#romance novels where one character is actually made of frogs

[hummingbird-games]

2022 IN REVIEW (VN/INDIE GAMES EDITION)

(Missed last year’s?? Check me out!!)

This year had lots of personal high highs and lower lows, so I’m glad I had games to distract from things 😂Without further ado, here’s my year in review:

DEMOS

Pivot of Heart - I’m unsure of the current status of this one, but I played it earlier this year and fell in love with the MC, the art, and was intrigued by the tarot inspired gameplay!

My Alien Roommate - I will 100% be supporting the Kickstarter the MOMENT it’s live. I was actually upset when I reached the end of the demo knowing good and well it was only a demo so that’s how you know I had a fun time 🤣 also, how can you not wanna romance an alien?? That’s what I thought. 

Our Life Now and Forever - On one hand, if you’re plugged into the VN scene, you’re already aware of this game and there’s no need for me to draw attention to it. On the other hand, to quote Billie Stevenson, “I do what I want.”

Infinite Blue - Oh man did I have fun with this one! To say I’m excited for the full game is an understatement! (review for this one is on the blog too btw)

Error143 - Seeing people simp for Micah Yujin has added 10 years to my life because a dark-skinned love interest getting THIS much attention??? Players be ready to risk it all for him and I love it. Also yeah he has my attention too, I am not immune, TF you thought this was???☠️

Garden of Seif - I’m not much help in selling this game because I just straight up inhaled it?? Everything was on point, from the characters, to the unraveling story, to our LIs and supporting cast, and of course, can’t love a game with loving the MC (at least, that’s how I work)

Fully Released & Played (at least 1 playthrough)

Gilded Shadows - The brain rot for this game is so real??? So. Damn. Real. It got to a point where after I played so many routes and unlocked multiple endings that I had to stop playing so I could work on my game! And there’s still content on the way?????? Oh to live at the same time as GS 🤗

Sifting Thyme - I’d be lying if I said this wasn’t my favorite high school otome game.  And I thought long and hard about the many other games I’ve played. And I have played a lot of high school romance/dating sim games ☠️ But this one takes the cake!!--and because food is involved, pun intended. If I could have played this in one sitting I totally would have.

An Everyday Love - Check the tags on this blog. I never shut up about this game. Seriously. 

Butterfly Soup 2 - Sequel’s only been out for like 2 months and I’m already begging for a third.  

Blanket Cat & Teacup - The first is a cozy visual novel that gives storybook/ younger me watching Reading Rainbow vibes, and the second is a puzzle, point and click narrative about an introverted frog girl who needs to get tea ingredients for her party, and both these games reminded me of the healing power of gaming. 

Still Shinning - Simply and lovely in its execution. I need to check out this dev’s other titles as well!

Portrait of a Texas Family - If you play no other games on this list, play this one. I don’t have any better words other than “I love it” and “this family and their love and their worry stick with you”.

Dusk & Dawn - SFHJSHFJSEJE THIS WAS SO GOOD LIKE WHAAA??? Black female MC, demi rep, superheroes, 2 dating options, multiple endings/dead ends, ughhh this game had it all. The only thing stopping it from being perfect is a sequel. And no, there’s no announced sequel so we can sulk together...

Fully Released (& still on 1st playthrough)

Wylde Flowers - I suck at farming sims in general, but this game has a special place in my heart. It’s the definition of charming + cozy and it was made to be played in bed so shoutout to the Switch port!!

ValiDate: Struggling Singles in your Area - I want to go in depth about this game when I’ve played all or majority of the routes, but for now just know I also believe this game was made for playing in bed LOL.

Gemi’s Gushies

(a list within a list of games that have devs trucking along in the background and I want to spotlight for y’all)

Band Camp Boyfriend

Ise and Kai

The Closet Door

Herotome

College Craze

Trouble Comes Twice

[owlhouse-headcannons]

Eda secretly reads romance novels but only the ones with murder or something.

[venusluvrr]

The Psychological Horror Manhwa “Killing Stalking” is not a Romance, but an Emotional Series Depicting the Codependent Relationship Between Two Ill Individuals

Content Warning!!: contains mentions of sexual abuse (rape) and mental illness.

Killing Stalking is an immensely twisted webcomic series, mainly popular within the Yaoi community for its boy on boy focused plotline. The story follows characters Yoon Bum (Bum), a shy, scrawny young man with a haunting past filled with abuse, and Oh Sangwoo (Sangwoo), a younger man who also has a quite damaging upbringing but masks it perfectly with his vibrant, extroverted personality. After being saved from a rape attempt during his time serving in the military, Bum develops a crush on his saviour, Sangwoo, from which an unhealthy obsession starts to arise and he eventually finds himself locating and breaking into the man’s home one day when he’s out. When he does, he discovers a terribly injured woman being held captive in his basement, and with further evidence, soon comes to the realization that his crush is actually a serial killer -- hence the name “Killing Stalking,” as Sangwoo kills and Bum stalks. For a very specific reason though, Sangwoo decides not to kill the man that had been stalking him, and instead holds him hostage in his custody. From here, the story goes into exceeding depth of the abnormal, toxic, and manipulative relationship the two form during their time spent together. By just the mere description of it, it’s a bit concerning to know that a large portion of readers still support Sangwoo and Bum’s relationship. In other words, they believe they truly loved each other and that the story was not only horror fiction but a romance as well. One could easily come to this conclusion by basing their relationship on the few parts within the novel where they showed affection towards each other -- for example when Bum allows Sangwoo to hug him to sleep when he suffered through the night, or my personal favourite, when Sangwoo buys Bum a stuffed frog keychain after finding out that he had an affinity for such creatures. But we cannot simply dismiss the underlying factors of their relationship because of some cute things they did that made our heart melt -- Sangwoo still abused Bum at his leisure which makes those moments quite meaningless in the sense of it all. What Sangwoo and Yoonbum shared can’t be classified as “love,” because even with their peculiar bond and endearing moments, the psychological damage they both endured played a bigger part in the way they perceived each other.

Many toxic relationships start out lovely and glamorous until the couple have become comfortable enough to start revealing some bad habits, but in Sangwoo and Bum’s case, they were already off to a bad start, as the reason they remained with each other was solely for reasons pertaining to their poor mental health.

At the time Sangwoo saved Bum in the military, Bum still suffered from Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) -- a disorder he inferrably developed due to the fact that he grew up being constantly physically and sexually abused by the people around him. People with this illness may easily develop an infatuation for a person who shows them even the least bit of care; It can reach the point where they begin to idolize them and see them almost as a perfect human being -- which is exactly how Bum viewed Sangwoo after he helped him to escape a rape attempt. The likely specific term for what Sangwoo was to Bum is a Favourite Person (FP). To an individual suffering from Borderline Personality Disorder, their FP is everything -- their self-worth, identity and emotional dependency all rely on this one person, making them the center of their lives. In contrast to this sincere fondness, the only reason Sangwoo kept Bum alive was because of the man’s resemblance to his late mother -- the one person in his life who he truly loved. While his father was abusive and negligent, his mother tried her best to care for her son even while her own mental stability wasn’t so great either. Even though it was implied that he was responsible for the murder of both his mother and father in high school -- getting away with it scotch-free because of how perfectly executed his plan was -- he still shared a special bond with the woman, allowing her existence follow and continue to torutue him mentally as he grew older. When he saw Yoonbum, he felt as if she had been somewhat resurrected, or at least he could pretend so by dressing him up in his mother’s clothes and making him cook and do the chores; He also played the husband role by abusing and assaulting Bum just as his father did to his mother -- mostly just out of his own nature. Sangwoo had his own issues, “mommy issues,” and he initially needed to keep Bum alive so he could fulfill his own longing desires. Knowing the man’s character though, things wouldn’t end there and instead headed down a very gruesome and frightful path.

The very reasons that the two were drawn to each other we’re even more evident the longer they lived under the same roof. While Yoonbum continued to recall the perfect image he had of Sangwoo in his head, Sangwoo continued to manipulate the man in order to satisfy his own needs. A healthy relationship cannot be based on deceit, because one person will end up victimized instead of loved.

Oh Sangwoo is a sadistic sociopath with a history of kidnapping, abusing, raping and torturing innocent people, and because of his illness, he shows feels and shows no remorse for his actions and even proceeds to kill off his victims as they pleaded in objection. What some people don’t understand is that when Sangwoo met Bum, the only reason he treated him differently was not because he thought of him as special, but because he had a personal agenda that included making Bum think that was the truth and that he was indeed the favoured victim among many. It’s no surprise with the man’s manipulative personality that he would enjoy planting a lie in Bum’s head to make him stay and continue to do as he says, and this is confirmed whenever he returned back to his old destructive habits even after showing the man acts of affection. Yes, Sangwoo spared Bum’s life, clothed him and fed him, but as their bond grew, his narcissistic attitude was still more apparent than ever.

Upon meeting Bum for the first time, Sangwoo didn’t hesitate to aggressively break his ankles to prevent his mobility, he left the man within the dark confinement of his basement for a certain period of time before letting him out only after he had gained his trust. He made him sit in a chair to wash dishes and make dinner because he could no longer stand. Sangwoo also constantly dragged Bum down with derogatory words and statements every chance he could get, this included calling him a “retard,” and referring to him as a “disgusting” and “filthy” human being. As confirmed by the author, Sangwoo is also heterosexual, which is further proved by the homophobic remarks he made towards a significantly older man who was sexually attracted to him while murdering him with Bum’s aid. This fact alone is another one that should justify a strong point that demonstrates the true hostility of their relationship -- Yoonbum never gave his consent to have sex with Sangwoo, nor did he allow it to happen because “he wanted it.” He specifically used phrases such as, “No,” “Stop,” and “It hurts,” implying that sometimes there was no mutual agreement when they had sex and Sangwoo had actually raped him several times.

People with Borderline Personality Disorder have been reported to have difficulties seeing the faults in their partner -- this explains why Bum still held on to him. He chose to stay when he had the chance to escape, and with tears rolling down his face from excruciating pain he still told Sangwoo he loved him. In a scene where Bum is left alone with the police as they investigate the suspicions they have surrounding him, he questions them saying, “Could you kiss somebody like me? Could you love somebody like me?” As he believes nobody but Sangwoo could answer yes to those two questions, convinced that Sangwoo really does have feelings for him. It’s saddening to know that the poor man had successfully been lured into a trap, and because of his mental health it would be much harder for him to realize it.

To the readers that think, “Sangwoo and Yoonbum needed each other,” -- You’re not completely wrong. They did need each other in the way that they found somewhat of a saneness from each other’s presence, each using one another to each other’s benefit. But being together at the same time built on their insanity, as the presence of Sangwoo’s mother seemed to grow even more prevalent with Bum, who resembled her, also in the picture, and Yoonbum growing so unhealthily attached to Sangwoo that he constantly feared of abandonment and turned the sociopath into the only source of his happiness. They needed each other, but not for the right reasons. They were attached to each other, but there was no love, otherwise it would reflect throughout the story. One of the most debate-worthy scenes that challenge this fact is when Sangwoo is reported by an old lady in the hospital, the one that had ended his life, that he was calling out Bum’s name throughout the night as he lay in his deathbed. Those were his final words, and Yoonbum’s final word was also Sangwoo’s name before he was very well implied to have been hit by a car while he chased an illusion of the man he “loved.” Even I almost felt that this was solid proof that even through the tough and terrible of their relationship, deep inside, the two really were in love but could not express it in the right way due to their mental health issues -- after all, what someone makes of their final moments before death is much more meaningful than most of what they've done in their life entirely. But I came to realize that the only way I could support this relationship would be if they had met in an alternate universe where they did not suffer from such dreadful childhood trauma that made them into the hurting individual they had become before meeting each other. As difficult as it is for me to picture the two with different partners, it would be best if the two had not met at all as they only fed into the severity of their conditions.

[duratrans]

Satoshi Mizukami Q&A, 3/3

Satoshi Mizukami recently took questions from the editor's desk, and publicly from write-ins, for an interview to celebrate the first volume of Solte going on sale (Jan 9th!). So I translated them all! It’s in three parts, so I’ll post them one by one.

Here is the third and final section, general questions of all kinds.

Q: I heard you were pretty impressed by Masakazu Ishiguro's Hero (note: Debut work in Gekkan Afternoon, 2000), and when you met him you said "You're my rival!" right to his face! Is there anyone that comes to mind you would still consider your professional rival today? A: Oof. I don't think I have that spirit in me any more. But, even while myself and so many of my friends are starting to slow down, when I see them putting out work, I do feel encouraged to stick it out.

Q: I've heard you started working to become a manga artist because you "wanted to live in a fantasy world" yourself. If you really could jump into a fictional world, what kind of work would it be? Who would you be in the story? The main character, or maybe the last boss? A: I want to live in a porno game. Somewhere with no danger or fighting.

Q: From any medium, can you think of one piece that you liked the most or inspired you? And can you explain why? A: There's probably too many to try and pick just one, but in terms of what really influenced me; For manga, late 90's Shonen Sunday and early 2000's Afternoon. Then, 90's new-wave light novels. For anime, Diebuster. In film, La Puta. A handful of Sega Saturn games. Some scifi stories on forums, and a bunch of other works on Shosetsu-ka ni Narou.

Q: What have you seen/read/played more recently that you liked the best? And can you tell us what you liked? A: Manga: Touge Oni. It was the first thing I read in a while that made me jealous. In books, The Three-Body Problem. I liked the second of the trilogy best, but they were just good page-turners. For anime, Karakuri Circus. The manga ended long enough ago that it felt like going in fresh again, so it hit just right. Really liked the OP too. Film: Interstellar. Tenet wasn't great, so I rewatched this again and still good. It's exactly the kind of movie I was wanting. Games: Ring Fit. I had the idea if I got a little bit in shape, I might get some motivation back. I feel like it might be working? Just the teensiest, slightest bit. Light novels: I Am the Only One Who Knows This World Is a Game. It's just the right amount of bonkers.

Q: If you had ultimate freedom to do any kind of manga you wanted, what would it be like? Would you want a long series, or something shorter? -Ruha A: I was going to say I haven’t exactly had any restrictions, but actually a few things did come up with Solte. But even still, I can fit in any ideas I really want to draw, so I think things are pretty good as they are.

Q: If you had to put yourself in a genre, what kind of manga artist do you think you are? Sci-fi? Or maybe romance? -Takeshi A: I'm a little surprised to see "romance", even as an example. If you ask me, you can categorize me however you want.

Q: Which character are you most attached to, out of all of your works? -Habu A: Anima from Biscuit Hammer.

Q: When you're designing your characters, how do you come up with a good balance when it comes to the composition and relationships in the cast? -Yoneko A: Oh, man. I just kinda... Feel it out.

Q: I've been a big fan of your work forever! I really like your drawing style. How do you make your art the way you do? -gum A: I dunno, that's just how it turns out when I draw. I've been telling myself "Wow, I need to work on my art" for 19 years, since the day I was first published.

Q: Has raising a child had any effect on your stories? -Tai A: It means I work less.

Q: I want to draw manga too, but I'm not very confident in my skills. Do you have any advice? -Tai Arima A: First, do you mean you're not satisfied yourself with the quality of your work, or you're just not confident enough to put it out there? Don't worry, this is always a fundamental issue for creators, things rarely come out just how you imagine them. It's like how you can only print out photos at a resolution as sharp as your camera can capture them. I recommend you start by just making something. Sit down, do it, and finish it, and you'll learn a lot from it. It'll be up to you whether you show that around, but when you start, I wouldn't necessarily make a big deal out of it, you can just work on it quietly without making a big announcement. That way, there's no pressure, and if it's not working out, you can still stop or take a break without feeling bad about it. You decide how to use your time the best.

Q: When I went to a promo event for Planet With at Loft, you and Rensuke Oshikiri (Hi Score Girl) both talked about how as you get older, you find it harder and harder to stay motivated. Have you found anything that helps you in that regard? -Tayu A: I listed to some cheerful music for a while last week and actually found it helped my mood a little.

Q: I love how expressive all of your characters are! Is there anything particular in your process for when you are working on faces and expressions? -Arbel A: I have to be careful I don't go overboard making the same expression I'm drawing.

Q: I write for a hobby, but I always have trouble planning out how the story comes together. Do you have any advice or a favorite method for composing a story? -Nigou A: I read and re-read what I've got, and anywhere I think it's getting dull, I change the scene or add some exciting development. Make the last thing you think would happen, happen. And don't worry about how to tidy everything up, that's a problem for tomorrow you. Today you just has to lay it out.

Q: Hello, Sensei. I've read all your works, and I'm a big fan, but what really impresses me is your dialog. I love how it always just flows off the page, it reads so naturally. So, my question is, when you are writing the dialog, do you just hear it unfold naturally in the character's voices, or do you write more deliberately like "oh, here they would probably say this?" That probably sounds weird to people who've never written manga, but I'd like to know about your process. P.S. Good luck with the Ring Fit grind. -Kiki A: First I decide how the dialog needs to play out in order to advance the story in the direction I want. Then, I just let the characters talk among themselves, and if it doesn't turn out right, I go back, shake things up, and try again. And sometimes I get good material, but it just needs to be trimmed or re-arranged just right.

Q: A lot of your stories have some sort of turning point where the back half really kicks it up a notch and things just keep getting more intense. Do you already have these developments planned when you start a manga? -TKO A: I usually have a few ideas but it's always pretty vague. I never know if I'm gonna wind up putting in or cutting certain scenes, so I don't worry about it too much.

Q: Do you have one favorite scene or a particular line from your own work? -yamatozo A: At the beginning of Spirit Circle volume 6, where the bad guy falls down the stairs and goes "I've made a lot of missteps".

Q: Do you have any idea of what genre you'd like to draw next? -Umehoshi A: I won't say no, but I don't want to give anything away (for my next work, or this one).

Q: If you weren't successful as a manga artist, where do you think you would be? -Ayuta A: Jail. But I'd be a model prisoner.

Q: How much longer do you think you'd like to continue as a manga artist? -Ayuta A: If I could pay the bills for the rest of my life with 24 pages a month, that's just what I'd do. At some point maybe I'll get to be unsatisfied with that and start to push myself to work more and more until I get sick of it, but no telling when that might come.

Q: How do you think of your character's names? -Takeshi A: They just come to me. I look at how I designed the characters and just imagine.

Q: I feel like some kind of forgiveness or absolution is something a lot of your characters go through. Does "forgiveness" have a special significance to you? -Bow-wow A: I'm not sure. Maybe it's me who is seeking forgiveness.

Q: Do you have a favorite phrase or motto? A: I like Shigeru Mizuki's (Gegege no Kitaro) 7 Rules of Being Happy. I don't really go around saying them or anything, but it's something I like to remind myself of, and helps me be mindful of other people. Also, I like "fortune favors the bold."

Q: You like frogs enough that you always draw yourself as one. What do you like about frogs? And do you have a favorite species? A: Frogs are cute. I like green tree frogs the best.

Q: You've drawn a lot of different youkai in Sengoku Youko, but out of all the youkai that most people know from stories, which is your favorite? Could it be the Chan Chu (chinese money toad), or possibly the oogama (monstrous giant toad)? A: My favorite youkai is Mizuki Shigeru.

Q: You've been doing Ring Fit, and eating oatmeal, are you doing anything else to help stay in shape? A: I put the Karakuri Circus season one and season two OP on a playlist and listen to it while I walk to work.

Q: If you were stranded all alone on a deserted island, what are the three things you would want to have with you? A: Really? Okay. I would bring two essential tools I can't find on an island, and a map.

Q: Do you have a favorite actor or celebrity? -Umehoshi A: Nope.

Q: What's the best kind of alcohol and snacks you've had? Where did you drink it? -Ikaninjin A: In the middle of a hellish summer and probably suffering from heatstroke at an amusement park with my kid, I had the best beer of my life in an air-conditioned food court. And the delicious spice to top it off was the bright sun knifing through the window that I just knew was tormenting everyone still outside.

Q: What do you want to be when you grow up? -Ayuta A: A youkai.

Q: What does your internal mindscape look like? -Rou A: An empty lot.

Q: Has anything happened recently that you're happy about? -Sanachan A: My son is starting to read and write.

Q: What kind of hotpot are you looking forward to this winter? -Tommy A: I'm not crazy about hotpot.

Q: I'd like to go to another event where we can toast again, would you consider it?

-Uta

A: If current events allow.

Q: How many times have you thought about quitting Ring Fit? -Honyarara A: 2 or 3 times. A week.

Q: I know you call it your "100-day Ring Fit Diary" on twitter, but since you've been taking breaks too, will you be going past 100? Will the illustrations be collected and published anywhere? -The Dieting Gentleman A: I'm going until I clear adventure mode, but it'll probably be finished by the time this article is up. I'll probably do some sets here and there. No plans for the illustrations.

Q: Do you have a favorite panel out of all your works? -Umehoshi A: You guys are really focused on my favorite everything. I have a lot of panels I like, not one in particular.

Q: Hi, I really enjoy all of your works, and there's one thing I think I notice (sorry if I'm wrong), and that's a love of glasses girls. Out of your manga so far, which is your favorite of all your glasses girls? Do you have a particular girl you've become a fan of recently? As for myself, I really like Yoru from Sanjin Sadou, so I'd love to see a story with her and her sister! -Bashi A: Glasses girls aren't particularly a thing for me.

Q: When you're doing authographs or sketches, does it bother you at all if people request characters from your past works? If I get a chance, I would probably ask for Hyou Shimaki from Biscuit Hammer, for instance. -Akasha A: If it's a promo event for a Mag Garden title, and you were to ask for a character from a Gahosha title, for instance, it might technically bump up against merchandising contracts, which makes it a little weird (I'm typically not allowed to to create any merchandise without going through the publisher), but my managing editors are usually cool enough about it. But if it's specifically a Sengoku Youko event, for instance, and I'm constantly getting asked for Biscuit Hammer drawings (let's say more than half), that would probably be an issue and they might make a rule against it for next time. Also, I tend to forget how the older characters actually looked. For personal reasons, I probably won't be doing any in-person events like this for a while, though. There's also the whole "current state of the world" thing, and my profitability and if bookstores actually want to do it, a lot of issues to solve.

Q: You usually draw Anima working out on Twitter, but did you have plans for any other characters to show up doing Ring Fit? (Like from Angel or Sanjin) -RYO A: I did, but forgot.

Q: Will you put together another oneshot collection, like Geko Geko? -Friday A: I don't know.

Q: Question! What is love? -Shirae A: To live is to love.

Q: How about this, do you have any questions you want to ask your readers? -Buriki A: Would you rather have: A. One series a month, from roughs to completion, all done by me B: Two series a month, with roughs by me and final touches by someone else

Q: I know thinking positive is half the battle, but what can I do about people who're determined to get me down? Can I give them a Samidare Punch? -Nondakure A: Your fist, and the choice of how to use it, belongs to you alone.

[sammysdewysensitiveeyes]

Ranking Brotherhood of Evil Mutant members (including all interations) from your, most to least favorite and please expound why. I do like asking for opinions.

Hmmm....there have been several iterations of the Brotherhood, and I’m not very familiar with some of the later versions, so I’m just gonna go with the earlier versions that I know.  Bear in mind, this is entirely subjective, and I like most of these characters, so a character being lower down doesn’t mean I hate them.  Going from favorite to least favorite:  

Pyro:

Anyone following this blog has probably noticed I love this dude.  I’m not exactly subtle about it.  I think he’s interesting and fun, as villains go.  He’s snarky and cocky, and actually rather friendly when he’s not trying to kill you - very Affable Evil.  He’s not necessarily a very good person - he’s self-interested, and can be rather vicious, but he’s a character that I thought could potentially come over to the good side.  He seemed, at times, to get into the whole “Freedom Force” thing, and clearly enjoyed saving people alongside Longshot.  He seems to bond a great deal with his team-mates - Mystique, Avalanche, even Stonewall (although he was a dick to him and Commando when they first joined).  He even pals around with Blob, even though he also snarks at him sometimes.  In AOA, Pyro was the only one helping and being protective of Phantazia.  And now in Marauders he refers to them as his “friends,” and is perfectly happy traveling around with people that used to kick his ass, even appearing impressed with them (especially Storm), and being a surprisingly good team player.  I don’t think Pyro would necessarily become a good guy for altruistic purposes, but I think he enjoys having “adventures” and getting attention and hanging out with his team-mates.  I think if Pyro was on an X-Team, and was made to feel welcome, he’d probably be content to fight alongside them and follow the rules (which is basically what he’s doing right now with the Marauders), and maybe some of his team-mates’ virtues would rub off on him a bit.  (There was apparently a version of X-Factor pitched to Marvel years ago that included Pyro on the team, and I’m disappointed that never happened, although I loved the X-Factor that we got.)  And of course, there was also Pyro’s somewhat redemptive death, where he came to regret his past actions with the Brotherhood and wound up sacrificing his life to save Senator Kelly (fat lot of good it did, since Kelly got assassinated shortly after, but hey, he tried!) 

Along with all of that, I am also really intrigued by Pyro’s back story of being a romance author and journalist.  There’s the whole dichotomy of a guy who callously burns people to death and also writes gothic romance novels in his spare time.  And honestly, it sounds like he’s lived a really interesting life before the Brotherhood - traveling all around South East Asia, working as a journalist covering Indonesia and Vietnam (I’d assume he speaks at least a little bit of Indonesian and Vietnamese to be able to live there and cover news).  His motives for joining the Brotherhood have never been established, and I’m dying to know more about how he met Mystique, and why he decided to leave what was apparently a successful career and probably fairly comfortable life to go be an international terrorist.  Was it money?  A promise of adventure?  Did he really believe in Magneto’s cause?  Was he already getting into criminal activity before he joined the Brotherhood?  There’s a lot of potential for development there, but unfortunately most writers (except Claremont) tend to completely ignore all of Pyro’s backstory.  I’m still hoping that Duggan at least makes some reference to it, even just a throwaway comment about how Pyro used to write novels.

TL,DR: I like Pyro because he’s fun and clever, he makes friends with his team-mates, and he’s a writer. 

Toad:

Toad is a really intriguing character, but mostly I like him because he’s actually got a lot of potential, but he’s had a shit life and can never seem to catch a break.  In the earliest issues, he was just Magneto’s abused lackey, and appeared quite sniveling and pathetic, but later on it was revealed that he’s actually quite intelligent (and good with machines), he just appeared “stupid” due to all the abuse he suffered during childhood.  Toad also has a lot of interesting powers - writers seem to give him a new one every other appearance.  His stamina, agility, and super-strong legs could actually make him a pretty good fighter if he got proper training.  Plus he’s got the prehensile tongue, pheromone secretion, acidic saliva, secretion of a paralytic resin, mind control over frogs - his Marvel bio is a long, long list of secondary powers.  Toad could be quite formidable if he actually got his shit together, and there are AU’s (like House of M and Age of Apocalypse) where we see a much more stable, competent, intelligent Toad who is living up to his potential.  But 616 Toad remains a joke,  He’s either a low-level bad guy (they tried to level him up in the 90′s by making him the leader of the Brotherhood, but it didn’t last) or a pathetic sad-sack used for humor, or both.  His attempt to “join” the X-Men led to him being the janitor and basically getting treated like shit (he literally had no bed?) then getting kicked out when he follow Husk to the Hellfire Academy, even though he did that largely out of concern for Husk, and actually helped her and Quentin escape.

Basically, Toad has been subjected to horrible abuse pretty much his entire life, he has a mutation that makes him appear “ugly”, and everyone treats him with, at best, pity, and at worst, hatred and disgust.  I’ll admit, he’s had a few chances to better his life that have fallen through because of his own bad choices (and he’s done some horrible things, especially when he was leading the Brotherhood in the 90′s), but most of the time he’s just getting continuously kicked while he’s down.  To a certain extent, it’s really a matter of comic writers not being willing to take Toad seriously - he’s considered a joke villain, and therefore gets written that way, because he’s there as an accessory in someone else’s story.  At least the Toad/Husk storyline seemed to focus some on Toad himself as a character, even if it ended badly for him.  Sometimes, I kinda think Toad is written as evil or pathetic so that writers can justify other characters being shitty towards him.  Like, Magneto’s early treatment of Toad was absolutely, inexcusably horrible.  Magneto treated everyone in the Brotherhood badly, including his own children, but it seemed like Toad caught the worst of it.  Pietro and Wanda were also disgusted by Toad, although they had good reason, since his affection towards Wanda was pretty creepy.  Later on, Magneto was revamped into more of a noble, morally grey character, and his past abuse of Toad was mostly forgotten.  I don’t think the writers are necessarily doing this on purpose, but it kind feels like Toad remaining a pathetic bad guy was partially a way to excuse Magneto’s poor treatment of him, since Magneto was being reinvented as a more likable character.  And not just Magneto, but just about everyone who finds Toad disgusting or cracks jokes about how gross he is – it’s okay, Toad is awful so it’s totally fine to have the physically attractive good guys mock him and treat him like garbage.  (Hell, the artists can’t even decide what Toad’s physical appearance should be.  Is he skinny?  Fat?  Does he have green skin?  Is his nose ridiculously long or closer to normal?  Who knows what we’ll get in each issue.  And God forbid he be drawn without his tongue lolling out of his mouth.)

Also, I think that a lot of Toad’s worst personality flaws are at least partially due to the abuse he suffered.  To be clear, I’m not justifying the things that Toad has done. He set up death traps for people who wronged him, murdered Sauron’s girlfriend, and stalked and attacked Wanda multiple times.  That’s pretty shitty of him!  But I also think the abuse had a huge effect on Toad and how he interacts with people. Like, his tendency to obsessively latch onto people, and act like a sniveling lackey – the dude has had pretty much no love his entire life, and he’s always been treated like garbage.  Of course he has no self-esteem, of course he’ll fawn over anyone that shows him affection.  He’s been raised to believe that he is garbage.  Even his tendency to gloat over others being punished, and his whole “I’ll tell Magneto, and you’ll get in trouble!” thing is an understandable survival mechanism – other people getting in trouble means that he’s not the target, for once.  Obviously I can’t condone Toad trying to murder people that wronged him, but his anger and resentment is also understandable after the poor treatment he’s suffered.  In fact, I think it’s actually healthier for him to be angry than to think that he deserves it.  And a lot of the shitty things he did as Brotherhood leader also felt like him desperately wanting to be taken seriously, to be respected – also not a bad thing to want, even if his actions were terrible.  Basically, Toad has a lot of personality flaws, and he’s also had a lot of experiences that created or exacerbated those personality flaws.  The guy needs serious, long-term therapy, and I think he could become a better (or at least more competent) person if he got the help that he so obviously needs.

TL, DR: Basically, Toad deserves better.

Avalanche:

I have to admit, a lot of my love for Avalanche is all about his relationship with Pyro, be it friendship or something more.  (It’s something more in my headcanons, I will forever ship them.)  But he’s also a character that we don’t know much about, in part because he tends to talk a lot less than a certain chatty Australian.  He seems, more than anything, to be a practical-minded punch-clock villain, who is mostly in it for the money.  He doesn’t seem to enjoy putting on a show and reveling in his powers like Pyro, and he doesn’t seem to have the same mean streak that can be seen in Blob (and Pyro, to be fair).  I’m sure there are probably instances of Avalanche being dickish and cruel, but in a lot of his appearances that I’ve read, he seems very practical.  Do the job, get paid.  He also seems fairly content to be a follower or a lackey – happy to take orders from Mystique, or even follow Pyro’s lead when Mystique isn’t around.  That doesn’t mean he doesn’t have his own ideas or opinions, but he doesn’t particularly feel the need to be a leader.  Like Pyro, we also don’t know much about his past before the Brotherhood, except that he was married at some point.  Where’s his wife now?  Why didn’t it work out?  Was it because of him being a mutant, or was it his activities with the Brotherhood that drove them apart?  Does he still love her?  Why did he join the Brotherhood in the first place?  

Avalanche also seems to care somewhat about his team-mates, although he’s not as openly friendly as Pyro.  During Freedom Force’s disastrous last mission, he made the difficult call to abandon Pyro and Blob to save Commando, something that he was clearly broken up about.  And of course, he was willing to go on a mission in the Savage Land with Pyro to get a Legacy Virus cure (that unfortunately didn’t actual exist).  Avalanche is selective about who he cares about, but he still shows that he cares through his actions.  I don’t want to make this all about Pyro, but I really love their relationship.  The stoic, quiet guy/chatty energetic guy dynamic is great.  They just love being bros and committing crimes together, and they are quick to work together and back each other up, even in their earliest appearances.  I would totally read a min-series focusing on the early days of Mystique’s brotherhood, especially if it gave us some good Avalanche, Pyro and Blob development, and didn’t just center around Rogue and Mystique (both fantastic characters, but they’ve both got a lot of attention directed at them already.)

Also, Avalanche likes to garden, which is nice. And at one point he just got fed-up with everything and tried to retire and become a bartender, which is very relatable.  Unfortunately Red Skull murdered him after that.  Sorry, Avalanche.  I hope you are resurrected on Krakoa, living your best life.

Blob:

Another character who is often not taken seriously. Blob is mean-spirited, crass, and often self-interested, much like the rest of the Brotherhood members.  He also was extremely close to Unus, and clearly devastated when Unus’s powers went out of control and killed him.  Blob is one of those characters where I think his physical appearance has led to him being designated as a bad guy by the writers – he’s big and gross, so, just like Toad, he’ll be portrayed as a bad person in order to justify the good guys being terrible to him.  (Yes, I know there are “ugly” good guys, but let’s face it, they are rare.  Most of the good guys look like models.)  Blob also, like Toad, gets a lot of crap for his physical appearance, something that is literally part of his mutation.  I think some of Blob’s nastiness is definitely a defense mechanism, lashing out at others because he is used to being attacked.  It also seems like Blob is really lacking in close friendships, like what Mystique and Destiny or Pyro and Avalanche have (“friendship”).  He was really the odd man out in Mystique’s brotherhood.  He’s willing to pal around with various Brotherhood members, including Avalanche and Pyro when they’re not picking fights with each other, but he doesn’t seem to have a best buddy after Unus’s death.  I kind of admire Blob’s toughness.  It would be easy for him to completely lose his self-esteem, like Toad, but he stands up for himself and never grovels to others.  He is frequently insulted for his mutation, but he also seems comfortable in his own skin, which is good.  He shouldn’t have to feel bad about his own body.    

There was an AU story that showed a softer, more thoughtful Blob who wound up in a relationship with Psylocke, so we know he’s capable of showing a better side of himself.  To some extent, I like Blob’s crass, take-no-shit personatliy, but I’d also like to see writers give him more depth.  I’d especially like to see him reunite with Unus on Krakoa, and the two of them hanging out enjoying each other’s company.  I’m also enjoying the cameos we get of bartender Blob on Krakoa, I hope he is also living his best life.  

Phantazia:

Honestly, I mostly just want to know more about her. All we really know is that she has a PhD (in some kind of scientific field, I think….she is reading a book on astrophysics in one comic), and she was willing to join Toad’s Brotherhood (and she was also the only Brotherhood member that received an invitation from Exodus to Asteroid M). Why?  What was her life before that?  Who knows? Most of the time, she seems rather cold, and a bit distant from her team-mates (but I can’t entirely blame her, the Brotherhood is a rough crowd.  It’s hard to be the new team-mate, and probably especially hard to be the only woman.)  She did seem concerned about Pyro when he was suffering from the Legacy Virus, but she kind of dropped out of sight when the Brotherhood disbanded.   She seems like she was mostly in it for personal gain, especially since Toad’s Brotherhood was more about petty crime than mutant rights.  Apparently she was deeply affected by Wanda’s reality alterations, which took a toll on her mental health, and was last seen in a SHIELD holding cell.  I hope she pops up again on Krakoa.  

Rogue:

The only reason Rogue is so low on the list is that I sometimes forget she was ever a Brotherhood member, and because I like to focus more on lesser known characters.  But I really like Rogue!  She’s tough but sweet, and an incredible badass.  Leaving the Brotherhood for the X-Men meant walking away from her team and foster-mother(s), but she still did it, and became one of the X-Men’s most dependable and valued members.  I love Rogue’s past, her relationship with Mystique, her relationship with Gambit.  I love how she doesn’t take shit, but she also doesn’t go around acting like a jerk, like some of the “tough” characters.  (Wolverine, basically.)  I like the complexity of her struggles with her powers, and her knowing that her strongest abilities, like strength and flight, were basically “stolen” from someone else. I feel like I should say more, but Rogue is very popular and has had loads written about her already.  Rogue is cool, and she deserves the best!  

Mystique:

A truly fascinating character.  She’s also lower on the list because she is fairly well-known and popular, and also because she can absolutely be a manipulative piece of shit, willing to throw everyone except Destiny under the bus.  Yet, at the same time, we see her appear to genuinely care about people, like Rogue, Nightcrawler (after the unfortunate “toss baby off a cliff” incident), Destiny, even Pyro occasionally (she has a nice moment with him on Muir Island, and also calls him “friend” in X-Factor).  She’s a character who can never be entirely trusted, which is a large part of what makes her interesting.  I think she truly does care about a few, select people.  Hell, there’s an early issue in which Mystique fights a bunch of robots programmed to look and act like the X-Men (courtesy of Arcade), and she completely breaks down after having to “kill” the Rogue robot, then hesitates to attack the Nightcrawler bot.  I think Mystique can also be extremely callous, cold and manipulative, but I don’t think she is completely evil, just very self-interested, like a lot of villains. Also, she’s probably seen and experienced a lot of shit over her long life that contributed to that callousness (I figure if I’m gonna cut Toad and Blob some slack, I should do the same for Mystique.)  I do wish she would stop committing rape by deception in stories (meaning sleeping with someone while disguised as someone else).  It’s something that gets glossed over, even though fandom generally despises rapist male villains (and rightfully so), but Mystique pretending to be Blink and sleeping with Mimic is barely a story blip.  

Mystique is also interesting just because she’s such a badass.  She’s cunning, a good leader, a good strategist, excellent spy, good at hand-to-hand combat (she only loses to Arcade’s X-Men robots because she hesitates). She is damn formidable!  She’s also lived a varied and interesting life. There’s a reason she’s gotten so much exposure in comics.  I can also understand her being short-tempered while leading the Brotherhood, as she has to deal with the three stooges of Pyro, Avalanche and Blob.  Then things get even more complicated during the Freedom Force days.  Mystique has a lot of shit to deal with keeping those idiots in line.  Her relationship with Destiny is probably my favorite thing about Mystique, they are beautiful wives, and I hope she gets Destiny resurrected so the two of them can live happily together on Krakoa.  (Unlikely.)  

Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch:

I don’t have much to say about these two, even though I like them. I’m starting to run out of steam in terms of character analysis, and I tend to think of them more as Avengers than Brotherhood members.  They both deserve better.  Also, they are mutants and Magneto is their dad. Retcon?  What retcon?

Destiny:

I don’t have much to say about Destiny because she is very mysterious – always working according to some plan that only she knows. So it’s hard to really know her as a character.  She seems like a very intelligent and calm woman.  She’s always chilling while the Brotherhood guys are freaking out or picking fights with each other.  She also faced her own death bravely and willingly.  She seems to have a good sense of humor.  One of my favorite stories is Mystique disposing of Destiny’s ashes after her death.  She is throwing them off a boat at a specific time and place, according to Destiny’s instructions – and the wind blows them back into her face.  Obviously Destiny planned it as a last prank, and I have to like a character who sets that up.  Also, one time she let a rock wall collapse on Avalanche and Spiral because she knew they wouldn’t be seriously hurt, and she hated Spiral and wanted to enjoy her humiliation.  That’s some impressive pettiness.  Destiny is cool, and I hope she comes back.

Sauron:

I don’t really care about him at all.  

Mastermind:

Seems like a real creep, especially with his manipulation of Jean Grey/Phoenix in the Dark Phoenix saga.  At least he apologized to her at his death.  Also, he’s got three daughters, the dude gets around. Regan, Martinique, and Pixie (WTF?! I just read that in his bio.)  I am really confused by there being two Mastermind daughters with the same powers, but apparently it was actually a mix-up between two writers.  Oops!  

That’s all.  I know there have been later Brotherhood iterations with other members, including one or both Lady Masterminds, but that was during a time when I wasn’t reading much X-Men, so I’m not familiar with most of those characters. I might have more to say if I eventually read some of the later Brotherhood stories.  

[inknose]

mdzs read diary part IV, the end

It’s inspiring how much self care wwx is gonna finally get now that his husband will go along with whatever he does, so he’s gotta look out for lwj’s well being if not his own. that is emphatically the STUFF

dragging my hands down I face as I read this, after all these chapters of getting up close and personal with ghouls bleeding from every orifice, slaying ancient beasts, rebelling against the entire cultivation world, the two of them are absolutely paralyzed by middle school crush sleepover math

chicken

he actually drew kissy doodles .... he....

IDK I THINK I JUST DOCUMENTED THIS PART CUZ I WAS STILL SCREAMING you cant expect me to have very useful things to say at this point

this is torture you are both so mushy you are so GONE

This part really stood out to me, it’s an attitude I feel like wwx implies with his inner narration a few times but most clearly says here: he’s not one for allowing himself to exaggerate how bad his circumstances are/could be even a little bit - he’s already lived through some extreme low points and found a way to keep going, so he never makes sweeping statements about what he couldn’t live without (Inner JingYi: you’re supposed to say you’d be lost without him here!!!) Instead he seems to accept as a given that being alive doesn’t guarantee him any pleasantness or joy at all, and as a result his feelings toward being in TRUE LOVE are surprisingly pragmatic, but also colored with such gratitude. There are a lot of things in the novel that struck me, like this, as being just a little to the left of familiar tropes/sentiments, and were more touching for it. Whether it be the influence of culture difference as opposed to what I’m used to reading in most western romance stories, or MXTX’s unique outlook, or a combination of both, it was really refreshing and made me pause over it. Not “I can’t imagine living without you” but “I could be living without you, but instead I get to be with you and I think that’s the best thing that could happen.”

ADJFDKFJ THE UST BEING SO STRONG THAT EVEN THE VILLAIN COMMENTS ON IT IN THE MIDDLE OF EXECUTING HIS EVIL PLANS IS ONE OF THOSE THINGS THAT WILL NEVER FAIL TO MAKE ME LAUGH MY ASS OFF. hes like god damn! here I thought I had problems

it was at this moment that I realized we were doing this Now... I’m still recovering. What a scene. I am so glad I saw the most incredible fanart soon afterwards, bc the fact that someone has already drawn a perfect comic of this part means I don’t have to

I love you so much, you are so annoying, you are perfect... I like how he’s been experiencing openly requited love for all of ten minutes but he’s already figured out how to weaponize it to piss people off

doing!!! his!!! job!!!!!

ahh... it’s a really good story. JGY is a great character. One of the most interesting differences for me between drama watching vs. novel reading experience is that without an actor to bat his vulnerable doe eyes at you and smile faintly with his cute dimples, the book does not go much out of its way to try to lull the reader into a false sense of security around him or *endear* him to you the way the show does. But just by seeing events through wei wuxian’s POV, its still enough to evoke pity or understanding towards him. The overall impression is a bit more detached though, there’s less emphasis on the spectacle of how he could manipulate everyone closest to him and more of a general feeling of resigned tragedy that everyones the worst on this bitch of an earth.

I CANNOT DEAL WITH YOU FOR EVEN ONE MORE SECOND!!!!

I clearly paused to take note of less and less parts at the end & the extras due to: a) too excited to reach the end b) too spicy to photograph and c) too sleepy cuz I kept reading in the middle of the night. but I absolutely took the time for Bro We Are Teens appreciation corner:

I’d absolutely read 40 more extra chapters of their monster-of-the-week field trip antics.

god... poor Jin Ling now basically has to deal with divorced parents that talk shit about each other to him whenever he is saying with one of them. except they are both his uncles. just a disasterhood of all uncles from start to finish. AUUUGH wei wuxian and jiang cheng have fucked me up completely, I dream of them reconciling but I also REFUSE to believe it would ever be easy. let me know if theres a fanfic that absolutely tortures you for decades before they hug

HAHAHA oh no this man ain’t making it to immortality thats for damn sure. HE’S JUST GONNA TRY AS HARD AS HE CAN HIS WHOLE LIFE NOT TO LOOK AT HIM BUT THEYRE *MARRIED* SDLKFJSF ohhhh it’s too funny, like... the mundane domestic family drama IN the fantastical swords and sorcery setting is what really ratchets up these things from amusing to fucking hilarious I think

aaaa the end... final random thoughts? No not final, I would like to please keep discussing at length and exhaustively, all the time please - CQL has gotta be one of the best TV adaptations I’ve seen. ANY adaptation of anything would be lucky to be so good!! reading the novel has just made me appreciate it even more.

- I don’t think I can do justice to what I find most fascinating about comparing the two versions briefly, to do that I need to get drunk and ramble at my friends for hours but... the condensed version is something like this. Really all the significant differences between the two versions (besides the ones which can be attributed to censorship and therefore aren’t worth discussing) are a side effect of the structure of how the story is told - there’s barely anything changed arbitrarily. Aside from having a cold opening, the drama sticks to a very linear version of the story, and I think for a TV show or film, that’s probably the best way to do it. We see everything, we get shocked and tricked and betrayed and surprised along with the characters, we feel the biggest impact at the climactic scenes having experienced all the build-up. The novel on the other hand is not only much more non-linear in WHEN we learn bits and pieces of information, but that information is also obfuscated under wei wuxian’s multiple layers of Unreliable Narratoritis, which are as follows: 1) difficulty remembering things because of personality/avoiding painful memories/actual memory loss, 2) No Homo Goggles still on, and 3) a wry sense of humor that makes the reader unsure of how much they can trust his attitude toward things, especially near the beginning. The experience of reading is a puzzle the reader has to mentally piece together through all of the above listed camouflage, and the puzzle itself is a three-sided mystery: One - How Bad of a guy was Wei WuXian really, and how exactly did all the bad stuff in his life go down; Two - wangxian epic pride & prejudice gambits; Three - political murder mystery. (I love stories like this btw... though I fully admit I’m glad I watched first this time bc it might have taken me a long time to tackle otherwise.) Because of this, where the drama wants to pull you in and submerge you in all the most potent emotional parts, the novel in direct contrast deliberately side-steps around these things and asks that you hurt yourself by filling in the blanks. In fact the more intense emotions and painful memories involved, whether it be his relationship with jiang yanli, his DEATH, the darkest days of war times etc, the more the novel evasively withholds details. I actually really like both styles of storytelling but each one is obviously way better suited to its medium. ANYWAY.... THATS BASICALLY WHERE MY BRAINS AT WHILE IM READING GAY SWORD WIZARD BOOKS

- The extras are so saturated with domestic married bliss that it’s a good thing I stopped taking pictures because I’d just take a picture of every page. this is too much for me to take... I did jump the gun a few times and read a few fanfics while I was still mid-read of the book (I tried to hold out but alas I am mortal) and at one point after finishing I was like “wow what fic was it in where lwj says something cute and wwx kisses him in public but they’re in the corner of the restaurant so no one really sees... OH NO WAIT that was actually in there.” and ... and that’s the LEAST OF IT... *stares into the distance* theyre married wow

- I ofc couldn’t help but see a few vague blogs beforehand so honestly I was braced for something like, wildly ooc for the sake of porn to happen in the extras... I definitely appreciate how the incense burner porn interludes could be uhhh a lot for many people and not my personal cup of tea in terms of smut however [here follows the words of a poisonous frog who has dwelt her whole life in the rainforests of BL] the concept is also surprisingly SWEET SDFLKJF like wwx sees lan wangji’s darkest mixed-up violent teenage fantasies and he’s just like aww babe you had a crush on me!! just... good for them

- I swear I’m not gonna rehash every cute married thing they do but wei wuxian grading papers in the tub........................rEALLY GOT ME

- I want to Draw - ok thats enough if I keep going I’ll just write “wei wuxian grading papers in the tub” seven more times probably

[wishbonehearts]

❝ girls are cruelest to themselves. ❞ natalia delacour-bardon, kristine froseth, sixteen, sixth year, hufflepuff, a cis-woman, one-eighth veela, she/her

character parallels: hanna marin, caroline forbes, buffy summers, summer roberts, cher horowitz, elle woods, brooke davis, bubbles, heather mcnamara, sansa stark

head’s up: i wrote most of this on discord when i was dead tired and it’s really messy because of it. it’s not amazing but i’m ready to get her on the dash so it’ll have to do!

unlike my other female characters, natalia is so unabashedly a teenage girl and i love her for it

she's the daughter of gabrielle delacour and henri bardon, and she has a twin sister named annette who's in gryffindor. tbh natalia had a relatively easy and happy childhood. her parents cherished their children so much, showering them with love and affection. because she’s related to the delacour branch of the wotter family, she also grew up alongside them, eventually choosing to attend hogwarts in order to be closer to them. honestly, natalia could not have asked for a better family, and she loves them more than anything.

[ SEXUALIZATION OF A MINOR TW ] although she's only one-eighth veela, it was still enough to make a difference. natalia grew up being called beautiful --- by her friends, by strangers, by her family. but unfortunately, that beauty would have its consequences. even though her parents tried their best to shelter her, she was sexualized from a young age, especially by older men. and of course, there were always assumptions. assumptions purely based on her appearance and her interests, that she's shallow and vain and stupid and easy. she's been called everything at some point simply because she cares so much about fashion and makeup and popularity and romance. [ END TW ]

it's reached the point where natalia feels as though she has nothing else to offer the world but her appearance, that it's all she's good for. outside of her family, she's not often praised for much else. she's always been abysmal at schoolwork, and she has little direction in life, constantly changing her interests and passions like a chameleon. she doesn't really have a strong sense of self? and she has no idea what she wants to do once she graduates school. because so many other people assume that she's superficial, she plays into it at this point, believing herself to truly be shallow. she can talk your ear off about anything, but a lot of the things she says are kind of vapid or frivolous. but every now and then she shocks people with a really perceptive comment because she's actually far from stupid, and due to her emotional nature, she's very good at reading people.

she's never quite felt like she was enough? especially compared to her sister annie. this was born out of nothing other than her own insecurities, and it's really not true, but to natalia, annie was always the one who everything seemed to fall in love with, who everyone wanted to be friends with. nat does have her fair share of friends, but usually people seem to gravitate towards annie more. and she loves her sister more than anything, she'd do anything for her, but sometimes she feels out-shadowed by her. this was only cemented when they were sorted in different houses. annette was brave enough to be sorted into gryffindor, but as much as she wanted to be with her, she was sorted into hufflepuff instead. the house of the left overs. the spares. the rest. don't get her wrong, she loves her housemates and she supports her house’s values to a fault, but she can't help but feel like it's confirmation that she's not enough.

[ EATING DISORDER AND UNDERAGE SEX TW ] because she's willowy and pretty, when she was little, she was approached by agents who begged her parents to let her model for them. and she was also a ballet dancer for a while. she relished in the praise of both, but after a while, she began to crack under the pressure. although these activities was not the true underlying cause of her anorexia, it was the catalyst of it, what spurred them on. ( the true cause of her eating disorder was her need for control, her compulsions, her longing to be perfect. eventually this caused her ed to manifest itself. ) 

of course, her family was attentive enough to eventually notice, and she was hospitalized. at this point, she's in recovery and has made a lot of progress although she had to quit both modeling and ballet because the environment was not conducive to her recovery. she truly misses it sometimes, as they were one of the few things she's excelled at, but if she's being honest, she loves fashion and would probably prefer designing clothes as to modeling them.

because she's so insecure, she's really self destructive ( as shown by her disordered thinking ). even though she’s in recovery, she still has self destructive thoughts and behaviors --- they’ve simply taken different forms. she gets her heart broken a lot. she has a habit of the awful habit of falling head over heels for boys who don't treat her well or love her back, and she's not really introspective enough to realize why, but part of it has to do with the fact that she doesn't love herself or thinks she's worthy of love, so she's subconsciously choosing boys that will ultimately break her heart, that she knows are just using her for sex. she sleeps around a lot, and because she's desperate for validation, the sex feels good in the moment, so good, but afterwards she's left feeling so empty. [ END TW ] 

but much like her twin sister, she loves romance novels and romcoms and dreams of being loved back someday. the problem is, she needs to gain some perspective and learn to love herself first and treat herself right before that can ever happen.

the thing about natalia is that she's really gregarious and loves being around people. she hates being alone tbh, which is probably partly due to the fact that she grew up with a twin and around the wotters? she's very bubbly and loves to party -- of course even since the war has started, she's been doing a lot of that and a lot more crying rip. but i think she's the type of person to be popular and maybe part of a typical clique of gossipy mean girls even though she's more of a follower than a leader, you know? not really a regina and more of a karen. she's not naturally mean but she cares about popularity and being accepted and could easily get swept up in that. and sometimes she can be rather dramatic and lash out at people, she's a teenage girl.

she's reluctantly joined mcgonagall's army, mostly because her sister and the majority of her extended family is fighting for that side. she absolutely aligns with their beliefs, but the problem is she's not really a fighter and isn't meant for war? she doesn't like the thought of hurting anyone and she doesn't want to die, she's terrified tbh.

she’s known for being happy-go-lucky and optimistic. however, her outward appearance doesn’t always reflect her internal emotions. truthfully, natalia doesn’t really like to talk about her issues, mostly because she feels as though they’re so inconsequential to everyone else’s? she doesn’t want to trouble anyone with her silly teenage problems, so she’ll put on a happy face for everyone else’s sake, try to be a bright light in the darkness that has become their world.

she loves animals!!! she has so many pets -- cats and dogs and horses. care of magical creatures is one of her best classes. because of her love for animals, she was a vegan for years until she started her eating disorder recovery. recently went back to being a vegan but her family and her healers are keeping a close eye on her to make sure she doesn't rebound. she also regularly sees a therapist.

she's part of art club and loves photography and painting -- she's actually really good at it even though she doesn't see herself as good and never really shows her work to anyone.

she's also part of frog choir and can carry a tune. she has a pretty voice and often does karaoke with the delacours, thriving off of the attention she gets when everyone’s watching her solos.

her other favorite class is divination, and even though she might not be a seer, she's pretty good at it because she truly believes in it and also has a flair for drama. like her sister annette, she really loves astrology.

she’s really fascinated by old hollywood too -- marilyn monroe, aubrey hepburn, elizabeth taylor, vivien leigh, etc.

only taking three newt classes: divination, comc, and charms. not really sure at all what she's going to do with those newts once she graduates but the rest of her owl scores were abysmal.

basically, she has a lot of interests and things she's good at, but she's just sort of lost and doesn't really know who she is yet nor does she have much self confidence. she ends up becoming a fashion designer later in life, but she hasn’t really allowed herself to properly pursue that dream just yet.

[internutter]

For the writer challenge post, numbers 1,2,16,20, and 31 I'd that's alright

1 : What age-group do you write?

Since I write swears and pseudoswears into my narrative [I’ve been cutting down though] I would have to say “young adult”... but I’d much prefer that everyone reads my stuff. If they happen to enjoy it, then my writing has no real age limit. [I do advise the grownups read first and judge as to whether their littles can withstand the contents]

2 : What genre do you write?

I can potentially write every fiction genre but Romance. There’s something about Romance as a genre that is largely dependant on all parties being inexplicably dense about things way too frequently for my liking. That said, I adore science fiction and keep returning to it like a bad smell.

16 : Would your story work better as a movie or tv show? Why?

Serialised television is kinder to the contents of the books than movies are, but... No matter what, there’s things you can do in prose that just won’t translate to the screen no matter what you do. If I were to pick, I would much rather my works be messed with by Studio Ghibli if they had to be a movie. Similarly, I’m pretty sure someone in Netflix-town knows what’s up.

20 : What book would you love to see adapted for the big or small screen?

I’d most like to see Clockwork Souls adapted. It’s something I’ve written, but haven’t passed through the editing cycle for lack of feedback. First: it’s the only actual novel I’ve written where my mother(nit-picker extraordinaire) has said she liked it. Second: 90% of the main characters are on one spectrum or another. Third: I really really really really [x 20000] want to see what folks would do with that noise. Mal-adaption or no, the end result would be entertaining as hell.

31 : What trope do you actually like?

I’m not too certain of the names, but I can give you the patterns in no particular order:

Kick-ass ladygal - woman in a ballgown or other fancy duds rips through the opposition. Trashed ballgown post-fracas optional. [Heavily sexualised trashed ballgown is a no-no]

Shrinking violet, hidden badass - formerly assumed milquetoast gets angry and goes Hulk on the opposition. Instantly resumes former innocent facade after the last villain falls.

I’m made of weapons - Character is forced to disarm and produces increasingly illogical weaponry from increasingly unlikely places into an increasingly alarming pile. Bonus points for “All of your weapons...” followed by even MORE of the same.

The Gilligan Cut - “What do you expect, [Highly Improbable Situation]?” [swish-cut to the selfsame situation].

NARRATIVELY DEPENDENT PUNS - Gods bless you Sir Terry Pratchett, Douglas Adams, and all of the Goons. I wish I had but a fraction of your artistry.

Expecting an argument and getting an agreement - bonus points for half the counter-argument and a “Wait, what?”

Rule of Funny - screw the established rules, if it’s funny, it wins.

Musical Mayhem - fights with excellent timing and pop music.

That Tribble Scene in Star Trek - if I could have more of that happening, that would be so much fun.

The One Sane Person - The lunatics are almost running the asylum, but this person has to keep them running in the same direction. [See: Kermit the Frog in the Original Muppet Show]

They Fight Crime - unlikely duo works like a well-oiled machine to fight and win against the bad guys. Good romance between them for super bonus points.

Yeah, I have lots.

Thanks for asking, I loved this.

[queencrimsonred]

Actor AU! Chocobros x S/O(crush)

Headcanons for how the bros met their S/O if all the events in the game were just a part of a movie.

Author’s note: I wrote this at 3 am because I couldn’t sleep, I woke up this morning thinking I wrote this in a dream. Apparently, it was not a dream, so guess I’ll just leave this here and continue on with my day. Enjoy! -Crimson

Word count: 1784

Warnings: None? Maybe like one swear word somewhere? 

Noctis Lucis Caelum

Noctis’s S/O is an actor and plays a prominent role as a member of the Kingsglaive.

They first met well shooting a scene after the Fall of Insomnia, they looked battered and bruised, perfectly portraying the horrible event from within the city. 

He started to admire them because they performed all their own stunt. 

Caught them changing costumes one day and immediately walked away because damn, under all those layers they’re super fit, and he likes their face.

Overall his S/O is a genuinely good person, they take suggestions when needed, nice to everyone, they crack jokes when mistakes are made and can instantly go into work more when they need to. They’re really amazing at their job!

The next shot they have together is after the time skip.

“Oh no, you’re so old now!” They said, overly dramatic, with a teasing smile.

“And you haven’t aged a day??”

“I did! Look! Scars,” S/O dramatically motions to scars. 

“Those scars look good on you,”

“You’re killing it with the facial hair!”

They’re supposed to be killed off in the next scene protecting Noctis from a daemon, but plot twist! They aren’t killed off.

Daemon prop is coming charging towards them, and Noctis suddenly stumbles into them, unintentionally sending them into a shallow pool of water.

They both avoided getting hit by the prop, but now his S/O is sitting in water, wet and confused because that wasn’t in the script??

“Cut!” 

“I’m not sure if I should thank you for saving my life or lecture you for throwing me into a puddle.” S/O stares, unamused.

“Pft, sorry.” Noctis laughed and pulled them out of the puddle, they have to change costumes again because their costume doesn’t look right anymore.

The director decides to have the script changed and his S/O lives after that

The day after filming ended, Noctis texts them to go to the studio they had been recording at. It’s late, and they’re confused why they’re needed on set.

When they get there Noctis challenges them to a paintball fight and they were more than happy to accept. 

They didn’t leave the building until around midnight, both of them were covered in paint splatters, and they couldn’t say the set was in any better condition.

“I have to say, that was a pretty good first date.”

“Oh, so that’s what this was?”

“Yeah, and hopefully there are many more to come.”

There were, in the next movie they starred in they even got to play love interests.

There’s a rumor that there will be a new final fantasy tv series where Noctis lives because of something his S/O did. The rumor also said that they’re supposed to be love interests in this new series, and the shippers are now demanding that they make it a thing.

Prompto Argentum

Prompto’s S/O is a makeup artist, they spent hours making their injuries look real.

The first day they met was, as one would expect, on the very first day of filming, and Prompto was at a complete loss for words when they meet.

Like, his makeup artist is super super pretty??

One day they caught him staring while doing Noctis’s make up, adding bruises and cuts for their next scene.

“You’re next Prom~” they called in a slightly sing-song tone.

Finishes Noctis’s makeup, and quickly moves over to Prompto, he’s nervous and they can tell, they think it’s cute

“You’re going to look super awesome, you’ll love it!”

And he does, the makeup looks so real and a small part of him is tempted to wear it on the street to see how people react.

One day you start chatting about monster makeup between scenes, and Prompto asks his S/O to practice on him.

Who are they to refuse a willing subject for their art??

They spend a lot of time together outside of work now, his S/O practicing their make up while he practices lines.

“How come you like doing make up for injuries?”

“Because the audience can’t feel what your character feels, they need something to see, something to resonate with, and visuals are a very powerful tool to get people to do that.”

Oh no, he’s falling in love with his makeup artist! They’re so focused when they’re working and they’re super passionate, and it’s really attractive?

One day they’re doing his makeup for when he’s found at Zegnautus Keep.

“You’re going to look like you need the kiss of life when I’m finished with you!”

“Only if you’re the one to giving it to me,” and now both of them are blushing, and his co-stars heard, and oh gods he’s done it now.

“Sure thing, but maybe in a different context, after filming?” They’re beaming, and Prompto has short-circuited.

Thinks things will be awkward after that comment and starts avoiding them when he can.

When his S/O finds him hiding out, they pinch him and tell him that they miss their friend. Prompto apologizes and everything pretty much goes back to normal.

The moment filming ends Prompto’s S/O hunts him down and pulls him aside, it’s really late and they’re both tired.

“Now that filming is over, how about we go out?”

“Go out??” Prompto’s blushing

“Yes out, like on a date, I want to get to know the guy who’s been nice enough to let me use him as a canvas!” 

“Oh my gosh, hell yeah!” 

Cue the pair going to a pizza parlor at 10 pm because it’s the only place open right now. It’s the start of a very fun relationship!

Ignis Scientia

Ignis’s S/O works special effects, they’re responsible for making magic on set.

The first day they met was the day they were shooting the scene where he puts on the Ring of the Lucii, he gets a full look at all the effects.

He has to admit he’s really impressed how much they can do!

Ignis occasionally checks on their work, and soon notices that they spend a lot of late nights at the studio working on effects.

One night he appears in their office with coffee, and they’re shocked because they thought everyone had already gone home??

But no, here’s Ignis with coffee, and he’s kind of their hero now.

“I noticed you spend a lot of late nights here, you looked like you needed the coffee.” Cue S/O blushing a little.

“Yeah, some of these special effects get pretty tricky, and I don’t really trust my trainees to do it justice just yet, so more late nights for me. What made you stay so late?”

Ignis can’t will himself to say they’re the reason.

“I prefer practicing lines in the studio instead of at home,” they know he’s lying but they don’t push it.

“Is that so? Well if you ever need someone to listen to you run lines, I’m here every night.”

And so, they go on with their night, Ignis runs lines and his S/O works on special effects.

They spend a lot of nights like this, and the more time they spend together, the more ridiculous they act. Ignis starts saying lines in different accents just to prove he can, his S/O took random shots of him and his co-stars and added effects of them getting turned into frogs.

They’ve gotten dinner a few times as friends and chatted about how they ended up in their professions.

“I get to make people feel like magic is real, and even if it’s only for a few minutes or hours, that’s still really cool.”

The day after the last day of shooting, he finds his S/O hard at work, working on the last few scenes.

“So, I see you’re still making magic?” 

“It’s what I live for, now what excuse do you have for visiting me today Mr. Scientia?”

“I do believe that now filming is over, this would be the appropriate time for me to ask you out on a proper date. Of course, after you finish with your special effects.” S/O stares at him, slightly shocked, and he looks so smug but they can’t say no.

They end up going to dinner together that night and immediately hit it off.

Gladiolus Amicitia

Gladio’s S/O is a stunt double, with nerves of steel!

The day they met, they were filming a scene from the fall of Insomnia, his S/O got thrown through a window.

When they first spoke, they were talking with the director and action coordinator to make a fight look more realistic. 

The second they saw Gladio watching them speak, they got excited and waved him over.

“Hey hey! You’re pretty good with that fake broadsword! Your fight scenes look super legit!”

“Thanks! Your stunts are pretty awesome!”

He made them happy when he complimented their stunt work, and a friendship started from there.

“Let’s practice together sometime!”

They end up meeting at the gym several times throughout shooting and learn they have a lot in common.

Quickly learns that they’re really hot, and they wear minimal clothing while training.

And they’re smaller than him but they’re really strong, they can bench press almost as much as him!

Learns they secretly love romance novels but swears that if he tells anyone they’ll deny it and shun him.

They taught him how to make his fight scenes look even better, and he treated them to whatever meal they happened to be closest to.

Learns that they are incredibly fit, but they eat the worst things.

“How do you eat like that, but look like this?”

“I work out like an Olympic athlete and getting thrown around is also a work out on its own.”

They meet his sister one day on set, and she tells them they have to come over for dinner because “Gladdy won’t stop talking about is stunt double friend!”

Gladio didn’t expect them to actually come to dinner, but they did and his family actually loves them?

One day they were practicing a combat scene and they accidentally sent him to the ground. He hit his face pretty hard against the training mats.

He stared at them for a second “traitor...”

Cue S/O apologizing profusely 

“I didn’t think I could send a mountain of a man to the ground! I’m so sorry!”

“It’s fine, you can make it up to me by being my date to the premiere.”

“Smooth, but I guess I owe you for kicking your sorry butt.”

They go to the premiere together and his S/O can’t remember a time where they’d been asked so many questions, but overall, they had a lot of fun.

They end up on sets together a lot, and it’s always tons of fun.

They’ve been together ever since

[skittidyne]

tagged by @lethesomething! thanks darling

1. How did you come up with your username and what does it mean?

hahaha. i’ve been stuck with “skitty” as a name since 05, but i went from “digital skitty” to “skittidyne” when i made the jump to tumblr. i wanted something that wasn’t my “professional” name, but could still be skitty-ish, and so i decided to throw some persona into the mix, because that’s how i be. 

“skitty” is a pokemon and the “-dyne” suffix is the highest tier of attack spell in the persona series. and it looked better with an i rather than a y. so i guess i’m the highest tier of skitty spell!

2. Which fanfic of yours has the most feedback? (bookmarks/subscriptions/hits/kudos).

pedestal hands down. (bbac isn’t even half as popular by any of those categories.) 

3. What is your AO3 profile icon, and why did you choose it?

it’s ryoji from persona 3! i chose it because... i love ryoji... even when i was drawing regularly, i rarely used my own art as my icons anywhere, except dA or actual art-hosting sites. 

4. Do you have any regular/favourite commenters?

oh god i know i’m going to leave people out, and I LOVE YOU ALL, but beechichi liveblogs shit to me on twitter, curiouslylazy leaves me comments longer than chapters, greatdanesandpandas leaves me amazing capslocked comments across several of my stories, haruhi02 and rd both leave AMAZING liveblog type comments on bbac, and unexpectedly but delightfully like every commenter on the kamafuta fake dating story is like, so kind and nice. (upside to writing a rarepair!) 

but i love all of my commenters and there are LOTS i’m missing here and trust me i do notice who comments regularly and across several stories ;; 

5. Is there a fanfic that you keep going back to read again and again?

ghost story, character development, sayuri, a heart swelled to bursting, settling down, the thirty-six stratagems of wáng jìngzé ... a lot of smut fics... (a lot of smut fics)

6. How many stories are you subscribed to? How many do you have bookmarked?

211 subscribed to, and 112 bookmarks on ao3! 88 bookmarks on ff.net.

7. Which AU do you find yourself writing the most?

i mean. bbac, i guess. i like things with a magical slant, but i don’t ever stick around the exact same universe for multiple stories? 

8. How many people are subscribed and bookmarked to you in total? (you can view this on the stats page)

285 subscriptions to me, idk how to check how many are bookmarked to me? can you bookmark authors on ao3? 727 subscribed & 1043 faved on ff.net though. 

9. Is there something you’d like to write about but are afraid of people judging you for it? (Feeling brave? If so, share it!)

hmm. i’d love to write a mafia/yakuza au one day, but i’m not sure i’m afraid of ppl judging me. i think i just don’t want to do that much research. i’d also love to write a sugaring au one day, if only out of PURE BITTERNESS, but that’s a lot of smut to write, and i’m afraid i’d probably start fights in the comments section. 

there’s not a lot i’m more scared of writing compared to other things, i guess. 

10. Is there anything you would like to be better at? Writing certain scenes or genres, replying to comments, updating better, etc.

commenting! leaving comments would be nice. truthfully, i’d like to work on my personal self-discipline when it comes to writing and getting things done, even though my output is pretty high imo. also, i guess romance writing. 

11. Do you write rarepairs or popular ships more often?

uhhhhhh. i never purposefully do either, and in naruto fandom i spent some time in rarepair hell, and apparently kamafuta is a fuckin rarepair so i’m again sitting in that lonely little boat, but i also tend toward more popular ships in hq fandom, at least. both? probably popular ships? 

12. How many stories have you posted on AO3 to this day (finished and unfinished)?

27 on ao3! 

13. How many stories do you have saved in/with your writing program?

uhhhhhhhhhhhhh. if we’re going to get technical about it... 

counting side story collections as 1 “story”, i got: 

61 on googledocs, 16 more on my harddrive. 

i don’t want to meet anyone’s eye right now

14. Do you write down story ideas, or just keep them in your head?

i ABSOLUTELY keep them in my head. if i start writing ANYTHING down, even if it’s notes or title ideas or character ideas, i know i’ve already lost the war, and i’m committed to writing something. 

15. Have you ever co-authored a story?

yep! oh it puts the heart in my chest on wings was with the amazing @h-lovely and where the wild things go was with the lovely @kaiyouchan!

also, technically @tarotdactyl is listed as a co-author on operation: poison tree frog, because it’s his fault, but i’m technically the one doing all of the writing for it. for some reason

16. How did you discover AO3?

i mean, i was on lj and ff.net. things migrated. i don’t remember specifically how it happened. 

17. Do you consider yourself to be a popular or famous author in your fandom(s) on AO3?

shrug emoji... i suppose i am? i think i still am in pokemon fandom, i know i’m not in naruto fandom, and i don’t even know anymore in hq fandom. (i guess only hq fandom matters on ao3)

18. Do you have a nickname or fandom name for your readers?

skittens!! 

19. Was there an author who inspired or encouraged you to write?

@avoidingavoidance and @silvercistern are #writing goals, and while she’s only just writing now herself, my mother has always been a devoted supporter of my writing. past that, it was just reader feedback that kept me goin’ onward. 

20. What writing advice would you give to a beginning author?

KEEP WITH IT. COMMIT TO YOUR IDEA. there is no such thing as a bad idea, and even “bad” ideas, if committed to, can turn into FANTASTIC stories/characters/arcs. absolutely keep going, no matter what. 

21. Do you plot out your stories, or do you just figure it out as you go?

both, haha. i’m trying to get outlines more and more these days, mostly because i guess i’m working with others and for some reason they can’t read my mind. hm. 

22. Have you ever gotten a bad comment on a story? If so, what did you do?

dude, i was in the pokemon fandom when farla was still around. 

yeah, i’ve gotten things that could be considered “flames”. i’ve accidentally started a ship war, and i’ve gotten nasty shipping-related comments on stories, too. hell, i’ve fought with readers over that sort of thing before. 

i’ve also had rude commenters, commenters who probably just didn’t know any better, and commenters who missed the point so badly i had to go scream into a pillow. it happens. 

for the most part, i try to respond to comments/reviews, because that’s how i was raised on the internet. i try to be polite and pleasant these days, but i’ll put my foot down. i try not to be rude or mean, though. 

23. Is there a certain type of scene that you have a hard time writing? (action, smut, etc..)

smut. it’s always goddamn smut. 

romance in general, though. i’m good with the emotional intimacy and casual physical intimacy, but half the time i end up with more of that between the best friend characters than the ships, so... i dunno. i’d like to be more comfortable writing romance, up to and DEFINITELY including smut. 

24. What story(s) are you working on now?

bbac, political intrigue, magical girl au, fake dating au, and a couple of random oneshots. 

25. Do you plan your next project(s) before you finish your current ongoing story(s)?

look, i ain’t happy if i’m not juggling projects. so i guess that’s a given. 

26. Do you have a daily writing goal set for yourself?

only during nanowrimo! some days, i don’t write a word, and other days, i’m easily in the thousands. i’m content with either, because i can only force it so often. 

27. Do you think you’ve improved as a writer since you first started?

absolutely. even when it feels like i’m stagnating with that dreaded 67-75% of the story completed zone, i know every word i write betters me as an author. 

28. What is your favorite story that you’ve written?

oh man, that’s so hard... mostly, that comes down less to emotion, and more to “what was easiest for me to write”... 

maybe pedestal. but maybe only because i’ve been feeling nostalgic lately, and it’s easy to love a story once it’s completed. 

29. What is your least favorite story that you’ve written?

haha i don’t want to say

30. Where do you see yourself (as a writer) in 5 years?

finishing bbac

completed trilogy & completed standalone original novels completed, probably in a new fandom, probably agonizing over yet another 500k novel fanfic

31. What is the easiest thing about writing?

momentum!! god, when you have it, EVERYTHING IS AWESOME

32. What is the hardest thing about writing?

trying to keep momentum... actually, probably, forcing yourself through a scene you KNOW has to get done and you even know what happens in it, but it’s just not happening. bleh. 

33. Why do you write?

for the attention and monetary gain (๑꒪▿꒪)* 

nah, it’s to share stories with people. i like ideas, i like turning ideas into bigger ideas, and i like people’s reactions to those ideas. it’s like friendship sharing except i don’t have to be social! <3 

i’m not tagging anyone directly but if you are an author type and like being tagged then grab this UP!

[punwolf]

Referring to this list of films which scare kids but are animated or believed to be for kids.

One of the ones which often makes the list is the older version of Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. Most notably the scene where it looks like Wonka is going insane as they’re piled into a boat. Scary images flash all around the children and their guardians.

That movie never bothered me. It also didn’t bother the kids I babysat for (their parents bought them the VHS tape - it’s been awhile.) Maybe if a kid is really young they’d find this terrifying but I don’t know... You’d think kids today would be more jaded than we were in the 80′s by looking at the cartoons I actually grew up with. They were so horribly shallow and lathered up with “moral of the story today” messages it was diabetic inducing. Not that we didn’t love them. He Man, Transformers, Thundercats, She Ra: Princess of Power, Braveheart and of course the timeless original Scooby Doo. Most of them were 20 minute toy commercials with 10 minutes of real commercials. It’s no wonder they didn’t have much substance. The acting was absolutely cringe worthy on most of them, too, but we never noticed that as kids. Freaking Disney murdering Mufasa or crushing the Lightning Bug in Princess and the Frog seems a lot more hard core to me than anything I ever watched.

“Return To Oz” - I thought this was really cool. Granted I was 12 and captivated with the story of the Land of Oz since I was in 2nd grade when my teacher read it out loud to us.

“Felidae" - Okay this one I’ll give people. I watched this as an adult. It’s horrifying in spots and there’s literal human porn in the background (on walls and such) if I remember correctly. Blatant kitty sex is hardly the worst part in my opinion. Out and out animal torture was disturbing, even as an adult.

"Watership Down" - I thought this was the most bad ass movie about rabbits ever made. I mean rabbits, man. Little fluffy bun-buns show what nature is really like. I still love it, but I can see how someone who didn’t grow up on the Discovery Channel watching the brutality of the natural world would find this really horrifying.

"Plague Dogs” -- I want to see this, but with reservations. It sounds depressing.

“Secret of NIMH” -- Oh come on, seriously? We had to read the novel in 3rd grade. It’s very sad in one place to make the point of the rats point of view inside the lab. A little puppy cries and there’s misery around them to drive home the point “all for the sake of scientific curiosity.” It shows rats getting shots but really, aside from the message that animal cruelty isn’t cool (not anti-science just anti-cruelty for the progression of science) this was a gorgeous film. I grew up loving this movie as a child with all the colors, the bravery of Mrs. Frisby (how often to you see a female protagonist back then, even a mouse?) Handsome Captain of the Guard was probably the closest I ever came to being a furry and having a crush on a cartoon character.

“The Mouse and Her Child” -- I’m not sure why this was scary. I saw this when I was really young - maybe 5 years old or so. It just confused the heck out of me. Maybe I’ll try to watch it again as an adult and see if I can make sense out of it. It’s also “Mouse and HIS Child” because it’s a dad mouse.

"Dark Crystal" -- Saw this when I was 11 in the theater. LOVED it! It inspired me to make so many drawings from it. I must have watched it a million times when it came to HBO and Showtime. I still love it. Scary? Wha? "The Electric Grandmother" -- I’m not sure if I saw this as a movie or one of Ray Bradbury’s shorts. If it’s what I think it was, my impression of it was that it was really sweet. Maybe I should look it up again, but I don’t remember anything remotely scary about it.

.... Maybe I was a really weird kid. I was reading Stephen King by the time I was 11 or 12. I was also into any kind of werewolf book I could get my hands on. Most girls were reading Harlequin romance novels by Jr. High. I was reading a few of those, but mostly Splatterpunk and horror.

I don’t know, but obviously movies that really bother(ed) people must not have phased me.

[the-desolated-quill]

Chapter 1 - Legion blog

(SPOILER WARNING: The following is an in-depth critical analysis. If you haven't seen this episode yet, you may want to before reading this review)

Other than the initial premise (a mutant suffering from paranoid schizophrenia), I had no idea what kind of show this was going to be. The trailers didn’t exactly do it justice in my opinion and having not read any of the X-Men comics, I was not familiar with any of the characters. What peaked my interest was the pedigree behind Legion. Noah Hawley. The guy behind critically acclaimed Fargo and who wrote and directed this first episode.

So what did I make of the first episode (or chapter) of Legion? Well... intriguing is one word I could use. Peculiar is another. But it’s never dull or boring, and that’s the main thing to take away from Legion. As confusing and mind bending as it can be, it’s able to keep your interest. Figuratively gripping you by the lapels and refusing to let go until the end credits.

Chapter 1 hooks you right from the get go with a montage of David Haller growing from innocent newborn to delinquent teenager to troubled adult as we see his life slowly unravel due to his mental illness. In fact visually Legion is striking. Hawley uses strange segues and visual cues to move the story along. It’s told in a nonlinear style and seems to be designed to disorientate and confuse the viewer, which makes sense considering the perspective the story is told from. 

Because of David’s schizophrenia, he effectively becomes an unreliable narrator. We have no idea how much of what we’re seeing is real or if its a product of David’s psyche. Legion seems to be set in the modern day and yet the design of the sets and characters’ wardrobes seems to be from the 60s and 70s. Whenever his powers manifest, he has a vision of ‘the Devil with Yellow Eyes’. Initially believing his powers are just another hallucination, both David and the audience eventually learn that his powers are in fact real. If that’s the case, what about the Devil with Yellow Eyes? Is he real? There are also numerous mentions of David’s attempts to kill himself. We see him try to hang himself at the beginning of the episode, but later we discover that no noose was found in his apartment, although he did have rope burns around his neck (also there’s a blink and you’ll miss it appearance of the Devil with Yellow Eyes in the background when David ties the noose around his neck). We also learn that the voices in his head apparently tried to stop him from taking his own life. Are the voices real? Why are they so keen to protect David? And then there’s the more trivial images we see. The old couple laughing at David in the visitor’s room. The man hiding in the bushes in the mental hospital’s cafeteria. The smoking frog. That weird dream sequence where we see David, Syd and the other patients perform a Bollywood-esque dance routine. Are they even significant?

Noah Hawley does an excellent job both writing and directing this episode, holding your interest whilst making you question every little thing you see. He clearly takes a lot of influence from Stanley Kubrick films with the use of wide angle shots and holding some shots for longer than expected. The hospital David stays at is even called Clockworks Psychiatric Hospital after A Clockwork Orange. And the use of visual and practical effects, clever lighting and camera trickery make for a truly gripping piece of television. The most memorable scene has to be when Syd uses David’s powers to trap the other patients inside their rooms and replacing the doors with walls. The tension in that scene was so thick you could cut it with a knife.

David Haller himself is a great character played wonderfully by Dan Stevens, who clearly put a lot of time and effort into making sure his depiction of someone with schizophrenia was as believable as possible. As did Hawley in his writing. He comes across as a troubled, but sympathetic figure. You really do grow to like and care about David over the course of the story. The scene with him in the interrogation room struggling to make sense of what’s happened to him may be his defining moment for me. I also appreciate the amount of care and attention that was put into depicting his schizophrenia.  In fiction there’s often a tendency to depict people with mental health issues as either someone to be coddled or someone to be feared. Legion thankfully is able to steer clear of that. Yes there are scenes that are very disconcerting, but that’s more because of his powers rather than his schizophrenia. And while David is sympathetic, it’s not because Hawley is emotionally manipulating you into feeling sorry for him. David isn’t some wide-eyed, childlike innocent. He’s an actual human being with flaws and drives.

The most prevalent theme of the X-Men franchise is that of prejudice and discrimination, using superpowers often as a stand in for issues such as race, gender and sexuality. With Legion it’s mental health. A topic that isn’t usually discussed and really should be discussed. Mental health care in both the US and the UK are really not as good as they could be and people’s views on those with mental health problems tend to be coloured by the media, which frequently either patronises or demonises them. Legion is the first X-Men property since X2 and X-Men: The Last Stand to actually dispense with the usual superhero nonsense and to actually address relevant social issues. Both Noah Hawley and Dan Stevens did a lot of research, even speaking to those with schizophrenia, in order to depict it as respectfully and as accurately as possible, and the episode frequently criticises not only people’s views on mental health but also the idea of normality. Syd Barrett mockingly describes normal as being ‘a suit everybody is supposed to wear’ and questions whether there is anything actually wrong with them or if they’re locked inside a mental hospital just because society deems them abnormal. It’s a very novel and fresh approach to the themes surrounding X-Men. Our mental health is just as much a part of our identity as our race, gender and sexuality, and should be respected as such. People with mental health problems may need help at times, but they’re not broken.

Two more characters I’d like to discuss are Lenny Busker and Syd Barrett. Lenny, played by Aubrey Plaza, I thought was a cleverly handled bit of misdirection. The fact that she wasn’t wearing the same uniform as the other mental patients plus that her dialogue sounded more stream of consciousness than actual speech made me think that Lenny was one of David’s hallucinations. Perhaps a personification of his internal monologue. But then later we learn that she was in fact a real person and ironically when she dies, she does in fact become part of David’s internal monologue. It’s Plaza’s performance that really sells the character, making her manic and quite cutting at times and it’ll be interesting to see how she’s utilised in future episodes that she’s another voice in David’s head.

Rachel Keller also does a great job as Syd Barrett. Initially a cold and reserved woman, she slowly opens up to David as they interact with each other. Their romance is very much the emotional core of the episode. The montage to the Rolling Stones’ ‘She’s Like a Rainbow’ was both very sweet and very moving. Stevens and Keller have excellent chemistry together and you’re completely invested in their relationship. However there is an underlying tragedy to it. Due to her mutant powers, Syd cannot be touched otherwise she’ll swap bodies with that person.  Her behaviour is very reminiscent of those who suffer from PTSD after being sexually abused, and her sheer panic when she swaps bodies with David and everyone is touching her is both emotional and unnerving. Plus, due to the way the story is presented, I can’t help but question the validity of their romance. As touching as it was seeing them declare their love for each other at the end, I can’t help but feel like it’s almost too good to be true. Especially considering how quickly she agreed to be his girlfriend. Why was she in that hospital? To get David? Are her feelings for him genuine or just a ploy in order to recruit him? Does the reason it all feels a bit rushed because of the fact that we’re seeing the romance play out through David’s distorted view of reality or am I just overthinking this? The appearance of the Devil with Yellow Eyes at the end seems to suggest there’s something not quite right here. Guess we’ll have to wait and see.

If the rest of Legion is anything like Chapter 1, this could be one of the most evocative and unique comic book based TV show ever made. It’s an engaging episode with a great central protagonist, explores some complex themes and encourages the audience to ask questions. Even the title Legion is ambiguous. What does Legion refer to? David? The voices in his head? The team of mutants he joins up with at the end? Let’s keep watching to find out :)

[benajahccjoseph]

The enchantment of a piece of writing delivered by the human voice may come on little cat feet, so to speak, slipping in so softly that we hardly notice its arrival. It can also dash forward and strike with a blow, as it did one night in 1917 to the future novelist and folklorist Zora Neale Hurston. Hurston had enrolled in a night high-school English class taught by a man named Dwight O. W. Holmes.

In her memoir, Dust Tracks on a Road, Hurston wrote, “There is no more dynamic teacher anywhere under any skin. He is not a pretty man, but he has the face of a scholar, not dry and set like, but fire flashes from his deep-set eyes. His high-bridged, but sort of bent nose over his thin-lipped mouth—well, the whole thing reminds you of some Roman like Cicero, Caesar or Virgil in tan skin.”

One fateful evening, this teacher opened a volume of English poetry and began to read to the class:

In Xanadu did Kubla Khan A stately pleasure-dome decree: Where Alph, the sacred river, ran Through caverns measureless to man Down to a sunless sea. So twice five miles of fertile ground With walls and towers were girdled round; And there were gardens bright with sinuous rills, Where blossomed many an incense-bearing tree; And here were forests ancient as the hills, Enfolding sunny spots of greenery . . .

Hurston was transfixed. “Listening to Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s Kubla Khan for the first time, I saw all that the poet had meant for me to see with him, and infinite cosmic things besides. I was not of the work-a-day world for days after Mr. Holmes’s voice had ceased. This was my world, I said to myself, and I shall be in it, and surrounded by it, if it is the last thing I do on God’s green dirt-ball.”

What happened to Hurston that night was a kind of intellectual and aesthetic liberation: the sound of her teacher reading Coleridge was so thrilling, so arresting, that it cut her loose from the life she might have had and freed her to find her destiny as a writer.

At other times in history, and in other places, reading aloud has been the means of more literal liberation. The human voice is just a sound in the air, and yet it has built bridges from ignorance to knowledge, and from bondage to freedom. In the American South before the Civil War, for instance, it was illegal in some states to teach enslaved people to read and write. There were no laws against listening, though, which is how the future abolitionist and writer Frederick Douglass got his first taste of what words could do. He was about twelve at the time, and as he later wrote, “the frequent hearing of my mistress reading the Bible aloud awakened my curiosity in respect to this mystery of reading, and roused in me the desire to learn.”

The woman began to teach Douglass the letters of the alphabet, but her husband soon put a stop to it. After that, Douglass recalled, her attitude toward him changed. “Slavery proved as injurious to her as it did to me,” he wrote. “Under its influence, the tender heart became stone, and the lamb-like disposition gave way to one of tiger-like fierceness.”

At one point, Douglass’s mistress became so enraged at the sight of him holding a newspaper that she yanked it from his hand. “She was an apt woman,” Douglass observed dryly, “and a little experience soon demonstrated, to her satisfaction, that education and slavery were incompatible with each other.”

Like Douglass, the future missionary and preacher Thomas Johnson paid close attention to readings of the New Testament at night. Johnson would ask to hear certain passages repeated, so that he could fix the words in his mind, and then he would compare what he’d heard with what he saw printed in a stolen Bible that he kept hidden away. Reading aloud became, for these determined men, a secret staircase that led to the open air of intellectual escape.

When a cell door slammed on Yevgenia Ginzburg, a Communist Party official caught in the purges of Stalin’s Great Terror, she was left with one source of consolation: “Poetry, at least, they could not take away from me!” she declares in her memoir, Journey into the Whirlwind. The prisoner prowled her cell, racking her memory to recite aloud the literature she’d read. “They had taken my dress, my shoes, my stockings, and my comb . . . but this was not in their power to take away, it was and remained mine.”

A few years later, eight hundred miles to the west, retelling literature from memory came to the rescue for Helen Fagin, a young prisoner of the Warsaw ghetto. “Being caught reading anything forbidden by the Nazis meant, at best, hard labor; at worst, death,” she writes in an essay for the collection A Velocity of Being.

I conducted a clandestine school offering Jewish children a chance at the essential education denied them by their captors. But I soon came to feel that teaching these young sensitive souls Latin and mathematics was cheating them of something far more essential—what they needed wasn’t dry information but hope, the kind that comes from being transported into a dream-world of possibility.

One day, as if guessing my thoughts, one girl beseeched me: “Could you tell us a book, please?”

Fagin had spent the previous night devouring a contraband copy of Margaret Mitchell’s Gone with the Wind, so her own dream-world was still “illuminated” by the story.

As I “told” them the book, they shared the loves and trials of Rhett Butler and Scarlett O’Hara, of Ashley and Melanie Wilkes. For that magical hour, we had escaped into a world not of murder but of manners and hospitality. All the children’s faces had grown animated with new vitality.

A knock on the door shattered our shared dream-world. As the class silently exited, a pale green-eyed girl turned to me with a tearful smile: “Thank you so very much for this journey into another world. Could we please do it again, soon?” I promised we would, although I doubted we would have many more chances.

Only a few of the children in the secret school survived the Holocaust. The green-eyed girl was one of them. “There are times when dreams sustain us more than facts,” Fagin concludes. “To read a book and surrender to a story is to keep our very humanity alive.”

  It is no accident that repressive governments often limit people’s access to books and information. That was true in Spanish Cuba, when the authorities put a stop to the public readings in the cigar factories. That was true in the Warsaw ghetto for Helen Fagin. Books consumed in private cultivate independence of mind, a thing unwelcome and even dangerous when the culture outside is in the grip of orthodoxy.

The experience of Chen Guangcheng, the blind human rights activist who made a dramatic escape from house arrest in China to the American embassy in 2012, speaks to the power of reading out loud as a means not only of liberating the listener’s imagination but also of engaging his critical faculties. If those faculties happen to be subversive, well, the responsibility for that doesn’t lie with the thinker but with those who would stop him from thinking.

Chen was born in 1971, and in rural China the blindness that took his sight after a fever meant that he could not get a formal education. As a result, he spent his days isolated from other children. While the rest of the kids in his village attended the Communist Party–run local school, Chen spent his time trapping frogs, devising gimcrack homemade guns, and building kites that he couldn’t see, but whose airborne vibrations he could feel through the string in his hand. His mother was illiterate, but his father had picked up the rudiments of reading and writing just before the Cultural Revolution shuttered the schools in 1966. In the horror and tumult of the next decade, young Red Guards plundered libraries and ransacked temples, smashing and burning books and antiquities.

They brutalized and rusticated the educated, the once-prosperous, and the insufficiently zealous in a state-sanctioned campaign to extirpate the “four olds”: old ideas, old customs, old habits, and old culture.

The fever would pass, but even as Chinese society was shuddering in the aftermath of the revolution, Chen Guangcheng’s father was doing something extraordinary. Quietly, every night, he read to his blind son. In doing so, he imparted old ideas, old customs, old habits, and old culture.

“My father and I would sit under the kerosene lamp as he read aloud, making out the words in a halting rhythm, his voice rough and low,” Chen recalls in his memoir, TheBarefoot Lawyer. Their books ran from folktales to history to Chinese classics. Father and son read the sixteenth-century novel Investiture of the Gods. They read the sprawling, tragic eighteenth-century love story Dream of the Red Chamber (banned during the Cultural Revolution). They read the fourteenth-century epic Romance of the Three Kingdoms, also banned, on the grounds that it encouraged mythology.

Hour after hour, sometimes sitting up, sometimes lying by his father’s side on a narrow bed, the boy listened. “The stories my father read to me served as a counterpoint to the official party line and the usual propaganda,” Chen writes.

Just as important was that my father’s stories and our discussions about them gave me an organic education in ethics, providing a framework with which to understand my experience as a disabled child. The stories I heard when I was young allowed me to imagine myself in the position of the characters, to consider how I would react if faced with similar challenges, to devise my own responses and then to compare them with what actually took place.

Chinese history is full of examples of the disempowered overcoming the odds through wit and daring. Though I lacked the conventional education of my peers, I also avoided the propaganda that was part and parcel of the party’s educational system. Instead, my father’s tales became my foundational texts in everything from morality to history and literature and provided me with a road map for everyday life.

It is a brilliant testament to the dedication of a loving father, and to the excellence of five olds: old ideas, old customs, old habits, old culture, and the old practice of reading aloud.

Wherever young people are growing up, they deserve to know what went into the making of their world. They have a right to be free to enjoy the richness thereby.

January 17, 2019  By Meghan Cox Gurdon

Reading Aloud to hear the characters true voice The enchantment of a piece of writing delivered by the human voice may come on little cat feet, so to speak, slipping in so softly that we hardly notice its arrival.