#this was genuinely soooooo mind boggling to me

[titsthedamnseason]

i can’t believe johnny and shannon waited so long to have sex only to do it the first time when shannon had horrific razor burn from a dollar store razor on her entire vag

[swordsofsaturn]

sorry but to this day i'll NEVER forget or get over when i was a teenager and i was visiting my best friend from school at her house (that her family owned) and there was some mention of wealth i guess and she said something about how hard it is for their family and how much they struggle. minutes after their family was talking about a new boat they bought to go to the dam on holidays every second weekend and knowing full well my best friend went to fucking italy for school exchange. in HIGH SCHOOL

[all-thestories-aretrue]

To preface the biweekly Path of Night muppet meme, a long rambly 2 am gush.

Path of Night is genuinely one of the best stories I have had the pleasure of engaging with in a long, long time. It is so well crafted and thoughtful from every possible angle. I say this a lot, probably too much, but the railroad tracks of Path of Night are soooooo expertly laid by everyone in the cast while at the same time leaving enough room for the audience to lay the ties. It's just so expertly well done from every side.

Everyone is getting all sappy about The End, and I am no exception although I've been around far less time than a lot of people who are deeply engaged with the show. I was introduced back in January (still this year I can't believe it omg), and I didn't manage to catch up until June/July??

During that time, I also moved out of the country, took a month long intensive course to get certified to teach, found a new apartment, applied and received my visa, and found not one but two jobs (such is the life of a freelancer). Through it all, Path of Night was there which is wild to think about. Commutes, international flights, summer days with nothing to do. It was the highlight of many of my days and will be for a long time to come I'm sure.

When I started listening, I had no intention of getting so sucked in. It was recommended for the vibes of VTM to me for the game I was playing in. Within 15 minutes, I was a goner. Episode 5, I was dedicated. Episode 11 hit the oh no mark for me.

It wasn't even until May that I started talking to people, and now some of those people are like my best friends, and I get to meet some of them at PAX. I'm so excited!!! They are such an important part of my life now, and I can't picture it without them.

I also posted some of my writing for the first time in years. YEARS. I have always, always struggled with sharing my writing, to the point it's been a massive hinderance to me actually writing. Having a community of people to share WIPs with and who are supportive and kind and excited is mind boggling to me honestly. And I do have more to share, I'm just very slow.

Fandom and the people who comprise it have always been an important part of my life, but I really think Path of Night takes the cake. I have never meant a more kind, considerate, passionate group of people. It's been unreal being a tiny part of this community, especially on tumblr and I mainly lurk in discord ngl.

My life has changed so much thie year and only second to literally moving to another country, Path of Night has had the most impact and in a more positive way than I could have ever imagined.

So in short, I haven't been here long but I've been forever influenced by the story and the people I've met through it, and I'm really grateful for that.

[eff-plays]

Wyll really is just so ignored, I'm playing for the first time and just got to act three and jesus, first time seeing his dad in forever at gortash's ceremony thing and theres like no reaction from Wyll?? unless my game bugged which it's been doing more than a fair amount since patch 7.. Like a lot. I saw someone say that Wyll gets treated like Karlachs backpack and like yeah... that scene is about gortash and karlach mostly, Wyll and his dad are just kinda there?? Mean while astarions plotline about vampires doesnt really seem relevant to the story literally at all but theres so much content focusing on that.

HEY sorry for coming back here to yell. If you know all of this or don't care for my flabbergasted yelling then please don't mind me, apologies if this is nonsensical, I am bewildered and my mind has been servery boggled. I just fully took a second to notice that wyll has 1 (ONE) greeting if you've romanced him, I was a lil baffled so I spent a minute spamming everyone in camp and saying hi and ahahahahah, everyone but lae'zel and the side npcs has at least two for the approval I have with them, karlach has 4. So I went to the wiki and, lae'zel has 4 possible romantic greetings and everyone else have above 10 APART FROM WYLL, WHO HAS 1, some of those greetings are if you've broken up but Wyll apparently has 0 (ZERO) if you've broken up BECAUSE Wyll has 7 possible greetings TOTAL TOTAL!! lae'zel has the same amount of platonic greetings as Wyll does total, asstarion has 27, shadowheart has 36 , Karlach has 38. what the actual shit, I'm not sure if the wiki is outdated and they added more for patch 7 but like?????? I also just had that cutscene with mizora, we had just doomed either Wyll or his dad, his dad in my case (even though what Mizora was offering was his location and protection from all but us, doesn't mean that he's dead for sure but everyones acting like Wyll just sacrificed his dad for his freedom, EXCEPT for Karlack whos acting like I took the deal, they really refuse to fix any bugs that involve Wyll huh), and we just get one of those "talk to me" interactions in camp, you don't even get to talk to him about it after that, he just goes right back to "I'm here for you, always" and all the default dialogue options, like bro you dad apparently just had his death cemented and THATS ALL WE GET? thats all he gets? No extra lil bit of dialogue to reassure him seeing as we may have just killed his dad?? idk it feels very significant to his character seeing as he often talks about how much he adores his dad but no? I really regret romancing Wyll first, I'm just getting mad at the game and his treatment like damn. I'm so disappointed, usually fandom ignoring any and all poc in games is just their racism and I've no doubt thats still happening here but I really can't blame people for not latching onto Wyll, he's great and I love him but even when romancing him and no one else, every other companion seems to have so much more going on, cause they literally do, they have so much more content. I knew he had less, I've seen that reddit post about the amount of hours each companion gets but the greeting thing really just whacked me in the face. small and minor correction, i misread the 10 as a16 I believe, so astarion has 21 not 27 as i think i said before! STILL OVER DOUBLE WHAT WYLL HAS AHAHA

(I assumed these were the same person so I bundled them in one big ask)

Oh but remember, Larian ENSURES all their devs work on EXACTLY what they want to work on!!! :))))

This is also why I think Durgewyll is the big brain romance of the game. Because it's the only way to experience even slightly more Wyll content. Like?? ONE romance greeting that was BUGGED for until a much later patch? Like!!!!! GENUINELY THE FUCKING AUDACITY. They should be legit fr fr ashamed lmao. Also Neil Newbon glazing Larian for being soooooo inclusive and making such groundbreaking representation while their only Black character is in the fucking toilet.

Ugh. It sucks so bad lmao. It's frustrating too cuz there's nothing one can do. Clearly speaking up about it has done fuck-all. Even if they drop the world's biggest Wyll patch, it'll still be like oh ok so all that racism was just a funny joke I guess? "Haha tricked you all into thinking we were racist?" To be clear I do want a massive Wyll patch, but I'm still never getting a Larian game again even if they drop it. I'll mayhap pirate one but even so. They've shown their priorities and preferences. They're SOOOOOO keen on speaking to their fans and addressing every little piss-ass useless gripe as soon as possible, except when you ask about Wyll. Then it's radio silence. Because even acknowledging it, apologizing for it, would be inconvenient. It would make it a Big Deal that people would Talk About, and it would tarnish Larian's current status as the gamer audience darling. So better to pretend it's not happening. After all, the only people upset are just some Twitter randos, and nobody listens to those guys.

Whatever man. Theo Solomon saying peanits.

[frankiensteinsmonster]

Genuinely boggles my mind the way my last therapist genuinely couldn't wrap her head around me being scared and distressed and angry for my loved ones who explicitly face abuse and medical neglect from their doctors for being fat. I mentioned it every session and she was like "you seem... Upset about this?" And I was like yeah I don't get why you fucking aren't??? (She turned out to be a former physique competitor :/ soooooo... Yeah. I think she might've had some kind of bias.)

[laviarray]

Why I can’t stand Ian Flynn’s writing style.

 Ever since I read his stuff from issue 160, he consistently makes fundamental mistakes that no professional writer should ever make. He incorrectly builds his story lines, doesn’t know how to handle characters unless told, his themes are poorly thought out and shows no imagination in his fantasy or action beats. However, I tend to ask for positive opinions before because I wanted to get more insight into why people like his stuff. While I am glad for the input, I can’t get past how his writing is ambitionless and lacks basic understanding of storytelling, leading to a very unengaging script.

 EXAMPLE?

A good example of this is in issue 267, where Sonic and Rotor meet an Eggboss and Rotor’s father, Tundra for the first time. Flynn said he wanted to try to set up the mains to have rivals, with Rotor’s being Tundra. In this story Rotor meets Tundra after not seeing him for years, gets mad at him for working with Eggman, Tundra throws them into prison and then they break out with the ending being Rotor and Tundra looking up to the sky to show a parallel of… something?

Rival?

There are a lot of problems here, but the main one is that the story fails to establish these two as rivals, mainly because they have nothing to be rivals about. Being rival isn’t just being on different sides of a fight, it’s about two characters who want to beat each other for their own personal reasons and are usually written in for the writer to challenge something about at least one of the characters. Ash from Pokémon shows this pretty well. Each of Ash’s rivals are usually written in to challenge him on some element of his character. Gary challenged him on his lack of privilege and struggling to keep up. Paul challenged him on his kindness and loving nature to his Pokémon. Sawyer on his pride and his seniority getting the best of his ego. Just to name a few.

 Tundra on the other hand, doesn’t challenge anything about Rotor. Tundra does call his technology interest “hiding behind his toys” and calls him weak, but so what? Besides the fact that working for Eggman contradicts this worldview, what does this mean to Rotor? None of what Tundra speaks here contradicts Rotor’s beliefs. Rotor has never defined his strength or character to his technology nor does he have any world view that deals with strength or lack thereof. Neither of them have any reason to want to butt heads over or to compete against each other and neither of them have anything to prove by beating the other. Rotor doesn’t even have any anger or animosity towards Tundra after meeting him. He just sulks in the cell before Sonic tells him to get over it (remember this).

Maybe this could’ve worked as a revenge subplot for Rotor wanting to get Tundra for failing his home town, but that ends up being undermined when Rotor isn’t mad or vengeful towards Tundra during this whole issue. Sonic gets more upset at Tundra than he does. However, this still falls flat because the only reason you would know or care about Rotor’s home town is if you read supplementary material. Not universe issues, which still would be a bad place, but special issues that most people couldn’t get. So… yeah, there is no animosity between these two.

 Rotor’s character

I’m not surprised this doesn’t work, mainly because Flynn doesn’t know how to write characters and Rotor suffers from this the most out of the leads. Throughout the shattered world arc, Rotor is never given any major character traits besides being super focused on saving the world, and by that I mean being a straw man for why the characters keep getting distracted from the A plot to focus on side missions. He’s never given any personal moments or conflicts before this, nor does he have any motivations or wants outside of the conflict of the arc. So by the time we get to 267, the only thing of note about Rotor is that he is into technology, but not in any way that is personal to him. So having him get a rival was always going to be pointless.

 Give Flynn a break!

However, as I hear from every Flynn defender, “This might’ve been fixed later”. Two problems. One, why would any sane writer introduce and have the rivals interact without establishing some animosity or reason for them to see each other. Two, if that wasn’t the goal of this issue, this comic issue is beyond pointless. Nothing else of note happens in this issue. They have a light show of a fight scene, get caught, meet Tundra, breakout, leave. Besides getting a Gaia key, that could’ve been anywhere, there is no other reason to get these two on their own to meet Tundra, other than to establish their rivalry. To be honest, I’m not sure what’s worse. The fact that they dedicated half an issue to this half-baked idea, or that they wasted the other half on Eggman getting Metal Sonic back, that should’ve been 3 pages at best, instead of writing a story that is a major game changer for a lead character to the fullest.

(We totally needed to cut pages from learning about and developing a lead character and dedicated the same amount of time to seeing Eggman get Metal sonic back... Im not kidding they are both 10 pages.) Now the reason I was asking you guys for your thoughts was because I want to gauge how others view the comics too. However, when I get outside of comic fans, I get… interesting views. For example, I showed this issue to a group of people that all have daddy issues (as in they had to fight their dad to protect their mom kind of issues), so it should’ve been easy for them to relate to Rotor. They were also a wide range of opinions on Sonic, ranging from hardcore fans to ambivalent. However, after reading it, they all had the same reaction of “Well… That happened…” with all of them feeling nothing after reading. And after we discussed it, we figured out why. The story never gives you a reason to care about Rotor, Tundra just shows up and leaves, leaving no impact on the story or audience and there isn’t a reason to get invested with the conflict when Rotor isn’t.

 “OK, that was a bad issue, but that isn’t all of them?”

Except it is. Every last problem that I brought up here shows up throughout Flynn writing.

Poorly developed main characters?

All of them written around this quality and the ones that aren’t usually have characterization mandated or coming from other parts of the franchise.

(ok... we were five stories in at this point... Why were their 12 characters in the main cast (Chip not pictured)? Longer slice of life stories would have issues developing characters with a cast that big.) Rivalries that don’t go past superficial elements of the characters and don’t challenges the leads well?

Pretty much all of them, but especially Antoine’s with Hood, Nicole’s with Phage, and Bunnie’s with Cassia

“What about Sally and Clove?” I don’t count them as Flynn said in his podcast “Sally would be too busy to have a rival”. Which speaks volumes about his writing priorities.

Having characters get Pep talks to get them over writer inflicted trauma and to never address again?

Flynn did this 8 times in Shattered world and already 2 times in IDW (Issues 1, and 3)

B plots that go nowhere and should’ve been cut early in production?

Most of the issues during shattered world

Dedicating an entire issue to one plot detail that may or may not be relevant to later issues?

This is practically his brand at this point.

(These two are going to be soooooo relevant and integral to the story. Just... you know... Not for this entire arc...) And these aren’t his only problems.

  What is your point?

So why am I going through all of this? Why did I just type all of that for you guys? For 3 reasons.

1) I want you to understand where my vile for Flynn’s writing comes from. Not because of one thing he did wrong or that he doesn’t get a certain character right. But from a comprehensive look at his written patterns and worldview on writing.

2) I do genuinely want to understand why this man is well liked as I’ve seen some writers do half the crap Flynn does and get flogged by their fan bases.

3) If possible, try to get us to ask for better. I don’t hate Flynn or anything, but it boggles my mind that he is seen as a great writer when he is subpar at best. I don’t want him fired or anything but I don’t want him on any other branch of the franchise, nor do I want to see anyone thinking he should be either.

Now I’m fully willing to admit I’m wrong on all of these points, so feel free to tell me what you think.

In the meantime, I’m going to get ready for the completion of the arc in IDW. Expect a full essay by Janurary!

[jellybeanbeing]

Switched by Amanda Hocking

Synopsis:

When Wendy Everly was six years old, her mother was convinced she was a monster and tried to kill her. Eleven years later, Wendy discovers her mother might have been right. She’s not the person she’s always believed herself to be, and her whole life begins to unravel--all because of Finn Holmes.

Finn is a mysterious guy who always seems to be watching her. Every encounter leaves her deeply shaken... though it has more to do with her fierce attraction to him than she’d ever admit. But it isn’t long before he reveals the truth: Wendy is a changeling who was switched at birth--and he’s come to take her home.

Now Wendy’s about to journey to a magical world she never knew existed, one that’s both beautiful and frightening. And where she must leave her old life behind to discover who she’s meant to become.

REVIEW TIME! With spoilers!

I am going to say this straight up: I didn’t really like this book but that doesn’t mean I didn’t enjoy it. I would consider this book to be a kind of trashy YA urban fantasy book, and I mean trashy in the most sincere way possible. I thought the writing was sometimes so cringey and I was frustrated at a few things while reading this book.

The things I liked...

I really liked how the story was short but was still capable of pulling me into it. I'd say it was a fun read. I also really liked the family dynamic Wendy had with Matt and Maggie. It seemed realistic and genuine to me and I wished we saw more of it. Another thing I liked was the "friendship" between Rhys and Wendy. I'm really hoping its just a friendship and not a romance because I HATE LOVE TRIANGLES. Their interactions with each other were so nice and Rhys was just so adorable. And the last thing I liked was Elora's power to be able to paint the future. I thought it was really different and I wanna see more and understand it more because it's an interesting power. 

I almost forgot to talk about Wendy and Willa's friendship. I loved this friendship so much. We learn from the moment we meet Willa, that she isn't the nicest person but she avidly makes the effort to be friends with Wendy. Willa helps Wendy with her hair and makeup because she knows that Elora isn't going to help her. And she is by Wendy's side when Finn leaves. I'm all here when it comes to these kinds of relationships! Their friendship was so genuine and so refreshing to see in YA novels. 

Onto the things I didn't like...

The thing that kept annoying me was how Elora and Finn kept getting mad at Wendy for doing things she didn’t even know she couldn’t do. For example, Elora yelled at Wendy for bowing to Aurora, saying how a princess should never bow down to anyone lower than them. SHE DIDN’T EVEN TELL WENDY NOT TO DO THAT. She can’t expect this regular teenager to adapt to the freaking royal life within two fucking days and expect her to know this kind of stuff. It was so mind boggling. To me, bowing to anyone is a sign of respect. And shit, if I was Wendy, I’d be bowing to anyone who bowed for me too. 

Also, they kept leaving Wendy in the dark about everything. Wendy was constantly asking questions because obviously, she’s the Princess and she should know about the fucking kingdom she’s going to rule but NO. No one tells her anything which leaves her to do things she’s not supposed to do. UGH. I’m just so frustrated with this. 

This book was very info-dumpy. There was a passage where Wendy meets Elora for the first time and Elora literally just spews out this whole information block about Trylle. And there are so many passages of info dumping when Finn is telling Wendy about Trylle and Forening. I think this whole thing could've been executed better and cleaner.

Can we talk about the cringey writing? I laughed so much when I came upon these super cheesy lines. I could not help but cringe whenever the author described a person (more specifically, males) as foxy. Foxy? What? This just too hilarious not to talk about.

Usually I like books that are fast pace and don't drag on but the pacing in this book was super duper fast. Wendy arrives to Forening and she's expected to know the norms of Trylle and every royal in the town and how to act like a princess within a whole week. That's nearly impossible. There were points in this book that just seemed to jump all over the place.

I was conflicted on how I felt about our main protagonist, Wendy. At some points, I liked how she stands up for herself like how she told Finn that he was being an ass when he was rude to her, and how she points out the obvious like how no one tells her anything about Trylle. At some points, I didn't like her mindset. She was always trying to be "sexy" and flirtatious around Finn or Rhys which was so cringe worthy. And I'm thinking, "Girl, you barely know these people. Why are you trying to act like this? Also, you're SEVENTEEN! Stop it!" Ugh, I cannot get over this. Its so weird. She also seemed like the gullible type because she fell in love with Finn so quickly and how she probably is falling for Rhys too and she barely knows them.

THE INSTA-LOVE. Oh my goodness. I can handle insta-love if its done right but the insta-love in this book was unbearable. The relationship between Wendy and Finn is so forced and I'm not with it. She literally goes from 'Why is Finn always staring at me? He's soooooo creepy!' to 'Oh my god, he makes my heart skip a beat!'. I mean, Finn is wayyyyy creepy at the beginning. He's always staring at Wendy for no apparent reason (that we know of yet at this point in the book), he's lurking around her house, he fucking shows up at her window in the middle of the night, trying to apologize for being an ass, and somehow is there to save her from the Vittra. After all of this, we're supposed to believe that Wendy has now fallen for this guy. What? I can't help but think that him doing all of this is acceptable because he's soooo handsome and good looking. The excuse we're supposed to take for this insta-love to be acceptable is because Finn brought Wendy "home" and to a place where she truly feels she belongs, which as we read, isn't how she claims she feels. 

Although this book was not that great, I am interested as to where it goes. Im probably missing some other stuff but I'll edit it when and if it comes up. I'm not that eager to find out what happens next so it'll be a while before I start and finish the next book. If you're looking for a fun read this summer and this sounds interesting to you, check it out! Gave this a 3/5 stars