#this has been a book rant

[qqueenofhades]

What is "romantasy" and why does it plague me every single time I open up any bookshop website anywhere. WHY.

[nokkiart]

As a long time httyd fan who has been heavily involved in the fandom since the first movie and who has spent years working in the animation industry, I’d like to share my thoughts on the new httyd movie. Keep in mind, this is just my personal opinion and it's completely fine if you disagree with me. I just want to say a little something about all this that really bothers me.

The core reason that Dreamworks and Universal made this film is that it’s a quick and easy cash grab for them. Thats it. They don’t care about telling a good story or making a “better” version of the original movie for fans or even having an accurate portrayal of the characters/story. It’s purely about money. They know that fans of the original film will go see this movie, whether it’s good or bad. And those guaranteed ticket sales are all that matter to the studios. And with Universal, it has the added bonus of being a cheap promotional and merchandising opportunity for the new HTTYD land in Orlando that opens around the same time that the film is premiering in theaters.

And to help the studios make even more money out of this, they are using non-unionized VFX companies around the world to make this film, so that they can get cheaper labor and push the artists to do more that would be against American union standards. The same thing has probably happened with the costuming and fabrication for the filming, hence why the costumes look un-weathered and the sets look cheap. They don’t want to pay for the extra time and effort that it would take to make the practical bits of the production look good.

On top of all this, Dreamworks has already announced that they’re shutting down all their in-house animation projects in favor of using AI and outsourcing projects to cheaper international non-union studios.

With all this in mind, I just can’t support this film and I will not be seeing it in theaters. And I hope that others will do the same.

The only way to stop all these horrible “live action” remakes (which are actually just realistically animated remakes) is to not buy tickets to see them. Money is all that matters to these studios, and if they don’t make any money off of it, then they will stop and try something different. Maybe they'll even go back to focusing on original stories!

That’s the power that we hold as audiences. Our wallets help drive the decisions that the executives make. So support unique storytelling and gorgeous cinematography in movies. Support indie films. Support animators as they're fighting for fair pay and better contracts. But don't support a mediocre shot-for-shot remake riding on the coattails of an already successful film.

And I just want to wrap all this up by saying I have absolutely no hate towards anyone that has worked on the new film. Toothless looks incredible and I know the artists and creatives involved in this project did the best they could with what they were given.

But I also know that those same artists have so many more brilliant ideas that they would’ve loved to be given the creative freedom to do. I just wish hollywood would be willing to take a chance and let them do it.

[anghraine]

It's interesting (if often frustrating) to see the renewed Orc Discourse after the last few episodes of ROP. I've seen arguments that orcs have to be personifications of evil rather than people as such or else the ethics of our heroes' approach to them becomes much more fraught. Tolkien's work, as written, seems an odd choice to me for not wrangling with difficult questions, and of course, more diehard fans are going to immediately bring up Shagrat and Gorbag.

If you haven't read LOTR recently, Shagrat and Gorbag are two orcs who briefly have a conversation about how they're being screwed over by Sauron but have no other real options, about their opinions of mistakes that have been made, that they think Sauron himself has made one, but it's not safe to discuss because Sauron has spies in their own ranks. They reminisce about better times when they had more freedom and fantasize about a future when they can go elsewhere and set up a small-scale banditry operation rather than being involved in this huge-scale war. Eventually, however, they end up turning on each other.

Basically any time that someone brings up the "humanity" of this conversation, someone else will point out that they're still bad people. They're not at all guilty about what they're part of. They just resent the dangers to themselves, the pressure from above, failures of competence, the surveillance they're under, and their lack of realistic alternative options. The dream of another life mentioned in the conversation is still one of preying on innocent people, just on a much smaller and more immediate scale, etc.

I think this misses the reason it keeps getting brought up, though. The point is not that Shagrat and Gorbag are good people. The point is that they are people.

There's something very normal and recognizable about their resentment of their superiors, their fears of reprisal and betrayal that ultimately are realized, their dislike of this kind of industrial war machine that erases their individual work and contributions, the tinge of wistfulness in their hope of escape into a different kind of life. Their dialect is deliberately "common"—and there's a lot more to say about that and the fact that it's another commoner, Sam, who outwits them—but one of the main effects is to make them sound familiar and ordinary. And it's interesting that one of the points they specifically raise is that they're not going to get better treatment from "the good guys" so they can't defect, either.

This is self-interested, yes, but it's not the self-interest of some mystical being or spirit or whatnot, but of people.

Tolkien's later remarks tend to back this up. He said that female orcs do exist, but are rarely seen in the story because the characters only interact with the all-male warrior class of orcs. Whatever female orcs "do," it isn't going to war. Maybe they do a lot of the agricultural work that is apparently happening in distant parts of Mordor, maybe they are chiefly responsible for young orcs, maybe both and/or something else, we don't know. But we know they're out there and we know that they reproduce sexually and we know that they're not part of the orcish warrior class.

Regardless of all the problems with this, the idea that orcs have a gender-restricted warrior class at all and we're just not seeing any of their other classes because of where the story is set doesn't sound like automatons of evil. It sounds like an actual culture of people that we only see along the fringes.

And this whole matter of "but if they're people, we have to think about ethics, so they can't be people" is a weird circular argument that cannot account for what's in LOTR or for much of what Tolkien said afterwards. Yes, he struggled with The Problem of Orcs and how to reconcile it with his world building and his ethical system, but "maybe they're not people" is ultimately not a workable solution as far as LOTR goes and can't even account for much of the later evolution of his ideas, including explicit statements in his letters.

And in the end, the real response that comes to mind to that circular argument is "maybe you should think about ethics more."

[ricky-mortis]

Have some Ted doodles- as a treat.

[bxriles]

I’m sure that this is not a hot take and that a lot of people feel the same way but like…

The question “does it have spice?!🌶️🔥” makes me want to jump off a cliff. I’m out here looking for gothic book recommendations on Reddit, tumblr, and goodreads and WHY is this the first question so many people ask 😭

Look, I love erotica as much as the next person but come on. There have got to be other things that matter when recommending books or choosing to pick one up, my GOD.

[littlecrow4]

Ok so not only have I just been SEVERELY COCKBLOCKED but I have also been SEVERELY ATTACKED EMOTIONALLY!!!

To my fellow FiddleStan enjoyers this is the fic that I have just suffered through with a plot twist so big it’ll make your grandmas head spin off! 10/10 it’s fucking amazing and I’m dropping the title to the ones who have not been blessed by this fic yet

Title: Penumbra

Author: Apuzzlingprince

Check it out it’s amazing! Had me droppin my jaw

[herbofgraceandpeace]

Re: Flavian’s outburst to Christopher about how he (Christopher) has been an unfeeling, stuck-up brat—Flavian’s not exactly right or wrong here. I think Jones is demonstrating that Christopher is so caught up in his (very real) powerlessness to control his situation, he doesn’t realize that he DOES have the power to really and truly hurt others. He’s so caught up in his own misery that he (selfishly) forgets that others might be miserable too.

This is part of growing up! Christopher hasn’t really been taught empathy, and he hasn’t really had it modeled for him either, outside of Tacroy caring for him, but that doesn’t excuse his behavior. He’s so focused on how the people at the castle aren’t caring for his conscious wants that he entirely ignores the ways they ARE intentionally and deliberately attempting to care for him (I think at least a little classism privilege is at play in him ignoring the maids—he’s only ever known his parents’ mistreatment of servants, but presumably he should have been paying attention to how the castle folk treat the maids differently)

However, I think the adults at Chrestomanci Castle are guilty of the exact same kind of blindness and self-focus as Christopher. They HAVEN’T been meeting his needs emotionally (which has led to their inability to physically protect him either), and whatever their intentions throughout his stay, they did not try to get to know or understand Christopher as a person at his arrival, and they’re paying for that first impression. He’s a CHILD. a child from an unloving and neglectful home, who’s just been ripped away from his friends and his home at school, a child’s just DIED for the second time, and he’s a child with hopes and dreams and self-will, all of which have just been casually, thoughtlessly stripped from him. The castle folk are so focused on their OWN need of a successor for Gabriel that they treat Christopher as an object to be formed to meet their needs instead of a person with needs of his own. They’re so focused on their search for the Wraith and the hell he’s wreaking on others that they miss the very real hell they’re imposing on Christopher. All of their attempts at care are based solely on their perception of what he SHOULD need and want because! They never! Ask him! What he needs or wants!!!!!

What’s that post about how some people act like “if you don’t give me the respect I think I deserve as an authority figure, I won’t give you the respect you deserve as a person”? I think that’s basically how the otherwise decent and well-meaning adults of Chrestomanci Castle treat little Christopher Chant. Confident in their own virtue, they presume that of course this boy who doesn’t know them will trust them immediately. Confident in their work for the greater good, they are indifferent to the suffering of the individual before them. It’s clear that they care about him and his well-being, but without treating him like a real person at all, and it’s never more obvious than in the scene where Gabriel takes his spare life away. They are taking tangible, drastic steps to protect him because they are very worried on his behalf, but throughout the whole process they have no real knowledge of the horror and terror he is experiencing because they are too busy making choices for him to ask him why he’s making the choices he does (and again, Christopher doesn’t TRUST them. But they never empathize with him enough to realize that.) Another example is how Miss Rosalie and the others keep chasing Throgmorton away from Christopher when he’s laid up. They’re so focused on how uncomfortable Throgmorton makes them feel that they don’t care at all they’re isolating Christopher and depriving him of his only companionship.

But none of their bad conduct exonerates Christopher of Flavian’s charges of being rude and unfeeling towards them, even though Flavian is STILL presuming to know and understand Christopher’s motivations and choices despite being completely in the dark about them. The very personhood Christopher wants the others to acknowledge in him is the reason that Christopher is responsible for his own actions towards the castle folk.

And that’s the tea on human responsibility in The Lives of Christopher Chant. (thanks for coming to my ted talk)

[burntblueberrywaffles]

Since some of y’all still get it wrong, perhaps you need to hear it from the queen herself:

Like, if you’re still making tbosas content these days, how have you not learned her name MONTHS after the movie release 😭😭

[dlldior]

i cannot begin to tell you guys how much i hate this charles grey fucker and his ugly face and ugly hair someone fire his barber. why is he always here. can he fuck off for once with his annoying ass chipmunk voice and his annoying ass chipmunk face.

[ganondoodle]

so ... that stupid totk masterworks book has been out for a while hasnt it?

does anyone know if its possible to find a version somewhere you dont have to pay for? (especially the german version) so i can avoid that at all costs of course, i definitely totally plan to spend money on it

[clevercorvidae]

ok i will say one thing and thats that this overwhelming urge ppl are having to blame every other character's issues on Ford and Ford Alone not only harms said characters' arcs and removes their agency (which, the level of agency that characters in gravity falls have is part of what makes the character writing so damn good, but i digress) but it also makes it very very easy to ignore the one character who genuinely did pull at the strings of fate with malicious, life ruining intent:

Bill Cipher.

yknow, the guy at the center of the new book? the one who's entire story demonstrates over and over how intentionally manipulative he is? how little faith he has in other people? how massive and all encompassing his ego is?

bill is a character who is absolutely filled to the brim with malice and hatred. he has so many lines of dialogue that are sickeningly cruel and he does it on purpose to hurt people. the shit he says to ford abt how no one will miss him if he dies, the insults he puts in code abt mcgucket, the things he says to pacifica when she refuses to shake his hand, the entire "how he beat me" rant he goes on about stan on the website, its just so blatantly cruel and hateful.

and nobody fuckin talks about it. and i understand that his backstory is very sad and interesting and i dont think it should be ignored but it feels like a lot of people are trying very hard to ignore the most interesting and prominent aspect of his character: his anger and hatred.

and so, instead ppl are projecting some of that blame more to ford when it really doesn't make much sense and misrepresents both of their characters. and the rest of the characters for that matter

anyway rant over. good night

[they-didnt-last]

anyone interested in talking about the iconic 2000's middle-grade-bordering-on-ya book series gallagher girls??

[miraculouslbcnreactions]

I feel like this is a horrible thing to say, but when I'm shown examples of when Marinette is having a hard time, it's hard for me to feel bad for her.

It's not like I think she deserves it and I certainly don't draw any joy from it, but I just don't feel any sympathy for when she's struggling.

My theory is that the show has toted her so much as the all-important one-and-only, all while ignoring everyone else's important moments and struggles, that I'm struggling to feel sympathetic for when Marinette is going through some sort of misfortune. Every single one of her struggles are always highlighted in such a way that it's supposed to be this incredibly-important thing that makes Marinette look so sad, but then she's comforted and validated until eventually, this struggle eventually gets resolved and she's all happy again.

But then there's Adrien. No closure about his mom, his dad, Natalie—nothing. He's slapped with all the responsibility of comforting and validating Marinette, who eventually gets her personal conflicts resolved without lasting impact.

I'm not saying Marinette hasn't done anything to comfort and validate Adrien, but his conflicts just feel largely brushed aside and/or downplayed in comparison to Marinette's, which are highlighted and emphasized as significant events.

I don't know if this makes me a bad person or something, and I do kind of feel bad about it, but I just struggle to sympathize with her when the show tries to make us feel bad for her.

Marinette is a fictional character. It's totally fine if the bad writing has completely turned you off to her and drained you of sympathy because the entire purpose of her existence is to entertain people. She's not some meaningful representation that you should want to connect with and understand to improve your world view or something like that. She's just a poorly written teenager in a bad kids show. As long as you're able to acknowledge that fact and own that this is mainly a writing issue - and it sounds like you are - I wouldn't stress about it. The writers have done a lot to make her unlikable! I totally get why someone would not want to watch a show starring her canon self. I struggle at times and I genuinely like Marinette! Her writing is one of the many reasons I just don't know if I'm going to watch season six.

I don't defend Marinette because she's done nothing wrong. I defend her because her faults are so clearly just bad writing and not some grand plan for the character where she's going to learn something, which makes me feel protective of her because I genuinely love the base character concept and what she could have been. It's annoying to see people treating her like she's the problem and not the writing because she's literally not allowed to learn lessons and change, so of course she keeps coming across worse and worse! Her flaws are genuinely fine for a serialized story, they just have no place in an episodic one where the characters stay largely stagnant.

For example, nothing about the season five conflict and final naturally follows the BS season four conflict where she supposedly learned to trust Chat Noir. As much as I don't agree that with that synopsis of what the conflict was, it is how Ladybug sums it up in the final:

Ladybug: Why don't you just give up on me? I've lost ALL the Miraculous! I'm the worst Guardian EVER! I wanted to control everything, I didn't listen to you, I lied to you, I kept you at a distance! Every time you offered me a helping hand, I never took it! I really made a mess of EVERYTHING! Cat Noir: We're gonna get them back one by one…until the very last. And we'll make sure this never happens again.

And yet none of this seems to impact season five. Chat Noir and Ladybug maintain all their secrets and they do absolutely nothing to track down the missing miraculous because the plot won't let them even though it really doesn't fit Marinette's character. She certainly hasn't given up controlling things because, once again, the show literally will not let her do that. The rare episodes where it happens always see her punished like when Alya handing out miraculous lead to SentiNino which almost lead Gabriel to knowing Ladybug's secret identity. Adrien suffers for similar reasons. So does Alya and so many other characters! I totally get why someone would not be able to look past canon's writing since it's not like the flaws are minor. I have the same problem with both Lila and Nathalie.

I just cannot stand Nathalie even though I know that she's as much of a victim as Marinette and all the other characters. None of Nathalie's flaws are her fault because she doesn't exist. It's just that Nathalie's bad writing hits me in a way that makes me despise her while Marinette's hits in a "protect and defend" way. There's no wider logic here. It's just a matter of what characters I connected with enough to look past the bad writing. The type of fanfics I read probably also helped...

My only real piece of advice on this topic is to watch your mental health and take a Miraculous break or even leave the fandom all together if you notice that your Marinette hate (or hate of anything in canon) is really messing with you. I've mentioned before that I'm debating about watching season six and a big reason why is that I don't know if it's going to be good for my mental health. Lila's writing has consistently got on my nerves, but she was a minor enough character that I was still having a good time. Given that Lila is our new big bad with the added bonus of how shitty season five was and the show may have hit a point where it's just not fun for me anymore.

Previously, I had issues with the overall writing, but genuinely enjoyed watching the show as the writers are pretty good at short form story telling, so canon was a nice mix of genuinely enjoyable moments and writing issues that were fun to talk about. That was not true for season five and I just can't picture how it will be true for season six. The only reason I'm even considering it is because I watch the show with my SO and he has a lot of fun listening to me rant about bad media, so I may still have a good time with season six. It would not be the first time that I suffered through a piece of bad media for the sake of a loved one who really wanted someone to rant about it with.

I'm not the kind of person who will tell people they're not welcome in a fandom unless they like X. That sort of gate keeping is ugly and often straight up bullying, so don't read this as me saying that you have to like Marinette to enjoy the show or that you need to disengage if you don't like X% of canon. As long as you're having fun and not forcing your dislike on others by sending clearly unwelcome asks or engaging with sugar posts in an antagonistic way or anything like that, then I'm going to defend your right to be in fandom even if we personally aren't going to get along and need to stay in our separate fandom bubbles.* All I'm saying is that it's important to know when to disengage from a piece of media. To keep track of when something starts consistently bringing you more sorrow than joy. When that line is crossed? It's time to move on.

The sad fact is that, while you may utterly adore a piece of media, you have no control of what that media will do, so you need to be very careful about trusting your mental health to total strangers. It's part of why I tend to be so critical of media. Analysis and plot pitches like I do on this blog are genuinely fun for me, but they're also a much healthier way to engage with a story than just trusting it to be good and getting burned when it isn't. There's a reason I avoid theory crafting. I've gotten really into that in the past and wound up hurt because I put way too much faith in strangers who ended up sucking at their job.

*Btw, the line about separate fandom bubbles was not aimed at you. It's just a general statement about how fandom works. All are welcome, but all do not need to directly interact. Curating your fandom experience is important self care. Blocking someone isn't some sort of value judgement. It's just sometimes a thing you need to do in order to keep from seething when you accidentally see their asinine hot takes.

[lunarlillieuwu]

Ok, it's rant time:

The Limian Burzghash is the Author of the 'Road to Janus' in which he makes a series of prophecies regarding the Librarians of Hush House. He accurately predicts Willem Harries will be the Sixth Librarian and will bring a Key with him to the house. At the end, while describing the Twelfth Librarian (us) he states they come 'After the Flame and before the Snow.' This is an amazing way to set up a sequel, but I recently recalled this line while I was looking through the Librarian Origins:

The Magnate is searching for peace, specifically 'the peace of snow.' I would normally just consider this a coincidence or something like that but I noticed that The Magnate is the origin connected to the Hushery branch of the Watchman's Tree, which is the branch that holds Hush House. This could imply that The Magnate is the 'true origin' of the Twelfth Librarian, which might be confirmed if the third game by Weather Factory (yes they are making a third) is a sequel, and it refers to the Twelfth Librarian as the Magnate regardless of which Librarian you played as, similar to how Julian Coseley has been defeated by an Ascendent Long regardless of whether you did so in Cultist Simulator.

Now, I don't know the possible endings for the Magnate, but I do know that in one of Burzghash's other books, he calls the Twelfth Librarian the Herald of the City Unbuilt, which could mean that the 'True Librarian' creates a history where Cear Ys is successfully built (Which could be the premise of the next game, a city builder where the player character tries to create Cear Ys.) So, I'm going to do a playthrough as the Magnate and see what the possible endings are, and if one of them involves the creation of Cear Ys, that could lend credibility to the Magnate being the Librarian that canonically arrives at Hush House, especially so if the aftermath involves the beginning of 'The Snow'

Let me know your thoughts on this, I wanna see what other people think of this, and I wanna hear other theories about it :3

[essskel]

Angoulême as Geralt’s false Ciri is a concept that always obliterates me. She’s introduced as Ciri, deconstructed as a hopefully avoidable future state of the real Ciri’s, and then blends back into Ciri when harmed in front of Geralt. She can only be Ciri when she’s bleeding, which luckily she does a lot. Angoulême is the photo of Ciri on the dashboard of the Hanza’s van that they all stare at as a reminder of what they’re truly after. Angoulême reminds Geralt of what it’s like to be a father, but makes him ever farther from it because she is still False and the absence in him has a shape now. To parent her would be wrong because that’s not his daughter that’s just a girl. He parents her anyway. Angoulême is the doll given to a grieving mother who needs something baby-shaped to hold. And it is comforting. You start to love the doll as a doll too. The doll has her own clothes now, she answers when you speak to her.

On the other hand: Ciri is both a princess and a street rat, but she’s most importantly neither of those things. Those two false but very real roles that she runs from and into are so overwhelming to her narrative that they exist as people in the story: The False Cirilla in Emhyr’s court, and Angoulême in Geralt’s Hanza. False Cirilla and Angoulême, but especially Angoulême are characters of their own who I hate that I sound like I’m downplaying or tossing aside as nothing but imagery to further Ciri’s story, but also you can’t talk about either of them without talking about how they overlap and grow off of Ciri like a cell in mitosis.

Angoulême is here because Geralt loves Ciri, False Cirilla is here because Emhyr has a daughter-shaped cage that collapses unless it’s filled. The two fathers confront the reality of their daughter while staring at a girl who they have no relation to, but it’s alright, they realize what they need to realize anyway. There was no medicine in that pill, it was just sugar, you got over the pain on your own, good job.

And then we reach the bloody ending and it hits us that Angoulême is so much more that Ciri, and that we love Angoulême too. That we and Geralt and the story were cruel to try and twist her into this shape, she’s such a great kid, she deserves her own story she’s going to be such a woman. Fuck this post Angoulême isn’t Ciri Angoulême is Angoulême and these comparisons are getting so old and played out. Then she dies in Ciri’s arms.

[the-way-astray]

i need to clean up the secret project doc before i can start flashback because currently it is the definition of a mess