#which is not to say they're not good writers

[gremlinlotusannonhere]

(ooc: YOU 🫵 YOU TALENTED BEING - I read through that one post "hunting while being hunted pov" AND DUDE - HOW COME YOU DIDN'T SAY YOU WERE AN AMAZING WRITER???

I was wondering if you'd like a continuation to of that? I feel like I've been overbearing these past days, sooo I just want to make sure you're good. If you need a break 100% oki 👍 just let me know))

...

(meanwhile back at the cave. Thorn was correct about the fact their "friend". The rambling mess, pacing back and forth worriedly to the little creature)

Nonononono, this can't be happening!

What if they left? What if they forgot again?? Or worse they got hurt!? How could I be so careless?? Falling asleep and just to wake up and find them gone! It's been how long? An hour?? Why aren't they home yet?? Are they safe??

(as they're nervously fidgeting the purple pebble, tied to some spare vines and now built to a necklace during their anxious waiting)

(ooc: I didn't mention it because I didn't (and still don't) really plan on sharing my writings and made that during school, liked it and decided to post it. It was the first thing I've written on my own time in, like, three months and I was also testing a new writing style which both made me really proud of how it came out!)

*Thorn walks into the cave, visibly confused about something before they spot their friend and tackle them in a hug*

Friend! Hello!

[group-dynamic]

The Pitt Episode 9 Spoilers Okay, processing that scene with Santos and Langdon. At first, it felt SO good, but now I'm thinking about the writing and trying to figure out: what's the plan?

I find it hard to imagine that we're NOT meant to enjoy that scene. Santos has been pretty unlikable: cruel to the other interns even when they tell her to stop, manipulating them / using them for personal gain, being a loose canon, but the writers are also pulling out all the classic stops to make us sympathize with her, like:

highlighting her history of abuse

having her give Dr. Mohan credit for her save

And I, unfortunately, do think they're trying to make us like and understand her, not just continuing to create a fleshed out unlikeable character, because the abuse backstory and self-sacrifice are classic cheap tropes used to garner audiences sympathy for a character when they were accidentally made too unlikable.

I sincerely felt that Santos saying Mohan actually saved the patient was an eye-roll worthy attempt by the writers to paint her as secretly good and selfless. I even considered that maybe they were suggesting that she was "taking the fall" in a way that an abuse victim might to protect a sibling, but honestly, it still felt . . . selfish and manipulative. She's a professional. Her lying seemed to have no purpose other than creating further discord and unnecessary drama. I don't doubt her emotion (which was conveyed spectacularly by the actor), but I couldn't sympathize with her even when Langdon was way over the top. I mean, let's be fair, he didn't give her any credit or support her like he would Mel in the question and answer portion of the scene. If he only likes the "unproblematic interns" then Robbie's right, he's not a great teacher.

But I still couldn't feel sympathy toward Santos. So I watched again to sort out my feelings and caught that she specifically said, "Dr. Mohan made the save by choosing to treat her even before her labs came back" and suddenly her phrasing sounded like a test of Langdon. And by congratulating Dr. Mohan and yelling at Santos, he confirmed exactly what Santos thought: he just hates her. He doesn't like her as a person, and he treats her differently because of it. (Earned or not, true or not, that's what she saw in that moment). Santos had just suggested that Mohan was the one who made a decision without him and without lab results, and rather than getting yelled at the way she would have, Mohan got praise for it. Santos doesn't even actually need to prove that she would have been yelled at if Langdon thought it was her idea, because he yelled at her anyway.

Also, having Langdon as her enemy is interesting, because it doesn't seem like we're supposed to dislike him. He's poignantly great to Mel in that same episode, he's usually in the right, gets the job done well, etc. so his attacks on Santos feel jarring. I don't know how complexly the writer's are thinking about this, it's possible they're just fumbling the story line, but it's deeply interesting that they made sure Dr. Robbie called Langdon out because Robbie's the voice of the show, you know? He's the teacher. We're supposed to listen to him. (But honestly, Santos has been painted so negatively by the writers that we even find ourselves as an audience getting mad at him for defending her!)

NOW! Theories:

There's no grand plan, here. They want to be sure every character has flaws and positive qualities and it was just Langdon's turn to be wrong / over-stressed / spin out and Santos's turn to be somewhat vindicated.

Santos is being set up as the "boy who cried wolf," who even the audience won't believe over the conventionally attractive white boy when it turns out she's right about (the drugs or something, take your pick.)

Santos and Langdon are being set up as parallels in an "when I was her age, I was a maverick and people died, I'm trying to course correct my younger self" way

The audience's hatred of her is intended and moments like her yelling at the intubated potential abuser is not a poor attempt to paint her in a heroic light, but actually further evidence that Langdon is right about her: she's going to kill someone before the end of the shift or seriously hurts herself.

They're trying to flesh out Santos's mental and emotional landscape by demonstrating how a history of abuse impacts how she thinks and reacts to men like Langdon. This one's hard to accept without insulting both characters, honestly, but he really got out of control insulting her when he was yelling at her, and she put herself in a situation to be yelled at. Cycle of abuse / revictimizing, something something??

I am ready to be surprised by whatever direction they're intending to take this, but if they want the audience to start liking Santos they shot themselves in the foot with her characterization early on. Langdon's yelling at her was way over the top and undeserved in that moment, and he's definitely picking on her at this point, but. . .we grew impatient toward her at the same rate that he did, so the audience is going to be on his side even in inappropriate moments like this.

[the--highlanders]

Hii, I'm trying to think Jamie-related thoughts. And I guess I'm thinking about how he's often characterised by his limitations as a young 18th century man, but he travelled with the Doctor for so long. How much do you think he ever got used to technology?And what are some other things that he would've got used to in his travels or other time zones that he never thought he would?

oh I absolutely think he gets very used to technology!! he's probably never quite as fluent with really futuristic stuff as, say, zoe is, but I almost think he might take to it more easily than ben and polly do - because they're working with a 60s expectation of phones, computers, etc, whereas jamie has no expectations whatsoever. and also seems to be happy enough to press buttons until something works.

the writers' occasional insistence that he stays fairly oblivious to technology or things from other time periods, and so the implication that he's not very bright, is. a bit of canon I'm willing to handwave away honestly. it does him such an injustice. & it doesn't even hold up with other bits of canon! sure, the dominators write him off as having a 'simple brain' (which honestly feels more like it's because he's human than anything about him as an individual - they also complain he has only one heart. zoe might also have been dismissed as having a simple brain if she'd been in his place!), but they also say he shows signs of rapid learning.

we also see that he's very adaptable and good at figuring out /that/ things work, even if he doesn't know /how/ - for instance, he gets out of the krotons' machine by putting together what two and zoe must have done, even though he doesn't know the science behind it. he takes to the radio he's given in the invasion immediately, works the communications part of the rocket in the seeds of death, works the target training machine in tomb of the cybermen without anyone showing him how.

in the end I think he just winds up with a very patchwork knowledge depending on what he's been exposed to and what he's interested in. he doesn't know what a train is in evil of the daleks, but he can probably explain the engine of a specific spaceship to you because it was critical to some adventure they had last week. he likes recorded music and documentaries and things that make life easier.

in terms of other things he adapts to... jamie's interesting because he's very flexible and open but also still puts a lot of stock in his own culture and values. I think he'd be very open to different sorts of people and alien cultures and how they live, even if it confused him. again I think a lot of it sort of washes over him, and he carries that knowledge with him but otherwise nods along and just carries on being himself. but I also don't think anyone could travel for as long as he does and end up changed by it somehow!

food from different places and times is probably a big one - he may or may not like it, but he'll always give it a try, and the things he likes he probably winds up trying to cook for himself as well. (the food machine is something I don't think he ever adapts to, just on principle. maybe the tardis' milk detector was put there for him because he wanted the real deal.) again, music - it's such a big part of his life and identity and I think he'd be really interested in other people's music. he jams quite happily to whatever is playing on his radio in the invasion, and picks up the closest thing he can find to bagpipes in the wheel of ice. he probably winds up with a whole collection of different musical instruments he's picked up.

being able to read and write is probably something that takes him by surprise, once he's used to it - he would never have considered it a skill he's /missing/, just one he wouldn't expect to have or need, and I think it takes him a while to come around to actually wanting to learn. but once he does it obviously ends up being useful for him, but also I think he reads a lot in his spare time, just because he's a curious person. he still likes to get information by listening, hence the documentaries thing (he'd probably also like audiobooks even more than actual books!), but he'll quite happily read as well.

reading is probably the thing that comes most as a surprise to him, honestly! everything else I think he just sort of. takes in stride. it might be unexpected just because he never imagined it existing, but he'll give anything a shot.

[waxworkdaughter]

prev tags (mine) brought to you by reading too many fics where mulder must elaborately and ceremonially apologize for a situation that they both created before the big kiss or sex scene (scully's eternal guiltlessness in any conflict implied)

basically a big part of my issue with this is the way a lot of fanon works really really hard to 'girl power narrative' away the sexism and depictions of loss of bodily autonomy in female characters (though to be clear, depicting loss of bodily autonomy and medical rape in fiction is not automatically sexist, even when it happens to woman characters. It was CC's handling of it that was sexist). But you can't 'fix' a narrative full of trauma and madonna complexes and eugenics by stamping 'all good female characters need to be perfect, all good male characters should grovel and get pegged' over top of it. (to be clear again, fics about men getting pegged are sexy but they're not a political statement and being penetrated or not doesn't say anything about inherent moral character.) Fixing the narrative involves things like resettling the plot on 'eugenics are bad and won't save the world' like TXF started out with and then abandoned when the mytharc got all mysticized and focused on super powers and alien rapture. Things like allowing Scully to be flawed and complicated and to make plot-driving choices instead of her personality and fertility being plot-driven, as CC liked at the end.

Plus I also don't think that fixing the narrative or reparatively putting her on a pedestal and has to be a part of every fic. And a lot of writers in the fandom are great about that, there is such a huge variety of types of fic and what they focus on! but i definitely also run into many that feel like they're desperate to show the reader that they Know Better than to like and endorse either character as they are written, they Of Course know to flatten any respective flaws or conflict, to make up for it being a messy M/F ship.

Which is probably a side effect of the 'this book is afraid of me' trend in harassment riddled fandom and writing circles. It's just that this fandom, the longstanding core anyway, doesn't have antis and doesn't entertain moral puritans because we've been around for too long to put up with it. So if you like the characters from the show, it's okay to just. Write them doing stuff and being messy and being themselves.

yknow what, I'm just absolutely sick of how often i end up feeling like my x files opinions are wrong, stupid, sexist, indefensible, backward and unforgivably ~wooby apologist~ for not preferring gentol puppy malewife-himbo Mulder or believing that all of Mulder's frustration with Scully was "mean" and "bad behavior" and "totally unwarranted and unearned" instead of A) not being nearly as bad as people make out and B) a human and earned reaction to Scully's moody, uncommunicative game playing and sudden reversals of opinion for the last couple of years until they get to where they are in late s5/s6.

It's not like her writing is inconsistent enough to say that all of it is done 'for the convenience of the plot.' Yeah, they boxed themselves in with the 'have to make the characters take opposite sides of the skeptic and believer dynamic every situation' dynamic and yeah, that can be explained away as a plot function. But the part where Scully resists and protests and fends off and lashes off about every level of change in their relationship and her belief system, and expects Mulder not to push her too much, which is fair, that's a boundary. And then she suddenly decides "okay i believe this now" or "I want this now in our dynamic" with no or very little communication to Mulder and he's supposed to catch up instantly and not hesitate or be confused or have any questions or she reacts with hurt and betrayal and retreats again or lashes out in some way.

This is a pattern with her character, and maybe it was part of how they staved off the ship and the shippers, but it is in the text. Consistently. The thing about the X-files is that the mytharc rambles all over but until the last season and a half + the 2nd move & revival (through a lot of factors, many of them simply being time) the character behaviors and motifs and haphazard growth arcs do stay consistent. Throwing that out because people want a good guy (girl) and a bad guy (boy) seems like a waste of depth and nuance.

Scully is a very flawed, very complex and raw character, who is, beneath the surface level, noticeably more unbalanced than Mulder despite all his trauma, or at least she lacks the self-awareness of why she's acting irrationally when she does vs Mulder's 'fully aware but doing it anyway because he can't convince himself he can stop' situation. And to be honest that makes her fascinating, especially with the way none of it is done with a wink at the camera and a big pantomime of the tropes like there is with so many of the 'genius girlfailures' in shows today.

Yeah, Mulder is sarcastic and intelligent and stubborn and that's fine and he doesn't have to apologize for it before they can fuck. Yeah Scully is unhinged and impulsive even though she covers it really really well, and yeah she can be a little manipulative and unfair even while disdaining and trying to protect Mulder from other people who manipulated him on a much greater level.

Lets be frank here, Dana "other fathers" Scully would get bored of a man who wasn't a little mean to her sometimes, and wasn't smart enough to keep up with her, and Mulder wouldn't even notice a woman who didn't manipulate him just a little bit. That's fine, they're allowed to not be perfectly healthy and to have these compatible foibles.

[maythedreadwolftakeyou]

i have seen a lot of posts about lucanis & illario lately, that specifically call out that some of the things Lucanis says about him are kinda mean. usually in context of 'yes what illario did was fucked up but they BOTH went thru the fucked up training and lucanis says shit to him too' etc etc. and i'll be honest as someone who does have a contentious/estranged/very-low-contact sibling relationship. everything lucanis said came off as super mild to me and they should both be WAY nastier to each other actually. yes even when you include their dynamic in wigmaker job which was both more lighthearted And heartfelt. but like if you want realism they should be going from that to 1 minute later annoyed enough to break out the super cutting remarks dragging up the worst things the other has ever done/said, specifically becuause they know it will hurt the other most. then i would believe it more tbh.

[jq37]

Descendants: The Rise of Red is kind of a bizarre movie to talk about critically because, imo, it almost doesn't make sense to talk about it in the usual terms of good vs bad or enjoyable vs not enjoyable when the way more obvious tension is finished vs unfinished.

Because, more than any other movie I've ever seen, it does *not* read as a full movie. And I don't mean in a "this movie has a cliffhanger" kind of way. The Empire Strikes Back and Across the Spiderverse fit that description. They end on big dramatic cliffhangers that point to a resolution in the third installment.

But Rise of Red just sets all this stuff up and then...ends without concluding anything. It doesn't feel like the first movie in a trilogy (or duology). It feels like the first act of a two-act musical. It very specifically reminds me of the end of the first act of Into the Woods where all the main characters sing the song Ever After about how they all fixed their problems with magic and nothing bad will ever happen to them again and then the narrator ominously says "To be continued" before the curtain drops. But in Into the Woods you know there's a second act and this movie wasn't sold as the first act of a bigger story. Like sure, it has the, "You didn't think this was the end" tag at the end like all the other movies, but those movies were complete, self-contained stories even though they had sequels. This was NOT a full story. It's half of one story.

Like, if we're supposed to take this as a full story, there are so many bizarre choices:

Why did they make sure to mention that Cinderella and Charming fell in love at the ball at the top if it wasn't meant to set up Back to the Future style, "Oh no, I accidentally got my mom banned from the ball so she's not gonna fall in love with Dad and I won't be born" shenanigans?

Why did Maddox very pointedly have that bit about "you could lose your mom completely" if that was never going to come into play? Red never did anything to endanger Bridget or endanger her own birth so it doesn't make sense as a warning in that way.

Why was there all this focus on this Carrie on prom night moment for Bridget if we LITERALLY NEVER SAW CASTLECOMING? Why dance around this moment and talk about it all cloak and dagger with no specificity if they weren't building up to some big reveal that it wasn't as straightforward as it seemed? And like, they leaned in HARD with making Bridget the nicest, sweetest, cotton candy princess as a teen so I need WAY more than, "She got pranked by known bullies she's been enduring with a smile very handily up to this point" to buy that she went from that to "murderous dictator". And even if she did become murderous, I find it insanely hard to believe that she'd include her best and only friend on the list of people she wants to suffer unless there was a betrayal. I find it INSANE that there wasn't a falling out scene at any point in this movie with how thickly they were laying on the admiration and camaraderie.

(Note: And adult Cinderella def has guilty vibes re: the Queen at orientation. Which I know I'm not imagining because it's literally spelled out in the Jr Novelization!)

Before the time travel element of the movie started, I thought they were going for something like they go to the past and realize that Bridget was bullied not by the VKs but by the spoiled royals, and Ella ends up joining in the bullying once she gets with Charming, betraying Bridget and justifying her whole "Love Ain't It" philosophy. Or Ella ditching her at the last minute to be with Charming meaning she has to deal with the monster prank alone and it was the being alone rather than the prank itself that hurt her (though that is NOT a good enough reason to go all off with their heads on your subjects). The fact that, as far as we know right now, it literally was just a relatively mild and reversible prank that caused all of this is just, such flat storytelling, you know?

But! All of this makes way more sense if this is meant to be the first act of a single contained story. And I don't wanna be all "Pepe Silvia, secret good 4th episode of Sherlock" about this but I did see this picture:

Which seems to indicate that this was written as a Part One. Which, if so, idk why they wouldn't advertise it that way but whatever. The point is, if that's the case then it means that we're potentially in bad pacing territory rather than straight up bad storytelling territory. Because this isn't a bad place to be halfway through your story:

The heroes, warned that time travel is dangerous, have gone back in time to change the heart of a brutal tyrant before she can stage a coup. They seemingly succeed in their mission and when they come home, everything is great! But then, the side effects of time travel start to catch up with them. Chloe realizes that, in breaking the vase, she prevented her mother from going to the ball and falling in love with her dad (who was conspicuously absent from the final scene btw) which means she's starting to be forgotten and erased from the timeline. And Red realizes that though this new version of her mom is as sweet and kind as the teen she once met, she's a complete stranger to her (fulfilling the Hatter's warning that she could lose her mom completely). So they have to go back in time once more to make sure the Ella and Charming fall in love again, perhaps at the cost of whatever bad thing that happened to Bridget happening again and bringing back the original version of her future self. But, now with more context of how her mom became that way, Red can now talk to her mother and persuade her to give people another chance.

Boom, that gives us time to go back and hit everything we haven't yet hit. We can pay off the time travel tropes that were set up but not explored. We can go to Castlecoming which feels so obviously set up to be the centerpiece of this story (like, come on, Back to the Future literally does the school dance thing. This is Time Travel Storytelling 101). We can actually get info about what the prank was and why it affected Bridget so completely.

(Note: This is a side thing but it really strikes me as so crazy that Bridget would so SUCH a big 180 here. Like, I know the Queen of Hearts is a silly, goofy, campy villain, but she straight up murders people and there's no way to get around that if we're taking her out of the surreal story she comes from and putting her in a (comparatively) grounded story. If I wasn't doing a betrayal plot, I would make the twist that the spell that turned Bridget into a "monster" didn't just have a physical effect, it had a mental effect and it magically twisted her personality to be the way it is now. So they broke the physical half of the curse, but neglected the other half and it's been festering the whole time, turning her as evil as she was sweet. Because like, a simple physical transformation isn't that big of a deal to have such heavy security--Bridget made cupcakes with a transformative effect and that was totally fine. I'm not saying that that's what's gonna be the case. I just think it would be an explanation that makes sense for why she changed so crazy much that makes more sense than a simple prank or even a betrayal. Her mom wasn't even evil! How did she go from zero to murder without even an evil mom to push her onto the path? But I'm super digressing right now.)

(Note #2: OK, one last thing. The trap on the book presumably would have hit the VK's and trapped them in Merlin's office regardless of what Chloe and Red did, right? That's like, net zero influence on the timeline. I genuinely can't tell if that's a straight up plot hole or set up to be like, "Oh no. Actually when she said that she was turned into a monster in front of everyone it was meant in a less literal way." Like she was just made to look bad and that was the real thing that pushed her over the edge. Like idk. It really feels like the only thing they really did that would change the timeline was get Ella banned from the dance and presumably out of the way where she couldn't hurt Bridget. OK NOW I'm done.)

Anyway, my point is that this is not how I would have structured my movie and I think this was a super weird way to go into the second era of Descendants movies, but they can still tell a complete story if that's their plan. I'm genuinely really curious to see if this pans out to be a fairly competently told story that just happens to be split over two movies or a complete fumbling of the narrative bag because it could really be either at this point and it's fascinating to me.

[itischeese]

Should I (attempt to) go back to posting weekly with less polished works, or post less often but much more finalized works (ie actually edited)?

(please note that the piece I posted most recently was, in fact, edited.

Also, If I post polished works less often, I will inevitably post much less of what I write; only the stuff that can be made good.)

[peaceblank]

Man, it's so annoying how recently there has been several things that really emphasize just how much it takes for some people to accept a character is jewish.

Be it from heavily coded in the text with an added word of god, to literally shown or out right stated in the text. Somehow, people will still crawl out of the woodwork to say, "well that doesn't mean they're jewish".

Meanwhile, in almost every piece of media a character could do absolutely nothing in regards to any religion and everyone will immediately just assume they're some flavor of christian. It is treated as the default and not something that has to be revealed. You do not need to dig and sift through the characters entire existence to justify having them celebrate christmas, but god forbid you have the briefest hint of giving them some other religion. People will come out of nowhere asking you why you would do this, demanding you cite your sources for why you would dare sully this character like that.

[coolspacequips]

Have been reading this sci-fi romance and like UGH u ever really wish a book was just at least a little better??? There's stuff in this that's interesting but also a lot about it that's so... Juvenile and kinda undercooked lol...... But it's so hard finding good romance bc for a lot of romance readers this is enough, except even then not really since they prolly didn't fuck nasty enough in this book for the ppl that just need the merest pretense to read smut (which is fine if that's what u like there's just an oversaturation of this, esp when you can have a light plot/heavy smut story with slightly better writing and internal world building without having to explain and describe the 'boring' parts 😅)

[throughdarkeningskies]

when I was a teen and I read everything I could get my hands on, I had this rule in my head to seperate 'literary' fic from 'chick-lit'. and the rule was this: if they have sex and its bad its literary. if they have sex and they enjoy it its chick-lit.

alternate variations:

- if there are dark serious themes explored and everyone is dark and serious about it it's literary. if dark serious themes are explored but the characters crack jokes about it its chick-lit

- if a man writes it its literary and if a woman writes it its chick-lit

- if its written with the most dry boring-ass prose possible it's literary. if its written the way an actual person would talk its chick-lit

[aeide-thea]

[fic crit, amatonormativity (blogger's own) cw]

revisited a story that i remembered really enjoying, but have had difficulty digging up for a reread because, as it turns out, it's a good 200 pages deep in the relevant pairing tag, and—

turns out that i do still really dig it, and also that the other thing i remembered about it is equally still true, which is that it totally fails to really resolve the emotional side of things! like, it's a fic full of Plot and briefly- but vividly-drawn OCs, and people from the main characters' pasts who show up in ways that work for the story but are also random enough to lend verisimilitude, and we get to see the elements of the foil's day-to-day life—what keeps them busy and burnished when they're not off Adventuring with our protagonist—in generous, engaging detail, and all of that remains really satisfying and compelling to me; but it's billed as a fic ft. a pairing, and yet all we see of that is an established, undiscussed level of ambiguous intimacy that's lovely and warm but queerplatonic at absolute most, and doesn't get tied into any sort of bow by the end, even a friendly one.

and the thing is—there's absolutely nothing wrong with that! if it weren't for the pairing tag i probably wouldn't even find it unsatisfying: it'd just be lovely warm plotty genfic, and i'd enjoy the hell out of it! but i am, for better or for worse, amatonormative enough that when i see a story with a pairing tag, i do personally expect some combination of Romance Feelings and/or sex to appear on the page, unless the author's notes inform me the relationship is queerplatonic or similarly asterisked, and having that expectation go unmet feels like a disappointment even when the fic is on all other fronts the opposite of disappointing. which i'm fully ready to accept is my own failing, rather than the story's! but. idk. pondering and processing. :)

[corbinite]

I don’t want a fionna and cake series. Please hbo just let this show have a narratively satisfying end pleaaase. The ending of adventure time was so good and such a good sendoff and it only WORKS if it’s an actual ending, it only works if we’re actually saying goodbye. Literally the whole message of the finale was that sometimes you have to let things end and accept that things will never be how they were, and that there’s beauty in that acceptance because no matter what changes it doesn’t erase what you had. You cannot literally have that be the entire THESIS of the last three or four seasons and then keep drawing it out for cash and nostalgia

[longagoitwastuesday]

Do you have favorite actors for the various roles in "Cyrano de Bergerac"? I would love to hear your thoughts!

I do! I actually rambled a lot about this while I was watching the different productions I could get my hands on (I tagged it "Cyrano de Bergerac" and "I talk too much").

My favorite productions are the one with José Ferrer and the one with Benoit Solès, and those actors make the best Cyranos in my opinion. Though that's probably something in part beyond the actors' choice, their dynamic with their respective Roxane and Christian are the best ones, I think, and I find how Cyrano moves around these two particular characters at the core of a good Cyrano characterisation.

José Ferrer's use of his voice, which is arguably Cyrano's true most characteristic feature, is unmatched imo (although McAvoy does a very good job with this too), and he manauvers very well several of the different aspects of the character, such as his playfulness, his shittiness and longing. By the end of the play you believe he is the most beautiful man on Earth. Cyrano, however, is a bit pathetic (not just in a "pathos" way), and I'd say Ferrer gives off an air full of dignity very fitting of many scenes, but that eats almost entirely this aspect of Cyrano; Benoit Solès manages this very well, while also playing well with some of the other ones, such as the playfulness, the longing, the pain and the despair. Both Ferrer and Solès are hilarious, tender, a bit shitty, vulnerable, playful and sad. Albeit neither of them portrays 100% what Cyrano is, I think both come pretty close in slightly different flavours, and by the end of the play one ends up being terribly fond of them.

My favourite Roxane is Clara Huet in the production with Benoit Solès, but Mala Powers in the 1950 film is a close second. I think they portray wonderfully Roxane's spunk, and her mix of honest playful cheerfulness and her haughtiness, her intelligence and wit, and how much like Cyrano she is.

I've not come to love for now any Christian as much as I've loved Ferrer, Solès, Huet and Powers, but again I think the Christians in the 1950 film and the Solès productions are very very good. I love the dynamic they have with their Cyranos, especially the one Christian and Cyrano have in the 1950 film, enhanced positively by the added scenes (they actually work so well in showing their developing as friends, their deep love and care for each other!). I don't want to expand too much on this to avoid spoilers (beyond the already known 'Christian dies' ones I mean), but some things they do with both these Christians are a thing of genius, and both feel vulnerable, kind, ready to fight and truly desperate at times; I like when they do that.

There's an Italian production which has a Cyrano I truly enjoy as well, despite how they dumbify him more than I usually like my Christians. His mix of anger and deep pain when he discovers Cyrano's feelings for Roxane were so well made, and his physical presence makes you identify who Christian is even before the play starts.

The Podalydès production has two different Christians. The one in the version on youtube isn't bad, but @ride-a-dromedary likes Éric Ruf a lot. I actually adore him based on the clips and gifs she's posted of him, but I haven't been able to find the version with him online, so I can't know. But he truly seems one of the best. Based on what little I've seen, I love his intense gazes and subtle gestures.

I'm not entirely sold on any Le Bret, De Guiche or Ragueneau yet.

I think the German musical has a decent Ragueneau in vibes, and the 1990 French film does as well. I found his poem made song for what I think is a Spanish production (I'm not sure if it's a fan creation based on the Spanish production), and while I've not been able to find that production online, the song works well in vibes too I think.

The German musical's Le Bret in vibes is very good. He encompasses well his deep love and worry for Cyrano while also being done with his shit. They truly feel like close friends. The 1950 film kind of combines Gaston de Castel-Jaloux and Le Bret into one character, which sadly changes Le Bret's dynamic with Cyrano a bit, but that's a very good Le Bret as well. The one in Solès' production is pretty good too. He has my favourite delivery of the scene in which Le Bret chastises Cyrano for risking his life sending letters.

De Guiche is complicated. I think productions often make him too pathetic and laughable or too bad, so bad it makes the last act kind of not make sense. The 1950 one, the 1990 French one, the Kevin Kline one and the Solès one are all good, but I am not passionate for any of them either.

And basically that's it!

[artemisdesari-blog]

A writer friend told me something that broke my heart a little bit today; they're going to quit publishing their fanfic.

My instant thought was that they had been trolled or attacked or that something terrible had happened in their life because this person is so passionate about their writing. It wasn't any of that. Engagement with their works has been going down, as it has for many of us. Comments are like gold dust a lot of the time, and just looking through the historical comment counts on old fics on ao3 demonstrates this trend very clearly. It was not simply the comments dropping off which caused them to decide to stop posting, however.

My friend came across a discord server for their fandom (I should point out here that their fandom interest and mine diverged a couple of years ago, we stay in touch but don't currently read each other's posts because I'm not into their fandom and they would rather gouge their eyes out with a wooden spoon than read anything Star Wars) and specifically to share fic in that fandom. They joined, because we all love a good fic rec, only to discover that their latest multichapter fic, which has almost no comments and very few kudos, is being hotly discussed in this server as one of the best stories ever. Not one of these people has bothered to say this to them on the fic. When they asked, none of participants could see the point in telling the author of the fic they apparently loved so much that they love it.

This discovery has absolutely destroyed my friend's love of sharing fic. They share because they love seeing other people's enjoyment, and fic writers do that through comments and kudos/reblogs/likes because we don't get paid. There is no literary critic writing a blog post/article about how amazing the story is for us to copy and keep/frame. There is no money from royalties. All we have are the words of the people reading our works.

Those people on that server could have taken five minutes of the time they spent gushing about how amazing my friend's story was to other people and used it to tell the one person guaranteed to want to hear that praise how much they loved it. They could have taken a moment to express their opinion to the person who spent hours upon hours plotting, writing, editing, and posting those chapters. Instead, they deprived my friend of thing that keeps them sharing their writing, and in the process have killed their love of it. My friend now feels used and unmotivated.

I won't be sharing a link to their fic, they said I could share their experience but not their identity. I know they plan to post one final chapter. I know they intend to express their hurt at being excluded from the praise for the thing they created, and I know they intend to announce that as a consequence they will not be posting for a long while, if at all.

So please, I beg you, don't hide your love of a story from the writer. It's just about the only thing we have.

[whitestopper]

I don't care either way about straight vs bi Eloise, but I think it would be really funny if this is her and Michaela's dynamic in S4

[forcebookish]

chapter three of twihh has gotten long enough that i needed to make a new document for it to properly get it organized. scenes have to be rearranged, more added