#type: criticism

[lorynna]

truly, birth control can do a lot of damage and we should not give it out to teenage girls thoughtlessy, in the way that it is happening right now where gynecologists can't wait to prescribe it, but in certain cases taking birth control can benefit and help you and it is more demonized than it should be.

it is still way more harmless and bears less risks than going through a legit pregnancy or childbirth.

adding more onto this: any woman harassing other women for the only fact that they are taking birth control, being in a het relationship etc. is not a feminist.

"cum-brained", "dick-lover" i am just waiting until you turn the last page and get to "yeah actually abortion is really not important, just suffer the consequences of sleeping with a man! you cum-fanatics, choke on your jakey's sperm and die!"

Actually got an anon like this today:

uh "hormonal birth control destroys your body and women only take it because they looove penis so much" is not a feminist stance and, in fact, believing that makes you a bumbling idiot

[chibird]

It's normal to be hard on yourself, because you want to do the best you can and accomplish everything, even when your time or energy is limited. However, sometimes the criticism towards yourself is too much, and it has a negative impact on your mood and motivation. The next time you catch yourself thinking that you "should" be doing more, pause and see if that's actually helpful, because maybe you're doing as much as you can already.

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[prokopetz]

The reason most people are bad at offering cogent criticisms of other people's work is because they're evaluating those works on the basis of The Thing They Would Make, not The Thing You Would Make. Indeed, a great many people don't understand that those are different things, interpreting The Thing You Would Make as a defective or incomplete version of The Thing They Would Make.

This gulf of understanding is not an impassable one. Learning to correctly identify the author's creative goals with respect to a particular work, and to formulate criticism in terms of how best to achieve those goals, is a skill which can be cultivated. In its proper place, it can be a hugely valuable skill – there's a reason many authors will tell you that a good editor is worth their weight in gold.

Unfortunately, developing this skill will not make you any less prone to being a hater. Learning how to correctly identify other people's creative goals simply means that you'll graduate from picking at specific choices to saying: "I understand this work's goals, and those goals fucking suck. I hate everything that this chooses to be."

[aenramsden]

The following is not my idea; it was the original brainchild of a friend of mine named Omicron, with help from various others including EarthScorpion, TenfoldShields, @havocfett and ShintheNinja:

So, you know what I want to do one day? Run (or play in) a D&D campaign in which the Big Bad Super Dragon that is fuckoff ancient and unfathomably powerful and whose actions have shaped history and bent the course of nations and had repercussions on the whole culture and society in the region where it's set; the Bonus Special Boss for some endgame optional quest after you defeat the direct BBEG and win the campaign...

... is a white dragon.

To explain this for people not deep into 5e monster lore; D&D dragons are sapient beings, and known for their instincts and tendencies, and whenever you meet an big evil dragon that's really old it's usually this ancient creature of terrible intellect Smaug-ing it up all over the place.

Except white dragons are fucking stupid. Like, they're still capable of speech and thought! They're just… feral, hungry morons. And you almost never see them portrayed as ancient wyrms for that reason; they lack majesty. Critical Role did it, yes, but even then, Vorugal is explicitly the most bestial member of the Chroma Conclave, and the others are the more intelligent planners and long-term threats. An ancient white as a nation-defining endboss, though; not a thug for a smarter master but as the strongest and biggest threat around is just not the sort of thing you tend to see.

Adventurers: "Oh wise Therunax the Munificent, gold dragon of Law and Good, what can you tell us adventurers of the evil dragons which rule this land?" Therunax the Munificent, 500-year old Gold Dragon: "Good adventurers, know this: this land is torn apart by the evil of Tiamat's spawn. The eastern marches are the dwelling of Furinar the Plague-Bringer, black dragoness whose hoard is a thousand sicknesses contained in the body of her tributes. The southern volcanic mountains are the roosting of Angrar the Wrathful, the fiery red dragon, who brings magmatic fury on all who do not worship him. And the northern peaks are home to Face-Biter Mike, the oldest and most powerful of all, of whom I dread to speak." Adventurers: "F-Face-Biter Mike???" Therunax: "Oh yes, verily indeed; two thousand years has Mike lived, and his eyes have seen the rise and fall of five empires, and a hundred and score champions have sought to slay him; and each and every one he bit their fucking face off."

Like... I want to see a campaign where Face-Biter Mike is genuinely the most powerful dragon in the region, if not the entire world. Where sometimes he descends on a city to grab himself some meatsicles and causes a localised ice age by the beat of his vast wings and the frigid wastes of his mighty breath and by the chill his mere presence brings to everything for miles around him, and everyone just has to deal with that for the next decade. An entire era of civilization comes to an end, an empire falls, tens of thousands starve in the winter, all because Mike wanted a snack. Where his hoard is an unfathomably vast mass of jewels and artefacts and precious stones frozen in an unmelting glacier, except he is a nouveau riche idiot with fuckall appraising skill, so half of his hoard is coloured glass or worthless knicknacks, and he doesn't give a shit.

"Your Draconic Majesty, this crown is… It's pyrite." "Yeah, well, it's brighter than this dusty old thing made out of real gold, it's my new best treasure. Throw the other one away." "…throw the Burnished Tiara of Bahamut, forged in the First Age of Man, your majesty???" "See? I can't even remember its fucking name." "But my lord-" "DO YOU WANT TO BE A MEATSICLE" "…I will fetch a trash bag, your majesty."

But at the same time, he's not stupid, he's just simple, and in some ways that makes him more dangerous than the usual kinds of scheming Big Bad you see in these things, while simultaneously justifying why Orcus remains on his throne (because he's lazy). Face-Biter Mike doesn't make convoluted plans or run labyrinthine schemes; he just has a talent for violence and a pragmatic, straightforward approach to turning any kind of problem he struggles with into a problem that can be resolved with violence. Face-Biter Mike has one talent and it's horrifying physical power, so his approach to any complicated problem is "how do I turn this into a situation where I can fly down and bite this dude's face off?" with absolutely no regard for the collateral damage or consequences of doing so, because those are also things he can turn into face-bitable problems.

"My lord, the dread necromancer Nikodemion is using his undead dragons to attempt a conquest of the eastern kingdom; his agents are everywhere, his plans are centuries in the making, what can we do against such a mastermind?" "I'm gonna fly over the capital and eat the eastern king." "M-my lord???" "The kingdom will collapse without leadership, Nikodemion will win his war, he'll take the capital and crown himself king." "And that helps us… how?" "Once he does I'll fly over to the capital and eat him." "…" "This is why you advisors all suck. You're all about convoluted plans when the only thing I need to win is know where my enemy is so I can fly down there and eat him. Stop overthinking things."

And, like, yeah, it's a simplistic plan, but when you're several hundred tons of nigh invincible magical death, you don't need brilliant strategy; the smartest way to win a war is, in this case, the simplest. He's not even all that clever at figuring out the consequences of face-biting, he's just memorised the common consequences of doing so.

(If you want to go all in on Mike being the major mover and shaker in the region; Nikodemion only even has a pet zombie dragon because Mike killed the last dragon to show up and contest his turf but wasn't going to eat a whole dragon by himself. Nikodemion got to stick around and amass that much power because Mike ate the Hero of the Realm while he was adventuring because he figured the Hero would come and try to slay him at some point. Nikodemion got started because Mike ate half the leadership of the Academy of High Magic who typically keep evil wizards and necromancers in check. And then eventually this product of Mike's casual, careless actions becomes a big enough problem to bother Mike personally, at which point Mike eats him too.)

He doesn't even really fail upwards, either! He is regularly reduced to nothing but the glacier he stores his hoard in, but he's Face-Biter Mike so nobody wants to commit to actually ending him forever lest they get their faces bitten the fuck off. And his hoard's in a huge-ass magical glacier so nobody can get to it without running into the Invading Russia problem; it's hard to wage war when everything is frozen over and you're both starving and freezing to death. Once he's been beaten back to his central lair and has lost all his holdings… I mean, he's still a problem, but he's a far away problem. So he loses his assets and spends a decade in a cave brooding it up while no one dares risk trying to actually kill him, and then a generation or two later he flies down to a kobold colony and gets himself some minions, or a dragon-worshipping mage comes to offer his service against a pittance from his hoard, or a particularly stupid cult starts thinking they can get in good with him and leech off his power, and then he's (hah) snowballing again.

He's also got a very… well, the kind of weird Charisma that Grineer bosses do. Like Sargas Ruk, who's a malformed idiot, but oddly charismatic. As he's a dragon, that makes him a natural sorcerer and thus Charisma is all he needs. He's pretty relaxed when he isn't in a face-biting mood, and he's kind of infectiously optimistic, because his life has taught him that he will succeed as long as he perseveres. So he just believes it.

And sometimes that's really refreshing to work for, as an evil minion of darkness! It's like, you're coming to your Evil Dragon Lord with terrible news; you've worked for evil overlords before, you know how it goes. You fall to your knees weeping and tell him that you've failed to seize the incredibly powerful magical artifact, you think your life is forfeit. And he's just like "Eh, it's okay, these things are all over the place. Better luck next time. You remember the guy who took it, right?" and you go "Y-yes, oh great lord!" and he's like "Sweet tell me his name later and I'll grab it" and then eats a frozen adventurer he kept around as a snack.

His followers tend to quickly realise that if they fail him, bringing some temple's silver or a sack of brightly coloured beads or a couple of dead cows means he's super forgiving because at least he's got something out of the day. "Oh boy, cows? It's been forever since I had those, ever since the Orc Steppe Nomads took over it's all about goats and onions. Today is a good day." He's a master of delegation by dragon standards, in that he just tells you "Just go get it done, I don't care how" rather than micromanaging you and constantly appearing as an image in smoke or taking over your campfire.

The key part of Face-Biter Mike as a threat to players (because he exists in the context of a D&D campaign) works well in that you can rely on several known quantities:

He will not pull sneaky shit that you don't see coming

He will not make convoluted plans that you must work to unravel

He will consistently attempt to come down and wreck you personally if he finds the opportunity and you are a threat to him

You cannot fight him head-on (at least not until the last leg of the campaign, and ideally as an optional boss rather than mandatory)

So as long as you are good at staying under the radar, thwarting his minions (whom he gives broad orders to with almost zero oversight) and not putting yourself in face-biting range, you can deal with him. If you succeed, it won't be the first time Mike has lost his assets and had to go brood in his glacier for a decade or two before rebuilding. It happens; he can deal with it. And that's a win for you within the context of a single campaign, so take the win.

And if you're not going to use him as an enemy, he works pretty well as a quest-giver, too! The costs for failure are obvious and straightforward, and "do whatever, just get me mine" means that players have a lot of freedom in accomplishing their goals. As far as evil overlords go he is actually one of the least dangerous to work for; his pride is relatively subdued by draconic standards, his goals are simple and typically achievable, and he is easily pleased.

(There's also a good chance he is the forefather of any draconic sorcerer in your party, because Face Biter Mike is a deadbeat dad.)

[ultraericthered]

Old article, but mostly excellent and thought-provoking save for two gaping holes in it that sort of throws me off.

1. I don't know where the talk of "prison abolition" in this piece is coming from seeing as in the series, the only imprisoned character we meet is Cutthroat....who turns out to be someone who very much belongs in prison and out of society, away from people he'd harm. The actual problem is that at the start, he's slated to be publicly executed by the state, something that the narrative posits as wrong, as not even a deranged mass-murdering monster like him deserves that treatment. Akudama Drive is anti-police brutality, anti-death penalty, and anti-authoritarian rule by moral absolutism that leads to retributive justice becoming the law of the land. But at no point does it take a stance against prison sentences for dangerous felons.

2. Mention of "defund the police" at the end. That's a no-no. In fact, the Director's Cut ending actually sort of goes against this, having Apprentice vouch for systemic reform rather than abolition.

“Serves You Right”: The abolitionist condemnation of retributive justice in Akudama Drive

Content Warning: Discussion of police brutality/murder, carceral violence, racism

Spoilers for Akudama Drive

“An attempt to create a new conceptual terrain for imagining alternatives to imprisonment involves the ideological work of questioning why “criminals” have been constituted as a class and, indeed, a class of human beings undeserving of the civil and human rights accorded to others.”

When Akudama Drive first aired in the fall of 2020, it came across as an all-style, low-substance cyberpunk action show most interested in showing off its slick, frantic animation. With a cast mostly of “dangerous criminals” identified by the crimes they’ve committed instead of their names, I assumed its dystopian setting would act as little more than set dressing in a story that ultimately reinforces, rather than challenges, the stigmatization of criminalized people. I have rarely been happier to be proven wrong. Echoing the calls of the prison abolition movement, Akudama Drive delivers a powerful and subversive statement against the criminal legal system, one that goes beyond slogans like All Cops Are Bastards and questions the basis of our conception of justice.

Instead of a more neutral term for criminals, the creators chose the word “akudama,” which literally means “bad guy” or “villain,” in order to critically examine its nature as a social class, one that is distinct from the group of people who have broken the law and carries with it a harsh value judgement. The branding of one as Akudama is the arrest by police. Once a person is handcuffed in public view, thrown into a police car, and the media publishes their mug shots, they are filed under “criminals” in our minds, presumption of innocence be damned. Likewise, one becomes an Akudama the instant the police declare it to be so, before Executioners begin their investigation, let alone sentence them.

Read it at Anime Feminist!

[chthonic-cassandra]

An anonymous individual asked @awildwickedslip for recommendations of literary criticism on the gothic, and she directed them to me, so I thought it was time I make a rec list on the topic.

I'm keep this to more general analyses, but of course have a lot of recommendations for more works on more specific texts (especially but not limited to Dracula).

I'm also including some things that are more properly about amatory or epistolary fiction, because I think an understanding of those genres will serve you well in contemplating the gothic.

Mario Praz, The Romantic Agony

Nina Auerbach, Our Vampires, Ourselves

Christy Desmet and Anne Williams (eds), Shakespearean Gothic

Kate Ferguson Ellis, The Contested Castle

David J. Skal, The Monster Show: A Cultural History of Horror

Devendra P. Varma, The Gothic Flame

Angela Carter, The Sadeian Woman

Roland Barthes, Sade, Fourier, Loyola

Elizabeth Cook, Epistolary Bodies

Jacqueline Howard, Readng Gothic Fiction: A Bakhtinian Approach

Toni Bowers, Force or Fraud: British Seduction Stories and the Problem of Resistance

Peter Cryle, The Telling of the Act: Sexuality as Narrative in Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century France

Peter Cryle, Geometry in the Budoir: Configurations of French Erotic Narrative

Jalal Toufic, Vampire: An Uneasy Essay on the Undead in Film

Ruth Bernard Yeazell, Harems of the Mind: Passages of Western Art and Literature

Marianne Noble, The Masochistic Pleasures of Sentimental Literature

Terry Castle, The Female Thermometer: Eighteenth Century Literature and the Invention of the Uncanny

[ultraericthered]

Out of four consecutive Disney Villains that were defined by plot twists regarding them, I've often thought: what made Turbo and the Cybug he merged with in Wreck-It Ralph work out so well and deliver a villain so infinitely stronger than the villains that followed? I'd concluded that mostly it was because Turbo got to be around as an active and characterized antagonist as King Candy and the twisty nature of his villainy was more comparable to Judge Doom than following the Stinky Pete, Henry J. Waternoose, and Lyle T. Rourke route of only being revealed as a villain in the third act and getting to be actively antagonistic for a limited time while taking on drastically different characterization than before like the later Twist Villains (or in Bellwether's case, in only the final minutes of the third act!).

But there was something else too, and it recently struck me.

Hans, Callaghan, and Bellwether all adhere to basically the exact same formula, with only the specifics of their roles differing due to each movie being a different type of story - Frozen is a fantasy adventure-thriller, Big Hero 6 is a superhero story, and Zootopia is a buddy cop mystery. The formula is that not only is the villain introduced as a friendly character in the first act and ultimately shows their true villainous self in the third act, but during the story there's another villainous character thrown at the viewer to serve as the red herring. In Frozen, it's the Duke of Weselton. In Big Hero 6, it's Allister Krei. And in Zootopia, it's Mayor Lionheart. All of these characters seem more like the sort of villains you'd typically expect to pop up in stories of these films' natures, radiating such obvious evil energy that the viewer is naturallly meant to have their suspicions drawn to them rather than the unassuming nice person who turns out to be the real villain of the piece. I'd argue it worked best when first tried in Frozen because the Duke ended up having absolutely nothing to do with the main conflict or how it got resolved, his main contribution being to tell two men to be prepared to kill Elsa at one point and that's it: he was a red herring in the purest sense. With Krei and Lionheart afterwards, they both had increased prominence in the narrative, the former being responsible for what drove Callaghan into grief-stricken, vengeful supervillainy, and the latter at first being Bellwether's boss and actually serving as a secondary antagonist in the plot with his unethical captures and coverups in response to Bellwether's Night Howler conspiracy. And they both are such obvious suspects for being behind evildoing even in-story that it loops around to becoming obviously NOT the true culprits at all. (Not helping is how both the Duke of Weselton and Allister Krei are voiced by Alan Tudyk, at the time still most known for King Candy/Turbo!)

Whereas with Turbo, I think it was so effective because it was sort of flipped around. The story was leading us to look at King Candy as the red herring or ultimately just the diversion, continuing to remind us that the Cybug that Ralph accidentally brought with him into Sugar Rush was lurking below and breeding, which we knew could become a true threat to the game and to the whole arcade world given the way Calhoun talked the Cybugs up. Even when Felix goes into the backstory of "Going Turbo", we're not really linking that to what's currently going on with King Candy, who we at that point had not been given reason to think is anyone but who he appears to be, and King Candy's such a silly, whimsical doofus of an antagonist that we suspect he'll amount to nothing more than food for the Cybugs. How King Candy goes on to manipulate Ralph and the revelation about him as a usurper turns our perspective of him on its head as is, but then it's revealed he's not just any usurpeeeer - he's Turbo! This on its own makes him that much more villainous, but then still we get the kicker: Turbo gets eaten by the lead Cybug, just as we might've predicted would befall him....and his code overwrites the Cybug from within, making him even more dangerous and malicious than ever! So while the Cybugs do indeed become the endgame threat, they're also used as the actual diversion to get you not looking harder at King Candy and figuring out both his true identity and his true nature as the primary, most menacing villain in this story. It is ingenious.

Pulling off a Twist Villain is easy. It takes a lot more thought, skill, style and polish to pull off a Turbo-Tastic villain as Wreck-It Ralph did.

[sarahreesbrennan]

Thank you for writing Long Live Evil.

I'm no cancer survivor, so I haven't been through the horror that that must've been, congratulations to enduring and surviving, and my sincere condolences that you had to go through it.

But I am chronically ill (cystic fibrosis, genetic defect) and have so far lived for 5 years longer than my prognosis allowed. My health's been good and stabile for a long time now, but I remember times where I couldn't walk alone, had a 18/6 nasal cannula and a 24-hour IV drip instead of school or a future.

Now I'm working at university, an archaeologist, chipping away at writing stories for years and years, and incredibly glad and privileged to see the world. All this to say that seeing how hurt Rae was in the beginning (and again throughout the story, while also never truly forgetting her true roots and motives) and how she grew around it like a gnarled tree, was like catharsis for me. Having miraculously given a second chance, no matter how hard the fight to keep it will be; I haven't ever read any story talking about this in a way that made me feel seen and understood like this. Thank you also lots and lots for taking the time to mention Rae's appreciation for Rahela's curves — it's been the same for me, since I've managed to get out of the underweight-trap. It means a lot to me, and I guess to many others in similar situations, including you of course. Thank you for sharing this with us, it must've been hard to touch on a deeply personal experience like this in writing that's simultaneously removed from oneself through fiction (at least that's what I'm imagining).

Thank you, and I wish you nothing but the best, health, and lots of good days to come. Deeply curious to see how Rae's story will continue!

Thank you so much for this.

I am so glad you are alive. Thank you for that, too - for living on even when you couldn’t see a way forward and everything was helpless despair.

I haven’t been through what you’ve been through, either, but it’s a privilege to have shared adjoining experiences trapped in darkness, and to share gladness and the wide world with you now. I’m so sorry it happened, and so happy you have archaeology and stories, and the world has you.

I will be totally honest and say it has been hard sharing Long Live Evil with the world, and I’m so grateful to you for knowing that, and for sending this message because you knew. This book is highly personal to me, but it’s also meant to be a wild celebration of messiness, escapism, and finding humour in art and darkness. And that means to some it’s just a joke, and in the words of Joanna Russ, ‘she’s not really an artist and it’s not really art.’ And so it gets dismissed, and it does hurt to see my most important story dismissed sometimes.

I was with other writers in a public space at one point and they were talking about how their books were about serious issues while ‘Sarah’s book is just for fun, and that’s fine too!’ (I had to take a minute before I could lean into my microphone and say ‘My book is about cancer’ in a cheery tone.) I’ve seen readers saying ‘this book’s just fluff, just silly, I’m ashamed of myself for reading it, there’s nothing to it’ about the book I wrote about almost dying.

My Rae, while of course she has bits of me in her (every character I’ve ever written does), and evil queens I’ve loved, and characters with wild hubris going on in the Greek plays I mention often in the book, and readers I’ve seen and I’ve been who are blithely confident they know what’s going on without doing more than surface reading and while forgetting key details… she’s also bits of women and girls I’ve mentored, been mentored by, befriended. And some of them are dead. So seeing the bits that were them particularly scorned or judged, seeing her pain dismissed or the discussion of her body sneered at…

That has been hard.

But.

In the end I believe I am really an artist and this book is really art, and art is there for the wide world to judge - to be mocked and dismissed, yes, as a price that comes with the opportunity to also be truly seen and appreciated, to get to influence real people’s real lives. Art is the gold that comes from the crucible in which we put all our pain and all our love and all our joys. I believe it deepens and transforms.

I wrote this book about how deeply unsympathetic people actually are to sufferers of illness, chronic or otherwise, and especially to women expressing pain. How the world villainises imperfect victims—which means all victims. How the world villainises bodies, and robs us of our joy in them—even when there’s horror in a body, too. I did know that by putting this book out into this world, that attitude would be reflected back by the world onto the book. And that attitude has hurt me in the past, and hurts me when I see it now.

I still think it’s worth calling out that attitude, even if it means getting more of that attitude reflected back onto me - because it means readers like you see it, and know others have been through this, and it was never okay, and you were never alone. While I know there will also be readers with chronic illnesses and/or cancer whose experience doesn’t overlap with mine at all, that only means there need to be more stories. So everyone who needs it gets the map into fantasy lands.

And I do hope some able-bodied readers read it, and think twice about adopting the world’s attitude to the people in their lives who are already going through enough. Some readers have told me the book helped them sympathise with and understand the cancer sufferers in their family and friend circles, and that’s meant a great deal. What do we write for, if not to learn to love each other better?

Long Live Evil has also given me my life back, as truly as chemo did, in a way that makes the pain worthwhile - I think I would have kept telling stories in some form, but Long Live Evil was my last throw, for as far ahead as I could see. Now since the book’s done well so far I’m hoping I can write more books, and my life can be the storytelling shape I always wanted it to be.

I read your message and I regretted nothing. I remember the pain and the way so many of us laughed or tried to laugh our way through it, and I know this was my way. Jokes, like stories, are the golden thread we follow through the dark labyrinth of our own agony and incomprehension.

It really has been hard, and it’ll stay hard. But like living, it’s worth it.

Please know two things.

I am so happy I wrote this book. Ultimately more than any other feeling I had so, so much fun writing it, and I’m having even more fun seeing the book be read by the people it was meant for.

2. This book was written for you.

[myinterestsvary-writes]

You make so much sense to me! I wrote a lot about it in my #criticism tag. They didn’t build it up enough to be satisfying all around. Mark and Amber were more serious than to be dismissed and gotten over in three months without lingering emotional consequences. They did not allow the audience to feel much for the Mark+Eve pairing which is just massively unfair (to me as someone initially rooting for them and the larger audience, writing wise) but I’m just hoping it’s maybe addressed later on in a satisfying way - this show tends to subvert expectations in a good way. I understood the intention of Mark and Eve taking a chance on each other in imperfect circumstances, but hopefully more things bubble up soon. They feel way too perfect right now.

Idc the story dismissed Amber too quick... the writers were like btw Eve so soon after Mark and Amber's breakup in Season 2, and then they were like well, Mark's always had feelings for Eve.

Maybe it was the three month timeskip, but I feel like they didn't explore the emotional consequences of the breakup enough. You know, now Mark's killed a man and has grown into his powers - I feel they could've reinforced his displacement from his own humanity through the breakup. Sure, there's his family to represent his grounded-ness to the individuality of himself and others, but Amber added an element of ordinary goodness that I think was really important. Idk!

[artist-issues]

I remember during the making of Tangled, the filmmakers said they had to work hard to design Rapunzel’s tower to be beautiful and seem like a cozy, fun environment, while also making Mother Gothel seem sweet and loveable, if manipulative.

Because, they said, if the environment is too much like a prison, and Gothel is too much like a villainess, the audience wouldn’t believe in Rapunzel as a character. They’d think she was either stupid or cowardly, to stay in such a nasty situation without trying to escape sooner. But if her circumstances seem just livable enough, just sweet enough, that you can see some of the appeal, then you wouldn’t blame her for waiting so long to leave.

Why didn’t they do that with Wish?

Why didn’t they think that relatability through?

Nobody is really feeling compelled to root for the everyday Rosas citizens during the movie. You don’t feel like rooting for Asha’s cause, or even Queen Amaya’s. Because you think to yourself, “why did it take the townspeople so long to ask the question ‘why can’t we just have our wishes back?’”

Asha comes up with those culture-breaking questions, inexplicably, in the first twenty minutes of the movie. It takes the rest of the townspeople about 24 hours to suddenly start asking that, too.

So why don’t you root for them?

Because when something bad happens to them, part of your brain goes, “why didn’t they see that coming, though? Why didn’t they ask questions? That one’s a little bit on them.”

And you don’t really feel that feeling you got with Mother Gothel, where you were like, “Oh yeah, I can see why the main character trusted this villain; the villain really seems to care about the hero, if you didn’t know what she was after.” You don’t;t get that same feeling with Magnifico. Because the whole idea of what he does—by erasing people’s memories and yelling at them and having no moments with regular folk where he’s warm and personal and building trust—is so malicious that we don’t believe the other characters couldn’t see it.

We COULD HAVE believed it. If they’d added in good writing and character moments to make it believable.

When Magnifico interacts with the people who trust him and are duped by him, he’s up on a stage, flashing superpowers they don’t have and then disappearing back into his tower after only granting one wish. He’s not on the welcome tour with Asha. He doesn’t know his own palace staff by name. He’s done nothing to build the trust all the side-characters unquestioningly give him. So even at the end, when everyone’s like, “aw, we wanted to believe in Magnifico,” we don’t feel it. Because didja? Why? Everyone could see that coming.

Meanwhile Mother Gothel tells Rapunzel she loves her most every time she leaves. She laughs with her. She reinforces every conversation they have with the idea that she’s desperate to protect Rapunzel. She brings her her favorite soup as a surprise and remembers the ingredients. She goes to get white paint on a very long trip so Rapunzel can paint. She compliments her strength and beauty—even if it’s backhanded. She calls her “dear,” and “darling.” She knocks thugs out with sticks, returning even after she argued with and supposedly ‘gave up’ on Rapunzel, all to supposedly’ protect’ her. So when Rapunzel realizes it was all an act, and she’s wrathful and furious and grabs Gothel’s hand, we DO feel it. Because we believed that Rapunzel really didn’t see this coming, so the shock stings worse. We don’t blame Rapunzel, and we do blame Gothel.

Just another example of what #NotMyDisney forgot about themselves.

[ganeshpnf]

Thinking about Wrath of the triple goddess again and I just saw the interview Rick made and-

He openly says that he is mixing up two canons together, how he gets inspired by the "actors" and their dynamics. I read @lilislegacy 's criticism again and I just dont know how would we handle new books if he just keeps doing it. Because we saw the results, we saw how ooc characters become, we saw how it felt like Rick didnt read his own books for years and actually this is funny:

Just read your own books...And like, missing every detail even big ones or the ones we kept in our hearts for years(Annabeth's lemon shampoo...) is gone! Like what are you on?

This is why I always believe, if you make an adaptation, keep them separate from the canon material, in this case, books. It is hurting the both of them. Also this is the reason I personally dont like any mixing in the arts or in fanfics. I respect who does or prefer, but for me, universes need to stay separate or we have this situation in our hands.

Show and the books are so so so different, they deserve to be their own things. Show deserves to have its own canon, own events, actors need to have their own development. While books should stay books and book characters should stay book characters. Like please, book characters and show characters are different. We cant pretend the otherwise, we just cant. You cant tell me Walker is exactly book Percy, Leah is book Annabeth or Aryan is book Grover. They are all amazing, yes. We should support them, also yes. But pretending they are the book characters, that they are the exact same is just a big no.

Rick trying to write the actors' dynamics into the new books felt so ooc! And anyone who is hyping "Oh he imagining them as he writes", you cant see how ooc they were? And someone should tell Rick that. I dont know how to reach that man, he loves keeping himself away from the fans. But someone gotta let him know because the new books feels nothing but cash grabs. Amount of typo mistakes, ooc characters, all the stupid advertasing for the S2. So so cringe :(

I really dont want new book to be the same and I really dont know what to do *sigh* It hurts to see the man, who I admired for my whole childhood, getting so so much hate from the fans, but it is getting so hard to defend him, he is turning to JK.Rowling and it is creepy :(

[amadholes-lostre]

My G-d, why does all the human males have large border shoulders and huge while the women are slim, showing a lot of skins, and having their breasts protubed more outwards. The character design of Rivals is mainly this meme.

[myinterestsvary-writes]

@fegafegafega :

Yet, their relationship does feel forced because of the lack of proper buildup to make their relationship have more emotional weight as I said in this post. I don’t like that it feels so casual and less serious given the multiple reasons that I’ve listed. It would’ve served the narrative better if there was more of a follow-up to the upsetting tone set at the end of season 2. I wouldn’t have felt so off with the season’s opening and wasted time being angry about it. I said in multiple other posts that the dialogue (not specifically) between them and about their relationship doesn’t feel earned because they’re telling instead of showing, even if I can feel Mark’s genuine affection for her all throughout the series so far. Eve and their relationship was far too sidelined especially last season for many viewers to truly believe what Amber and Eve talked about in the cafe in 303. There was some tension, I felt it, but it wasn’t enough for me to accept that conversation without question. I did not want to be annoyed watching their scenes the first few times but I was because of these very reasons. I just want their relationship to have more depth and given more room to breathe, and most importantly given MORE CHEMISTRY as you can absolutely write already established characters with an established relationship to have it and my suggestions could aid that specific complaint (character chemistry is described sometimes as the tension, energy, and audience engagement two or more characters have with each other; one is always reacting genuinely to the other, playing off one another).

Also, Mark and Eve are actually entwined not only by the narrative but literally by the universe it seems as even in alternative dimensions, there’s romantic undertones between their counterparts and with the Future Eve scene no matter how much they try to make sense of it and be ashamed and dismiss it, it goes to show how significant their connection is to each other. There’s even more to support my perspective from the comics but that’s spoiler territory.

I honestly appreciate more and more the way they got them together, however the main reason they feel so casual together is because of the lack of exploration of what their dynamic truly entails on many fronts including serious conflict resolution with inevitable struggles between two flawed people, they can’t help but be drawn to each other. That’s what I wanted more of. It doesn’t matter if either of them have been through enough, people will do what they do best which is mess up and underperform despite themselves.

“Your criticism for Eve is kinda like ‘she’s too mature let’s make her more insecure and irrational for the sake of drama.’ Have Eve be wary of Mark not only because of the future Eve dilemma but also because she’s been cheated on before why exactly? There’s no indication that Mark would ever cheat, and Eve has never been written as someone who projects her past onto others. Why should Eve feel guilt for having feelings for Mark? Amber and Mark are done. Amber isn’t in love with him anymore.”

For the sake of drama, yes, and also cohesion to what they already established with the character. I don’t mean projecting her past onto others, I mean making Eve confront her own past experiences with the men in her life up until Mark, that way it’ll be easy to see how she can appreciate the role Mark has in her life even more.

Regardless of whether or not Eve should feel guilt about it, there’s friendships and feelings involved. Mark and Amber had lots of love for each other and a break-up they struggled to come to making a decision on but I can believe them accepting it eventually and being okay moving on from each other, even if three months seem a little too short they can recognize it was for the best. There was time to heal but I didn’t see it all too much and wasn’t allowed to feel it or given more time to emotionally adjust to Eve and Mark being together even as someone who’s been hoping Amber and Mark would break up permanently from season 1.

“But the part I really don’t like that you said was saying, ‘Eve is way too healthy of a communicator…’ It’s so rare to see a female character in a superhero show who actually talks about her emotions and sets boundaries, and somehow you’re like you don’t like it cos it’s not messy enough?? And lastly A love triangle? For what?? A love square? Why?? A love pentagon? WHY?! Again loved the rant!”

It is not rare for a female character to do any of that, it’s rare for it to actually be respected by the narrative, which it has been so far. However, with someone with a tragic childhood and persistent stressors as the one Eve does have, letting her be a little more understandably messy (yet still being the chill Eve we know) would add more charm to her role as the main female lead outside Debbie. I enjoyed her arc in the second season, her having her own struggles that affect primarily her relationship with Mark and the plot (her being the co-protagonist in a way to Mark) would strengthen her writing and make her and their relationship less vulnerable to accusations of being boring and disengaging. It would be more nuanced and compelling, alongside her new goal of becoming an architect/engineer this season. Overall, I just want more quality character work for this powerhouse girly specifically.

eve talks, thinks, and acts too much like a psychology major. thanks, britta perry.

beware: rant below

the teenaged romantic relationships are not messy enough to be interesting. there’s a fine line among annoyingly boring - messy - and annoyingly messy. invincible, write your characters like fucking humans. they talk way too much with each other in a healthy way, there’s a lack of emotion that makes it feel bland. sure, we didn’t need cheating but i need more of an actual portrayal of complicated feelings among the cast. not just telling us, the audience, that it’s complicated. maybe it’s nice to the writers in contrast to amber and mark’s relationship to have a relationship without true obstacles to overcome, who just fit perfectly together. however, mark and amber were compelling with chemistry because their interactions related to one of the central themes and was tense because of external conflicts they had to face head on, and not just talk through. plus, they had chemistry because they got along among other reasons, so you get the sense in another life they’d still be together which hits harder and sits with you better.

another thing, mark and eve don’t just work as a couple because they’re superheroes. this was the perfect time to demonstrate the dynamic the two will have, to sell them as a couple worth screentime and ultimately endgame. it’s obvious as fuck the show is written around the two to be together from eve’s special, to their parallels, similar values and goals, and the fact that the audience could catch onto their chemistry that was apparent from the first season (and shockingly lacking later). mark and amber never felt like endgame to me yet them having more chemistry, tension, and intrigue so far is frustrating. (yes, I know their story is complete but imagine if mark and eve weren’t portrayed as teens just casually trying to date each other like they are in the third season. their feelings for each other do not feel profound at all as i feel it should be and like they’re truly destined and that a force they can’t truly comprehend brings them together blah blah blah. like they’re truly birds of a feather who understands one another on a whole other level. it’s so fucking wack.)

explore more of mark’s melancholy that his last relationship ended because he didn’t want his gf to get hurt. show more of mark’s avoidance of eve and him being nervous and reserved around her but also evidently contemplative and wistful. show more of their attraction to each other.

show more of eve’s reasonable understanding of healthy boundaries but also her disappointment in mark avoiding her, feeling insecure about it (because the one who should be insecure about stuff like this should be eve, who has dated a serial cheater as her first love). have eve be wary of mark not only because of the future eve dilemma that wasn’t even that big a deal unfortunately, so wack, such a missed opportunity but also because she’s been cheated on before, and that her dad does not like her so she’s insecure about her taste in men and doesn’t know why mark would like her. have them tiptoe around the other but make the tension palpable, not played almost entirely for comedy and quickly resolved with barely a microcosm of interpersonal conflict. have eve feel guilt when she confronts her feelings for mark, mainly because she’s friends with amber and mark too! show eve is way too healthy of a communicator and it freaks me out. she doesn’t even have to be completely like her comic counterpart, just make her feel young and human like they all were in the first and second season, making mistakes and acting on impulses.

build up the emotion to where when important beats happen, it feels significant and satisfying. like them getting together for the first time, or kissing, dating, making love etc. that way we as an audience connect with them more on an emotional level when something bad happens hint hint and it won’t feel like you’re trying to force it out of me. make us want to root for them and not lazily put them together based on a history the two share that wasn’t even mainly focused on in favour of another love interest. make us understand truly why they want and love each other instead of making it feel as casual as it does.

i would’ve loved a semi-love triangle/square/pentagon with mark, amber, eve, rex, and/or rae. anything to spice things up!

[davidhudson]

Lester Bangs, December 14, 1948 – April 30, 1982.

[countlessofvoids]

"Funny" how HTTYD went from a series where disability was an important part of the story and characters, to ignoring it or just being ableist.

Especially in THW; where Toothless can easily fly without Hiccup and what was symbolism of their relationship being thrown away, to completly ignoring the fact there are dragons with disabilities that they could never survive in The Hidden World without any human help, to the official artbook straight up calling Grimmel a "psychopath".