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raven-at-the-writing-desk · 3 years ago

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UWAHAHAHAHDWSDBJQJBWDJ W REQUESTS?? OPEN??

give me a hot second okay okay firs ur writing is bomb and id totally marry the hell outta it if it was a living person i can totally see how much effort u put into ur writing and i love ur character portrayals they are soo spot on goodbye im having an adrenaline rush

can i request vil and neige and malmal and riddle and lastly lilia (seperately) headcanons with a g'n reader who's just,, always really romantic unintentionally

like their love language is words of flat out love

they just look at vil/neige in the eyes and say " I would willingly spend hours of labor and no sleep just to keep you happy. " or

" you look like you were carved out of gold. "

you may decline this request if you so wish <3 gonna go request for rsa ocs on your other account kjfnksan take ur time

Go marry Miss Raven if you like my writing so much 😂 I try my best to write the boys in character, so I’m happy to hear that my efforts are appreciated!

For the future, please be clear if the relationship between Reader and the TWST boys is romantic or platonic! Just saying “[Character] WITH Reader” is vague, so I’m not sure what to do and will most likely default to platonic.

alndasdnaudsbaif Thank you for giving my side blog some love <3

Curiouser and Curiouser...

Vil has received his fair share of compliments, given the industry he works in, and the types of people he’s surrounded by (namely, Rook). Because of that, Vil’s graceful and very socially intelligent.

He accepts your words with a nod, a thank you, and a smile (it’s nothing compared to the intense thirst comments he gets on Magicam, to be honest). Why not? Vil enjoys random bursts of praise throughout the day, it helps to affirm his hard work and efforts to achieve absolute beauty.

With time, his smile fades, and makes way for a bit of annoyance instead. Vil actually pulls you aside after class one day to admonish you!

He thinks you’re taking after Rook (whom he calls a “bad influence”)... But whereas Rook knows just what to say to to get under people’s skin, you lack the self awareness to recognize the gravity of what you say.

“Repeat flowery words too many times over, and they quickly lose their meaning, their value. Then... they are nothing more than lip service,” he lightly chides you. “Select your words carefully—we wouldn’t want you accidentally barking up the wrong tree. Or rather, accidentally flirting with the wrong person. You know how combative NRC’s students are.”

“... And sometimes, short, simple words are enough to convey all of your thoughts,” Vil adds, his voice softening. His smile returns. “By all means, adore me, worship me... But an ‘I love you’ will do just fine, dear.”

Like Vil, Neige is used to being praised due to his celebrity status. He also takes to compliments pretty well, and has the social grace to keep from stumbling and blushing at your (unintentional) flirting.

Neige has an air of purity about him. He doesn’t really register the implications of your words or how they can be mistaken as flirtations, he just likes to hear people say nice things, so he’ll happily listen!

Neige is super excited to hear what you think of him!! He looks at you so attentively when you’re speaking, and you swear his eyes get a new sparkle in them with each compliment that you give. He just drinks up all the attention like an apple drinking up sunlight!

He makes really adorable little motions while he’s listening to you, like cupping his face in his hands, daintily clapping, or bouncing up and down on his toes. It makes you want to gush over him more, which of course leads to more cute motions... it’s an endless cycle.

Neige likes to get love, but he likes to give it, too! He’ll clasp your hands in his and tell you all the great things he’s noticed about you. The tables have turned! Before long, you'll find yourself as a blushing mess before the oblivious boy’s charisma and charm.

When he has to say goodbye and go to his next gig, Neige gives you a tender smile and a fond wave before departing. “My manager’s calling. I’ve got to go now, but I’ll see you around, okay? I’ll do my very best, so... please keep supporting me!”

Malleus keeps a generally level head. After all, it wouldn’t do if royalty like himself were to falter in the face of flirtations. He’s been in many a court, and as a result, he’s well aware of the fanciful words and flattery nobles weave to curry favor. (... But surely, that can’t possibly be your intent, can it?)

He totally misinterprets what you say... but in a very different way. Instead of taking your words to be unintentionally romantic, Malleus takes your words seriously. VERY seriously, actually.

“I would advise for you to get an adequate amount of rest for optimal functioning. Hours of hard labor and a lack of sleep...” He shakes his head sternly. “Neither will grant happiness. Not to you, and certainly not to me. I could not bear to see you in a state of distress.”

“Shall I cast a curse upon you which turns everything you touch into gold? Then everything shall be gilded, not just I.” Malleus taps his chin, still set deep in contemplation. “Ah, or perhaps a miniature gold statue of me would also suffice. Sebek owns something to that effect, so you can two can match. I believe that phenomenon is known as ‘twinning’.”

Malleus is dense about your love language, but he’s genuinely trying to be helpful and give solid advice! He wants to help you out using all the magic he has at his disposal, like some kind of dark Fairy Godmother.

It’s not until he’s alone in his own chambers, that his mind wanders, and he finds himself musing about your strange sayings. And sometimes, when he thinks about it long and hard enough... his pale cheeks will color in a pleased pink--proud of himself for having assisted.

As a Dorm Leader, Riddle holds himself to maintaining a certain level of decorum, especially in the presence of his peers. He needs to set a good example for others to follow!! ... is what he tells himself, but he loses his cool anyway.

It’s pretty easy to set Riddle off. One perfectly timed line will instantly ruin his concentration, no matter what activity he’s currently busying himself with. You can literally see the moment when his expression breaks and his face slowly changes shades until it reaches a deep carmine.

He’s not used to being praised for things outside of academic achievements and extracurriculars, so comments that appeal to his appearance or to his emotions are awkward for him to accept. Riddle gets all tongue tied trying to explain to you why he doesn’t care for those particular comments but ultimately just digs a bigger hole for himself (because isn’t he just so cute, even when he’s mad?).

Riddle will no doubt lecture you every time you let a “poorly worded phrase” come out of your mouth (yes, even if his face is already beet red). He’ll usually follow it up with a second lecture (which comes a little while after he has completely cooled off from the initial embarrassment).

“Honestly... It’s utterly nonsensical how you hand out praise like candy. Moderation is key.” Riddle sighs, ever pragmatic. “Don’t you care to stop and think about the consequences of your words? There are people out there who will misunderstand you, so you’d do well to watch what you say.”

Once he’s done giving you a piece of his mind, he’ll demand that you lower your head for him. You do, and you suddenly feel Riddle’s hand patting you. “Right, as long as you keep that in mind, we won’t have any trouble. Don’t give me cause to worry about you again, understood?”

He actively encourages you to be as loose with your words as you like. Lilia’s not going to restrain you or tell you what you can and can’t say. It’s more more fun when you’re unpredictable, and it gives him a good laugh when you get yourself into messes thanks to being oblivious to your own words.

Lilia takes it all in stride! He’s heard all kinds of strange things on his travels, so casual romanticisms and being showered with compliments are pretty ordinary happenings by comparison.

Being as old as he is, Lilia’s aware that everyone has different ways of communicating, as well as different ways of expressing their affection. It’s super easy for him to read others and the intentions behind their words and actions... but hey, he’ll play along and act all "embarrassed” about your unintentional flirting, just for the fun of it.

“Oh dear, I think I’m being swept off my feet,” he jokes, a hand to his forehead to pantomime feeling faint. “Kufufu. Like a young school boy experiencing his first taste of love... How was it? Did my phenomenal acting get your heart racing?”

He’s not conceited, but he’ll act as though he were. “Tell me what big eyes, what big ears, what big teeth I have again!” Lilia calls out, pretending to nom on your shoulder--his fangs lightly scraping the area. “All the better to see, hear, and taste you with, my dear.”

You find yourself getting flustered with how readily Lilia takes to a counterattack (except, in his case, it’s completely intentional)! It looks like this old bat is a natural charmer himself. Now, the real question is, will you be able to make it out from his wiles with your heart, or will Lilia swipe it from right under your nose?

#Malleus Draconia #Vil Schoenheit #twisted wonderland headcanons #Lilia Vanrouge #twst #twisted wonderland #Riddle Rosehearts #Neige Leblanche #Reader #self insert #disney twisted wonderland #curiouser and curiouser

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i-like-eyes · 3 years ago

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What do you think of the idea of Elfilin from the new Kirby game transforming into (a kinder) Fecto Elfilis after absorbing Chaos Elfilis.

Sorry if spoilers.

I like the idea! Honestly for being the soul part of another person the game doesn't really explore how that shape a person. I was hoping maybe Elfilin would change visibly just a little when he became whole at the end, like a minor palette change at best, but he still looks and acts the same.

Fanon Elfilin is 10x better than the real thing in so many ways. There is something inherently funny in the simple fairy dude transforming into his final boss form just because it's easier to open a jar with. Or I've seen people just say Elfilis is good now and also Elfilin's brother. Chaos Elfilis fusing with Elfilin at the end reads like a kid tired after throwing a tantrum and just giving up. By instead having it so that they stay as two separate dudes (or I've seen some people have it so that Elfilis can talk to Elfilin through his mind/be summoned) then you can explore their mindsets. Also I just like Elfilis' design more (it's about the only new one I really like) and seeing a big final boss eating a burger with Waddle Dees is cute.

I've seen people say that Elfilin is as flat as he is because he's missing a part of him, and while that's a really fun take, saying that explains the generic dialogue is giving the game too much credit. If Elfilin is supposed to be the "soul" and nothing else then maybe he's super duper sweet but as dumb as a rock or can barely lift a pebble. I compared him to a Disney Princess for a reason, like Ariel he can get easily excitable by anything no matter how simple but doesn't actually knows what its purpose is (like thinking a fork is a hairbrush). But whereas Ariel was a sheltered merkid, Elfilin was a sheltered science experiment that also lacks the intelligence and strength of Elfilis. After they become one at the end then Elfilin starts to understand basic concepts and can get around easier. All of this isn't in the game at all, but the fact Elfilin's writing prioritizes interesting ideas over competent storytelling just tells me the game wants you to fill in the blanks yourself. Y'know what I will take your theory bait and just write a new character sure.

#asks #kirby #katfl

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theoriginalcarnivorousmuffin · 4 years ago

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After that gorgeous sequel rant, would you be willing to share your thoughts on reylo?

Ugh.

Once again, that is the most succinct, easiest, answer I can supply. But it's so short, and that just won't do.

I mentioned in a recent post that Dramione comes in a myriad of disguises. Every fandom usually has at least one Dramione ship, you can usually guess which characters the ship will consist of, and while you might not be able to articulate exactly what about it makes it so damn similar to Dramione you will recognize it on sight.

Usually, to me, a Dramione ship features a strong, independent, female lead who may be varying levels of sexually empowered, varying levels of intelligent (Hermione loves to tell us how smart she is but it's not the heart of the ship), is strong, courageous, and noble who depending on the story du jour might slide into depravity. The real give away is her love interest, always a man, usually a young man of comparable age, who has the bad boy appeal that's not too bad boy where he often is redeemed to the good side for 'reasons' in the course of the story.

Reylo is such a Dramione pairing.

You don't believe me? Look at the authors who write it, I haven't done this too often myself, but I guarantee you that a not small majority of them will either write Draco/Hermione or will have it all over their favorites and bookmarks. It's the same damn pairing.

But worse.

Because Kylo-Ren and Rey aren't really characters.

"Whoa, hold up!", you say, "That's just slander and uncalled for!" Well, change my mind. Rey Palpatine and Kylo-Ren are a series of character tropes and archetypes thrown to us by Disney screaming "LOVE MY CHARACTERS".

Rey is our noble, very Luke like, hero who is a scrappy desert rat with overwhelming mystical powers only acknowledged when the movies feel like acknowledging them (guys, admit Rey kicked Kylo-Ren's ass every time they fought with 0 training, come on, it's not hard).

However, there is nothing underneath her surface. Her hero worship of the resistance feels dull and given to her because it's expected. Of course Rey likes the resistance! The resistance is great! Sign her up! Rey has been living in the desert at the edge of nowhere for presumably 15 years, I'm shocked she's even heard of the new republic let alone the resistance. Despite essentially starving and only having a home that's a broken down old fighter, Rey saves a random droid. We're not really given a compelling reason of why she would do this, that she has a deep respect for droids/is horrified by their use, really really really hates the random trader she sells things to, or really really really hates the empire (if she even realizes it's them behind the bounty). She does it just so that a) the plot keeps moving b) to show Rey is... noble... I guess?

Remember that even Luke (who I have some problems with as a character) started his journey with more backstory and personality than this. Luke loved the empire and desperately wanted to become a pilot. He was very put out that his aunt and uncle kept saying, "Uh, no, bad idea." Luke was ready to skip town and sign on up for flight academy, he just got distracted by pretty women, er, his sister.

So, Rey is never given a compelling reason to do any of the things she does in the series. Just vague feelings of hero worship. And, of course, the drama over her parents. Just... I feel like Disney took out a hat, put a bunch of pieces of paper with words on them, and drew out the one that said "orphan angst about parents" and said "See, now she's conflicted! What a character!"

So yeah, Rey is your cardboard generic hero who is so generic she's not even a person. She has no hopes, no dreams, no fears, just these vague things we're told as an audience she cares about but never shown in any legitimate manner. Rey likes the resistance and rando droids, Rey imprints on Han Solo as the father she never had, Rey has this thing about her parents, Rey is attracted to Kylo Ren.

And that last one, oh boy that last one. It sold me less on the attraction to Kylo Ren than... oh... I don't know... Palpatine's secret Sith planet of doom. I mean, we all saw it coming, The Last Jedi it was very clear where that was going and then Abrams went for it even harder. But what we had was a series of skype conversations where Rey went from "Gr, you killed my pseudo father!" and Kylo-Ren responding, "Yeah, well he was my real father AND HE WAS SO MEAN" to "Oh Ben, I will fly to you through space and we shall save the galaxy together!"

I am given no reason to believe Rey's change of heart. Han Solo's death just suddenly... doesn't really mean much to her anymore (the man was murdered by his son in cold blood so that his son could feel better about himself). She believes Ben Solo is good now because Luke is a dick (never mind that, no matter what a dick Luke is, Ben Solo still murdered dozens of children and then went on to gleefully massacre his way through the galaxy). We're told there's a Force Dyad, which is um... not this thing the writer's made up because they were too lazy to convince me that Kylo-Ren and Rey would end up together in any organic way.

So, yeah, why does Rey like Kylo-Ren? Because the Force told her too? Because it was somehow all Snoke's fault in a way that's never properly described? (Indeed despite us spending quite a bit of time on Kylo-Ren's decision to remain Kylo-Ren being a very internalized thing) Because we saw him shirtless in yoga pants this one time?

It's bad when that last is actually the most legitimate reason I can think of out of the whole lot.

Now let's go to Kylo-Ren. If Rey is boring and nonsensical then Kylo-Ren is a dumpster fire and non-sensical. The guy reminds me a lot of Commodus from the film "Gladiator", the man is cowardly, vile, and murders his father in despair that his father never will be capable of loving him/passes him over for the throne. Kylo-Ren's murder of Han Solo is extremely similar to the murder of Marcus Aurelius in "Gladiator". Han Solo is a flawed father, trying to make his peace with his son, who approaches him unarmed and Kylo-Ren decides to murder him in order to solidify his place in the dark side.

Only, the films never acknowledge that every action Kylo-Ren takes is horrifying.

We're told "oh, Kylo-Ren exists because evil Snoke corrupted him" but also shown repeatedly that Kylo-Ren chooses the darkest path again and again and again. He "struggles with the light" but I don't see it. His opening scene, he has massacred a village and is torturing a man for information (this is presumably a daily routine for him). In the same film he later tortures Rey for information. He serves on a Death Star which wipes out billions in an instant. He murders his father to feel good about himself. He dresses as a man who was reviled and feared throughout the galaxy, a man who murdered countless children, and a man who dressed the way he did because he was barely hanging onto life, because Kylo-Ren thinks it makes him look like a badass. Think about it, this is like if a fully abled Kylo-Ren is wheeling around in a wheel chair, perfectly capable of walking, because he thinks that Professor X is so cool. Now, replace Professor X with Hitler, this is what the movies gave us.

Yet, the films seem to take it for granted that Kylo-Ren is a redeemable character. He's just lost and misguided, he's really struggling with the light and dark side! They don't just tell us this over and over again (which they do) but also just assume we know it.

And base the entire Reylo pairing off of it. Reylo believed Kylo-Ren could be redeemed, they battle Snoke together, then Kylo-Ren stabs her in the back and continues the assault on the Resistance and asks her to be his Dark Queen (TM). Reylo is shocked and appalled, I'm just wondering what movie she thought she was watching, because that was coming a mile away.

Later, when Kylo-Ren is redeemed, we're never given a reason why it happens. Leia just gives him a nagging, one word, phone call and then Han Solo shows up to go, "Ben, are you going to do the right thing?" and Ben goes, "Mumble, grumble, fine" because there's only an hour left in the last film.

Kylo-Ren, like Rey, is the writers' desperate attempt to create a compelling anti-hero with all the anti-hero sauce we love. They just won't admit they made an overgrown genocidal toddler.

Wow, this turned into why I hate both Rey and Kylo Ren, but, uh, back to the ship. Basically, the films give me 0 reason to ever believe it, and even if I wanted to, even if I said "Alright brain, let's make these characters real people for once", I still wouldn't like it. Because the ship itself is just as flat as the characters. It's spicy but not too spicy bad boy gets together with strong female lead.

I know a lot of people enjoy this, and I won't say it's any less legitimate than any of the weirdness I ship, but I'm not one of them. And the whole thing just makes me go "ugh".

#ask #anon #anti reylo #anti kylo ren #anti rey #anti star wars sequels

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thelordofdarkreunion · 4 years ago

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Magnificent Scoundrels- Seat of the Citadel

One last faction intro story, in which Shepard finally tells the Council what every Mass Effect player has ever wanted to tell them. Unless someone specifically requests otherwise, or it is needed later, I won’t have any more “faction intros” as I’ve been writing them. Next up is the meeting of the different governments. As usual, I own none of these characters. Enjoy the story.

(A note on timelines: This takes place slightly more than halfway through the events of Mass Effect 2)

Mass Effect Galaxy

The Citadel, Capital of the Citadel Council

The Citadel. The beating heart of galactic power. A glimmering jewel of elegance and culture. An utterly massive 45 kilometer long space station, constructed by the long-extinct and highly advanced Prothean race, it was the capital of the aptly named Citadel Council, the galaxy spanning federation that ruled most of explored space.

Discovered by the Asari in the human year 580 B.C.E., it had since remained the center of galactic power. Open, airy, and utterly magnificent, it was a menagerie of elegant futuristic-style architecture and open water features. Its beauty was unmatched by any other place in the galaxy; not the often conflicting human architecture of Earth, nor the sweeping elegance of Thessia, nor the simplistic, yet sturdy nature of the Turian or Salarian homeworlds. Truly, it was a place unlike any other.

Commander John Shepard sat in an elaborate waiting room at the base of the Citadel Tower, the large structure that housed the chambers of the Council itself. Above was an artificial sky of brilliant blue. Blossoming cherry trees were dotted around the large room in large pots, their blossoms adding to the Beautiful fountains trickled slowly, the sound of running water meant to calm and soothe visitors. Shepard was anything but calm. In fact, he was, to put it rather mildly, pissed off.

The Council had done absolutely nothing in the two years while he had been dead. He warned them of the coming of the genocidal synthetic race known as the Reapers, but, no, they apparently preferred the illusion of safety and calm instead of shoring up defenses and preparing for a war that was almost certainly coming. Goddamn bureaucrats.

Now, it was even worse. There were nine new galaxies out there, and all of them had it together. He shuddered as he remembered reading the briefings and documents provided by his various new colleagues. Council will probably want to ignore that, too. Goddamn bureaucrats, he repeated to himself. And what did the Council do? Invited them all over as if they were all newly discovered species. As if they were peoples who newly discovered space flight, expected to be cowed by the might of the Council, instead of pan-galactic empires.

Goddamn bureaucrats.

“John. God to see you.” Shepard looked up sharply as someone called his name. He visibly relaxed when he saw who it was.

Captain, now Councillor, David Anderson walked towards Shepard, a smile on his face. Dark skin, a flat nose, and short cut hair highlighted an elegant but simple suit; the clothing of a Councillor. Anderson was Shepard’s mentor, old captain, and still older friend. Still more, he was the only of four Councillors that Shepard fully trusted.

“It’s good to see you too, Anderson,” said Shepard, rising from his seat to shake his hand. Anderson made a ‘follow me’ gesture, and the two started to walk through the extensive lobby.

“The information you sent me was quite helpful,” remarked Anderson. Shepard rubbed the back of his neck, a nervous tick he’d picked up from somewhere.

“Ah. Yes. Well, my new colleagues are a bit… bizarre,” Wasn’t that the understatement of the century? Really weird and slightly insane would probably be better. “But, they are quite helpful.” Especially if you want something very, very dead. Anderson nodded in response.

“I’m sure.” He glanced around the room, noting several Salarians hovering near a doorway. “But the walls here have ears. All part of the political game,” he sighed. “Let’s take this conversation to my office.” Shepard couldn’t agree more.

Anderson’s office was, again, simple yet elegant, as a Councillor’s office should be. Smooth walls and a large window, overlooking the Presidium, highlighted a maple desk. Sitting on top of the desk, next to endless reports, was a single picture of Anderson wearing dress blues on his naval graduation day. Anderson slid into the chair (with wheels, of course; humans in this galaxy weren't savages) and gestured for Shepard to take a seat opposite him.

“Some of this data is, to put it bluntly, quite concerning,” opened Anderson without preamble. He touched a button on his desk, and a hologram sprang to life, displaying three symbols: a blue triangle with a minimalized rocket taking off on it, a black and white six-spoked circle, and a double-headed golden eagle. Of course we’d start with those three. “These three in particular. Tell me about them.” He glanced at a data pad. “The, uh, Interstellar Manufacturing Corporation, who sound a lot like if the Alliance was ruled by Cerberus, and the Galactic Empire and Imperium of Man, who,” this was accompanied by a slightly incredulous chuckle, “Sound like some nightmare governments from a bad movie.” Shepard rubbed the back of his neck again.

“...yeah. Sure. I… how should I even start,” he rubbed his neck again, “The IMC is what you think would happen if a super-corporation gained enough power to rule humanity, the Galactic Empire took power after a Galactic Republic kinda lost a horrible war.” He still wasn’t 100% sure about the politics from that particular galaxy. He shrugged, then continued. “But, uh, both of those governments are on the decline. Their opposite, more freedom-loving numbers have recently beat them back. It’s the third one that’s the problem.” Anderson shot him a look that clearly said ‘explain’. “You see… well, how should I put this…” He frowned as he considered what to say. “The Imperium of Man makes Terra Firma look violently pro-alien.” Terra Firma was the System Alliance's resident human supremacist group. Often compared to the Nazis of old, they were uncouth, brutal, and, above all, close minded. Anderson’s eyebrows shot up at this comment. Shepard rubbed his neck once more. “Yeah. No slurs or racial barbs for these guys.” Shepard leaned in closer to Anderson to get his point across. “One of their mottos is, and I quote, ‘Suffer not the alien to live’.” Anderson cradled his head in his arms.

“Oh, God. And we invited them to the upcoming first contact talks.”

“Yep!” replied Shepard with slightly more relish than was actually necessary. It would be a real shame if xenocidal zealots murdered the Council (maybe), but perhaps it would be a good thing if they shook things up a little. Certainly, if Cain was anything to go by, they weren’t all bad.

“How are the other three going to react to all of this?” moaned Anderson, head still in his arms.

“Not quite sure,” replied Shepard, “Although, this time, it’s all politics, so the illustrious Commander Shepard isn’t going to be able to save their collective asses, like I’ve done the last five or six times.” His face took on a pensive look. “Although, maybe this will actually get them to listen about the Reapers…” Anderson and Shepard’s thoughts were broken by a blue-skinned Asari, who politely knocked.

“Excuse me, Councillor Anderson. The Council is ready to see Commander Shepard,” said the Asari. Anderson sighed and slowly shook his head.

“Well, duty calls. This ought to be interesting.”

The Council chambers were much like the rest of the Citadel: utterly beautiful with a simple and refined elegance. Too bad such a wonderful room was squandered on the walking wastes of oxygen that were the Council. At least, that was Shepard’s opinion. He didn’t have much liking for politicians, and most definitely had no liking for these three in particular. He looked up at the podium where the Councillors stood. At least they bothered to meet in person this time.

There were three Councillors, excluding Anderson, each from a different species. The Asari, a graceful, elegant monogendered race of blue-skinned women, the Salarians, a short lived but extremely intelligent race of amphibians, and the Turians, a militaristic race descended from avians. Humanity was the most recent addition to the Council, a move that many seem to resent, but thanks to Commander John Shepard saving the Citadel and the Council it housed, a move that no one could oppose.

“Commander Shepard,” began Sparatus, the Turian Councillor. “While we appreciate being given information about these new galaxies,” this was inflicted by a measure of sarcasm, “Some of this seems quite hard to believe.” ‘Just like the Reapers’ remained unsaid, but everyone was thinking it. Shepard sighed inwardly. It’s going to be one of these meetings.

“Yes. You went off on your own, chasing some message, and just sent this data back. Explain yourself,” said Tevos, the Asari Councillor. Anderson looked like he was about to intervene on Shepard’s behalf, but was interrupted.

“Some of this seems highly unlikely. First you come up with Reapers, a race of immortal sentient machines hell-bent on killing us all, now this!” intoned Valern, the Salarian Councillor. Shepard struggled to keep a straight face.

Calm down! said one part of his mind. Explain to them what’s happening out there! Tell them what you’ve seen. Getting angry will get you nowhere.

Or will it? asked another part. They didn’t listen about the Reapers, despite being attacked by one, they didn’t listen about your involvement with Cerberus, preferring to label you a terrorist. They haven’t listened to you about anything. Maybe anger will help you! Besides, continued to voice, it's not like you couldn’t find similar employment elsewhere. The Scoundrels trust you more than these idiots ever have. I’m sure there are plenty of people who would pay top dollar for someone like you.

“You know what? I’m sick of this bullshit,” said Shepard. “I am goddamn sick and tired of this bullshit. You can believe whatever you want to believe, despite evidence to the contrary. I have never lied to you. I saved your lives. I saved the Citadel. I died for you!” he thundered. The Councillors seemed rather taken aback. “Yes, still, you don’t heed my warnings! You don’t follow my advice, even though I have not once lied to any of you. You sit, on your comfy chairs, trying to keep a peace that will most definitely be shattered. You do nothing because it is simply more convenient to ignore reality,” he hissed, words dripping with venom. Spartacus bristled.

“How dare you-” Shepard whirled around to face him.

“Shut. The fuck up, Sparatus.” The calm in Shepard’s voice was deadly. The Councilors blanched. No one’s ever talked to them like that before, I’d guess. He would have laughed if he wasn’t in mid-rant. “Apparently, what I gave you was good enough to invite all of these governments over for peace talks. All of them. You also apparently trusted myself and my new colleagues enough to give them these invitations, instead of contacting these governments directly.” Which was probably a wise move, in the long run, considering some of the reactions would have been ‘piss off and die’ if the invitations weren’t hand delivered by galaxy wide heroes. Were they invitations? Or… treaties? What was a document inviting someone to a peace talk called? Shepard shook himself out of his tangent and continued.

“Also, it seems you trust eight unknown people more than you trust the Spectre who has never lied, saved your lives, and died for you. Have I missed anything?” he spun around to the room, arms outstretched theatrically.

“Fine then, Shepard,” said Valern. “You are dismissed. Apparently,” he threw the word back in Shperad’s face, “Our top intelligence gatherer isn’t loyal to us anymore. Other Spectres or the STG can take care of finding out what we need to know.” Tevos and Sparatus looked apprehensive at their colleagues's dismissal. While they might have been bureaucrats, they knew Shepard was one of the best Spectres and intelligence agents they had. Shepard gave a laugh; a full throated hearty laugh.

“Oh, yeah. Have fun with that. Have fucking fun with that. Have fucking fun sending the STG or some lone-wolf Spectre against people who have entire armies of super-soldiers at their disposal and who can legally destroy planets*. Have fucking fun.” He sneered. “This is now the intelligence game you’re playing. You aren’t in complete control anymore.” Shepard crossed his arms and looked up at the Council. “So, only one question remains: do you want my help or not? ‘Cause if you don’t, there isn’t much point in me staying, is there?” There it was: the ultimatum was out. Would they back down and realize that Shepard was their best shot, or would they allow their emotions to get in the way? Honestly, it could probably go either way. Spartacus shot a look at Anderson. Anderson replied with a ‘hey, not my problem’ stare. Tevos cleared her throat.

“It seems we have been remiss, Spectre Shepard.” Shepard let out a breath he had been silently holding. While he would have made good on his threat, this was his home galaxy, and he wasn’t particularly sure he wanted to be working for someone like Crossgrow or the Inquisition. “As you are the only one who has had contact with these people, please give us your opinion on how we should handle this situation.” Shepard was sure it had probably physically hurt the Council to say that. He dismissed the thought and returned to his duty.

“First thing first: you have to present a united front. You can’t disagree with each other. Second, all of the species’ representatives should be here.” Before anyone could make an objection, he continued. “All of them. Definitely the client races.” The Council had four races as members, but many more that were under their jurisdiction and not full members. Many of those races were trying (and, for the most part, failing) to get a seat on the Council itself. It wouldn’t do if the more open minded government, such as the Federation or GA, came to the Citadel, then saw the Council treating other races as less than equals. “Even some of the other races who aren’t officially part of the Council, if you think you can control them.” Shepard paced the floor.

“In addition, you should probably beef up the Citadel fleet. Send in more ships. Turian, Asari, Alliance, I don’t care. We need as much security as possible, and some of these governments will be impressed by shows of force.”

“Yes… we shall think about this,” replied Tevos. “Your input will be helpful. Please stay on the station during the talks.” Shepard nodded, then came to a realization. Oh, hell. The first meeting of all of these governments is only slightly more than a week away. This was going to be interesting. Or deadly. One of the two.

*ONI can call on Spartans, ISB has Death troopers, and the Inquisition has the Grey Knights and the Deathwatch. In addition, ISB helped to create the Death Star and has sway over Imperial Navy battlegroups, enough to bombard a planet into uninhabitable-ness, and the Inquisition can enact Exterminatus. Shepard and the rest of the Scoundrels would know about all of this, except for the Grey Knights.

#magnificent scoundrels #stroy #my story #writing #my writing #crossover #fanfic #mass effect #mass effect 2

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wordsnstuff · 5 years ago

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20 Mistakes To Avoid in YA Fiction/Romance

* This is a re-upload due to the original being flagged a few months ago for having a gif of two teenagers...*GASP*... dancing. What, tumblr? What is “adult” about that? The post has been in appeal for 4 months, and I have a feeling it won’t leave, so I decided to finally repost it.

YA Fiction is an incredibly popular genre of literature, and most people have picked one up and devoured it in less than a day, but there is a trend in the genre where in certain instances, people forfeit quality for a cheesy dramatic plot. A lot of these stories are just regurgitated cliches with vaguely interesting characters and just enough drama, fluff, and mildly (or extremely) sexual content to keep the reader paying attention. (No shade to the authors, because obviously, any author who writes and publishes a book works hard, no matter the end product.)

There are a lot of aspects of YA Fiction that repeatedly rear their ugly heads and annoy readers or flat out scream dangerous messages to the young people that indulge in them. I thought I’d put the spotlight on a few in the hopes that it will help clean up the genre’s reputation as new and more awakened authors contribute content to it.

Below you will read about some common mistakes that YA Fiction/Romance writers make that either ruin the story, promote dangerous messages, or unrealistically portray teenagers.

Forgetting The Supporting Characters

The supporting characters are an important part of any story, even if the main plot revolves around two people. Supporting characters provide subplots, information to the reader, and more opportunities for your audience to connect and relate to your story. It’s always good to give your supporting characters love and attention when creating and writing them. Sometimes they end up carrying the story.

A mistake that a lot of authors make is that they give the reader a couple defining characteristics, a name, a relationship to the main character, and then just make that character pop into the reader’s view whenever the main plot needs them to. No backstory. No life of their own. Just support to the plot, and that’s a huge waste of potential. You don’t want your readers to put down your book and either forget the supporting characters existed at all, or believe that they were extra pieces of a puzzle.

Using Slang Badly

Writers should not feel the need to include current slang in order to make their story more relatable or popular amongst their targeted demographic. Slang is constantly changing, evolving, and most importantly, dying. Not to say that you should only write in traditional terms or put “thy” and “thee” everywhere, but using standard English and avoiding the trendy but temporary slang words is key.

If you must use slang, try to use the bare minimum and only in fitting circumstances. If your character is the type to say “OMG her dat boi memes are on fleek” then, by all means, go right ahead, but you probably cringed when you read that. That would have been totally normal 2 years ago, but every bit of that sentence has died over time, and no matter how much you think a slang word will stick, don’t risk it.

Sympathy and Envy Mongering

Two emotions that YA Fiction and Romance always try to invoke in their readers are sympathy and envy. The author either wants the reader to feel bad for one or many of the characters, or they want them to be jealous of the awesome (and usually unrealistic) lives the characters have. Don’t be one of these. It’s tired and boring and not original in the slightest.

Are sympathy and empathy both totally okay emotions?

Yes.

Are they all you need to write a good story?

Nope. Not at all.

The reader needs and wants to feel more than jealous of and sad for the characters in the story. The best stories are the ones that trigger a complex whirlwind of emotion. Sympathy and envy are the easy way out, and you get out of those emotions what you put into them.

Unrealistically Portraying Teenagers & Teenage Life

Teenagers look up to and compare themselves and their lives to the characters and lives of the characters in your story. Keeping in mind that your audience is young and impressionable is essential for authors of the genre.

Love At First Sight

Love-at-first-sight does not happen. Infatuation, maybe, but love is more complicated than that. Writing a plot based on “love at first sight” can leave a bad taste in your readers’ mouths from the start, and that is something you should avoid at all costs. On top of that, love-at-first-sight is a very easy-way-out move and if you’re dedicated to your characters and your story, there’s a good to fair chance that you can come up with a more satisfying build up.

Unrealistic Romantic Situations

If you’ve ever opened a YA Romance, chances are you’ve read a scene in which the protagonist and the love interest end up in a stunningly beautiful place and the love interest sweeps the protagonist off their feet prior to riding into the sunset. This, unfortunately, does not happen very often, especially in teenage relationships. The most romance you’re going to get (usually) is the love interest offering to pay for the protagonist’s bag of skittles with the leftover money from their paycheck they earned at McDonald’s.

Just because teenagers don’t really go to great lengths to rent an entire ice-skating rink in the middle of the night so they and their crush can skate to Ellie Goulding music doesn’t mean there can’t be cute and memorable moments. Great doesn’t always equal grand and that’s important to remember. A lot of the time, teenagers appreciate fantasizing about things that are actually possible.

Happy Endings

Not all stories have to end happily, and you’ve definitely been told this before, but nobody ever takes into account how stories about teenagers have so much potential when it comes to endings. Teenagers read books about teenagers and unfortunately, this means that a lot of them will take what you’re writing about and try to change their own lives to match. Be honest in your depiction about what actually happens when you leave high school.

The majority of the time, high school sweethearts won’t stay together. Long distance won’t work, they’ll find someone else, the spark will die out, their personalities will undergo drastic changes, and their goals and plans for the future will turn out differently than they expected. “And they lived happily ever after” is criticized harshly for a reason, especially in YA and YA Romance. Most stories don’t end happily, but there is more than one story in a person’s life and giving a person their happy ending as they graduate high school is a great injustice, to your character and your readers.

Avoiding The Dark Parts Of Teenage Life

Teenagers, despite what a lot of the media claims, go through some really serious and stressful and damaging things. Teenagers suffer from mental illness and deal with the intense pressure of the education system and hold their heads high in the face of stigma over every little detail about them. They suffer from eating disorders and body dysmorphia and self-harm tendencies, and that doesn’t even bring into account the bullying and family issues and the stress of constantly learning and feeling things for the very first time with little to no guidance or assurance or resources to ask for help. It is hard being a teenager. Do not forget that, and don’t leave the actual teenagers reading your story feeling underrepresented and/or abnormal because they aren’t as stress-free as the characters they look up to.

Exaggerating How Teenagers Interact With Each Other

A lot of teenage interactions are short, awkward, and uneventful. Teenagers aren’t super eloquent and socially apt, but YA Fiction seems to believe they are. It’s quite rare that a teenager will just walk up to someone they like, say “wanna go to dinner on Saturday?” and all will be fine and dandy. It’s quite rare that a teenager will saunter up to someone who talked about them behind their back, say something super clever and damaging to their enemy’s ego, and saunter off like the king/queen of the world. Those interactions look great in our heads, but they usually contain a few stuttered words and “um”s and blushing. Confidence is usually a trait that people develop later in life, so try not to push it if you’re trying to be realistic.

Maturity of Teenagers

Teenagers are underdeveloped human beings with minimal experience in most areas of life. They do not have it all figured out. A lot of YA books revolve around characters that are extremely intelligent, disciplined and ambitious at a level of maturity a 25-year-old be on. This is not accurate. Making characters “awkward” or “childish” does not have anything to do with how mature they seem to readers. There is a distinct difference between an awkward girl with childlike innocence and a girl who makes mistakes, does not have her life figured out, and is not yet comfortable with casual social interaction. The latter things I mentioned are pretty universal when it comes to teenagers.

Unfitting Aspirations

There are more than two paths in life. It seems that in YA you’re either going to graduate, get married, pop out a couple kids and live the rest of your life in the suburbs, or you’re going to leave home, go to college, travel for 20 years and settle in some random country in Europe writing poetry until the end of your days. There is no in between, which sucks. There are a lot of interesting things you can do in life, not to say that either of the two life paths I mentioned are uninteresting. You could take a gap year and travel the world, go to college, move back home for a couple years then maybe get a job that has you traveling and exploring new things for the rest of your life. You could meet the love of your life in college and have some kids but put them in online school so you could travel with them. You could live your whole life in an awesome cabin in the forest casting spells and adopting wild squirrels. There are so many ways life can be and restricting it to opposite extremes takes the imagination out of the future.

Not All Teenagers Think Their Relationships Will Last Forever

This one is pretty self explanatory, so long story short, not every relationship a teenager enters into is with the end goal of staying together forever, or even more than a few months. Most teenage relationships are pretty short and not very meaningful, and portraying every single couple in your stories as “we’ve been going strong for 2 years and plan on getting married right after graduation” is inaccurate and will probably cause your readers some disappointment in the future.

Relationships Aren’t A Teenager’s Only Concern

Most teenagers are more concerned about the F they got on a History test than they are about who they’re going to stare at next period. Everyone has more than just their crush to worry about. Some teenagers have to worry about where they’re going to get their next meal or how they’re going to get a ride home from school or even how they can apologize to a friend they’ve hurt. It’s not all about relationships for teenagers, in fact, relationships are a pretty small part of teenage life. If all your character has to think about is the hottie they sit next to in Biology, perhaps you should work a little more on character development.

Unnatural Appearances

Most teenagers are not model-level attractive. All teenagers have break-outs and leave the house late with greasy hair or with their shirt on inside out. No teenager shows up at school every day looking absolutely flawless, as if they’re about to walk down the runway. Please keep that in mind, because portraying teenagers accurately, especially when it comes to physical aspects such as weight, acne, etc. is super important. In YA and YA Romance, you must keep in mind that the teenagers you are trying to appeal to should not feel like a piece of trash because they aren’t as perfect as your characters. Yes, YA Fiction is Fiction, but just because you know that it’s unrealistic doesn’t mean your readers do. Readers of YA Fiction compare themselves to the characters in your books whether you like it or not. It is not hard to realistically portray physical appearances of teenagers.

Avoiding Dangerous Messages

A common problem found in YA Fiction is the lacing of dangerous messages found in the smaller details. You may miss them the first couple times you read a story, but if you go looking for them, you will find them, and perhaps you will find the source of a lot of mistakes you’ve made. YA has a bad habit of endorsing mindsets that lead to bad decisions. Some of them, however, can be avoided in your own writing.

The Need To Change The “Flawed” One

Nobody in this world is perfect. Expecting the person you supposedly love to be flawless all the time is not realistic. People make mistakes. People are not always happy and bubbly and confident about themselves. People do not always act the same one day as they did the day before. Human beings are flawed and should be portrayed as such, especially in the stage of their life which is the most confusing and scary. Teenagers are underdeveloped human beings, and for some reason, teenager girls in YA Romance expect teenage boys to be charming and loving and never ever make a mistake, which is ridiculous. Creating love interests that appear flawless and can make no mistakes is detrimental to your audience. It raises your readers’ expectations to an unattainable level which causes them disappointment and might cause their future partners unrepairable damage to their self-esteem because they’ll think that in order to find a partner, they cannot be flawed and cannot make mistakes.

Glorification Of Illegal Activity

It’s not “cool” or “edgy” to pump yourself full of deadly and mind-altering substances you know absolutely nothing about. It doesn’t make you “badass” and it isn’t a personality trait unless that trait is stupid. Whatever your position is on drugs or alcohol or whatever, there is no excuse for putting the idea in the heads of young readers that doing things that are illegal and addictive and that might even get you killed is ok. Not only because most of your readers are younger than 21, but because it will always be dangerous to take drugs, commit crimes, and drink. Your choices are your choices. Don’t impose your habits and excuses on kids who don’t know any better.

Slut Shaming

News flash: it’s 2017, people. Nobody cares who you’re kissing or dating or having sex with. People are finally getting used to the idea that maybe, just maybe, it’s not the end of the world if you do whatever you want, as long as you’re not hurting yourself or anyone else. This recurring theme of “I hate this person because they do what they want with their body” is getting old and annoying. Believe what you will regarding religion and morals and what is right or wrong or whatever you want to believe in, but the second you start turning your story into a commentary on the decisions and beliefs of other people, you’re in the wrong. There are other, more creative reasons to make your characters hate each other than their sexual activity.

Forgetting The First Times

One of the most exciting parts of being a teenager is that everything you’re experiencing, you’re experiencing for the first time. Everything is confusing and exciting and 10x more painful or memorable or enjoyable, and that’s neglected all the time in YA. I don’t mean the common trope of the first kiss or the losing of virginity. I mean love and infatuation and loss and heartbreak; it’s all happening to them for the first time in their lives, and these events make up their memories that they will carry with them forever. Teenage years are incredibly heavy times for people. It is, after all, the years in which they learn the most and the fastest and where the majority of their brain development takes place. These moments that you’re writing, the first kiss, the first time having sex, the first time your character loses someone they love, they’re all going to determine how your character will develop in the future. Treat them that way. Teach young readers that it’s normal and perfectly okay to be scared and inexperienced and lost. That’s the bitter-sweet part of youth and it’s beautiful.

Bad Boys And Boring Girls

Bad Boys are, in reality, bad news. The real “bad boys” in this world are slimy, manipulative jerks who trick girls (usually more than one at a time) into thinking they have feelings for them, using them for things like sex or money, and then either end up controlling their entire lives, introducing drugs and problems, or breaking their hearts. It’s sad, but it’s reality. Yes, there’s always a cause for this behavior, and sometimes these bad boys grow out of it, but that’s not always the case. Portraying these bad boys as “changeable” is not only dangerous for the female readers but also the men in their future. If you make girls think that they can change whomever they’re with to be the perfect prince charming, they will never be satisfied with someone who is flawed (spoiler alert: everyone is flawed) and they may destroy the self-esteem of whoever they’re with by making them think they need to change to be lovable.

Boring Girls are, sort of, connected to bad boys in this sense. They show up in every story, which makes sense financially because authors who make more relatable main characters sell more books. It’s just demographics. But at the same time, this stretch for a wider audience can end up influencing girls’ expectations of themselves and their love lives. If you make every protagonist completely boring, compliant, and devoid of strong, defining traits, girls will take that as advice. They will learn that all a girl has to do to make people fall in love with them is sit quietly and be pretty, which is horrible, in case you hadn’t noticed. Teach girls to look up to strong characters with rich personalities. Nowadays, that counts as an original idea.

Generalization

Portraying every aspect of teenage life and teenagers themselves as if you opened a book full of cliches, closed your eyes and pointed at something is not ok. High schools and families and personalities are different wherever you go, and making blind generalizations about aspects of teenage life can not only change how your reader interprets their own lives, but how adult readers assume teenage life is when they’re not around. It is important to not reinforce the assumption that there is always a popular clique and mean jocks and awkward nerds and dead-beat stoners because these stereotypes are a way for people to justify their snap-judgements, and not only does that say a lot about you as an author, but that will breed a whole new generation of judgmental, close-minded people.

Glorification Of Unhealthy Relationship Behaviors

I’m gonna say this once: It is not “hot” to have the love interest constantly putting restrictions on their supposed loved one. It’s not okay to borderline stalk someone and use “I love you” as an excuse, even if the person reciprocates your feelings. It is unhealthy to ignore someone when they say “no, no, not now” or “no, stop, not here” when you’re in the middle of initiating sex or even just kissing. It is disgusting when romance, especially YA Romance, which has mostly young, impressionable readers taking in your messages, promotes these behaviors like they’re something to strive for. Like it or not, your writing is going to alter the way they imagine a “perfect” relationship. If you aren’t willing to take that responsibility seriously, you should not be writing YA, and especially not YA Romance.

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myupostsheadcanons · 4 years ago

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Books “Read” in 2020

Previous entries: 2019, 2018, 2017

I don’t rank these based on actual literary quality, but by how much i enjoyed reading/listening to them. Hopefully with Audible’s new “Premium Included” feature it would cut down on so many Average/Below Average books next year, it’ll give me more of a choice on what kind of books/podcasts i want to listen to rather than given a handful to pick from a month.

The “Top 10″

Forging Hephaestus / Bones of the Past: Villains' Code Series - Drew Hayes has became one of my fav authors over the past couple years, from his Vampire Accountant series, 5-min Sherlock, and his Spells, Swords, and Stealth books. FH is one of the few times he wrote Adult Fiction. This is the second time Drew created a world of super heroes (the YA Superpowereds), thus previous experience in dealing with the nuisances and meta of super meta dynamics. I love the main character, Tori, and especially love many of the side characters (like Ivan) and the comedy is the right tone of dark and not-in-your-face (not quite as well -written as something like The Venture Bros or The Tick, but being adult fiction you can get away with having characters named Johnny Three-Dicks and Captain Bullshit)

Dreadnought / Sovereign - the second super hero series I’ve placed on my top list this year, this one is Young Adult. This one is far more serious and deals heavily in issues like trans and women’s rights, mental abuse, and social acceptance. The main character is full of angst, but that should be a given for a 15 yo with lots of mental baggage and new social pressures. The main character is the main draw, most of the side characters are a bit more one-dimensional.

The Trouble with Peace: Age of Madness, Book 2. It isn’t a “First Law” book if you don’t want to strangle half of the main characters. Many are stepping outside of the shadow of the previous generation and finding themselves falling flat on their faces. If they aren’t at each other’s throats, they would soon have to deal with rebellion in the streets and the constant looming presence of Bayaz, who waits to sweep the board clear and rearrange the pieces the way he sees fit.

Michael J. Sullivan’s: The Riyria and Legend of the First Empire Books.

Riyria Revelations: Theft of Swords / Rise of Empire / Heir of Novron

Riyria Chronicles: The Crown Tower / The Rose and Thorn / The Death of Dulgath

Age of Death / Age of Empyre, Pile of Bones

After finishing the Legend of the First Empire books that came out earlier this year, I went ahead and read the prior series that takes place in the same world. I would suggest reading the entire series by Publish order, but they can be read Chronologically. I read the Legends books first, and it helped me see where Sullivan was heading and when he started to plan out the Legends books in more detail. (The early cameo of the Main characters from Legends in a mural in Heir of Novron, and knowing who is behind the events in Dulgath)

The Dresden Files: Peace Talks / Battle Grounds - They really should be read as one book, because that was how they were written. It is a Feast of Crows / Dances with Dragons situation, where the book got too long and got split up. The fans are pretty divided by the book(s) ending and how some of the main characters are handled, but these are Jim Butcher’s characters not theirs and he can drop bridges on whom ever he wants.

What Lies Beyond: Cycle of Galand, Book 6 - This is a “mythology” book (like Sullivan’s Age of Death was) where it introduces most of the Pantheon of their religion and corrects much of the mythology that had been lost over the decades. They seek a weapon to vanquish the Litch and save their world and the afterlife from oblivion, but not all of their Gods are happy about it.

Will Destroy the Galaxy for Cash - Yahtzee (Zero Punctuation!) has to be one of my favorite internet personalities for the past 10+ years, and I eat up every book he puts out and because he wrote the books, and is an actor himself, he could deliver the lines as they are intended to be. The sequel to Will Save the Galaxy for Food does not disappoint and even ups the stakes from the previous book.

The Girl Who Drank the Moon - This has to be one of the most charming books I’ve read. It is magic and wonder at it’s finest, no need for long explanations on how the world works. If you like Ghibli movies, you’ll be interested in this book. It has its dark moments but isn’t outside of what you’ll find in something like Spirited Away, Princess Mononoke, and Nausicca.

The Goblin Emperor - the youngest son of the Elf King finds himself emperor after the death of his father and brothers in an assassination. The only problem is, that he is only half-elf... his late mother was a Goblin, and he had been in exile as an embarrassment to the family for most of his life. He knows nothing of how the courts work and what’s left of his own family work against him just for being who he is.

Lost Gods: Brom - I liked this book more than I did American Gods (which I read a few years ago). It is darker and bleaker by the bucket loads. One of the few books with a downer ending that I actually liked. I would compare this book to books like All the Pretty Horses and No Country for Old Men-- but it is a Fantasy!

Above Average.

Siege Tactics (Spells, Swords, & Stealth. Book 4) - What happens to adventurers after they retire? A fun concept that is explored with our party of NPCs running across a town full of epic-level characters that no longer have a player.

The Arthurian Saga - The Crystal Cave / The Hollow Hills / The Last Enchantment / The Wicked Day - A more realistic version of the Arthurian tales, taking the POV of Merlin, bastard son of a princess, as he earns notoriety as a scholar and wizard. The Wicked Day takes the POV of Mordred, making him far more sympathetic than other iterations of his character.

Arc of a Scythe - Scythe / Thunderhead / The Toll - Science and Technology eliminates death and in order to prevent over population and complacency an order of grim reapers are chosen to randomly deal out quotas of permanent deaths. An example of what happens when every need and want is satisfied by a higher force and the apathy that causes rot in human society and the superiority complex of those in charge of life and death.

The Diviners / Lair of Dreams / Before the Devil Breaks You / The King of Crows - Horror during the Roaring 20′s. Tackles issues as Racism, Poverty, Government Secrecy, Christian-Evangelical Cults, Nationalism Cult Mentality, Communism, Labor Unions, Eugenics, Post-WW1 trauma... It could almost pass as an adult fiction book. I wouldn’t recommend giving it to someone under High school age.

Ancillary Justice / Ancillary Sword / Ancillary Mercy - Artificial Intelligence takes over human bodies as a form of capital punishment, controlling ships and space stations. The dominate human empire outgrew the need to label any gender, using “she” to refer to everyone rather than the vaguer “them/they” pronouns, and only outlying colonies stick to the binary ideals. Think of “The Left Hand of Darkness” but on a more broader scale and as the default majority/ruling empire. Toss in a solid military action novel on top and it isn’t nearly as boring as Left Hand.

Children of Time / Children of Ruin - War destroys the human population of Earth and those that remain are the ones that headed out to the stars on tera-forming missions. A virus created to advance life forms to prepare a world for human habitation runs amuck with out its overseers, creating intelligent arachnids, crustaceans, and squid.

The Licanius Trilogy - The Shadow of What Was Lost / An Echo of Things to Come / The Light of all that Falls - It is very heavy on info overload, there is a lot to keep track of, so much so there is a summary of book one and two at the start of the third. I like the twist at the end of the first book and that the villain is actually trying to help save the world, and you spend most of the second stuck between who thinks they are doing the right thing and who is actually doing the right thing - a lot to talk about doing the lesser of two evils.

Mythos - Steven Fry - A humorous retelling of Greek mythology. I read Mythology - by Edith Hamilton prior to this book, which is a more scholarly take on the myths, and helps if you are unfamiliar with classical mythology prior to reading Fry’s take on it.

Iron, Fire and Ice: The Real History That Inspired Game of Thrones - a nice history book about Iron Age royalty. It is actually refreshing to read after going through so much faux fiction that is in Philippa Gregory’s books.

Will My Cat Eat My Eyeballs? - Children ask questions to a Mortician about death and what happens to bodies after people die. I listened to her autobiography last year/year before and it is worth picking up this one along with it.

Average, but still good.

Jack Campbell’s Lost Fleet Universe: Triumphant (Genesis Fleet, Book 3) / Tarnished Knight: Lost Stars, book 1 - The realistic space battles just drag me back in each and every time.

The Case of the Damaged Detective: 5-Minute Sherlock - Drew Hayes can’t write a boring book. It isn’t quite on point as his other series, but still fun to read. Hayes is really good at making YA books with Adult Protagonists. It is a road-trip book, the main character is a washed-out operative that is getting his second chance playing bodyguard and future assistant to the 5-minute Sherlock.

Locked In / Head On - Do you remember “Surrogates”? that Bruce Willis movie where people walk around in robotic avatars, well... it’s almost the same thing. A virus kills millions, save for a select few that experience “lock in” syndrome and are able to connect to robots via their brains and the internet. The main character is gender neutral and you get a choice to listen to the book with a male or female reader.

Murder by Other Means: The Dispatcher Book 2 - more John Scalzi! The first book was in my top list a few years ago, and i enjoyed the sequel just as much. Between Scalzi’s The Dispatcher and Locked In series, i like the Dispatcher more.

The Shattered Sea Trilogy: Half a King / Half the World / Half a War - Joe Abercrombie’s attempt to make Young Adult books. It keeps all the grim dark, but lacks all the swearing and humor that made The First Law books more enjoyable. Many of Joe’s favorite character tropes are still present and is one of the better “Fall to Darkness” stories I’ve read. It also has different POV characters each book and is one of those “faux fantasy” settings.

Mage Errant: Books 1, 2 & A Traitor in Skyhold: Book 3 - If you are wanting to get away from Harry Potter, pick up this book series. It takes place in magic school, but it is its own world and setting and not just a hidden world within our own. The main group of kids are misfits among the school, unable to master their powers, that get taken up by the badass librarian to be trained in more unconventional ways.

Dawn of Wonder: The Wakening Book 1 - the main character has ptsd from growing up in an abusive household, and i thought it was handled rather well. He would be rather competent and cleaver most of the time until he gets triggered into an episode, he fights really hard to overcome this short-falling of his. Standard classic affair else wise, family leaves home because the local authority figure doesn’t want them around anymore, goes to big city, kid wants to do good and avenge the deaths he was accused of, joins the badass school of hard knocks... big powerful evil thing trying to consume the world.

The Rage of Dragons - It shares a lot of tropes and story points with Red Rising... just in a fantasy setting, not in space. If you are wanting fantasy with POC main characters and a non-European-centric culture, that doesn’t pull any punches, give it a shot.

Earthsea - Tehanu and Tales from Earthsea - I had read the first three books several years back, and i did re-read them in order to refresh myself prior to reading the final two.

The Secret Garden - I absolutely loved the movie from the 90′s as a kid, and finally got around to listening to the book.

Six of Crows - A heist book in fantasy world with the magic users being heavily “Jewish / Slavic” coded by how they are treated and persecuted. I might have thought more favorably about the book if i hadn’t read other books with “street rat slum” main characters. (Seriously, after spending six books with Royce in Riyria someone like Kas is just second bananas)

Unconventional Heroes / Two Necromancers - Comedic Fantasy, the humor’s not on par with say MogWorld, and has more jokes than Fred The Vampire Accountant. It is still a parody of villains and heroes in fantasy worlds. I would find it safe for a 12/13yo to read, cursing and all, though they might not be aware of many of the tropes that are being deconstructed. The reader of the book did better in this one then he did with Six of Crows and Beezer, still the audio needed some editing because it repeats itself a few times.

Once More Upon A Time (Free Audio Book) - I don’t always care to read romance stories. I like the idea behind it however, to trade their love for each other in order to save their partner’s life, then learn to re-love one another again.

Monster Hunter International - If you think Dresden is too liberal, this takes a hard turn to the right.. replace the magic with GUNS, lots and lots of GUNS. An organization that hates the government but hunts monsters for government bounties. The main cast is multi-ethnic and they do make fun of that at one point. There isn’t a lot of thought into the plot, because action is #1, but it is fun enough to ignore the politicking.

The Chronicles of Narnia: The Collection - i bitched about there not being an omnibus last year, and then Audible uploaded one. The ending is still one big clusterfuck.

Stephen King’s Insomnia - this book is the bridge between Steven King’s two universes. It is a sequel to IT and brings up the Darktower often. IT dealt mainly with childhood fears, Insomnia deals with Elderly and feminine fears.

D’Arc / Culdesac: War with No Name - I liked D’Arc more than i did Mort-e, and Culdesac is more on track with Mort-e. The virus that mutated the ants and animals reminded me of the virus from Children of Time/Ruin, even though i read Mort-e first, reading D’Arc after CoT let me notice it.

Michael McDowell’s: The Amulet / The Elementals / Gilded Needles / Blackwater - From the guy that wrote the screenplay of Beetlejuice, and the pioneer of the Southern Gothic Horror. Gilded Needles is a bit out of place, taking place in 1890′s, and is more of a social horror rather than a super natural horror the other books are.

Gardens of the Moon: The Malazan Book of the Fallen, Book 1 - high fantasy dark fiction. if you really want some CHONKY door stoppers, there’s over 10 of them in this series. Could’ve done less with the manipulative bastard mage that speaks in 3rd person. I had read The Willful Child, an attempted comedy science fiction novel by the same author, and it showed that the author was unfamiliar with that kind of genera and should stick to grim fantasy.

The Knife’s Edge / Citadel of Fire: The Ronin Saga - This is one of those series that I’m always going “oh, that reminds me of [insert another better series]” At times it reminded me of The Licanius Trilogy, Shades of Magic, Arc of Scythe, Riyria, Korra... It is just shy of being as good as them, and is rather firmly in that Sci-Fi Fantasy Ghetto and has a bit of “anime” feel to it with their magic users having ‘power levels’ and the power creep.

In Calabria - My only problem with the book is the massive age-gap between the Main character and his love interest. Outside of that, the whole Unicorns in the modern world concept is done very well.

Pout Neuf (Audible Free Book) - Journalism and romance during WW2. A quick read and the book really shows that research had been done about the setting and time period.

Nut Jobs: Cracking California's Strangest $10 Million Dollar Heist: An Audible Original - Not only does it talk about the heist, it actually touches on the subject of migrant farmers and slave labor, as well as the desertification of the California Valley.

The Science of Sci-Fi: From Warp Speed to Interstellar Travel (Free Audio Book) - a neat little informative podcast if you are looking for an introduction to some of the harder science fiction.

Mythology - by Edith Hamilton - Text book about Greek Mythology. Like “used in schools” text book. It is a good read if you don’t want to go through Ovid, Virgil, Homer, and all the other classical writers on your own.

The Space Race: An Audible Original - America didn’t win the Space Race. Russia did just about everything first. The only thing we did first was put people on the moon. It also goes into detail about how the inventor of the Nazi’s V2 rockets became employed with the US Space program. As well as the government’s announcement to let space travel become privatized.

Pale Blue Dot / Cosmos: A Personal Voyage - It’s Carl Sagan. Come on! Everyone should be reading them. Pale Blue Dot was being turned into an Audiobook in the 90′s but with Sagan’s death, only the first few chapters were read by him and his partner reads the rest of it (she does a decent job, and i understand why they wanted her to read it, it should’ve been done similarly to Cosmos, with guest readers doing each chapter)

Thicker Than Water (Free Audio Book) - start up pharmaceutical company scams people out of millions with promises of a miracle machine that was ahead of its time. Story told from the whistleblower himself as he recounts what his job was within the company and how he knew the owner/founder of the company and how coming out about what was going on ruined his relationship with his family and friends.

Don't Panic: Douglas Adams and the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy - biography on Douglas Adams and the history behind the creative process behind the Hitchhiker’s Guide series.

The Genius of Birds - It reminded me a lot of “The Soul of an Octopus” in quality. It is rather informative about birds, how they behave, and how we judge intelligence in non-human animals.

It’s “ok.”

Les Miserabes - I can see why people favor movies and theater versions because of how dense the book is, getting the cliff notes version of the book instead of reading several chapters about the Battle of Waterloo.

Viva Durant and the Secret of the Silver Buttons (Audible Free Book) - It’s cute, and I spent the next several weeks humming that freaking song.

Challenger Deep - A book about mental illness by the same person that brought us The Arc of a Scythe series. It isn’t a bad read, but if you are prone to get panic attacks and have mental illness yourself, you might get too into it and make you uneasy. It can help with neurotypical people with understanding how some illnesses work.

Into the Wilds (Warriors, Book 1) - Ah, the cat book. It is prob because there are soooo many books in this series that it over-saturates the kids impressionable minds.

House of Teeth (Audible Free Book) - I read this book prior to Monster Hunter International, and thinking back on this one, i am reminded about the other. Save for this one is PG. So... the kid friendly version.

The Martian Chronicles - Space Horror, on Mars. If you like old science fiction, like Classic Trek, Wells, or Forbidden Planet stuff. There is a lot of zerust.

Andrea Vernon and the Corporation for UltraHuman Protection - The third superhero series I’ve read this past year. It is not as ground breaking nor subversive as Villain’s Code or Dreadnought. The humor is a bit too forced and parts of it falls into “we can be more offensive because it is an adult book” category.

Interview with the Robot - Don’t really care for books or programs that are set up in the “interview” format where it is two people talking to one another. (I have no fucking idea how this book got top Kids book of the year on Audible, it is more of a YA book... it must been because it was Free and lots of people picked it because the rest of the choices that month were complete garbage)

Micromegas - perhaps one of the oldest examples of Speculative Science Fiction. Written by Voltaire, it is about a giant from another solar system that is so big that humans and life on Earth are microscopic. “what value are the lives of ants to a man?”

The Three Musketeers - i had forgotten how much espionage there was in this book. I would say this is a good companion book to Don Quixote, as it takes its fair share of inspiration from and even name-drops the character a couple times.

Charles Dickens: Oliver Twist / David Copperfield / A Tale of Two Cities - DC is the standout IMO among the three, it is Dickens’ Magnum Opus. Les Mis did a far better job with the Revolution than Tale did as well. I felt rather obligated to reading these books because of the subplot in the Age of Madness books being about Poverty during the Industrial Revolution and Workers Revolts against the Ruling Class.

20,000 Leagues Under the Sea - the version i listened too made most of the Americans sound like GWB... which is funny because one of them is Canadian, and the Comic Relief character about how boorish Americans are.

Stuck (Free Audio Book) - it is a neat idea, getting jarred free of time but everybody else isn’t and doesn’t remember. It gets a little heavy for a kids book near the end, edging into YA territory as the character gets older mentally and the people around him age physically.

Phreaks (Free Audio Book) - i knew a lot about Captain Crunch and other phone hackers of the 60′s. There is a subplot of the big radioactive corporation covering up causing cancer to their workers, and the father (voiced by Christian Slater) being in the closet but still homophobic about it.

Silverswift (Free Audio Book) - If you like fairy tales set in modern times, it is worth a look. It is similar to In Calabira in that way. The mom being the nonbeliever and thinking grandma is off her rocker, but the granddaughter knows it in her bones that grandma is telling the truth.

Sleeping Giants - alien mechs from the distant past, once mistaken as the titans and gods form mythology, now being studied and experimented on by the government. This is another “interview style” story telling.

Celtic Mythology: Tales of Gods, Goddesses, and Heroes - there is a lot of names and stories, it is worth prob getting a physical copy of the book to keep things straight and to use as a reference.

How to Defeat a Demon King in Ten Easy Steps - A love letter to The Legend of Zelda’s Ocarina of Time and other RPG games.

Casino Royal: James Bond - the movie was rather faithful, including the part of being tied to a chair. I do wish they kept more of the book’s ending where Bond was ready to retire prior to his secret-spy love interest gets killed.

Aliens: Bug Hunt - a compilation of Alien stores about people landing on various planets and encountering aliens, not always the Xenomorphs we know, but the term “Bug” came synonymous to any dangerous alien lifeforms encountered.

Macbeth: A Novel - retelling the story of Macbeth but in a novel form. If you can’t get past the language of the original play, this would help. It sets it more firmly in historical fiction.

Hannibal: A Novel - I went ahead and re watched the tv show after finishing the book. I’ve seen the movie a dozen times, and i understand why they changed the ending to the movie. The book is the main one that characterizes Hannibal and the show uses a lot of the plot. Hannibal Rising wasn’t really needed because Hannibal (in this book) does think/talk about what happened to his sister and home, and i can see why Harris didn’t want to write that book either. The audiobook is rather poor quality, they talked too fast in places and i don’t really care for their acting...

The Power of Six - I read I am Number 4 several years back and this one popped up on sale so i nabbed it. I like Neil Kaplan, and i think this one is better than the first one and actually gets into the meat of the story.

Cut and Run: A Light-Hearted Dark Comedy - body parts harvesting.... mmmm.

Calypso - non-Fiction, biography of the author. Talks about his family, his life with his partner, and what he does. Much of it is charming and it is read by the author. this was prior to him loosing his marbles about retail workers and becoming a karen.

Our Harlem: Seven Days of Cooking, Music and Soul at the Red Rooster - the history of Harlem and the Harlem Renaissance. I didn’t mind this podcast so much because i was reading The Diviners during the same time.

Malcolm and Me - another biographical book. one of the free books i got during Feb’ Black History Month.

History of Bourbon (Free Audio Book) - Informative about the liqueur industry in America.

Junkyard Cats: Shining Smith Book 1 - post apocalyptic action science fiction novel. the moment that guy showed up i was “that’s your bf.” and it was so... the plot wasn’t hard to figure out, it’s all about the action and setting.

The Moon is a Harsh Mistress - One of the better Heinlein books. The man can’t write romance and he is rather big on casual polygamy and open marriages. An anarchist-revolution book written by someone that is more on the Libertarian side of the aisle. Mycroft (the computer) comes off as rather antiquated, an AI that runs on a closed server, communicating through the telephone lines and printed paper, makes me wonder what Heinlein would’ve done if he was told about the internet and Deep Fake tech. (the book takes place in like 2075, but written in 1966)

Caffeine: How Caffeine Created the Modern World - the production of coffee and it’s prevalence around the world.

The Life and Times of Prince Albert - Exactly what it says on the can. *rimshot*

The Real Sherlock: An Audible Original - a biography of Sir. Arthur Conan Doyle.

The Design of Everyday Things - using psychology to improve the design of systems, products, and the modern business model. It gives proper terminology for several common design features and how to improve on existing structures.

Bottom of the Barrel.

The Pagan World: Ancient Religions before Christianity. I was hoping there would have been something in there about European Religions, there isn’t, and the book was mostly Greek and Roman life styles and how gods are worshiped. It let me know where the word “auger” came from and why it was used in the Licanius Trilogy.

Life Ever After - disjointed at best. a couple that aren’t good for each other spend the next several hundred years in a crappy relationship.

Beyond Strange Lands: An Audible Original - The audio was complete crap on half of the voices. Which is bad because this could’ve been better. It is a Pod Cast Show and the director couldn’t make sure everybody had decent recording equipment and the sound effects often drown out the actors.

Henrietta & Eleanor: A Retelling of Jekyll and Hyde: An Audible Original Drama - They were going for a modern telling, but the language used is archaic. They speak like Dickens characters even though they talk about cellphones and computers.

A Crazy Inheritance: The Ghostsitter book 1 - The concept is there, but it is too nerfed. It was made for the 8-12yo crowd in mind by people that don’t know how to write for children.

Tell Me Lies (Free Audio Book) - It really wants to be smart. Who’s playing who and who is the actual villain of this story? If you want a quick “who done it?” maybe look into it.

Evil Eye (Free on Audible Plus) - told through phone calls between a mother and daughter. The whole genera of evil boyfriends/husbands isn’t really my cup of tea, and the boyfriend’s actor was too fake and the set up to the meat of the story was annoying.

The Half-life of Marie Curie - I didn’t mind learning stuff about Marie Curie... falls squarely in “made for TV lifetime movie” quality though. You should not carry around a vile of uranium where ever you go.

Alone with the Stars - A girl in Florida hears the call for help from Amelia Earhart, but nobody listens to her. Part fiction, part biographical. It would’ve been better as a biography and talking about various conspiracy theories about what happened to her and finding the pieces of the airplane.

Beezer - The son of the Devil learning to become a good person with a found family... however, most of the characters are annoying.

The Year of Magical Thinking (Free Audio Book) - very heavy on the subjects about loss and death.

Complete Garbage.

The Getaway (Free Audio Book) - A man being a POS by stalking and abducting women. It broadcasts just about everything that is going to happen.

Agent 355 (Free Audio Book) - Do you like “American Mythology?” Like the whole “the founders are the greatest people in the world” kind of vibe? I don’t. I also hate the main character for being one of those “i’m smart, because i read books that women aren’t supposed to” girls when she doesn’t really think for herself at all.

#myu reads #books read in 2020 #audiobooks #booklr #Audible #long post

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zukkacore · 4 years ago

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i didn’t know people were being racist shits in their sokka depictions ?? Also why would people portray him as dumb did they even watch the show? ugh, i feel the same about lance from voltron (those two guys rlly remind me so much of each other) but in voltron the show itself treated lance like trash so i can at least see where the confusion comes from. i’ve only seen one season of atla but love sokka with all my heart and have heard he got a gr8 arc ahead of him

Yeah ngl my exposure to it has been thankfully minimal (I’m picky abt which Atla ppl I follow ngl) but I still see & hear abt it on Twitter and shit & here too. Idk ppl treat him purely as flat comic relief which is so dumb bc imo he has the second best arc in the show (like, after zuko) & has some of the most obvious growth? He’s clearly brilliant and necessary to the dynamic of the gaang bc he’s a strategist & an innovator and incredibly resourceful and creative. Sokka’s idea of a “vacation” was to go to the library! I literally have no idea where ppl get these horrible ideas abt him being useless and stupid are, I rly think they’re just buying into their own racist biases. Or they take the most offhand gags and assume that’s his entire personality and ignore any contributions he makes to the gaang. Like, he’s not the best artist, or he forgets Toph is blind sometimes & for some reason this gives ppl cart blanche to act like he’s an idiot.

(Actually I have a theory abt this bc I think ppl just have a lack of understanding or empathy for characters that display adhd traits whether coded or stated canonically, just look at the way everyone is HORRIBLE to Percy Jackson or Leo as an example & mischaracterize both of them as stupid when rly they’re both smart they’re just kinda out-of-sight-out of mind type ppl. Sokka can be selectively forgetful and he just can’t help that! He’s not always the best communicator, oh mood)

I’ve joked abt him being dense before but it’s with the caveat that he’s mostly just a dumbass in the way most teenage boys are dumbasses? Like, i call Zuko a dumbass too but they’re both smart, they’re literally just both teenagers and teenagers have some real brainrot moments. Really It’s nice when Sokka gets to be childish & silly honestly (bc ppl mischaracterize him as all sunshine too which is not the case like he’s cynical and snarky but he also paints rainbows into scenes when there aren’t any!)!He’s a 15 yr old traumatized by imperialism, he deserves moments of playfulness. But ppl take moments of him getting an actual childhood as signs that he’s “immature”.

(People treat Katara in a similar way, honestly they’re probably worse to her bc she’s also a girl & misogyny in fandom is nothing new they just depict her in the flattest way possible like she’s nothing more than a motherly figure.)

Also bring up the show that shall not be named to me omg. Bc I’ll have a chip on my shoulder abt the v-slur forever bc I ADORE Lance McClain (Lance 🤝 me = Latines w inexplicably white last names) but that show treated him like garbage and I am STILL heated abt it, but so did the fans. The show had no idea what to do w him but he was like weirdly important to me for a show that I now hold so much hostility for in my heart of hearts

Ppl just don’t know how to write or sympathize w (bisexual) brown boys & I would say idk why but I think we know the answer. All they do is get reduced to jokes and their intelligence gets diminished. But the think abt Sokka is that he IS a well written character and sadly that’s rare as hel. Ppl wanna fit zvkka into their fav cliche mlm conventions so bad but like they’re both PEOPLE, they’re both interesting people with rich characterization and I think they would have a genuine connection based on common interests & complimentary temperaments. The fact that Sokka and Zuko can both be grumps is actually something I rly like abt the pairing! The fact that they’re both nerds who have an appreciation for the arts! the fact that they have parallels in their arcs as they cope w feeling inferior to their prodigy sisters! And there ARE fans who I know treat the relationship w respect and nuance (lol, fans of color) but we have to get lumped in w ppl who I don’t feel like I any affiliation with & openly critique (& imo zvkka as a ship w a bad reputation isn’t comparable to a case like r*ylo bc even tho I didn’t see any chill r*ylos anyway, I think willfully ignoring Finn/John Boyega’s importance to the sequels trilogy & enabling or outright contribution to his harassment & willingly associating w a fandom like that is causing harm to an real black person irl. Zvkka has it’s problematic implications bc Zuko is a former colonizer but bc they’re fictional characters I think there’s a way it can be handled more ethically than others, but way too many ppl don’t give a shit abt that and just indulge in ya kno, racism)

#dont reblog djdkkdkd /#anon #jan.ask

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agent-cupcake · 5 years ago

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Adding on to the Claude discussion, I feel like he’s not nearly as compelling as Dimitri or Edelgard because 1) Golden Deer’s writing isn’t as good and 2) the Leicester Alliance is kind of ancillary to the war in Fodlan. I found Claude less compelling than the other lords because he doesn’t go through the growth that they do. I haven’t finished BE yet so I don’t have much to say abt Edelgard, but Dimitri has to have his whole world view upended in order to succeed and win the war. (1/2)

(2/2) Dimitri has to change the way he views his purpose in life and change the way he acts in order to succeed against Edelgard, but Claude is never wrong. Claude finds new information about the Church and has his understanding of Fodlan’s history change, but his approach to life and his beliefs never felt like they were challenged the way Dimitri’s was. I want to like Claude as much as I like Dimitri and Edelgard, but compared to them, he‘s too static to be as compelling as his fellow lords.

I’m not sure I agree that Verdant Wind’s writing isn’t as good as I think it might be the most coherent narrative plot the game is able to tell, but Claude’s lack of a character arc is a bit jarring and the Alliance does kind of feel like a support role, cleaning up the mess afterward. It’s strange, because apart of me instinctively feels that Claude is a bit out of place in the game, but then you look at the themes and the things the game is trying to say and he almost seems more cohesive with the Church/Edelgard story than Dimitri does. In a world where Edelgard was the official antagonist, I think Claude and Dimitri would have been more balanced story-wise, representing a different form of opposition to her actions. Seriously, out of any of them, Claude was the only one ever interested in the actual truth that Edelgard and the Church outright covered up (as compared to Dimitri’s equally bad flat out ignorance of the truth). But that doesn’t matter, not really. If anything it’s just more exposition instead of attempting to show anything and, like you said, it doesn’t change anything.

I, unfortunately, agree with you about Claude. I wish I didn’t. He alludes to having a certain moral code and be willing to do whatever it takes to achieve his goals, but you never see that side of him because the game isn’t interested in pushing him to make those calls. Really, the story takes it easy on all of the Lords. I love Dimitri and Edelgard but their own routes baby them just as much. The only difference is that Claude wasn’t allowed to have the internal conflict that gives Dimitri and Edelgard tension and drama to make up for it. Like I said before, I disagree with the idea that you need to be a mentally tortured ball of trauma to make an interesting character... But come on. They expect us to believe that five years of playing a wartime politician didn’t give Claude a new perspective or in any way challenge his bright-eyed ideals of what trying to fight discrimination would actually mean? Intelligent Systems is telling us that he was already fully prepared for what war would mean for him mentally, what being a leader after a lifetime of being an isolated outcast would do to make him grow?

The tragedy of Three Houses is being frustrated as you read between the lines and see hints of what the story and characters might have been only to know that it will never be. That said, I love Claude a whole bunch and I maintain that Verdant Wind is probably the most coherent story-wise. I talk such mad shit about this game considering my entire life spins on its axis

#Anonymous #FE3H spoilers //#FE3H #fire emblem three houses #claude von riegan #i hope this doesn't come off as unduly negative

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ffwriteradvisor · 5 years ago

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Character skill sets

Obviously, you don’t really want a character that brings nothing to the table. On the other hand, a character who can do anything and everything so good that they can compete with deities dedicated to the subject of the day is often too much for the average reader to believe. There’s also a matter of how well the skills mesh together in practice, the amount of variety brought to the table, the difference between a developed skill and a mere talent, the nature of the skills - are they the sort of thing that anyone can develop or are they based on some inherent trait? - and how age and life experience plays into building a character’s ‘resume’.

It’s, as you can tell by the small laundry list I just rattled off, a tricky business.

Good news - there aren’t any hard and fast rules to giving characters skills. There are some guidelines and you’ll often find yourself playing by ear to see if your latest take strikes a sour note or not, but there are only a few ways to really do it wrong and, even then, there’s ways to salvage it.

But let’s focus on the points I listed already.

Let’s Play ‘Pick The Protagonist’ - (The Problem Of The Unique Protagonist Asset)

How many stories have you watched or read where the main character has a special, one-of-a-kind ability that makes them stand out above all the other characters in the story?

The answer is probably ‘a lot’. It can take the form of a one-in-a-million power, a sacred sword that only allows one hand to wield it, a legacy passed down over the ages... there’s a lot to work with here.

There’s nothing wrong with doing that with your protagonist. It’s probably one of the better reasons for dragging a random person into the plot - if you’re the only person who can stop the end of the world because the anti-Doomsday weapon decided that it lives in your hand now, there’s not a lot you can do about it. But there’s also something to be said for a protagonist that doesn’t have a grand destiny giving him a fair shot at victory just by merit of existing.

Plus, like. There’s also logistical issues to deal with. So let’s address those.

Depending on the story or fandom that you’re working on, a unique protagonist asset isn’t feasible. Sometimes because such things don’t exist in-universe (One Piece would be a good example of a series where literally the only thing you need to be a contender is a will to succeed and a boat, though I guess you could consider Conqueror’s Haki or a Devil Fruit ability ‘unique assets’...), but sometimes it’s just because the canon main character of the story you’re writing for already has that asset on lock.

There are ways around the second - you can kill off the original guy and take their place through reincarnation as said-guy, plot erasure of the guy (just flat-out make it so he doesn’t exist, it’ll be fine), or just being a convenient runner-up who happens to meet the bare minimum requirements to be the guy.

You can also shoehorn your OC into position to turn the Chosen Uno into the Chosen Duo, though this path of action doesn’t have the best reputation historically thanks to the influence of the Dread Mary-Sue on fandom culture (I’ll be posting an article about that eventually), or change the story to make room for a large range of potential Chosen - this one specifically can allow for an added plot aspect, because suddenly there’s competition to achieve the final goal and complete the quest for whatever.

And on that subject, let’s jump to our next point!

The Problem With Superman (and how to challenge the man who has everything)

Now, there’s no shortage of characters who, quite simply, are written to be good at everything - sometimes not even just good, but the very best ever. No, I’m not talking specifically about the Dread Mary-Sue, though the archetype associated with that term does often come with such a description. This is a pitfall just about anyone can fall into, irrespective of age, gender, background, or the originality of the work in question, even if the most blatant forms of it seem pretty easy to avoid.

Most writers know better than to make one character good at everything, but you get exceptions fairly regularly. Batman writers, for one, have a tendency to assume that Batman knows everything there is to know and can defeat anyone on his own ‘given enough prep-time’. There’s also the fact that a fair few Superman stories often have to call on Kryptonians or Kryptonite to make the plot complicated enough that the solution of ‘just move really fast and take advantage of invulnerability to punch/move/freeze/melt the problem before bad thing happen’ doesn’t work.

Then you have the more subtle examples. Where a character isn’t good at ‘everything’... just everything relevant to the plot and what we see of the setting. A good way to pick out this is to look at a story and start removing characters. Remove the science guy, the spy, the sidekick... If you can shave the cast down to your Super-suspect without having to change any major or middling-size plot points, twists, and story beats or having to shift the difficulty level of the setting, you probably have a problem.

Obviously, this doesn’t work for every story, especially if they have a very small cast to begin with. There’s also the fact that most stories are built around emotional journey’s instead of ‘use x skill to get to y place at z time’. But a lack of difficulty or danger played completely straight is something of a warning sign if you’re working with a genre that requires that there be some manner of challenge in the story.

So, let’s take a look at some of the more specific issues with power distribution.

Equal Opportunity Asskicking vs. There Can Only One Chosen One In This Town (how common is power in the setting and how does that affect the plot)

Have you ever thought about how many series - video games in particular - have the protagonist solve all the problems they come across, even the ones that seem like the sort of thing any rando could handle? Especially when you have a big organization that could theoretically handle a few of these things without the protagonist being present for everything?

It’s often hand-waved as ‘they’re not strong enough to deal with it’, but why would that make sense? If the setting is so dangerous, why isn’t there more people operating at or above the protagonist’s power level without being a member of the primary cast herd? If there’s such a dangerous colony of animals on this island, why are these fragile citizens still living there? Why is this martial art that’s so powerful and useful so goddamn rare and special despite its utility? How did such a weak person climb so far up in an organization that seems to value the punchinating power of its employees above all else?

It doesn’t make sense.

This is a problem that plagues a lot of series with an emphasis on fighting. The average person becomes an alien creature as the protagonists and antagonists gain more and more power and take down bigger and bigger opponents. The ante keeps going up and the rest of the world stays down where it started, which... well. Doesn’t make sense.

Think about Dragon Ball for a moment. On the Earth of that series, how many people would you say represent any kind of physical threat to the protagonists or the antagonists at any point in the story? I’m not asking over the course of the story if Dragon Ball-era Goku could stand even half a chance against Cooler, but if you took a specific episode from like... oh, I don’t know, the Cell Saga, how many people on the planet at that time would stand a chance of surviving the events of said-episode if they were brought into the blast radius of the plot?

The number is probably in the low tens. And the fact that, even with a lifetime of training in setting, the best chance for a person in that setting to survive that specific scenario would be coming from ‘superior’ alien stock such as the Saiyans.

And Cell isn’t even the top of the danger totem pole in setting.

Going back to our previous example, One Piece is a fairly good example of how to handle this. There are many routes of power in the series - Devil Fruits, Haki, training, inherent species traits, and more are possible in terms of physical strength, but there is also value given to intelligence and the ability to strategize and create unconventional solutions. Even the ‘weakest’ member of the Straw Hat Pirates, Usopp, who has no Devil Fruit, species ability, mutations, or, alterations, and only one form of Haki (fairly recently awakened and not even one of the offensive utility variants), is able to keep up with the rest of the crew by having a variety of weapons and skills he has developed himself. There’s also the fact that people in the setting tend to be fairly well developed to the danger levels of their relative environments, either in terms of physical strength or having strategies to deal with the dangers around them.

It still suffers from the emphasis on combat before most else, which is common in Shonen, but it at least feels fairly balanced compared to some other series that have a similar approach to strength in setting.

Besides power distribution in a setting, there are other things to consider beyond combat applicable skills.

Combo Platters/The Five Basic Food Groups (the importance of variety and moderation)

There are different types of skills that you need to balance when making a character, both in terms of variety and rationing them out in a reasonable manner.

There are career skills (good for making money, but not overly relevant to day-to-day life), utility skills (cooking, cleaning, basic home repair, etc.), recreational skills (art, music, other specific skills that aren’t necessary for day-to-day activities but lack the immediate financial reliability of career skills), interpersonal skills, and combat skills (self-explanatory).

Obviously, different skills have different ‘weights’ in terms of plot impact. A fighting series probably won’t make much of a character’s house painting skills unless it has an impact on their combat skills (which is entirely possible depending on how the writer goes about it), but someone knowing how to use a sword at a high level means that they’ve got a lot of physical capability to quite literally cut through the competition.

If you need a combat skill for a character... well, I already dedicated a post to talking about that specific range of skills. You can also apply their non-combat related skills to their fights in a tertiary sense - a lack of primary offense can lead to unorthodox tactics to bridge the gap.

But other skills have their uses too. It can allow you to make use of your characters outside of a combat context, reveal things about their character that might not be immediately obvious from their appearance - not just their interests, but background as well, though I’ll cover that a little later in more detail -, and bring them into the orbit of other characters naturalistically. You can only have so many Crash Into Hellos before the charm wears off for the audience.

In giving your character skills, you need to balance those skills. Making a character a ‘master of combat’ who can use any weapon under the sun like a master doesn’t work without some kind of supernatural explanation - martial artists tend to specialize. I’m not saying that you can’t have a character with multiple weapons skills - there’s a lot of historical real-world precedence for that, actually, usually in the combination of ‘ranged/close range/mid-range’. But a lot of those multiple weapon sets tend to be in sets that cover the weaknesses of the other weapons - sword, bow, and spear cover different combat ranges and needs, and there are various martial arts that teach their students weapons handling in conjunction with unarmed skills.

A generic ‘swords skill’ is non-functional - there are many types of sword in the world, varied by their size, weight, shape, and intended use in combat. Some swords are intended more for stabbing, others for slashing, and while you have more than a few that can do both, there are some are simple not built to stand up to the stresses of the other style.

They Didn’t Cover This In Kindergarten! (why you need to tailor skill-sets to your character’s life experience and background)

Another thing that can affect the size, nature, and diversity of a character’s skill set is their age, life experience, and background.

You wouldn’t expect a character that comes from nobility to have any concept of how to street fight without some kind of explanation attached. The same rule applies in reverse - you wouldn’t expect a character living in the gutter to know the nuances of fine manners and etiquette of nobility without a good reason. Depending on the period, a person from the second background couldn’t even be expected to know how to read.

That’s not to say you can’t use those things, but you have to have some kind of structure to support those additions. Maybe your noble doesn’t have the spotless background most would expect from one of their station or, in another scenario, someone pulled a Prince and Pauper switch back in the day and then neglected to switch them back. Same with your gutter rat - maybe they’re a fallen noble, maybe someone made a go at pulling a Pygmalion with them before losing interest, or maybe they’re an autodidact (that is to say, self-taught).

The age of a character can also affect the width and breadth of their skill set pool. People don’t expect five year olds to know much about anything - their reading skills are just getting started, their language skills a bit rough around the edges, and their ability to prepare food is generally limited to toast and toast-adjacent goods like sandwiches.

On the other hand, an elderly character, while having plenty of time to collect lots of skills, may not be able to utilize all of them anymore or might have even forgotten enough of them to be counter productive.

My grandmother, over the course of her life, has worked at several jobs that had fuck all to do with each other. She was a carhop at a drive-in, worked at a grocery store, worked at a local medical factory, worked at a guitar factory assembling instruments long enough to have a hand in every part of the process along with possessing the know-how to design a thing to make winding strings (I might be miss-remembering her exact description of the thing) faster and safer (and then not getting paid or credited for it after the company started using it), and drove bus for several years. She also had all the skills of an at-home housewife, a professional upholsterer, unprofessional seamstress, knows how to treat and care for wood furniture, knows how to work with and maintain leather (not how to make it though), was a very good cook until her physical condition no longer allowed her to handle such tasks, was physically capable enough at one point in her life to help with construction on her own home, and was a good enough artist that she was given two separate opportunities to go to college for the subject back in the 50′s.

That’s a lot of stuff. Each career - including housewife, as there’s a lot of work involved in homemaking - might provide for three to five distinct skills, a few of which would be extremely specific to that particular career path.

On the other hand, a lot of these skills haven’t been used for decades, meaning that not only would she be extremely out of practice, her understanding in a certain field might be anywhere from thirty to sixty years out of date. There’s also the fact that her physical condition is very different from what it was back then, meaning that even the skills she remembers how to preform correctly might not be feasible thanks to her own body failing to cooperate.

The Humble Bundle (varied skill-sets that come from specific careers/backgrounds).

As I touched on in the previous section about how to select certain skills for a character based on life experience and backgrounds (admittedly based on variety + how time factors into it, but that’s the point of specific focus sections), we‘re going to take a closer look at ‘skill clusters’.

You don’t have to cluster all of the character’s skills - in fact, I suggest making sure that you don’t do that, unless the character is specifically a bit character who is there to perform a specific function rather than being a long-term fixture in your cast - but there are some that simply are more expedient to cluster and can sometimes boggle the mind if the character sometimes lack some of those vital skills.

Say you have a character who’s a trucker (or, if you’re working with fantasy/sci-fi, the local equivalent of). They’d probably know how to handle a few different kinds of vehicles (in a mundane context, they’d probably be qualified for both commercial driving licenses and the unregistered kind most people have, but possibly also know how to handle loading vehicles), know how to repair their vehicle if it is damaged (this can vary in skill - knowing how to jury-rig a solution to a small inconvenience is very different from resurrecting a dead engine), have a good understanding of navigation, access to a trade-specific tongue (radio jargon, for one, if we’re still sticking with the mundane modern AU), know how to handle long hours of relatively boring work... and that wouldn’t even be the sum total of their skills tied in some way to this particular profession.

Still, it doesn’t read as an unrealistic amount of things for a single person to know how to do, does it?

On the other hand, if I gave you a character who’s... I don’t know, a generic protagonist of no particular employment and said that their list of skills includes navigation, medical knowledge, being an expert chef, trained fighter, classical ballerina, multiple languages, and limited telepathic ability, it reads as a bit much, doesn’t it? Especially when it just comes up out of nowhere without warning or even an allowance for being less than good at those things.

Part of it is that it takes time to learn how to do things, as we covered in the previous section. Having a talent or instinctive understanding for a particular subject can help cut down on that, but that can only excuse a few things - someone who’s a natural born fighter usually can’t turn that natural instinct towards language acquisition or legal understanding. The other part is that everyone knows that most people aren’t good at everything they turn their hand to, so even with a lot of effort, we wouldn’t expect a single person to be good at everything.

That’s why a diversified cast is important, so the needs of the group can be met in a more believable way, though there are also work arounds that can be used to keep the cast smaller or the inability of the group to meet those needs can be used to raise tension in the story. Injuries become a lot more notable when there’s no healer in the group, after all.

Gifts, Loans, and Hard-Earned Pay (the difference between talent, training, and temporary trades)

Now, there are a couple things you could use to ‘explain’ why a character is good at things. Like most of the points I’ve made so far, this is expanding on a few things I mentioned off hand in earlier parts of this article, such as the importance of age and life experience.

Now we’re going to be explaining the mechanics of why a person might be good at certain things. There are a few different approaches to this.

In terms of purely mundane ways, you have talent and training to explain why a person would have a certain level of ability with specific skills. These can’t universally be applied across the board, of course - you’d prefer someone with medical knowledge over someone who says that they have a ‘talent’ for it and there are other fields that require a person have a certain amount of instinctive ability to flourish. Most would agree that it’s important to have both in any given field - for example, art requires both talent (the ability to visualize what you want) and training (to transfer that vision to reality).

When dealing with supernatural settings, there are other routes. Boons from supernatural beings, familial inheritance, memories from a past life, temporary grants of power from special artifacts, and so on.

This can allow for a skill to be acquired quickly while also pushing along the plot in various ways, but there are a number of drawbacks to this one as well - a character who has been granted a supernatural power might lack the practical experience in how to use that power well, the memories of a past life don’t confer the physical conditioning required to actually pull off some of those skills or the world has moved on since those days, rendering those skills out of date and possibly useless, the artifact has a mind of its own and opinions on how it can/will be used, etc.

There are drawbacks to the more mundane routes as well. Training takes time and effort, along with coming with the risk that the character has been trained wrong or in a way that isn’t helpful to their current situation - ex. a medic who’s extremely competent in a hospital setting but is now stuck in a place where they have none of the resources they’re used to, a self-trained martial artist who doesn’t know how to modulate their force well and has a lot of holes in their technique because they never had a trainer to point that sort of thing out.

Talent can lead to a person becoming complacent with the idea that they’re automatically going to be good at a thing forever despite evidence around them to the contrary and make them frustrated whenever they do run into something they don’t quickly understand or make progress with.

On the upside, you can also use these to build off of each other. Training can help refine both talent and control over new gifts, a well-chosen gift can make a well-trained character something breathtaking, and discovering a previously untapped talent can throw a character who’s previously had to struggle for everything in their life a well-deserved bone.

Now, hopefully this covers enough points thoroughly enough to be helpful to everyone. If not, please shoot me a comment and I’ll try to expand on any areas I might have missed.

#characters #skills #talents #training #writing help

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giveamadeuschohisownmovie · 5 years ago

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Terminator: Dark Fate review

Okay, I just got finished watching the movie. Here are my thoughts:

Short review: It’s definitely one of the better post-T2 sequels but it still feels like an unnecessary entry in the series. It gets a letter grade of C / C+.

Long review:

PROS

1) Gabriel Luna as the Rev-9. Easily one of the better villain Terminators in the series, arguably the best. He was absolutely menacing and Luna was able to pull off the machine-like personality without it coming off as cheesy. If I had to pick who among the cast really shined, it’d be Luna.

2) Arnold Schwarzenegger as Carl. Okay, I love the idea of a Terminator finding new purpose and integrating with humanity. That’s the whole point of the series, it’s about machines blending in with mankind. Carl takes that concept and goes in a different direction with it. That said, WHY COULDN’T THIS MOVIE BE ABOUT CARL? I’d honestly love for a whole Terminator movie about what happens to a Terminator after it completed its mission. I’ll just say it now, the Carl subplot was far more interesting than the main storyline.

3) Linda Hamilton as Sarah Connor. Not much to say here, Linda killed it. It was nice to see Sarah as this brooding, aging anti-hero. She reminded me of Hugh Jackman’s performance in Logan. I was actually surprised that the movie didn’t give as much for Linda to do as I thought they would have. She was definitely in more of a supporting role compared to her roles in T1 and T2.

4) Mackenzie Davis as Grace. I mean, I should be more critical of this character since Grace is just Kyle Reese 2.0 (more on this later) but the movie did make Grace a distinct enough character to stand on her own. Plus, I liked that the movie brought back the concept of the human-robot hybrid. True, this was just an excuse to have Grace fight toe-to-toe with the Rev-9 and to introduce a deus ex machina at the end of the movie instead of exploring concepts of humanity and machines/artificial intelligence but still, I liked Grace’s character.

5) Action scenes are fantastic. The action highlight would have to go to Gabriel Luna’s Rev-9 doing battle with the border patrol.

6) This is a minor pro but I love when the Terminator series gives us glimpses of Judgment Day. So although it was short, I did like Grace’s flashback.

CONS

1) The character of Dani Ramos. Now, I just wanna say, I really tried to like her character. But I’m sorry, I cannot. They literally just copy and pasted John Connor’s role in the story to Dani. That’s not creative, that’s lazy and uninspired. It doesn’t help that Dani herself is a flat, two-dimensional character. Credit to Natalia Reyes for giving an excellent performance but how her character was written was crap.

2) Legion. Like the Dani Ramos/John Connor situation, they just copy and pasted Skynet’s role in the story to Legion. Seriously, there’s nothing to really differentiate Skynet from Legion aside from the fact that Legion uses “Rev” for their Terminators. Also, the Rev models are...darker? And they don’t have a full head? Look, if you’re going to replace your main villain faction with this new one, give us something new. Or at least, take the story in a different direction.

3) In fact, just writing about my problems with Dani and Legion leads me to my main problem with Dark Fate. It doesn’t take the series anywhere new, to the point that I’m not sure why this movie even exists. Say what you will about Rise of the Machines, Salvation, and Genisys, at least those movies tried to introduce a new element to the series, or tried approaching the series from a different angle. For Dark Fate, the story is just a copy of Terminators 1 and 2, with the human-robot hybrid subplot from 4 and 5, and the T-1000/T-800 hybrid concept from 3. Don’t even start with the “but the new leader is Dani and the new villain is Legion” argument, you can just switch them out with John Connor and Skynet.

4) Pacing was atrocious. Movie started off fast-paced and intense but didn’t allow the audience to fully take the story in. Then, by the third act, the movie just sorta trudges along. The movie was only 128 minutes long but it felt like I was in the theater for three hours. Somehow, “Avengers: Endgame”, which actually was 3 hours long, didn’t feel as bloated.

5) Because the writing and pacing was off, the movie didn’t really give the characters a chance to just sit and talk. We get a few of these scenes here and there but they don’t stick. Most of the time, the slow-paced scenes are just used to give out exposition. It honestly feels like no one on the Dark Fate creative team watched the first Terminator movie, even though James Cameron is directly involved with this movie.

6) Look, I personally don’t have a problem with killing off John Connor. It’s an interesting idea that could take the series to a different direction. But his death didn’t do anything to the story. All that happened was, we got a new John Connor and a new Skynet. If that’s the case, then what was the point of killing him off in the first place? For shock value? That’s pretty damn cheap.

SIDE NOTE

If the story is going to revolve around protecting Dani, at least take the story in a different direction. Make her distinct from John Connor. For example, let’s say in the original future, she grows up to become a scientist and invents the Legion program as a way of destroying Skynet (the concept of using a virus to battle a virus). The Rev-9 was then sent by Skynet to kill her as she’s just as responsible for Skynet’s downfall. However, due to John and Sarah making sure Skynet doesn’t exist in T2, the future changes to Dani still creating Legion but to profit off of the arms race. Legion becomes sentient and, without Skynet as its enemy, it becomes the new Skynet.

So, with Grace being from the future where Legion is used for good, she believes that Dani is still a savior, unaware that Dani is responsible for the coming apocalypse. Thus we get a role reversal, with the Rev-9′s mission to kill Dani could potentially save humanity while Grace’s mission to keep her alive will result in Judgment Day. Both Grace and the Rev-9 are unaware that their missions will have the opposite effect.

That’s what I mean by change the story up. Don’t just repeat the story of the first three movies.

#terminator dark fate #terminator #the terminator #sarah connor #john connor #rev 9 #carl the terminator #dani ramos #grace #kyle reese #skynet #movie review #film review #dark fate #terminator 6

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safflowerseason · 4 years ago

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an observation around class in the oc to add to the discourse. DJ is one of the most ill-conceived and badly handled plotlines but it's interesting how Marissa - the most progressive of the Newport teens - is embarrassed about the relationship and never was with Ryan (or even Alex later on). The difference being here is someone visibly working class, working a blue collar job. Ryan also came with this Cohen stamp of approval which I think stopped Marissa for ever really seeing a class difference

Thank you so much for sending in your observation, Anon! The issue of class in The OC is really fascinating…the show had so much potential and so many missteps in this area.

It is really to The OC’s detriment that they never addressed the class issues inherent within the show’s premise with any kind of critical focus, because it would have made the show a lot more interesting and more complex than it was. Class constantly present, but the writers never actually dig into the reality that these class forces (intersected with gender, of course) profoundly shape the fates of these characters—class issues motivate their actions, influence their reactions to events and the introduction of other characters. But exploring that force is always deflected in favor of the emotional stakes…which in S1 is mostly fine because the emotional stakes are much more carefully rendered and the ensemble is much more tightly delineated. But in S2 and S3, with the exception of Taylor, nearly all important new characters are middle-to-lower class: DJ, Lindsay, Alex, Trey, Jonny, Volchok (presumably, I barely remember S3, but I know Marissa meets them through Newport Union…). And yet, the show always skates over the surface, never really digging into the issue. For example, part of the reason Ryan and Lindsay like one another is because they aren’t rich kids and they don’t see themselves as having safety nets the way students like Seth and Summer do. The show uses this to establish a parallel between them and then never addresses it again. Why?! That would be so much more interesting than Lindsay turning out to be Ryan’s actual aunt!

Marissa’s hesitance to invite DJ to the Sno-C is, as always with Marissa-related storylines, confusing in execution. I think she is embarrassed about him, and she also thinks that he won’t be interested in her rich-prep-school activities, which is also a class-based assumption. However, the show also implies that she’s made the decision to not invite him to spare his feelings…so it’s just a lot of mixed messaging. For one thing, it’s not like DJ’s covered in dirt and wearing jeans with grass stains… his appearance is really quite polished, even when he’s gardening! He wears nice button-down shirts! It’s not like you would guess he worked in people’s yards if you passed him on the street, nor is he the only gardener for all of Newport Beach…like, at most a few other teens at Harbor might have recognized him. We’re just given so little information, it's hard to make sense of their storyline.

But I do think you are absolutely right that she sees a genuine class difference with DJ in a way she never did with Ryan, and of course his race must surely factor into her understanding of him as well (although the show doesn’t even glance in that direction). It is interesting that Marissa’s tendency to be generous with her time, money, and resources does not seem to be a factor in their relationship…but then again, DJ isn’t framed to the audience as needing anything in particular (unlike Ryan or Trey or even Alex)…he’s just this flat cipher.

As a result of never really facing class head on, the show frequently ends up relying on unexamined and problematic stereotypes on what it means to be poor. For one thing, as you’ve pointed to in your comment, the very premise of the show rests on the assumption that the Cohens take in Ryan because they think he has promise and because he can rise above the destabilizing emotional and physical effects of poverty that have defined his life—he gets their “stamp of approval.” Poverty is ultimately presented as something that an individual can escape by virtue of being a better person, when it’s not. This is why Marissa (and Seth too) never really see Ryan as “poor”, because he displays qualities that demonstrate his suitability for “upper-class” life in a way that other poor people on the show don’t. (putting the rest of this mini-essay under the cut!)

Compare how Ryan is presented compared to his mother and his brother (both the S1 version and the S2 version): they are not especially intelligent, they get involved in relationships with people who are transparently coded to the audience as actively harmful (Dawn’s abusive boyfriend, Jess in S2, whoever got Trey to rob the car), and they don’t have manners. They do not regulate their emotional disruption in a way that is socially acceptable—see Trey knocking over displays in anger when Ryan and Marissa take him shopping, or Dawn wanting to talk about personal issues with Ryan in front of the Cohens. Trey’s whole narrative is basically that he could have gotten his shit together like Ryan and didn’t (primarily manifested through his attempted rape of Marissa). Dawn “surrenders” to the chaos of her life caused by her circumstances and admits to Kirsten that she’s giving up on being a mom as a result.

In contrast, Ryan displays characteristics that signal to the audience that he’s worth the Cohen’s (and our) attention - he’s quiet and private, with a clear sense of decorum, and he is physically fit and obviously attractive (The show uses visual markers to highlight class differences in a very interesting way). Even more significantly, he possesses skills and interests that can be translated into a “real” job, aka, a job that demands a certain form of intelligence that is highly valued on the economic market—Ryan’s high test scores are, like, the second thing we learn about him, and we learn in the second episode that he is interested in architecture and construction. These are broad and problematic stereotypes, absolutely—they are based on (Western) social conceptions of “good” behavior that have been codified by elites over decades and centuries. But they are deeply engrained in Western audiences, and The OC uses them to signal that Ryan is worthy of his “approval stamp” from the Cohens—he’s worthy of being plucked from Chino and transplanted into a dazzling new life filled with opportunities. The show doesn’t hide from how “miraculous” this is, but coupled with how practically every other “poor” person on the show is written, the writing seems to emphasize to the audience that Ryan rose above the “demons of poverty” in a way that Trey or Theresa couldn’t.

#class and the oc #the oc #the oc discourse #the marissa discourse

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softspaceboibrian · 6 years ago

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Journeys End in Lovers Meeting (Chapter 2)

Pairing: Professor!Gwilym Lee x reader

Summary: Reader is a new student at Harvard University and, on her first day, she does something she might regret. Or maybe not.

Warnings: none

Wc: 2700

A/N: okay, so, not as many people as I thought read the first chapter, which is sad since I thought it was good. but yeah, I'll keep posting it anyway and, hopefully, it will gain readers with time

Other chapters: 1 - 3 - 4 - 5

“Gosh, you’re soaking wet… get inside the car” He sounded worried and confused. You didn’t let him beg for you to actually do it. You didn’t know why, but you trusted him enough to get instantly inside his car, even though you had known him for, what? Less than a day? “What happened to you? I thought you were going to go home by bus.”

“Well, the bus didn’t come, I don’t have money for a cab, my flat mate is still working, I don’t know if I left my keys at home or if I lost them. Oh, and it started raining.” You explained without managing to look him in the eyes. You were embarrassed because of all that happened to you in less than ten minutes.

“You can stay at my place till your friend gets home.” His voice was soft, his smile sincere.

“Oh, no. Don’t worry. You can just drop me off at the library or, I don’t know, a café. I really don’t mean to bother you.” You started rumbling on, really not wanting to be a weight for him.

“You are not bothering me. I live alone with my dog, and she loves people. You’re more than welcome, trust me.” He smiled gently, before starting the car. Apparently, you didn’t have much of a say in it. He just decided that you were going home with him and, for some reason, that didn’t bother you, at all. The drive wasn’t long and surely a lot less embarrassing than the walk they had together to get to his office a few hours before. It was filled with funny comments and stories of embarrassing students hitting in him during lesson or trying to kiss him during office hours. After fifteen minutes or so, the car stopped in front of a beautiful townhouse, which reminded you of London.

“Make yourself at home” said the man while letting you in. The house smelled of cinnamon, books, coffee and cranberry. You looked around, noticing that that place looked exactly how you expected the house of an English literature professor to look like: books everywhere, papers full of notes and stains of coffee, tons of used notebooks, numerous bookshelves filled with every kind of book you could ever think of, the desk and the coffee table submerged with papers and, yes, you guessed it, more books. “I’m really sorry for the mess, we were obviously not expecting any visit anytime soon.” He laughed. The way he talked about himself and his dog warmed your heart.

“Don’t worry, my home is a lot worse. I mean, two girls leaving all by themselves, without any parent to remind them to tidy up the room. I think you can imagine how that looks like.” You giggled, putting your bag down and taking off your shoes. Immediately afterward, you felt something touching your leg and, when you turned around, you saw a furry ball sitting right in front of you, with two beautiful blue eyes, and a ball in her mouth.

“Lady, don’t bother our guest” Said the man, getting closer to them, probably to take the dog away. But you got down on your knees, petting the dog before taking the toy from her mouth.

“Lady, that’s a beautiful name” You commented, starting to play with her, throwing the toy and waiting for the dog to bring it back to you.

The man didn’t answer. He just smiled and disappeared in a room, coming out of it a few minutes later in some more comfortable clothes. “You’re still wet, maybe you want to take a shower and change into some warm, clean clothes.” His voice was so gentle it almost gave you shivers.

“Ehm… yes, thank you. If that not a problem with you.” You got up from the floor, leaving Lady alone and walking towards him.

Twenty minutes later you walked into the kitchen wearing warm clothes that were definitely too big for you, your hair had been pulled up in a messy bun, but at least you were no longer soaking wet because of the rain. The kitchen smelled even more of coffee than the living room did, inviting you to get inside and take a seat at the table where the Professor was working. The last thing you wanted to do was to disturb him. But as soon as you sat down, he looked up from the laptop, laying his eyes on you, that soft smile that showed the little wrinkles around his eyes made its way on his face, making you blush for no particular reason. “How are you feeling?”

“Better, thank you.” You smiled, lowering your gaze on the table, while you started fidgeting with your hands.

“Would you like a cup of coffee?”

“I actually prefer tea”

“Black?”

“Yes, please”

“Coming” He winked, going immediately to the stove to prepare you tea. It amazed you how different he looked there, at home, where no one could see him, where he simply was Gwilym, the nice guy next door with an adorable puppy and amazing taste in books. “I’m working on an article.” He said breaking the silence. “I write for an online newspaper. I take care of the literature section. I review new books, I write about recently deceased authors, but this kind of article I’m working on right now is by far my favourite: I have to work on a theme, analyse it through different works, authors, countries, genres.”

“And what is the theme of this article in particular?” You asked, being sincerely curious.

“Don John. You know, the famous Spanish womanizer.” He turned around, arms crossed in front of his chest. “I started by analysing the first drama ever written about him, then I compared it to the Romantic version. Then, I talked about Mozart’s and Byron’s plays and Kierkegaard’s theory of the three phases of life.” He explained with a proud grin on his lips, until he got unexpectedly cut off.

“Did you consider writing about Wilde’s Dorian Gray as modern Don John?” You asked, tilting your head to the side, laying your cheek on the palm of your hand.

He looked at you speechless. “No, I did not…” You had surprised him, positively surprised him.

“Well, you see, they are more alike than one would ever imagine: they both care about appearance more than everything, they like to seduce people – here’s the first difference, Dorian seduces not only women, but also men. Then, for example, look at the characters and the object: Sybil is Doña Ines, Sybil’s brother is Don Gonzalo, the picture is the statue. Easy.” He was amazed by the girl in front of him and her knowledge. “Why modern, you might ask. Well, you see, when the story was first written, it was set in Seville, Spain, one of the most glorious reigns of those times. When Wilde wrote The Picture of Dorian Gray, England was the most powerful country in the world and geographically the centre of the world. Don John used to go out drinking, Dorian is known for using drugs, such as opium.” You kept rambling on for several minutes, stopping only to thank the man for the tea.

When you finished presenting your theory, Gwilym remained silent for a couple more moments, still astonished by your intelligence. “You know Spanish literature too?”

“And Anglo-American, German, Italian, Scandinavian and a little French and Russian.” You replied, right before taking a sip of your no-longer-too-hot tea.

“You will never stop to surprise me, won’t you?”

You giggled, hiding your now rosy cheeks behind the mug, not really knowing what to answer. “You can use my idea, if you want.”

He sat down across from you, setting his mug down on the table right on a small pile of papers. That’s why there's stains pretty much on each paper on his house. “You should write for a blog or a magazine yourself.” His voice was gentle, just as his smile.

“Oh no, writing articles isn’t my thing. I’m more into poetry and novels.” You shook your head, crossing your legs on the chair. “But, I’m serious, use it. If your readers find it interesting, all you need to do is thank me.” You giggled, putting down the mug on the table.

But, at that point, the article was long forgotten, the laptop went on standby mode. “Are you staying over for dinner?”

The next day you woke up at the sound of your alarm going off. You reached for the phone, without finding it. It must have fallen from the nightstand or something, or at least that was what you thought. When you finally managed to open your eyes, the view of a room you had never seen before appeared in front of you, leaving you perplexed. You finally found her phone, which was on the nightstand, charging. A just not your nightstand. It was only when you read Rose’s text messages that it all hit you.

[9:47 pm] Honey, I’m so sorry if I didn’t answer. I was still working. Hope you’re fine.

[9:48 pm] Oh, I see, you’re with Prof Charming.

[10:14 pm] Yes, your keys are home. I’ll leave the spare one under the mat outside the door.

[6:45 am] You’re not home? Are you already out or did you sleep at your teacher house?

[7:01 am] I’m actually a little worried. Text me asap, so I know that you’re okay.

You unlocked you phone and immediately responded Rose’s messages. Yes, you had spent the night there, but you didn’t recall falling asleep in that bed. That was extremely confusing. At that point you got up, taking your phone with her and walking outside of the room, following the scent of black tea and coffee coming from the kitchen, finally finding the tall man, who was standing in front of the stove, waiting for the coffee to be ready, printed papers in his hands. You just walked in, looking at him and greeting him, waiting for him to realize you were actually there. And when he finally raised his eyes from the papers to meet your gaze, a soft smile formed on his lips. “Good morning.” His voice was still a little raspy, he had probably just woke up himself. “Did you sleep well? I made you tea, and here you have toasts with jam or butter, granola, cookies, fruit. Take whatever you want.”

You sat down at the table, still looking at him, hoping he would say something that could remind you how you ended up waking up in his bed. Like, did you drink so much that now you couldn’t even remember doing it? Did you have sex? What happened?!

“Last night you were watching TV and you fell asleep on the couch” He said, as if he could read your mind. “So I picked you up, took you to my room and let you sleep in my bed, while I slept on the couch instead.”

You looked at him in silence for a second, waiting to finish chewing the cookie you had started to eat. “You didn’t have to. You could have woken me up and driven me home, or even just let me sleep on the couch.”

“That’s okay, don’t worry.” He smiled in that gentle way, like he always did, that kind of smile that reassures you, makes you feel comfortable. “Do you need me to drive you to your place so that you can change before going to University?”

“Yes, but you could just drop me off there and then I could take the bus, you don’t need to wait for me.”

“I insist.” His voice was soft, soothing, in a way. He had only known you for less than a day and he was already so caring and thoughtful. And the was weird for you because never in your experience someone did that just because they wanted to. Back in high school, people always wanted something in exchange. They treated you kindly and then they wanted you to do their homework; they invited you to parties, and then they wanted you to vote for them; they invited you over to their place to study together, and then they wanted to have sex. “Come on, I’m just trying to be nice. After all, we’re going to work together now.”

You didn’t let him go on for a lot more. You trusted him, even though you weren’t sure why. In his eyes you see that something that ha led you to accept his ride the day before. You trusted him, and that was the reason why you eventually gave in. And there you were, twenty minutes later, in front of your apartment, finally opening the door and letting the man in. “I’m really sorry for the mess.” You giggled, immediately running towards your flatmate’s room to close the door – it looked like a bomb had exploded inside that room, there were clothes all over the floor, open books on the bed and shoes on the desk, nothing was where it should have been. Luckily, the rest of the house wasn’t that bad, still a mess, but it could have definitely been worse. The living room wasn’t that big, the couch took up most of the space, all of her books were still inside those big cardboard boxes, only a couple of notebooks were lying on the coffee table with some other papers, most of them covered in tea and mug stains. Your room, on the other hand, had a reason for it to be a mess: it was still a work in progress, there were still boxes out, you hadn’t put all the books on the shelves nor all the clothes inside the closet, but that was just because you would usually have something else to do in the afternoon or in your spare time instead of tidying up.

“You can wait here, on the couch” You smiled, right before vanishing inside your bathroom. It didn’t take you long and fifteen minutes later you had showered and were now wearing some dark wash mom jeans, a loose navy blue turtleneck with white stripes, a cream coloured long cardigan and white sneakers. As simple as it could be. You put on some lip balm and walked out of the bathroom, picking up your bag and going back to the living room. There you immediately met those blue eyes that almost sent shivers down your spine, before going back to what they were looking at before. There was something about that man, something that you couldn’t yet understand but that still made you want to spend time with him as if he was a simple friend.

“Your poems are breath-taking. I didn’t expect you to be this good.” He commented, his eyes still on an open notebook. “I mean, I imagined you were probably really good, but I didn’t think you were this good.” When you finally realised what he was holding in his hands, you let you bag fall to ground with a big thud, before running towards him, taking the notebook from his hands and closing it immediately. He looked puzzled, why should someone this good hide her talent? “I’m really sorry, I found it there, on the coffee table. It was open, and I peeked. It’s impressive what you can do.”

“I never show my poems to anyone.” You whispered, hiding the notebook behind your back.

“I don’t get it? Why not share it with the word? Those are wonderful.” His voice was soft, sincere, his eyes tried to meet yours, which were now looking at your shoes.

“I don’t… I don’t think people would actually like them.”

He looked at you in silence for a while, before crossing his arms in front of his chest. “The Romantics, am I right? Those are the poets you look up to. Keats is probably your favourite.”

“Yes”

“Well, that explains a lot.” And you knew exactly what he meant by that, so you just kept your eyes low, trying to hide the peachy colour of your cheeks. “We should get going.” Said the man after taking a quick glance at his watch.

#gwilym lee #professor gwilym lee #gwilym lee x reader #gwilym lee x you #professor!gwilym lee #journeys end in lovers meeting #jeilm #softspaceboibrian writings

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go-diane-winchester · 6 years ago

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How come Misha gets away with causing so much damage to this show?

Thanks for the conundrum @staycejo1:

That is a good question to ask. How does Misha get away with so much? The reason is simple. Misha is smart. Compared to Jared who is merely scholarly or book smart, and Jensen who is intelligent with regards to cinema and various arts [he hit the nail on the head with wincest, year ago], Misha is shrewd. I don't like the man, but I have to admit, he is very smart. He is using something I learned about whilst studying Public Relations: networking. Networking requires skill. You need to know how to talk to people and you need to know which people to talk to. If you network properly, you reap major benefits. There are a few cliques that Misha might be networking with: SPN production personnel, SPN alumni and cast members, Creation Entertainment, media personnel and selected fans.

SPN Personnel and affiliates

I elaborated on these people in other posts.

Bob Singer:

Bob Singer has been a co-showrunner for almost all the time that SPN has been on air. He handles production while the other co-showrunner handles the story. And yet, this man never gives the impression that he is a showrunner. When Sera Gamble killed off Castiel, rumor has it, that Singer fought to bring the character back.

Eugenie Ross-Lemming and Brad Buckner

She is Bob's wife and was brought on board with her writing partner, Brad Buckner. Since season 7, she has enjoyed many promotions. Now she is a co-executive producer on the show. Nice to work for your husband, huh. She and Brad butchered Sam's character until recently. I think Jared told them off. They were demonizing Sam to elevate Castiel's status. Currently, they are not writing destiel. They are not stupid. They are writing enough material to keep Misha on the show.

Robert Berens

Robert or Bobo Berens started off as a writer and moved up to co-executive producer. He allows the leads to be abused by heller fans, that he follows online. Remember, he is the one following problematic fans and not the other way around. Does that even make sense?

What personal stake do they have in keeping Misha relevant? Well, they all take their cue from Bob, and he is a close friend of Misha's. If Bob has a stake in Random Acts or Gish, then it might explain why he isn't willing to let Misha go. But I don't have that information just yet.

Stands

Misha has shares in Stands. For awhile now, they have been pushing destiel related merch. When they start to regret it, you will see a change. This is because hellers are already complaining about getting duped by Misha regarding the merchandise. We will just have to wait and see.

SPN alumni, cast members and affiliates

I spoke about these people before so I will gloss over them here.

Kim Rhodes and Brianna Buckmaster

They needed Misha for Wayward Daughters. They have affiliation with a bunch of fans who are involved in the Travis Aaron Wade scandal.

Osric Chau and Orlando Jones

I don't think Osric had any personal stake in elevating destiel. He really loved SPN and the fanbase. He was probably trolling destiel for fun like Orlando Jones does. The minute both men realized how problematic the hellers are, they slowly backed off. I don't think Orlando Jones has spoken about destiel in a while. He still is a friend with Misha as is Osric. I don't think these actors have any ill will. So far they just seem like a couple of trolls. Misha's networking failed with Destiel but succeeded professionally because these two men may be able to ''hook him up'' with other projects.

Creation Entertainment

Someone once pointed out that Adam, the CEO of Creation Entertainment, is in fact, Misha's cousin. I don't have any sources of that. However, for awhile CE was pushing a lot of YANA and destiel related things on their con circuit. The reason is because they have financial stakes in Misha's charities and thought that pushing destiel might make his fans shell out more money. The cockles photo ops probably gave them the erroneously impression that Misha himself, is profitable. Recently, however, this happened.

https://jolygram.com/profile/creationent/photo/1842990860569353024_552397215

They added a caption: Name a better duo. We'll wait. So was Cockles not better anymore? Misha is not profitable, so all of a sudden, CE loves the leads. I think they realized that when Misha's entire con fails but one of Jared's sweaty hoodies which he wore all day, fetches $8000 during an auction, that maybe they were betting on the race horse that dances rather than runs to the finish line.

Their personal stake was money which is why they dropped Misha and destiel related endeavors like a hot potato. Misha's networking failed here. Well, not completely. I heard there might be a new Misha con. I think they want to be sure that he is a failure before letting go completely.

Media Personnel

There are many kinds of mediums that are available to Hollywood. Some are more important than others. There are small trendy little pointless media outlets, usually social media outlets, like Hypable, ONTD and Geekiary. There are bigger more credible ones, also known as mass media outlets, like E! Entertainment. The heads pick up on news coming from the mass media. They don't bother with small outlets, and that is where Misha does his networking. He has people working within these outlets who are not legitimate reporters. They are merely gossipers and shippers in disguise. These outlets are invited to meets to disseminate information and that is where Misha connected with these viruses. Some of these pseudo-journalists have since been demoted, reprimanded or fired for misinformation.

What is their personal stake? Self-importance. Hellers and their sock accounts keep these peoples social media handles active.

Selected fans

These are fans that are overly invested in either Castiel or destiel. Most of them are nobodies but because of their association with Misha, they are recognizable figures. These are meta writers and influencers within the fandom. Their names are:

Lua James, with a twitter handle, poptivist. Real name: Theresa Cotter

Influencer who regularly attacks Jared on SM, and fled California after Travis's house was vandalized. Close friend of Kim Rhodes. Destiel shipper. Claimed to be a Journalist. Not sure about that. Followed by Kim, Matt Cohen, Robert Berens and Briana on SM.

Monica Gleberman

Very big shot. Lua's bosom buddy and Swagger magazine journalist or editor. She is a minion who lied that she had sex with Jensen and Jared. Commits fraud.

Emily Cleghorn

Influencer. Not sure if she is a meta writer. Runs the SPN anti bullying twitter handle and Exorcising Emily blog on Tumblr. J2 kicked her out of con once, because she made them uncomfortable with a tweet. She got into a twitter fight with William Shatner over destiel.

Reba Snodgrass

Runs small cons like Wayward con. Proven liar. Has to know Misha personally in order to run the cons.

Janelle Clay Davis

Influencer, also known as intelligentshipper on Tumblr and GhostofBobby on Twitter. Claims to be haunted by the YED. Pushes destiel like a religion. Cyber stalks people. Posted a selfie where she is posing with a gun recently.

Sara Burnhope

Knows Misha and his parents personally. Random acts volunteer as well as Gish participant. Might have worked with YANA although I am not sure about that one. Attacks people on his behalf on social media. Cyber bully. From the UK. Might be an influencer. Not sure if she writes meta.

Melanie Adeline

Regular con-goer and influencer. She has fans of her own. She belittles Jared to his face. Destiel shipper. Knows Misha and Briana personally.

These influencers and meta writers are important because without them and their overreaching meta, Destiel will fall flat. Misha accidentally tagged their meta once in a tweet. Or so he claimed. What is their stake, other than canon destiel? Self importance. These randos are suddenly important people, because Misha put them in that position. They are the ones who encourage people to vote for Misha for awards, and harass the execs for destiel. They are the ones who attacked J2 for the Nolacon joke and influenced others to follow suit. The above women were implicated in the Travis Aaron Wade scandal. There may be more, but these are the worst of the worst. As far as I know anyway.

So to answer the question, why does he get away with this problematic system that he has put in place? Notice, that he is affiliated with small fries. Misha, like I mentioned before, is a nobody. People are not linking the irritation they are dealing with, to Misha. Misha's criticism of SPN's misogyny was reported in those petty small media outlets where his hellers are working. And it was written in a such way that he is portrayed as a good guy. If E! spoke about it, Misha would have been in trouble because Pedowitz and gang pay attention to E! not Hypable. That's why they don't fire him. They don't know what he has done because he has spn people in his back pocket covering for him.

Even J2 don't have time to look through their own panels. They are certainly not paying attention to Misha's panels. So obviously Jensen doesn't know about this.

If Jensen was aware of this, a fistfight would have broken out of the set. Jensen would have boxed Misha's ear. Because this is sick. This was apparently at one of the Chicons. I don't know which one, because I can't stomach looking at that over bloated loudmouth. This is proof that the leads have no time to spare looking at this man's panels. So he is confident enough to say these things knowing full well, that the lead are too busy to care about him. He's behavior goes unchecked, and his continued presence on the show ensures that Gish and Random acts are continually funded. He needs Castiel to keep these two machines running.

Excuse the typos.

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reviewmedia · 5 years ago

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I, Robot

Disclaimer this review contains spoilers for I, Robot (2004).

“What does this action signify ;)”

Bio

I, Robot is a sci-fi thriller, released in 2004. Set in 2035 the story follows Del Spooner, a detective with a chip on his shoulder as he investigates the death of scientist and founder of USR, Alfred Lanning.

Acting

Will Smith (who plays Del Spooner) clearly gave this his all and it’s one of his better performances. It doesn’t matter if he’s delivering one liners (which there are plenty) or giving an emotional performance because Smith hits the right notes. Similar can be said for his co-star Alan Tudyk (who played Sonny). Unfortunately, Bridget Moynaha (who played Susan Calvin) performance fell a bit flat but does improve through the course of the film. While I didn’t have an issue with any of the other actors’ performances, I was disappointed with the lack of time spent with these characters. This became frustrating as I was curious to get to know these characters but the film never got further than outlining their relationship with the protagonist and demonstrating how Spooner was alone in his distrust of robots.

Writing

For the most part I didn’t have an issue with the writing. The characters all had clear opinions and felt unique. Smith is given a lot of jokes to work with and I found these to be genuinely funny. That being said the writing wasn’t perfect. As mentioned above the side characters were severely underdeveloped and to a lesser extent so were the lead roles. An example is that Lanning (portrayed by James Cromwell) hints that his relationship with Spooner isn’t normal, yet we never find out why. We know he worked on Spooner’s prosthetic arm but it felt as if there was more history between them that wasn’t explored. There were also some inconsistencies such as Spooner being afraid of heights near the end of the movie, but leaning over the edge where Lanning had been killed at the beginning of the movie. The later scene would have been more consistent and tense if Spooner had displayed how uncomfortable he was in the beginning of the film when he was in Lanning’s office.

Story

At its heart I, Robot is a crime story in a futuristic setting and for the most part it’s done well. I liked that Sonny was originally portrayed as an antagonist. I thought it was convincing due to his introduction and the chase that followed. I also really enjoyed how the story was told, seeing Spooner investigate Lanning’s death never felt like a chore. This was of course due to how fast pace it was, which was at times to its detriment. Certain elements could have been explored more. But the positive was that the film never stagnated and remained engaging. The villain’s motive was nothing new or ground breaking. I personally liked that V.I.K.I’s goal wasn’t to end mankind, but was a misguided attempting to protect humanity as a collective. My biggest complaint in regards to the story was the lack of themes explored and the lost potential. For example, V.I.K.I (portrayed by Fiona Hogan) claimed that humanity was destructive and was set on its own extinction. Yet we see no evidence of this in the film, in fact the lack of world building is such a shame because the movie would have really benefited from it. We see many examples of how society trusts robots and I really do like how they’re implemented into the world. But we never go beyond that, leaving the world feeling two dimensional. The other issue I had was Lanning’s overall plan relying too much on chance. He essentially kills himself with the assistance of Sonny and expects Spooner to figure everything out. I also didn’t understand why he had to die as at the time of death the NS-5’s weren’t connected to V.I.K.I. Meaning there wasn’t much threat of being attacked. The film tries to suggest no one would believe him, but even if that was the case (which I don’t know why they wouldn’t as he’s a well-respected expert in that field) he could have just gone rogue and killed V.I.K.I himself, sure he’d be sued and lost lots of money but he’d be alive. The final issue I had with the story was the lack of consequence, by the end of the movie the only characters to have died (excluding Lanning) were the villain (V.I.K.I) and the antagonist who we had been lead to root against until the climax of the film.

Cinematography

In regards to cinematography I, Robot takes inspiration from The Matrix. This is defiantly one of the films strengths. Seeing Smith wield a giant futuristic machine gun, tearing apart robots. While the camera moves around the interior of a sky scrapper, showing not just how outnumbered the hero is but also how easy it would be to fall was disorientating in the best kind of way. Fortunately, there are many moments like this that do a really good job at creating tension and setting the right mood. There are some truly epic action sequences that kept me on the edge of my seat. The director (Alex Proyas) proves he’s capable at pulling off more than action scenes. With flashbacks, tense chases and even a montage, all of which I’m happy to say still hold up.

Visuals

The visuals for I, Robot are a real mix, the NS-5’s and other robots have aged surprisingly well. Obviously if the movie was released today, I’d expect them to look better than they did, but fifteen years later I’m defiantly not complaining about their appearance and similar can be said about the vehicles. This being said, there is a very heavy reliance on CGI and it shows. Not only does some of the CGI not hold up (exterior of USR building) but the arguably over reliance meant that places that weren’t CGI looked out of place as these scenes didn’t match some of the other scenes and as a viewer this constant switch between CGI and none CGI became jarring. Costumes like the soldiers and S.W.A.T police also looked really cheap and un-tough, resembling something closer to a laser tag outfit.

Audio

Sound design was really good. Marco Beltrami has added so much emotional depth with his music, it doesn’t overstay its welcome and is one of the highlights of the film as it’s cleverly used to create tension. The guns and cars sound believable, with no real negatives to speak of. The audio was clear and impactful with certain moments being very satisfying to hear, such as Sonny using a wire to ping himself to save Calvin.

Misc

I had an issue with how Calvin was treated. When Spooner is first introduced to her, he laughs at her and doesn’t take her seriously. While you could interpret this as Spooner being arrogant and it being an area that we’ll see him grow away from, I wasn’t convinced. This is because near the end of the movie Farber (portrayed by Shia LaBeouf) openly sexualise Calvin in front of her and the only part that Spooner objects to is the use of the word “shit”. This to me comes off as the leading female role being objectified and really didn’t need to be included, it makes for uncomfortable viewing and took away from the experience.

While I, Robot is the name, product placement is the game. I personally didn’t mind this too much and found it humorous. However, the Audi logo sticking out from Spooner’s headrest just seems kind of uncomfortable, but that’s just my opinion.

Verdict

To conclude I rate this film 4/10. I, Robot is a very enjoyable film that’s funny, action packed and is well paced. I had a blast watching this and there really is a lot of fun to have with this film. However, I was really disappointed in the character development and lack of world building and as enjoyable as this movie is, it doesn’t take full advantage of its setting or explore the themes in a meaningful enough way. The reason I, Robot isn’t spoken about as much as other films from 2004 or earlier isn’t because the visuals don’t 100% hold up, it’s because it doesn’t make you think. Sci-fi is a genre where you can explore the impossible, get lost in complex socio-political structures that as alien as they are reflect our own reality. And go beyond the questions of what a soul is. But unfortunately, I, Robot doesn’t do that, instead the film plays it safe with underdeveloped character in a 2D world. The movie has other issues too like some mild sexism (compared to other movies), plot holes, some pretty awful costume designs and CGI, an in-consequential ending and some minor issues like the occasional bit of inconsistent dialog or some bad acting.

Recommendation

Would I recommend this film? That depends what you’re interested in. If you want a fast pace action movie in a sci-fi setting, then yeah you won’t be disappointed. But if you yearn for a film that makes you question if humanity is going too far creating artificial intelligent and whether or not robots/AI should be entitled to the same rights humans are or other similar question. Then I’m afraid no, I cannot recommend this.

PUNISHMENT: Converse all stars vintage 2004

#film #review #I robot #movie #movie review #sci-fi

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