#will i be scaring the hoes

[doom-dreaming]

no i lied i am going to rant because it's only tangentially-related to the essay and i can't let myself go on tangents there. but i can link this post into it. win-win.

Last Light is not a murder mystery. It has the aesthetic of a murder mystery, but it is not a murder mystery. Why? Because there's no mystery. Not for the readers, which is really what matters. We know by the first few chapters who the killer is and what her motive is. The façade of a murder mystery is blown at that point, because there's nothing for the audience to figure out.

However, it gets weird because the main character...is still (technically) in a murder mystery. She's supposed to be, anyway. She doesn't know what we know. This format can work, dramatic irony is cool and the audience seeing behind the curtain before the sleuth does is a lot of fun...as long as the person crafting the story puts in the work to make sure all the internal logic is still functioning. Denning does not do this. The individual components of a murder mystery are still there, we still have the veneer of the genre, but the sleuth isn't actively solving anything or putting pieces together in a meaningful way.

The whole reason I'm so bothered by Mark being a suspect is that it's a classic red-herring...but for who? Not for the audience, we don't need a red herring, we already know who the killer is. So he's supposed to serve as a red herring for Veta...only there's no logical reason for her to cling to this so hard. He goes from being barely mentioned to being her top suspect at the drop of a hat. Well, the drop of a boulder, really. Because she only starts to suspect the Gammas could be capable of the kind of violence inflicted on the victims once she witnesses Olivia going Hulk Smash(tm).

...but then why Mark specifically? He wasn't the one who raged out. In fact, he never gets brutally violent at all during this novel, even when he's fully off his smoothers and fucking around on his own in the caves. All his kills are clean and precise and well-planned, absolutely nothing like the other murders.

Denning wants us to buy into this so desperately without having any actual, textual support for why Veta herself would believe this. The internal logic isn't there. We don't have anything to connect the final dot from "brutality" -> "enhanced strength" -> "spartans" -> "gamma company enhancements" -> ??? -> "Mark". Why not Ash? Why not Olivia, the one we (and Veta) actually witnessed beating a Sentinel into scrap metal with her bare hands?

All Mark does is make vaguely sinister remarks and remain standoffish. That's it. That's not evidence. That's the author wanting to reinforce a paper-thin plot complication because otherwise this book would be 200 pages shorter than it is.

There's not really any procedure involved for gathering evidence, either. Information drops conveniently into Veta's lap because every other character can't keep their fucking mouth shut. She doesn't have to work for any of it. Hey Denning, if you're gonna write a detective, for the love of god, she better do some fucking detecting. We see attempts at this. But in every conversation where she attempts to """trick""" someone into divulging something, they just talk in circles for a couple lines and then *poof* suddenly they're giving up classified secrets. There's not actually any clever dialogue or process of breaking them down, just the (very poor) illusion of it.

Anyway, now I'm losing the plot. Last Light is just sci-fi action with a whisper of intrigue (and I'm using that word so loosely), dressed up like a murder mystery. Denning can't write smart characters and I feel myself getting dumber the more I try to make sense of it.

[lurukifennecfox]

Amity was... Odd

It always was even before the Fenton Portal, just more subtle, cold spots, newer electronics not working properly, older picking up things that weren't always there, things at the periphery that you can't see when you turn, shadows too dark, lights too dim.

Lake Eerie was named that for a reason. they knew to never swim alone, or at night without lights.

Then the portal happened and those who didn't adapt left. then the invasion and they thought they are going to just go back to new normal and...

The town refused to leave. Not the people the town itself, turned out Amity had a city spirit and she liked it in the Zone so they adapted, 'parkers always adapted if they didn't they left, this side of the veil or the other.

They managed to coax Amity to return and continued living, a little to the left, teeth a little too sharp, eyes a little too intense, hearing a little too good, but they adapted. They found out more ghost culture in the zone, some learned to fight, some decided not to. They weren't bothered by property damage anymore, the buildings would pull themselves back together and they would help.

Amity was always Odd it just wasn't subtle anymore.

[valtsv]

my brother made the mistake of asking me what i do for fun in my free time today and by the time i finished explaining to him that my main hobby is learning everything i can about death and associated practices and beliefs and that i'm happiest when surrounded by death and decay he was looking at me like this

[xuyanzheng]

[wrestling AU] LAUGHIN STRAIGHT TO THE BANK, I’M TONY KHAN

[tantaliart]

deathly choir

[guiding-key]

Sora, Kairi, Aqua, Ventus, Mickey fucking Mouse:

[xzumichannn]

Animation practice of the green thing

[yarrowdraws]

yeah I don't know

[kalashnikovlobotomy]

"what if i don't smo-" "you start today."

[modeus-the-misanthrope]

Voice of the Hero, to Smitten, after Happily Ever After:

[sleepdepriveddoorknobs]

Common crow and white dove. Two children of God.

[laurearte]

😀😀 mon roi svp 😀😀 oui oui vos crocs la 😃😃😃

[claudioseraph]

[starcrashedsatellite]

[separatist-apologist]

Genuinely so obsessed with people complaining how toxic the ACOTAR fandom is while screenshotting posts that have nothing to do with them so they can talk shit without having to hear a rebuttal from that blog.

If you want to talk shit that bad, don't be a coward- respond directly to the post you have no business being on.

[vranias]

marik please u cant be posting shit like this your sister’s a diplomat