#what about the shitty writing what about the horrible representation what about the romanticization of abuse

[urjover]

hold on

i hate sj maas

i hate sj maas

i hate sj maas

i hate sj maas

i hate sj maas

i hate sj maas

i hate sj maas

i hate sj maas

thanks

[persepholline]

I've read that article about the romanticization of the Darkling and while I absolutely understand people who are pissed off/sad and I agree that it's shitty, I find LB's attitude towards Darkles stans very funny in a "girl what are you doing" sort of way because it's so petty like I've never heard of a bestselling author writing a portion of their fans into their books as a crazy cult before, it clearly hit a nerve

I'm new to the fandom but the feeling I get is she wrote something problematic ten years ago and became very embarrassed about it afterwards so she turned on the fans that liked it as a way to absolve herself. Especially since fandoms in general have become a lot more focused on discussion of what constitutes healthy/acceptable relationships to write about. And in a way I get it I had a huge Twilight phase in high school and afterwards I was super embarassed about it because of how problematic and cringe it was. But now with distance and more maturity I'm able to both still see why it was problematic and also why I was drawn to it (mostly the very unhinged representation of female desire) and like...it's really not the end of the world and no it never made me believe that breaking into somebody's room at night to watch them sleep was actually ok in real life lmao. This feels so obvious to me but apparently it needs to be said.

(More under the break this is turning into an essay, I've been thinking of this a lot recently)

And of course it's good to have these discussions about how historically romance tropes have echoed social dynamics of men's shitty behavior being romanticized and excused. But these days they often are so simplistic and focused on chasing clout that they become this weird new puritanism and moral panic about oh now women are reading novels it's going to make them hysterical or something

So you have these weird assumptions that you can't like a character and also be critical of their actions, or enjoy certain parts of a character and not others, or wish they were written differently and like them more for their potential (which I'm sure stings a bit for an author lol) - it assumes that if you like a character it means you would approve of their actions in real life, or that people just stupidly reproduce whatever they see on TV. That tendency to treat fictional characters like real people is the thing that actually worries me, to be honest, because it indicates a lack of distance and critical capacities regarding how stories are used and received. But people - fans and authors - are so scared of being called out as problematic and harassed for it that they're going to shy away from any nuance.

And yeah I think that it's good that standards of what constitutes an ideal relationship are evolving and becoming more feminist and communicative and all that and we definitely need more of that. But not all fiction has to be aspirational! Sometimes you just want to read about fucked up shit, because it's cathartic or fascinating, even healing at times because with fiction you are absolutely in control and can choose when to close the book. Toxic relationships in fiction can have an appeal specifically because they go to extremes of feeling that we don't want to go to in reality, in exactly the same way as horror movies or very violent action movies - which I don't see a lot of people besides fundamentalist Christians argue that they turn you into violent psychopaths (and that feels very obviously sexist). And for women, who are often taught growing up that love is the purpose of life, the "saving someone with your ability to love" can be a power fantasy in the same way that being a buff superhero who saves the day with their capacity for incredible violence can be a power fantasy for men. Still doesn't mean those women are going to fall in love with actual murderers or that those men are going to start beating up people at night. And love is scary, and weird, and weirdly close to horror at times, with all the potential for loss of self and being vulnerable and overwhelming feelings and potential for being horribly hurt and it should be possible for stories to explore that without anybody screaming about how this is going to Corrupt the Youth or something

And I mean I get it LB wanted to write a cautionary tale for teenagers, but it just did not work for reasons a lot of people have already written about - the fact that the Darkling is the leader of an oppressed minority and is the only one with a real political agenda to end that oppression in the first trilogy, the fact that he helps Alina come into her own power while her endgame LI is someone she keeps herself small for, that she's shamed for wanting power after growing up without any, a generally very wonky conception of privilege, and a lot of other stuff with yucky regressive implications to the point where stanning the villain actually feels liberating and empowering which is a surefire sign that the narrative is broken (unless it's a villain focused story lmao). But of course that Fanside article makes almost no mention of the political dynamics, it's all about interpersonal stuff which is an annoying trend in YA, there are those massive events happening in the background but it's made all about the feelings of the hero(ine) ; war as a self-development quest (which is kind of gross). Helnik is kind of an example of this too - I like them, I think they're fun ! But Matthias spends a big part of the story wanting to brutally murder Nina and her kind, and he mostly changes his mind because he finds her hot. Like you don't feel there is some sort of big revelation that his entire moral system and political framework is completely rotten ; it's all better because of feelings now.

As a teenager that kind of sanctimonious bullshit would have annoyed the hell out of me ; I read those books in my early twenties and I found the ending so stupid I wouldn't have trusted any message or life lessons coming from them. And I liked reading/watching dark stuff as a teenager, as a way to deal with the very intense inner turmoil I was dealing with - and I turned out fine ! Meanwhile I've seen several times women in very shitty relationships being obsessed with positive energies and stories ; they were so terrified of their life not being perfectly wholesome they ended up being delusional about their own situations.

Like personally I think the Darkling is a compelling, interesting, alluring character and also a manipulative, murderous piece of shit and that Alina should get to punish him (like in a sexy way) - but he's also the end result of centuries of war, oppression and trauma and reducing that to "toxic wounded boy" feels kind of offensive ngl ESPECIALLY since the books don't offer any kind of systemic analysis or response to oppression beyond "the bad guy should die" and "now the king/queen is a good guy our problems are solved!!!!"

In Lives of the Saints, we see how Yuri is abused extremely badly and almost killed by his father, and so when his father dies when the Fold swallows Novokribirsk, he thinks the Starless Saint has saved him. Later in KoS/RoW he's turned into this fanatic who explains away all the Darkling's crimes. The other followers talk about how the Starless Saint will bring equality for all men. Then the Darkling comes back and actually thinks his followers are pathetic, which feels again like a very pointed message to his IRL stans. Which is absolutely hilarious to me. Like oh no, if he was real he would not like you and think you're pathetic ! Yeah ...but he's not. Real. Damn right he would not like the fics where Alina puts him on a leash. I'm still going to read them. What is he going to do about it, jump out of the page ? Jfjfjjdhfgfjfj

Anyway I think the intended message is "assholes will use noble political causes for their own gain and to manipulate people" and "being abused/oppressed is not an excuse to behave badly." Which. Sure. But that's kind of like...a tired take, honestly ? A big number of villains nowadays are like this ; either they've been bullied as kids, or they're part of an oppressed group, or they have "good ideals but too extreme". This is not surprising because a lot of mainstream heroic narratives present clinging to the status quo as Good and change as chaotic and dangerous. And like sure in real life people often do bad shit because they're wounded and in danger. But if you want to do a story like that, you have to do it with nuance, talk about cycles of violence, about how society creates vulnerable people to be exploited, about how privilege gives you more choices and the luxury of morals, etc. The Grishaverse does not have this level of nuance (maybe in SoC a little bit but definitely not in TGT). So it kind of comes off as "trauma makes you evil" and "egalitarianism is dangerous" and "if you're abused/oppressed you're not allowed to fight back". And ignores the fact that historically, evil generally comes from unchecked privilege.

I guess my point is that there are many things I like about LB's writing, she knows how to create these really exciting character dynamics, and the world she has created is fascinating. But these stories are not a great starting point for imparting moral lessons. And her best characters tend to be, at least in canon, the morally grey ones. I hope one day she'll be at peace with the fact that she wrote the Darkling the way she did and leave his fans alone but in the meantime I'm just not going to take this whole thing seriously I'm sorry

[lichen-punk]

TRIGGER WARNING for extreme lesbophobia, mentions of coercion & r*pe, mentions of pedophilia, mentions of (psychological) self harm, mentions of sex, mentions of biphobia

If you can’t read through any of those: PLEASE DO NOT READ OR SUPPORT THE BOOK ODD ONE OUT BY NIC STONE

note: i haven’t read this book and i’m making no claims that i have. my very dear friend did, and they have asked me to repost the below here to spread the word abt this shitty ass book

“I’m posting this as a warning to other lesbians so none of you have to go through what I did read this book, & to allies to lesbians to not support such a lesbophobic book, as well as to anyone who would be negatively affected by any of the content I warned about. Spoiler warning.. But I VERY highly recommend STAYING AWAY from this book, and recommend you take my word for it if you don’t want to/can’t read about any of the things I listed.

This book was a train wreck. I wanted to like it; a love story between three teens of color, including two LGBT+ characters, a lesbian and a bi girl sounded like great representation. I was wrong. I’d like to note that obviously it is not my place as a white person to comment on how the representation of poc in the book was handled, and that I can’t understand the experiences of LGBT poc. However these elements are harmful outside of that & I can speak as a lesbian to that portion of the book, and all lesbians, including lesbians of color, deserve much better representation than this incredibly harmful book provided.

The whole storyline about the lesbian character is that she likes girls and that the straight guy who is in love with her has to accept that she’ll never be with him. The book starts out from the straight guy’s pov and there is an uncomfortable amount of him thinking about the lesbian character’s body and how sexy she is. I hoped, and it seemed like, the book was heading in the direction of the straight guy accepting that she wouldn’t be with him and that her love for girls was valid. However, towards the end of the book, the bi girl (who the lesbian is in love with) tells the lesbian that she is in love with their straight guy friend. Which would be fine individually except for the fact that the lesbian responds by, for whatever horrible reason, asking the straight guy to have sex with her—which she enjoys and says she was more turned on by than girls had ever made her feel, and I guess is “converted” into not being a lesbian anymore. I had to stop reading after that because I couldn’t stomach any more of that. Obviously in real life some bi women start off thinking they’re lesbians and then realize they’re bi, and that is of course valid. But writing a book where one character’s storyline centers around her being a lesbian and then making her “converted” by having sex with a guy is inexcusably lesbophobic. As I didn’t read any more it’s possible that the character afterwards realizes that she actually is a lesbian like she thought, but that would mean that she engaged in what was essentially glamorized, romanticized psychological self-harm.

There are real lesbians who self harm by forcing themselves to have sex with men and it is not the place of an author who is not a lesbian to tell that story (the author has a husband). Having this in a storyline is going to make lesbians feel ashamed of themselves and upset (it already made me incredibly upset) and has a very strong potential to make straight boys/men think that pursuing lesbians is fine because this book implies lesbians will probably eventually “cave in” and not be lesbian anymore.

The extreme lesbophobia also was only one highly immoral and concerning part to the book—there are also biphobic comments from characters that go unchecked, there are age gaps between TWO sets of adult/minor characters who are attracted to & physical with one another, and I haven’t read this far but I know from reading other reviews that there is a scene involving coercion & r*pe that I believe is not handled well. LGBT teens, teens of color, and especially teens who are both deserve MUCH better & I was incredibly hurt and disappointed while reading this book.

On a much more positive note, here are some books featuring lesbian characters, including lesbian characters of color, that I felt were well done & did not contain the incredibly harmful rhetoric Odd One Out did:

Tell Me Again How A Crush Should Feel by Sara Farizan (trigger warning for lesbophobia from characters in the book, which is condemned)

It’s Not Like It’s A Secret by Misa Sugiara

The Summer of Jordi Perez by Amy Spalding

Ash by Malinda Lo”

[entermates]

sighs ok ill answer this under the cut and separately but for future reference please use “vr” or “vr///ains” for ask memes so my shit doesn’t pop up in the tags. ty

haven’t heard of it | absolutely never watching | might watch | currently watching | dropped | hated it | meh | a positive okay | liked it | liked it a lot! | loved it | a favorite

don’t watch period | drop if not interested within 2-3 episodes | give it a go, could be your thing | 5 star recommendation

fav characters: ema i guess but that’ll probably change once yoshida gives ema the vr tm annoying edgy backstory (and i also can’t stand anyone else)

least fav characters: yusaku, go, ryoken, light, windy, earth, bohman, spectre, blood shepard, god i hate literally everyone in this show

fav relationship: yusaku & homura’s friendship is ok ig

fav moment: ryoken’s dad dying because he fucking deserved that shit don’t tell me he didn’t don’t TELL me that man DESERVED ANY FORM OF REDEMPTION

headcanons/theories: miyu aint the lost girl she’s just there to fuel the “aoi struggles to make friends” storyline. probably gonna be some girl aoi was friends with and somehow aoi struggled to maintain the friendship im calling this shit rn

unpopular opinion(s): i. i have so many literally any opinion i have on this show is unpopular but here we go:

data////storm is bad and it romanticizes mental illness and nearly all the fan content does this too. please stop. please fucking stop romanticizing possession, ptsd, and any other mental illness with these two it isn’t healthy, it’s gross, and it’s really shitty. (note: not all. nearly all from my experience) below is a tweet from my boyfriend that summarizes up my point pretty well

ryoken ain’t deep he’s 2d as fuck and horribly written and also he’s ugly as shit irl

aoi’s written horribly too she hasn’t developed at all and if she’s really the lost girl then her bad writing shows. it shows they shoehorned this shit in at the last minute when there were plenty of other opportunities to foreshadow it. (if u say that 1 frame from ep 19 ill scream bc that’s not foreshadowing at all)

ptsd and other mental illnesses are handled horribly in this show. vr is NOT a positive example of ptsd and other mental illnesses at all so please stop looking up to it as something it clearly isn’t

akira’s the only consistent character in vr. literally no one else is consistent in their motivations or goals (maybe homura but i honestly stopped watching at some point)

you don’t need to give every single character an edgy backstory. it’s not heartbreaking, it’s not emotional, and it’s not good representation. it’s annoying and honest to god it’s a fucking joke at this point. vr is literally a shitting contest to see who has the edgiest backstory. from what i’ve heard go’s entire character motivation is to beat playmaker  and get the power playmaker has and akira was just “yeah its his fuckin trauma lol” and go was just “gimme that” (i only saw screenshots but you get the point)

there is no reason for every single character in this show to have some sort of angsty backstory. it should be limited to the six kids and their relatives (like kusanagi or akira if aoi’s the lost child). blood shepard doesn’t need an angsty backstory. go doesn’t need one. ema doesn’t need one. haru and bohman don’t need one. RYOKEN DOESN’T FUCKING NEED ONE it’s also shit anyways

none of these characters are even real characters??? they’re just models drawn on a sheet and they’re given voices to participate in whatever duel of the week they need to. go’s the worst victim of this but it carries over to literally anyone with a duel disk. this is why we get our “main girl” vanishing for like 20 fucking episodes without a word.

the ignis are the only interesting concept in this show and yet the show REFUSES to do anything with them. the cyberse world is boring, the war between the ignis is boring because there’s no motivation outside of “welp i guess i hate humans.” why didn’t the ignis create their own sub species or kids or their own society? it gives em something to fight for and some motivation outside of hating humans for the sake of hating humans.

this show doesn’t know how to use it’s budget. most of the experienced vas are voicing characters that barely appear (vyra, aqua, etc)

how’d you find it: i like ygo so. i just heard about it.

random thoughts: stop saying it’s the darkest ygo when it isn’t, stop bashing arc v in ur vr positvity posts im sick and fucking tired of it.

i’m also sick and tired of every flaw in this show being excused because it’s literally a pandering shit show (no ryoken and yusaku aren’t good representation they’e fucking bait) yet arc v isn’t allowed a single fucking slip up. i’m so fucking tired.

[imperatorium]

The thing I think I want to most articulate, in writing, about the new Beauty & The Beast, besides how at least ninety percent of it was horrible and I can’t believe Disney did this to me, is how I - in theory, at least, since the follow-through wasn’t there at all - am coming to vastly prefer this version’s attempted characterization of Adam. Well, no, actually, what I prefer best is this movie’s accidental characterization of Gaston as a slightly conceited and maybe a little dumb, but otherwise very decent human being with an annoying, passive-aggressive White Gay friend following him around, being a Nice Guy about everything.  An otherwise decent person who Belle had no inherent reason to dislike other than the fact that it’s valid that she just...did not like him (even though they definitely still tried to have her tell us that he was a jerk).  We all know how much I love when stories are trying to tell you one thing but showing you something incredibly different. (What I prefer least is how many assholes probably tried to pat themselves on the back and be like, “Representation!” by having LeFou suddenly become a “good” guy for no discernible reason, then pairing him up with some other noncharacter gay for point-two seconds in a final shot.) As Old As Time is still forever going to be my favourite version of Beauty & The Beast, no matter what else happens, I think, but.  There’s something Very Good, I think, about Adam having been cursed as a young adult (and giving a logical explanation for it) instead of as a literal child.  I know, weird, right?  When all I’ve done, until now, is yell about how he WAS A BABY, PLEASE UNDERSTAND AND FORGIVE, etc.  But, hear me out. What I think was important to me, at least, about him being a literal child when he was cursed is that...it absolves him of his being shitty.  It gives him a reason to have been shitty, if he’s an arrested, spoiled child who grew up as a giant monster without anyone to really challenge him or take care of him the way they should have.  That’s always how I’ve looked at it, I’ve never even taken into consideration the idea of someone who is, otherwise, a functional adult, the way Dan played it. As an adult, myself, now, and as someone who has been in a relationship with a “Beast” who was (and still is) a damaged, underdeveloped person because of terrible things mostly out of his control that happened to him as a child, I don’t know if there’s anything left to romanticize about putting Belle in such a situation.  Obviously, there’s only so much the staff could do/has done for Adam, since he was raised to see them as servants and they never challenged this too much, considering that they’ve spent the majority of this time as small, breakable appliances with limited movement, so it falls on Belle to be the one person with any kind of real influence.  It becomes her responsibility, since the curse refers to True Romantic Love (for whatever reason you would put that on an eleven year old), to raise her own boyfriend.  It’s his curse, he was the one who allegedly did not have enough love in his heart, but Belle is the one who has to do all the work.  That’s not, stepping back to look at it, a narrative I like at all. (Which is why I like As Old As Time because that’s another thing they address as a little ridiculous, but that’s a digression.) If the whole point was supposed to be about giving Belle her great adventure, something more than what her little town had to offer, then, really, the story fails her completely.  She has a shitty man-child immediately available to her, who already “likes” her in whatever twisted way he thinks that is, in Gaston.  He’s gross, he’s illiterate, he’s rude, he’s dangerous, etc.: all the same things that, in the original Disney canon, Adam also is when Belle first meets him, all the same things Adam has been for presumably as long as Gaston has.  Putting aside the new movie’s weird treatment of him, that argues for just as much of a legitimate potential redemption story for someone we’re supposed to see as the obvious villain.  That says, I think, that if the right person came along for him, too, he could just as easily also “become human”. ...That actually feels like half a digression on what my actual point is, too. Literally none of this really ever started to occur to me, at all, until he takes her to the library and tells her of course he knows Shakespeare, he’s read the majority of the library books, he is educated because, as an adult from the royal family, why wouldn’t he have been?  Just that one snippet, I feel like, turned my whole world upside down.   In my real life, I did the Teaching Beast To Be A Functioning Human routine with Terrance.  We both fucking acknowledged, all the time, that we were Belle and Beast.  I did everything I could have, at the time, to help him be less unhappy, to replace the bad stuff that had happened to him with good stuff that was happening to him in the present and he still chose to stay a Beast, a stupid child exclusively defined by all the excuses he has to be The (awful) Way He Is.  It’s not cute, it’s not even sad anymore.  Well.  It is sad, it’s just not something I feel sad about, now, because at some point, it stopped being a terrible thing that happened to him that he reacted to in a way that gave way to certain behaviours and revealed itself to just be like...an excuse to be an antisocial dick to literally everyone he knows.   I GENUINELY THOUGHT THIS SHIT WAS ROMANTIC FOR SO MANY YEARS.  UGH. So, really, I feel that much more cheated by this stupid movie that I waited on for years, because they presented to me the brand new, incredibly meaningful concept of Adam as Belle’s intellectual and, technically, socially evolved equal.  Someone who meets her where she is instead of having to be dragged/guided up to her level.  Finally, the logical conclusion to her faerie tale, based on what she says she wants in her “I want” song.   EXCEPT WITHOUT THE FOLLOW-THROUGH TO FULLY SUPPORT THE FANTASTIC IDEA BEING SUGGESTED. The script was so disjointed, there was never any real time given to appreciate the case, not to mention, like...the presumed need to recreate iconic moments from the cartoon, like the fact that Beast eats his soup like he’s a messy puppy instead of a person.  This happens after he reveals to her that he is an intelligent, otherwise (formerly) refined person, so why the fuck wouldn’t you at least do him the service of showing that he does this because his paws are a size that make using cutlery almost impossible.  TBH, showing him fucking struggling with things like that would have made a world of difference, too, to explain why he - someone who was such a Fancy Asshole as a human - was so pissed all the time. But that leads to my other huge complaint about both the storytelling and the lack of follow-through.  After the wolf attack, when everyone’s watching over him, Mrs. Potts tells Belle - in basically one line - that Adam’s mom died and his dad was the shitlord who, in turn, shitlorded it up and tried to make Adam just as much of a shitlord.  And, I was saying to Jack last night, I get that...it’s not like...in real life, Belle would have had the privilege of seeing clear examples of that and getting a vision of that backstory (although with that contrived book magic, who even fucking knows), so she would just have to rely on someone saying to her, “Oh, he’s nice, it’s just that his dad tried to fuck him up,” but.  We, the audience, are not Belle.  (I mean.  I’m Belle, but you know what I mean.)  We’re watching a movie and one of the first fucking rules of any storytelling is SHOW DON’T TELL.  Show us at least the effects of his dad’s influence or his struggle against it or SOMETHING. Because that is a great aspect to this version of the character, too, having a terrible parent who was there, the whole time, to inform his upbringing.  I could write a whole story about how much better it could have been to be made to understand that, maybe the King spent years treating Adam like he was a monster already and that becoming a Fancy Asshole was his coping mechanism and then here comes an enchantress who doesn’t see the full picture of this and gets pissed off and not just punishes something she saw as an injustice but inadvertently brings Adam’s biggest fear to life. In the same way we were like, “...Yeah, based on how they’ve been treating him, Gaston’s reaction to this is a bit over the top, but not entirely unfair,” while watching the movie, you would be able to see what informed Adam becoming the reclusive, angry monster we first meet without making it about how...he literally doesn’t know how to be anything else.  He would know how to be Better, but in part, not be able to, and in other part, having a not unfair reaction to all of it. And I think that’s another thing I like more, as (someone who at least feels like) an adult: understanding that excuses don’t need to be made for him.  He can be shitty.  What’s important for the character development, I think, is that he makes a decision to change.  He should have that authority, since the whole curse happened to him because he did something wrong.  Making excuses for him, painting him as a child who didn’t know any better takes away any lesson learned.  It does what I did for years, with Terrance: denies problematic behaviour and desperately clings to an excuse so that he doesn’t have to be the bad guy, simply because you (I) don’t want him to be.  Especially if Belle becomes the one responsible for making him and keeping him human, that says to me that she’s going to spend a lot of time in their life, together, making apologies for him when he does something awful.  It’s not his fault, he didn’t mean it, etc.  And that’s when you can start calling it a faerie tale about Stockholm Syndrome. (It occurs to me that Adam owning being shitty, even if he was made so by abuse and influence or whatever, but ultimately still being good or at least cute is the same logical conclusion we draw about my husband, Prince Hans Vestergaard of the Southern Isles.) (It’s more true of Hans, but really, it’s not untrue of Eugene, either.) (I LIKE SHITTY DISNEY PRINCES OK.) Anyway, the storytelling is wretched, the CGI animation is horrific on everyone, I’m disappointed that Emma didn’t really bring anything to the table, I still don’t know why they made Ewan look so dumb or why they wanted him to do a Mexican accent, Luke Evans as Gaston Did Nothing Wrong 2k17, I’m half-sold on Dan in his bad wig as Adam (over my Dothraki boyf, even though I still think that’s the best) because he really did look literally exactly like the art and played the part in a way that I (obviously) really enjoyed, and there is nothing uglier on this planet than that version of the gold dress, the end.