#well well well... if that isn't me writing a whole novel in this post

[lenteur]

random thoughts about castaway diva, episode three

(read more because i always get carried away lol and this post might contain spoilers)

i'm glad we're getting to see more moments of mok ha during her time on the deserted island.

I'm also glad we're seeing so many parallels between her and yoon ran joo and i really hope the show will develop the relationship between the two women because the story is very interesting.

I'm just speechless because both women have so much in common but they don't know it yet. They're both born in the same island, they have a passion for singing, they went through the same hurdles at the same time. It's details like these that make their bond so special.

The su*c*dal ideation for both mok ha and ran joo is understandable. Mok ha has spent a long time alone on that deserted island that she lost hope of someone finding her. She figured no one would miss her/no one thinks she's alive after all that time. It's not easy being alone for more than a decade with no one to talk to. For the latter (ran joo), I think her dark thoughts occurred when the public turned on her because of her attitude. The only thing that made her happy (singing) was no longer an option because no one wanted to listen to her. Or maybe it's because of the band-aid on her neck? I don't know what it is but it could be the cause of her distress and less than happy thoughts?

I see ran joo's ex manager turned into her new CEO profited from her to become some hotshot in the entertainment industry. It seems he forgot about her and invested the money he promised to her on new and younger artists.

It's really telling how women are more affected by time in the entertainment industry. Once she became "too old" or "too diva-ish" (sorry for my lack of vocab), lee seo jun (finally found his name) along with the public diverted his time and attention to someone else. I'm saying the entertainment industry is more severe on women because only one little tiny mistake can make them fired/erased from public attention. For men, it seems the industry and public is lenient on them. This is only my opinion that I based on things I've seen in the music industry as a whole.

Lee seo jun compared the artist to flowers that wither with time. I think it's the perfect image to describe what I was trying to say earlier (cf. Previous point).

So yes, it is only natural for yoon ran joo to be sad because she can no longer do the thing she loves the most: singing.

The audacity to name the company RJ Entertainment and mistreat the artist who started it all!!! And to rename it RNJ so it won't be based on ran joo's name anymore. I'm seething. All men do is lie and cheat. BOOOOOOOOOOO!!! tomatoes tomatoes

Mok ha is so cute as a fangirl. Park eun bin really nailed that part lol.

I find it both sad and beautiful that the only person that seems to pay attention to/care about yoon ran joo is mok ha when lee seo jun should be the one to do so.

Woo hak insulting ki ho stating a literal teenager should be able to throw down a whole adult, an adult that is as tall as a fridge? He's lucky I wasn't right in front of him or else I would've slapped him so hard he would've landed on the moon. How can you blame a child for that?

So it's both the abandonment from her company and the vocal nodules that made ran joo spiral into alc*h*l and dark thoughts. This must have been painful to hold in for so long. And the fact that mok ha is the first person she told this to is another proof of how strong their bond is. It might not have been long but they both are each other's confidant/emtional support.

It seems that even ran joo disappointed mok ha by giving her false hope when dr*nk. Even then, mok ha is worried about her and wonders what she went through to change so much. Mok ha is the only one who hasn't changed that much after all that time. It's like time stopped for her while everyone else moved on and changed.

Just like ki ho said, mok ha liked ran joo because she lacked worries and gloominess. But now it's not the case so i'm wondering if mok ha will stop being a fangirl and see ran joo in another light.

Okay so bear with me while i try to write my thoughts. I just find seo mok ha empathetic to the point where she sometimes forgets herself. She's willing to protect ran joo and pretend she didn't hear her beg for an audition. She's going as far as giving her compliments that no one has told her (ran joo) in a very long time. I think this is both a strength and a weakness because I can predict some people will take advantage of that (and her credulity) to manipulate her. However, just like I mentioned before, Mok ha still hasn't changed at all and has kept her naivety. So yeah, I'm very interested to see how or if she will evolve in that sense.

I'm just saying that because mok ha was ready to throw hands when she understood how lee seo jun took advantage of ran joo, but it seems she puts others before her.

The man that took over the seafood restaurant is a betrayer. First he told ki ho's dad how he was working and earning money to save for the future. And now he's also telling the father that mok ha came to visit him. It's disgusting because he's trying to hide it behind a smile. He's on the father's side because ki ho never dared accuse his own father of ab*se. I mean when his own dad is a police officer, it's difficult to do so.

The truth bomb scene is exactly what i said previously. Women in the entertainment industry are aging way quicker than anyone else. The truth hurt mok ha and it's like she's submerged with it. She doesn't know what to do. Even then, she finds it in her heart to have empathy for ran joo. Mok ha is an incredible and strong woman.

I am so happy they developed the story around mok ha and ran joo. They're helping each other out and making the other realize things that they wouldn't be able to see otherwise.

I'm relieved someone opened ran joo's eyes about lee seo jun's goals. He wants to wait until the end of ran joo's contract just so she won't become the majority shareholder of the company. That's why he left her. He doesn't want her to sell 20 million albums. GOOD JOB MOK HA! GO KICK LEE SEO JUN'S ASS RAN JOO!!!

i'll give this episode a 9.5/10 as well

[archaeren]

How I learned to write smarter, not harder

(aka, how to write when you're hella ADHD lol)

A reader commented on my current long fic asking how I write so well. I replied with an essay of my honestly pretty non-standard writing advice (that they probably didn't actually want lol) Now I'm gonna share it with you guys and hopefully there's a few of you out there who will benefit from my past mistakes and find some useful advice in here. XD Since I started doing this stuff, which are all pretty easy changes to absorb into your process if you want to try them, I now almost never get writer's block.

The text of the original reply is indented, and I've added some additional commentary to expand upon and clarify some of the concepts.

As for writing well, I usually attribute it to the fact that I spent roughly four years in my late teens/early 20s writing text roleplay with a friend for hours every single day. Aside from the constant practice that provided, having a live audience immediately reacting to everything I wrote made me think a lot about how to make as many sentences as possible have maximum impact so that I could get that kind of fun reaction. (Which is another reason why comments like yours are so valuable to fanfic writers! <3) The other factors that have improved my writing are thus: 1. Writing nonlinearly. I used to write a whole story in order, from the first sentence onward. If there was a part I was excited to write, I slogged through everything to get there, thinking that it would be my reward once I finished everything that led up to that. It never worked. XD It was miserable. By the time I got to the part I wanted to write, I had beaten the scene to death in my head imagining all the ways I could write it, and it a) no longer interested me and b) could not live up to my expectations because I couldn't remember all my ideas I'd had for writing it. The scene came out mediocre and so did everything leading up to it. Since then, I learned through working on VN writing (I co-own a game studio and we have some visual novels that I write for) that I don't have to write linearly. If I'm inspired to write a scene, I just write it immediately. It usually comes out pretty good even in a first draft! But then I also have it for if I get more ideas for that scene later, and I can just edit them in. The scenes come out MUCH stronger because of this. And you know what else I discovered? Those scenes I slogged through before weren't scenes I had no inspiration for, I just didn't have any inspiration for them in that moment! I can't tell you how many times there was a scene I had no interest in writing, and then a week later I'd get struck by the perfect inspiration for it! Those are scenes I would have done a very mediocre job on, and now they can be some of the most powerful scenes because I gave them time to marinate. Inspiration isn't always linear, so writing doesn't have to be either!

Some people are the type that joyfully write linearly. I have a friend like this--she picks up the characters and just continues playing out the next scene. Her story progresses through the entire day-by-day lives of the characters; it never timeskips more than a few hours. She started writing and posting just eight months ago, she's about an eighth of the way through her planned fic timeline, and the content she has so far posted to AO3 for it is already 450,000 words long. But most of us are normal humans. We're not, for the most part, wired to create linearly. We consume linearly, we experience linearly, so we assume we must also create linearly. But actually, a lot of us really suffer from trying to force ourselves to create this way, and we might not even realize it. If you're the kind of person who thinks you need to carrot-on-a-stick yourself into writing by saving the fun part for when you finally write everything that happens before it: Stop. You're probably not a linear writer. You're making yourself suffer for no reason and your writing is probably suffering for it. At least give nonlinear writing a try before you assume you can't write if you're not baiting or forcing yourself into it!! Remember: Writing is fun. You do this because it's fun, because it's your hobby. If you're miserable 80% of the time you're doing it, you're probably doing it wrong!

2. Rereading my own work. I used to hate reading my own work. I wouldn't even edit it usually. I would write it and slap it online and try not to look at it again. XD Writing nonlinearly forced me to start rereading because I needed to make sure scenes connected together naturally and it also made it easier to get into the headspace of the story to keep writing and fill in the blanks and get new inspiration. Doing this built the editing process into my writing process--I would read a scene to get back in the headspace, dislike what I had written, and just clean it up on the fly. I still never ever sit down to 'edit' my work. I just reread it to prep for writing and it ends up editing itself. Many many scenes in this fic I have read probably a dozen times or more! (And now, I can actually reread my own work for enjoyment!) Another thing I found from doing this that it became easy to see patterns and themes in my work and strengthen them. Foreshadowing became easy. Setting up for jokes or plot points became easy. I didn't have to plan out my story in advance or write an outline, because the scenes themselves because a sort of living outline on their own. (Yes, despite all the foreshadowing and recurring thematic elements and secret hidden meanings sprinkled throughout this story, it actually never had an outline or a plan for any of that. It's all a natural byproduct of writing nonlinearly and rereading.)

Unpopular writing opinion time: You don't need to make a detailed outline.

Some people thrive on having an outline and planning out every detail before they sit down to write. But I know for a lot of us, we don't know how to write an outline or how to use it once we've written it. The idea of making one is daunting, and the advice that it's the only way to write or beat writer's block is demoralizing. So let me explain how I approach "outlining" which isn't really outlining at all.

I write in a Notion table, where every scene is a separate table entry and the scene is written in the page inside that entry. I do this because it makes writing nonlinearly VASTLY more intuitive and straightforward than writing in a single document. (If you're familiar with Notion, this probably makes perfect sense to you. If you're not, imagine something a little like a more contained Google Sheets, but every row has a title cell that opens into a unique Google Doc when you click on it. And it's not as slow and clunky as the Google suite lol) (Edit from the future: I answered an ask with more explanation on how I use Notion for non-linear writing here.) When I sit down to begin a new fic idea, I make a quick entry in the table for every scene I already know I'll want or need, with the entries titled with a couple words or a sentence that describes what will be in that scene so I'll remember it later. Basically, it's the most absolute bare-bones skeleton of what I vaguely know will probably happen in the story.

Then I start writing, wherever I want in the list. As I write, ideas for new scenes and new connections and themes will emerge over time, and I'll just slot them in between the original entries wherever they naturally fit, rearranging as necessary, so that I won't forget about them later when I'm ready to write them. As an example, my current long fic started with a list of roughly 35 scenes that I knew I wanted or needed, for a fic that will probably be around 100k words (which I didn't know at the time haha). As of this writing, it has expanded to 129 scenes. And since I write them directly in the page entries for the table, the fic is actually its own outline, without any additional effort on my part. As I said in the comment reply--a living outline!

This also made it easier to let go of the notion that I had to write something exactly right the first time. (People always say you should do this, but how many of us do? It's harder than it sounds! I didn't want to commit to editing later! I didn't want to reread my work! XD) I know I'm going to edit it naturally anyway, so I can feel okay giving myself permission to just write it approximately right and I can fix it later. And what I found from that was that sometimes what I believed was kind of meh when I wrote it was actually totally fine when I read it later! Sometimes the internal critic is actually wrong. 3. Marinating in the headspace of the story. For the first two months I worked on [fic], I did not consume any media other than [fandom the fic is in]. I didn't watch, read, or play anything else. Not even mobile games. (And there wasn't really much fan content for [fandom] to consume either. Still isn't, really. XD) This basically forced me to treat writing my story as my only source of entertainment, and kept me from getting distracted or inspired to write other ideas and abandon this one.

As an aside, I don't think this is a necessary step for writing, but if you really want to be productive in a short burst, I do highly recommend going on a media consumption hiatus. Not forever, obviously! Consuming media is a valuable tool for new inspiration, and reading other's work (both good and bad, as long as you think critically to identify the differences!) is an invaluable resource for improving your writing.

When I write, I usually lay down, close my eyes, and play the scene I'm interested in writing in my head. I even take a ten-minute nap now and then during this process. (I find being in a state of partial drowsiness, but not outright sleepiness, makes writing easier and better. Sleep helps the brain process and make connections!) Then I roll over to the laptop next to me and type up whatever I felt like worked for the scene. This may mean I write half a sentence at a time between intervals of closed-eye-time XD

People always say if you're stuck, you need to outline.

What they actually mean by that (whether they realize it or not) is that if you're stuck, you need to brainstorm. You need to marinate. You don't need to plan what you're doing, you just need to give yourself time to think about it!

What's another framing for brainstorming for your fic? Fantasizing about it! Planning is work, but fantasizing isn't.

You're already fantasizing about it, right? That's why you're writing it. Just direct that effort toward the scenes you're trying to write next! Close your eyes, lay back, and fantasize what the characters do and how they react.

And then quickly note down your inspirations so you don't forget, haha.

And if a scene is so boring to you that even fantasizing about it sucks--it's probably a bad scene.

If it's boring to write, it's going to be boring to read. Ask yourself why you wanted that scene. Is it even necessary? Can you cut it? Can you replace it with a different scene that serves the same purpose but approaches the problem from a different angle? If you can't remove the troublesome scene, what can you change about it that would make it interesting or exciting for you to write?

And I can't write sitting up to save my damn life. It's like my brain just stops working if I have to sit in a chair and stare at a computer screen. I need to be able to lie down, even if I don't use it! Talking walks and swinging in a hammock are also fantastic places to get scene ideas worked out, because the rhythmic motion also helps our brain process. It's just a little harder to work on a laptop in those scenarios. XD

In conclusion: Writing nonlinearly is an amazing tool for kicking writer's block to the curb. There's almost always some scene you'll want to write. If there isn't, you need to re-read or marinate.

Or you need to use the bathroom, eat something, or sleep. XD Seriously, if you're that stuck, assess your current physical condition. You might just be unable to focus because you're uncomfortable and you haven't realized it yet.

Anyway! I hope that was helpful, or at least interesting! XD Sorry again for the text wall. (I think this is the longest comment reply I've ever written!)

And same to you guys on tumblr--I hope this was helpful or at least interesting. XD Reblogs appreciated if so! (Maybe it'll help someone else!)

[orphiclovers]

Rereading early ORV and I have some THOUGHTS on Kim Dokja. In typical me fashion, they are unpopular. So if he's your absolute favourite character and seeing him be criticized will ruin your day, maybe skip this post, ok? Peace.

-

What is so novel and interesting about Kim Dokja is that he GENUINELY doesn't really have a knee jerk emotional reaction of outrage and empathy when seeing injustice happen. He sees something immoral and bad, but doesn't FEEL horrified and disgusted. Emotions don't drive him to attempt to fix the situation or save anyone.

Instead his moral compass is based on the simple logic that 'bad things happening should be prevented if there is an opportunity to prevent them.'

This philosophy is the most apparent in his actions in Chungmuro on the WHOLE, with the food and marginalized group and etc. But I will point out this moment in particular as an example of what I mean.

They see women be driven to prostitution to survive. Jung Heewon has an instinctive, human reaction of outrage and disgust, wants to rush in and save them and damn the consequences, while Kim Dokja is calm and rational, holding her back and saying those woman will starve if they try to help right now.

This lack of empathy (feeling strong emotions) is definitely due to childhood trauma stunting his emotional development but... that doesn't change the fact this is a legitimate part of his personality now.

Usually, when a character is 'cold and ruthless', it's because they are repressing their true feelings and forcing themselves to be unfeeling for some goal. Like Yoo Joonghyuk, for example.

But we are IN Kim Dokja's head and get to see the way he thinks, and being 'unfeelingly rational' IS what comes naturally to him.

Before you say anything, I know the Fourth Wall represses some of his emotions in certain situations and certainly helps him deal with pain and horror. But we are ALWAYS TOLD when it's active, and it isn't in these moments.

Blaming all of Kim Dokja's less than moral thoughts and behavior on the 4th wall even when there's no indication that it's influencing him at that particular moment, is not something I want to do as it feels like an attempt to scrub away his moral greyness. I choose to believe that his narration, in moments when he's not wrong or biased or 4th wall-ed, is a basically accurate representation of his character. I think the authors didn't make his narration totally 100% unreliable all the time, with no possible indication of where he's wrong or right. Because that would mean there is nothing a reader can latch onto and draw conclusions about KDJ from.

If they wanted to write about a faceless self insert with no concrete personality traits and flaws, a person you can headcanon to be anything, they wouldn't have written ORV.

I think it's okay to acknowledge Kim Dokja's first reaction to seeing a woman about to be raped is not 'oh my god...those bastards...! I have to stop this...!' but '...she might be dangerous or a hinderence in a future...'

We don't need to make excuses here and try to justify this. A moment later he catches himself thinking like this and 'shudders with disgust at himself.'

His first, instinctive thoughts that he can't control don't necessarily make him a bad person. What matters is his second thoughts and what he actually chooses to do, which he CAN control. I ALSO don't think he's wrong to feel disgusted at himself for having low empathy. His guilt is justified.

I genuinely like him even more for always picking the 'moral option' in every scenario now, than if he did it immediately with no hesitation. Because it makes empathy and compassion a constant choice he's making, and putting in the effort reflects well on what his values are.

Kim Dokja legitimately can't help but weigh everyone he meets on a scale of how 'useful they potenially are' first and foremost. He does this with strangers and also with all of kimcom too.

"Who should I save because they would be useful in the future? I wasn't Yoo Joonghyuk to be thinking about these things." At this point, chap 74, he thinks Yoo Joonghyuk is wrong and doesn't want to be like him at all and mostly calls him a psychopath. He thinks 'acting like him' is wrong and undesirable.

He has a mini arc about Yoo Joonghyuk later, goes from 'he's a bad person, I know it because I know everything about him' in chap 81 to 'maybe I don't know him at all' in chap 82 but this is before that.

Seeing people as tools and deciding who to save based on future knowledge is a thing BOTH of them do. Yet Kim Dokja critisizes Yoo Joonghyuk for it, it's his least favourite character trait that YJH of TWSA has.

And in typical Kim Dokja fashion, this similarity between them is exactly what he despises in Yoo Joonghyuk - but now we find out it's not because he finds it amoral ("I'm not a humanist" - he doesn't care about that part) but because he sees it as a mirror reflection of himself. He's projecting, as always!

In early ORV, he hates the part of Yoo Joonghyuk that is the most similar to himself. (even tho they're sort of the polar opposites too. Yoo Joonghyuk is a deeply emotionally driven person, he feels empathy and the desire to save everyone but chooses to repress and ignore this and act like a ruthless 'psychopath'. KDJ disagrees with this choice, as Kim Dokja IS an unfeeling psychopath (low empathy) but does his best to act like a decent person and not an edgelord.)

[vidavalor]

I've had to disconnect from my dash because of all the negativity; I honestly do not get why people are acting like a semblance of justice+a movie is the worst thing in the world?

I'm mourning for the full six-episode season we lost because ng couldn't pass the utmost basic sub-zero bar for not acting like scum and of course I wish amazon had kicked him out and then sprung for it anyway (and honestly, as long as you're blaming the right person, I think it's fine to feel upset? We deserved better, the cast and crew deserved, Terry deserved better, and this one guy ruins it for everyone because the bar was buried six feet deep beneath the ground and he still managed to go lower, and that does suck, and it is miserable and unfair, so take a moment if you need it 🤷‍♀️) but let's face it, we got off lucky. Arguably, considering this was a standalone novel from the nineties, that then got made, in one of the best book adaptations I've ever seen, into a limited standalone tv miniseries (and, again, emphasising the standalone here, so even if it all goes to hell in a handbasket, we'll still always have S1 and the book; people have been ignoring the Jurassic Park sequels for nearly three decades), and then got a surprise sequel, we were pretty lucky the whole way through.

And regarding the whole what if it's bad thing, I was always going to be worried: I was anxious long before this shit went down, and I was anxious before S2 and even S1, as well. It's not like we ever had any guarantee it was going to be good beforehand either, and at this point, knowing what we do now, I'm not at all sure I'd have trusted ng to write this anyways. So while, yeah sure, I'm maybe a little more anxious now, I trust Michael and David with these characters and I trust Rob and Rhianna with Terry's legacy and story and that they wouldn't have fought so hard for this ending unless they planned to keep fighting and thought they could pull it off. Isn't the problem with this kind of thing normally that what happnes is the creator who cares deeply about the work gets pulled in favour of someone out-of-touch who cares not a jot about the story and needs to leave their own grubby fingerprints all over it? More the other way around here, no?

Anyway, what I also wanted to say was that I really appreciated your 'think of it as the final two episodes of season two' (and all your takes on this situation so far, very level-headed and optimistic, thank you). I mean, you're right, and it's hardly wildly out-there for a series to finish on a feature-length special, and although the filler material in S2 and the compression of S3 maybe means it doesn't exactly resemble what the second book would have been, it was only ever meant to be two books. (Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed S2 and was very glad to get it, even though I am a book/S1 fan and also had the most fun in that time fandom pre/post/around the time of the S1 release, but why does it exist? Ego? You can't tell me you couldn't have fit the important parts of S2 into one season with the S3 plotline.)

Basically, I'm grieving the could-have-beens (imagine if he'd been exposed way earlier and the TP estate had had control of this whole production from the very start!) and I'm a little worried that that hurt'll stick around no matter how good S3 is - which I need to fix, because that's more power over my favourite show and what it means to me that I want to give anyone, let alone someone like that - but at the end of day, I do think it definitely can be done with what we have, and I'm choosing to be hopeful it'll be done well, because, well, why wouldn't I?

(I will say this hasn't been great for my faith in humanity, because I really want to believe not all men are shit and some of them are making it very difficult right now, but that's an entirely different problem and so far believing most people are mostly good has always prevailed in the end so. y'know. we'll get there. might reread discworld, that's always good for that.)

Sorry for venting all this at you! I just kinda felt the need to write it all down once to get it off my chest... have a snack on me? I'm partial to cherry tomatoes, green melon and mandarines at the moment (I stop eating salads in winter, which means I default to eating even more fruit) but I can also offer homemade baked goodies fresh from this morning? 🥧

Hi there. 💕 You are welcome to vent away & thank you for the delicious-sounding snacks and kind words. I'm glad my posts on the movie boosted your spirits about it. I agree with and can relate to almost everything that you said here so assume that anything that I don't address just has a 'yes, absolutely' nod happening. 🙂‍↕���

The one thing I want to touch on here is S2 and this idea of it being "filler" that you mentioned that I think might not be quite accurate. I think you (and anyone else who reads this) might feel more enthused about the idea of a good ending in 90 minutes after reading this so hopefully this'll be another way that I can help?

On why S2 is really the whole story and actually had a lot more going on in every way than S1...

Ok, I'm going to explain something that drives writers like myself bonkers 😂 and that is how some readers or viewers of fictional stories mix up plot and story.

Nothing grinds our gears than reading things like "filler" and "unnecessary subplots" because, while everyone is within their rights to have an opinion on written works, 95% of the time, the person who says phrases like this isn't talking about the quality of the work but of its very existence. They're saying "why did we have to read/watch this? it didn't connect to anything" and that's where they are very, very, very... argh, just tell them, Crowley...

...thank you, dear. Right, so, why is it wrong?

Because what many people who don't write don't understand about subplots and more character-driven story arcs is that the writers sat down and decided to do that stuff for very, very specific story reasons. Readers and viewers mistake plot for story. Plot only exists in service of story and, so, all plots exist for a purpose in the story. They're all relevant. In fact, the stuff people usually label as "filler" in a story is really exactly where they should be looking to figure out what the story is saying. If you're big mad about all this time you spent with Maggie and Nina in S2, I'd say you might not still understand what S2 was about because you won't understand Aziraphale's story without understanding both Maggie and Nina's struggles in S2, for example.

A story is the whole, overall thing. It's the meanings, themes, and messages in the work. It's what's being said. It's the ideas being put forth by the piece. It's what it's about. It's different from plot, which is just the stuff the writers are making the characters do or not do in order to tell the story that they are looking to tell. Story is the art; plot is a tool used to make that art. Fiction writers can come at their story from almost anywhere to convey what it is that they are trying to say so there is meaning in the fact that they are choosing to tell their stories the way that they are telling them. They came up with these ideas for reasons.

When you dismiss stuff as filler, you're saying that it's lesser than more in-your-face and bigger plots (when, often, it's very much not), and you're telling a writer how they should have written their own story-- most of the time, without even fully seeing the ending of that story or giving any consideration to why it is that the writer wanted you to read or watch the stuff you're saying wasn't necessary. I'm not arguing that every story is perfect but you aren't getting anywhere near close to being able to evaluate a story if you're not willing to dive into what you were given and consider why it was that you were given those things and what they might mean.

Until the main question that you're asking about every single aspect of a story is "what is this saying?", you're not really fully engaging with a work. You won't get there by dismissing what the artists are telling you is important.

The secret sauce to interpreting fiction are subplots, actually. They exist to help highlight the themes of the main story, often in a slightly more direct way. If you want to understand Good Omens, starting with Ineffable Bureaucracy is actually one of the best ways to get at the core of the themes of the story. It's far from wasted time in the story.

There's actually a funny nod to the importance of subplots in 1941 when Aziraphale references Sophocles, the playwright who basically created the concept of the supporting character whose story mirrors and parallels the main character(s). The mention of Sophocles shows up in S2, the season that brings Gabriel more fully into his purpose as exactly that.

The reason why S2's plot is centered around the honestly pretty easily solvable mystery as to what's happened to Gabriel is because Gabriel, from the get-go, has been the entire story distilled down.

If you follow nothing but Ineffable Bureaucracy in Good Omens, you're going to be closer to getting what it's about and where it's going and what its end game is than you are if you are dismissing it as wasted time when we only have few episodes left. If you haven't yet seen the secret wisdom in Jim-- not to mention understand that Jim and Gabriel are the same person-- then you're probably wigging out more about the movie.

You likely think that S2 was wasted on stuff like Gabriel, or Maggie and Nina's romance, when they should have been getting to Armageddon and The Second Coming already!

You haven't yet noticed that Armageddon has more than one meaning in the series.

It's not always the literal destruction of Earth but also a person's own life crisis. We are all worlds of our own and those worlds can be put at risk if we don't let others in and take care of ourselves and those around us.

When you realize this, you can start to see that S1 goes hard with a freight train of plot all over the place that is related to Armageddon in a more Biblical, apocalyptic sense while it establishes its universe for us but that, once we know how it all works, we can get something like S2... a time where we can step back and start using Armageddon in the more figurative way that the story is also presenting it.

We need to because the story isn't about Heaven or Hell-- it's about being a person. S2 is emphasizing the deeper aspects of the themes and rolling that out at a pace more in line with a person having a few days of inner crisis. When you see that Aziraphale's crisis is the point then you can see how S1 can be about The Four Horsepeople riding to the end of the world and S2 can show War (inner conflict), Pollution (mental health issues), and Famine (symptoms of the other two; lack of food and pleasure and connection; self-starvation and self-denial) as a mental health crisis.

The point is that if you're thinking these characters need to come together to overthrow Heaven and Hell and get to the South Downs Cottage and there's no time slajdflkfwjlkejlje!?!?, then you aren't realizing that not every revolution involves guns and bombs.

People all over the world can start a love train that's far more effective. You might think a subplot about The Hellhound and The Ginger Cat learning to play nice and that they have a fuckton in common and should maybe bury the hatchet and just become eternal bffs already is filler but Crowley and Gabriel aligning is set up for the end game. It's strength in numbers and finding peace and family. They can't overthrow Heaven/Hell without help and Gabriel is the Supreme Archangel. They literally will never have a South Downs Cottage ending without a plot that helped Crowley and Aziraphale see that Gabriel and Beez are on their side.

This is the revolution in Good Omens:

It will take all the characters coming together to overthrow Heaven/Hell and set up something new for us to get a happy ending and we absolutely will. S2 is Gabriel-centric because Gabriel is the key to all of the characters getting a peaceful ending and because he's a split-directly-down-the-middle mirror of both Crowley and Aziraphale. In a season that is more about Aziraphale's inner Armageddon than about an external threat, Gabriel is vital to telling that story. The plot of S2 is every bit as important to the story as S1. I'd argue that it's even more important because takes the time to go at the themes in a slower, deeper way. It needs to because it's a story of a fall that sets up for a story in S3 of a recovery from one.

Good Omens is the absolute perfect combination of a show that is both very, very detail-oriented and full of depth while also being, secretly, an incredibly simple story. I do not mean simple in a negative way but in a chef's kiss sort of way. Simple in a tight and elegant sort of way. This is something that I think some people might not see when they're theorizing but it's something to keep in mind ahead of the movie. Not just because the movie is shorter-- this would have been relevant if we were having a longer S3, too.

Good Omens has a very engaged fan base that looks for the details, yes. *raises hand* I'm one of them lol. And there will be plenty to pour over in the movie, but... the big thing to keep in mind is that your theory needs to be something that is simple, that can be explained in under a handful of scenes, tops, and that is focused on where Aziraphale's story arc is going above anything and everything else.

If you're beginning with time loops and the birth of a new antichrist baby, I'm telling you from ages of experience reading and writing stories, you're going to be way off. If you are over here composing theories of the story that you are arguing are correct and this theory involves, idk... *makes something up* Crowley is really Elvis and Elvis is really The Bentley and when a rainbow hits Whickber Street at exactly 4 minutes into the new season, Satan will be revealed to really be Jesus, I think maybe you might be missing the point of the details that the show has given already. Like the plot, these details exist to reinforce the themes of the story. Story beats everything else-- it's what this is all about.

And what Good Omens is about? Is best summed up by Michael Sheen, in this single sentence that I really, really agree with and have paraphrased more than once in posts:

Good Omens is about the business of living. It's about the human experience, which is the experience of being a person. Everything related to Heaven and Hell and good and evil and Armageddon and supernatural things is plot that only exists to highlight a story about the complexities of being a person.

The supernatural is human and the human is supernatural.

That is what Good Omens is about.

While Crowley and Aziraphale are built as two halves of a whole and are both main characters, Aziraphale is the main character from a technical, story perspective, because he is the character whose story arc is driving both the plot and story forward. He's heading for a happy ending with Crowley in the South Downs by the end of the film. If you're making theories, start with what kind of plot would truly get him there and still fit with all of the themes of the story.

This 'it's about being a person' business is why if you look at S2 as filler and not as a season that is exploring the continuing themes on a deeper level, you're still worried about things like there being no time in a movie to show the story of a new antichrist kid being born or how they're going to fit the whole Second Coming into the movie. You don't yet see that Aziraphale parallels Adam and that being an antichrist is basically just being a person and that Aziraphale is presently the antichrist in the story. There is no antichrist child yet to be born. They won't be cutting it because it's not the story.

Armageddon since S2 has been Aziraphale's own personal one and the story from the end of S2 on is now how, if all the other characters can't come together to help him, it could also trigger Armageddon of the S1, Earth-destroying kind. It's tying a more literal Armageddon into a more figurative one. Because this story is about being a person so Armageddon is just metaphorical for going through a mental health crisis and shutting people out.

This story's themes include that every person matters and we all have to let others in and look out for one another. That there's strength in numbers. That found family and adopted family is as much family as biological family-- often, even more so. That labelling and categorizing people is bullshit and you should always open the cover and read the first sentences of people and help people whose stories begin with the same letters find one another. That it might be surprising who has things in common. It's about all of Heaven and Hell versus all of humanity, in the sense that ideas of being a perfect angel or being seen as an evil demon are concepts felt by human beings that get in the way of peace and healthy, happy living, but that fighting them is a common, human struggle, regardless of from where you come.

If you are too focused on the religious plot being the center of the film, you haven't yet seen the meaning of why the end of S1 was an eleven year old kid saving the world by telling off the bio-dad that was never there for him. You might be one of the people who thought this a silly, anti-climatic ending to that story, and don't yet realize that this is the entire story in a nutshell.

Adam can only reject Satan and keep the darkness at bay because he is surrounded-- here, literally-- by a family that supports him. He has good people for parents and was lucky enough to grow up with resources that all kids in this world should have. He has an absolutely terrific group of friends. He has this witch lady and her boyfriend and these two gay uncles that just showed up out of nowhere 😂 and his human incarnate self has what it needs to make it through this crisis, in this moment, even if he'll probably have others throughout his life, just like all of us. He's not evil incarnate and he doesn't have to be perfect-- he's just a person.

Aziraphale tells Adam this but struggles to see himself in the same way. That's what S2 is about.

S2 is about that other kid who, like Adam, breaks the season down into a single line of dialogue, David Tennant's apparent favorite from the season:

Jemimah knows who she is and she is happy to claim ownership over her art and contributions to the world. She's living her life with excitement and enthusiasm in a way that gets more complicated as we become traumatized adults. Crowley and Aziraphale struggle with this. They have been making a life together on Earth for thousands of years and each struggle, in their own ways, to truly accept that they are people who are allowed to have a life because they struggle to accept that they are people, just like everyone else.

Their story is about getting to a better place with that. That's really all Good Omens fundamentally is. That's why their ending is going to be to go live in a little cottage together that isn't a business that covers up an angelic embassy that covers up a secret love den. It's just their house-- theirs together for the life they're going to live openly together.

If you want some peace with the film, I'd advise throwing over your theories about The Second Coming and Armageddon needing to happen and antichrist kids and how Jesus fits into everything. Jesus in Good Omens is Crowley romancing Aziraphale at the crucifixion and Aziraphale using what Jesus said to Crowley to reject temptation as invitation to fuck him. I thought Jesus in a single scene or less was the most likely thing for S3 and the same holds for the movie. It's not the story. The only time The Second Coming is mentioned in S2 is by the villain and, to get there, Earth would have to first be destroyed. It won't be.

If the story is about being a messy human walking the Earth and we're in the end game now, then the story is about Aziraphale and only Aziraphale. Everything-- everything-- will be in service of Aziraphale's story arc. We already had just a few episodes with S3 and we now have even less time but the way this is going is still the same. The story is Aziraphale's fall and the other characters coming together to challenge Heaven to keep Aziraphale from eternity in Hell. That's how Armageddon is stopped this time around-- overthrowing Heaven with Aziraphale's fate as the motivation to take on The Metatron. It's nothing to do with Jesus. It's everything to do with Aziraphale.

When you see that, you can see how feasible that is in 90 minutes, with plenty of time for things like 1941, Part 3 and other flashbacks.

I think, when all is said and done, you might wind up appreciating S2 more after the film but you can get there already if you start looking at it less as meaningless fluff and start asking why it is that we were shown this story, in this way, and what that can tell us about the story we're watching.

[asleepinawell]

sorry if this seems a bit out of the blue, but ever since youve been posting about fallen london, im a bit curious about it! What is the game about and where can I get it?

oh no worries! I'm happy to ramble about it

fallen london is a free to play browser game you can find here. the basic premise is that sometime in the 1800's the entire city of london is engulfed in a swarm of bats and then falls through the earth into a cavern a mile below. this is the neath, a huge underground cavern where london sits on the shore of a vast ocean. queen victoria is still around locked in her palace being a typical shitty british monarch, who, amongst other things, decided that 1900 was cancelled and we were just going to have 1899 for a second time

things are a little...different down there. humans are far from the only ones running around. there's devils, rubbery men (think mind flayer vibes), clay men, and the shadowy cloaked figures running the bazaar (and the city) called the masters. death mostly isn't permanent and the dream world is a little too real. also, most importantly, cats can talk! and there are tons of them! and tigers too

it's got victorian, gothic horror, dark humor, lovecraftian vibes. also it's extremely queer as is everything the dev, failbetter games, makes. something I especially appreciate is that you don't have to give your character any particular gender (though you can) and some of the little avatars are very gender neutral:

since it's free to play it comes with the normal things that type of game has such as real money transactions (completely optional and unnecessary for enjoyment (though some of the bonus side stories you can buy are extremely cool)), limited number of actions you can take (max of 20 at a time and refills 1 per 10 minutes). it is definitely grindy too though there's so many things to do (cannot emphasize the insane amount of content enough) I will usually just switch things up every so often

it's single player for the most part but you can ask friends to assist you in certain actions and there are some specific items that can be sent to other players

(if you like the setting but not the free to play part you can check out mask of the rose which is a visual novel they just released set right after london fell. it's a romance but with full aro and ace options (which I actually preferred) and a murder mystery. that one is a normal just buy the whole game deal and I think it's on most platforms. there's also sunless seas and sunless skies which take place in the same world but are a very different type of game and would require their own post. all of these have great writing in them)

but back to fallen london. it works based off of 'storylets', or little short stories when you usually do a skill check to accomplish something in return for advancing the story, levelling your skills, and reward items. you unlock more and more things as you go and get access to new stories and areas. here's an example of one of the little activities and its resolution

since it's a game designed to be able to play endlessly there isn't really a way to lose or game over. you can die but dying is just a minigame of its own and sometimes even a thing to do purposefully. (the only actual way to die is the notorious story called seeking mr eaten's name which you may have seen me post about, which is a very unique story that will permanently erase your character at the end. why you'd ever want to do that would also be its own post. it's pretty hard to stumble on accidentally I think and extremely well-marked as a thing with severe consequences that you probably shouldn't do. or should you...)

anyway I'd definitely recommend giving fallen london a try if you're interested in the premise and aesthetic

[queer-reader-07]

a love letter to trans romance

because i can't be normal about media and i'm making it y'all's problems

hi hello and welcome to my mildly unhinged ramblings about love and gender. this post comes to you in three sections, enjoy <3

--

t4t romance novels made me believe in love again

the first romance book i ever read was The Feeling of Falling in Love by Mason Deaver. TFOFIL is a t4t (trans for trans) romance that follows a teenage trans boy, Neil Kearney, and a figuring-out-their-gender teen, Wyatt Fowler, as they get themselves wrapped up in peak YA romcom shenaniganary and eventually fall in love. cute, right? just a fun little romcom, not much more to it?

yeah well that's what i thought going in, but coming out of that book i was in tears. tears because i'd never read a story about trans love before. tears because at that point in my life i'd never allowed myself to fully claim the word "trans." tears because Wyatt made me feel so seen and so real.

there's this one scene where Wyatt is talking to Neil and they describe themself as being the kind of person who sometimes wants to wear makeup and dresses, but other times they like their body hair and scruffy beard. and i just remember nodding along and then absolutely melting because Neil takes it in stride, he comforts Wyatt and let's them know that they don't need to have it figured out just yet. Neil makes it clear that he's there, and that Wyatt doesn't need to come out to anyone unless they're ready.

Mason Deaver has another t4t romance, Okay, Cupid. and that similarly had me in my feels because there is something so special about finding people who embrace you for all that you are.

every t4t romance I've read has one thing in common, the fact that the love interests do not love each despite the other's transness. their transness is not an obstacle to love or to attraction or to adoration, it is an object of it. their transness is something to be admired and to be loved and to be cared for. it is not something the other has to "get over."

reading The Feeling of Falling in Love was the first time i ever thought to myself "maybe, just maybe, i can call myself trans and still be loved." because up until that point i hadn't let myself accept that i was some flavor of trans. up until that point i'd said "not cis" without ever saying trans because i was so scared my being trans would make me unlovable. t4t romance books showed me how wrong i was. they showed me that my ability to be loved was not dependent on my girlhood.

ha you thought i could write something this long on tumblr and NOT mention good omens? think again bestie

i have held a trans reading of crowley since i read the book and the show only solidified it for me. crowley canonically plays with gender.

he's dressed femme during the crucifixion scene, his modern look is a mix of men's and women's pieces, his hair is a Whole Thing in and of itself. i could go on but i digress.

but it's not just the way he plays with gender that informs my trans reading of him. it's also how his character arc can very easily be read as an allegory for transness.

an angel who falls (a girl who isn't a girl anymore)

a fallen angel turned demon (a girl who is a boy now)

a demon who isn't really a demon anymore (a used to be girl, a thought to be boy, is now nonbinary)

girl = angel and boy = demon is entirely arbitrary in this please don't read into it

now, you may be thinking "A how in god's name does this apply to trans romance?" to which i say, aziraphale falls in love with every version of crowley. aziraphale beams heart eyes at angel!crowley before the beginning and loves crowley as a demon for millennia and is so deeply and unabashedly in love with crowley in his not-quite-demon form of s2.

aziraphale loves all the versions of crowley because crowley's angel or demon-ness (gender) is not the reason aziraphale loves crowley. aziraphale doesn't love crowley because he's a demon or because he used to be an angel, aziraphale loves crowley because it's crowley. crowley in whatever clothes he chooses to where, crowley with whatever hairstyle he's fancying at the moment, crowley as he inhabits the shades of grey just a little more.

to me, that is so easy to read as a trans love story. you could argue it's t4t depending on how you read aziraphale, but to me, it's at the very least a love story between a mostly-demon who gets down to some gender fuckery and an angel who loves him very much.

fuck it let's talk about fanfiction

i don't think i could make this post without mentioning @ineffabildaddy's fic I'm Beginning to See the Light.

i have a complicated relationship with my body. i don't plan to ever medically transition because i don't want to make any permanent changes to my body. but there are days where all i want is to have a flat chest and hips that are flush with the rest of my body but instead i'm stuck with tits and an hourglass figure cis people always seem to focus on.

i don't hate my body, but the idea that anyone could look at it and not just see A Woman is beyond me. i walk through life being perceived as a very feminine woman even on the days that i feel the most androgynous. the idea that a lover could look at my body and still see me for who i am feels like a dream that could never happen.

and IBTSTL slapped me (lovingly) across the face with the message that, actually, i can be loved as my whole self and that there are people out there who don't look at me and see A Woman and those people don't love me any less. IBTSTL made me feel safe in my trans body because it said "you are worthy of love and adoration because your transness is not something to get past it is something to admire. it is something to love."

--

i think the point i'm trying to make here is this: trans love stories are so special to me. they've been so vital in my own journey to love and accept myself. they're the reason i can imagine myself maybe having romantic love in the future.

representation matters, it can quite literally change your life.

[lurkdragonstuff]

I'm an atheist and a philosophical materialist. I don't think there's anything more to the universe than what can be observed and measured. Disagree if you want, that's fine, but take as read that this is where I'm coming from.

As you can imagine, this makes it very strange to me that my brain thinks I'm a dragon.

I have been trying to square this circle for years. Since around the 2000's, when I first made contact with the Internet, I would look in on the otherkin community, and the draconic community nested inside it, and I would think, man. I wish I could believe that. I wish I could believe that souls were real, and that I had one, and that it was a dragon, and that's why I was so odd. For quite a while, I just explained it as a furry fandom thing. Sure, yes, my fursona is feral, but ferals are furries, too. This is still true! I'm still in furry fandom, and my dragonself still acts as my fursona. But they are also, in a deeper sense, me.

I'm a secular pagan. I don't think gods exist, and I don't think magic is literally real. I can't really cast a curse on shitty charities. The moon's a big shiny rock. It doesn't care if I roar at it when the sun reflects off it just so and I can see the whole of its tidally locked face.

But my dragon brain doesn't know that. It likes the big shiny rock. It likes little shiny rocks, too. It likes to light things on fire, and considers this a sacred act, both bringing destruction to noxious things and bringing honour to things worthy of it. It likes to growl and hiss when things annoy it. It likes to collect things, to have a hoard. It likes to range around its territory, keeping an eye on what's around in what season. It finds it frustrating that its wings don't seem to work at all, and its other limbs barely better. It wants its tail back. It wants its fire breath.

I'm autistic. Sometimes speaking is hard, and I growl and hiss when things annoy me. I like to collect things related to my special interests; I have a sprawling collection of cetacean, Nintendo, and SEGA figurines, as well as lots of little animal figures. Plushies, too, and videogames, and books. I do wildlife photography, as well, marking who's around in what seasons. This is, to my frustration, limited a lot by waning energy because of chronic health problems.

If backed into a corner, to say what I really believe, of course I'm a human. It is in my DNA, expressed in a bipedal body plan, five fingers on the forelimbs only, nails and not claws, no wings, no muzzle, no tail, short neck, skin and fur instead of scales. Not even any horns. I find this frustrating, but it is what it is. I also find it frustrating when people call me 'she' and not 'they', and that really there is no feasible gender presentation that would guarantee that strangers would use the right word. The best I can hope for is that people will read the 'they/them' button on my hat, or otherwise call me 'he'. Still wrong, but at least novel.

I honestly think my draconic identity developed when I was younger as a way to explain why I was so weird. I have never been normal. I will never be normal. As an adult, I have fancy words like "autism" and "anxiety and depression secondary to post-traumatic stress disorder" and "seasonal affective disorder" to explain why I'm abnormal.

But a part of my brain, I think the same one that still believes in magic and deities even though I don't, tilts its head, then grins a sharp grin and says, "Cool story, bro. I'm still a dragon."

I generally have, for any given of my eccentricities, the philosophical materialist explanation (generally that I am either brainweird in some way or another or am playing pretend for placebo purposes to manage executive function etc.) and the dragon explanation (generally what the pretend play revolves around). But - and this is hard to explain - it isn't exactly playing pretend, either. It's me.

When I'm pretending to be Link, either playing a Zelda game or writing Zelda fanfic, Link isn't me. I might be inhabiting him as an actor, but he isn't me. When I play Animal Crossing, and I'm playing a character named after me, that's closer. It's me but greater. Me but more. Me existing in a life I wish I could have.

When I put on my mask, when I sit and daydream about the multiverse-hopping shenanigans I get up to, when I hiss at someone startling me by getting into my space, that's me. I'm not a dragon, I'm a human wearing a mask, daydreaming, hissing because "back the fuck off!" isn't allowed in the workplace.

Yeah. Cool story, bro.

I am still a dragon.

[fellamarsh]

another thing i've been trying to do recently is read more self-published stuff. "but fell," you say, "you're a self-published author. surely you've been reading self-published stuff all along" and then i laugh for so long in response we both become uncomfortable.

see, the fear (which has for a long time been killing my mind) that i'll read other self-published stuff and find out that it's so much better than mine that i might as well stop writing forever kept me from doing that basically ever. i have a hard time not unfavorably comparing my work to others and had convinced myself i was being smart by withholding an avenue of de-motivation (reader: i was not being smart). it also doesn't help that i'm pretty low income and have a hard time spending money on books i haven't already read, and that self-published stuff isn't always available at the library---but really a lot of it was just me being a coward. which i'm working on. i could talk about how this particular cowardice is Very Silly, but i think enough has been said about it on writeblr and in the Writing Space in general that i don't feel the need to (though i will if anyone wants me to).

instead, i wanna talk about the self-published things i have read in the past few months and ask about the self-published things you love!

so: what happened was i got real sick, and while i was real sick i (naturally) read over 200,000 words of ace attorney fan fiction in the span of a few days. eventually i got bored of it (and also maybe annoyed at how people were characterizing some of my guys), but i still wanted to read something gay and romantic and nice, something i knew was gonna end happily, which isn't my typical fare.

now you may be saying (having gotten over all the uncomfortable laughter from earlier) "fell, you write gay romance. what do you mean that's not your typical fare?" listen. until a couple months ago i hadn't read a cut and dry romance novel since before i finished college. for context: i graduated in 2015. i know it doesn't make sense. i'm a guy who doesn't make sense.

but in this case it worked to my advantage. not the not making sense thing, but the not having read Published Romance in 1000 years thing. I didn't know where to start. I was very skeptical of everything the library had Available Now in the Gay Fantasy Romance category. what if it was all bad and also not good?

and then i scrolled past the familiar cover of our very own @ashen-crest's A Rival Most Vial.

now this was comfortable territory! this was a novel by a very nice writeblr person whose posts i enjoy! i already loosely knew the plot, i was familiar with the characters, i knew the names of things like rosemond street and the griffin's claw and that ambrose had blue hair and that at the end of it all there would definitely be Boyfriends. i didn't have to worry that this would be bad! i only had to worry that it would be really good!

but i wasn't worried about that, because i was officially Not Writing at the time, and because why the hell hadn't i read this book yet Ash literally emailed me some very kind words last year when my cat died??

Y'all, I devoured ARMV. If you haven't read it yet---especially if cozy fantasy is more your thing than it is mine---you should check it out Immediately. It was fun! It was heartwarming! It was sweet and earnest and confident! I was delighted to find it was occasionally hot! Ambrose and Eli snuggled up into my sick exhausted heart and found a permanent little place there. (Especially Ambrose. I have such a thing for Stiff Guys who Kind of Suck for Tragic Backstory Reasons and are So So Lonely They Don't Even Realize It. gawd)

(And a very small part of my brain spent the whole time wondering why I had been so afraid to really engage with the work my community is doing. The community that I'm in. The one I'm a part of. Why?! Maybe more on that later.)

But from there the curse was broken! I immediately devoured @stjohnstarling's What Manner of Man in a similar sort of frenzy (and hooooly shit guys am I excited for the expanded, finalized version to come out at the end of next month!) and started digging into @lurinatftbn's The Flower that Bloomed Nowhere (which I can already tell is going to be an All Time Favorite).

And now I want to ask you what your favorite self-published books are so that I can read them, too, but I think I will in another post that doesn't dedicate so much space to talking about my various and sundry Issues and isn't Terminally Long

[emotionallychargedtowel]

Hira's parents and his self-defeating tendencies

I was talking to @sorry-bonebag and @wen-kexing-apologist about what role Hira's parents might have played in creating the weirdness he displays throughout both seasons of Utsukushii Kare & Eternal. I started writing a response and it got too long and, well, now it's a post.

Before I talk about Hira's parents and the tendencies in him that they helped to create, I want to note that family of origin is just one of the influences that form us as people. Parents and caregivers have a huge influence, as do other family members. But so do peers. The bullying about his disability that Hira experiences nearly constantly is one of the biggest influences on his personality.

Hira's parents appear extremely briefly at the very beginning of the series. His mom fusses a bit about him being on his own and his dad is very "he has to take care of himself sometime" about it. We know they took him to specialists for his dysphemia, bought him his camera, etc.

Their departure is a show thing, by the way, and isn't present in the novel. In the novel they continue to live with him through high school and, if I remember correctly, part of college. But they don't play a big role in his life. The main things that happen involving them are either instances of Hira hiding things from them (or attempting to) or instances of his mother briefly, sporadically, having a big burst of worry about him. It would make sense if the show version of his parents were the same way aside from the leaving-him-to-live-alone part of things, though that’s not shown.

The rest of my thoughts are largely headcanon since I’m working backwards from his personality to guess about his formative years, but they match up with the little bit that’s shown in the series and how his parents are in the novel. I see Hira as having a self-defeating personality in a lot of ways. The typical etiology of this kind of personality (the set of conditions that lead up to it) is supposed to be a rather deprived childhood that is punctuated by occasional bursts of parental attention when the child is seen as in crisis somehow (or when they attract attention in other self-defeating ways, like intentionally getting in trouble).

This reminds me of something Nancy McWilliams writes about in Psychoanalytic Diagnosis, attributing the idea to someone named Emmanuel Hammer: “a masochistic person is a depressive who still has hope.” [I should note here that “masochistic personality” is an older term for self-defeating personality that is not meaningfully correlated with masochism in a sexual sense. I think that, despite how he might appear at first glance, Hira actually isn’t sexually masochistic or submissive. I have a whole mostly-written post about this that I hope will see the light of day eventually.] In other words, whereas the background that creates a depressive personality involves deprivation that's intense enough that the person gives up on the possibility of receiving the love they need, the self-defeating personality has had enough success with occasionally getting their needs met that they keep trying. If that’s what happened with Hira, it would be consistent with what we see of his parents in the series. We know they pulled out the stops at certain points when it comes to his dysphemia. Anyone who’s a parent can tell you how hard it is to get a good specialist to see your kid, even when they have some kind of glaring issue and you have decent healthcare access overall. The fact that they managed to get him in with a specialist is notable all on it own. (I actually have some stressful phone calls I need to make today in a similar vein, seeking specialist help for one of my kids.) They also spent a lot of money on a DSLR for a young kid. And yet they’re OK with letting him live alone and after that point remain very hands-off. It also seems like despite the attention they paid to his dysphemia during that one period, by the time of the series they’ve totally stopped trying to support him about it.

Basically, I think his parents are largely neglectful (emotionally rather than materially) but that every so often, they freak out and pay a bunch of attention to him because they perceive him to be in need of rescuing. When he was young, he probably appreciated the attention when it happened, but at the time of the series he gets those needs met in other ways and/or displaces that need for attention onto Kiyoi. The idea of seeking attention in this way maps especially well onto his relationship with Kiyoi, because he seeks Kiyoi’s attention and approval through exactly the sort of strategies typically used by people with self-defeating personalities. Here’s McWilliams again:

Reik (1941) explored several dimensions of masochistic acting out, including (1) provocation [she refers to a previous anecdote about a woman who feared angry outbursts by her partner because of experiences with her father; she would act out in ways that antagonized him in order to “get it over with”], (2) appeasement (“I’m already suffering, so please withhold any further punishment”), (3) exhibitionism (“Pay attention: I’m in pain”), and (4) deflection of guilt (“See what you made me do!”).

I can think of plenty of instances of provocation (the first type). Hira often does things he knows will make Kiyoi angry, and sometimes visibly relishes the negative attention.

One good example is the scene in Eternal where he creates a totally avoidable misunderstanding by vaguely talking about how “a divorce is going to happen” because of an affair, which Kiyoi takes to be referring to their relationship and specifically, to Hira cheating. When Kiyoi rears back to punch him, Hira protests for a moment but then says being killed by Kiyoi is actually a longstanding wish of his. It turns out it’s Naho-chan who is getting divorced because her husband cheated. Hira could easily have spoken more clearly when he brought this up by using subjects in his sentences. When he first brings up divorce, Kiyoi says, “Who are you to decide on your own without me agreeing? What dissatisfaction do you have with me?”, which makes it clear he thinks Hira is referring to something involving him. Yet Hira continues to speak without subjects when he elaborates and says the reason for the divorce is an affair. He only clears up the misunderstanding after Kiyoi has lost all patience and is (legitimately!) freaking out. There's no way this isn't, on some level, intentional.

One version of appeasement (the second type of self-defeating acting out) that McWilliams talks about is criticizing oneself before others can do so. It’s no exaggeration to say that Hira talking himself down to Kiyoi is a defining characteristic of their relationship. There are lots of examples of this but a particularly classic case is his constant refrain about being a “pebble.” His invitation for Kiyoi to “Please hit me as much as you want” after their fight in season 2 is another example of appeasement. 

It’s hard to pin down specific examples of Hira employing the third type of acting out, exhibitionism. It makes sense that they wouldn’t be easy to find, though. This is a very covert type of exhibitionism that doesn’t announce itself. I think you can observe it in subtle ways, though. For example, when Shirota dumps tomato juice on Kiyoi, a bunch of it gets on Hira as well. Afterwards, Kiyoi cleans the juice off of himself as best he can, seemingly as quickly as possible, and changes his clothes. But when he talks to Hira afterward, dried drops of juice are clearly visible on Hira’s face. Acidic juice on one’s face would probably feel uncomfortable, but he intentionally doesn’t wash it off. It’s like he’s wearing these stains as a badge of honor and proof of his mistreatment.

I think deflection of guilt, the fourth type, is less characteristic of Hira than the others. He tends to absorb guilt rather than deflecting it, blaming himself in a way that often takes the form of the self-critical form of appeasement.

I think it's worth noting that he also employs appeasement as a strategy in the hostile environment of high school. His biggest rule in school is to avoid attention as much as possible, so exhibitionism and provocation aren't acceptable options. (He does disobey Shirota in a way that could be considered provocation when the rift between Kiyoi and Shirota first starts to form, but I think that's more a case of overt rebellion.) We don't see him employ deflection of guilt, though his teacher does seem a bit more forgiving of his attack on Shirota given what he knows about Hira's experiences with bullying. But appeasement? When he can't avoid attention entirely, that is his go-to strategy. It doesn't draw much, if any, additional attention this way. He can demonstrate to people who pose a danger to him that he's not a threat and is ready to comply with their orders if it will allow him to avoid mistreatment. It's only when he finds a kind of vicarious strength in Kiyoi (see my post here for more on that aspect of Hira) that he starts to deal with the bullying in other ways.

So, yeah. Hira's parents initially formed these patterns in Hira, peers deepened them, and they came out in his relationship with Kiyoi. A big part of the shift that needs to happen in order for their relationship to last is for Hira to stop using self-defeating strategies to sneakily get his needs met by Kiyoi and start seeking what he needs openly and assertively.

Maybe now would be a good time to brush off those other in-progress Utsukare posts and try to finish them off while I have a bit of momentum, huh?

By the way, if you’re interested in my previous Utsukare posts, I have a master post here with links to everything.

[orphiclovers]

Avatar - fundamentally broken skill?

This is a thing I have been thinking about. The way powers (skills, stigmas, whatever) work in the world of ORV is fascinating in that they are not designed to help the incarnation or adjust to their bodies like a classical superpower. It's repeated many times that the Star Stream is a cruel place, so of course it makes nothing easy on them. Just look at how many times Shin Yoosung and Lee Gilyoung bleed when using their skills. Or how Anna Croft and Yoo Joonghyuk were destroyed mentally by their repeated lifetimes - don't even get me started on Regression.

And Avatar is one of the skills that is the most developed. I've talked about how manifesting it seemingly splits you in two (I recommend reading this previous meta before this post) but what does that split entail, exactly? Here's my theories.

1. Author/Character divide.

If we take 1863rd Yoo Joonghyuk as an example, it's very clear cut. The black coat wearing YJH would be the 'character' who stays and dies and the white coat wearing YJH would be the 'author' who choses to write another story. 'Character' used here in the sense that Kim Dokja would look at them and be able to see/assign them this metaphysical trait, as he does for everyone else.

With Kim Dokja, it is basically easy too. 51% is the author, while 49% is the character, probably.

Han Sooyoung is more difficult. I think since Kim Dokja looks at 1863rd and says she is already a 'character', while 3rd stays a person the whole time IIRC, 3rd would be the 'author' self, even if this seems counterintuitive and like it should be the opposite - this makes the most sense with the second part of this theory.

Technically every author (or reader - someone with the knowledge of the narrative) becomes a 'character' (i.e forgets everything) at some point as per Star Stream rules, but this has not yet happened to Han Sooyoung of the 3rd round.

Still, it's not a perfect fit. Both Han Sooyoungs write novels and neither Kim Dokja does (not that writing is 100% necessary to be an 'Author', since YJH is one and barely writes anything until the epilogue) But it's still an interesting connection to explore.

Onto the second part.

2. Does the divide into two...actually work long term, because it doesn't seem to, based on the evidence we have?

First, let's look at 49% Kim Dokja. Perhaps Kimcom would have accepted him as the real Kim Dokja, like they do with Han Sooyoung, if he didn't ACT like a wet paper towel. The detoriation in mental faculties is very apparent and jarring and soon he falls apart physically too. This doesn't happen to 3rd Han Sooyoung, who is also an avatar, so what gives?

Well, it might not happen to 3rd but definitely did to 1863rd Han Sooyoung.

A 'probability storm is gnawing at her memories' and there's physical effects too. She says this has been happening for a while. Even though she has found a way of slowing down the effects it clearly doesn't fix the issue and eventually, despite her resistance, she might have become like 49% Kim Dokja.

(Maybe that's why she was so ready to leave her companions after the scenarios were over. If rereading stuff helps, perhaps that's also why she kept a diary of her round that 3rd YJH eventually got? Just spitballing, this isn't part of the theory.)

She names two possible causes to this detorriation - exessive use of the Avatar skill or Ways of Survival. 'Ways of Survival' probably refers to the Star Stream rule that once you reach the end of your knowledge you forget you were an author and become a 'character', which 1863 justifiably doesn't want to happen. Later, Kim Dokja comments on her 'status as a character' too, so it is related to that.

With 'overuse of Avatar' she could be refering to the way she makes thousands of them in her mind, but if we look at 49% Kim Dokja and the way their sympthoms match pretty closely, it's likely also the fact that another her - the main body/'author' - is running around in another worldline.

So for these two it checks out that one of the halves is always unstable.

With 1863rd Yoo Joonghyuk, well, it's hard to tell how it would have gone, since black coat YJH dies almost immediately. But the very fact that his avatar didn't even make it a couple minutes is also pretty telling.

As previously stated, nothing is stopping a skill from being harmful for the user. So maybe, one half of the initial avatar pair gets the short end of the stick and ends up slowly disintegrating. That's the basics of this theory.

Technically 51% Kim Dokja disintegrates into the Star Stream too but it is by a different mechanism, unrelated to the Avatar skill. First, he overconsumes probablility and shrinks into a child - this happens to Secretive Plotter too, it's just a thing.

Then, he loses his memories and if Kimcom hadn't interviewed would have become the same exact child that SP takes away in the subway, so that was just the time loop asserting itself. Like alt-1863rd YJH losing his memories when regressing to the 3rd round, or 1863 Han Sooyoung going dormant in Young Han Sooyoung's mind on the day the scenarios start. (Each of these are the looping points of the universe for yhk.)

But something about the way 1863rd Han Sooyoung in those 13 years sheds pieces of her story to create TWSA is very reminiscient of how 51% Kim Dokja disintegrates into the Star Stream on that subway. So perhaps there is some kind of connection there too.

[emiliosandozsequence]

Tell us about sjm. Spill the tea.

oh man there really is SOOO very much of it that idk how i'll fit all into one response, but i'll do my best 🫡

so sjm or sarah j maas is a very popular fantasy writer (she is the origin of 'feminist' romantasy as a genre because her writing has just been THAT influential (in some good ways, but mostly in bad ones for reasons i'll get to in a minute). she's jewish and has white skin, blonde hair, and blue eyes (this also is relevant i promise).

anyway, despite her writing being so influential it...is really not that good (it has the potential to be tho which is one of the (many) reasons why reading her stuff is so frustrating) and she has a HUUUGE problem with putting her biases in her writing, in particular her racism, misogyny, and ableism.

her racism is at a level that i truly find unbelievable. in every book of hers, every character that is seen as good/smart/beautiful/brave, is a main character, or, at the very least, starts out that way in the story and doesn't have a redemption arc later after the narrative has already taught you to hate her (because it's always female characters this is done with too), has fair hair and light colored eyes (and almost always light skin too); on the opposite end of the spectrum, every single (female) character that either is in the story for not very long, isn't a main character, starts out a bad or undesirable person in some manner, or isn't considered good/smart/beautiful/brave has dark hair, eyes, and/or skin.

this is a tame tho in comparison to the fact that in the first two throne of glass books (one the series she's written), the only black character is considered a manipulative liar (she's even described as such on the wiki lmao) despite being the main character's best friend before she's summarily killed off in an extremely violent manner all for the development of that main character. she also has an asian character in the acotar series that is considered rude and emotionless, despite, again, being a best friend of the main characters. oh and of COURSE the asian character doesn't have dark eyes lol. because...can't have that in a sjm book!!!! no one can look like an irl person of color AT ALL!!!! g-d. and then, ofc, there's the illyrians, which are 100% coded as people of color and are a violent and misogynistic group of people lmao. as if htat weren't bad enough, she also tried to trademark illyria/illyiran even tho (and this is what made me make the post this morning) that's a REAL PLACE with REAL PEOPLE LIVING THERE.

and even THAT is tame to the fact she posted a promotion for her own book on the same day breonna taylor was killed and, not only that, but used her death to promote said book because she mentioned the murder in one (1) line of the post. to this day she has STILL NOT taken down that post.

compared to that, her misogyny in her novels (the main character constantly competing with other girls and always thinking she's better than they are and 'not like other girls teehee') and her glaring plagiarism (she uses terminology not only directly pulled from asoiaf (wolf in the north; the queen who was promised; oathbreaker; breaker of chains) but is used in exactly the same context as asoiaf too as well as some pretty significant plotlines of dany's (in particular her freeing the slaves of several cities and gathering up everyone on her continent to support her claim to the throne and unite in defense against a common foe that will turn all of them into walking zombies basically....SOUND FAMILIAR??????)) is a pretty tame offense, but imo it all adds up to just one disgusting whole of a person to me.

oh and, to top it all off, she's a zionist. there's a video essay about her i watched on youtube that explains the proof for this, but i do Not remember what it was she said now, so i'll link it here.

she's also ableist too, which expresses itself in how nesta archeron is treated throughout a court of silver flames (g-d forbid a traumatized woman be hypersexual and an addict and get sick of being treated like shit by the peope around her or she deserves to get thrown out of her home to a place her 'loved ones' know is going to be openly hostile to her lol). i don't think sjm even realizes how ableist she is throughout this book bc she claimed it's a healing journey and like...lol. lmao even.

also (i'm 100% being petty here) i hate how fake she comes across. in every time i see a picture of her, and the one interview of her i saw, she reminds me so much of my mother to the point it makes me physically ill.

i'm almost certainly forgetting something because there's just SOOO much about this woman to dislike, but this is everything that immediately came to mind.

anyway her fans are also rancid and believe she's some sort of goddess of writing when she's not even that good and is 100% a fake and shitty person that doesn't truly care about them at all whatsoever.

[transandersrights]

Bioware's dislike of the mage rebellion

I really enjoyed Absolution, but it continues to immensely frustrate me that people writing for Bioware refuse to write pro-rebellion mages. Qwydion is a "rebel mage" - whose introductory line about the topic is that she isn't actually a rebel. She's a mercenary who pretends to care about the rebellion because people pay more for a cause. It annoyed me, but also got me thinking:

Since Anders, there have been no (afaik) pro-rebellion mages in major roles in Dragon Age media - and very few pro-rebellion characters have ever been portrayed in a favourable light.

Major mage characters since the start of the mage rebellion (I'm counting from the end of DA2), excluding comics/short stories/Tevinter Nights:

Rhys (Asunder). He starts as a Libertarian who defects to the Aequitarians because of disagreements with a pro-rebellion mage. He votes in favour of mages leaving the Circles, but he's not exactly happy about it.

Felassan (Masked Empire). Not particularly concerned with the rebellion. Definitely has other priorities - the Circle can't really touch him.

Valya (Last Flight). The whole premise behind her existence in the novel (I haven't finished it yet) is that she doesn't want to fight in the rebellion. She would rather die as a Warden than take her chances as a rebel.

Vivienne (Inquisition). We know how this one goes. Pro-Circle, fervently anti-rebellion.

Solas (Inquisition). Not pro-Circle, but he's more apostate than rebel and more *gestures at his whole deal* than apostate.

Dorian (Inquisition). Tevinter, with little to no stakes in the rebellion. Will specifically voice his doubts about whether a full alliance with the mage rebellion is actually a good idea.

Mage Inquisitor (Inquisition). Can absolutely hold anti-Circle and pro-rebellion views. Only a Trevelyan mage Inquisitor can have been a rebel, though.

Qwydion (Absolution). As discussed above, more of a mercenary than a rebel and her only comment on the matter is stating that she isn't one.

Saphira (Absolution). Again, a Tevinter mage with no real stake in the rebellion. Was seemingly in Ferelden during Inquisition, but makes no comment on the rebellion.

And what about the narrative's general treatment of mage characters, particularly mage rebels? Well, it's not good. People have already discussed at length that Anders is almost universally demonised in post-DA2 Dragon Age media that mentions him, but he's not the only one.

The most fervent mage rebels in Asunder are Adrian and Fiona - the former is generally discredited as a scary radical who alienates people with her actions, and the latter is portrayed largely as foolish/weak in Inquisition (I disagree, but the narrative of Inquisition has little time for it). The mage rebellion in Inquisition is seen as a terrible, dangerous group destroying the region just as much as the Templars and for just as bad a reason.

More recent Dragon Age entries are also more generally anti-blood magic - no blood mage companions in Inquisition, no specialisation, characters who will speak against it frequently (most notably Hawke), and a blood mage villain in Absolution. Not to mention that Absolution also inadvertently reinforces the "necessity" of Harrowings by showing that Rezaren failed his.

And that isn't even the end of it!! There's a general narrative arc in Dragon Age which serves to validate the Chantry view of mages - the Blight was (seemingly) caused by Tevinter mages. The elven gods were just powerful mages - and they were slavers just like in Tevinter (making our only two examples of mage-dominated societies also slave-based). Mage companions deceive or betray you, their actions responsible/anticipated to be responsible for hundreds of deaths in a way that isn't the case for other former companions. The mage who found the cure for tranquility accidentally killed everyone in the city. From the Chantry boom onwards, 3/5 of our biggest in-game antagonists/bosses have been mages. If we're counting Absolution, that brings us up to 4/6.

This means that the general message of recent Dragon Age isn't just a disdain for the rebellion and its participants, but also a general lean towards saying that the rebellion should never have happened in the first place - because the Templars are right. Mages are Bad.

This probably isn't much of a revelation for a lot of people, but it stands completely in contrast with how I (and a lot of people) understand mage-related conflicts in Dragon Age. How Bioware have managed to set up a compelling narrative showing oppression+attempts to deconstruct it and then decided that no one should resist it (and if they do, they're never good people) is just.......what.

[copperbadge]

Usually I post short stories as little tags after posting up novels from the Shivadhverse, and I recently came up with one when I realized that for a significant portion of the next book, Noah's going to be figuring out where he wants to go to college.

I have a pretty good idea of where he's going, but I am introducing, eventually, a very small and new university in Askazer-Shivadlakia, the Royal Shivadh University (currently 78 undergraduates and 15 graduate students). It occurred to me that Noah would be torn between repping for RSU and getting it some international attention, or attending a school with better name-recognition in a country where his stepbrother isn't king.

The central plot of the story is that Noah is taking a poll, and the whole country is basically involved in one massive wank in the comments about where he should attend. So I thought a poll here would be fun. Feel free to get fighty in the comments as well. Presuming he's accepted to these schools...

[burning-academia-if]

Hi again. If you've been around a while you're probably going to be like "Em, again??" But guess who got sick for the 6th time this year and this time it was a full on chest infection!! It has been three weeks, and somehow I am still Not Free!!

Anyway, BA fell to the wayside this month because it was Velox Fabula time and I've yet to miss a Velox jam (also...chest infection). I also needed to get my sudden and newfound Pirates of the Caribbean obsession out of the way so! I made a short pirate visual novel for the jam and I'm normal again. I also released the prologue of my side IF To Taste Sweet Silver (@sweetsilver-if) just to have it out. Feel free to check it out if you want, but it likely won't be updated for a while as I'm shifting gears back to BA for September!

I don't have much to report but:

UI update should be out in the next week or two depending on how I'm feeling. It won't look like much to y'all since it's more for my sake via cleaning up the code LOL but there were things added (friendship indicators, open dyslexic font option, character page updated, stat page updated, glossary page added) I'm not a graphic designer but it's better organized I think. There won't be an Official Post about it because it isn't new content, but I will make a small announcement when it's out. It'll also include the originally deleted Lars/Zoe/Nevio lunch scene in Chapter 2 as well. Sorry this is taking so long, I just really struggle with the coding side of things which has made the process slow.

Writing in August was also slow, and honestly, I think I really needed those few weeks off not thinking about BA. My inbox being very quiet helped as well, so I really did take a real break from BA. When I opened up the writing doc, I felt a whole lot better about working on BA again, and we have hit 100k words finally!

Anyway, I don't want to lament much, but I did have a personal goal of releasing up to Chapter 4 this year which obviously is Not Going to Happen. It honestly sucks I got sick so often this year because it cut into so much time for creative projects, be it BA or anything else.

I'm not really going to be hard on myself for it, though. I think releasing 3 chapters this year considering everything that kept Going Wrong this year is actually pretty good. I just think its annoying when I know I could have done it but the universe said no instead akfjalfa Anyway, I'm not sure when Chapter 3 will release but I do have a good feeling about September and I think I'll be able to at least get a decent chunk done this month!

Finally, September marks the one year anniversary for this blog and October marks the one year anniversary of BA releasing!! I feel like I literally just started writing this, the fact it's September already is wild.

I was going to do art commissions, but due to surprise car issues, I don't really have the money for that now (next year for sure though!!), so I was thinking of maybe doing character Q&As to celebrate? I've also seen some authors do raffles, but I'm not entirely sure what I would raffle off? Maybe personalized short stories with readers MCs if there's interest in that? I'm not sure yet, but I have a month to figure it out lol

But also thank you to everyone who has followed along!! It's been a really fun time both writing BA and on the blog. I know I say this a lot, but I'm really glad this is such a chill place. It's nice for me the author obviously, but it's also nice because I always want the spaces I have to feel like safe places for others as well so! Thanks again!

Lastly, I normally would end on a little snippet or preview but since most of what I wrote was just the two different openings, I feel like I have nothing fun to tease (or maybe I'm too picky about snippets idk). Hopefully Zoe's bday post tomorrow makes up for it, and I'll post some snippets later in the month instead!

Thanks for reading!

[bethanydelleman]

do you have any book recommendations beyond classic lit + Jane Austen? Love your blog by the way!

Thanks! I read/have read a ton of books. My favourite genre as a child was fantasy, but I read almost everything except true crime*, thrillers, murder mysteries, self-help, and biography. But I do sometimes read those, my favourite thriller is Sometimes I Lie by Alice Feeney. I'm going to start with children's books because honestly, I find so much imagination in that genre.

Children's/YA Books: Gail Carson Levine, specifically The Princess Tales 1 & 2, and Ella Enchanted, among others Jean Little/Kit Pearson - these authors have the same vibe to me. Willow and Twig is a favourite from the first one, The Guests of War trilogy and Awake and Dreaming from the other. They both write coming of age novels for girls, both Canadian. Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children by Ransom Riggs - I loved the whole trilogy (haven't watched the movie). The story being based around real antique trick photos is my favourite part The Echorium Sequence by Katherine Roberts - a trilogy of books about magical singers with blue hair and their interactions with half-human magical creatures Margaret Peterson Haddix, specifically Running Out of Time, the Shadow Children series, and Double Identity. Margaret Buffie, who writes stories about teenage girls and ghosts. Also Canadian, which I guess isn't that surprising. The Hunger Games series by Suzanne Collins. Re-read it last summer and it's as good as I remembered. Roald Dahl, I really loved Matilda as a child, it's been fun to read some of these novels with my kids. Sideways Stories from Wayside School by Louis Sachar - and it's sequels. Amazingly quirky and funny stories about a class of students in a weird school

Fantasy: Mercedes Lackey, specifically the Five Hundred Kingdoms series and The Obsidian universe. I also loved the Elvenbane series, but due to the death of Andre Norton it may never be finished. I would advise caution if sexual assault is triggering for you, the ones I like are mostly free of it but that can come up in her other works. Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien - obviously. Also loved The Hobbit, have not read further The Broken Earth trilogy by N.K. Jemisin - the book opens with the triggering of an apocalypse. The world contains people who can control earthquakes A Baroque Fable by Chelsea Quinn Yarbro - this book is so hilarious but I don't know if anyone has heard about it Once Upon a Winter's Night by Dennis L. McKiernan - and it's sequels. This is a romance retold fairy tale series

Science Fiction: Michael Crichton - who spans a bunch of genres but I'll put him here. I've read everything he's written and I recommend most of it. State of Fear has not aged well. His books are very fast-paced and Timeline has one of the best enemies to lovers. Orson Scott Card - I am aware, but Ender's Game is a masterpiece. He also has this single novel called Magic Street that is a sequel to A Midsummer Night's Dream. I also loved Memories of Earth but it's been a while since I read it. I, Robot by Issac Asimov - short stories about artificial intelligence and how it might go weird

Graphic novels: Astro City by Kurt Busiek - superhero, but more focused on how living in that world would affect normal people Y: The Last Man by Brian K. Vaughan and Pia Guerra - every male on earth dies, except for one, and his monkey Fables by Bill Willlingham - after being attacked by an army of wooden soldiers, fairy tale characters and creatures seek refuge in a non-magical world (ours) Nimona by ND Stevenson - a villain gains a shape-shifting sidekick, but she is not what she seems Scurry by Mac Smith - post-apocalyptic earth, the main characters are all surviving mice. Best artwork I've ever seen in a graphic novel American Vampire by Scott Snyder- vampires have different traits depending on their home country, this is about the new, American species. Asterix and Obelix by René Goscinny and Albert Uderzo - a small group of powerful Gauls defend themselves against the Romans using a magical potion

Non Fiction: Stephan Pinker, I've read both of his trilogies on language and the brain. Trying to get through his huge book about violence The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat by Oliver Sacks - writen by a neurologist, fascinating book Doing Harm: The Truth About How Bad Medicine and Lazy Science Leave Women Dismissed, Misdiagnosed, and Sick by Maya Dusenbery - what it says on the tin

Toddler/Young Child Books: The Monster at the End of This Book by Jon Stone - I give you a 100% guarantee that if you read this book aloud, the kids will be fascinated. It is literally always a hit Robert Munsch - most of his books are amazing, but if you don't want to cry, DO NOT read the backstory of Love You Forever. The Paper Bag Princess was one of my favourites as a child. Little Critter - only the older ones, the new ones are religious for some reason. Just for You and I Was So Mad were favourites for my kids. Early lesson in unreliable narrators. Phoebe Gilman - Something From Nothing, the Jillian Jiggs series, The Balloon Tree... so many good ones! Really good illustrations too Little Pea by Amy Krouse Rosenthal - a book about a pea who hates eating candy. This book is fun to read and my kids loved it (I have the box set) The Book with No Pictures by B.J. Novak - kids love when adults have to do weird things I Want My Hat Back by Jon Klassen - perfect opportunity to do a lot of funny voices The Mitten by Jan Brett - a whole bunch of animals squeeze into a mitten. That's the whole thing. It's great. The Very Cranky Bear by Nick Bland - and the rest of the series. These are fun to read because they rhyme. Jonathan Stutzman - my kids LOVE Tiny T. Rex and the Llama series. We haven't read the others An Elephant & Piggie by Mo Willems - we have this entire series, they are a delight. An elephant and pig are very silly friends. Good drawings Dr. Seuss - be careful with him though, his books are quite long and can be hard to read, so I recommend waiting until your kids are a bit older. But The Lorax slaps and my personal favourite as a kid was The 500 Hats of Bartholomew Cubbins

Other: Still Alice by Lisa Genova - or any of her books really. She is a neuroscientist and her books are really interesting explorations of different disorders. Book is better than the movie Warm Bodies by Issac Marion - zombie Romeo and Juliet Sophie's World by Jostein Gaarder - a novel that is also an intro to philosophy course Calvin and Hobbes - I own all of them, so excited for when my kids can understand them. I also love The Far Side, Zits, and the earlier Dilbert comics The Women in Black by Madeleine St. John - this book is absolutely charming. I saw the Netflix movie and then bought it right away.

*I avoid true crime because I have heard that the genre causes harassment to victim's families

General Note: I am aware that some of these authors are now considered controversial, some for more serious reasons than others. Sometimes flawed people make really good art. I mean, flawed people make all art because nobody on earth is perfect.

[one-flower-one-sword]

alright, I'm going to start a new post because I'd really like to continue this discussion but my post about the contrasts between Jun Wu and Hua Cheng that started it all has been getting too long to keep adding to it. me and @illuminatedferret were discussing whether or not Jun Wu knows Hua Cheng and Wuming are the same person. I'm also going to tag @csilla-nocturine because you had also commented with similar points but I forgot to tag you yesterday, I'm sorry T_T. this was my response to both of your very interesting points on my last reblog on the original post, which I've copied over to this post:

First of, I think Hua Cheng being right there ready to voice his own feelings on the matter wouldn’t take away from Jun Wu's satisfaction in reminding Xie Lian of what he almost did while at his lowest - and what happened to Wuming as a consequence of that. In fact, Hua Cheng revealing then and there that he is Wuming might have played right into that - regardless of Hua Cheng stating that it's an honor for him to die for Xie Lian and that he never blamed him and so on - Xie Lian would still feel like he's caused his beloved's second death. like you said though, interpreting that scene precisely is difficult!

the second thing is that if Jun Wu has no idea who Hua Cheng is and thinks he and Xie Lian have basically just met, it doesn't really make sense to me that he'd immediately and repeatedly try to separate them, the specific ways he goes about doing that, and that he'd call Hua Cheng "a very faithful believer" of Xie Lian's, as he'd have no evidence that Hua Cheng sees Xie Lian as his god and worships him as he knows Wuming did:

"Do you know who that ghost was?" White No-Face asked.

"A... A soul of someone who died on the battlefield?" Xie Lian tried.

"Yes," White-No Face replied. "But he was also your very last believer in this world. And now, he's no more. [...] Oh yes, that's right. This wasn't the first time you've met him," White No-Face continued. [...] "That ghost had been following you for a while. At first, I thought he was simply deeply resentful, so I caught and interrogated him; his answers were quite interesting. The Zhongyuan Festival. A night of lanterns. A wandering ghost fire. Do you remember? [...] In life, he was a soldier under your command," White No-Face lazily hinted. "In death, his soul followed you, turned into a wrath ghost because you were pierced by a hundred swords. And now, his soul has been obliterated because you unleashed the plague of Human Face Disease."

Xie Lian seemed to vaguely recall something, but he hadn't even seen his believer's face, he didn't even know his name - what could he recall?

TGCF Volume 6, page 339

then @illuminatedferret your response to this was:

Those are some good points! I could definitely attribute the kinda weird feeling of the dialogue to Jun Wu being increasingly unbalanced and desperate, rather than him not knowing about Wuming. The 'faithful believer' bit, I just figured he saw Hua Cheng as a threat to his plans for Xie Lian. You're right that his immediate actions to separate them make more sense if he already knows their history together. But, by this point(the initial dialogue from Book 5, I mean), he has explicitly seen the Cave of Ten Thousand Gods, so no matter what he definitely knows Hua Cheng is a believer of Xie Lian.

First of, I want to thank you both for being so interested in my original post and taking the time to write down and share your arguments! like I said in my initial response, I can see both your lines of reasoning as well :) for me though, there's too many scenes throughout the whole novel that either hint at Jun Wu knowing or that don't make sense to me if he doesn't. Like the Cave of Ten Thousand Gods... isn't that actually more evidence that he knows Hua Cheng is Wuming? Because from the above quote I included, Jun Wu knows exactly where Wuming had met Xie Lian before, which are also things Hua Cheng depicted in the murals in the cave. Now, the murals were covered by butterfly silk, but iirc it's not clear if they always were or if Hua Cheng just ordered the silk to cover them once Xie Lian, Mu Qing, and Feng Xin started to investigate the cave. in any case, they tear it down. plus, in addition to the murals, the statues depict Xie Lian in situations that would also match what Jun Wu "interrogated" out of Wuming. Even if we assume (which personally I don't) that Jun Wu didn't know before this point, I can't imagine him seeing all of that and not realizing that Hua Cheng is Wuming, not with everything he already knew about the latter.

also... the irony of Jun Wu knowing all this but not Xie Lian. and not just that, from the fact that Xie Lian wasn't aware of any of this until he lands in the caves, Jun Wu also knows that Hua Cheng has not told Xie Lian any of this, even with how much time they've been spending together, because Hua Cheng either doesn't want or doesn't dare to tell him - the latter being correct, as we know:

"San Lang, what kind of person is your special someone? Why haven't you won them over yet?"

[...] "It's alright if gege finds it funny," Hua Cheng replied. "But, truth is, I'm afraid. [...] That person saw me at my worst." (Vol 4, page 181).

also, from certain murals and/or statues that are implied or outright stated to depict things of a more sexual nature, he would know that Hua Cheng not only worships but desires Xie Lian - information he then tries to use to, again, drive a wedge between them and provoke Hua Cheng into hurting Xie Lian, like when he disguises himself as Mu Qing and Feng Xin:

"Hua Cheng! What do you think you're doing to his Highness?! You're disgusting! [...] Keep your filthy hands off him. Does the ugly toad want a taste of swan meat?" Mu Qing sneered. "Never mind dreaming of it for eight hundred years - you can hope for a thousand more, but don't even think of touching a single one of His Highness's fingers!"

Xie Lian's heart dropped. But while the comments annoyed him, he could sense that something was amiss.

What was wrong with those two? [...] It seemed that they were purposefully trying to provoke Hua Cheng. But there was no reason for that; they knew they couldn't beat him, so what did they want? Moreover, their tone subtly pointed the spear in Xie Lian's direction. It was like they wanted to stir up confusion - as though they wanted Hua Cheng to do something to Xie Lian in a fit of anger.

TGCF Volume 6, page 72

Hua Cheng has been dreaming about being with Xie Lian for eight hundred years - so this barb feels way too pointed and knowledgeable for Jun Wu to just randomly be accusing him of this, especially with this exact number.

This has gotten quite long again, so I'm gonna cut myself off here (I could talk about this topic for hours as you can surely tell by now, I think it's super fascinating). feel free to reply to this post/reblog with a response, but I also completely get if you're not as into this discussion and want to be done with it by now, no hard feelings! also, if we have to agree to disagree after all, that's also fine, and I'll thank you both again for your interest :)

okay one last thing I swear - since this was all spawned by comparing and contrasting Jun Wu and Hua Cheng, I also just realized how poetic it is that to Jun Wu, Mount Tonglu is where he releases all his hate, whereas Hua Cheng literally carved out a place there where he pours out all his love. damn do I love this novel