#the background is very meh also i’m still not great at drawing men but I TRIEDDDD 🦅

[valinoar]

final goodbye

[danwhobrowses]

WWE Royal Rumble 2021 - Initial Thoughts

I know I’m late, but employment is still a thing, and I had to prioritize that over an all-nighter, but it’s time for the Royal Rumble, one of the more exciting shows of WWE’s schedule, so let’s get on with it!

Spoilers for Royal Rumble, you have been Warned

I might not invest too much in kickoff matches but the Women’s Tag Match was not a good time

It was fine before the end, but who the hell decided that Charlotte should control 90% of the champions’ offense and have the hot tag!? Asuka is the RAW WOMEN’S CHAMPION, not Charlotte. After the tag Asuka literally had one spot and she was dead, completely taken out of the match for *checks notes* being thrown over the Announcer’s Table...you know that thing several wrestlers come back from easily.

The finish was just too much too, Ric distraction didn’t work, Lacey distraction didn’t work, Kirufuda Clutch didn’t work but then the brass knuckles did. Too much.

And why TF are we putting titles back on Nia!? We should’ve just given the titles to the Riotts, or the winner of the Women’s Dusty Classic. It also cuts me deep that Asuka and Shayna are treated this way, even as champion Asuka is a side character to Charlotte T_T

Main show though and I don’t like the package and interviews between entrances

Drew vs Goldberg was just...meaningless.

It was cringy enough that Cole had to spout drivel to make 60 year old Goldberg seem strong but to have Drew be ‘injured’ by a barricade spear - something much more tired wrestlers have and will get back up from in less time and continue a longer match - was daft. Also saying that Goldberg’s spear or jackhammer is the best move of all WWE is stupid, it was a WCW thing

Thank God Drew Won, but the post-match does remind you of the meaningless circumstances this feud came about. Suddenly Goldberg is okay with Drew’s same manners of respect

I mean, Carmella’s entrance and gear is cool, but do you think it eats at Corey a little that Carmella’s ‘behind the curtain’ bit is a tad...red light district?

Sasha’s promo didn’t hit for me unfortunately

Reginald didn’t deserve to be ejected for that! He caught Sasha and get beaten up for it

Jesus Carmella! Sasha got barely any of that dive

Screeching and faffing aside, Carmella got a good showing...I do hate quick tap outs in title matches though

Sami cuts a good promo, but his content wasn’t exactly the best. New Day are hardly the management’s faves, it’s taken this long for E to get a singles run, Fans literally had to Yes Movement their way into giving Kofi the world title.

New Day’s Brodie gear was good though

Bad Bunny as the ‘Biggest Latin Artist’? Is Cole for real? I didn’t even know who he was before today

If the song is about Booker T then why is he dancing around GI Bro?

Come on Book, you hang on the Sucka! That’d be like if the Rock just went ‘If ya smell what the Rock is cooking’ without the drags or pauses

Ric’s ‘with a tear in my eye’ promo was after the Rumble though...

It’s actually a sad stat that just over half of the Rumble winners win titles

No Morrison segment for the escape spot!? He did it as much as Kofi dammit!

Sorry Greatest Royal Rumble is not canon for me

This Stat Attack has taken far too long

I’m okay with Mike Rome but couldn’t a woman have announced the Women’s Rumble? Where’s Lillian at!?

NAOOOOOOOMIIIIIIIIIIIIII GIRL WHERE HAVE YOU BEEN!?

That hair is amazing as well

I know you can’t say it, but we all remember that Benoit won the rumble in the first two as well

Was...Bianca wearing earrings on her entrance, she looked like she was taking them off

Billie actually had the right idea, can’t be in the match until you enter the ring, it’s clever stuff

That tank did not look like it was meant to turn that direction XD

It actually surprises me every time how tall Shotzi is, I always imagine her short

Billie no...not with Shayna

The piped boos are highly unrealistic to boo even a heel Toni Storm

Shotzi eliminated and then horrible singer Jillian comes in? Urrrrgh, Bad Singer Jillian was terrible

Wrestling wise she hasn’t missed a beat though

Billie’s surprisingly being a highlight here with actual narra-OHMYSHITITSVICTORIA

Gear was a bit meh but Victoria definitely can still go

Oh Peyton the purple looks good on you, and her Widow’s Peak was not bad at all

Ah, good for Santana, for a moment I thought it said Santina and got a very bad chill

Damn Liv, Speed Machine!

Ooof, the betrayal is real Billie

THIS IS MY BRUTALITY!

Somehow I’m genuinely upset by every elimination so far, good job!

Aaaaaand then they got rid of Victoria and brought on Charlotte to immediately take out Rhea -_-

That was a clever move from Bayley but damn Ruby landed hard

Are we seeing a Bayley/Peyton team? Or is she just eliminating the Riotts for revenge for Billie, but also Liv Nooooo!

Torrie now, eh okay

Ouch for Dana

Lacey...no, this ain’t working

Poor Peyton, her elimination was a side chapter

And we missed Bayley’s elimination!? For Shame

Mickie! Good to see ya! Aaaaand being beaten by Charlotte...

Nikki Cross is back too! Hopefully they find a good story for her

Alicia Fox? I guess she sobered back into the good gra...R-Truth? No

Oh yeah, Humberto is a thing

Jerry shut the fuck up!

The 24/7 stuff was super unnecessary, we did not need to take focus off this match

Lacey eliminating Mickie, rude.

Dakota should’ve gotten more time, she barely lasted a minute

Reginald again deserves better

See Tamina vs Rhea would be exciting...if Tamina was booked better

Naomi’s chemistry with Bianca is really insane right now

Lana *reminded of her feud with Shayna and Nia* Also Lana *goes for Rhea*

That was a hard tackle on Alexa by Rhea...aaaaand she’s eliminated mid ‘transformation’ a bit worthless for me

Road Warrior Ember Moon! And right into the Eclipse that’s the good shit

Baszler probably shouldn’t have eliminated Lacey story-wise

The Betrayal is real for Tamina as well

What’s with the crazy camera cuts!?

Nia eliminating Baszler? Nah...

Hold on Cole, baiting Nia over the ropes isn’t a ‘tremendous elimination’

The betrayal is real for Lana too, Nattie sure shrugged off that double assault

I get that the narrative is that Charlotte has beaten both Bianca and Rhea before, but to hang against both of them after already being in a match and hanging on from two apron attacks was daft. Stop making her super strong, she’s mega talented yes but giving her the Brock Lesnar energy does her no favours

That close call though with Rhea and Bianca was great, need more spots of two wrestlers about to be eliminated at the same time

The final bit of chain wrestling too was great, that’s what you need at the final part of a rumble, the mini-match

I had Rhea as my win prediction but am more than happy for Bianca, who was my second choice. Winning at No. 3 is great and her emotional promo just gets her more over. Bianca vs Sasha’s gonna be wild too

Overall the Women’s Rumble was good, most of the women got shine and there were a few mini stories too, do wish that more time was given to some women and that Sonya was in the rumble but the returns were good and most of the eliminations got me good

Miz talking about guaranteeing a championship run like he didn’t lose the last cash-in and didn’t have a chance to cash in previously this night when Drew was ‘reeling’ from the barricade spear.

I reiterate that I wish Sonya was in the rumble, but do like her endorsement of Bianca

Again, this 24/7 stuff is wrong place and time right now

Last Man StANDing Match for the UniVERSal Championship

Cole, there is Champion’s Advantage. Triple H vs Michaels Last Man Standing, neither men made the 10 so Trips kept the title, 17 years ago. Royal Rumble 2004.

See, this is where a Finisher Spotfest works, because it’s not about pinfalls it’s about keeping people down

The camera switches are not doing good on this portion of the side of the thunderdome

Yes, attacking the knees, this is the Cerebral ‘rope breaks with his pinkie finger’ Owens I like to see

Ooof the Golf Cart, a la Kane and Stadium Stampede

Why is this training area just like a second arena

Lil’ running ref in the background

Right into that conveniently placed mini-ladder

Not the forklift! Think of Judy Bagwell!

Oh that curtain is the thing Becky took a photo of! I mean she was always gonna be backstage

Corey before the match ‘there must be a winner’, Corey after Owens went through the stage LED ‘The ref should consider stopping the match’

Did the Ciampa move there to stand up

I don’t think you’re allowed to use a Ref Bump that way

Then the Second Ref restarts the count and stops at 5!? If this doesn’t come back next SD it’ll be a misstep

It was a physical match, not the best I think the finish brought it down. The problem is that KO has lost 3 times now and the last time is a botch finish, and we can’t have him lose again - the poor guy needs a win

ON THIS DAY, I SEE CLEARLY!

I will say this immediately, revealing Edge and Orton as 1 and 2 beforehand was a terrible idea, just because you don’t have a live crowd doesn’t mean the people watching from home can’t be surprised

‘Number 3 is the worst number to draw on average’ - Belair just won at No. 3

Ali at 4? Then went after Edge and not Orton?

Sami, just don’t get in Orton’s face

Refs what are you doing? No rules in Rumble, where were you with Nia and Shayna with that logic

‘What does Shin need to do to be more successful?’ - for one not face AJ Styles, he is still a tag, US and IC champ as well as a RR winner, that’s quite successful

Carlito finally shows after the Legends Night tease and yes those are some abs

So...Randy’s just sleeping with this knee injury

Big E enters with some snappy camera angles again

I was hoping for more Ali - especially since Ricochet came immediately after - buy angry E was nice to see

Wait is that Elias’ entrance? Where’s the guitar strum?

Priesty, wonder if this is his main roster call

What DJ leaves his equipment on stage anyway?

‘The biggest star in the world in the music business’ - for real?

‘I’ve heard of flying squirrels but flying bunnies!?’ - Corey you need to watch Tokyo Joshi Pro, they got a flying sugar rabbit

To quote Ross Tweddell, MMMmmm Riddle...does not do it for me

Stop with the camera cuts I beg of you!

Mayor of Knox County!?

Ricochet eliminated by Kane, le sigh

The betrayal is real for DBry

Big Elim for Priesty though

‘Now it’s a Royal Rumble’ - reminder that Edge is a KOTR winner too, and that Nakamura is the King of Strong Sty-oh and Corbin eliminated him :/ what was the gauntlet about if you’re gonna Corbin him?

Otis’ new gear is slick

aaaaand Corbin’d again

Big Dom Fuck im Uhhhhhh Spinebuster’d

Damn he got him though

Dang that bounce sound from DBry

Bobby no why you gotta do Dom like that!?

Hurricane back from his Gangrel crossing and disposing Sammy Guevara’s broken body in Elite Deletion to do another rumble

One of these days, he’ll hit that Chokeslam and shit will go wild

Christian! This time getting the more emphatic reaction

Oh that smile, that hits you in the chest cavity...then Riddle ruins it

Rey comes in and WWE made him an advertisement ¬_¬

Edward James Omos what are you doing? well...I know what he’s doing, IC feud between AJ and E

Edward James Omos fuck you for eliminating Rey

The betrayal is real for Shamu

Cole how did you know it was Seth before his entrance hit?

I don’t think we were supposed to pick up Shamu welcoming Christian back but that was sweet

Then finally BWOAR

And Bwoar eliminates Cesaro, what was the point of his push? (it’s because his contract’s nearly up isn’t it?)

Again with the camera switching

Seth No! And where’s the boos pipe music!? DBry was a heavy favourite, that would’ve caused heat

Can’t believe Mmm Riddle lasted ahead of DBry

I didn’t forget about Orton, but the finish was good, that Orton tease got us good

It was a decent rumble, in hindsight you could tell Edge was winning given how they put express focus on Michaels winning at number on in the stat attack, Edge being face in peril for the first 10 entrants and Cole reminding us how long Edge has been in there

I don’t at all hate the end result, though I do question whether it was the best choice in the long run. Edge had his rumble win returning from injury already and throwing more legends at Drew does imply a heavy lack of depth in the current roster. Edge didn’t really need the win, but I’m not disappointed in him winning

The Men’s Rumble itself wasn’t as good as the women’s I don’t think, a lot of favourites of mine were unceremoniously dumped out quickly, any layered storytelling didn’t get enough time and it did feel a little by the numbers, almost a microcosm of modern WWE booking

Overall it was still a decent PPV, happy with the winners of the rumbles and that’s mostly all we need from a Royal Rumble. The Road to Wrestlemania starts here

[teaveetamer]

My Issues With TFioS (and Other Elements of John Green)

Alright I’m just going to preface this with two things.

It’s been about six years since I’ve read the entire thing through, so my points are probably not going to be as detailed or precise as they were when I first read it.

If you enjoyed the book, identify with the fanbase, or like John Green in any capacity... Great! You might want to skip this one. This is definitely not the post for you. I’m going to put all of my more controversial thoughts under the cut so if you don’t want to see them you can just move on.

I brought up the book in that other post because I felt it had relevance to the discussion of “authors using characters as a mouthpiece”, but that’s only a small part of my issue with the book itself. I suppose I could have used a fanfiction example, since there’s more than enough fodder there, but I brought up The Fault in our Stars specifically because I feel comfortable criticizing a book in a way that I don’t feel comfortable criticizing fan works. John Green is a public figure that produced a paid product, made money, and does this professionally, while most fanfic authors are amateurs that provide free entertainment and just do it for fun.

Now with that said, we move on to the meat of the post.

Some Background

Perhaps this is not a little known fact, but I absolutely adore love stories. I don’t have incredibly high standards for them by any means, and in fact I actively enjoy them even when they aren’t the deepest, most thought provoking pieces. Someone got me a copy of Red, White, and Royal Blue for my birthday this year and I read the entire thing cover to cover in a day (and I seriously recommend if you’re looking for a pretty easy read with a lot of gay).

The only thing I love more than love stories? Tragic love stories, of course. If anyone has followed my fanfiction or main blog for any amount of time then you know that I love a little bit of tragedy. Usually with a happy ending, but not always. So when one of my friends shoved (and I mean literally shoved) The Fault in Our Stars  into my hands and billed it as a “tragic but heartwarming love story” I thought it would be perfect for me.

I was sixteen at the time, the target age demographic, and I was always looking for books with smart, well written teen characters. At this point in my life I’d never heard of John Green or his fanbase before. I tell you this because I disliked the book as I read it, but I think John Green and his fanbase are a major factor in why I disliked it so much I’m willing to sit down and write a blog post about it six years later. Granted, that’s not all on the book, but it is a factor.

Needless to say, I was not all that impressed by it. At some points I was downright infuriated, really.

My Issues With the Book

In summary, it feels very meh and overly pretentious. After about two chapters I just wanted to put it down, and the only reason I pushed through is because my friend insisted that it got better. She said it was funny, relatable, and intelligent, but I found it to be none of these things.

The impression I got was that the author, whoever he was, fancied himself terribly clever and he wanted everyone to know it. You know the type, the kinds of people that go around and assure everyone of how smart they are? It feels like it was made for haughty teens to brag about how intelligent they were because they read a “deep” book.  The book itself, despite being a surface level of “witty”, didn’t really have anything to say. In the end it reads like a thirty-something year old man bragging about how smart he is and waxing philosophical about the nature of life (and... Breakfast food..?) and using a fictional teenage girl to do it.

That’s why I brought up the “mouthpiece” thing. I didn’t want to read a book about a thirty-something dressing up his thoughts as a teenage girl. I wanted to read a book about a teenage girl.

Speaking of Hazel Grace… I don’t know if this is a common experience, but can anyone else tell when a man writes a female character? I find that I usually can. Men have a particular voice when they write, and especially when they write women. Every single page hammered me over the head with the fact that this was a man who was trying (and, in my opinion, failing miserably) to write a relatable teenage girl. And, in my opinion, he parroted a lot of very upsetting, dangerous mentalities for young women.

There were quite a few “I’m not like other girls, and not just because of the cancer!” moments (a mentality that I find wholly problematic coming from other women, let alone a man writing for a woman) that just had me rolling my eyes straight out of their sockets. She doesn’t care about shoes, see! She reads books! Isn’t that awesome and unique? Because, apparently, women are not allowed to do both.

These problematic mentalities extend into the book’s romance plot, too. Augustus is, frankly, one of the creepiest motherfuckers I’ve ever had the displeasure to read about. Not only is his aggressive creepiness portrayed as romantic, but Hazel reacts exactly how men wish women would react to their advances. Unfortunately I don’t have a copy of the book in front of me so you won’t get much in the way of direct quotes, but some examples include:

He stares at her, completely unblinking, for the duration of their cancer kids support group meeting… before they’ve even so much as spoken a word to each other. Which also features this gem of a quote: "A nonhot boy stares at you relentlessly and it is, at best, awkward and, at worst, a form of assault. But a hot boy . . . well." which just perpetuates the disgusting misconception that women are okay with being creeped on as long as a guy is attractive. Spoiler alert: We fucking aren’t.

He repeatedly refers to Hazel as “Hazel Grace”, despite her introducing herself as “Hazel” and asking him to just call her “Hazel”. And not only does he ask for her full name, he demands she give it to him. This rings all kinds of alarm bells for me, because you know who else does that kind of shit? Christian Grey. And it’s manipulative, disrespectful, and downright rude. It is essentially saying “I hear your desires, but I would prefer to address you how I want to address you, not how you would like to be addressed, because my ego is more important than your comfort”.

Hazel is perfectly fine with getting into a complete stranger’s car and spending time at his house mere minutes after meeting with him and after all of the questionable shit he just pulled.

Continuing this book’s litany of problems with women, let’s talk about Isaac’s (ex)girlfriend. The book treats their breakup as this massive betrayal, then even goes on to justify vandalizing her property because of it.

I’m sorry, but no.

You, as an autonomous human being, have the right to end a relationship with someone else whenever, wherever, and for whatever reasons you designate, regardless of previously expressed emotions or promises. How and when she did it was not the most ideal, but she’s an emotionally immature teenager, and there’s never going to be a good time to do something like this. What was she supposed to do, keep pity dating him because she felt sorry for him? Wait until someone invented technology to cure blindness? Assuming she did actually break up with him because of his disability… Are her reasons shitty? Sure. But she’s allowed to have them.

And you know what? He’s allowed to be mad about it. His anger might be completely understandable, if not totally justified. But you know what else? That does not give him the right to take revenge on her by vandalizing her property.

I would have no problem with this scene if it were honest about what it was: a bunch of teenagers with under-developed frontal lobes that are angry and feeling vindictive. But it’s not that. It’s depicted as not only completely justified, but heroic. I’m sorry, no. You are never heroic for harassing another human being.

And Augustus’s dumb little speech to her mom is such garbage. You really expect me to believe that a grown woman was so pwned by some jerk teenager’s super witty justification for destroying her property that she just went inside and, idk, watched TV? Didn’t call the police to report the crime that he and his friends were actively committing against her? Bullshit.

Speaking of bullshit, that scene is pretty egregious, but that doesn’t even begin to cover my issues with this book’s pretentious dialogue. If you told me that they ran every word in this book through Thesaurus.com then I would believe you without hesitation. The one hook, the draw, the thing that kept me reading was supposed to be the relatable characters, but they just aren’t relatable. They’re not realistic in the slightest. Seriously, go read any line of this book out loud and tell me how ridiculous you feel. I kept expecting Augustus to pull off his skinsuit and reveal that he was secretly a robot trying to imitate human speech the entire time.

I’m not sure how far I can go into this point without giving you direct quotes, but half the stuff that comes out of these characters mouths is pseudo-intellectual nonsense. “Put the killing thing between your teeth so it can’t kill you”?

It’s not a metaphor.

Putting an unlit cigarette in your mouth is still stupid. I guess it won’t give you lung cancer, but really? It’s still not a great idea.

Augustus has to go buy these cigarettes, which means he’s actively going out and giving money to an industry that has been funding pseudoscience and suppressing health initiatives that would prevent people from suffering what he did (i.e. fucking cancer).

Here’s a clue: Tobacco companies don’t actually care about what you do with the cigarettes. Their transaction stops as soon as you put the money in their hands. I could purchase a hundred packs and throw them in the garbage, and the only thing they know is that they got about $600 from me. Way to “stick it to the man”, asshole. You’re not clever.

With the exception of the Isaac’s-girlfriend thing, all of that is in chapters 1-4, by the way. This book turned me off so thoroughly that early.

So by the time the Amsterdam trip rolled around I was already not enjoying this book, but then this thing happened and it was just the final nail in the coffin for me. You probably know what I’m talking about already, but if you don’t… The Anne Frank Museum kiss.

I honestly cannot even articulate how incredibly tasteless and disrespectful I find the entire thing, and not only does that happen, but it’s followed by an r/ThatHappened “and then everybody stood up and clapped!” Seriously?

There are smarter, more well-versed people than me that have covered this topic, so I’ll leave the analysis for why that’s all kinds of wrong to them.

Those are really my big gripes, though there’s a few smaller ones (like Augustus throwing a pre-funeral like are you a psychopath? Why would you put the people you love through that???) that I’m not going to touch on because they weren’t all that instrumental in putting me off. Instead I’ll move on to the external factors.

The Fanbase

So I finished the book, a little miffed at having just wasted my time, and immediately told my friend that I didn’t like it much, and that I would be returning her copy the next day. Feeling pretty meh-to-slightly-negative about it, but whatever, it happens.

I was essentially met with “wow I can’t believe you didn’t get it.” and “Oh well maybe you’ll finally understand how deep it is when you’re older” from my friend. Which is really just one step away from the wow can’t you read?! BS that I’ve been seeing more and more frequently these days. So immediately I was pissed. All that aside, I was sixteen, the target age demographic? If I didn’t ‘get it’ then John Green was doing a pretty piss poor job of conveying what it is.

So I went online seeking something. Either validation that I wasn’t wrong and that I didn’t miss the point, the book just wasn’t great, or an explanation of what this it was that I’d missed. And let me tell you... Spotting a negative opinion of this book was like looking for a unicorn. There were a few, and many of them were met with the same kind of thing I had experienced. Vitriol, insistence that they were stupid or that they didn’t get it (again, with no explanation of what it was), and, apparently, a lot of harassment and threats.

I discovered that John Green’s target audience had a tendency to be… A bit obsessive. Lots of young, impressionable teenagers that were willing to jump on an opposing opinion with zealous outrage. If I had any interest in pursuing any of John Green’s other works or John Green as an internet personality any further, then it died in that moment. Absolutely nothing turns me off like a rabid, spiteful fanbase.

Now by this point I was already in the rabbit hole, and I began encountering a lot of criticisms of John Green and the things he’s said and done in the past. I did not like what I found.

John Green Himself

To be extremely blunt, the guy put such a bad taste in my mouth that it retroactively soured my opinion of The Fault in Our Stars even more. Since this is a post about my opinions on the book, I’m only going to be discussing things that affected my view at the time I read it. These are all things that happened six years ago, and I have no idea what this man has been up to or what he’s said about any of these topics since.

Let’s just get this out of the way… John Green writes the same book over and over. There’s always a quirky, nerdy white boy that is invariably cisgendered, and almost always straight. He is always an outcast with only a few friends, though apparently never directly bullied. He always meets an edgy girl that he falls in love with the idea of. Usually there is a road trip somewhere in there too.

The Fault in our Stars admittedly doesn’t follow the exact same framework, but it’s close enough in a lot of ways. Instead of the Quirky, Too-Smart-For-His-Own-Good cisboi being the PoV character, it’s the love interest (Hazel also fits this description, albeit a female version). Hazel and Augustus are both still outcasts. Hazel is attracted to Augustus because he’s Deep and Edgy and A Little Larger Than Life. The road trip is a flight to Amsterdam.

Looking at the man... Yeah the entire premise starts to come off as some weird self-insert fanfiction. I can feel the “I was a quirky, bullied teen and I wish this is how my high school life had been!” energy coming through absolutely every pore and every molecule of ink. Every character reads like John Green. John Green has written book after book and the main character always appears to be John Green in a slightly different teenage skinsuit.

And that’s fine, I guess. A little lazy, but I guess it’s working for him since he’s making hella bank? It’s certainly not enough to put me off the guy, just not something I’m interested in reading, and not something I find compelling.

What put me off for good were some of his comments. Dude skeeves me the fuck out. I’ll just go over some of the highlights I found at the time, and why they upset me so much when I heard them.

“Nerd girls are the world's most underutilized romantic resource.”

As a nerdy girl that has been stalked and harassed by men because I’m “good girlfriend material” (aka I like video games and traditionally masculine stuff and I’m pretty! I must be a unicorn!), this statement is disgusting.

I don’t care if it was a joke. I don’t care if he wasn’t being serious. This is the kind of shit that men think is a compliment because they think it makes “quirky” girls feel “unique” and “special”, but that “complement” is also an insult. You know why? Because it makes female interests all about how men perceive their sexual or romantic viability.

John Green’s penchant for writing “special” and “unique” girls (while simultaneously shaming “typical” girls, but I’ll get to that in the next point) and depicting them as the ideal woman just reaffirms my feelings about this quote. I think, on some level, John Green has no idea why this is such a bad take. And that’s not even getting into the fact that he called human beings resources. Women are not objects that exist to be a plot device or for your gratification. Fuck right off with that shit.

“She was incredibly hot, in that popular-girl-with-bleached-teeth-and-anorexia kind of way, which was Colin’s least favourite way of being hot”

This is just one quote of many that shames people with eating disorders and weight problems (on both ends of the spectrum, “too fat” and “too skinny”. Another fun one being: “there’s the weird culturally-constructed definition of hot, which means ‘that individual is malnourished, and has probably had plastic bags inserted into her breasts.’")

Know what this line is? It’s called “negging”, and it’s a popular tactic of incels because it works. You make someone seek your approval by intentionally giving them backhanded compliments to undermine their self esteem. The idea is that the more you insult them, the harder they’ll work to try and impress you. It doesn’t work on everyone, but you know who it does tend to work on? Insecure younger people (usually girls). You know who John Green’s target audience is? Insecure teenage girls.

As for the actual substance of the quote… I hate it. He’s shaming a woman for the choices she makes over her appearance. Which are, fun fact, none of his damn business. Also the idea that “skinny” and “anorexic” somehow need to go hand in hand is just wrong, insulting women for a mental health disorder they have no control over is offensive, and using a serious mental health disorder (did you know that anorexia is the most deadly mental health condition?) as an insult is disgusting.

Coming back to my earlier point about shaming “normal” girls, this quote is just the tip of the iceberg. He repeatedly shames women in his books for looking or behaving “typically”, while quirky girls are lauded as the ideal. Quirky girls are “weird and interesting” and normal girls are “boring”. If this was intended as a compliment, it’s a shitty one. If you have to shame one group to make another feel better, it is not a compliment. You are lowering all women when you pull that shit. You teach them that in order to feel good about themselves another group has to be made to feel worse.

And hey, maybe the pretty girl likes her teeth bleached because it makes her feel confident? Why can’t bleached teeth girl and anime t-shirt girl both be beautiful and unique and confident in their own right? Why is it “powerful” for anime t-shirt girl to wear her nerdy clothes, but scorn-worthy for bleached teeth girl to like bleaching her teeth?

What John Green is doing is simply replacing one ideal (skinny pretty girl) with another (quirky cute girl), and then he pretends like his version is somehow “woke” because it’s not based on physical appearance (though all of the women in his books are also physically attractive. Hmmm. Guess “nerd girls” are only “viable resources” when they aren’t hard to look at?).

And trust me, I’ve been down this path. I’ve been taken in by guys who try to make me feel ~special~ by putting down other women, and it leads to absolutely nothing good. It doesn’t make you feel better. It just makes you feel angry and resentful, and that’s not a place you want to be in. In fact, this was a mentality I had recently escaped from around the time I picked up this book. Seeing someone with as much influence as John Green parroting this specific brand of toxic shit to exactly the audience that would be most likely to feed into it? I was never going to be able to like the guy, sorry.

I know some people are able to “separate the art from the artist”, and I might have been willing to do that had the book actually been good… but it wasn’t. So in the end the book just looked worse for all of the author’s shortcomings.

So yeah, in summary: The book was mediocre at best, the author pushed all of my angry feminist buttons, and elements of the fanbase were annoying, condescending, and spiteful. I didn’t like the book in the first place due to the myriad of problems plaguing it, but everything else just made it look so much worse in hindsight.

Anyways, this probably got kind of ranty, but it was cathartic and I did make this blog to vent about dumb stuff. I think this qualifies.

[the-cryptographer]

I should not have dropped eight thousand words of a new WIP.

I mean, it was the one unposted WIP fic I allowed myself to work on at all, and for a microfandom, so it’s not like I had no idea what I was doing. It’s just a lot on my mind and on my plate, and I’m just kind of meh about the parts of the chapter I rushed to finish. I felt myself struggling through parts of the Trish conversation, and I completely BS-ed a section - one that should have been longer - in a very poor attempt to preserve the original pacing and scene changes that I drafted two years ago. But after sitting on the thing for so long, I figured it was just better to go ahead just bc... I want this fic to exist.

It’s really weird for me, because it’s not even a fic that’s entirely mine - it was something brainstormed in response to someone’s yuletide prompt from 2015. I’m not sure I would have conceptualised the concept as I did without that prompt. I have some major reservations about the ship, for one, particularly the Gig/Levin side of the triang. Gig’s mass exploitation and the control he leveraged over Raksha in the backstory is kind of fucked up in a way I can’t really excuse as the backstory for a relationship, regardless of how terrible a person Raksha is. But even though I’m finding myself edging over to the abandoned fandom corner of Levin/Revya OTP, I kind of want Gig there for this anyhow. He’s great to write dialogue for, for one. He’s observant in ways the other two aren’t. And there’s something in his relationships with each of the others... The kind of codependence he has with Revya - they way they hide their identities behind one another, and draw together in solidarity so easily. And that Gig and Raksha, for all that ugly, ugly, history, were really the only two to make it out alive and together and in an understanding of what had happened - all those attempts to grab power and control - was all utterly futile. So even though I have issues with Gig being there, and I’m not entirely sure it’s something I would have happened upon myself, I kind of realised that there isn’t really a story without him. How would Revya and Levin even begin a conversation if it was just them? They get so easily tongue-tied. And it’s also just kind of hard for me to imagine Revya... not wanting Gig to be a part of this. ...And also bisexuality and polyamory and genderfuck are life, lol. Like, I’ll write and enjoy het ships, but this is really what I’m here for - let’s not lie to ourselves.

Other issues I have with it...

Chapter two will be better in this regard, but the first chapter relies too much on incidental meetings. I don’t think they’re impossible to believe, and I think on a meta level they can be justified considering the amount of narrative mileage that’s milked out of them - the first setting up the plot, and the second being the centerpiece of comedic schadenfreude. But I’d prefer to have a more substantial reason for characters running into one another on an in-universe level.

The mental health stuff is all over the place. It was another thing requested by the yuletide prompt. I got the idea for depressive, bipolar, and psychosis trifecta with Revya, Levin, and Gig respectively. But, while I’m kind of attached to bipolar Levin in particular, I realised I don’t really have the background or personal experience to write much more than depression with any certainty. It’s kind of integrated into the plot at this point, so there will definitely be moments of lapsed health, but I kind of feel it’s going to be both disappointingly vague and disappointingly left hanging.

The prompter also specified they didn’t care much for Tricia or Danette. And, yeah, I don’t /not/ get that. I’m not too fond of Danette myself. It’s just hard for me to make Revya not attached to her. The same way i won’t write Red not liking Pikachu. Or Yuugi not liking Atem. So that, but also it’s hard for me to leave this kind of fandom mindset where... I really /want/ to like female characters. Even when I don’t. Despite all the incredibly shoddy writing surrounding female characters, and despite the fact that I don’t think it’s really a fan’s responsibility to make allowances for that, I’m still kind of super... meh... about the way female characters get treated in fandom. I live irl around enough women that are 500x more critical of other ladies than any of the men in their lives. And it’s just... really hard for me to not read that kind of misogyny into fandom attitudes. Especially considering how viscous and charged and controlling I’ve seen fandom get about what female fans are allowed to do. So I kind of inevitably want to write stories where the female characters are given weight and importance in their relationships with each other, and the resultant product of this impulse combined with trying to follow the letter of the prompt was something very ??? where Tricia and Danette are kind of left out of the story while still being rather over-present in it. I kind of wonder at this point what niches they would have filled in the story if I hadn’t tried to limit them. But it kind of is what it is at this point, and I have trouble wanting to fix what isn’t broken, even if it could potentially be better maybe(?)

So, in spite of all my many reservations, I... care about this thing. The kind of grim comedy and exuberance to Soul Nomad struck a chord with the grim comedic fatality of my teenage self, and every once in a while I’m kind of overcome with how much I love the cow siblings. They are just a mess of abuse and biological weapons engineering and deception. I kind of realise dancing around the soul nomad tags... how much I disproportionately love Levin, lol. And how much I need content about him and Euphoria that goes into their identity struggles, and having been trafficked, and the kind of ugliness and control that sits between them. Content that largely doesn’t exist.

And I also like the kind of aftermath to what is a quest that gathered a number of different party members - all of different political allegiance - and set them to a common goal. The idea that they’re all still friends that enjoy each other on a personal level, but still all have their own agendas and priorities that clash, is one of those things that intrigues me. And that Revya and Gig and Levin can kind of move through that landscape (mostly) unaffiliated and detached from it. Outside observers.

Anyhow, these are all the things I’m kind of thinking about. and I just wanted to ramble for a bit.

[softgrungeprophet]

god-tier wyatt wingfoot:

naturally, OG jack kirby wyatt is also in this level for being a very handsome and charming young man with nice hair who is a thousand feet tall (okay, 6′6″) to johnny’s little 5′9″ twink ass

cover art from the recent very badly written oil arc. the... what issue was that? #20-something? the cover with moleman where johnny is wearing three shirts tucked into his jeans and wyatt’s rocking that outdoorsy hiking look. extremely handsome.

good tier: Allred-drawn-and-colored in the otherwise mediocre fraction FF run--handsome, hunky, nice hair. like, between good and god tbh.

most 2000s and onward wyatts before the slott run are pretty good overall (even though aburtov is not a good colorist). slott issue 1 and also whichever issue was the bachelor party are both pretty good too, handsome, tall, etc. love his red tuxedo with the bolo tie.

she hulk ceremony gets up here too, by virtue of being good looking, as do most of the other graphic novel appearances (minus byrne’s) for also, being very good looking. some of the GNs have some questionably handled background stuff and ceremony uses a LOT of stereotypes but as a whole (minus byrne’s) they tend to be done pretty well and are less mocking toward wyatt and more like... you know that whole, road to hell is paved with good intentions thing? like that.

like, the ka-zar GN with wyatt isn’t bad but it’s got this HEAVILY paternalistic approach to the “primitive natives,” you know? ceremony isn’t bad, and it’s obviously written by someone who knows how race works (by virtue of, you know, being black) and there’s obviously a lot of reference being used for the art but it’s still very much steeped in the whole mystical native american stuff that has definitely not aged well  (or ever?) but wyatt is also treated as a character with a complex interior and his own worries and stuff in a way that like, sensational she-hulk entirely fails to do. my feelings on these wyatt-centric GNs from the late 80s and thru the 90s are complex. he IS very handsome though.

so. otherwise those would be up there in the superb tier cause honestly he’s VERY handsome in them.

just okay tier:  points deducted from ryan stegman’s wyatt NOT because he doesn’t have good wyatt vibes (he’s pretty solid honestly) but because he is an ENTIRE FOOT shorter than he should be. he’s literally like 5′6″ in she-hulks because stegman draws pretty much everyone the same size. it’s wild. the colorist is also not the best but not the worst either. if steg’s wyatt wasn’t an entire foot too small, he’d be in the good tier. he’s written good too. i like him. he’s basically teetering toward pretty good if only he’d grow 12 inches taller.

most of the interior art from the slott run. a lot of it is just. meh. apart from the 1st and bachelor issue he’s usually too skinny or too short, WAY too pale, not very handsome, just not wyatt vibes sometimes to the extent that if i didn’t know he was supposed to be wyatt i would take a few minutes to figure out who he was supposed to be. like. it’s fine. it’s just okay. he’s not totally unrecognizable. but i’m not a fan and i hate jesus aburtov’s coloring (and most of the other colorists in this run aren’t great either) (hey why does this run have like 6 different art teams)

wyatt in claremont’s run. mostly that’s just an issue i have with the art  being overall very..... squishy. i don’t HATE it but i don’t love it. but i also don’t like the way claremont totally ignored every established fact about wyatt and just made up shit 👌 his personality was fine though. purely on aesthetics he’d be between “okay” and “good.”

that one single-panel appearance in the anniversary issue written by dwayne mcduffie. pros: aw he’s family, and he’s LARGE. cons: his face is not great. he’s possibly TOO large? his biceps are the size of watermelons it’s kind of a lot to take in. he’s alright tho.

there’s at least one comic (the one where lyja stalks johnny to a digsite where he’s hanging with wyatt and she-hulk) where wyatt looks like the punisher and i just. lmfao. but he’s an okay wyatt for the most part. a little TOO rugged but not the worst i’ve seen. and he was not red, which is always a bonus.

bad tier: anything with pink or light red skin, so pretty much anything from the 70s and part of the 80s. even skin color aside a lot of those artists gave him awful hair. some of them were okay but the reddish skin drags that down to bad. the only plus side was that he was always big. there were very few good wyatts between 1973 and 2000. also most of the single issues with him in them were just kind of ugly 🤷‍♂️

also there are a couple of really hideous wyatts from random one-off mini issues or 1-2 panel appearances through the 2000s and later that are baffling to behold and look literally nothing like him to the point of being completely unrecognizable. sometimes i wonder if the artist just hears, “he’s native american” and then draws a completely new character based on that alone. cause wow.

shit-tier: literally anything by john byrne (and glynis oliver/wein), both because it’s racist as hell both in terms of skin color (basically the only time wein didn’t make wyatt some shade of red was in the she hulk GN) and in terms of dialogue (like, jesus christ mr byrne), and also because byrne manages to make wyatt look unappealing even without color (though it’s still a marked improvement in b&w 😬).

his hair... is bad. his face... is fine i guess? his body.... is what str8 comic dudes think people who are attracted to men like. (aka a ridiculously shredded bodybuilder physique with zero body fat, flexing even when relaxed) (not a fan, thanks)

[toomuchtimenerd]

Review for ‘The Unhoneymooners’ by Christina Lauren

Admittedly I ended up reading this book much quicker than I expected. Perhaps it was the fact that I was desperate to make myself forget I had ever read The Cruel Prince, or maybe I just needed some light reading to make myself feel like I was 15 years old again and reading my very first book on kindle: On the Island by Tracey Garvis Graves. Perhaps a bit of both. Regardless, The Unhoneymooners was a delightful book that flew by so quickly despite being around 400 pages. I think I needed something super lighthearted and contemporary to temporarily draw my mind away from high fantasy. I love fantasy, I really do and my entire folder of drafts for fantasy stories that I’ve brainstormed over the last several years is proof of my love for fantasy. But sometimes it’s still nice to get away and read something about nonmagical people in a nonmagical world surrounded by nonmagical things. This book did just that for me, and the fact that it’s mostly set in Maui pulls at my heartstrings a little because my first vacation with my boyfriend was actually in Maui too. What a happy coincidence.

Even though this book didn’t stir a lot of great, wild emotions within me the same way a lot of YA fantasy tends to, I’d still like to comment on some parts that I liked (which was a lot) and a few parts that were kinda ‘meh’ with me. This review is probably going to be a lot shorter than what I’ve written before, but that’s okay. 

The Unhoneymooners is about a 30-something-year-old Latina named Olive who narrates the entire story with the exception of the epilogue (which is narrated by the male love interest). Some background on Olive: she’s supposedly incredibly unlucky and unfortunate in life... almost like somehow all her luck has been sucked dry by her twin sister Ami. Ami’s the one who wins all the jackpots for random stuff in life, so much so that she managed to snag enough jackpots to plan a dream wedding and a free honeymoon for the price of only around $1000. As someone who also proclaims herself to be somewhat pretty unlucky in life, I relate to Olive pretty hard. I used to not be a pessimist, but whenever I look back on some of the stuff that has happened in my life that were TOTALLY out of my control I can’t help but chuckle and be like “wow my life is pretty darn unlucky sometimes”. Now it’s just easier for me to deal with certain things if I don’t get my hopes too high up beforehand. But enough about me. 

The story starts with Ami’s wedding, and unfortunately the jackpot she won for a free luxury shellfish catering at her wedding goes completely awry and almost everyone gets serious food poisoning. All except for our lovely heroine and of course, the love interest. The male lead is Ethan, the older brother of Ami’s new husband and also a guy that Olive does not really like at first. They met about 2-3 years ago, when Ami and Ethan’s brother (Dane) first started going out, and because Olive misinterpreted Ethan’s facial reaction at her eating cheese curds she forever believed that he didn’t like her and she wrote him off as a fat-shamer or something of the sort. Kind of weird, but okay I guess. Ethan’s your typical hottie, also 30-something years old and apparently has the looks of a frat boy (like Dane) but the personality of a homebody semi-dork (unlike Dane). Ethan does something math-related for a living and loves staying at home. He also has a lucky penny. How cute. 

So when everyone’s yacking and having explosive diarrhea all over the place, Olive and Ethan decide to make good use of the free honeymoon to Maui and make an agreement to tolerate each other for the length of their trip. The book very quickly gets juicy, considering a series of events happens and they are essentially forced to put on a constant charade of pretending to be newlyweds. All this pretending wears and tears down their emotional barriers with one another, and next thing you know they’re sharing feels and kisses and tongue action together. We find out that they both shared mutual feelings of attraction when they first met, but Dane had actually warned Ethan to not get involved with Olive due to her penchant for negativity (which stems from the fact that she’s so unlucky in life all the time). At one point at a baseball game or something, Olive goes to get cheese curds and as she’s enjoying her food she stumbles into Ethan who apparently makes a weird face at her and she gets incredibly insecure and feels like he was fat-shaming her. Turns out (and I can’t believe this took over 2 years to reconciliate) he was trying to mask his attraction towards her and avoid her out of respect for Dane. But Olive just assumed the worst, thinking Ethan did not like her and decided to return the feelings with mutual dislike. This alienated Ethan, and obviously who’s going to pursue a girl who’s giving you the vibes that scream ‘stay away from me!! i dont like u!!!’? Not any normal, sane, decent guy. 

Personally, I felt like this backstory between Olive and Ethan was super weird and not the most well fleshed out or even something that remotely makes much sense. I get feeling insecure and I understand not liking someone simply on the basis that you think they don’t like you. But I don’t understand how someone completely misinterprets a facial expression THAT much and then holds it against the other person for THAT long. Heck, I’m absolutely one to hold grudges against people but even I don’t think I’d hold a grudge for that long over something like that. But hey, this whole book is meant to be comedy fluff so I ain’t too bothered by this nonsense backstory. 

I’d say about 70-80% of the book is literally just about the relationship build-up between Olive and Ethan, and the rest is about the shitshow that is Ami and Dane, specifically just Dane. Turns out he’s been cheating on her for the majority of their 3-year relationship, and tbh Ami’s initial reaction to Olive informing her of Dane’s unfaithfulness kind of pissed me off. It’s one thing to not want to believe it, but it’s another to completely disregard it and turn it back on your sister by claiming they’re just trying to sabotage you or something. Thankfully, this whole issue is resolved pretty quickly and Ami’s way of finding the truth out herself was simply magnificent. She texted each of her husband’s side-chicks through his phone, pretending to be him, and had them all come by their house at the same time on the same day just so she can confront Dane and all his flings about his faithfulness. So beautifully done, it almost brings a tear to my eye. 

So in conclusion, The Unhoneymooners was a lighthearted and enjoyable read that truly had me either smiling or silently laughing for maybe a third of the book. The language was great, the chemistry between Olive and Ethan was oh so ooh la la, and way Lauren weaved in the love and support of a big close-knitted (and very dramatic) family was heartwarming. I may try to search for more books like these since light fluff is always much needed to help treat my seasonal depression (thanks January). But I’m always worried about shelling money over a book that ends up reading a little too much like corny fanfiction. For example, I absolutely adored Meg Cabot books when I was in middle school, but now that I’m in my 20s I really don’t think I could read any of her books for more than half an hour. If I tried, I would end up rolling my eyes out of their sockets. Books about a contemporary romance between teenagers seemingly always end up becoming so dramatic, but then again it’s probably because teenagers are incredibly dramatic. I should know this, after all, I definitely was a dramatic teenager. I wish I were being sarcastic. I’m just going to sprinkle some of my favorite quotes from The Unhoneymooners so I can help myself forget about how unnecessarily dramatic I was as a teen.

“I want to say something sassy, but the only coherent thought that comes to mind is how insulting it is that eyelashes like his were wasted on Satan’s Errand Boy...” (Lauren, 2019, Ch.2) 

- TELL ME WHY IS THAT QUOTE SO RELATABLE? WHY ARE BEAUTIFUL LASHES ALWAYS WASTED ON MEN?? MY BOYFRIEND HAS THE MOST STUNNING LASHES EVER MEANWHILE I NEED TO GLUE FALSIES ON MY DAMN EYELIDS JUST TO ACHIEVE HALF OF WHAT HE’S GOT

“I can appreciate my body in a bikini and still want to set fire to the patriarchy.” (Lauren, 2019, Ch.7)

- All I can say is yas preach 

“I am a homebody, through and through, and there’s nothing like being at home.” (Lauren, 2019, Ch.15)

- Also too relatable. I enjoy traveling, I enjoy vacations, I enjoy spending a night out with friends, and I enjoy a good party. But at the end of the day, there’s nothing I enjoy more than my own bed