#the format and balance of characters is going to be different because tv is different from books

[harbingerofsoup]

i will say that about 80% of the discourse (and im talking the idiotic social media style discourse) in the iwtv fandom is perpetrated by people who don’t know how to safely and responsibly engage with the gothic horror genre and i don’t care if that comes across as pretentious because it’s true

[fatalforesight]

I once read a review of Yellowjackets where the reviewer was saying that Yellowjackets is the kind of show that would be better enjoyed by book readers because of the slow pacing that is not fit for television storytelling and the kind of show that Yellowjackets is supposed to be and while I kinda agree with the guy (especially because I read the scripts and I remember being really entertained by them maybe even more than when I was watching the actual episodes) as a book reader I can also firmly say that our brains know what we're picking up in the moment and adjust accordingly and expects a different kind of entertainment with each media. If I pick up a book, my brain expects the entertainment I get from a book. If I pick a movie, my brain expects a movie. Same with a tv show. And while I love Yellowjackets the pacing really gets on my nerves and confuses me a lot of the times. It could be a book but it's not and my brain doesn't expect it to be. It expects a tv show. Does that make sense? Sorry for ranting in your inbox lol. Just, your recent post reminded me of that review and the thoughts and feelings I had while I read it and I totally agree with you the pacing from S2 and S3 is really dragged out and we still have two seasons left? This could have been a 3 (or 4) seasons show and it would've been amazing. You know how some people say that some tv shows need to go back to the 22 episodes format? I feel like with Yellowjackets it's the opposite. If the season doesn't need more than 8 episodes, don't give it more than 8 episodes. I love the show, I really do but sometimes it really needs to get to the point. You know?

I wanted to wait and respond to this until I could read it and really take it all in but I think I agree with what you’re saying. As someone who writes YJ material, it is def not made for another format. I think the needledrops, the dialogue, and a lot of the cinematography are what make the show so distinct, and those things don’t necessarily translate to written material. More under cut cause this got long lol

Season 1 of the show is just so tight and perfect. They got a lot of the ratios right between balancing the girlhood of the teen timeline with the supernatural and fear factor, and the adult timeline expands so well on the characters that survive and how the trauma affects them.

To me it truly feels like the writers lacked direction with the adult timeline, and by season 3 lacked direction in both timelines. I do understand that it’s easy to critique, but not easy to create. But I’m lost on how they’ve managed to drag the show out this season.

Yellowjackets is NOT a 22episode season imo. Ben’s death shouldn’t have been a five episode arc, and adding more episodes would not have made that worth it. People forget that the 22 episode season has nothing to do with pacing, and everything to do with money. You want a series on cable to run for most of the year, so people tune into your network (NBC, CW, Disney, etc)

Shows like Yellowjackets are EXPENSIVE to make. They’re not shot like a studio/lot show. These casts and crews are on location, there’s a great amount of travel involved, not to mention with having two separate casts with totally different on screen needs. The camera work, the makeup and costuming, and the transport of people and equipment is a massive undertaking. A 22 episode season would be exorbitant, and totally unnecessary because streaming services don’t need to run shows for 8 or 10 months out of the year.

And I think when you have a show like Yellowjackets that had such a perfect first season, saying it needs more episodes later on is not the fix I would advise. If I was a producer or showrunner, I’d absolutely be gunning for killing off more characters, therefore downsizing the ensemble in both timelines. I also think the show works best with suddenness, and it is not a show where any of the tragedy needs to be drawn out across multiple episodes. The 8 episode season works when every episode is about something new. But if your team has run out of plot ideas, then of course you hire Hilary Swank for clout and let a death arc take 5 episodes to play out. You would have thought they were killing Caesar.

[ilikekidsshows]

Miraculous WAS a good cartoon, right? There were the seeds and setups for something pretty special there, before it went off the rails (and claimed that those were the real rails all along, metaphor falling apart, whatever). Miraculous: Tales of Ladybug and Cat Noir was compelling enough that we still put our minds to talking about it long after new episodes cease to hold any appeal for us.

Are there other stories you used to like that turned out super disappointing, but some blorbo or plot line still won’t let go? Would you say there’s a factor that determines whether or not you stay motivated to make fanworks for a disappointing story?

---

Miraculous was never a flawless show, but its flaws used to be a lot more understated, like, a whole lot. The thing about Miraculous is that the Miraculouses give us a really good story engine, there’s a good balance between school drama and superhero action, and we have a large cast of colorful characters. There’s something for everyone’s tastes. Miraculous was designed with a wide range of appeal on purpose and it worked. The early seasons also leaned into these strengths.

A big factor in this are the Akumas. We used to get a different Akuma in almost every single episode, with the entire episode plot revolving around the Akuma victim’s troubles and life. This format is very similar to the original Sailor Moon anime, where Usagi would meet an acquaintance or stranger who’d be targeted by the villains to absorb their energy or turn them into a monster. The Akuma victims getting such high billing also meant that having the classmates get targeted was a really easy way to showcase them.

The focus on resolving personal problems and misunderstandings also meant that the show had something to say about relationships. So many of the show’s problems are caused by miscommunication, especially for Marinette herself, that it functioned as a central theme for the series. With the inclusion of the Marigami arc, where Marinette learns to look past her personal wants to see Kagami as more than an obstacle for her happiness, and episodes like ‘Party Crasher’, where Nino and Marinette both realize they went overboard for Adrien, Marinette was clearly learning to be more considerate and aware of others. This was a very relatable, consistent and solid theme that made the show easy to get into.

But, like, these weaknesses in the writing team didn't come out of nowhere, hence why a lot of the problems were there from the beginning, like inconsistency. The difficulty the writers have seems to be in concluding stories and arcs. It often seems that the team knows how stories usually end, but they don't know why they end like that, so they just try to “subvert” the common conclusions because they might think, like many TV writers these days, that being clever is more important than being consistent.

‘Reflekdoll’ is such a good microcosm of how the writers have a hard time with completing stories, since everything alway comes down to ‘Reflekdoll'. Usually the power swap episode starts with the heroes not appreciating each other or their powers enough and ends with them learning to appreciate each other more, but, in ‘Reflekdoll’, the episode starts with Cat Noir saying he has the easy job and Ladybug calling him a jokester, and then the episode ends with Cat Noir “admitting” that he didn’t realize how much work being Ladybug is and Marinette "learning" that Cat Noir really is nothing but a clown that she never has to worry about, meaning they actually learned nothing, because the episode snaps its internal consistency in half in order to finish off with dialogue that reaffirms their female protagonist. In addition, Adrien actually learns that he isn't fit for important roles. Season five has concluded and they both still believe these things, despite us getting a redo with a more “proper” take on a power swap, so it wasn't that ‘Reflekdoll’ was a one-off parody of “what did we learn today?” episodes like The Owl House’s ‘Once Upon a Swap’ where the lesson is meant to be bad. It's just messy writing.

Part of the problem, I feel, is that all that potential and setup and successful episodes like Heroes Day made Miraculous so popular that the writers got too cocky and started including more stuff that they couldn’t actually write consistently or well. They thought the audience would consider anything they wrote good or they thought they had to reach higher levels of “hype” by including shiny new ideas to keep things from getting “repetitive”, like they phrased it in the London Special. All previous character arcs get dropped. Instead it’s all about creating moments that will trend on social media, either in terms of “twists” or romance scenes. So that was where they put their focus, on romance scenes and creating “surprising” twists and “subverting expectations”.

Another aspect of this cockiness is that seasons 4 and 5 are too ambitious for the writing crew’s skill level or writing style. The Miraculous crew, as I said, is good at writing isolated scenes and sometimes whole isolated episodes, when the episode is so simple that they don’t end up accidentally contradicting themselves by forgetting what they wrote for the beginning. This means that seasons 1-3 being mostly episodic with some recurring plot threads played to their strengths, but part of the hype for the retool was changing Miraculous to be more serialized, where the episodes have a proper viewing order, which is why Astruc was asking people not to watch episodes out of order when they kept being dropped whenever.

Yet, once again, most of the actual development in seasons 4-5 happens in the premiere and finale, just like in the more episodic seasons. The thing about a continuous plot is that you need to actually have a continuous plot that moves along every few episodes at least instead of the characters spending fifteen episodes faffing about before anything important happens again, basically just having a different status quo for one season, or having a single other plot-important episode in the middle of the season to fake having continuous plot progression, but that actually is just two status quos (like S5 being split into “Marinette tries to move on from Adrien” and “Adrinette are dating” status quos). In addition, several details get changed as the episodes progress, making what little continuity there is contradictory. The Miraculous crew can’t write a continuous plot because they can’t keep their details consistent.

The London Special gives us a lot of evidence that this is what’s going on. It’s almost as meta as ‘Simpleman’, with Alix making comments about getting a working formula but then needing to change things up to keep things interesting. She is literally describing how to write an episodic, formulaic cartoon, which Miraculous isn’t supposed to be anymore. Miraculous is being hyped up as a continuous story, but it’s being written like an episodic one, where character development takes forever to stick, if it ever does, and plot threads get dropped as soon as a newer, shinier idea comes along.

This is the thing with Astruc constantly defending people being confused over his writing with: “You’re thinking too complicated” or “Keep it simple”: he’s a simple writing guy. Give him a premise and a status quo and he’ll keep it going for several seasons. But he can’t deliver a more complex story or concept in a way that the audience can just instantly pick up on, which makes his favorite defense so silly, because the one making things needlessly complicated and shitting the bed because he can’t handle what he tried to tackle is Astruc himself. “The love interest is actually a human-shaped remote control robot made with a magical artifact and the remote control is his parents’ wedding bands, meaning Adrien was only not going to be controlled by them after they were dead or they decided to give the rings up, but this human and children’s rights violation isn’t supposed to make Gabriel and Emilie the villains but sympathetic characters instead while Adrien’s suffering isn’t supposed to be a concern” is not simple in my opinion, but maybe I’m the weird one for thinking that. Maybe I’m the weird one for thinking that the main villain of 5 seasons and 131 episodes getting to destroy the world is a villain victory, too. I should just “keep it simple” and consider it Marinette’s victory instead because the characters were smiling in the end (sarcasm).

Usually, when a show ends up flopping for me, there's a clear change in the show that just lets me go: “none of that happened, the show ended here”, like TMNT 2003 with Fast Forward and Back to the Sewers seasons. After the jump to the future, the plots became uninspired and the characterization became flatter. The show had already wrapped up its storylines before the retool, so I can just pretend the retool never happened and easily enjoy the original TMNT as the best Turtles cartoon that it is.

I think the problem with Miraculous in comparison to other shows that ended up flopping for me, is that Miraculous' problems make the good parts of the show retroactively unenjoyable to me. Adrien is a remote control robot that will never be truly freed, so his struggle for self-expression and freedom in the previous seasons becomes a Shaggy Dog story that could never have had a happy ending. Similarly, the love square scenes are hard to enjoy because Marinette’s flaws are vindicated instead of learned from. Nothing the pre-retool show sets up is delivered on, and when it is delivered on, it’s the worst possible way things could go because the writers wanted to “subvert expectations” or “keep things simple”. The post-retool show dooms the pre-retool characters, because the starting signs of that doom are already there, in all the character arcs they end up dropping. Miraculous doesn’t bother with concluding anything it sets up, it just moves on to the next shiny idea. You aren’t given anything satisfying to be content with before the show drops the ball.

I think a similar experience for me that didn’t ruin my love of fanworks was My Hero Academia. It was another new take on superheroes, but it also ends up delivering on basically nothing it sets up. Horikoshi is just throwing ideas around and dropping them just as quickly and neither the characters nor the world end up changing that much, despite the narrative screaming at us that change is needed. But those dropped ideas are really interesting, there’s a bunch of pretty neat story arcs at the start of the series, I am absolutely obsessed with Toshinori, and none of my other favorite characters are treated too poorly by the narrative in any egregious way other than a lack of screen time (singular scenes for the girls are crimes, though) so, like, I can still very much enjoy fanfics and comics and art that gives the spotlight to those ignored characters and fixes my other grievances.

Basically, it’s a question of whether or not the things that made you stop loving the show made it harder to still love the things you used to love about the show. If you can just say: “the story stops before that happens/the character starts acting like that”, then it’s easier to enjoy the fandom. Also, like, if the bad thing that happens is directed at your top favorite character or relationship, the one thing you tune in to see, then it’s going to make you too mad to just ignore or forget about.

Adrien was the number one thing about Miraculous that I loved above all else. So when most of these awful creative decisions made it harder to enjoy him, I had to ask myself: “What am I willing to put up with?” and the answer was: “Not this sentinonsense!”

[frozen-fountain]

Thank you @my-smial for tagging me!

Last song: I Will Find You by Whitechapel for real upbeat, happy go lucky, summer fun listening.

Last film: I rewatched The Death of Stalin last night because we kept quoting it on the way back from a family thing that wasn't as awful as I feared it could've been. Still one of my favourite comedies.

Last book: Go Tell it on the Mountain by James Baldwin. I came away being most impressed, as usual, by the depth and breadth Baldwin gives the inner lives of his characters and the very intimate way he portrays the effects of oppressive forces on their being (the concept of sin seems to seep into the very walls). It's been quite a year for ending up drawn to stories concerning faith, which wasn't a conscious choice at all or particularly reflective of anything going on with me. Next up is Vampires in the Lemon Grove by Karen Russell. It's the last of hers I have to read aside from the new novel, but I tink she really excels in the short story format, so I'm looking forward to it.

Last TV show: I've been watching What We Do in the Shadows, which I never got around to while it was still airing. It's a great choice for something to put on before bed that isn't too demanding. The last show I finished was a rewatch of the original Madoka Magica series, which hits different but just as hard when you have the scope of what's going on.

Sweet/Savoury/Spicy: Most of what I make and enjoy eating involves balancing the three and throwing in some sourness too, and as prev said, it depends on the foodstuff as well. But I ate a lot of cake yesterday, so now I want savoury.

Last googleDuckDuckGo search: "university lecturer example interview", for an exercise I'm putting together for my no-longer-voluntary work.

Current obsession: I've spent so much of this year creating a little personal map of countries that boast at least one band fusing their folk music traditions with metal. The fictional thing I'm currently most excited to see updates on is The War of the Roses, which is my friend's ongoing Utena fic that I highly recommend (if you know canon and all the Akio-typical content warnings aren't too much for you). Also, fitness! I've never been much use at anything besides very long walks but for whatever reason this is the year I really wanted to see how far I can push myself physically just for the fun of it. I had a twinge in my knee last week that worried me, but after taking it easy for a couple of days I'm pretty relieved that I most likely just slept with it at an odd angle or something.

Looking forward to: A few things. There are various Pride-related events going on in my town this month that I want to show up for, the Miners' Gala isn't too long after that, and I'll have a bit more money coming in soon and can't wait for the day life overall gets slightly easier and freer. Other than that I'm also looking forward to all the little mundane ongoing joys, like time with my son and all the books I have to read and days wandering about in all the green.

I'm calling this one an open tag!

[tellthemeerkatsitsfine]

Watched the new season of Not Going Out. Enjoyed it. Spoilers ahead.

I love that Lee Mack's single-handedly keeping the traditional sitcom alive. That's how I want it. I don't want anyone else doing it. Those "classic", traditional sitcom tropes have (mostly) died for very good reasons - there were a lot of problems with those things. I'm glad society has largely moved on.

I don't believe that all comedy TV shows should be comedy-drama either. I think there is lots of middle ground, where you can have interesting, creative, subversive, progressive comedy shows that are still focused on being funny first and foremost, with any drama or emotional stuff as a distant side issue. And you can have those alongside the smart, touching, thought-provoking comedy-dramas that have more of a balance, jokes sprinkled into emotional plots and messages. I like that that's mainly the TV comedy landscape these days, rather than the model from 25+ years ago, when it was all about formulaic classic sitcom tropes.

But I'm glad there's one person keeping that latter thing alive (I mean, I'm aware that lots of people are involved in making Not Going Out, but it seems to very much be Lee Mack's vision). Every 18 months or so, we can trot out a new season, a six-episode memorial to a rightfully bygone era. But this version is the one that's done well enough to be worth keeping around.

The show is so loose with continuity and overarching plots. Every character, every set piece, every plot element, is only there as a device to set up more jokes. And yet, the show's been running for so long that even without episodes dedicated to actually fleshing out any of those things, I've seen enough of the main characters to feel invested in them. And I think this whole paragraph is quite an accurate definition of the classic sitcom format.

Lee Mack is the perfect person to keep the traditional sitcom alive. He's staunchly traditional in his comedy style, but he's also actually funny (as opposed to... I mean, I guess I'll avoid naming specific names, but there are definitely some of those older comics who are supposed to be really really good, but if you actually listen to their stuff, you'll realize that they probably only got so successful because stand-up comedy was a smaller thing at the time and there was less competition). His entire career pays homage to the traditional jokesmith style, but he's also willing to keep moving forward, following what comedy has become, and writing new material. His ridiculously quick-moving mind is one of those un-teachable skills that's perfect for this style of comedy. And Lee Mack manages to be old school without being, you know, a dick. To the best of our knowledge, at least. We don't know what he's like in real life, but we do know he's not out there giving interviews about cancel culture to the Daily Mail (cough cough cough Jack Dee).

So I nominate Lee Mack to be the sole ambassador for the old school sitcom in the 2020s. Which is just as well, because the people who have the power of those things had appointed him as that anyway, regardless of my nomination.

There was some wild stuff in this latest Not Going Out season. I enjoy the way that Lee Mack has now established the bones of his sitcom - Lee, Lucy, and their relationship - well enough so he can play with all kinds of different scenarios within that. That campervan episode, what the fuck? Lee Mack writes fanfiction of his own sitcom, horror movie AU. I spent the whole time waiting for it to turn out that Lucy and Lee had comically misunderstood something, Scooby Doo-style, and it would turn out that what seemed like a dangerous threat was actually fine. Like that time in an earlier season, when they thought Hugh Dennis' friend was going to kill them but it was fine. But, nope. This time, Lynn from Alan Partridge was genuinely trying to kill them, and Lee Mack had decided to show us how his characters react in that scenario. And then, in the next episode, act like it never happened. Classic sitcom.

I suppose I should have known, because last season, there was that coffin episode, and I spent the first half of that episode waiting for it to turn out that Lee was actually fine, that due to a madcap series of hijinks, he'd never been buried, and was just locked in a closet or something. But nope, that turned out to be actual horror too. And yet, always true to sitcom style. It's impressive.

That final episode was a masterpiece of a classic farce. I did find it funny when Lee, in the middle of such an amusingly formulaic farce scenario, realizes he's accidentally swapped cell phones with his neighbour. It was such an odd juxtaposition, modern cellphones alongside Pink Panther-esque farce.

I'm down to have this show keep going for another couple of decades or so. Let's follow them (the characters and the actors) to the retirement home.

[writingquestionsanswered]

Hey, thanks so much again for being an invaluable resource!!

So I’m rewriting my fic from scratch again (OTL) and the plot is going to be rather complex. After some major on-foot travel (with appropriate timeskips), three different types of climax will happen around the same time, all caused by two well-meaning villains and their ‘gangs’ as it were. The 3 main OCs will have 2 canon side characters be a lot of help, each group hopefully with about 50/50 importance.

With this, what are certain factors in general writing I can be more lax about versus those I should tackle more carefully?

(Hopefully I asked this well haha, hopefully not too specific.)

Fan-Fiction: Things to Keep in Mind While Rewriting

1 - What Type of Story You're Writing - Just as with original fiction, there are all different types of fan-fiction stories. As with original fiction, fan-fiction can be character-driven (centered around internal conflict), plot-driven (centered around external conflict), or a combination of both. The story you're describing is likely a combination of character-driven and plot-driven, so you may want to keep Basic Story Structure in mind while re-writing.

2 - Canon Format - While you certainly don't have to follow canon format when structuring your story, it may be worth considering. If the canon source is a TV show, you may want to structure your story like an episode, season arc, or mini-arc within a season. If the canon source is a movie, you may want to structure your story like a movie. And, if the canon source is a book, you may want to structure your story like a novel.

3 - Avoid Over Complication - You have a lot going on in your story... three main characters, two villains with their own gangs, and three separate climaxes. It's not that this can't work, it's just that it's going to take some effort (and maybe a little trial and error) to make it work well. Most stories have only one climax, though sometimes the "dark night of the soul" plot point is thought of as a pre-climax or false climax. But three different climaxes happening at the same time is a lot. The one way this might work is if they're all related/stemming from the same event. Otherwise, you're dividing the reader's attention so much that none of the climaxes can have much impact. You may want to consider combining two of the climaxes into the main climax and use the other one as the pre-climax/dark night of the soul beforehand.

4 - Consider Reader Expectation - If you're going to post this story and care about people reading it, you may want to think about what readers will expect from this story based on things like canon, popular fan-fiction, and stories you've written in the past. While you definitely want to surprise and wow the reader, it's also a good idea to do so while not straying too far from their expectations.

5 - Just Do Your Best - When you ask what factors in general writing you can be more lax about versus those I should tackle more carefully, my best answer is if you want this story to be good, you should tackle all aspects of writing carefully. Things like story structure, plot, character development, description, pacing, balance of dialogue/action/exposition, world building, etc. aren't things you pick and choose. They're all critical pieces of a well-told story. However, it's also important not to overthink any of it, because when you let yourself get too bogged down in worrying about plot, story structure, world building, etc., all it does is hinder your ability to write, which isn't helpful either. So, all can do is be aware of all these things and how they work, then do your best to deliver on them based on your current ability as a writer, the needs of the story, and the expectations of the reader. :)

Have fun with your story!

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[youngestrunningleek]

Urchin and the Heartstone

We’re going back to Mistmantle, baby!

Today’s review is The Mistmantle Chronicles, Book 2: Urchin and the Heartstone. This was published in 2006, written by M. I. McAllister and illustrated by Omar Rayyan.

Content warning: this review will mention vomit and ableism (again)

This is the first sequel I’ve reviewed. I was not very detailed about the plot in my first review, but this one will get more in-depth. I’m also not going to explain the premise as much since I covered that in the last book.

In this book, the protagonist Urchin is kidnapped and brought to another island called Whitewings. All the while, the Heartstone that Mistmantle needs to crown a king is missing.

I really liked this book’s focus on the difficulties of running the island. The Heartstone is missing because of the bad guy from the last book. And some of the problems on Whitewings are caused by all the soldiers that Mistmantle exiled at the end of book one. It felt like the right balance between new challenges and connecting to the first book. It’s not as simple as replacing a bad king with a good king.

This book had two issues that the first book also had. For one thing, the middle bit is kind of boring. There’s a lot of “character A B C finds out that character X Y Z is doing something”. And we have to talk about the number of characters.

During this book, I started writing a character guide on a bookmark. It was simple things like “Whittle, training as lawyer and historian”. By the end, my scrap of paper was running out of space, with 18 characters, and I was still having double-take moments near the end of the book.

I wonder how this would go over as a visual format. Comics, TV shows, etc tend to be able to get away with more characters.

One other issue I have is with the A and B plots. For a book called “Urchin and the Heartstone” it’s not really about Urchin doing anything with the Heartstone. It’s moreso a book about Urchin, which also has some parts about the Heartstone. Because we had Urchin kidnapped on an entirely different island, it was very hard to care about the Heartstone search on Mistmantle. It sort of just deus ex machina’s itself into appearing, once he’s back home.

And speaking of deus ex machina, the bad guys' castle sinks into the ground at the end. There's no final confrontation.

Urchin is kind of a MacGuffin in his own way. People on Whitewings want a Marked Squirrel, so they take Urchin because his fur is mostly white. He's central to the plot because the bad guys decided he was central to the plot. It does make me wonder why the cover doesn’t show him that way, though. He’s pretty obviously a plain red squirrel on the cover.

All that said… I loved this book. It’s an excellent sequel to an excellent book!

So, let’s list some of the great things.

For one, the reunification at the end of the book really is delightful. Too many characters or not, I love this cast. And it’s so heart-warming to see the whole island celebrating the heroes’ return. After he spends so much of the book trapped alone in a tower, Urchin “was back among animals who hugged you and squashed up beside you and didn’t mind much what you smelled of”. D'aww.

Another cute image is children making snow-squirrels with tails that fell off.

I also think it’s very notable that this book doesn't have many evil disabled people. So often in children’s books, especially in animal books, villains have scars or mental illnesses. There is some of that, but it’s much better than the average story in my opinion.

Ableism, or generally fear of difference, is always a villainous trait. Urchin is called a freak on Whitewings, even though his fur is just a different color.

There’s also a pattern where the priests of islands have some kind of disability, like Brother Fir on Mistmantle having a limp. Juniper is another priest-like squirrel. He was hidden away from the culling because of his turned-in paw, and he also has a lung condition.

Generally, I admire that McAllister tells a solid good-versus-evil story. There’s powerful imagery of dust, decay and death for the bad guys. But, there are still gray areas, such as Scatter the squirrel deciding to be loyal to Mistmantle instead of Whitewings. That doesn’t mean she’s automatically innocent, though. The book doesn’t put everyone into a box of either good or evil, and it doesn’t completely ignore someone’s problems if they’re on the side of good.

I do feel obliged to address the inter-species biases… But frankly, I think this book handles them excellently! There’s a moment early on where a squirrel says otters and moles would rather be in the water, or underground, than rule the island. That got my hackles up.

But, after a second reading, it’s not the text itself saying that. It’s the characters. They’re not treating that opinion as fact.

Later, there’s an attempted coup by hedgehogs. I was very surprised about how firm the book is about their “hedgehogs are the only ones who should be in charge” rhetoric. Basically everyone, hedgehog or not, shuts them down immediately.

I appreciate that because, in real life, there are biases. There will be prejudice, and it’s more realistic to show people working through it than to show none at all.

Also, it’s cool that the dynamics vary over time and in different places. Whitewings has moles, hedgehogs and squirrels, but no otters.

A cool piece of worldbuilding from this book was the way the Heartstone works. It jumps out of your hands unless you’re worthy. Also, the reason people can take mole tunnels between islands is that the tunnels predate the water. Cool! Wind Waker made me love anything where the current world is just a flooded version of the old one.

This book had swans, like the last one. But here they are basically mounts. I don't even think we directly hear dialogue from them, even though last book had an island ruled by swans. Weird.

Also, I am pretty sure these guys are human-sized with human lifespans. But, they mention a dead sparrow on a kind of stretcher, at one point. Not sure what that means. Are sparrows the same size as the people? A human doesn't need a stretcher to carry a dead sparrow.

One final note, since I talked about it in the last review: an early chapter of this book had a squirrel throwing up. Wow… they don’t just have human abilities of language and tool-making, they can also vomit like us…

My rating: 4

Overall rating: 4

[beatrice-otter]

Fic: Six Things That Changed Because They Were In A Sedoretu, and One Thing That Didn't

Six Things That Changed Because They Were In A Sedoretu, and One Thing That Didn't (7929 words) by Beatrice_Otter Fandom: Battlestar Galactica (2003) Rating: Teen And Up Audiences Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply

Written for: @tielan in Sedoretu Exchange 2023

Relationships: Lee "Apollo" Adama/Kara "Starbuck" Thrace, Anastasia "Dee" Dualla/Kara "Starbuck" Thrace, Sam Anders/Kara "Starbuck" Thrace, Lee "Apollo" Adama/Sam Anders, Sam Anders & Anastasia "Dee" Dualla, Lee "Apollo" Adama/Sam Anders/Anastasia "Dee" Dualla/Kara "Starbuck" Thrace Characters: Lee "Apollo" Adama, Kara "Starbuck" Thrace, Anastasia "Dee" Dualla, Sam Anders

Additional Tags: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Sedoretu, Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, Happy Ending, Polyamory, Podfic Welcome, Don't copy to another site Summary:

what it says on the tin

On AO3. On Squidgeworld. On Dreamwidth. Rebloggable on pillowfort.

Betaed by iberiandoctor With an old-school fandom, I figured why not go for an old-school format?

Fic wittering and explanation of a sedoretu behind the read-more.

sedoretuex has revealed, and I can now reveal that I wrote TWO stories! (I have not yet had time to read any stories but my own--I have been really busy this January--but I am planning on making my way through the collection soon.)

My second story for this exchange was a pinch hit for tielan that I had been eyeing for treat purposes since the beginning, because our tastes are very similar and every one of her ideas was amazing and absolutely a story I wanted to exist. But there was a problem! Each one of those stories, my feeling was "I want that to exist, but I don't know if I can do justice to it."

Here were my main options:

1) Relationship and prompt I have written for tielan before (MCU, Steve/Maria/Natasha/Bucky, the previous fic being Look Clear and Calm)

2) Really interesting relationship and prompt from a TV show I've only seen sporadic episodes of (Simon Basset/Anthony Bridgerton/Daphne Bridgerton/Kate Sharma (Bridgerton TV), The oldest son and oldest daughter of the Bridgerton family finding and settling on a sedoretu husband and wife for their familial quartet. In the middle of the season. With the ton looking on.)

3) Relationship I requested myself and would really like to se done, but I requested it because I'm not sure of my ability to write it and the canon is a TV show I haven't watched in almost 2 decades. (BSG, Lee/Kara/Sam/Dee)

4) Relationship I already wrote for this ficathon for my original assignment. (Star Wars Legends, Luke/Mara/Leia/Han, the other fic being Dawning Understanding)

And these were just the top four. There were 13 requested quartets and I could have written 10 of them! I was spoiled for choice! Honestly, it was a little bit paralyzing.

But in the end, I went with BSG, and decided that Wikipedia would have to be enough canon review. And it really did write itself; everything poured out. As always, for me, Dee was going to have a major role and survive; I love her and she was done so dirty by canon. Her death was the first time I got incandescently angry about a fridging because I could see it for what it was. And of the relationships in this foursome, Lee/Kara is my least favorite. (I am glad that in Kara we got to have a female character who was fucked up and messy and not punished for it or considered 'whiny,' but at the same time, there were a lot of other fucked up and messy female characters on that show, and a lot of the other character arcs interested me more than 'cosmic destiny + will she and Lee ever get their act together.' But I know that Lee/Kara is tielan's favorite! So as I was plotting out each section I had to restrain myself: how much Dee was too much? What could I find to say about the other three? Because if I was writing it for myself, the balance would have been very different. (But I think it would have been a weaker story, less balanced.)

A sedoretu is a specific organization of a poly marriage created by Ursula K. Le Guin in her short story "A Fisherman of the Inland Sea" aka "Another Story" available in a 1994 short story collection of the same name. It includes four people and specific arrangements of the relationships inside it. All people have a "moiety" that is considered as inherent as gender; the two moieties are Morning and Evening. Sex with someone of the same moiety is considered incest. The expected relationships within each sedoretu are: The Morning woman and the Evening man (the “Morning marriage”) The Evening woman and the Morning man (the “Evening marriage”) The Morning woman and the Evening woman (the “Day marriage”) The Morning man and the Evening man (the “Night marriage”) (i.e. two homosexual and two heterosexual pairings)

Here is the Fanlore explanation of it and the E2 explanation.

[faejilly]

jilly's week in review?

I guess or something. Idek y'all, I was gonna try and do reviews but then I just rambled about what I did instead, so this is clearly gonna need a format revamp next week

anyway

READING

Finished Daughter of Witches

and also St. Peter's Fair, which I had started AGES ago and sort of lost track of, but I'm doing the January Challenge on TheStoryGraph and couldn't decide what to read next but needed to get my pages in, so I went digging for random shit and I have read it before and watched all the Cadfael mysteries so it's not like it was hard to get into to finish it so I could save my streak.😅

Read A House with Good Bones (on purpose from start to finish in one day!) because T. Kingfisher/Ursula Vernon is absofuckinglutely one of my favorites. (There's a thought here about my occasional forays into the horror genre, and how some horror is almost kind of cozy because it's about protecting what we love from what we fear, and that is very much a Kingfisher kind of thing, but that might need a new post and a more functional brain to figure out where I'm going with that.)

Listened to a little bit more of IT while doing housework; I'm not great at audio books except when I'm driving, but sometimes I can manage a little (and I didn't want to distract myself from dishes by picking up a new book instead). Stephen Weber is an excellent narrator btw, for anyone who's curious.

WATCHING

The husband was sick last week, and I was only sort of doing shit either, so he kind of just put the TV on and let it go and I definitely will not manage a nice list with links like I did with books. There was some M*A*S*H, (oh, I did finally watch the special that recently came out on Hulu), and RoboCop (largely because Thing 1 gave the husband the new game for Christmas) and several different Predator movies of various quality, and a bunch of other stuff I am not thinking of at the moment. I know I picked a couple and watched them myself but with everything else I can't remember what?

Also some Mythbusters when Thing 2 picked something to watch for awhile, which is pretty much always entertaining even when we're like: your sample size is nonexistent and just because you can't do it doesn't mean someone who knows what they're doing couldn't have done it so are you SURE you should have busted that? 😅

PLAYING

I got Garden Story for Christmas and got through the quest-lines and realized I was quite far away from all the upgrades, so I've been periodically poking at it and trying to get my villages/tools better before trying the Final Boss. I have had a good time with Concord though, it's fun, I'm just not sure the leveling functions, such as they are, are paced/balanced quite right? 😅 (Or perhaps I'm just Bad At Fighting In Cozy Games? This does seem to be a bit of a trend tbqh, probably why I liked Wylde Flowers' lack of combat so much.) I also have found VERY FEW of the memories/weird achievements so that's a thing I'm probably going to have to look up hints for soon-ish...

(I did finish Potion Permit last year, which is great, I recommend it whole-heartedly: the potion building mechanic is usually pretty solid, it has good characters, a nice aesthetic, I did actually mostly have fun rolling around and fighting things/gathering stuff, but I did reach the end of the main quest and then go... huh, is that it? just because it, yk, kept going after the finale but there didn't seem to be anything there beyond like, a couple personal quests that needed materials I couldn't unlock until the end.)

MORE ENTERTAININGLY I THINK, we did also play some board games

Paint The Roses is QUITE HARD with only two people even if you stick to the medium level whims; or maybe I'm just not that smart?!? We did in fact survive without getting our heads' chopped off by the Queen of Hearts, but we legit guessed the last two puzzles so. Dumb Luck™️ is not nearly as reliable as actually figuring out how to plot your plants better.

We did Escape the Dark Sector (with more people this time, tbf) on our first try though! That was pretty delightful. It is atmospheric and potentially almost deadly without feeling too awful at any point! Also I got to punch a tentacle monster!

Mice & Mystics can go dramatically bad if your dice aren't on your side and you do like, one stupid thing to compound that, and then if you're invested enough to start over you can suddenly realize you've been moving tiny plastic mice and bugs around the table for like four hours and still only got through the first chapter... but not regret it at all because you like your mice and are very proud of them for finally making it!

Can you tell we like co-op games? 🤣🤣🤣

(I did also do some rearranging so the game room was comfier, so like, win/win I adulted and played!)

THERE WAS NO WRITING OR CROSS-STITCHING OR PAINTING OR ANYTHING ELSE THIS WEEK, so uh. Clearly my balance of activities is bonkers and I should maybe get off the couch/game chair(s) a bit more often.

[nellasbookplanet]

Today I’m going absolutely bonkers thinking about stories where the medium itself becomes so interwoven with the narrative that the two are inseparable and the story borderline unadaptable into other formats.

Lately I’ve been playing a lot of Portal and listening to the Malevolent podcast for perhaps the third time, and as any slightly obsessive fan who desperately wishes for more when I run out of story I find myself thinking ‘man someone should adapt this into a movie/tv show/novel/etc’. And then I stop and think, ‘wait a minute, how?’

How could you possibly adapt the puzzle aspect of Portal into anything other than a game? Sure you could make some cool action sequences out of it, but that would get old quick, and you never get any chance to solve the puzzles yourself. And how could you adapt it without them, when the tests are a deeply intrinsic part of the narrative? You would end up with a vastly different story.

And Malevolent. Malevolent! Rarely have I experienced a story that so masterfully not only gets around the limitations of its medium, but uses them to their full advantage. How do you explain your lead constantly speaking out loud to themself (since the dialogue-only format doesn’t allow for internal monologue)? Why, put a possessing entity into their head, so that they’re literally never without a conversational partner! How do you fit visual descriptors into the story, since characters explaining their surroundings out loud would be weird? Make one of them blind and the one possessing him his seeing-eye entity, of course!

How could you possibly adapt any of that into, say, a movie? Having the entity describe visuals the viewer can already see would be distracting, but having him not do it would break suspension of disbelief because why is Arthur not constantly bumping into things? Of course, you could remove the blindness, but aside from being a shitty thing to do it would also remove the delicate balance of power between him and the entity that forces the two to co-operate.

I’m thinking about these two stories especially because it’s where my obsession lies right now, but there are lots of examples of similarly interwoven narratives and medium. Think of epistolary books, webcomics with animated images and music, webnovels so adapted for a digital format with links and gifs and layout that actually printing them would take away from the experience (everyone go read What Football Will Look Like in the Future and An Unauthorised Fan Treatise right now, you can thank me later), or other podcasts that give their narrator an intrinsic reason to speak and describe everything aloud, such as The Magnus Archives and The Mistholme Museum (which I need to catch up with, by the way). It drives me insane! The medium is the message!

[biblioflyer]

The writer's strike and franchise fatigue: two heads of the same coin?

Context: I'm shamelessly reposting a comment on a popular webforum where someone posed the question "What's next for Star Wars?" that prompted a lot of discussion about the whats and whys of what's working, what isn't, and of course everyone's favorite hobby: performing yet another autopsy on the Sequel Trilogy. I declined to go there in favor of speculating on the production side.

Ultimately I think the future of Star Wars requires Disney to do what a lot of franchise owners have been resistant to doing for various reasons: allow their creative teams a wide latitude to fully develop their ideas without unnecessarily harsh deadlines tied to quarterly earnings reports. Now that isn't to say that projects can fail on their own merits.

I don't know for a fact that Book of Boba Fett was timid, awkward, and boring because the showrunners couldn't make a cut that worked with the time and resources allotted, but we were mostly all impressed with Rodrigues' work on Mando so we were cautiously optimistic that a Cool Gangster Drama with Boba Fett could be a thing. So what the hell happened? Solve that mystery and I think you ensure that Star Wars has a future.

Looking at another popular "Star" franchise, we see a lot of similar problems with uneven writing and what seems to be differing opinions both inside and outside the franchise as to what exactly it means for something to carry that name. What sort of stories can you tell? How do you tell them? Can you have a point of view character or does it always have to be ensemble? Can you deconstruct the setting only to reconstruct and reaffirm it in the finale without losing the fans?

What explains "bad" writing? Coercion by the studio? Writer inexperience? Showrunner inexperience? A failure to find the right balance between modernizing the storytelling of a franchise without it becoming illegible as part of that franchise or to cling so hard to fan service that it is afraid to experiment and becomes a less interesting and murkier Xerox of itself?

Something that I found fascinating in the discourse around the writer's strike is that the format of streaming TV with its short seasons has turned everyone involved in these productions into gig workers. Unless you're one of a half dozen showrunners who have helmed widely acclaimed franchises, modern tv has become severely siloed on the production side: writers have limited opportunities to learn directing, editing, and show running. They also have limited opportunities to see how their work translates to the screen when it lands in the hands of directors, actors, set decorators, and FX artists.

If you add up all of the live action Star Trek shows produced to date, you end up with 8 seasons of streaming that equal roughly 4 seasons of broadcast era TV. Which means that under the old paradigm, a traditional TV show would only now just be airing its second "good" season. Which, shockingly enough, maps very neatly to attitudes about Strange New Worlds and Picard Season 3, and to a lesser extent Discovery season 4.*

*To the extent it will ever be allowed to make a second impression, which is another seeming "problem" of the streaming era that needs addressing since any "failed" first season is very likely to result in a sub-franchise that is going to get cauterized and forgotten about given the era of a permissive financial environment for funding additional seasons and permitting a production to recover and learn from their mistakes is pretty much dead and gone.

Were I Disney, given these realities, I would probably fund 2 or 3 "stables" of Star Wars writers and production teams. One for light hearted action comedy, one for "serious drama," and a third for something more esoteric. Maybe a fourth for big budget tentpole films. Keep them employed and give them opportunities to develop their tradecraft.

Don't be so quick to slash and burn a dud, use failure as permission to experiment. If nobody cares about Book of Boba Fett anyway, why not take some risks and see if some writers who are claiming they can turn in a second season that can "fix" the first season by turning the stories that go nowhere or are halfhearted into the first chapters in more meaningful stories? People already tend to avoid series that have only one season anyway and become ever more likely to do so the more time passes without more seasons so you're just throwing away your investment by not trying to salvage it.

This is incidentally why I'm not antagonistic towards the prospect of trying to rehabilitate the Sequel Trilogy. The Prequels are poorly made but were rich in potential. That potential was not left on the table, it was exploited until we can no longer separate the Prequels as they originally stood from all of the tie in media that added depth and nuance to the setting and storybeats.

So were I Disney and I have all of these props and set pieces in storage doing me absolutely no good, then of course it will eventually be time to try to make the Sequel Trilogy good. Maybe do some Director's Cuts and then build out the universe to make it feel less claustrophobic and less overtly a bigger, louder, dumber rehash of the Original Trilogy.

[linkspooky]

do you have tips on how to write fanfiction? this is a list of what a struggle with,

dialogue

character writing

writing from POV(point of view)

do you have tips?

Ummm, I'm basically talking out of my ass when I try to give other people advice, but I'll try my best here.

DIALOGUE

One thing I do is before even attempting to write a characters dialogue I write out guidelines and rules for how they might speak. Like, imagine you were a tv show writer and you were about to hand your character off to another writer, you write them like "they sound like this, they don't sound like this, they wouldn't say this."

Example: Michikatsu is incredibly polite and formal in his dialogue almost to the point where he sounds stiff. Michi's dialogue should sound like Gojo's dialogue except Gojo takes an aggressive authoritative tone and Michi takes a passive aggressive one. Michi babbles about his special interests and personal thoughts and doesn't notice when other people aren't listening. Michi's rarely up front about anything. Michi’s incredibly flippant, if you insult him too his face he’ll usually laugh it off.  etc. etc.

Write out a summary of the entire conversation first before you even start to attempt to write it, don't just sit at a blank sheet of paper with a plan and attempt to pull a conversation out of thin air. I think a lot of people ignore that a big part of writing is planning and prep work.

You can write a conversation in script format first for a first draft, and then go back and add the prose and in between bits for a conversation earlier. Also it's way easier to edit the dialogue in script format.

POINT OF VIEW

So like number one you have to pick a perspective for your story and stick with it. Don't use first person perspective if there's nothing really unique about being inside of the character's head or there's nothing added by their first person narration and personal insight. Third person limited means you have watching from the back of their eyeballs, you can't describe the character like a camera floating around them. Third person omniscient you can jump anywhere but you should try to be clear when you are switching between perspectives in a scene.

You have to strike the right balance between physical description of the characters environment around them, and then thoughts and feelings of the character themselves. One thing I say is like, picture you are a director for a movie and try to decide where you think the camera should linger when you're writing up prose descriptions.

A third person omniscient narrator should be perspective, but if you're writing a third person limited narrator then every person in the whole world has a personal bias to their thoughts. Their thoughts and opinions should not be considered objective facts because a lot of characterization can come from where their biases differ from the truth. Every character should also start out with like a "Wrong" opinion, or a "Wrong" way they see the world, or just a mistake in their understanding that can be corrected.

This goes hand in hand with: Fictional characters are liars.

CHARACTER WRITING

Write meta and character analysis for your own characters. One thing I always do before I start any story is write character profiles like they were characters in a databook with long summaries of their personalities, and like relevant parts of their backstories. If you're writing your own character then like, this is your time to shine. Try to think clearly about what you want the audience to understand about the character. If you're writing someone else's character, then think about your personal thoughts for the character. B/c if you're writing fanfic like the goal unless it's an au is to write as close to canon as possible but literally no matter what you are going to be writing your personal take on the character.

Always think of your endpoint for the character first, because the whole story is the journey there. If you don't know where you are going you're just going to meander. Umm, a really basic way to describe character arcs is a want versus need conflict, what they think they want versus what they actually need. So your goal is to get them to realize what they need.

OCS INTERACTING WITH OTHER CHARACTERS

For OCS interacting with other ocs I do not have a ton of advice other than you should try to picture how interacting with this person would be in real life. Like characters can be drama queens and have tragic backstories, but imagine if they were just a person in your friend group. Would they be passive aggressive? Would they be annoying? Would they be a downer? They helps with personal interactions with other people.

Also in general try to think about what you want to get out of the scene by these two characters interacting. Do you just want it to be funny? Do you want the audience to learn something about these characters? LIKE That's a big focus in general. What does the audience learn here? What does this add to the story?

For OCS interacting with canon characters. I am all about OC Love but my best advice here is just like ocs interacting with other ocs you should try to use the OCS themselves to demonstrate character traits the canon characters have. Like, forget they are an OC for a moment, pretend they are a canon character just write them the same way you would write Itadori and Megumi interacting. However, the added caveat is you have to introduce and OC and exposit on them enough the audience understands their personality b/c they can't use their knowledge of canon characters as a reference material.

Also in general just like any canon character if you are putting them in a story you should ask yourself "What is the purpose of this character in the story? What do they add to it? Why do I want to include them?"

[spiderwingz]

Do you think it’s possible for the enemy book series to ever be adapted in the future ?

i really want to say yes.

we have a really strong trend of adaptions going on. and especially after the success of the last of us, i think the interest is definitely there. plus, since there’s so many books and they’re so long, there’s plenty to go off of!

but that’s also part of the problem. adapting such a long series would be way better off in a tv format vs a movie format (think of manga to anime). if we’re going live action, then it becomes even harder bc actors age and the characters not so much.

though small, another problem is how the ages differ depending if you’re reading the american version or the british version. the british one (the original) has everyone over fourteen/fifteen contract the virus. but the american one has everyone over sixteen. it’s a minor detail but still might be important depending on who’s making it.

the biggest problem might just be the amount of violence. i mean, it’s a series where the only ones to survive are the kids and the adults literally become your worst enemies. of course there’s going to be violence. literally so much violence. i can think of so many death scenes that were so terrible and gorey that they still stick with me years later. not to mention trying to get sickos looking scary but not overly touched. and the twisted kids?? i’d love to see them. there’s a delicate balance in creating the sickos that the last of us did really well.

not to mention that most of the fear (and realism, i’d argue) comes from not knowing if certain characters will make it out of their situations alive or not. the lack of plot armor keeps things interesting and tense and it’s one of those things that makes the series so special. plus every book focuses on specific groups of kids and has a lot of pov switches in order to better tell the story, which isn’t bad, just a thing to point out. the lack of a sole character might turn away potential investors, either financial or attention wise, because it would be harder to promote. think of the hunger games with katniss.

the only thing i’m not sure about is how popular the series is, in both america and overseas. i discovered the series on accident when i picked up the sixth book off the recently released section in the library back in 2015, got halfway through before i realized it was part of a series, and then started the whole thing for real. most of the people i’ve talked to irl haven’t heard of it but that might just be because horror novels aren’t their thing. i was pleasantly surprised to see so many people online love it tho.

overall, i’d say the chances of the series getting adapted are about 50/50. i think the idea has to be pitched by someone with influence to really get the whole thing moving. there’s so much potential in it, tho, and i’d love to see it happen. i’d do it myself if i could!

[the-monkey-ruler]

multiple? how many jttw movies come out in a single year does no one get the equivalent of superhero fatigue?

Oh yeah, I made a list in the past 10 years about the different adaptations of Six Ear, but as for Xiyouji movies/shows in the last 10 years at least... around 350. 2017 and 2020 were the largest increase in moves. And this does include future moves and movies that are said to come out but not sure when.

Please note that these aren't ALL solely Xiyouji productions as there are documentaries, crossovers, and other Xuyouji-related content but it's not always the plot of the movie. If you want an average of how many Xiyouji films come out a year the number has skyrocketed ever since the early 2010s with the invention of web movies that don’t have to be released in theaters, but there have been up and down years for sure.

The thing is Xiyouji it’s just that kind of story that can be interpreted in so many different ways from thriller, drama, romance, comedy, action, martial arts, futuristic, or even just symbolism. It’s one of those things that is just easily ingrained into anything because it’s just such a universal piece of literature that could touch any kind of interpersonal issue. That’s what makes it such a fantastic piece of literature as it’s so flexible with its interpretations and its relatability to anyone that it’s very hard for people to get tired of it because there was a different interpretation for every generation.

Not every Xiyouji fan grows up with the same kind of Xiyouji right now you got your 1986 fans and you got your 1996 fans and you even got your 1999 fans who all grew up with different TV shows of Xiyouji and they are all considered fans but they all have a different lens of how they were introduced to the story. I could go on about how the flexibility of storytelling can transcend so many generational gaps that I feel like other franchises miss.

The problem with superhero movies is very long and repetitive and at this point in stagnates, it’s very much just a Cash grab rather than focusing on the story or plot, like, of course, people are tired of superhero movies, because… they aren’t that good (some are great yeah but the standard has lowered to just cameos) And don’t get me wrong. There are plenty of Xiyouji movies that are absolutely terrible. But at the same time, there were plenty of movies that are fantastic! BECAUSE THERE ARE SO MANY.

This is where you were introduced to new characters, and you have a set of limited time to care about these characters. The advantage of Xiyouji is that you already know these characters, and if you don’t, you already know the character archetypes, and you know what you’re getting into. It’s that kind of simple format that gives it such an advantage over a lot of other movies that you can go straight into the plot without having to give too much exposition or background the characters as you are able to move freely of how these you want these characters to be interpreted. Again, I could go on about the creative liberties that directors and producers have had with Xiyouji and how so many creative minds can come together and create new adaptations of Xiyouji while still making it feel fresh at the same point.

At this point, it just goes to the credit of the artists and writers that put so much care into the craft and how it can fill so many different genres like drama, comedy, action, adventure, mystery, romance, and even thriller! It can be a tragic epic tail or an absolute comedy and neither would be wrong! But a true masterpiece is able to balance them both in my opinion. Xiyouji movies can be created for kids, adults, teens, anyone really depending on what kind of version you are given. And not everyone even hast to like the same media that is being produced. To me that there’s another advantage that if you don’t like one interpretation of Xiyouji I promise you, there are over 900 other media that you can consume if you want to be introduced to the story.

This is just turned into me gushing about Xiyouji but yeah, I fucking love it and I’m glad that so many movies get to be made of it and that everyone has a chance to enjoy it.

[justiceleaque]

Hey Leaque! I know you watched the new Justice League movie and I was around when you were doing the very first DC movie reviews back in the day. I would absolutely love a review of this one if you have the time :)

i've been a fan of Snyder's universe from day 1 so i understand this might be considered an off-balance review already, but i want to note that i didn't come in wanting the film to be good or willing to see it as good despite actual impressions. i wanted to watch it as the Justice League movie i was supposed to get back in 2017, the same one i was willing to not watch for years if it meant Zack Snyder got to finish his vision even later down the line

i was actually as neutral as i could possibly get because at this point i don't have any real emotional involvement in whether this version of the DCEU continues or not. WB execs have done some fucked up things with the treatment of the cast/ray fisher, so i take this as Snyder's DC trilogy and nothing more (which makes it bittersweet for me but that's a different topic)

heavy spoilers follow

it's incredibly comic book-like. i remember typing the exact same words back in the Dawn of Justice days: it doesn't read as a superhero film a la Marvel but as a comic book film. each frame could be a realistically painted comic book frame; the dialogues would fit freakishly well if they had to fit speech bubbles. the damn scene overlaps and changes are heavily reminiscent of a comic book. better yet: of a Justice League comic book. if you’re familiar with comic book events where big things happen and it affects everyone, this is how this reads

it’s a heavy film but it’s not hopeless. i’ve been seeing reviews pop-up already: “ZS’s Justice League film is twice as longe and twice as hopeless” is the maybe verbatim title of most articles. the one thing i kept thinking throughout these four hours is how much hope this is filled with. we’re dealing with a post-superman world that was shaken by the loss of a beloved superhero and you see batman, the #1 comic book superhero known for brooding and darkness and all things sad and bad, be the loudest, most hopeful person in the film, trying to get a team together to save the world, and later on being two steps from literally screaming that bringing back superman is what should happen no matter the cost because of his faith and hope in winning. did we watch the same film?

in the same vein, the 4 hours seem like a stretch until you realize each part has an actual purpose that introduces or ties in important aspects related to the film’s one purpose: take down Steppenwolf and Darkseid. i don’t believe any scene was wasted on useless information. it can get tiring in the way watching a shot tv series gets tiring: it does NOT get boring at any point

such wonderful character arcs. seeing each of the team’s personalities and quirks, the way they clash with each other, the way it makes it all work so goddamn beautifully. the way they click because they just keep interacting so much? Whedon’s cut didn’t give me a team, it gave me five different people in costume that were forced to sort of work in the same vicinity as each other. Snyder’s cut gave me a version of the Justice League that worked so flawlessly together by the end of the film it felt like a dance. felt like comic book page spreads

right before the epilogue they all pose together in the rising dawn, clark included, having won. super reminiscent of the JL cartoon intro. i cried a bit

J’ONN J’ONZZ!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! DO YOU KNOW THE AMOUNT OF SPECULATION ABOUT GENERAL SWANWICK BEING THE MARTIAN MANHUNTER BACK WHEN MAN OF STEEL WAS RELEASED???? VINDICATED!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

listen to me. i need to make this clear. listen.  j’onn. j’onny boy. the way he’s designed and cgi’d..........the adorable frown............the kind smile......................his obvious need to make others feel better and to simply help......................i love him

his interaction with bruce only comes in the end and it’s super brief but seeing those two still not know how the hell each other works even in film format is hilarious. bruce having accepted aliens and magic and shit is the new norm after like 20 years of only having to deal with the joker attempting to rob neon green hair dyes or some shit is so much bigger of a character development than i ever expected, especially coming from BvS where he’s just a stupid fat-bat-carrying onion

i wasn’t a big fan of Suicide Squad’s joker portrayal but we get to see him at the end of the film while we’re seeing a possible future where lois lane has died and superman is best friends with darkseid playing tic-tac-antilife equation. Snyder somehow managed to turn jared leto into a disgustingly legit comic-faithful joker. dont’ ask me how

in the same scene they mention jason and his death

: - (

we see a few bits of some green lanterns in some scenes, one from the past and one from a possible ultra dark and edgy darkseid future. still convinced bruce simply willingly did not go looking for hal, which, fair

they cut out the fish joke bruce tells arthur when they first meet which immediately turns the whole film into a 1/10 for me

ben affleck’s bruce wayne and batman continue being my favorite on-screen batman iteration to date. we finally move from the usual dark lone soldier version Hollywood is relentlessly giving us into one that belongs with the Justice League. incredibly heartwarming to see

there’s a scene when the JL are first assaulting Steppenwolf’s base and they’re all fighting parademons and shit and there’s a moment where you see batman fighting the Space SWAT From Hell alone and the way he moves? the way he flows from one position to another and another like i’m watching a damn comic book animation????????? sir????????????????????

barry allen saved them

like, literally, barry allen saved them. superman was back and everyone was ready to dance one final time and they were all going ‘steppenwolf fucking SUCKS’ and steppenwolf was crying to darkseid and then the motherboxes did their thing and they all were obliterated into star dust and then barry allen was like ‘bitch i told you i need FRIENDS’ and turned back time and now they’re all okay again :o)

darkseid @ batman through his magic spacetime portal: i’m gonna get your ass one day soon and take you back in time and you’re gonna eventually bring about the end of the world by having every dark twisted batman invade your universe because you inspired them

batman:

batman:

batman: i haven’t read Rebirth bro

i know i’m forgetting stuff but that’s the gist. hands down one of the best comic book film experiences i’ve ever had. with an aside to barry allen being more of a mix of barry and wally, everyone feels incredibly faithful to the source material. also batman definitely killed like, at least 400 parademons in one night, but pest control doesn’t count

(like. he straight up obliterates them)

(pulls out a batbazuka on them)

(amazing)

[itsclydebitches]

i think something else that's pretty frustrating about rwby right now is that they keep to a web series format with varied (and often quite short) episode lengths, with the scope and breadth of the story right now requires something more uniform--or at least episodes longer than 18 minutes to tell reasonably.

not that the writing would necessarily improve had they more space to fill given how poorly they use the time they have now, but we are constantly seeing 20-24 minute episodes where you know going in that 6-8 minutes are taken up with credits&the OP, meanwhile the plots keep getting more complex rather than less and the cast keeps growing, but one of the excuses i see trotted out a lot is lack of screentime to give all these plot elements and characters the breathing room they need, except that lack of screentime is also a choice.

it's not like this is a primetime tv show ruled over by a network with demands to meet. they could've had explicit queer rep from episode 1 if they'd wanted, and similarly, they could have chosen to up episode lengths enough to actually encompass the story they decided to tell once the stakes amped up at the end of volume 3 and it was no longer a simple fighting anime with no stakes or real narrative to dig into.

idk, it's just frustrating to see all the bits that have potential in the plot they keep spinning, except every one of them ultimately winds up dropped in favor of the next shiny new plot point, and it feels like at least some of that is because they keep the episodes so few and so short when there's no real reason for it.

Yeah, I tend to lean more towards your second paragraph: unless you know what you're doing to fill that time, simply tacking on an extra ten minutes to each episode (or however much) isn't going to automatically result in a better written story. I'm sure we could all point to 15-20min series (particularly anime) that balances a large cast and complex plot better than RWBY does, as well as 45min-1h shows that severely stumble despite having double the opportunity to develop things. As we saw in Volume 8, a lot of the time we have is already taken up by questionable content. Moments like hanging out in the mansion are low hanging fruit at this point, but we also have battles like Penny vs. Cinder. Other than a battle with questionable entertainment (it's obviously a matter of taste, but I'm not very invested in shots of Maidens chasing each other through the air), what did that scenario accomplish?

Neither Pietro nor Maria died, even though the former could have been a way to permanently kill Penny without making her human and it's clear at this point that RWBY isn't very interested in writing the latter.

Revealing that Maria still fights didn't lead to her being a key resource in the finale — again, the story forgets her.

Cinder losing the battle and being injured didn't change her trajectory in any way. She just does what she has since Volume 4: getting up, tracking down a hero, fighting them. I'd feel differently if the rooftop scene with Watts had led to something, but the point is Cinder ultimately didn't have a change of heart.

Needing to defend Cinder certainly didn't impact Emerald's decision to leave. She barely seemed to remember that Cinder has been her primary motivation since she came on screen.

Being threatened by Emerald didn't impact Penny's reception of her into the group. She's laughing along with everyone else at Emerald's 'joke.'

So what was the point of this fight? To damage Amity? They could have done that with some hand-wavy, sci-fi, "Something has gone wrong!" explanation. Or better yet, actually keep the rules consistent and have the group try to launch an unfinished communications tower, resulting in disaster. Given RWBY's difficulty in following up on ideas, so much — like this fight — feels like filler. If we gave RT more time, they'd likely just write more filler. Though yeah, the short episode length is one hell of a limitation, ultimately I think the problems run deeper. More needs to change alongside a (potential) increase in length to result in a better written show.

As a kind of side point though, asks like this always blindside me with how staggeringly short RWBY is. I mean, we've obviously been discussing that, but I when you tally up all of Volume 8 you've got less than four and a half hours of content — and that's including the intro and credits! That's at the most two movies' worth. It's been on my mind lately because as someone in the RWBY community and as someone using the RWDE tag, it's pretty hard to miss the influx of trolling in that space. With that comes the endless demand to "just watch something else" and my immediate thought to that is always... I do? I'm watching, reading, and playing a hundred other things because the latest season of RWBY is an afternoon's worth of content that came out eleven months ago. Outside of new or returning fans, no one is actually watching RWBY. They're participating in the RWBY community, which is a completely separate activity made up of a multitude of different enjoyments: talking with other fans, writing metas, enjoy fanart, reading fic, theorizing about Volume 9, etc. The fact that many fandoms have participants who never watched (read, played) the canon highlights that these are very distinct types of enjoyment. So there's this weird disconnect between what some fans are doing for a hobby and the demands that other fans are making of them — to cease a different hobby. I could better understand that demand if RWBY were a Supernatural-length show where someone was forcing themselves to get through another 45min episode out of 23, out of 15 seasons, hating every second of it, but even if you're currently unhappy with the show, keeping up with RWBY is a really quick binge. "Go watch something else." I am and I have been since I got into RWBY five years ago. My desire to participate in the community is entirely separate from my desire to watch the canon because I did that already and, considering the hiatus, I will be waiting indefinitely to do it again. As is often the case, RWBY is the only fandom I've been in where "go watch something else" is seen as a legit bit of advice (accusatory demand, really) when it's abundantly clear that watching is no longer the activity everyone is hanging out in these spaces for.