#Mostly I think the plotting and overall narrative arcs need work

[moony-2001]

How I would’ve constructed the 10 year time skip

✨Brought to you by my deep loathing for Lore Olympus✨

•warnings: super long post (I’m not joking), death, kidnapping, violence•

What The Fuck Happened

There was so much potential for the punishment arc. We could’ve seen a lot of character development, fleshed out storylines, reconciliation between certain people. We could’ve seen both Hades and Persephone going to therapy instead of claiming that one therapy session has fixed all their problems and then never going again.

Instead we got horny Persephone, pretty much no clue about what happened to Demeter OR Persephone during that time, and an easy plot device (sorry Cerberus) for Persephone to be like “I’m a big girl now harrumph harrumph, time for me to go reunite with my crusty ass bf who I’ve only know for a month”.

I hate the way she reunited with Ares. Ares is just a bonafide creep throughout the whole comic (although I liked when he attacked Zeus lol). I guess what I mostly hate about Ares and Persephone’s interaction is, yet again, it’s another example of every guy in the comic going AWOOGA over Persephone. Also Athena’s design is so fugly. I guess Rachel is completely incapable of drawing masculine presenting women as actual women.

The whole Kronos plot line is stupid. I hate it so much. Imo the whole “the titans are trying to escape so they can rule Olympus again” is overdone and not particularly done well. The fight between Kronos and Persephone is lame as shit. Like what, she gets big for all of 20 minutes, burps out a bunch of bees (which aren’t even aggressive creatures), and then does her version of the Wuxi Finger Hold from Kung Fu Panda and has Tartarus spirit Kronos away, magically fixing all of their problems (except it doesn’t and nothing is actually fixed).

Also I might get a lot of flack for this, but I don’t think the addition of Morpheus’ character was necessary. I like Morpheus. I think she’s cute. But she’s a) slowly turning into another version of Hecate and b) not really vital to the narrative imo. We already have so many other characters and plot lines that take away from the central “romance” the story is SUPPOSED to be focused on. I just don’t think we need ANOTHER character whose arc is probably not going to go anywhere.

So yeah, overall very L writing, L plot, and L characters.

What I would do differently

The first thing I would change is that the whole punishment arc would be an entire season unto itself. You’ll see why it has to be a separate season.

The second thing is (and this literally pains me to say) in order for me to rewrite this portion of LO without rewriting the entire comic, I kinda sorta have to throw the entire timeline of Greece out the window. If I try to follow a timeline based on the history of Greece, the entire timeline of LO has to shift massively. I’m already getting a migraine trying to think about how I could possibly make it work.

I do know this: Instead of 10 years I’d do somewhere between 1,000-3,000 years. 10 years is a joke. When you’re a god, 10 years is a trip to the time out corner

For now, let’s just say (assuming LO takes place in the Ancient Greece era) and Ancient Greece spanned ~1500 years, Persephone’s punishment would’ve needed to have been established near the very end of the collapse of the Late Bronze Age, spanned the entirety of Ancient Greece as we know it today, and ended some time in the very early Byzantine era. So like what, 1500-2000 years? Fine. I can work with this.

The Famine

You know how the first 400 years of Ancient Greece was deemed the “Dark Ages” and it was a time of war, famine, and loss? I want to start the punishment there. It would make sense for what we know about the characters thus far:

Demeter has had complete control over the growth of the flora and fauna on earth. She’s the goddess of the harvest after all. But we also find out that while Persephone has been in Olympus, Demeter has also been carrying out her duties as the goddess of spring. Plus Demeter has been around for forever and a day. She knows what she’s doing

Persephone doesn’t (at this point in the comic) really have control over her powers. Even in her fits of rage, she ends up doing more harm than good (i.e. her act of wrath, turning Minthe into a plant, etc.). In comparison with everyone around her, she is a literal infant. I mean shit, she’s only been alive for 20 years compared to the fact that everyone else has most likely been around for a minimum of 500 years.

If Demeter is stripped of her status as a goddess (and thus her powers) it would make sense that there would be a lot of death and famine and war over territory/food. Persephone would be left with nothing: no guidebook, no how-to. Of course a lot of people would die while she’s trying to figure her shit out. It could also be a very interesting tactic for psychological warfare on Zeus’ part. Zeus KNOWS Persephone doesn’t know what she’s doing. He knows people will die. And he knows that since life is precious to Persephone (or at least that’s what she claims), it would punish her further.

We can see episodes of Persephone struggling to provide for humanity. We could have real world examples of the affect of famine and depopulation. We would see her struggling with her powers, her mental health. We could get an episode that explains how her hands got destroyed from trying to mimic her mother’s powers. We can see what the fuck happened to Demeter in Attica.

Now obviously things will eventually go on the up and up for Persephone and her compatriots. The whole 1500-2000 years isn’t just going to be one big clusterfuck. As time progresses and chapters pass, we could see real character growth for Persephone not just mentally, but in almost every aspect. Since she will have been alive at that point for over 1000 years, the readers would be able to see her newfound maturity. We could also see her build strong female support systems and strengthen her friendships, something we NEVER saw in the OG comic (or at least they never happened without Hades somehow being involved). You get the point.

What’s Old Man Hades up to?

I have big plans for Hades and none of them involve him going into a 1000+ year coma or getting possessed by his creepy-ass dad. He is an asshole though. I kinda wanted to portray him in this the way he is in the original myths (which for those who don’t know or haven’t read it, it’s not good).

So in Greek mythology, Hades actually had a wife before he even met Persephone or Minthe. Can you take a wild guess as to who?

Bingo! It’s Leuce. Contrary to popular belief, Leuce is actually NOT a home-wrecking POC version of Persephone (don’t @ me we all know the nymphs represent the lower class and POC). In mythology, Leuce was Hades’ first wife/lover and she died sometime long ago and I believe was turned into a white poplar tree. No she is not a cousin of Thetis and Amphitrite. She is not even remotely related to them. And Thetis and Amphitrite are sisters, not cousins. Do your fucking research Rachel.

Unfortunately, Greek Mythology doesn’t really mention all that much about Leuce outside of the fact that she was a daughter of Oceanus, she was kidnapped by Hades, and when she died (for unspecified reasons) she turned into a tree. Which means I’m going to be taking a lot of creative liberties for this portion of the post. Sorry to all you diehard fans of Greek myths out there. I shall try to do her justice.

In my head-cannon Hades and Leuce had been in an arranged marriage for thousands of years. Leuce was offered by Oceanus as a peace offering after the War and Hades, not really having any other viable options for a wife, agreed to take her to the underworld (much to her dismay). Over time, they grew to have a mutually loving/caring relationship. Unlike LO Persephone, Leuce was a good queen and she worked hard to make sure the denizens of the underworld respected her and that they were well cared for. Unfortunately, they got divorced because Hades starting having an affair with Minthe. Even though she loved her kingdom and the people of the underworld, she divorced Hades because she couldn’t stand to be around him, which, y’know. Fair.

A few notes: in my head-cannon, Leuce is still around leading up the the trial and punishment. Her portrait would still be up, we would see signs that Hades and Leuce still interact (more in terms of business, not romance), etc.

Also, unlike Persephone, Leuce would not take her anger out on Minthe or turn her into a plant or destroy her apartment. She would simply wish her good luck. She would be mad at Hades for cheating and for taking advantage of Minthe while she’s at her lowest. But I’m going to be straight up: even though Leuce is meant to be the better Persephone, she still has her flaws. She’s not going to feel inclined to help Minthe in any way. Would you want to help out the person who your partner is cheating on you with? The answer is no and if you say yes, you’re lying.

Anyways, during the Punishment, Hades and Leuce reconnect and Hades finds out Leuce is dying. He tries to convince her to leave the underworld and return to her father, but she insists that she is going to stay, even if it means she dies away from everyone she loved. She won’t abandon her kingdom, her people, or her ex-husband (although that’s much better than he deserves). They move in together and Hades begins to take care of her, even as she begins to deteriorate. They also begin to rekindle their past relationship and (with the help of a therapist) work through some of their past problems together.

Note: their relationship rekindles a couple hundred years into the punishment so by the time the punishment ends, they’ve been back together for a minimum of 1200 years

The aftermath and the Rape of Persephone

Before any of you go gaga over me for the title used above, the original title used for the myth is The Rape of Persephone (or if you want to be really original, The Rape of Proserpina). In the context of the title, the term “rape” means to be taken/kidnapped rather than having sexual violence inflicted upon you. Rape stemmed from the traditional Latin word “raptus” which means “to be seized” or “carried off”. Okay? Okay.

So after the Punishment ends and Persephone feels like she has thoroughly improved herself, she goes to find Hades and talk with him about their relationship. Mainly that she feels they rushed into it, and even though she does like him she wants to take things really slow (kind of like how she wanted before getting married 3 episodes later).

Upon arriving to the underworld/Hades house, her worst fears are realized: not only has Hades (seemingly) moved on, he has found someone else. Or rather, he got back together with his ex-wife.

Persephone freaks out (“who is she?”/“I’m his wife!”)

Persephone, throughly upset for getting her hopes up, flees back to mortal realm. Hades goes to leave Leuce, but not before she tells him that if he leaves her for Persephone, she will never forgive him. Hades leaves anyways, much to the absolute despair of Leuce, who is left wailing as he runs off.

Persephone returns home and finds Demeter and they hug. Demeter is initially horrified to see what happened to her hands, but is proud of the work she did during the punishment. Persephone cries to her mother about Hades, and Demeter tries to comfort her but it inadvertently comes off more as “I told you so” rather than “I’m sorry you had to experience that” (although Demeter is sorry that Persephone’s heart is broken). Persephone, already feeling incredibly emotionally distressed, lashes out at Demeter and they start to argue. This is when Hades arrives.

Hades sees Demeter and Persephone arguing and inserts himself into the situation. Persephone becomes more upset after seeing him and Hades (assuming that Persephone is upset about the fact that Demeter is getting in the way of their “relationship” and not the fact that Persephone discovered Hades went back to his ex-wife after saying he loved her) whips out the the “one personal question, no exceptions” card and proposes to Persephone. He insists that he loves her and only her and that they should spend the rest of their immortal lives together.

Persephone says no.

Hades, not taking no for an answer and not wanting to leave the mortal realm empty handed, kidnaps Persephone, much to the dismay of Demeter, Artemis, and the nymphs. Hades returns with a traumatized Persephone to the underworld to find that Leuce has died and turned into a white poplar tree. While Persephone is sobbing on the floor, Hades weaves a mock crown from the branches and leaves of the tree, places it upon Persephone’s head, and tells her she better get used to their life together.

Thus ends the season and the punishment arc.

Afterthoughts

Thank you for sitting through my ramblings. I officially joined the anti-LO community about the time the trial happened and had been wanting to make a post like this for a reaaaaally long time. Besides the fact that the trial in of itself was completely unethical (@genericpuff made a whole post about that) the punishment arc just really pissed me off. Like go girl, give us nothing!

Anyways, I may or may not do a whole timeline reconstruction of LO depending on how much I feel like offing my sanity with the amount of research that would have to go into that. Until then, I hope you like this post and look out for other anti LO posts coming your way :)

#lore olympus #anti lo persephone #anti lore olympus #unpopular lo #unpopular lore olympus #kung fu panda #anti lo #lo criticism #lo critical #long read #lore olympus criticism #lo critic

[ladyluscinia]

Tell me if you've seen this one.

You're watching a romcom. A beautiful woman with a wealthy, city-boy fiancé goes to visit family in a small town. (Let's be honest... It's Christmas. It's basically always Christmas.) While there, she has an instant connection with the film's hot small-town love interest and starts reevaluating her city life. Does the fiancé work too much, or not like dogs? (Does he not understand the joy of Santa Claus?) At the movie's end, she makes a dramatic choice to break off her engagement, quit her job, and move back home to date the guy who was obviously the only love interest in play all movie long.

It's a very standard romcom love triangle.

It's also the kind of love triangle that OFMD is setting up, with Izzy and Stede antagonizing each other and representing two possibilities for Edward to choose... all the way down to how the final choice has been pretty obvious from the start. He's going to end up with Stede. (And hopefully have an overall better written arc than the one described above. That's a standard romcom, but not often a good one!)

Now, this works because love triangles are a narrative tool. They can be purely a source of shipping drama (especially in a drama genre) like tumblr fandoms seem to define them as, but that's only one variation, and far from the most interesting. Or even, I would argue, the most common.

So let's get into what love triangles actually are, and how this applies.

---

I would say most stories - especially character focused ones - use a love triangle as a way to take an abstract choice the protagonist needs to make, and give it some grounded symbolism in the love interests.

Hell, even in its most basic forms, there is a reason the most classic love triangles are a man choosing between Good Girl "Betty" vs Bad Girl "Veronica" or a woman choosing either the Respectable Gentleman or the Sexy Scoundrel. Which love interest the author makes endgame will correlate pretty strongly with whether the story ends on social conformity or encouraging passion, and social conformity always has the edge. This comes through even when the character differences are mostly personality, but it will get a lot more blatant if something like "finding a spouse" is a major plot point and we start getting material concerns like finances involved.

OFMD, though, is not really being basic about this - the ship for a "social conformity" option has long sailed, for one - so what are some more complex choices?

First, we can loop back to the small town Christmas romcom from the start. The men are potential lifestyles. The protagonist starts in very career / finance focused place with a partner from the same. They won't have children or be planning for them. The new guy is small town living - community, family, holidays, etc. He's got a respectable working class job. Maybe a kid. He'd be traumatized by an urban public transport map but he can probably ride a horse. These movies are targeted at small town housewives, so the "better" lifestyle is that one.

Or, another great example, the options can symbolize political or moral values. This also gives you a nice out from the love triangle when one love interest proves their unworthiness by finally crossing a line the protagonist won't. The Hunger Games had shades of this and fans definitely picked up on it (though I definitely remember being a "ditch them both" truther myself, lol).

And what about character growth? This can come into play when a story is about a protagonist fixing their life or self-improving. It's why - seemingly paradoxically - the established relationship is almost always expected to lose out to the new person in their life, despite being, well, established. They end up paired with the one who knows them as who they are becoming, not who they used to be.

...I think I've made my point about symbolism.

So. Back to OFMD! You'll probably notice all of the above could apply to BlackBonnet - Stede being the better lifestyle and values is kind of his whole thing, what with the acceptance boat culture and all (even if Stede himself needs to work on practicing as he preaches). Plus Edward is on an arc of self-improvement to fit into that culture. This is why absolutely nobody is going to be shocked that he doesn't end up with Izzy. But I do think (or at least hope 🫠) that the writing is good, and that's probably going to entail a bit of complexity in the choice.

The choice being "Stede, Stede, 100% definitely Stede, why would I even hesitate?" is rather boring. Especially since they have to make Edward hesitate so the show has a plot and stakes, and that's how you get plot contrivances and drawn out drama between two people (despite framing them as perfect for each other).

Conversely, if choosing Izzy aka his current life (the competing love interest angle is barely subtextual with the wife comparisons) actually has some appeal for Edward, then even though the endgame is obvious, it still makes sense why he's hanging back. It gives him a conflict with Stede / Stede's life that can take time to resolve, and one that will slot really nicely into the main story beats of a romcom. Edward is struggling a lot with identity, so tying the two men to different aspects he needs to choose between for himself is very compelling. (I'm just gonna drop my main Edward meta here.)

And, finally, how they handle the choice part is going to inform what they do with Izzy once Edward picks Stede. Yeah, there are the love triangles that make the bad option a horrible person, destroy their life, and skip away to the happy ending, but those can be kind of fucked up? And I think an unsympathetic ending for Izzy is unlikely for a few reasons... But that's a different meta.

(Maybe they should just OT3 for us??? 😆)

Anyway... This is why anyone starting from the stance that OFMD is not doing a love triangle because there's not actually a chance of BlackHands endgame has fundamentally misunderstood the argument being made, which unfortunately has been a common point of dispute. And with Season 2 coming I imagine it will come back with a vengeance, so I'm getting this out of my drafts now. 😘

Here's to love triangle shenanigans!!!

#our flag means death #ofmd meta #love triangle #tropes #character arcs #blackbeard ofmd #izzy hands ofmd #stede bonnet ofmd #this could be more polished but i'm not feeling it - hence the sitting in drafts for several months #ladyluscinia

[comradeboyhalo]

i really do think its been too long without the eggs. and it also sucks that they cant do anything until cc!forever comes back (which is not his fault, hes got a life!) but it stretches it out even more because he'll come back, and presumably they'll be another week of build-up bc i think q!forever will probably get, and deserves, his own return lore stream. we're about to reach 2 months of no eggs and every parent who started a character arc about this just cant finish it and they're getting no hints to make any significant narrative progression.

cause just taking q!bad as an example, he's got a bunch of mini-plots wrapped into this overall arc, with the soul vultures and ron, but the overall plan hinges on saving the eggs. his deterioration is due to the missing eggs. no matter how many smaller plots he introduces, his core motivation still cant even be progressed if there's nothing about the missing eggs. and yeah, im aware that we have the egg photos and the maze but its still not enough to give characters something to act on. but if you give them something to act on, then you need some type of resolution, and, again, there can't be any solid resolution if they already have planned the egg return date to be a month from now.

a lot of characters are getting new plots to work on, but thats mostly beneficial for characters like bagi/pol/tubbo who have no eggs. and characters like aypierre and antoine are exploring backstories which is great for them, but it still doesnt help characters like roier/bad/phil who have established new arcs so strongly tied to the missing eggs. it still means we're missing a lot of resolution, and im not sure how long ccs can improv this out.

[purplerakath]

Ramona's Guilt

So I wanna talk about a bunch of the stuff in Scott Pilgrim Takes Off and how it looks at, answers, and smooths over some generalities in the other two Scott Pilgrim narratives (mostly the comics as the movie didn't do much with Ramona). More of what I'm writing under the cut. Spoilers for all three but most pressingly for Takes Off.

So overall the frame here is going to be on how much guilt Ramona carries over her actions, and how much amends she goes for in the new narrative of Takes Off. And how much that matteers.

See, in the other two versions Ramona 'dumps them and leaves' is painted as a singular through line, a universally identical action across all her relationships. That isn't the case here. Each relationship is painted as 'Ramona leaves' but how much that matters varies.

Going to go through each Ex in order:

Matthew Patel

So it is painted as both 'a relationship that could go somewhere' but also 'dude you knew her in middle school.' Ramona doesn't apologize to him, doesn't accuse him of kidnapping Scott, or really interact with him because 'middle school.'

To Matthew's credit as a character, he gets a massive growth arc through finding a passion he loves rather than obsessing over a girl he knew when he was twelve. His 'take over Gideon's empire and follow his off Broadway dreams is a good avenue for his character to grow.

Lucas Lee

Ramona makes it clear she still cares about him, and has always been rooting for him she just- ran off. And that her doing that did significantly change him. And that part she apologizes for. It's also clear she mostly questions his guilt because of the league, and not because she thinks he's evil (referencing back to his 'evil for being a sell-out, I guess' from the books).

He's not the nicest person, but she sees though his facade. And barring his tossing a child onto the roof of a car to steal his skateboard, he's pretty much harmless. Lucas Lee is a lot of attitude but nothing really behind it.

But he did need to hear that Ramona cared about him, and was sorry.

Todd Ingram

Todd is in a weird place, one is he's not in the montage of Ramona running away from what she loves. So he's more of a rebound when she got scared with Lucas. Two he's always been in love with Envy Ramona was just 'there' not 'there for him.'

Third he's Gay. The story kind of makes it pretty clear he just didn't know that about himself. (Which is fine, Todd doesn't have two brain cells to rub together.)

So she doesn't apologize and Ramona didn't really do anything for him.

Todd is also in a weird place where he's less 'Ramona's evil ex' as he is 'Punchable Avatar of Envy Adams.' His major element in the books is as Envy's current boyfriend to deal with Scott's 'the big ex' problems.

Roxie Richter

The most deserved and needed apology of any in the series. While Ramona didn't mean to hurt her, because she wasn't aware of how much their thing mattered to Roxie. It. hurt. her.

So Ramona needed to apologize, more than any other ex.

This also changes Roxie from the 'safe ex to run back to' (because Ramona doesn't count her as a real relationship, in the comics) to 'terrifying relationship Ramona wasn't sure how to deal with' (because they got so close and Ramona runs when she feels scared). It's overall a very positive change to how this relationship worked.

And like with Lucas, post-apology this Ex is no longer evil.

The Katayanagi Twins

So Ramona doesn't really... interact with them at all. The ending montage shows she did love both of them, but she also dated them at the same time because they were, well, fuckboys. So it's less a 'she hurt them' as it was a 'she is the karma they deserved.'

The twins, overall, are painted by their nature in the future of being overall good guys who don't care about all this. I would like to see more of them but they aren't very useful narratively to Ramona's plot. Because they're useful to the whole 'how do we make this new Scott Pilgrim story go Brrrrrr.'

Gideon Graves / Gordon Goose

His inclusion in the final montage of 'running from love' is weird, because I do think a major element of a potential Season 2 is Gideon's kidnapping of ex girlfriends for a complete set. This is what I assume was in that vault from Ep 2, the one Matthew couldn't blast into.

Still, Ramona didn't apologize to Gordon, she chastised him and threatened him should he treat Julie the way he treated her. Which is deserved, Gideon is the worst. He doesn't get an apology because this time Ramona was right to run.

So what does this all Do!?

What it does is keep Ramona's character flaw (she runs when things get complicated) without making it seem like running is always the same, with the same weight, and the same responsibility on her. Of the evil exes, while six out of seven are no longer evil. Ramona was only needed to fix two of them.

It means she's a flawed person, as is the theme of this show. But not some secret heartbreaker. Just another scared little girl with intimacy issues.

And it means when a relationship was going to end on someone else's terms, having her chase down that relationship like a dogged detective makes her less a prize at the end of a story, and more her own person.

And that's a pretty great change.

#Scott Pilgrim Takes Off #Scott Pilgrim Spoilers #Ramona Flowers #Character Study #Glad Roxie got her Due #The movie kind of shafted her #which is not very cash money of it #Lucas Lee also got a good middle ground #between himbo king and skater d-bag #and I'm into that #I do think they aren't erasing Gideon's seven girlfriends in freezers thing #that feels like his endgame still #that or Scott still facing his ex girlfriends

[not-terezi-pyrope]

FIPTION: There Is A Crack In The World (Review)

So, I finally finished "There Is A Crack In The World", the largest part of my fiction reading trade with @fipindustries. It's taken me a while, and I haven't spoken about it much here as I read, sending my in the moment thoughts to Fip directly, instead. Part of the reason I didn't finish it sooner was because I am abroad, and I've been distracted by not being in my own home, hanging out with my boyfriend, actually hanging out with Fip in person, but regardless; I am done now and here are my thoughts.

Crack in the World is a really interesting book for a lot of reasons. There are a bunch of things I didn't like about it, and a bunch of things I really did like about it, and it's fascinating for me how those things intersect. I'll start with my biggest criticisms; the writing itself is very one-and-done, unedited prose, which, combined with this being a novel written in a second language, results in text that feels fairly sloppy in parts, spattered with spelling and syntactic errors, odd sentence phrasing that needs a second eye making adjustments. There are some moments where I can feel the author had a clear picture in her head, but where the details didn't come out as clearly as might have been liked to the reader. These issues would be the biggest barrier to this getting published properly one day, but it's also arguably the most straightforward to fix; the book just needs a thorough editing pass, either by Fip or another editor. The intent is clear enough that I think someone could fix up these issues without any author input, and indeed I found myself doing so in my head as I read. The core meaning is solid, and so when thinking about the book I am going to largely ignore the typographical stuff, the narrative now feels fairly accurately transcribed into my head where I can prod at it as a consolidated story, and it is that story that I'll be reviewing.

The important context for CitW is that it was written when the author was, per her description, dealing with having been in a pretty bad place, and so the tone that the novel seeks to strike is a pretty grimdark one. According to the aftermath post linked at the end, parts of it were an exercise at writing "unrepentant misery porn". Maybe I am desensitised to dark fiction, but a lot of the book didn't really come off that way to me, but in a way that's almost to Fip's credit; even when she's trying to write a dark and miserable story, Fip's delight in writing about whacky characters playing out dynamic adventure narratives comes through in many places, and so the book's dystopic setting feels more Mad Max than 1984. The setting is dark and grim, but it's a cartoonish kind of grim that is, to be frank, mostly just sort of fun. There's a teenage edginess to a lot of it, which Fip has talked about being an accurate description of the mindset for some scenes. The times when that edginess doesn't work are, ironically, when the book really tries to be dark but in a way that pushes into being too crass to be endearing. There's a lot of blood and gore, which I appreciate, but then there are anal rape and shit jokes, which I do not, it feels a little bit too immature and too aspirationally edgy. I think some of that is regretted in retrospect. It doesn't detract too much from the overall feel, though.

The plot is also surprisingly straightforward, not as labyrinthine as I had expected at its core, a fairly conventional dual-protagonist adventure arc culminating in crossed paths (with several side-vignettes, as I discuss later). The ending is dark and follows up on the themes of hopelessness the most effectively of anything in the novel. After the entire book, I think that the background thematic radiation has built up enough for it to be earned, by that point. The final chapter and epilogues are a little fast and blunt, but not unworkably so.

There are two big strengths to the book, two things that I really liked. The first is the characters; Fip is primarily a visual/comics artist and you can really tell, even via writing alone, that she really likes coming up with cool characters with their own specific emotional vibe, and setting them off to interact with each other. These are guys who all feel like they should come with their own splash screen, tag line and iconic halloween costume. There's something almost superhero comic strip about the iconic identities of the characters, about their specific skills and motivations, true even for those that don't actually have their own "superpowers". But don't get me wrong, there's plenty of superhuman individuals on display, here; we have impossibly tenacious gun-wielding assassins, murderous, practically invulnerable clown girls, jungle mercenaries using anti-air rifles as a personal pogo stick, Russian mobster types, a literal dark lord... It's very whacky and fun when you get down to it, which is what really tempers the intended grimdark tone. You might fear that there's some dissonance there but it merges into something unique and interesting. That said, perhaps a more tightly edited version could change some passages with that in mind.

The second thing I really liked was that the story is used as a sort of... Stage setting for a bunch of smaller, more contained narratives, almost smaller parables (sometimes literal parables) that slot into the story. These are clearly separate ideas that were floating around in the author's head, and a lot of them are more tightly written than parts of the main narrative, more fully formed from the start. The two interlude chapters are the clear standouts in the whole work, and both are examples of writing in the style of these little vignettes. I do almost wish that the rest of the story was more integrated to match, there is a risk a few times of the non-sequitur insertions coming across as a little piecemeal, but this becomes less of an issue near the end - the second interlude is at once its own thing but is deeply connected to the rest of the story, and it makes absolute sense that it comes when it does.

One thing that the vignettes also highlight is the difference between pre-planned narrative trajectory/pacing and the "write on the fly" nature of the rest of the novel. There are some times where, in comparison, the "standard" chapters are at risk of tripping off required plot occurrences by rote without dwelling on them, and it's most notable by contrast. Keeping the little sub-stories in the novel is well with it though, and the pacing issue could be fixed with editing.

Other little things I liked: the bounce back and forth between protagonists in alternating chapters was very fun, and helped keep the pace up. I liked seeing the world from different perspectives, and from characters with very different roles in the world. For that matter, I liked the world itself; the worldbuilding was fun, if a little tropey, and I enjoyed trying to dissect the lore. There were a few things that didn't hold up to scrutiny lore-wise in retrospect, but that's understandable given the serial publishing. On the other hand, there was a lot of cool thematic stuff and character foreshadowing that was clearly planned well in advance and paid off really well. I'm avoiding specifics due to spoilers, but there are a lot of fun surprises in this novel!

So that is There Is A Crack In The World. Not a perfect book by any means, but a lot of fun and vibrant ideas. Fip has been sending me her excellent artwork for the story, which really adds a lot, and that compounds my desire to see this adapted as a sort of pulp graphic novel, given an ideal world. At it is, if there is future development of the story to be had it would be in a thorough editing pass. This is not required, however; the story is a fine artefact as it exists on its own, as rough around the edges as it may be, it tells an interesting and satisfying tale of some very cool characters. It's a shame I didn't get through it faster, but I'm very glad I took the time.

Great job Fip. Next up I read The Milkman (although that may also be slow coming; my preemptive apologies).

#not-terezi-speaks #fiption #there is a crack in the world

[not-poignant]

Hi! I love all of your stories that I’ve read so far (there’s so many but it makes happy cause I finish one and then can go to another). I was wondering, do you have any tips for character creation and story planning? I never know how to set everything up and section and organize.

Hi anon!

I feel bad because this is a very 'how long is a piece of string' question, like, to the point that I have literally tags that have multiple posts in them like 'pia on characterisation' and 'pia on worldbuilding' and 'pia on writing' and that would be a good place to start.

I'm not someone who is good at condensing a lot of information into short bite-sized pieces. You can tell by how long my stories are.

And honestly I organise differently every time. Anon, I don't plot most of my stories. Do you think Palmarosa and A Stain that Won't Dissolve and Underline the Black have a plot somewhere? They don't. I don't have a document that's even a list of plot points. When I say sometimes that I'm making it up as I go along, I'm literally making it up as I go along.

Sometimes my setting up is sitting down and starting the first chapter and then being like 'oh shit, characterisation.'

Sometimes I'll do worldbuilding. Sometimes I'll do behind-the-scenes characterisation. But often I don't.

Nothing writes a story faster, imho, than sitting down and starting to write the story if you have some characters and an idea in your head. But not everyone likes writing that way, and organisers hate that, and I hate being an organiser, so like...

Part of this is also - what works for me, what tips cracked the code for me, might make it a lot harder for you! You need to learn the kind of writer you are by experimenting. Maybe you're a faithful plotter and organiser, maybe you fly by the seat of your pants and don't want to truthfully plan anything at all. You can try it all! There's no one right way of doing it, there's not even a single one way right way of doing it for you, there's literally 'right ways per story' - because different stories sometimes need different things (at different times.)

Idk what kind of writer you are, anon, but it sounds like I don't do some of the things you think I do! I hate plotting with a fiery, passionate vengeance, and it makes me want to write so much less, for example! Story planning is my nemesis!!

BUT, to write a story that feels planned without planning, you have to read and watch a lot of stories.

And you have to not just enjoy them, but start thinking about when they feel fast and when they feel slow, when they feel important and when they're giving you a break, when they're telling you details, and when they're telling you action, and how they're doing that.

And you know, it might benefit you to research story structure overall, and classive narrative arcs - like the Hero's Journey, for example. As a good starting point, you might want to look into a personal favourite of mine (which I don't consciously use, but still use anyway) - Dan Harmon's Story Circle, mostly because the starting image is free, and it applies to tiny mini-stories, and broader over-arching stories, and it's colourful and pretty. And also because Dan Harmon is an extremely clever and accomplished story writer, so he knows what he's doing :D

#asks and answers #pia on writing #also anon you might not even want to write like me? #maybe you have other authors you'd like to write more like #but we all have different methods and different styles #anyone who tries to sell you a single way of doing things #or a single 'right way of doing things' #doesn't realise other people exist #who are not them fdsalkfjasfdsa #we all have different ways #that might seem scary anon #but sometimes fear is just excitement dressed up in a weird coat #and you might want to try and learn how to also approach this journey #with some excitement #because it can be fun to learn new things <333 #even when you're terrified

[emmersreads]

These Violent Delights by Chloe Gong | 2.5/5

The best stories feel effortless, and overburdened narratives are the opposite of that. They make you keenly aware of just how much they’re not pulling it off.

It would be wrong to say that These Violent Delights is patient zero for this phenomenon, because its not like overburdened stories were invented in 2020, but it is a definitive case study. There is a good book in here somewhere, maybe even more than one, but they’re crushed in with so many bad ones that it makes the whole thing worse.

I’m going to pull out a bunch of specific details from this book and you may think that some (or even many) of them kinda slap, but don’t get it twisted, These Violent Delights is far less than the sum of its parts.

These Violent Delights is a very thinly veiled adaptation of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, starring the scions of two opposing gangs in 1920s Shanghai whose past romance draws them together even as the blood feud between their gangs pull them apart. In addition to the plot of Romeo and Juliet, there is a second main plot in which protagonists Roma and Juliette must put their allegiances aside and work together to avert a supernatural plague of madness ravaging the city of Shanghai. That’s already one plotline too many but the book has one more, growing off of the original play’s plot like some kind of horrible fungus. This one is a meta-mystery about why Roma and Juliette were broken up the first time and the events that led to the current tensions between their two gangs. It’s a meta-mystery because there is really no reason for the third person limited narration to hide it from us — the characters should realistically be thinking about it literally every time they interact — and it ends up as a super underwhelming reveal. That’s a lot of plots, and we haven’t even got to the side characters, who also have two side arcs that have nothing to do with the overall throughline. Each of these is enough for their own book, but as more and more get introduced they crowd each other out. The narrative is pulled in more and more directions.

There are two consequences to overburdened plots: first, basically none of them get the time they need, so at best they’re not as good as they could be and at worst they feel like demeaning token inclusions; second, while all of these plots are basically fine on their own, they don’t all play well together and end up robbing each other of thematic weight. As a result the book is a mismatched jumble of plots and characters that constantly undercuts its own continuity stakes, and thematic resonance.

Lets deal with the artificially crushed pacing first. The biggest victims of this are the side characters. There are way too many and they don’t have enough to do. Part of the premise of Romeo and Juliet as a play is that its really only about those two characters. They're not the most socially significant characters in their world, or the most self aware, but their relative insignificance in the grand scheme of things serves to highlight the meaninglessness of the violent grudge that leads to their deaths. The supporting cast is mostly there to flesh out that feud. They fight and die and that's about it.

In the grand tradition of YA fanfiction everywhere These Violent Delights desperately wants to expand these roles to give them their own hopes and fears and stories, and, in the grand tradition of YA zeitgeist, add some diversity to one of the English language’s most famous heterosexual romances. This book’s version of Benvolio and Mercutio, Benedict and Marshall (and we’ll get to the fucking names), are two bros in a bromoerotic friendship. It also adds Kathleen, a Capulet faction member, Rosalind’s sister, and a trans woman.

This will be an unpopular opinion — I’ve seen fans praise Gong’s novels for the diversity and confess disappointment in its absence in more recent novels — but I kinda hated it. Both of these are good ideas — representation is a noble goal, especially of a trans woman — but I can’t overemphasize just how little time these subplots get and just how irrelevant they are to the overall plot. Benedict and Marshall get a couple of cutaways that the audience can interpolate with their prior knowledge of m/m fanfiction. Kathleen gets a little meta-mystery around her backstory reveal conveyed over about two chapters. This backstory is interesting enough to be its own novel. A Shanghainese woman transes her gender while being educated in Paris and must impersonate her tragically dead sister in order to return home, in the 1920s? Don’t mind if I do! Why is it playing fourth or fifth fiddle to the heterosexual activities of literally Romeo and Juliet. None of this has anything to do with the actual plots, which are about teen melodrama and colonialism monsters. This means that even though they’re great ideas in isolation, they end up feeling like distractions. I was tempted to skip these chapters because they just weren’t important. Put uncharitably, representation in the form of side characters who exist to be diverse rather than to influence the plot in any way isn’t good representation at all. These Violent Delights would be a better story if these side plots were cut entirely, and these characters deserve a better book.

The side characters are the most egregious victims of the limited narrative space, but far from the only ones. Juliette and Roma get one internal character problem each — after four years in New York, Juliette feels like a foreigner in her own city, and Roma’s relationship to his violent father is on the precipice of total breakdown — which look like the beginning of a character arc, but vanish from the second half of the story. They are replaced by the feud meta-mystery stuff, which is much more predictable and much less interesting than the threads it replaced. The succession drama within the gangs is supposed to be important, but has so little relation to the actual plot that it only succeeds in establishing that Tyler (our Tybalt) sure is a character. Each gang has a loose affiliation with China’s two major political factions, the communists and the RoC nationalists, but this too is dismissed because there is not enough room for this book to be about both internal Chinese politics, the western foreigners slowly taking over the city, the animosity between the gangs, and a teen love story. Roma also has a sister! I guess!

The biggest space hogs are the Romeo and Juliet interpretation and the colonialism mystery, which are uneasy bedfellows. Romeo and Juliet is a play about the tragic deaths of two teens as a result of their uncompromisingly feuding families; part of the whole tragedy is how little external pressure is on the two groups. There’s no reason for them to hold this grudge and there’s no resources that they’re competing over. The fact that neither Capulet nor Montague really understand why they’re making such bad decisions is a major part of what makes the story so hopeless and tragic. There is no room in there for ‘also they unite to solve a supernatural mystery.’ Similarly, ‘a Shanghainese returnee discovers that the supernatural plague destroying her city is a hostile takeover by an English merchant’ is its own plot. ‘She also has this on-again off-again thing with a historical gang rival’ feels like a distraction. The high stakes of the supernatural plague and the systematic wrong of colonialism makes the comparatively lower stakes of teen melodrama seem meaningless and absurd. The two plots meet catastrophically in the climax. In one scene Juliette confronts Paul, the Englishman responsible for the disease and Roma is also there, standing awkwardly in the background. Paul sometimes makes a half-hearted cutting remark at Roma, but he might as well not be there, because Paul is Juliette’s antagonist, not Roma’s. Roma’s antagonist is his father, and that plotline never gets resolved. The two plots have so little to do with each other that at best all they do is take time away from each other. At worst, they deeply undermine each other, which brings us to the second problem with all these plots: they ruin each other’s thematic impact.

To put it succinctly: teenage romance and the violence of colonialism cannot be the same importance at the same time.

Romeo and Juliet is a very personal tragedy that is essentially a melodrama. It’s about the purity of young love. It’s about the overwhelming emotion of young love. It is fundamentally unimportant in the face of a systemic violence like colonialism.[[ It has become super trendy these days, especially in YA, to juxtapose a systemic injustice with an intimate emotional story, often but not always romantic. It is easy to see the motivation behind this: any particular experience of oppression is also extremely personal, and on the other hand an intimate emotional plot line may be used to add levity or hope to a situation that the protagonist is otherwise individually incapable of changing. However, a reasonable motivation doesn’t make this technique effective. At the end of the day systemic problems are structural by nature and are a fundamentally different scale from individual level conflicts.]] It is ludicrously naive to imagine colonialism defeated by the power of young love and in the face of the higher stakes of the slow takeover of Shanghai by westeners rich enough to buy it out from under the locals, the woes of two nineteen-year-olds who can’t be together are a distraction. The idea that there would be anything more important than either this relationship of the fuel ruins the context of the original play; the whole point of Romeo and Juliet is that there is no greater crisis going on and that the families have backed themselves into this corner. In These Violent Delights the plot is precipitated by events outside of the gangs’ control and with only one exception (Tyler’s attempt to kill Roma’s sister Alisa post-climax) all the major plot events happen because of someone outside of the gangs. I found myself often wondering, ‘why the heck is this a Romeo and Juliet adaptation at all?’

Unfortunately, the alternative isn’t necessarily better. The book’s version of Paris is Paul, son of an English merchant trying to set up drug deals with Juliette’s gang. As the story progresses, we discover that the plague of madness was brought to Shanghai in order to bend the city to his will. He has been intentionally it to his enemies and to the native Shanghainese this whole time. Also, the plague is spread via the vector of a shapeshifting fish-man who shoots infectious bugs out of his back as he swims through the river. It’s fine for the bad guy to have been colonialism the whole time, but saying that colonialism is a supernatural fish monster is, dare I say it, losing the thread of the metaphor a bit. Actually, I do dare say it. The subgenre of YA that deals with social justice plots like this one is at its best when it is at its most serious. These Violent Delights sucks because it is so fucking goofy. It is so reductive for colonialism to be a fish monster that I used it as a joke earlier in this paragraph. These two things are fine on their own but when they are thrown together they absolutely suck the soul out of each other.

The novel follows the details of Romeo and Juliet very closely despite having dropped the overall thematic message in favour of the colonialism thing, so there are a bunch of characters that have no reason to be there other than the fact that they appear in the play. Why is Rosalind here? Why would a 1920s Shanghai gang have an experimental physician on the payroll? Well, friar Lawrence needs to be here somehow and for whatever reason he can’t just be cooking drugs. It is too much like Romeo and Juliet to not be a straight up retelling and it is not a retelling.

As you may have noticed, all the characters have been named the kidzbop version of their names from the play. I can’t even begin to guess why. A lot of hay is made out of how many different places all the characters are from and how that affects their sense of belonging. Roma is Russian, technically a foreigner, but he has lived in Shanghai his whole life, unlike Juliette, whose western education makes her an outsider — but they’re all named like a Say Yes to the Dress wedding party. Marshall is unusual in that he’s the only central character who is both poor and Shanghainese. If any character ought to represent the people Roma and Juliette are ostensibly trying to protect, its this one, but you’d never know it because his name is fucking Marshall. Juliette directly addresses that she is ambivalent about using an English version of her name and feels like an outsider compared to her cousin, so why does he also have an English name? Names are a hugely meaningful place to express personal identity and narrative worldbuilding. As an example, in Babel protagonist Robin chooses that name when he is required by his English patron to choose a name befitting of his new country; we never learn his original Chinese name. Babel uses this to represent the colonization of the individual mind via language. It is a familiar topic for These Violent Delights, where the characters are the globe-trotting new generation of the 1920s, but that detail is fundamentally superfluous because the simplest opportunity to show rather than tell is dismissed in favour of naming them more like Romeo and Juliet.

There’s a lot more stuff in here that simply needs removing. Either a cause or a symptom of the overburdened narrative is that the book feels poorly edited. It badly needed a second pass. The turning point of the ending is that Juliette diffuses an encounter between White Flowers and Scarlets by pretending to betray Roma and faking Marshall’s death by shooting him with an empty handgun. It does not take a firearms expert to know that an empty gun clicks. It is extremely obvious that it is empty. It’s a whole trope! The foreboding click as the protagonist hasn’t counted their shots. Or perhaps the moment of tension diffuses as the villain realizes they’ve run out of firepower. Blanks are rounds that include gunpowder but no bullet, but that combustion is where the noise comes from. I’m complaining this much because this is a pivotal scene. The way the gun works is crucial to the relationship between all the major characters and the social premise of the sequel. This is not a small detail you can fudge for everyone except the true obsessives. It needed to be corrected. (Also, by the way, even a blank round can seriously injure a person at close range as the still combusting gunpowder exits the barrel). There’s a bunch more of these. A friend of mine who knows more (read: anything) about Chinese history pointed out that it is ahistorical for the qipaos to be described as ‘tight-fitting’ especially as tighter-fitting than a western flapper dress. In reality, both garments were much looser than our preconceived notions suggest. Why is Juliette the heir of the Scarlet gang when her male cousin really ought to be due to male-precedence primogeniture. It wouldn’t even change anything material about the plot for Juliette to be trying to seize the heir role from Tyler rather than to be defending it from him.

These Violent Delights is a poor love story, and a worse thriller, and a deeply unoriginal comment on colonialism. It is trying to do too many things to do any of them well. The most depressing part of this is that the book is so messy and its use of the play so diluted by all the other crap going on, that the use of Romeo and Juliet comes across as little more than a cynical feature of a popular play to get classics girlie dollars. A vicious end indeed.

#book review #read in 2023 #bookblr #book blogging #bookstagram #these violent delights #chloe gong #historical fantasy #historical fiction #ya #i know i've had a couple negative reviews in a row here i promise i've got some positive ones coming #also no pics because its been ages since i read this thing

[sticks-and-souls]

8, 22? :)

Thank you so much for sending this ask, I've always wanted to do one of these!!

8. What projects are you currently working on?

Long fics! (mostly) Which ultimately means I’m doing a lot of writing and not a lot of posting. I’ve never posted long fics before and I’m discovering that—because I’m trying to aim for certain places in a story—I need to have a strong foundation in my opening chapters. So I’m reworking them and revising them (hopefully not to death) every time I build another chapter. My two main long fics are:

a) Foxiyo political intrigue! I fell into Foxiyo on tumblr by accident (the way most of us have) and was so in love with them and came up with all these fluffy scenes between them that made me want to try my hand at a multi-chapter fic. Except I had no plot.

e.g.  Me: They’re hiding in a supply closet and overhear critical info! The ambiance! Such atmosphere! 

        Also me: What info, Souls??? How did they get there? How can you describe people plotting against them if you don’t have any plot???

…And in the process of finding any plot, I ended up coming up with a LOT of plot. But I really really like it so far and I’m really proud of the world building that I’ve done on the Coruscant political scene and imagining how Riyo and Fox each exist in that world and how they need support (and find it in each other). I’m hoping to start posting this fall/winter.

b) Maul redemption arc via Force Quest(TM) with Ahsoka. I have no chapters written but an entire outline composed of many staple fleshed out scenes, overall plot/character arcs, and main themes. This started as a casual musing of “what would cause Maul to turn to the Light?” that has ended up tackling the big questions about what makes people do evil acts--and when does that cross the line into them becoming evil people, whether people deserve forgiveness, is the world inherently uncaring, covered with loads of my own interpretations of the Light and Dark sides of the Force. 

In the meantime, I miss actually posting, so I have a thranto short-fic of loosely related one-shots tied together (the thranto brain rot is so real) that I’m trying to fit in to my writing time, and also the vibes for Battle Scars just refuse to let up and I have a 3rd chapter idea that’s starting to take shape. 

I have two other WIP ideas with enough of the plot/narrative sketched out that I haven’t let them go yet, but based on how long it takes for me to write content for the projects above that I really care about, I’m not sure I’ll ever get to them. (but if anybody goes rabid over them posted here I’ll consider them more closely). They are:

a) Codywan Pride and Prejudice AU. It would be a parody vibe and I would be trying to practice writing humor but I watched P&P this summer and I think my idea of execution is solid. 

b) Rexsoka Modern-day Road Trip AU. I actually really love this one and if I come back to Rexsoka, I would love to do this. Anakin wants to do the Great American Road Trip for his bachelor party; themes include coming of age, you can never go home but maybe that���s not as bad as it sounds, and found family. 

22. Do you know how your fic will end before you start writing?

If you define writing as “opening a file and starting to create a chapter that will eventually make it to AO3”, then, for the most part, yes (Battle Scars being the glaring exception). The details of that ending are vague, but if I were to give a summary of the entire work, I can tell you the sentence that describes the ending before I decide to start writing. In fact, it’s usually the realization that I have enough plot/character points for a full story that incentivizes me to finally start writing “Chapter One”. 

That said, at least 75% of my “writing time” is a Notes file with my story ideas and completely informal scene sketches. Even for my two “probably never write this” ideas above, I have Notes files several pages long outlining the plot points, random scene details, story ambiance, and even some dialogue for key scenes that I didn’t want to forget. And I seriously will probably never find time to write them. 

Thanks again for asking and I would honestly love to ask these same questions back to you!

#foxiyo #sw the clone wars #my writing #ask meme

[niaking]

Bebop Thoughtz, part five

If you don't want Cowboy Bebop spoilers, stick with part one.

I just finished rewatching the cartoon. I thought I'd make a list of things the anime does better, and things the live-action version does better.

Things the anime does better:

humor - The humor of the anime version largely comes from visual gags like people having animals on their heads. (They go back to this well three times, and it works every time.) The humor in the live-action version mostly comes from Spike's dry wit and Faye's use of oddly childish obscenity, which largely fell flat for me.

characters - The characters of the cartoon manage to be charming, at least at times, despite their obvious flaws. For example, Faye reveals herself to be pretty amoral (stealing from Spike and Jet, lying/breaking promises to Ed), and yet her tragic backstory makes her compelling and somewhat sympathetic in my view.

racism/sexism/homophobia/transphobia - The caricatures of Native Americans, Black people, and Latinos in the anime are wildly racist. I personally think the episode Mushroom Samba takes the cake for racism, but Heavy Metal Queen is a close second. Jet and Spike are constantly talking trash about women. (Spike also hates children and dogs. This is our hero!) The homophobia and transphobia mostly comes out in Gren's two-episode story arc, which I'll get into later.

fatalism - The ending of the series is BLEAK. [Major spoilers coming] Ed and Ein leave the crew, possibly to reunite with Ed's dad who can't seem to remember her name, gender, or the fact that he left her in an orphanage. Faye leaves in search of her childhood home, finds it destroyed, and returns to the Bebop. Spike basically commits suicide by storming the HQ of his enemies, after watching the alleged love of his life die. I say alleged because their love story is not developed at all in the anime.

Things the live action does better:

make sense - The episodes of the live-action show all have fairly linear, easy-to-follow storylines, whereas some of the anime episodes feel more like fever dreams.

provide an overarching plot that tied the episodes together - Some of the anime episodes feels like the creators came up with an idea for a villain, and based the whole episode around that, rather than trying to build a coherent narrative. I like how, in the live-action version, Spike and Vicious' relationship is the through-line, and each development brings us closer to their final confrontation. Knowing that we are always moving forward, to the resolution of the overall conflict, gives you something to hold on and a reason to pay attention.

family dynamics - Though I found the live-action versions of the characters charmless, we like them because they are willing to risk their lives for each other. Each has lost a family. Spike is an orphan. Faye was frozen, lost her memory, and the closest thing she has to a family is a woman who scammed her into believing she was Faye's mom. Jet is divorced or separated from his wife, and his daughter, who he has minimal contact with, now calls one Jet's cop ex-buddies "daddy." The members of the Bebop represent a chosen family, and even though they are often not honest or kind with each other, they always seem to show up for each other when most needed. What the live action lacks in charming characters, it makes up for in heartwarming vibes.

develop the backstory for Spike and Vicious' relationship - Episode 9 is one of my favorite eps, and it's one of the ones that strays the most from the source material. This ep is pure backstory and it gives us a reason to care about Spike, Vicious, Julia and their weird love triangle, which was barely perceptible in the anime. It also tries to humanize Vicious by giving him an abusive father, but... I'm not sure that justifies his impulsiveness or bloodlust.

bigger roles for Ana/Annie and Gren - These are extremely minor characters in the original who get much better developed in the live action. In the anime, Annie owns a... porn store? Liquor store? Corner store? Unclear. Her and Spike clearly have an affinity for each other, but we only really see her once before she gets murdered. In the live-action version, Ana is a powerful Black disabled woman: a jazz club owner, a spy of sorts, a liaison between rival parties within The Syndicate. In the original, Gren is a man who grew breasts due to a hormone imbalance. In the live action, Gren is trans femme without breasts, and also Ana's right hand in running the club and keeping the troublemakers at bay. Ana and Gren were my favorite characters, and least to have to least-compromised moral compasses of all the characters. I loved Tamara Tunie as Ana. She and Spike have a cute flirtation going, but I never understood, in either version, why this character was so loyal to Spike.

surprise betrayal - One of the major plot points of the live-action version is Vicious' scheme to overthrow the Elders. In the anime, the scenes of the actual betrayal are pretty confusing, and involve, I believe, an exploding bird? In the live-action version, Vicious overthrows the Elders in a surprise twist that really got me, so I don't want to spoil it for you.

give women agency - In the anime, no one really cares what Julia wants. She's just "the girl," a prize to be won by either the "hero" or the villain. In the live-action version, she claims her power in a way that I, as a viewer, did not at all see coming. She's a much more well-developed character: smart and manipulative.

The humor of the original and and charm of its characters carried it a long way. Perhaps remakes are destined to disappoint, but this one did some cool things with casting, storylines, and of course, fight scenes. The fact that John Cho was almost 50 when he filmed them makes it all the more impressive.

#cowboy bebop

[skillbard]

Drone

Noun: A Deep Sustained Or Monotonous Sound

The following is an excerpt from Drone director Sean Buckelew's much longer in-depth behind-the-scenes article found here.

Drone is concerned with some pretty lofty concepts and we wanted to be sure we fully understood the director Sean Buckelew’s point of view before we dove in, so we requested a reading list and pounded through some relevant literature in front of a log fire on our Christmas break. We found Frankenstein to be the most fruitful reference, paralleling so many of the key ideas in Sean’s script in an equally lyrical way.

To kick us off, Sean sent us a WIP along with some spotting notes. In true Buckelew fashion, they were fun & casually worded but extremely well thought-out.

His first note: “Overall, I think the sound/music oscillates between two modes: one is kind of bureaucratic and banal, the other is dreamy, impressionistic and poetic” presented to us the idea of a duality at the heart of the story. So, borrowing a technique from David Sonnenschein’s book Sound Design: The Expressive Power of Music, Voice, and Sound Effects in Cinema, we plotted a table of two columns with relevant motifs aligned with the two main ‘modes’ that Sean discusses. We thought the film a little too nuanced to label “good vs evil” or “man vs machine” so we decided upon the much broader terms “Inside” & “Outside” to name the two forces.

Our “Bipolar Evaluation” of Drone:

We then mapped out the timeline of the film with colour-coded slugs that tracked the two main polarities to help us plot the emotional beats of the story arc, forming a solid guide for us to follow while we worked.

A couple of weeks later, we presented our first sketch to Sean: We went big from the outset, unabashedly invoking signifiers from the sub-genre of ‘hollywood flying music’, Namely: a soaring melody, vivid chordal gestures, and rich, lush strings over a floaty waltz feel. This OTT feeling seemed to elevate Newton’s monologue into the realm of fantasy, contrasting with the cold cynicism of the office scenes.

In a previous collaboration with Sean, Lovestreams, we relished the opportunity to create an  Enya-inspired, floating & ethereal ‘semi-New Agey’ score that could perform on a dual level: Being playfully ironic while legitimately tugging at heartstrings. We approached Drone with a similar sensibility.

Sean’s response was very enthusiastic: “you guys are fucking brilliant, skillbard strikes AGAIN!!!!”. Smashed it first time!

But really all credit goes to Sean for making it easy to get right. When a filmmaker  understands their message, thinks things through as thoroughly as Sean does, and takes the time to communicate so effectively with collaborators, it starts to feel like all we need to do is go away and start pressing the buttons. He had notes, of course, but nothing major, so we pressed on, fleshing out our demo and writing cues for the rest of the film, sending regular WIPs to Sean for his thoughts. We also started work on the sound elements, focusing mostly on the bombing scene to establish overall dynamics of the film, since that’s the loudest/most intense bit.

Now we had established the musical DNA for Newton’s journey and we set about extrapolating, variating and developing outwards to set up the other cues.

EG During Newton’s death cue we rendered a sombre, minor-key variation from the core motif.

As usual, music was the most noticeable emotional & atmospheric signifier but every sound you hear was considered in terms of how it contributed to the story emotively, narratively & even conceptually. Perhaps the most obvious example is processing of the dialogue EG: a feeling of alienation was often achieved through tactical intelligibility of dialogue. It’s not always clear what Newton is trying to tell us while he’s delivering his manifesto because, ultimately, it was never heard or understood outside of creating a spectacle.

Similarly, a lot of the dialogue in Drone is heard through speakers, we’re not sure if this is something we discussed with Sean but our perception was that this was an expression of technology’s power to create distance between people. It seemed important that this is something that is felt by the audience. We did a lot of ‘reamping’ by hacking gritty, small speakers to make this talker—>listener detachment palpable.

Once all the music was written and demoed and approved by all parties, we sent our sample-based mockups to our talented orchestrator Finn McNicholas (Midsommer, Daniel Isn’t Real, Swansong) and briefed him on how we’d like them to end up when played by the orchestra. Finn listened carefully to what we’d programmed in MIDI, transcribing it to page to achieve everything we were expressing in a way a room full of 30 people can understand and play without complication.

See the full scores for this cue here.

To invoke Newton’s destructive intentions, Finn helped us pin down and notate a number of ‘extended techniques’ for our orchestra to try; often ‘unmusical’ playing styles that push the instruments outside of its regular usage into more savage tones.

This musical thread begins during the night time cue ‘Alienation.’ Newton’s monologue describes an “interwoven fabric” while we see a spaghetti junction. We wrote a long sustained drone featuring an airy random textural movement from the string players, giving a musical sense of threads rubbing together.

Later in that cue when Newton describes the destruction he is about to bring forth while we see a field in flames, we wrote two powerfully opposing chords with a tense and nervous tremolo, going between ‘sul tasto’ (string player playing close to the neck) and ‘sul pont’(string player playing close to the bridge) to express his destructiveness and contradictory nature.

In the death scene after he crashes we hear a scratchy gnarly string articulation, Newton’s full destructiveness wrought…

When we had worked through exactly what we wanted with the orchestration, we attended and directed the session with the Budapest Art Orchestra (Queen’s Gambit, Locke & Key, Godless).

A portrait of two composers and orchestrator on the day of recording

Covid prevented us from attending the session personally—which was a shame because a pint of beer in Budapest is like £2!

Unfortunately their live room camera fell over immediately upon starting our session so this is the best angle we have.

Hear each cue in isolation here:

[rawliverandcigarettes]

Ask Game : ALL OF THEM !!!!!! Or, perhaps slightly more realistically, 💭 ! 👓! 🚀 ! 💥! and/or [INSERT PREFERENCE HERE] ! (they're all free choice, answer as many or as little as you like)

Hahaha yes that would be maybe A Lot (though I did have fun, these are good asks! I might answer more at some point!!)

I have already replied to some of them here!

💭 What inspires you and your writing?

I always found the "inspiration" questions to be really hard to answer, because I'm not always 100% sure what qualifies as inspiration to be honest? If I had to answer beyond the obvious (just living one's life, watching others live theirs, get involved with other people's art, learn cool facts about being alive and how we made it obtuse and complicated), I think my thing is to notice intersections, heighten them and push them in a direction that I can then observe? I think it's why I really like fan creation: there isn't the arbitrary part of making things up that could be literally anything, it's more about reckoning with particular feelings and exploring where they come from and what they mean. I think I create in a very... reactory way, if that makes sense? Which sounds awful put like that, but oh well!!!!

👓 What helps you focus when you write?

Two things!

Music and a drink of some kind (generally tea or coffee, but can be a nice cold something, or even alcohol in rare occasions)

NO INTERNET.

This second part is so crucial. As time goes by, I think I have a fairly decent amount of suspicion that I fall somewhere on the ADHD spectrum, and so the internet simply murders my ability to focus. I didn't use to be so bad, but two burnouts before hitting 25 years old will mess up a brain real good, and now I need my way out of the interwebs to do anything remotely productive.

I am so worried about the inevitable moment where my old phone dies and I *have* to get a smartphone.

🚀 Do you like to outline your fic first or create as you go?

It mostly depends on the story. If it's a short piece, I either don't outline or outline in extremely broad strokes.

When it comes to longer pieces, I do outline pretty extensively! I have developed a method that works extremely well for me and involves some sort of table that recaps what's going on in a given chapter, but also notes any crucial information we're supposed to learn regarding main character arcs, main plot and subplots. I only get to the table phase once I have a seriously good idea of what the story will be, which usually takes several notebooks to iron out.

Even then, the outline is pretty loose, and I know I will make adjustments while putting the actual words on the page --there's always something I forgot to take into account, or a narrative opportunity I didn't realize was there to begin with.

(also sometimes I forget what I put in my outline and remembers too late oops)

💥 What is one canon thing that you wish you could change?

Oh nooooooo this is so hard!!! And what is hard about it is to only pick one!!!

So I'm trying to pick the one that would have the most positive impact overall, and that reflects my arbitrary bias the least (it still will, but I'm not picking something like "more salarians", which for sure would be great for me but wouldn't do much to enhance the story as a whole)

So. I love Mass Effect 2, I really do. It's my favorite of the trilogy, mostly thanks to its bold narrative design that was pretty revolutionary at the time, and its cast of amazing characters. But... I think the main plot kind of makes very little sense, and its connection to the rest of the trilogy is tenuous at best.

The thing I would change is that instead of Collectors reaping out humans colonies to make a Super Human Reaper, which is pretty stupid, Collectors are still there (and maybe still kidnapping colonists why not), but they are used as an inside job inside the Terminus Systems to stirr trouble and mess things up between different factions, increasing tensions between Council Space and the Terminus Systems before the invasion strikes. We can keep the whole game pretty similar, except that the danger is less in humans disappearing (which... ok mary sues why is it always about you) and more in "we are eating our own instead of being united against the Reapers when they do arrive". We could get a great peak of who are these people opposing the Council and why, and get a sense of the "dark" side of the Milky Way --which I think was always the intention, though it got a little muddied-- and why it still deserves to be saved. We can keep everything: the suicide mission, us being allied with Cerberus and questionning the Alliance, the diverse perspective of all these suicidal outcasts... And!!! That would justify giving depth to batarians, I did it, I made batarians part of my change without making it seem as if the one thing I would change is to write batarians in a better way!!!

(my other pick for those who are curious would be to rework Priority: Thessia and make it less sexist. I really think just reworking this mission would make ME3 overall less weirdly bitter --though toning down the sexism in the entire game also works)

And I'm throwing a wildcard generated by a number generator for good measure:

🎁 Have a piece of a WIP you want to share?

That one's pretty easy! Here's a snippet from The Empire of Preys, from the perspective of the one and only, our favorite eugenist, racist and misandrist space frog: Dalatrass Linron!!!

(it's not edited, first draft, etc, thread with caution --also Dalatrass Linron's first name is Nemore)

Nemore ignored the alien’s brutish sturdiness to return the salarian his defiant gaze; a pastel shade that looked like a discreet blush, an unbecoming secret. He was young, his clothes baggy and practical and unkempt; used to run away from the local city watch, his angles sharpened by the toll of constant revolt, or the streets, or long-term overdose. She wondered whether his mother knew where he was, if she knew about the imprint that krogan claws left on his skin and how it was now overpowering the imprinting on her; whether these claws ever dug deep enough to soil her son’s blood.

She clenched her teeth. Her crusade had never been about saving everyone –especially not souls desperate to sink themselves back to lower cycles. The Salarian Union was a collective struggle, but collective didn’t imply all-encompassing. Nemore was well aware of the sacrifices left to make. All those wayward girls and motherless boys; tragically lost, incapable of being saved.

She wrenched her attention away from the nauseating pair, and back at the crowd chanting her name.

“They’re too close,” Nemore murmured to her security chief. “Get them away from my people.”

Thank you so much, those are really fun!

From this ask game!

#asks #fanfiction #mass effect critical #mass effect 2 #halfway home #the empire of preys #batarians #dalatrass linron #yes the snippet is in fact about a salarian and krogan punk boyfriends #fucking up dalatrass linron's rally #and we do stan

[jeanmoreaux]

Everybody, everywhere “let’s enjoy the show we got instead of complaining—-“

Oh but I will complain. I will lament. Forever in grief and mind you, in righteous anger too.

Cheers 🍻

Six of Crows was a story that was there for me during a particularly dark part of my life, and even with all my little grumbles of plot holes and wishes for what could have been in the books—it’s quite dear to me, for sentimental reasons. Also, it was just so much fun to read. I felt some semblance of joy reading the duology.

So to see the characters onscreen reduced mostly to stereotypes and tropes, and say copy-paste lines from the books without having earned the development to deliver those lines…. and have people say it’s fine or worse, that it’s to be celebrated is…blasphemous.

i’m with you on all of this!!! i mean, i am sorry, but the show was the PERFECT opportunity to improve on the source material—fix what wasn’t working, extend on existing storylines and themes, add nuance, spend more time with the characters, explore different facets of events… the possibilities were endless, and they didn’t chose to do any of that. i mean, quite frankly, when an adaptation fails to match the narrative, emotional, and thematic depth of the original material, what even is its reason for existing???? i don’t need to experience a similar story done worse. and that’s why i am frustrated with sabs2. because obviously we know they did have a solid foundation to draw inspiration from. the books are Right There. we know they didn’t have to rush through all these plot point & character development. we know they had at least the basics of a political intrigue plot at their disposal. we know they had a solid resolution for alina's arc at the ready. and with s1 they showed that they are capable of decently adapting and expanding the story. so there is really no excuse for them to mess up as badly as they did. i think it’s more than fair to complain about that. like you said, rightous anger. i am not gonna thank them for stripping a perfectly good story of all its meaning and generally doing a bad job with their characters. why should i not get to complain about that? tbh i am more confused if you feel similar about everything that’s wrong with this season and don’t complain. you shouldn't have to thank them for scraps and breadcrumbs. you should be out there acknowledging the good and the bad while urging them to do better. and just let's be real for a moment, enjoying bits and pieces of a show and complaining about the overall utterly inept writing of said show is not mutually exclusive—you can do it in the same breath.

#cheers my friend 🍻 #i am not sure if people think complaining will hurt a show or???? #i mean networks and streaming services only care about money not the quality of the product #and the matter of the fact is that if shows suck people generally stop watching #which leads to shows being cancelled prematurely #and i actually don't want them to get cancelled. i want them to do better. #aaanyway #anon you an me are on the same page about all of this. we'll complain and lament and grief just as much as our poor little heart desire #bc that's what we deserve to do if we feel like it <3 #anon #answer #have a great day! #mish watches sab #s&b2

[bluefurcape]

Hi! I'm a big fan of your work and am in the process of trying to revive a very old hobby of writing my own fanfics. I would love to hear what your process of writing is like. How do you go from an idea to a story line? How do you deal when you reread what you've written and think, wow, that is some lengthy exposition/dialogue/etc there? I have reached out to a couple authors in the community with the same questions so no worries if you aren't able to get to it!

Really cool of tumblr not to let me know when I get a message <3

Thanks for reaching out! I hope that things are going well with your writing.

Idea >> Story

I'm going to be pretty honest, I don't get a lot of ideas these days. I have this superstitious theory that my brain shuts off the ability if I watch TV/Movies with plot in it, but I can't resist watching so it's been a dry spell of like most of this year. This week though I did manage to stop so I finally managed to snag something. It was near the tail end of sleeping so I laid there twitching like a dreaming dog while I thought about it in a half alive state.

Anyway! That's not really your question. If I do get an idea, it's usually the scraps of something that appeals to me. I play around with what comes to me first. For example, if I think of a piece of internalization, then I work around that. The first line of "Marked By Fate" where Kakashi hates a baby was what came into my head and from there I went to what it would be like if you feared your own soulmate (for ethical reasons). The recent idea I had was more of a setting that appealed to me (hint: a type of store) and not too much more except that with most of my fics it does have a 'goal' in mind of a romantic ending. But that is a type of framework, loose as it is, so I started thinking about the story circle which is a highly reduced version of the hero's journey. The steps don't make total sense to me all the time so I have to re-explain it to myself, but the basic circle goes:

you, need, go, search, find, give, return, changed.

"need" is often actually two things: an external goal and internal need (of like a "lesson" to be learned)

Not always, but many readers find satisfaction from a story where the character changes, so sometimes it is easier to work backwards. With a romance story, if the 'goal' is for them to accept love, generally then, how are they rejecting or missing love in the beginning? Etc etc

No need to put a lot of pressure on it in the beginning though because sometimes, you only can see the full picture after you come to the end (and you go on your own hero's journey).

2. Editing

This is the point where I go from big to small. I think more critically of the flow of the overall story (going back to the story circle...sometimes) and usually if the character arc is not clear enough, that is what I attack first. Then it's down to the actual sentences. I look at each to see what filler words can be taken out ('had' is a big culprit for me) and repetitive descriptions and verbal tags. The way I test exposition is if I'm using it like a time saver/skip to cut out boring shit or if I'm avoiding writing something that is important to show the character arc. Dialogue is a bit trickier, but I think a lot of people use filler stuff that we say naturally but doesn't work well in a narrative work where it needs to serve some sort of purpose (character or plot). Like I often will be tempted to write people going "good morning" a lot and just doing stupid small talk lol.

(secret 3rd question)

If I think about this all too much I get way too in my head about it. My suggestion is to digest it and then forget about it. Write what you want to write. Look back with an editor's eye later.

edit: as ppl can see in this mostly unedited post i have a terrible tendency to repeat the same words in a sentence (i was abt to write same sentence) so that shit has to get weeded out

#asks #writing advice #sue words

[sammydem0n64]

here's a fun question i've thought of recently! since you would like lilyheart to become an actual animated show one day (i think?? /lh) how long do you think you'd make the episodes?? would they be short, like 15 minutes along, kind of similar to how SU did them? or would they be a full 30 minutes?? how do you think you'd pace them?? would a couple episodes be filled with a lot of lore and then a filler fun episode (to show minor plots??) or perhaps everyone's plots would gradually all meet up in the same place?? just interesting questions to think about,, 🤔🤔

I was JUST thinking about Lilyheart man!! How'd you know!! But this IS a neat question!

I haven't really thought about the lengths, but honestly I'd think the episodes would be close to 30 minutes! Maybe not exactly that, probably around the shorter 20 minutes side (like 24-25) but it'd give room for the plot to breath and such

Pacing for individual episodes would be dependant on the plot, since a "The Adults and Karson Kids find some fucked up creature" and "Berry kills a man" are different narratives that often intersect, but obviously wouldn't have the same pacing. As for the overall story, the pacing is a tad slower for major plot beats. Like the introduction to the supernatural elements happens fast (Frost would be introduced in the first episode, and quickly the kids run into supernatural stuff thanks to him) but things like meeting Dracula, Smiley, etc etc happen later and of course their stories overarch

In terms of pacing, I will say that the Karson Killer reveal sorta happens early on? But it's still a twist, bc in the narrative, Berry is actually introduced early on! But he's not presented as an antagonist, more like a comic relief character for Frost to bond with. Of course later on we learn his true colors but it still takes eons for the main cast to figure out his motivations.

As for fillar episodes, yeah there'd be some! There's this whole spring break arc where it's just different groups of the main cast doing stuff! Locke takes Blue, DJ, Diamond, Gem, Dashi and Parker back to Maryland to look for Maryland cryptids, Loxy and Fiona go to stay with their uncle Apollo and crazy shit happens there, Ricky is sent away by his dad and meets Chastin due to. things, and Frost stays behind with the secondary cast (Charles, Miles, Tia, etc) to discover some things. The filler is fun and does have some minor plot and world building stuff, mostly to break up the dread of the main plot fghjk

I WOULD say that everyone's plots do end up intersecting at some point of course, that's just how the narrative works. The Karson Killers are accidentally thrown into the supernatural stuff, the supernaturals have to deal with the killers and their mayhem against their kind, Parker realizes his sister is working with the man who planned to make him a killer, etc etc fghjkl

I really need to get an exact timeline of the major events in order by like, the month. Since Lilyheart takes place over the school year, they have nine months for all of this chaos and I gotta figure out when certain stuff happens specifically, but yeah! Thanks for this question this was super neat

#Lilyheart lore is so fun tbh I really need to somehow force myself to hyperfixate on it again #I love my blorbos!! the gijinkas just have my autistic ass in a chokehold #asks #don't even ask how many seasons I'd want. idk man FGHJK

[rmorde]

The Husky and His White Cat Shizun (2HA, Erha) delivered everything I wanted in a story plus everything I never knew I would actually want in a story.

When I consumed all four books and realized there was more, I was horrified. So, I ventured to all fan translations I can get and practically lost sleeping hours to finish it. It is that good imo.

First off tho, it is not for the faint of heart. Do not be fooled by the cover with pretty art. The premise barely scratches the surface of how dark the story is. Book 4 is also a fucking trap that lulls you into bringing down your defenses before giving you an upper cut in the face then pummeling down your soul into tiny little pieces.

It promised me a cute albeit dark-ish story of two men falling in love. However, what it delivered was a narrative with a thin veneer of fluff to hide tons of absolute brutality concerning racism, classism, elitism, generational trauma, body horror, genocide, rape, mob mentality, gossips, and so much more.

At its core tho, it is still a love story. You just need the patience of a saint and nerves of steel to power through all the pain and agony after the Farming Arc (Basically, be like Chu Wanning as a Reader). ----> I guess you can summarize my feelings as "Went in for the BL. Stayed for the plot. Surprised how underneath that pain, horror, and tragedies woven in the story - it was always about love."

Sure, there were asspulls here (Nangong Bloodline Mo Ran) and there (Butterfly Boned Beauty Feast Mo Ran). There were attempts to set up those reveals tho but they were a bit clunky. However, it is not too detrimental to the overall appeal of the story for me. There were weird phrasings and word choices too but I gave them a slide since it is a light novel after all.

The gore in the story is unexpectedly top notch tho. The fights and monsters are interesting. The stakes in the plot really ramps up the suspense. While some Reveals are fairly obvious, they were still rewarding because they were set up quite nicely such as the reveal of 0.5 Chu Wanning's soul being implanted in the current timeline Chu Wanning, Taxian-Jun appearing, and Shi Mei not being as nice as he presents himself to be.

I also like how redemption was explored in the story. A lot of characters, like Mo Ran, were presented with second chances to fix their own fuck ups. While the villainous characters were sympathetic, they were not given a pass. All of them have to work hard and make the right choices to achieve true redemption.

Just for example: Mo Ran. He feels remorse for everything he had done as Taxian-Jun. He did his best to make up for it. Chu Wanning even forgives him. However, it was not enough. Because the wrongs he had done are not just againstbWanning after all. He still had to pay for his sins with his peaceful life as Grandmaster and earn his happy ending through zombie Taxian-Jun.

There are many more characters trying to seek redemption in the story but I think it would be better if that is in a separate post instead.

Now, another recurring theme featured in Erha is kindness. In the story, Kindness can both be a blessing or a curse. A small amount of it can have big repercussions. Also, contrary to what most people think, kindness is a choice that requires a lot of (mostly thankless) hard work and sacrifice.

Anyway, Erha is my first danmei and I love it. It is dark but with a nice satisfying ending. I'll check out others. Scumbag Villain Self Saving System seems to be a good follow up but from I have read so far about it, it's kind of a parody/comedy type of story?

Maybe I'll check out Heaven Official's Blessing first instead.

#finally finished speed reading the novel #wow was it roller coaster #will be reading it a second time for further analysis #but i like it overall and its definitely my cup of tea #a horror-romance dark story that puts characters and readers thru the wringer #but is rewarding in the end if you pulled through everything

[pridepages]

Rough All Under: Undergrounder

I finished Undergrounder by J.E. Glass. I have thoughts...

Here there be spoilers!

The indie publishing world is full of diamonds in the rough. It is also, unfortunately, full of raw material still in need of refining. J.E. Glass’s Undergrounder represents the tragedy of both the publishing industry and the struggle of queer literature generally. 

A sci-fi queer feminist take on Beauty and the Beast, this novel features Alex: a sprightly, intrepid, beautiful sapphic journalist who finds herself attacked one night as part of a revenge-hit on the streets of New York City. Her body is thrown off a bridge, and she literally washes down into the city’s secret underbelly where a society run by a mysterious scientist in hiding has been thriving for the better part of 30 years. Among its residents is Alex’s savior--and love interest--Leanna, “Lee,” who appears to be some kind of monstrous-looking mutant with a heart of gold. Together, the two of them build a new life together and fall in love even as forces around them threaten to tear them apart.

The plot is where part of my problems begin. I won’t summarize further because it gets off-the-rails silly: all parties have mob connections, those mob connections are hunting for their various targets, the reasons why are convoluted, and none of it makes much sense or is terribly compelling.

This book was meant as the first in the series. The first volume clearly is meant to serve mostly as a primer in the world building and as the introduction to the various characters. The problem with that method is that pacing suffers. I couldn’t turn off this background hum in my brain as I was reading that was urging me to restructure scenes, to switch things around, to cut other things shorter in order to make the tenuous logic of the premise and the natural arc of the stakes sweep a reader along. Overall, the story judders and clunks, making it a struggle to suspend disbelief. And that’s the real problem. I have no objection to silly action-adventure books, but if I’m not caught up in your spell, then I’m going to see the machine behind the curtain. If the illusion’s ruined, then I’m no longer feeling the magic.

Plotting and pacing weren’t the only places this book suffered. Dialogue fell flat. And point of view kept switching without clear reason or warning. (While all of it was told in third person, the text would close-third follow one character and then mid-scene switch for a second to close-third someone else. When that happens, it’s incredibly distracting. Point of view and perspective matter. Stronger writers know that you should pick vantage points with intention.) All in all, it became a lot of tell instead of show and that made the book an even harder slog on top of everything else.

So, it’s a cringe book. There are a lot of them. Why do I think it’s a tragedy?

Because I know what it takes to write a book. The first few drafts of a novel are hard to do, and they come out bad. Every one of them. Because all you’re supposed to be doing is telling yourself the story. Then, you go back and you re-write and revise on global levels and on sentence levels to make it better. But even then, your work won’t be publishing level worthy. What you really need to make a good book is a good editorial team.

Here’s the reality: not every creative writer with potential gets one of those. Getting published traditionally is an uphill battle even for white cishet writers/narratives because publishers have generally told debut writers: you are on your own. You must market the book yourself. You’ll get only some editorial attention. But the publisher’s goal is to throw stuff out there and see what sells. After you explode, when you become a John Green or a Colleen Hoover, then they’ll put more effort into helping you make your books the best they can be because then you’re a safe bet.

So imagine how much harder it becomes when you’re writing a queer book.

I cheer to see the Casey McQuistons and the Alice Osemans of the world making it (relatively) big. But it’s a struggle. For every one of them, there are hundreds--nay thousands--of queer storytellers out there who will only be read by a fraction of the audience. They’ll never get the same level of praise. Their stuff will be lost in the wash. It sucks. It’s wrong. Capitalism and homophobia are the nightmare shackles of our society.

So I don’t want to just sneer at ‘bad’ books and dismiss them. I see them for what they are: raw potential from creative queer minds who are fighting to get out the kind of representation and the kind of stories they want to see in the world. I respect the hell out of it! It takes some of the deepest courage possible to put yourself out there.

So I sigh as I say: Undergrounder isn’t a good book. But it’s a brave one. And I hope that Glass and every other queer writer out there keeps telling stories and keeps refining their craft. Because it’s rough out there, living in the underground. And we need to keep fighting to come up, come out, and be seen.

#undergrounder #je glass #wlw #sapphic #lesbian #lgbt reads #queer lit