#to the point where its a huge part of the reason those characters exist in the firs tplace . if not The Only reason they exist

[wizardlybullshit]

Ok hear me out: Smallville rpg. Now I know what you're thinking, a licenced rpg where all the art is screen shots of the show, its clearly a quick cash grab on name recognition alone. It looks terrible, I know. But its actually one of the best drama systems I've played. See its secretly the core book for cortex + drama; for whatever reason cortex + doesn't release non specific rules, and sadly the Smallville licence is the only one they made that runs on drama.

So cortex + drama works by first making a big relationship web as part of character creation. Everyone goes through a flow chart step by step, taking turns around the table, and draws one or two nodes on a big map and connects them to existing nodes while giving themselves a corresponding point or two on their character sheet. Even if you're not running cortex + drama, I recommend stealing the character web thing for any rpg built around a tight interlinked cast, like a politics focused vampire the masquerade for example.

So once you've got your characters built, everything you do mechanically is built on a dice pool that is assembled primarily of a value and a relationship, based on why you're doing a thing and with/to whom. These are rated based on how strongly you feel these feelings, regardless of their quality. As well, everything has a short description that provides context; if your action doesn't match the context of the relationship/value you can't use that thing and thus you can't use those dice. However, you can "challenge" a relationship or value, rewriting the context as you do, and this provides a big mechanical boost to the roll and extra xp later. Thus you are mechanically incentivised to feel strongly, and possibly incorrectly, and change your character’s outlook as you grow.

In addition to all this, the publishers have provided a fantastic book called the cortex + hackers guide. Its a series of articles all about how to change the rules; it includes everything from authors notes as to why the rules are the way they are, small rules changes, articles on the state of the game, even huge overhauls that are practically new small games by themselves complete with worked examples. In this book are a couple different examples of using cortex + drama for fantasy, so you don't have to worry about stripping out all the cw teen superhero by yourself.

There are a bunch of other games I've heard of, but this one I've played and can vouch for it being a good example of a fantasy game that strongly incentivises building (admittedly volatile) relationships with the npcs and pcs around you.

out of curiosity, do you know of any games you’d consider legitimate ‘elf-kissing games?’ you know, high fantasy games that engender drama with mechanically explicit/reinforced relationship building systems?

besides d&d, of course. /s

Sadly I haven't found a perfect example of such a game: to me Monsterhearts is the best example of a TTRPG that centers romance and it is a perfect urban fantasy teenage monster romance game, but that disqualifies it on account of it not being high fantasy. Also, Monsterhearts' mechanics are very much about melodrama and like very petty, jealous, teenage romance, so it would not be the best for it.

Anyway, high fantasy intersects a bit with chivalric romances, and for that there's nothing better than Pendragon, a game of Arthurian chivalry in a setting that resolves the ahistoricity of Arthuriana by saying "well, Arthur was such a special guy that chivalry basically was real during his reign as king of Britain." It owns. Anyway, the game has actual mechanics for measuring characters' spiritual attributes, including their Passions, which covers things like strong feelings of hatred and love, so in that sense developing romantic feelings is mechanized and rewarded. Now, while knights doing quests is an important part of the gameplay, the game basically rewards characters for simply doing chivalric things, which means that besides doing quests knights are explicitly rewarded with Glory (the game's big reward currency) for engaging in romantic trysts. But sadly it isn't quite there because it is very heavily tied to a place and time, and I feel just transplanting the game into a fantasy setting would be doing it a huge disservice.

Which leads me to Mythras or RuneQuest 6th edition: basically the same game under two different names (Mythras is RQ6 rereleased after the creators lost the RQ licence). I won't go into the details but RuneQuest basically is part of the same lineage as Pendragon. Or they're like separate branches of the same tree. Anyway, somewhere along the way the creators of RuneQuest decided to basically borrow the idea of Passions into RuneQuest, and they serve pretty much the same mechanical purpose. The main issue is that while there are mechanical incentives for increasing a character's Passions (which works the same as increasing any other skill or attribute) they don't exactly represent relationships, as much as they represent internal emotions. Basically, a character's Passion of Love (Target of their affections) can be entirely one-sided. That's not to say that the system can't be worked to represent developing romantic relationships, but it's a bit of extra work (having said that: Mythras/RQ6 already is something of a "some assembly required" toolkit game, unlike the more recent RuneQuest: Roleplaying in Glorantha which is a very specialized game using the same engine, it's a whole thing). Mythras/RQ6 is a very traditional type of fantasy RPG but notably one where character growth isn't simply through becoming better at combat, and combat is somewhat disincentivized by the game. So it actually is a game that does wonders for romantic fantasy.

There's also Burning Wheel, which is a fun and gritty game, which has a system not unlike Passions in its BITs (Beliefs, Instincts, and Traits), but like Mythras/RQ Passions they are internal.

So I have yet to find the perfect elf-kissing game for myself, but if I had to choose I would personally pick Mythras: it is a very trad type of game concerned with verisimilitude above all else, but it has just enough tools for providing some mechanical grit to romantic relationships. In fact, when I first started reading it one of the first things I realized was "I would so much rather use this to run romantic fantasy than Blue Rose" (a romantic fantasy RPG powered by the Fantasy AGE system which suffers from the Fantasy AGE issue of ultimately being a D&D ass game with some light relationship mechanics on top).

Now having said all of that: there are hundreds of games out there that center romance, which I haven't mentioned here either because I'm not familiar enough with them or because they are not specifically high fantasy. But let me just rattle off a couple of those that I would love to play at some point: Star Crossed. Court of Blades. Eyes on the Prize. Heck, looking some more at the blurb of Court of Blades, it might actually be perfect for this ask, even though it is also like a general courtly intrigue game. Anyway, hope that's something.

[sonknuxadow]

was thinking about fankids and was briefly like "a gerald and black doom fankid would be funny i wonder why nobody has ever done that" and then i Remembered

[batmanisagatewaydrug]

You seem like an incredibly well read person, plus someone with a lot of insight into intimacy because of your work. So, in light of your romance book reviews, which are an absolute highlight on your patreon, do you have any insight into what is needed/suggested for a good romance novel?

g o d this is so fucking hard and also really fun to chew on. I want to preface this by saying this is ENTIRELY subjective and based completely on what I *PERSONALLY* find that I enjoy in a romance. this isn't, like, an objective guide on how to write a romance that doesn't suck. that doesn't exist because people like different things, and I'm speaking from one perspective.

also I should say that my preferred flavor of romance novel is solidly contemporary. I haven't read many historicals, certainly not enough to opine well on them, I don't do those mafia dark romances or whatever the fuck, and I've barely dabbled at all in any kind of fantasy romance, whether they're full high fantasy or witchy urban fantasy stories. (although I'm about to do one of the latter next month, you can vote for a book on my patreon rn!)

having gotten all of those caveats out of the way, here's some shit I like and dislike:

there are exceptions to this but broadly, I prefer a POV for everyone involved in the relationship. to me a romance where we're only seeing events from the POV of one member of the relationship automatically makes it seem like one person matters more in a dynamic where everyone should be of equal importance. also, god, if the plot's really going to hinge on not knowing what's going on in one partner's head suggests that miscommunication is going to be a pretty critical part of the plot, and I hate that shit. TALK TO EACH OTHER. I'LL KILL YOU.

on that note, there needs to be an actual compelling reason why the characters can't be together, okay? the #1 driving tension of every romance is "why the fuck can't they be together yet" and you BETTER have a good answer. whether it's interpersonal or external forces, if there's a very easy solution to what's keeping them apart then your characters look dumb and I'm bored. one of the most frustrating romances I've ever read involved two characters who were mutually attracted to each from the JUMP, who refused to act on it because they were coworkers (neither of them in any position of authority of the other, nothing unprofessional or inappropriate about it) and they were "only" living in the same state for A YEAR. A FULL YEAR !!! shut up. get a grip and kiss each other.

now, having said that: whatever your bullshit reason is for these two characters to be interacting with each other, you need to COMMIT to that shit so hard that I, the reader, will feel silly for even questioning the logic. the worst offender I've ever seen on this front is D'Vaughn and Kris Plan a Wedding, which pulls its protagonists together via a reality TV competition and then just... promptly loses any interest in really dealing with the actual realities of being filmed 24/7? it's insanely distracting how little the book engages with its central hook, and was a huge point deduction for me. whereas you have, like, The Bride Test, a book with a premise that skirts dangerously close to a little bit of human trafficking but embraces the whole premise so wholeheartedly that you completely forget about the potentially horrific elements in there. who cares that Esme was bribed here with the promise of a green card if she seduces a man she's never met? there's whimsy happening! we've moved on! it's literally fine and she's in no danger except the danger of a BROKEN HEART.

this one is going to seem SO obvious but like. I need them to be actually like each other. I'm not saying they can't be mutually bitchy while they grow to like each other or anything, they don't have to always be NICE to each other, but there are so many M/F romances where the dude is just flat out fucking MEAN and condescending to the girl until he decides he wants to fuck her. and sometimes even after that! stop it! after a certain point I don't want her to fuck him I want her to run him over a car!!!! there's suuuuch a line between "guy I butt heads and exchange banter with but could fuck if we just got to know each other" and "man who hates me and is for real fucking bullying me."

"kisses only," "doors closed," whatever term they use for a romance novel without any sex scenes on page, I don't like it. listen: I know that they're not everybody's cup of tea, and I FULLY recognize that a lot of romance novel sex scenes are unfathomably cringe. and yet, I need them. partly because they're funny, but also because if this book wants me to be invested in the developing relationship between two adults who are supposed to be WILDLY sexually attracted to each other, then I want to see the damn sex. no matter how many bad similes or unfortunate adjectives it entails. and if you're not going to show me the sex, don't you dare have the characters gushing about how great it is. I'll be the judge of that, thank you very much. (I'm looking at you, Sorry, Bro.)

related: there's this thing that I call "Horny Wolf Syndrome," which is derived from this tweet:

initially I used it to refer to when previously sweet-tempered male romance protags inexplicably started talking like horny wovles during sex scenes - "LET ME SEE YOUR PRETTY CUNT ON MY COCK" and the like - but now I more generally use it to refer to scenarios in which characters of any gender completely dispense with their established personality while they fuck in order to fulfill a more broadly appealing, one-size-fits-all sexual fantasy. I hate that shit; if your characters act like completely unrecognizable people during sex, you didn't write very strong characters. one of my favorite things about writing sex scenes is that it's so SO interesting to see how their the characters' personal quirks translate into a setting that's very different from most other contexts, and it's deeply disappointing when authors take the easy route in favor of some pornhub dialogue.

one of the things that actually won my most recent read, Raiders of the Lost Heart, a HUGE amount of points with me was how frank the female lead was about initiating sex for the first time. it was completely in character for her and felt really different than any other book I've read, and honestly? it was a breath of fresh air.

[mauesartetc]

A while back I got a comment that demonstrated a misconception as to what the character design process actually entails, and I thought it had real "teachable moment" potential. So let me make this perfectly clear:

Drawing a character is NOT the same as designing one.

Let's say I wanted to draw a guy. No backstory, no defined personality traits or preferences, no details about his current life, just doodling some random, generic guy who popped into my head.

That's just a drawing.

But what if I decided to flesh him out more? What if I wanted his appearance to reflect his lifestyle and inner life as well? Here's where the note-taking comes in.

And now for the visual research:

I thought the bodybuilding angle would provide a fun contrast with this guy's profession. The mental image of a huge, burly dude working on a clock or watch with tiny, precise movements just makes me smile. Perhaps I could give him small, nimble hands that would suit his line of work.

Now that I have a better idea of how Mikhail's face and body will look, it's time to establish a pose.

Of course, I never expected to employ all the personality traits I started out with inside this single pose; those were just a jumping-off point. No one drawing will ever be able to encapsulate every single facet of a character, unless they're extraordinarily flat and generic (see also: random guy I doodled at the start of this post). If I wanted to write a story with this guy, I'd have to figure out how all the traits play off each other and how they'd cause him to react to different situations. There would be a lot more note-taking and development involved, but for the sake of keeping this post (somewhat) brief, let's just focus on visuals for now.

On to color!

I decided to give Mikhail a carnation in his pocket (for its round shape), specifically a red one, which represents deep love and an aching heart. Thus, the flower needed to maintain its red color for the symbolism to come through.

For some reason I initially pictured this guy wearing a pink shirt (perhaps as an offshoot of the "romantic" angle), but I wanted to try some different colors inspired by the 70s catalog pages I found. I ended up really liking the contrast of the cool blue shirt with the warm red pants, and that option made it into my top three as a result. I lined them up next to each other to compare them, and in the end, blue won out over pink. I think it also reflects the "colder", more cerebral, less-emotional parts of his personality well (namely "systematic", "stern", and "callous"- one from each column!). Just goes to show that you shouldn't get too attached to your first draft, as better ideas are just around the corner.

I then lightened the blue of the shirt so it wouldn't compete so much with the rest of the outfit, and wouldn't be quite as loud and "in your face". Mikhail strikes me as a bit of an introvert, so the calmer, quieter blue is a better fit. I added a darker belt and watchband and de-saturated the flower just a bit to make the values feel more balanced, and I think we've got it!

Let's see the final result!

Y'all, I was not expecting this process to make me emotional, but there's something special about fully realizing a little guy you've spent hours working on. All of a sudden you look at him and go, "Oh my god, there he is. That's him." This man wasn't even a twinkle in my eye a couple weeks ago and now I'd protect him with my life.

And the thing is, the only reason I'm calling this design "done" for now is that I basically just brought it into existence to make a point. But if this dude were attached to a larger story, he'd be nowhere near finished. I'd have to make a ton more iterations and go a lot more in depth with my research than I did (especially with the Armenian cultural stuff). Overall, though, I hope this quick project properly highlighted the difference between a single drawing and a more fleshed-out character.

Later!

[phantomarine]

Hey what were you trying to say in your “it gets good at page 1001” post

Was it more of a comment directed at yourself ( self degradation), is it satire about perfectionism,

Is it supposed to be inspirational for Beginners webcomic creators, or we’re you just in a bad mood?

More of a warning against self-sabotage, because I see it so much. Sometimes it's tied to perfectionism, sometimes it's the opposite - people surrendering to imperfection when they don't really have to.

Creator chat incoming. I'll put it under the deelybob for anyone who wants to read it 👇

I've been in the webcomic sphere for several years now and I've seen so many people introduce their comic with 'I know it's very long and not easy to read, and I won't be going back and changing anything about what I've already made - but please critique it so I can make the rest of the pages better and attract a bigger audience from now on.'

And that's a hard thing to respond to. If a reader can't get through all those existing pages without being confused or bored, then how can they get to the good stuff that lies past them?

So much of gaining an audience is about actively making it easy to 'fall into' a work. Without that easy entry point, it's always going to be an uphill battle to build an audience, no matter how good the later chapters get. There are outliers, but most webcomics won't be those outliers, especially with thousands of them available nowadays. Some people love the grind, but most people will jump to a new tab and try to find something less frustrating.

And webcomic creation is particularly cursed by its very nature. Creators are hesitant to go back and edit pages, even once they've figured out more details about their craft or story structure. It's mostly because of the seeming permanence of it all - the art takes ages and the words feel unchangeable if even one other person has read them. To go back and edit is to publicly admit your failings, right? That's how it feels. What do you MEAN you didn't get it right the first time? You were supposed to do it live, and do it PERFECTLY!

But ideally it shouldn't be any different than prose writing, which is ALL ABOUT finding the story in those edits. And because your story is digital, you can go back and change things whenever you feel like it. A webcomic is fluid.

And if you're thinking 'I should just redraw my whole first chapter' - NO! Hell no, old art can be a part of the appeal! It's far more about finding little tricks to convey your story/characters more clearly. I have read some first chapters with janky art that made me fall completely in love with the story and cast. It's not about the art - as with all things comic-related, it's about conveyance.

Examples I've seen and some I've used myself: A single extra page with a meaningful interaction can solidify the theme of a character's arc. One additional 5-to-10-page scene can help add visual context for an offscreen event where there was none before. Adding a map can tell people where the characters currently are. Changing a character design can help if they get often confused with another character. Redoing your lettering to make it more legible is a huge one too.

In the end, I just don't want people to be afraid of small edits. When I got feedback about the bad clarity of my own work, I knew it would take some time to fix those problems. It wasn't fun to think about or to do, but I'm glad I did it in the end - because it would have limited my audience tremendously. With just a bit of extra effort, I opened a door that wasn't there before, and it now leads more people even more easily to 'the good stuff.'

tl;dr You started your webcomic for a reason, and you're learning more things about its characters, story, and craft every day. Don't be afraid to go back to old pages and inject some of that wisdom through editing. Even a little can go a long way.

***Caveat: If your goal is to just create chaotically, with no goal of gaining an audience, you are a wild and free little thing, and I am in awe of you. This whole rant doesn't apply to you, and you are stronger than me.

[ewingstan]

Worm and other media that won't just let you shoot the Joker, part 1:

Worm comments on the structure of stories, especially superhero stories, in some interesting ways. There's a lot of stuff that happen in superhero comics for no real reason than that it needs to happen for the story to be interesting; a huge amount of Worm's worldbuilding is devoted to taking these things and making the fact that they have to happen an explicit in-setting constraint. For instance, superhero stories tend to have more powerful heroes face off against much more powerful villains than their less-powerful allies, to the point where it seems like super-powerful threats are coming to earth every few weeks just because it wouldn't be interesting to read that comic otherwise. It gets weirder when you compare what villains end up visiting the cities of uber-powerful heroes vs the cities of less powerful heroes: Gotham mostly just has to deal with serial killers while Metropolis is a magnet for evil gods. Worm plays with this by having the Endbringers exist only because the big hero needed something to fight in-text: it changes "powerful heroes need powerful villains or else it wouldn't be interesting" from a Doylist justification to a Watsonian one. Then there's the fact that so much of the horrible conflict in Earth Bet is explicitly caused by Gods making sure the powers they grant people lead to increased conflict, the fact that one of the most powerful characters does what she does because the plot path to victory says she needs to, etc.

But the big one is Jack Slash, and how he's only able to get away with his bullshit because he has plot armor as a secondary power. As WB says here, "Jack's a reconstruction of the Joker type character in the sense that you can't have such a character take such a high profile position in the setting, without having there be a cheat." The Joker and similar characters are only able to keep being relevant threats in their stories because the narrative bends to let them win and stops them from being killed. Jack Slash is only able to keep being a relevant threat because his power makes the universe bend to let him win in the same way. Not only does this make for an interesting obstacle (its almost like they're fighting an authorial mandate!), but it skewers the use of similar character's plot armor and how unrealistic and unsatisfying it makes their stories.

But wait, what does it mean for a story to be "unrealistic" in the context of superpowers? Is being unrealistic in those contexts actually a problem? For that matter, what does it mean for a narrative to bend to let someone win? Its not like there's an objective way fighting the Joker would go, which the author is deviating from by letting him survive.

[Stuff under readbelow contains spoilers fo, the movie Funny Games and the book Anybody Home?]

Maybe we could say that if characters like the Joker were real, and put in the situations they are in their stories, they would end up being killed really quickly. But is that a reasonable way to judge stories? A narrative where such a character is killed unceremoniously to satisfy a need for realism isn't any less an expression of the author's deliberate choices than a story where the character keeps showing back up to satisfy a desire for fan-favorite characters. And while Jack Slash's arcs help show why deviating from "realistic consequences" in the service of keeping a character alive can make a story exhausting and screw with an audiences' appreciation of stakes, it doesn't make a strong case against the concept of villains having plot armor in general. A story isn't necessarily worse just for being constructed to keep the villains alive—all stories are constructed, and sometimes being constructed that way makes for the best story.

That becomes more clear when you take the premise of Jack Slash as "killer who wins because the mechanics of the universe says so" and make clear just how much "the mechanics of the universe" really just means "the story". Which is how you get Peter and Paul from Funny Games.

I'd highly recommend watching Funny Games (though for the love of god check content warnings), as well as Patricia Taxxon's review of it that I'm cribbing a lot from here. But to summarize, Funny Games is a movie written and directed by Michael Haneke about a family's lakeside vacation being interrupted by the appearance of two murderous young men, who capture them in their own house and slowly torture and kill them off. At least, that's what it seems to be about initially. It marketed itself as a somewhat standard entry in the genres of torture porn and home invasion thrillers, and played itself straight as one for the majority of its runtime. But then one of the two villains of the pair, "Paul," starts talking to the audience.

It starts small: after crippling the family's father and revealing that he killed their dog, Paul has the wife look for its corpse outside. While giving her hints, he slowly turns back towards the camera and smirks, before turning back. In isolation, maybe it could be interpreted as Paul smirking at Peter, seeming to look out at the audience only because of clumsy blocking. But then it happens again. Paul tells the family, who are completely at their mercy at this point, that they're gonna bet that they'll all be dead within twelve hours. When the family refuses to take the bet, asking how they could hope to win it when he can clearly off them all whenever they wish, Paul turns towards the audience and asks "what do you think? Do you think they stand a chance? Well you're on their side aren't you. Who you betting on, eh?" The audience is being acknowledged; their role as someone invested in the story is being examined by the ones introducing the stakes.

But the biggest moment comes near the end, when the mother grabs the shotgun she's being threatened with and blasts Peter. Paul startles, grins, and then hurredly grabs a tv remote and presses rewind. The movie itself suddenly rewinds to right before the mother grabs the gun, and plays again with Paul grabbing the shotgun right before the mother reaches for it.

Its a truly incredible moment, in that its the perfect way to forcibly take away the audience's suspension of disbelief. It forces the audience to acknowledge that they're viewing a story, not something happening to a real family. After their moment of catharsis against the villains, Paul makes the confront the fact that the movie will end however the creators want it to, and if they want the villains to win they'll will regardless of how little sense it makes. Fuck you, we can go from being set in the normal world with normal rules to the villains traveling back in time with a tv remote, because a story does whatever its creators want. Haneke just decided to make that obvious in the most jarring way imaginable.

But maybe the best way to illustrate Funny Games effectiveness at this type of artful unveiling is comparing it to its less-effective imitators. I've recently finished Anybody Home?, a recently-published book by Michael J. Seidlinger. It has the conceit of being narrated by an unnamed mass-murderer, guiding a new killer in their first home invasion. I started reading it before I watched Funny Games, and even afterwards took a while to realize the unnamed narrator wasn’t just a pastiche of a Paul-like character but was actually supposed to be read as Paul himself. Seidlinger was having his book be a sort of unofficial sequel to Funny Games, narrated by its star. Once I realized, a lot of the books details suddenly clicked. The big one was the constant references to “the camera" and the idea of murder being a performance for an audience, one that needed to be fresh and original to make “the cults” enjoy it. Take these passages from page 77:

If it happened, it would perturb. It would create suspicion. It wouldn’t end up ruining the performance, and yet, it could have derailed our casing. The camera can have all it wants; either way, it’ll make it look better than it really was. It’ll strip away the cues and other planned orchestrations and it’ll show the action—the actuality of each scene, each suggestion…

This is a spectacle, above all. The craft pertains to keeping and maintaining a captive audience; behind the camera, you’ll never know how it happened—the trickery that made the impossible possible, the insanity so close to home. It is spectacle.

Through online activity, the son made it clear that something is happening at home, yet we cannot be certain if he has noticed the camera.

These all point to the idea that the murders are being viewed by an audience rather than just by intruders, that this is a performance for said audience's benefit more than anything else. But notably, it also reinforces the idea of these characters having an existence outside of the camera: the camera shows the action and "strips away" the cues behind it, the victims have a life outside the camera such that they could plausibly sense that the camera is now here. The victims are sometimes described as playing into their role, but always metaphorically; always as if normal people start acting like characters when put in certain circumstances. Whereas Funny Games posits that characters will behave however the author wants them to, denying the claim that stories are realistic simulations of hypothetical scenarios.

The whole thing is predicated on the idea that there needs to be a guide, that the villain of a home invader movie is really in danger of something going wrong. Paul/The narrator keeps giving directions on what needs to be double checked, what needs to X, and its completely against the spirit of the role Paul served in Funny Games. If something goes wrong for the villain they should just be able to rewind and do it over, because the story was written for them to succeed. Anybody Home? throws out Funny Games theme of the story being on rails, of the winner being whoever the author wants it to be and the events following whatever the author wanted rather than what would "really" happen. It throws out the whole idea that it’s all just a story, by supporting the idea that the characters have lives not captured by the camera—or more relevantly, not captured on-page.

Because Seidlinger using the language of film in a book leads to different things going on with the fourth wall. The way Funny Games and Anybody Home? make the camera explicit are just different, and the former does it much more interestingly than the latter. Seildinger’s characters aren’t looking back at the reader, the fourth wall is never actually breached. Funny Games has Paul look into the camera to address the audience, making clear how it’s a story being set up for the audience's benefit. Anybody Home? invokes the idea of a camera tracking everything home invaders do in general, having it be a third-party force that’s itself an unseen character contained within the story, observing the intruder's crime rather than the reader. Why is it still a camera, if we're in a book rather than a movie? A character in a book talking about a camera watching them does not convey any of the same meaning as a character in a movie suddenly looking into a camera and smirking at the audience!

By the end, you realize that this is caused in part by the book's bizarro take on how horror movies exist in this world. It reveals that in its setting, all horror movies are adaptations of real home invasions, which get recorded by unseen mysterious forces. Killers enter a home and enact violence, are filmed by some supernatural camera, the footage gets leaked to the public, and then the killers sell the rights to the work to studios. The events of SAW really happened, but the movie was just an adaptation. Funny Games really happened, but the Paul in the movies was just an actor playing the Paul narrating this book. The killer's victims eventually realize that they're "victims," but not in the sense that they realize their characters in a story, only in a sense that they realize they got sucked into their world's magical realism bullshit.

Ultimately, while the book does the same trick of being all about how horror stories are “for” us, it gets rid of all the tricks that made it work for Funny Games. It even strips it's in-universe version of what made it special; Funny Games is just another adaptation of a real home invasion. All the meta stuff that makes it interesting in its genre are just gestured at as aesthetics.

So what makes Jack Slash in Worm succeed where the killers in Anybody Home? fail? Both are constructed to be entertaining for a 3rd party who stand-in for but aren't actually the audience; the entities in Worm, the cults in Anybody Home?. But Jack Slash doesn't mix his metaphors. Worm may turn various real-life factors affecting a work into in-story mechanisms of the world in the same way Anybody Home? does. But it doesn't also base itself off a text that takes in-story mechanisms and breaks them to force the audience to see the various real-life factors affecting the work. In effect, WB pulls off a trick Seidlinger tries and fails because WB wasn't taking another metatexual story and stripping it of what made it interesting.

Though that introduces the question: can such meta-moves be mixed? Can you have a text where story conceits become explicit plot mechanics the characters are aware of, while also having characters really look at the camera and tell the audience that its all just a story? Can you actually sell it and make it something interesting?

There is one story that tries this. I don't know if it pulls it off, but it certainly makes a lot of interesting moves that create a fascinating whole. It even comments on the Joker in the same way Worm does, having a character who seemingly cant die because the roll they play in the story is too impor—

Ah fuck.

Continued in part 2.

[conceptofjoy]

what do u think of dirk n hals Gender Situation given 10 or 20 years? if they ever finally settle down their various identity issues etc

......... great question..

dirk's masculine gender identity is fucking fascinating and there's always something new to consider when i look at it at a different angle. and i mean this also goes for bro too. like gender is a very complex thing in homestuck with many metaphors physical or thematical littered about. Dirk specific gender identifiers are lil cal (empty), being seen as cherry red (either failing at those standards or admired for achieving them), and bro-ism which in this instance is often interchanged with heroism.

canonically in caliborn's masterpiece, after dirk seals caliborn away into cal, and lets cal and arq go, homie has straight up lost all the signifiers he's identified with and is left in his pink god tier outfit. literally forced to reckon with the fact that he is a gay man, and how that actually may be way better than the alternative that he was trying so desperately to be seen as. idk there was a series of posts i made about it a month or so ago. this is like, the final realization dirk has in the comic. i mean i dunno about specifics of labels, but gay and genderqueer is like the basic all encompassing ones. to be honest most homestuck characters fall under this extremely broad category, as queerness is a huge underlying theme.

a dirk that doesn't immediately go through caliborn's masterpiece learns this the loooong way. cis guy-> trans guy (refuses to acknowledge this during the session but slowly gets it towards the end of 3 year voyage. will NOT say he is trans through his lips though.) and then shit just stagnates there. i think it depends on his environment, but 5+ years (depends on who he surrounds himself with. if its no one, he is COOKED.) is about the time needed to have those same revelations.

and then there's hal........ arq is one of them brightly colored gendersonas. like what swimz said, arq sacrificed her continued existence for her friends. i dont think arquius ever gave her gender a name because of how thoroughly she embodied it by her self love/ the joy she felt for being alive. it was already said by her existing. hal getting a body vs hal getting a body after being arquius r people who understand vastly different amounts of things about themselves.

a hal sans arq brain meld has a silent kind of depressive acceptance about them. yeah i got a body, things feel better, but it feels like there could be more i could be doing for myself right now, however do i really need it? umm sandpaper floor room esque. trying to figure out what to do with herself after getting less than the bare minimum of being a person. would take a bit to realize she can be a girl.

hal post arq brain meld. holy FUCKING shit i can feel like that?? suddenly no longer arquius's confident persona and is kind of freaking out about the various implications. there would be an amount of time where she falls into a depression, however tries to bring herself up back to that point because a part of her who was arquius knows she deserves it. she would over think the gender thing though, ok yes im a girl, BUUUTTT -etc etc-. almost for the same exact reasons why dirk is attached to those bro-isms. she was supposed to. red girl struggle. again, idk the specifics, gay and genderqueer is hella broad.

i do think hal is fem aligned and more confidently can call herself a girl over time, and dirk can finally wear pink without thinking about it and wanting to decapitate himself.

[the-fiction-witch]

i totally respect you and i love your work but i’m just curious: do you not consider there to be a line when you’re writing fics of underage characters? is it not a little weird to you? this is me assuming you’re an adult. all love, genuine question

Hello! Thank you for your question and the answer... is a little bit of an explanation.

Underage characters are a huge talking point not just within the realm of fanfiction but also I think fiction in general and I do believe it needs to be discussed more.

I am very aware underage characters are a line for a lot of people and I completely understand why, it's part of the reason I have such a detailed listing at the top of each of my posts as well as the recent overhaul of my own rating system.

I am an adult however I am also aware most of my audience is younger than me, I've been here a long time and I am very aware I am not one of the younger people on this platform.

When it comes to writing underage characters I find it a bit of a grey area, and I do believe both writing and reading it comes down to personal taste and where you believe your line is drawn and I completely understand if people don't want to read it.

My personal rule of thumb if you like is actually kinda detailed, I take into account,

How old the cannon character is within the Original work,

How old the actor playing them within their respective media was at the time of filming,

The time period in which the media takes place,

and the rules/ laws and social elements of the location where the media takes place.

Those last two are big parts of it, because as much as I may not agree with them I do understand that as an example,

Oscar Tully (HOTD) is an underage character as presented in the book and show, however, he exists within the world of GRRM's Westeros which is a world which is culturally accepting of things like child marriage as we see in the show itself.

Do I agree with child marriage Absolutely not! In fact, I kinda think 18 is too young to get married but that's a personal opinion.

But I do take into account the world and time these characters are in but there is also kinda an element with overage characters as well, I recently started writing for Elrond (ROP) and he is an immortal elf which opens up a lot of age-related questions in terms of what I can and can't do with his relationship to another character.

But in short its a kinda a case by case situation but I have no plans to make anything 18+ for underage characters unless it is specifically requested and even then I will take into account everything I have previously mentioned.

Hope this answer is okay!

[pyromanicsghost]

I genuinely don't understand why people hate the new season. Spoilers to follow.

To start, the Five and Lila subplot was shit. I won't front - it existing outside of the plot made it easy for me to just act like it didnt happen. Diego and Lila and Five deserved better and it sounds like the actors knew it. But if a bad romance subplot could ruin a whole show, I'd hate a lot more things.

I'm on the fence about Klaus's plot - felt like sidelining him and was questionable. But also a natural part of Klaus's life. Lila had her kids, Allison had Claire, Diego his family, on and on. Klaus's whole life was avoiding being sober and then a huge focus on sobriety. This is his thing. All y'all loved his drugged antics and it gets messy and sad especially when facing it post rock bottom and change.

I see a lot of Ben being unimportant complaints - Ben was always auxilary and a mcguffin there to bond or split the group - Umbrella Ben was a concept, a guilt source, Klaus's conscience, Klaus's id...never a character and dead before the show ever began. Sparrow Ben was literally never part of this family and plot about the family embracing him would have been nice, but him having his own solo quest because he is alone in this world was also fine. Jennifer was a plot device - and in a comic book show about another apocalypse thats not neccessarily a bad thing - especially with a group of dynamic characters I care about on the board.

I see a lot of complaints about the lack of fun villains. What was Sy (I know who was in him but that performance was fun)? Gene and Jean? Those are classic villains that are right up there with the Swedes and the Handler. Hazel & Cha Cha are still standouts but thats not cause these guys sucked.

I see a lot of ending complaints - going from "it was all for nothing" to "it was harmful". If it was harmful for you please be safe and that's a personal decision each time - but also that's media sometimes. It wasn't an irresponisble move like The Magicians or 13 Reasons or other things that just don't consider the audiences needs in order to gain shock value and I don't think they did anything irresponsible with it.

(I am a survivor of unalive attempts, one right after magicians so I get it. And I'm a year sober re: Klaus stuff.)

But, I loved the ending. I don't think it was all for nothing. They saved thier families! They saved everyone! The whole world! Universe! Future and past! Their moms! Hundreds of people who died in their fight to save it, on either side because without the conflict caused by them they're lives were different! I wish the Flash, or Winchesters, or anyone else who keeps ruining lives and causing death and strife sometimes on an apocalypse scale or multiverse timesplit scale had, at literally any point, said "Actually we should value this over my mom/brother/self"...like the scale was apocalyptic. That has a cost. And wow they fixed more than even I hoped. The families? Nice. Hazel and his diner wife are where I got emotional - very nice touch to show everyone.

Why isn't there a kugelblitz? Either the deletion of the timelines and that energy removed the issue Golden Compass style or its a fun comic book show with time assassins and a new element called marigold.. take your pick. It's never been that deep.

The marigolds at the end were probably not thought about as much as anyone on here has. I thought it was just a fun finale goodbye, like getting a bouqet at curtain. I liked that Ben and Lila both had one.

Genuinely confused and had to write to the void and see if I'm alone or crazy. I recommend a lot of people read and watch more media for literacy and stop hoping for plots that are fanservice as they often tank good things and fanfiction and your imagination remain goated, often better, or touch grass and realize the silly fun comic book apocalypse multiverse romp may just be a lil dumb and that's okay...if you read all that I'd love feedback 🩷

And I loved so much more than this stuff! Claire being an actualized young adult and loving her uncle and mom and being a teen? Viktor getting the validation he craved. Diego getting his skills and lust for life back. The fucking cut from baby shark to "He's dying" and so many shots/editing/music choices that highlight the dark comedy this show is.

[decepti-thots]

(I’ll preface by saying: huge JP fan who has no problem with people not liking it)

Anyways I’m actually super curious…

How are most JP fics “boring”? 🤔 I’ve always found their dynamic to be more entertaining than most, given the dichotomy of their characters.

So I’m curious as to how you’ve wound up at “boring” of all the possible reasons to dislike it. 🤣

I'm going to be a bit blunter here than I usually would be on the topic, as I was directly asked. So I'll cut the uh… negativity? I guess? For those who prefer not to see folks talk shit about a ship they like, lol.

First and foremost Jazz/Prowl is basically just… essentially made up and purely based on fanon inventions/additions, and made up fanon stuff is usually not of real interest to me without a very strong hook somewhere in the actual canon material. It is 99% fanon by volume that draws on little to no canon material of any kind but just... years of fanon, reproducing itself and mutating almost like a fanfic game of telephone, all developed in fandom echo chambers. Which renders the characters in the vast majority of fic a) largely unrelated to any canon material I like in a meaningful sense and b) tbqh, the kind of generic stuff found in a lot of typical, large dudeslash fandoms where the characters are… they're Dudeslash Fandom Archetypes with a gloss of paint on top, you know? People come in, look for which character in a fandom fits their favourite m/m trope the most, and then squish the character down to fit into that pre-existing archetype.

And the thing is, J/P has historically made a certain kind of sense for this, because the appeal was basically that… they didn't HAVE that much canon material? In the Marvel G1 comics, they have a little more specific characterisation and canon, but the G1 cartoon is not exactly a character exploration piece ANYWAY, and for Prowl especially he is a blank slate you can functionally project an OC onto. Which like, that's fine! That makes a lot of sense even if it's not what usually draws me into something.

My issue has become that if I read one more G1-fanon-soup fest mistagged "IDW" I'm gonna scream. I like IDW Prowl (and IDW Jazz too!) for the fact that these characters have specific, strongly delineated canon personalities, arcs and dynamics, and both of these characters- Prowl especially, but both of them!- have like. Things about them which are true, and which J/P fic not only tends to ignore but actively treats in a loooot of cases as somehow Inferior To Our Fanon and something to be "fixed" with idk, the power of Extremely Generic Dudeslash Tropes. I've been in many a fandom with Migratory Dudeslash Fandoms writing fic. J/P is extremely rote to me as a result, if nothing else.

It warrants mentioning that J/P fandom is where one does find a lot of examples of just undeniably racist treatment of Jazz in fic, both the truly inexcusable phonetic accent bullshit and also a lot of bad decisions around tropes. I don't think this is a function of the ship, per se, but that its specific persistence in J/P fandom (bc trust me: this has been a point of criticism for A Long Fucking Time) is in part due to it having this long entrenched fanon-to-fanon game of telephone going on? It would be better to talk about the fandom's issues there outside ship talk so I'll leave it at that, but I can't deny it has not… helped my feelings. TBH. And I know that's where a lot of the resentment you will find in the fandom obviously stems from.

IDK. It's just. It's usually fanfic of itself, you know? J/P largely feels to me, in most cases, like fanfic of fanfic of fanfic, and I come to TF fandom for fanfic of a canon. So. Yeah. Not a fan. At all.

[coraniaid]

Dawn Summers?

General opinion/how much I care about them: Dawn isn’t one of my favorite characters (partly because she’s not in either of my favorite seasons), but I do like her and I think the decision to introduce her into the show was a really good one.  I think it allows for some really strong emotional beats that just wouldn’t have been possible otherwise.

A ship I love: I don’t think we see anybody in the show who I’d feel comfortable shipping with Dawn.  (At least, nobody who we see enough to have any idea about their actual personality.  I guess Janice … exists?)  Uh.  Amanda, maybe?

A non-romantic relationship that I love: Dawn and Buffy seems a little bit too obvious an answer here, but … well, it’s obvious for a reason, no?  I think it’s a huge part of what makes seasons 5 and 6 work, and its relative absence in season 7 is a significant factor in why that season doesn’t work for me.  “Summers’ blood: it’s just like mine“ + “She’s me.  The monks made her out of me.” + “I don’t want to protect you from the world.  I want to show it to you.” and so on.  And I like the fact that Buffy actually does get to find Dawn annoying sometimes too, without this detracting from how much she loves her, and that Dawn gets to be upset when she thinks Buffy is ignoring her.

The NOTP: I have lots of other conceptual problems with the comics which have pretty thoroughly put me off reading them, but knowing who Dawn ends up with in them is … definitely up there.

My biggest headcanon about them: I always forget that this is headcanon and not just established in the show, but teenage Dawn absolutely thought Faith was the coolest person she’d ever met.  I think she’d have been so thrilled to meet her at the start of Season 3, and driven Buffy a little crazy later by adopting her mannerisms and trying to copy her fashion choices (in … well, the exact same way Buffy herself does later in the season), or by suggesting that Faith was maybe a better Slayer than Buffy and Buffy could learn a lot from her.  And after Faith starts working for the Mayor, I think she’d have been the biggest advocate of her ability to reform or secretly feeling bad about everything … right up to the point Faith threatened Joyce and stole Buffy’s body, something that Dawn would react to very very badly (see: her reaction to meeting Faith in Season 7).  In fact my headcanon for why the rest of the group don’t really talk about Faith after Season 4 is precisely that they’re worried about upsetting Dawn, who is by this point very vocal in her dislike of and refusal to forgive Faith.

An idea for a fanfiction I would like to write/read about them: I’m not sure if it’s an interesting enough idea to make work on its own, or you need something else as a hook, but I sometimes think I’d really like to read an (otherwise canon compliant) retelling of the first four seasons (or, well, first three seasons) where Dawn actually existed all along.  When exactly did Dawn find out about Buffy being the Slayer? (Yes, I know there’s a semi-canonical answer to this question but I do not like it.)  Does Joyce take her to LA (and out of school??) on all those occasions she has to be conveniently out of town for the plot to work, or is Buffy supposed to look after her while she’s fighting the Order of Taraka?  Does Dawn hate Ted too?  Does she get to meet Kendra? Is she home when Buffy and Spike stake a vampire in front of Joyce in Becoming? How does the big fight in Dead Man’s Party play out if Dawn is around?  (OK, maybe I just want somebody to write a version of Dead Man’s Party that’s �� you know, good.)

Something that makes me think of them: Well, like I said, I don’t think of Dawn that much (compared to some other Buffy characters, anyway), but that means I get to be reminded that Dawn exists sometimes, which is nice?  It’s always fun when I run into a line of dialogue in the early seasons that absolutely couldn’t have been said in the version of the show where Dawn always existed (“It’s a good thing you were an only child”, for example): for some reason those are the times in my rewatch of the show I’m most likely to remember that Dawn actually does (or will) exist.

[woodswolf]

anyway im going to make some minor changes to existing chapters of DLD. im going to make a point to differentiate between the Hocotate and Hokotate pronunciations in-text since that's actually kinda really important and informs a lot about where olimar and various characters come from.

i don't think ive said this before anywhere (at least outside of DMs with my partner/ideas ducky), but the TL;DR is that both the "american" and japanese pronunciations of Hocotate/Hokotate are kind of an important background detail that inform how i see the pikmin universe Working in DLD. Hocotate ("american" pronunciation, "hawk-a-tate", rhymes with Freight) is the "standard" pronunciation across the galaxy while Hokotate (japanese pronunciation, "hoh-koh-tah-tay") is how Hokotate natives would refer to it. and this like, really really informs a lot of characterizations.

the ship for instance always pronounces it as Hocotate because it literally wouldn't know any better and nobody's ever said otherwise because it works well enough for an interplanetary business setting.

olimar also pronounces it as Hocotate unless he's specifically in a situation where everyone involved would Know to pronounce it Hokotate. however, he Thinks of it as Hokotate except in the context of Hocotate Freight.

the president is obviously from Hokotate but intentionally always pronounces it Hocotate and obviously named his company Hocotate Freight.

lamella would always pronounce it Hokotate which might make some characters (i.e. basically anyone who isn't from Hokotate) kinda 🤨 at her.

etc. like these are 4 very different outlooks that imply a lot of very different things about each of the characters.

also to be clear, Hocotatian is the "standard galactic" name for people from Hocotate. if asked by anyone Familiar With The Hokotate Distinction, though, they'd call themselves Hokotateno. but some people (such as olimar, aka Mister Nuance) would naturally have a conditional answer depending on who was asking and why.

in case anyone can't tell from the tone of this post, a lot of the reasons for this relate to some of the background lore of this universe that ive alluded to both in-text and in comment replies. i don't think it's ever going to come up explicitly in-text (so far it's mostly just been alluded to in things such as Hokotate's socioeconomics as olimar ranted about in chapter 2), but in DLD Hokotate has a history of Being Colonized and exploited for resources which can pretty clearly reframe a lot of those attitudes mentioned above if you didn't get the vibe already. it just hugely informs characterization so i think it's a change that's important to make sooner than later (even if it's mostly going to be relevant in much later entries once we start getting people Not From Hokotate involved in a major way, e.g. the Koppaites).

also blah blah blah everyone is technically speaking different languages but something something universal translators are standard features or something. i can have my really nuanced worldbuilding AND handwave things. if you're going to get mad at me about handwaving stuff though id like to introduce you to a cool game called Pikmin 4 which definitely does not handwave 90% of its plot and is 100% internally consistent all the time.

anyway ill probably make these changes tomorrow night or something. all im really gonna do is change 13 instances of spelling (the other 9 are going to remain unchanged as either part of "Hocotate Freight" or one instance in dialogue) but i can't be bothered tonight lol. i also might rewrite this post to actually use sentence case etc. since it'll be an important reference post to link in the chapter 1 author's note after making this change but i just expanded this from a discord message lmao

[arabian-batboy]

in your opinion, which stans of the Batkids are the most toxic?

Short answer: All of them, when a character has hundreds of thousands of fans online, then there bound to be a portion of them that is toxic. They might be a small percentage of the over-all fanbase, but their toxicity makes them appear larger in numbers than they really are, but for the most part there’s really not a huge margin between how toxic different fans of the Batkids can be.

Long answer: I have been in the fandom for a couple of years now and I have interacted with my fair share of people across the fandom, so based on my own personal experience, from most toxic to least toxic, they are:

1- Tim’s stans:

To be fair, when Tim’s fans are cool, they’re REALLY cool and very fun to interact with or talk about comics. Unfortunately though, cool Tim’s fans that don't take themselves seriously are hidden gems and a huge amount of them are very very very obnoxious and their shortcoming is that they view Tim through main-character-lenses where everything has to be centered around him and everyone else is a secondary character.

The biggest reason that makes them #1 in my ranking is that they have a serious issue with thinking that Tim is simultaneously the best character to exist while also being the most oppressed character to exist, even though he’s definitely neither of those things and its just really annoying to hear someone go on about how their favorite character is so perfect and better than everyone at everything, while also crying about how their favorite character doesn’t get any love and are constantly mistreated (especially when in reality they actually get more love from DC than anyone in Gotham beside Batman & Harley)

2- Dick’s stans:

If you asked me this question a couple of years ago, they would have definitely been way lower in the list, but I don’t know what happened in recently years that made Dick’s fans so overly-defense and hostile. I understand that fanon Dick has done more damage than any other fanon interpretation of any Batkids, but attacking everyone who make the smallest light-hearted joke about Dick isn’t it.

There’s also those who are so desperate to portray Nightwing as an A-class superhero who’s a master at everything he does and is a total loner edgelord who doesn’t need anyone or has anything fun or cheerful about him and...... just stop, what you’re doing isn’t that much better than fanon portraying Dick as overly-bubbly and I know you think it makes Dick sounds cool, but in reality you just make him sound like a discount Batman.

3- Cassandra’s stans:

They’re very similar to Dick’s fans in that they used to be chill, but in recent years they decided to make their dissatisfaction of DC’s treatment of Cassandra to be everybody’s problem, which includes them popping up to anyone who’s makes the smallest complaint about how their favorite character is currently being treated to yell: “YOU THINK THEY HAVE IT BAD??? LOOK AT WHAT HAPPENED TO CASSANDRA!!!” even if the character they’re talking about literally has ZERO things to do with Cassandra’s character.

Basically their anger is always misdirected and rarely has any positive results or discussions coming from it.

4- Damian’s stans:

I’m a Damian’s fan myself, so I might be biased, but its honestly hard to judge them because I feel like Damian’s fanbase has the most “variety” of any Batkid’s fanbase and it reached a point where some groups stan completely different versions of the same character with each group being toxic in their own special way, so I decided to put them in the middle.

I’m not gonna talk about each of them, but I feel like what all of them have in common is that they tend to over-react to things, even if they are in the right about something, they usually end up pushing too far in the other direction to the point where it blows out of proportion (but to be fair, if you leave them alone, they generally will not bother you)

5- Barbara’s stans:

Lets talk about the elephant in the room from the get-go.........almost all toxic Barbara’s stans are DickBabs shippers, I don’t know why that is and I don’t think everyone who ship them is inherently toxic, but boy are they a loud minority.

If we’re just judging Oracle’s fans then they would probably be the lowest in the list, but stans of Batgirl!Barbara and DickBabs shippers really pumped them up, especially during TT’s run of Nightwing.

6- Jason’s stans:

You know what, I never noticed this before I sat down and wrote this list, but have you noticed how most Jason’s stans are surprisingly very chill? There might be some inner-fighting going on between them, but for the most part they usually stay in their lane and don’t bother anyone unless you came for them first.

7- Duke’s stans:

Again, for the most part they are very chill and usually have great takes for all characters equally, but I feel that just like Dick’s fans, their frustration about Duke’s treatment can get the best out of them and sometimes they might go off on someone who didn’t deserve it because they didn’t like what they were saying.

8- Stephanie’s stans:

I don’t have much to say about them, but I mean come on, when was the last time you saw a Stephanie’s fan-account picking fights with other fans or insulting other characters? I personally haven’t seen one do such a thing before and while similar to Cassandra’s fans, they might give you a sob-story about Stephanie’s treatment, I feel like they’re much better about directing their frustration to DC instead of random people online or other fictional characters.

[nnnn99999]

Since summer night is ending soon, I decided that this is the perfect time to start watching mafia the series. Because I can't not have a constant injection of jd content in my life. I mean I could totally rewatch simm or ha, but since I am almost done watching a solo Dunk show, I kinda want to watch a solo Joong show now. I decided not to binge it so that I have something to keep me busy for a while. Life is stressful and I need something good to look forward to everyday. Anyway, this show is really good. Yes, I only watched ep 1. Yes, I am very confident that the whole series is good after watching only one ep. Because my do I have THOUGHTS!!!

First of all why oh why is this series so obscure? I doubt I would have known of its existence had I not been so jd obsessed. Or is it that the style of this show does not suit everyone? I'm just confused because I think it's great.

The cast so far seems to be great. I am so intrigued by everyone and how their characters are going to play out. They are so interesting. And all of them are so different, which makes the dynamics between them so much fun to watch. Particularly, I am very interested to see how the AnnaIntenso dynamics is going to play out. I love frenemies. Also I can already tell the characters have a lot of depth to them.

I love the style of this show. It is a mafia show, but it gives me more of a western + fantasy vibes. The opening scene was a fight between two mafia gangs, but because of the music and the way it was shot and edited, it felt more like an epic fantasy war. But it also gives me anime vibes for some reason. Anyway, I am loving the overall vibes so far.

Also I have to mention the choice of weapons for the main cast. It is interesting. This mafia show is giving me a sword, daggers(I have no idea what Intenso's weapon is actually called so I'm settling for daggers even though I clearly know those are not daggers. I don't want to accidentally spoil myself by researching so yeah) and a red gun. Awesome.

Fun fact about me nobody asked for: I am a huge fan of One Piece. I have a very strong emotional attachment to it. I will not even start on how much I love it and why. My overflowing love for One Piece is relevant because one of my favorite characters is Zoro. And Sven from this show reminds me of Zoro. It's not just because Sven is a swordsman, their fighting styles are very very different after all. It's because Sven is the cold, calm, loyal, strong protector like Zoro. If Sven turns out to be an idiot too, I will probably scream and terrify anyone who is unfortunate enough to be in the same house as me.

Moving on, the story seems really interesting so far. I have literally no idea where this is going to go since I jumped into this without knowing a single thing about it, apart from the fact that Joong is in it. But I am seated and ready for whatever this show decides to give me.

This next section is going to be me gushing over Joong basically.

So obviously I knew Joong is a really good actor. But I didn't know he was this good. The highlight of this ep, and maybe even the whole series, was Beam crying after finding out about his father's death. It was not the teardrops falling silently kind of crying I have seen Joong do before. No, it was the gut wrenching screaming ugly crying to the point you start to throw up because your world has fallen apart right in front of you. It was such a good scene. I felt every bit of Beam's pain and loss. I had no idea Joong could do that. Actually the scene at his father's funeral was done so well too. Joong was crying here too, but the feeling was completely different. Also I love that when Sven came to the funeral, Nut was the one who noticed and recognized him. Beam however was so distraught that he didn't notice Sven at all. Even the part where Beam gets lost in Baifern is so good. Like you can really tell that he is completely enraptured by her. Also the part where Beam looks at Baifern before getting into his father's car in front of the pub. So so good.

To summarize, Joong is a wonderful actor and I love him. This show is great.

Thanks to @airenyah for helping me find this show because if I was not going through your tags, I probably wouldn't have found out about the existence of this show until much later.

[reachexceedinggrasp]

tbqh i‘m not a big fan of Janey and/or Barb being the sole purpose and reason Coop stayed sane all those years. obviously, in a lot of ways he hasn’t processed the betrayal of his belief system and the hurt, let alone getting closure. And I mean, from where he stands at the end of s1 and from what we learn about him, it makes total sense that he’s so driven to find his family.

A message that I (personally) would find a lot more compelling though would be a possibility of a new life and closing the door on the past completely? In a way dwelling on the past keeps ourselves from healing, I think, and I really wish for Cooper to find meaning in the present and truly ‘take it as it comes’.

Ghoulcy brainrot aside, I think that it could be a nice way, narratively speaking, for Coop to let himself be soft and vulnerable and learn to trust someone (Lucy potentially) again? Like, he’s been in survival mode for the last 200 years, and there’s no question that there’s a lot to resolve with Vault-Tec, Barb, Hank etc. But I think it would be all backwards if his character arc would lead to him being a father again, without acknowledging how he changed in the meantime.

I mean, there’s a difference what a character THINKS they want, and what they really need. And I don’t see this tidy, neat, narrative bow of Cooper and Janey reuniting and going back to their old dynamic, happening. Which also completely negates Janey’s change and perspective (we still don’t know what happened to her and how she got separated from Cooper. Maybe she was lied to? there’s so many possibilities)

Sorry. All this rambling, just to say that I like the idea of Cooper finding his new purpose in the changed, new world, that is very different from the past, just like he is a changed man. And I hope that his character arc in s2 helps him get closure instead of ‘’’seemingly’’’ giving him what he wants, as in his family.

I agree that I wouldn't like the idea of it as his sole purpose in the ultra-literal sense I mentioned of it being the physical only reason he's alive, ie: he'd go feral if he got answers. That rubs me the wrong way, I think, because I feel like it implicitly denies the inherent value of his life and suggests he can't or shouldn't survive finding closure. Or, like I said, that he's 'already dead' and more like a ghost with unfinished business than someone who can find a way forward. Which I hugely dislike, thematically, because I always want the possibility of hope and healing to exist or what's the point investing in anything. I want characters to feel like they have narrative worth beyond their quests or immediate goals. He's been symbolically resurrected already because we meet him literally rising from his grave, and I want that to be resurrection not reanimation. I think he's alive and therefore still capable of choices and therefore still capable of healing etc etc.

They could take it in a hopeful direction (he's alive and can change) or in a bittersweet or tragic direction (Cooper died and the Ghoul is either his ghost or the wasteland is his Hell, he can serve only as a messenger or vengeful spirit).

I don't agree it's going backwards for him to 'become' a father again. He's never stopped being a father. He's the same person and will always be a father whether Janey is alive or not. To me, healing for him inevitably involves becoming more like he used to be, but that's not going backwards, that's reconnecting with his authentic self. It doesn't mean the intervening years are wiped away and nothing he's gone through since then matters, it just means he realises he buried parts of himself that he needs to be whole. That he doesn't have to let the wasteland turn him into its creature, there's ways to adapt and survive without discarding your soul.

He's already being confronted with that and already questioning himself just from the interaction he's had with Lucy so far. She's a mirror and a challenge for him and she's already showing him there might be another path, that it wasn't inevitable he ended up where he is now. He doesn't have to play this role he felt forced into to survive, it's not the only way.

I don't think you ever leave the past behind. It's part of you. To me it's not a binary between nostalgia and trying to 'go back' or drawing a line under it all and getting closure. His past is something he has to reclaim and reintegrate, not something to 'let go'.

If they're reunited, it will obviously never be the same, but that doesn't mean having a relationship with his daughter isn't something he should want. He'll always want that, that's a fundamental part of his identity. I don't think it's a simple bow to tie things in at all, because the most difficult part about it is that they'll have to figure out a way forward in the changed world. They can't go back to the way things were before. He can't go back, he can only reconcile.

I'd argue it'd be more of a challenge to his character if she's alive, because he'll have to deal directly with the reality of who he really is under the role he's taken on and be vulnerable just in order to even talk to her. If she's not alive, someone else would have to force him to do that.

Which I think can be Lucy, of course, because she's already made him reflect and confronted him just by being herself, but she can never create the emotional reckoning Janey can. The way his arc is going could be equally leading up to a reunion and a crisis or to him having to accept Janey's death. I think either is valid and possible, though again I think her being alive is more challenging and thus more likely.

If Janey is dead, that puts ten times more weight on his relationship with Lucy and makes their intimacy or lack thereof completely determinate of his trajectory, because he'd have no one else left to make him vulnerable. But like. He already dropped his exaggerated persona several times, including for Lucy simply because he empathised with her. I feel like he's more aware of what he's doing by playing a character to survive, and his authentic self is much closer to the surface, than people generally suppose.

[faerywhimsy]

Vamptember Day 24 -FREE DAY

I am a huge fan of book to TV adaptations, so much so that a portion of my Honours thesis was actually dedicated to that particular portion of media.

The Hunger Games books and movies offer a perfect example of so much of what I love about it; a series of books that are from a limited 1st person perspective, then expanded out into a series of not just three but four movies to make room for perspectives that are hinted at within the books, yet given no explicit voice given the nature of the perspective choice.

But even a faithful adaptations can turn sour is when enough of the central themes of a story get overturned over the course of a longer running series. I’m thinking Game of Thrones here. That first season was almost a play by play of the first novel. Things like the Red- and Purple Weddings later occurred more or less as expected, though timelines of surrounding events were fudged. There were some really cool graphics made on this topic back in the day.

And then... well, we got the last 3 seasons, didn't we? What a disappointment (sorry Jacob, you're an actor capable of doing things that are very subtle, but that show let you down).

Reimaginings can likewise be good or bad, but they have built into them a bit more leeway. Where these usually turn sour is around the time they fully abandon the source material. This is mostly your ‘loosely inspired by’ stuff. It’s putting a name on the door that’s generated to sell tickets. I’m trying to think of a good example of this, but the stuff I haven’t liked doesn’t tend to stick in my head because I’ve usually moved on by then. At their strongest, reimaginings bring well thought out and updated content to a fandom.

BBC's reimagining in Sherlock was innovative when they brought Conan Doyal's characters into the modern day. They succeeded in doing that because what they kept sacred, at least to begin with, was the relationships between the characters and the overarching themes that came from that. By doing only those two things, they were able to reinvent satisfying ways to touch on the main plot points of the original stories.

That team also, sadly, offered a cautionary tale of what happens when such a project deviates too far from its source material.

The reimagining in AMC's Interview with the Vampire is far more ambitious and therefore complex in what it proposes, with an equal half of its story existing in a space that will be close to what was written in the books. I genuinely hope they end up succeeding with their ambition. Part of that is that it's not pretending to be any sort of directly faithful adaptation.

The first hint? The entire premise of S1: It’s 2022 and Louis invites Daniel for a second interview. That just didn't occur in the books.

This one change brings the story straight into the modern day, which is easily arguable as something needed for a series that released its first book in 1976. While I love a nostalgic- or period piece as much as the next person, I’m not disappointed by this.

This is the kind of change that’s a deal breaker. It stands to give new watchers the introduction they need into the world at the same time as giving something entirely unexpected to old fans. In other words, it’s narrative gold to someone like me.

The reasons I love it are completely different to what draws me to a straight like for like with added scenes adaptation as outlined above in Hunger Games. By changing the timeline and beginning straight out of the gate, it means that you can change everything.

And, god, they do.

Okay, obviously not everything. Character names, places, even dates on their own aren’t enough to hold the narrative cohesion of a reimagining if it doesn’t hold tight enough to the central themes of the source material to maintain that the original plot points still make sense to come to pass. WHICH S1 DOES.

I have so much interest in dissecting how they’ve so far kept hold of (most of) the themes and yet, in only 7 episodes, have already told a story with so many different details. And, if I’m gonna be totally honest, TVC is perfectly primed for exactly this kind of adaptation simply because, as a collection, these books have never been consistent (thank you, Anne for this dubious and ongoing gift).

There has been a single possible inconsistency with themes that did give me some cause for concern, but it’s also not the one that most people seem concerned by. So, let’s get into the analysis!

Armand:

I’m beginning with this character, because a supercut on YouTube I finally got around to watching made me realise we got a total of 15 minutes of Assad on screen in the 7 episodes of S1, and less than 5 of those are of him in the named character. So it’s an easy place to start.

Obviously, there is little difference that can be pointed to in those fewer than 5 minutes other than the differences in physical appearance than described (17 y/o, red hair, brown eyes) in the books, and that’s what I’ve seen a lot of discourse on thus far. That, and what on earth this Louis had on him to convince him it was a great play to pretend to be Rashid in front of Daniel. (He is a theatre kid, I guess…)

There is however a short detail in The Vampire Armand after Armand goes into the sun, however, that briefly describes his eyes as being orange (maybe amber?) as he starts to heal, and therefore the choice on making Assad’s eyes this colour in the series becomes an interesting detail to me.

Also, let’s be honest – if you’re gonna make the creative choice to have both Sam and Jacob in these luminescent contacts, but leave Assad’s natural throughout… well, I mean, what is being said on that side of the coin if that’s the choice being made?

On the side of details they kept AND CHANGED at the same time, my favourite for this character continues to be the below image that shows the physical resemblance between one Assad Zaman and, yes, a different Botticelli painting than any referenced in the books, but ultimately a Botticelli painting all the same. We're good to go!

Louis:

I don’t really want to focus too long on the obvious differences between Louis the slave owner (books) and Louis the pimp (series) except to say they are there. As are Louis’ signature green eyes.

However, that is where the resemblance ends. And I’m not just talking about physical.

In Louis’ case, the biggest difference I clocked and remarked in DMs up till now that—as a fanfic writer of both books and series fandom—Louis’ was the voice that consistently gave me most trouble to move between. I literally could not convincingly write him in any series fic at the same time as I was writing my mammoth long fic How They Get to Trinity Gate.

And it was not the fact that Louis was white in the books that tripped me up.

Another big thing is the change to when Louis and Lestat meet. This changes things for Lestat's character a bit as well, but I think it's more clear at this point the ways in which Lestat being set up as that much stronger and older than Louis on first meeting has had an impact on their story. Armand will be that much older than Louis as well, but what's a difference of a handful of decades when Armand already was that much older than Louis canonically?

As a linguist, I remain most fascinated by the dialogue changes that have been given to Louis’ character, particularly in historic New Orleans scenes. When reading Interview With the Vampire, there’s not a great deal of difference to the voice of Louis in the present vs the past that he gives to the boy interviewer. In the series, however? The difference in character from past to present is as unavoidable as it is riveting. To me, that alone offers so many details about who Louis is as a person, the disparity between Louis and a Lestat who obviously still gets to keep his book canon French accent.

In terms of how these changes effected the story as Louis relates it to Daniel, however? I mean, for the most part, the Louis I watched was equally convincing as he hit the main plot points his character needed to hit to stay true to the source material. That makes it a successful update to me!

Daniel:

Daniel is a laugh, both in the books and in the series. But, though the series has held on to the aspect of his sense of humour from the books, that humour is depicted in a completely different way.

Self deprecating, for the most part, or actually laugh out loud funny is what we see of Daniel in the books. Occasionally his anger gets the better of him, but for the most part he’s more docile—or possibly just as drunk—as many of us would be in similar circumstances. Apart from, say, when he’s calling Armand an immortal idiot.

The humour we get from Daniel in the series, though? That’s cutting. Yes, aimed to slice others up, especially when he’s deflecting from himself, but also the stuff that's made to cut through bullshit.

He’s had another 50 years to hone it, and none of them were lost to madness or absence from himself. No, this Daniel has been present every year of the 69 that have been given to him, and it shows. His wit has grown up with him, because he has grown up in a way he never got to in the books.

Something else to consider, however, is the fact that this Daniel is half David.

Actually, it's more than half. We got less of Daniel in S1 than we got of Armand. When I say this, I mean the only parts from the book canon we've got were in a couple of flashback scenes and the recording Eric listens to, then plays in Dubai in Episode 1. Only Luke Brandon Field has so far shown me anything close to a faithful version of Daniel, and I've no doubt this actor is destined to continue to follow that trajectory throughout future seasons.

That leaves me with wondering who we've got in the present from Eric? And that's David Talbot who, it turns out, is another canonical interviewer within The Vampire Chronicles. You may remember him as the guy who interviewed Armand, a version of which we're also set to see in S2.

David, when we first see him in Queen of the Damned, is someone interested in vampires not as puff portraiture but as a reality. He’s an older man coming to acceptance he’s near the end of his life and career. And he does not want to be made into a vampire.

Louis: A still hand, time to watch your daughters marry. Daniel: And divorce. And die.

Sound familiar?

Let me explain something of what I suspect went into this decision behind the scenes: The character of Daniel is underdeveloped in the books to say the least, something I’ve written about already during Vamptember. There was never going to be enough of the book character of Daniel in AMC's version to satisfy every book reader. Anne simply didn't give us enough of him, and fandom remains wildly divided in how to interpret him.

By contrast, David was a character readers got far too much of because of Anne's attempt to shoe horn us into a different romantic interest for Lestat. He's just not as popular. Imagine for a second the reception if the early promotional material had named Eric as playing 'David' instead of 'Daniel'? It's a marketing mislead, and one that's paid off.

When setting up the core "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf"-esque central cast, the creative team over at AMC did something very clever, I think. They pulled over characteristics of another underdeveloped character from the same canon in order to flesh their version of Daniel out. We'll almost certainly see a body swap, and that's where the David, and Eric's, part of the story will end.

In conclusion, I will absolutely eat my hat if we see someone called David Talbot walking around in this series ever ever. And, when it comes to the eventual plot line of making Daniel a vampire, they've set up three good options in front of them (and another example where we old fans have no way to expect WHICH WAY IT WILL GO):

He'll be coerced into it (David, canonically by Lestat, but in this universe almost certainly Armand)

He'll change his mind and demand it again (Daniel in true Devil's Minion style)

He'll almost die and someone will have to turn him (Daniel, yes, but also Jesse)

Two of these methods of becoming a vampire from the early books canonically turn a Talamasca character, and I definitely have some on-a-tangent theories there, given the presence of Talamasca characters already in Mayfair Witches.

The only thing they’ll need to change from the books here is Armand being Daniel/David’s foil, instead of Lestat. And, look, they’ve already positioned Louis right there as the love of his life in the face of the love triangle that’s sure to follow in the series, as in the books.

Fareed (bonus):

This is further to my passing body swap comment in the last section, but I really wanted to add:

Why include this minor character front and centre as early as S1? Why then have him explicitly say he is not there not once but three separate times as part of his only dialogue?

Fareed: That is not my voice. And I'm not here. [...] I am not here. [...] I'm not here. [...] Pleasure never meeting you, Mr. Molloy.

Is this not explicitly designed to have the same effect as telling a person not to imagine a pink elephant? Not to mention, it's as meta as fuck. That's Schrödinger's Vampire right here.

So why do these things if not to bring to the front of people's minds not only that the entire of Anne Rice's canon is free game in this reimagining? But that Fareed in particular is a character who's the first of his kind in the Chronicles; a scientist who can and does invent a clone?

A clone that might just end up looking very much like Luke Brandon Field?

Why, also, spend so much time and promotional material on another actor we see for about the same short space of time within S1? Minute for minute, I reckon we get about the same amount of screen time here with Gopal Divan as we do with Luke.

That, and they both happen to appear for the first time in Episode 6. Just saying.

In terms of canon deviation, if there was a physical description of Fareed in the books, I honestly don't remember it. He was just one of Anne's many, many characters that were a) created to function as a plot point, and b) forgotten beyond the original purpose he was created for.

As long as they manage to keep Fareed interested in the vampiric sciences, I honestly don't see there being any problems.

Lestat:

Saving the best till last, am I right?

Lestat is Lestat is Lestat, isn’t he? The blond hair. The blue eyes. The arrogant swagger. Both the father’s anger matched with the uncontrollable laughter raging within him at all times. Completely out of control. Hedonistic, definitely to a fault. A Byronic hero in the package of an immoral vampire.

I hated Lestat and, when I read the books as a teenager, it was despite him.

I was ready to go into the series doing the same. The stories, the themes, the history, the characters (minus Lestat). There is so much richness to love in the world of the books, despite so much of it being told by Lestat. And there was no doubt we were gonna get less of The Lestat Show in a show that’s not told from his PoV and has three other main characters vying equally for that attention.

I will amend this statement now to acknowledge he does get less obnoxious by the time we hit the final trilogy, which were obviously not out when I’d made the judgement call of despising him. (Hell, Tales of the Body Thief wasn’t yet out…)

In Lestat's case, the changes that have been made aren't so much of appearance or characterisation, so much as moments. And I understand why. Lestat is iconic and, in many ways, impossible to change in any meaningful way because of it. So the choice of changing moments here and there becomes the perfect way to cast a new spin on Lestat's character.

ESPECIALLY when you have Armand right there behind Louis the whole time, almost certainly controlling the narrative.

Obviously, there was That Scene in Episode 5. That particular scene is one that never happened in any of the books. But Lestat’s aggressions, micro and otherwise, are a well known particularly in early canon, and Louis is certainly not exempt from them.

Nor is Claudia. And who among us haven’t put up with less when it’s aimed towards a person we love than what we’ll put up with aimed to ourselves?

Despite it not following an actual canon event, it held intact location, characters and central themes all together – the summation of most important aspects when we have an adaptation and hope it will continue to hit the major canon plot points in its reimagining.

We saw Lestat, Louis and Claudia all moving towards an event we all knew was coming, and what ended up being the climax of S1.

What I don't see being talked about anywhere near so much is the beginning of Episode 3, as Louis begins to commit himself to becoming a nuisance to the feline life of New Orleans.

Lestat: Say we come upon a murderer planting a flowerbed, thinking only of flowers. How long do we wait before his bloody deeds reveal themselves? Louis: As long as it takes. Lestat: You haven’t thought this through, Louis.

The charitable view, of course, is that Lestat is just not wanting, in this moment, to encourage anything Louis wants to say. If so, it would hardly be the only time Lestat shuts Louis down. Louis says he doesn’t want to feed on humans anymore so Lestat’s immediate response is to push as hard in the opposite direction. I would be satisfied with that.

Equally, I would be satisfied if, come S3, Lestat is revealed to remember this conversation completely differently. It would make sense. Of COURSE Lestat wants to feed on the evil doer and only the evil doer. What else are monsters like them supposed do? This would speak perfectly to their being many things in The Vampire Lestat that are different once Lestat takes the reigns of the books and supposed pen name.

The more I think about it, the more I won't be terribly surprised if they decide on one of these—or even a secret third option (Armand, I'm looking at you)—being the way this moment washes out later. The repercussions of deviating from Lestat only feeding from the evil doer are far too detrimental to the canon they seem intent to create.

Basically, their Lestat holding fast to this opinion for any longer than this scene would leave them struggling to hit more than one major plot point in future seasons.

Anyone who's read the books knows Lestat has already come across Marius before he meets Louis. He's heard Marius’ treatise on only eating the evil doer, and understands why his mentor holds to that tenant. Likewise, Lestat has prior to that come across Armand—something that has all but been confirmed for the series, again in the S2 trailer—and, after meeting both fledgling and maker, Lestat is able to pull together for himself an ethical stance he will take into the rest of his immortal life.

Lestat doesn't have to figure out what his code is gonna be, or whether he's gonna have one, like he way that's depicted for Louis in Episodes 2-3. This ethical stance informs him and carries through from there to the time in the future where Lestat’s made Prince of all vampires.

We'd have a very different looking future seasons ahead of us if Lestat were to abandon that code. It would make Episode 5 look tame.

But Sam knows those books. Rolin knows those books.

I love these monsters. As unreliable as Anne was with her famous lack of editing, this was something even she never flipped back and forth on. And a bunch of monsters with a code is still what we are seeing in S1 just from the fact that Daniel has survived this far into the interview in 2022.

They were and continue to be monsters, her characters, but they aren't that monstrous. There's a line for these serial murders. Honour among the thieves of mortal life.

That’s what makes them so enduringly interesting in all the variations we see for them.

@vamptember