#because no one was actually talking about the existing characters and story

[ofbreathandflame]

who do you think is the most realistic abuser between rhysand and tamlin?

Hi anon!!!

I feel like the overblown for Tamlin has a specific function, and so I usually end-up disagreeing with anti-Tamlin (not criticisms, but this particular crowd of people - if you know, you know ) sentiments. First and foremost, Tamlin and Rhys are purposely made into foils; that is, we are supposed to look at their actions and compare – once we get to MAF. In the first book, the story isn’t necessarily trying to make a point about Tamlin, so the ‘red flags’ being pointed out aren’t moments of intentional, tactical abuse.

I don’t think there’s an actual ‘realistic’ way to experience abuse. I don’t think it’s an adequate way to talk about abuse because there isn’t a universal experience with abuse. Everyone’s experience is different! There are signs, and staples that can help people identify abusive partners and/or experiences, but those experiences in and of themselves are unique, as is the response to abuse.  I’ve always thought of Tamlin as a blank canvas that can be imposed upon. He’s abusive, in the fact he does a string of abusive things. He has all the hallmarks of an abuser…but none of the threads that make him feel…like anything more than a canvas, in my opinion. Like – I see how people see their abuser in him, but I also don’t believe he’s a very consistent character. He doesn’t do things for the same reasons, as MaF tries to argue; he also doesn’t act the same between those books. It’s subjective, but character wise he doesn’t stay the same.  I’m sorry, but I genuinely disagree with the way Feyre characterizes Tamlin. If the story argues that Tamlin developed abusive tendencies because of his trauma, great! But like,,,the story tries to argue that he was always like that, and Feyre just never noticed and I just…disagree. I have my issues with Tamlin, naturally, but I think the reason Rhys is much scarier to me, is that he consistently has the same justification, with seemingly no introspection. He gets away with the abuse because he is constantly sympathized with. The only reason I don’t dislike Tamlin is because he faces consequences. Rhys doesn’t. He also does the same abusive things to Feyre in like…every book. He doesn’t have a character arc. So, it’s not realism I’m looking at, but consistency.

The more fruitful question should be consistency. Is the dynamic between Tamlin and Feyre consistent, and my answer to that is no. I don’t believe we get a pattern of abuse that is consistent across the two books Tamlin is heavily featured. Tamlin having anger issues is a characteristic that merely exists, for one, because Tamlin is naturally an adaptation of another character and therefore embodies those characteristics. It’s not to say that Tamlin doesn’t have a particular way of handling trauma (see: violence), but that consistently, Tamlin has always known to remove himself from the general public when he does. We never see him leverage his violence against his peers or Feyre ever – even when Feyre is effectively his prisoner. So while his anger is a consistent character trait, it isn’t a consistent abusive Trait. It’s also…the norm for stress relief in this society (see: Rhys + Cass + Az’s schedule beat downs to ‘calm rhys down’). He’s also never used violence against anyone in the entirety of TaR to ‘calm down.’

This is a change for Rhys, as discussed in a previous post, who actively does consistently leverage violence against Feyre (and his Inner Circle) since his introduction in the first book. Tamlin, as initially characterized, is revulsed so heavily by having to hurt his people, that he physically cannot go through with Amarantha’s curse. He chooses his people. He is disgusted with having to whip Lucien. He physically couldn’t stand what Amarantha did to Lucien’s eye – so much so that he vomited as soon as he saw it. In MaF, this entire dynamic (not just his abuse of Feyre, but of his citizens) becomes of focal point. The story tries to argue that Tamlin would willingly harm his own soldiers, and Lucien, when in the first book he literally stood against Amarantha and refused to participate in the curse, with no power. Tamlin doesn’t allow Feyre to leave the house in MaF, yet in TAR, when Feyre is attacked by those monsters in the forest, Tamlin literally just tells Feyre to be careful when she goes out, he tells her to stay close when he’s not there, and they leave it at that. Tamlin doesn’t ask Feyre ‘what does she want from’, as we established. All I’m saying is there’s no consistency in this behaviour. The story can’t even figure out whether Tamlin has always been like this or has just become like this.

And then my next question become has Tamlin ever leveraged violence against Feyre, prior to the events of MaF – and the answer is no. So not only is it not consistent on a character level, it isn’t even consistent between the dynamic between Feyre and Tamlin. When Tamlin initially falls in love with Feyre, he falls in love with the human girl. He doesn’t want a Lady – he doesn’t even believe he’s going to make it out alive. He falls in love with her because she isn’t just that, and he literally subtly shunned the way his mother would not say anything when his father became a tyrant. He’s essentially telling Feyre he doesn’t want her to be like his mother. So like, even that angle is again, not consistent with what we’ve seen. Snd because of this, people have purposely insert and add things to make him look like a worse character because like there’s nothing in that proves Tamlin is worse than Rhys as the book kind of argues.

#anti sjm #anti rhysand #anti feysand #anti acosf #anti sjm: tamlin #anti feyre #anti acomaf #i kind a wrote a rhys part but im too lazy to finish it

[chaifootsteps]

You know I kind of understand Viv writing wise. When you make a story that’s been with you for decades you grow very attached to the characters and the world that you forget to tell outsiders important aspects on the story and focus more on the details and hope the audience understands it.

Same with Helluva Boss when she talks about Millie in her infamous Twitter thread it seems that she has the idea of Millie as a character in her head and she just forgets to actually show those aspects to her audience.

I also wonder if she knows the phrase “Kill your darlings” when it comes to writing because there’s just some characters or aspects of a story that just wouldn’t work so you would have to scrap it. It’s hard advice but it’s necessary. There’s so many characters and story I scraped even though I became too attached to. Viv wants to have her cake and eat it too but it’ll mostly leave the audience confused and frustrated and scavenging for context for character motive or how the world works. She needs to learn that when writing a story, your magnum opas, you need to kill your darlings so that your work can truly thrive

It's true, and I don't know if this is true for anyone else, but this has helped me immensely in my own writing as of late. It could be day one stuff in an intro to fiction class, that you need to actually translate the character that exists in your head onto paper/print and not just expect people to read your mind.

#Anonymous #vivziepop critical #viv stuff #actual blog post

[sleep-deprived-lesbian]

undertale aus fucking sucked except for pta sans that was the only good one

#i remember when ut was my special interest it made me SO MAD how much au content there was #because no one was actually talking about the existing characters and story #like man idgaf about your sans-but-edgy-oc-number36 #but pta sans? now THATS an au that builds upon the source material. those are ppl who understand sans as a character

[conchfritters]

i need to get less ashamed of talking about my interests on my 0 follower tumblr blog because if i don't point out that despite having one of the most interesting concepts ever presented in a genshin event, shadows amidst snowstorms was not actually well written, and was in fact pretty Poorly written, then who else will. Who else will.

#seashell resonance #Anyway amber hasn't shown up in any content since 1.0 where she wasn't optional or thrown out entirely in favor of standing as an #advertisement for euIa. case in point in the scene in shadows amidst snowstorms where you're waiting outside the cave for albedo the last #person joel was left with was amber. when euIa confronts albedo about the fake trying to lead joel away...there's no mention ever of the #fact that amber...was With Joel. Amber who is an Outrider trained to Notice Danger. Either left joel with fakebedo without noticing anythin #or the actual explanation: hoyo didn't care enough to write her because. well. Amber Bad #the next time we see her is when she shows up with bennett #amber used to have a lot of fire to her and this sort of unique not quite cockiness but like. easy way to tell she used to be the difficult #kid we hear about in her character stories and teapot dialogue #she serves no purpose in shadows amidst snowstorms #an event that easily could've capitalized on the Horror aspect of being trapped with a doppelganger of one of your coworkers and shown off #ALL the characters (because get this. You can make people wanna spend on characters who aren't meta by making them Like Them.) #but amber? no value in any event she's ever been in. she talks about good hunter and sticky honey roast. she gets flustered. euIa pays for #her meal. Remember how she was in Almost All of razor's story quest and then when they needed a knight to give him a gift in weinlessefest #they chose...SUCROSE AND NOELLE? #remember how collei has had more on screen interactions with fucking euIa and sucrose than AMBER #how amber and collei's reunion was what people wanted to see and instead it happens off screen and amber simply isn't relevant during #windblume? how amber didn't get a skin with lisa and kaeya? how amber has no appearance in kaeya's hangout event despite their dynamic in #the webtoon and her being suspicious of him presenting so much room to work with? #her tcg dialogue has a meta joke in it. Because amber bad and amber doesn't exist outside of euIa and connecting collei to euIa #and i could go on. about the writing for cyno. about collei. about the way they write kokomi or any genius character. about albedo even. #about all my Other gripes with euIa because they go to about every single aspect of her character except her Basic personality #which is to say the personality we see in most of her voicelines. she could've literally been a saving grace for the cast if she weren't on #of the like top 3 worst written characters #i could talk about like almost any character's decay but that's not the point. Not the point. Nobody look atme. #i tried to replace the L in euIa's name with a capital i to make this post not show up in front of her enjoyers somehow but if it does #sorry about that! no problems with you it's hoyoverse who has my ire #i have so much more to say even just about amber specifically since she is. Unfortunately my fav and unfortunately almost the only characte #i care about whenever my enjoyment of genshin even Slightly wanes #but nobody will ever see it because that essay i write in my head seven times a day is for Me. I'll die before i crack open google docs

[designernishiki]

I wanna flesh out a yakuza oc but every time I think about it I end up thinking about an oc of mine who already Exists who’s not a yakuza oc. but is, in fact, an oc who is a yakuza. and that fact is genuinely completely unrelated

#he existed WAY before I started playing yakuza or knew really anything about it #actually he contributes to why I got into yakuza to begin with. cause when my friend first showed me y0 I was like ough… my character #grew up in this exact environment and culture and structure and etc (son of a patriarch) #so it was legitimately a good reference for his background and stuff #I kinda wanna talk about him/his background more on here but. like i said he’s. not technically a yakuza oc #and he can’t be because he. canonically. has PLAYED yakuza. like the games EXIST cause it’s just a normal real world type universe and #I won’t get into all this much but he ends up in the states on the dl for Reasons. accidentally ends up with a son when he’s 22 (son’s #mother being significantly younger but again we’re not gonna get into THAT mess). ends up seeing the first game being sold somewhere in nyc #and is unable to restrain his curiosity about it (as an Actual Yakuza) so he ends up getting his son a ps2 for his birthday partly just #as an excuse to buy and play yakuza 1 because he NEEDS to know what’s in it #something something it ends up being a weird bonding thing with his son who’s definitely too young to be watching this game being played #(he was born the same year as haruka so he’d be like. 8-9. also already a concerningly violent child with many issues but. anyway) #something something he ends up disappearing out of the blue from the states when his son is 12 but the pastime still sticks for said son #from then on. so uh. yeah weirdly significant that these games Exist in this story/universe bdsjhfdfjnd #idk why I’m avoiding saying his name. his name’s asura. he’s a year or two older than daigo (born 1974) and his family’s supposed to be a #pretty powerful one in the tokyo area and he was supposed to be a nepo baby sorta like daigo except he’s not Technically an only child- he #has a much younger sister. but obviously she wasn’t gonna be considered for taking over their father’s seat nor would she want to #she wants absolutely nothing to do with any of it and changes her last name pretty soon after moving to the US to get away from them #no beef with her brother or anything she was just treated absolutely horribly and disgustingly by older members of their family growing up #ANYWAY I should stop talking bdshshcbsnnf I didn’t mean to infodump all this the lore is just. deep with these guys #Asura wasn’t even made to be a particularly prominent character or anything it’s his SON who’s a Bonafide Main Character and asura’s ties in #the story are mostly related to Him. (though his sister is also a pretty prominent character so there’s connection there too) #rambling #also one more note. yes. the timing and location of where asura would’ve first bought yakuza 1 means that it would most likely be the #infamous original english dub version. which is hilarious to think about #especially because his son’s mom (I keep calling her that because they weren’t really in a Relationship they just co-parented and lived #together a little less than half the time. it’s complicated) Did Not Approve of a game that Adult around their kid. so she would not be fond #of walking in the room and hearing TEN YEARS IN THE JOINT MADE YOU A FUCKING PUSSY #luckily she was so young and considered her son a lost cause and a burden as it is so. she complained but didn’t really do anything about #it. I mean shit she was like. only around 24-25 I think. but yeah

[magpigment]

i find it rlly funny when i make a character and i’m just like. tumblr would love them. tumblr would be all over this character. why isn’t tumblr obsessed w them already. and then remember they exist only in my mind :(

#my character birthday i love birthday he’s one of my favorite characters i’ve ever made and i know he would be a hit on tumblr lmao #his name is birthday and he’s the birthday boy and it’s his birthday! #and also he’s devastatingly lonely. and lowkey got theseus’ shipped. whoops. #and also lilith. tumblr would adore lilith. #called the ghost of the wasteland and her existence is largely only rumored. was a genetic experiment to create something that #could survive the nuclear wastelands that cover the majority of her world. they succeeded but she escaped and now lives in those same #wastelands. is incredibly codependent w a very morally grey dude who was a black market test subject for poisons who escaped around the #same time as her and they ended up relying entirely on each other for survival for years and know each other better than anyone #but struggle to connect in any way that isn’t solely to keep each other alive when they’re older. #he never talks about his past and she is almost entirely nonverbal and doesn’t rlly want to find a way to tell him about hers. #she also realized after she escaped that she prefers to be referred to w she/her pronouns after her existence being viewed as #something instead of a someone and choosing that for herself is one of the first choices she ever made for herself and who she is. #and she’s only a side character in the story and mostly just haunts the narrative but yknow i should incorporate her more because #wow i love her actually. she’s dope as hell XD #dandy talks #my ocs #can’t talk more about birthday even tho i love him just as much because one of my friends has my tumblr and i’m using birthday #in a story i’m writing w my friends for fun and i don’t wanna spoil anything more than i have lmao. but yeah birthday is so cool lmao

[v-iv-rusty]

I could go to bed at a reasonable hour, but why would I do that when I could stay up and make myself sad over characters that I made up literally 5 minutes ago instead

#misc.txt #3 in the morning is peak oc creating hours #was doodling an er oc I have #and offhandedly wondering what they'd be like if they were an npc with a traditional soulsborne tragic quest. yes I know I am cringe btw #but now I'm sad :( and also dealing with the fact that this character only exists in my head and matters only to me hdfjskhd #it's like whenever I make a character where like. I want to write them a sad story I guess? idk how to put it but you know #I get to a point where I'm like 'idk this just seems kind of boring and bland' and then I get. a tiny idea #which then just snowballs from there until I'm reduced to the human version of a crying cat meme #AND NOBODY ELSE WOULD FULLY UNDERSTAND BECAUSE THEY ONLY EXIST IN MY HEAD. torture :) #honestly I never post about my ocs (fully original ones and then ones like this one) even though I have them but. whatever #his story arc and questline are not real but I could absolutely break your heart with subtle details and item descriptions if they were <3 #ok actually I want to talk about this though. so like #I think it's less so like 'I want to make a character in this universe' but I really love the fromsoft method of storytelling #by giving you tiny details and hints and things you might not notice at first. and then when you do it just HITS you and it hits different #than if it were just spelled out for you. like if you fully understand a character from the start that's great and all #but there's something about absentmindedly connecting the dots in the shower or something and going 'OH.' #idk if I'm wording this right probably not it's late but. thinking about how to tell a character's story through those methods is very fun

[tearlessrain]

please help me- i used to be pretty smart but i’m having so much trouble grasping the concept of diegetic vs non-diegetic bdsm!

gfkjldghfd okay first of all I'm sorry for the confusion, if you're not finding anything on the phrase it's because I made it up and absolutely nobody but me ever uses it, but I haven't found a better way to express what I'm trying to say so I keep using it. but now you've given me an excuse to ramble on about some shit that is only relevant to me and my deeply inefficient way of talking and by god I'm going to take it.

SO. the way diegetic and non-diegetic are normally used is to talk about music and sound design in movies/tv shows. in case you aren't familiar with that concept, here's a rundown:

diegetic sound is sound that happens within the world of the movie/show and can be acknowledged by the characters, like a song playing on the stereo during a driving scene, or sung on stage in Phantom of the Opera. it's also most other sounds that happen in a movie, like the sounds of traffic in a city scene, or a thunderclap, or a marching band passing by. or one of the three stock horse sounds they use in every movie with a horse in it even though horses don't really vocalize much in real life, but that's beside the point, the horse is supposed to be actually making that noise within the movie's world and the characters can hear it whinnying.

non-diegetic sound is any sound that doesn't exist in the world of the movie/show and can't be perceived by the characters. this includes things like laugh tracks and most soundtrack music. when Duel of Fates plays in Star Wars during the lightsaber fight for dramatic effect, that's non-diegetic. it exists to the audience, but the characters don't know their fight is being backed by sick ass music and, sadly, can't hear it.

the lines can get blurry between the two, you've probably seen the film trope where the clearly non-diegetic music in the title sequence fades out to the same music, now diegetic and playing from the character's car stereo. and then there are things like Phantom of the Opera as mentioned above, where the soundtrack is also part of the plot, but Phantom of the Opera does also have segments of non-diegetic music: the Phantom probably does not have an entire orchestra and some guy with an electric guitar hiding down in his sewer just waiting for someone to break into song, but both of those show up in the songs they sing down there.

now, on to how I apply this to bdsm in fiction.

if I'm referring to diegetic bdsm what I mean is that the bdsm is acknowledged for what it is in-world. the characters themselves are roleplaying whatever scenarios their scenes involve and are operating with knowledge of real life rules/safety practices. if there's cnc depicted, it will be apparent at some point, usually right away, that both characters actually are fully consenting and it's all just a planned scene, and you'll often see on-screen negotiation and aftercare, and elements of the story may involve the kink community wherever the characters are. Love and Leashes is a great example of this, 50 Shades and Bonding are terrible examples of this, but they all feature characters that know they're doing bdsm and are intentional about it.

if I'm talking about non-diegetic bdsm, I'm referring to a story that portrays certain kinks without the direct acknowledgement that the characters are doing bdsm. this would be something like Captive Prince, or Phantom of the Opera again, or the vast majority of bodice ripper type stories where an innocent woman is kidnapped by a pirate king or something and totally doesn't want to be ravished but then it turns out he's so cool and sexy and good at ravishing that she decides she's into it and becomes his pirate consort or whatever it is that happens at the end of those books. the characters don't know they're playing out a cnc or D/s fantasy, and in-universe it's often straight up noncon or dubcon rather than cnc at all. the thing about entirely non-diegetic bdsm is that it's almost always Problematic™ in some way if you're not willing to meet the story where it's at, but as long as you're not judging it by the standards of diegetic bdsm, it's just providing the reader the same thing that a partner in a scene would: the illusion of whatever risk or taboo floats your boat, sometimes to extremes that can't be replicated in real life due to safety, practicality, physics, the law, vampires not being real, etc. it's consensual by default because it's already pretend; the characters are vehicles for the story and not actually people who can be hurt, and the reader chose to pick up the book and is aware that nothing in it is real, so it's all good.

this difference is where people tend to get hung up in the discourse, from what I've observed. which is why I started using this phrasing, because I think it's very crucial to be able to differentiate which one you're talking about if you try to have a conversation with someone about the portrayal of bdsm in media. it would also, frankly, be useful for tagging, because sometimes when you're in the mood for non-diegetic bodice ripper shit you'd call the police over in real life, it can get really annoying to read paragraphs of negotiation and check-ins that break the illusion of the scene and so on, and the opposite can be jarring too.

it's very possible to blur these together the same way Phantom of the Opera blurs its diegetic and non-diegetic music as well. this leaves you even more open to being misunderstood by people reading in bad faith, but it can also be really fun to play with. @not-poignant writes fantastic fanfic, novels, and original serials on ao3 that pull this off really well, if you're okay with some dark shit in your fiction I would highly recommend their work. some of it does get really fucking dark in places though, just like. be advised. read the tags and all that.

but yeah, spontaneous writer plug aside, that's what I mean.

#I found their original stuff while I was researching various waterhorses and their folklore for no reason #because one of the characters in their original work happens to be an each uisge #and then it turned out it ALSO included a lot of figures from welsh folklore in general #so yknow if you happen to have my incredibly specific hyperfixations you'll love it but even if you don't it's great #I didn't mean to bring up phantom of the opera so much it just happens to be very relevant to a lot of my talking points #I haven't actually seen it in years

[emeryleewho]

I used to work for a trade book reviewer where I got paid to review people's books, and one of the rules of that review company is one that I think is just super useful to media analysis as a whole, and that is, we were told never to critique media for what it didn't do but only for what it did.

So, for instance, I couldn't say "this book didn't give its characters strong agency or goals". I instead had to say, "the characters in this book acted in ways that often felt misaligned with their characterization as if they were being pulled by the plot."

I think this is really important because a lot of "critiques" people give, if subverted to address what the book does instead of what it doesn't do, actually read pretty nonsensical. For instance, "none of the characters were unique" becomes "all of the characters read like other characters that exist in other media", which like... okay? That's not really a critique. It's just how fiction works. Or "none of the characters were likeable" becomes "all of the characters, at some point or another, did things that I found disagreeable or annoying" which is literally how every book works?

It also keeps you from holding a book to a standard it never sought to meet. "The world building in this book simply wasn't complex enough" becomes "The world building in this book was very simple", which, yes, good, that can actually be a good thing. Many books aspire to this. It's not actually a negative critique. Or "The stakes weren't very high and the climax didn't really offer any major plot twists or turns" becomes "The stakes were low and and the ending was quite predictable", which, if this is a cute romcom is exactly what I'm looking for.

Not to mention, I think this really helps to deconstruct a lot of the biases we carry into fiction. Characters not having strong agency isn't inherently bad. Characters who react to their surroundings can make a good story, so saying "the characters didn't have enough agency" is kind of weak, but when you flip it to say "the characters acted misaligned from their characterization" we can now see that the *real* problem here isn't that they lacked agency but that this lack of agency is inconsistent with the type of character that they are. a character this strong-willed *should* have more agency even if a weak-willed character might not.

So it's just a really simple way of framing the way I critique books that I think has really helped to show the difference between "this book is bad" and "this book didn't meet my personal preferences", but also, as someone talking about books, I think it helps give other people a clearer idea of what the book actually looks like so they can decide for themselves if it's worth their time.

Update: This is literally just a thought exercise to help you be more intentional with how you critique media. I'm not enforcing this as some divine rule that must be followed any time you have an opinion on fiction, and I'm definitely not saying that you have to structure every single sentence in a review to contain zero negative phrases. I'm just saying that I repurposed a rule we had at that specific reviewer to be a helpful tool to check myself when writing critiques now. If you don't want to use the tool, literally no one (especially not me) can or wants to force you to use it. As with all advice, it is a totally reasonable and normal thing to not have use for every piece of it that exists from random strangers on the internet. Use it to whatever extent it helps you or not at all.

#writing #writing advice #writing tips #am writing #books #booklr #fiction #media analysis

[homunculus-argument]

Idea for a Generic Medieval Fantasy Setting: The characters refer to their nameday as an apparent stand-in for birthdays, celebrating it annually according to their respective preferences and perhaps family customs, as one does. People talk about things that happened before someone's time as having gone down "before you were named", someone grievously insults an opponent on the battlefield by going "your mother should never have named you." So with the way naming is always talked about, as a reader you start to somewhat assume from context clues that these people have some sort of a taboo about the word "birth" or something, and naming is used as some sort of an euphenism to avoid naming the process in which people come into the world.

Then somewhere halfway through the story it turns out that in this setting, people aren't named immediately after being born. This is a semi-realistic-gritty fantasy setting, after all. Due to the somewhat high infant mortality, to at least somewhat soften the blow of potentially losing a child, babies just aren't named before the parents are pretty confident that the kid is going to survive. The naming ceremony is where a baby is officially aknowledged as an entire individual, a member of the family and a legally existing person, instead of just a gurgling extension of the mother who may or may not disappear from this world. And that timespan between birth and being named is - depending on the situation and the family - somewhere between 1-4 years.

And suddenly the whole bunch of annoyingly-too-mature teenagers and other weird remarks about age start making sense in hindsight. The heroine protagonist who celebrated her 16th nameday at the start of the story is actually 19 years old. The wild difference in maturity between two characters who were both named the same year wasn't just a difference in backgrounds, The Rich Idiot isn't just rosy-cheeked and naive due to being sheltered growing up, but actually literally years younger than a peasant "of the same age". A character who's sickly and was frequently remarked to look much older than their years hasn't just been harrowed by their illness, but was not named before the age of seven because their parents didn't think they'd survive.

[piratecaptainscaptainpirates]

Been thinking about why the argument that OFMD is inherently a bad show because it's based on historical slaveowners so often feels disingenuous to me as a person of color.

HUGE disclaimer up front: if you don't wanna fuck with the show because of that premise right out the gate, that's 100% valid and I completely get that. I'm not talking about that. What I'm specifically talking about is White fandom people in particular who argue that OFMD must be "problematic" because of this, especially when they say this as some kind of virtue-signalling trying to win points in fandom wars, stuff like that.

My big thing is that the resemblance the characters in OFMD have to their real-world namesakes begins and ends with having the same name. The show feels more to me like it's playing with the vague myths around these names, not the people themselves. Can you make an argument that they should have come up with original characters instead? Sure, but let's be honest, even people who study the irl counterparts have very little knowledge of their actual lives, and the average person has all but none. To add to that, this show has absolutely zero interest in historical accuracy; the moment they cast a Jewish-Polynesian man as Blackbeard that became obvious. No one is saying the real-life Blackbeard and Stede Bonnet were good people, least of all the show itself; the point is that OFMD's versions are basically original characters already.

It always feels like an incredibly disingenuous claim to parallel the show to Hamilton, because Hamilton both did care about historical accuracy and also brought up the slave trade. Hamilton is uncomfortable for so many poc because it writes poc into the story of otherwise very faithfully portrayed racists, colonizers, and slaveowners and just handwaves the racism. In OFMD, racism exists, but the stance is always explicitly anti-racist and anti-colonialist in a way that is just so fun to see (whom among us has not wished to skin a racist with a snail fork?).

The other thing that sticks for me is...there's an appropriate amount of slavery I want to see in my romcoms, and that amount is none. I am so sick of historical fiction where Black characters are only there for trauma porn about the horrors of the slave trade. You can make a legitimate argument that OFMD is handwavey about the slave trade, but I'd argue that including discussion of the slave trade is something that should be done with such incredible care that it would leave us with a show that can't really be a comedy at all anymore. OFMD's characters of color are allowed to be nuanced, complex characters with their own emotions, and it's incredibly refreshing to see, and I'd much rather have that than yet another historical fiction show where the only characters of color are only there to make White audiences feel virtuous about how sad they feel for them.

In conclusion, I guess: every yt person who makes this argument to win points in a fandom war owes me and every other fan of color a million dollars

#ofmd #our flag means death

[artist-issues]

I Hate How She Talks About Snow White

"People are making these jokes about ours being the PC Snow White, where it's like, yeah, it is − because it needed that. It's an 85-year-old cartoon, and our version is a refreshing story about a young woman who has a function beyond 'Someday My Prince Will Come. "

Let me tell you a little something's about that "85-year-old cartoon," miss Zegler.

It was the first-ever cel-animated feature-length full-color film. Ever. Ever. EVER. I'm worried that you're not hearing me. This movie was Disney inventing the modern animated film. Spirited Away, Into the Spider-Verse, Tangled, you don't get to have any of these without Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937.)

Speaking of what you wouldn't get without this movie, it includes anime as a genre. Not just in technique (because again, nobody animated more than shorts before this movie) but in style and story. Anime, as it is now, wouldn't exist without Osamu Tezuka, "The God of Manga," who wouldn't have pioneered anime storytelling in the 1940s without having watched and learned from Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs in the 1930s. No "weeb" culture, no Princess Mononoke, no DragonBall Z, no My Hero Academia, no Demonslayer, and no Naruto without this "85-year-old cartoon."

It was praised, not just for its technical marvels, not just for its synchronized craft of sound and action, but primarily and enduringly because people felt like the characters were real. They felt more like they were watching something true to life than they did watching silent, live-action films with real actors and actresses. They couldn't believe that an animated character could make kids wet their pants as she flees, frightened, through the forest, or grown adults cry with grieving Dwarves. Consistently.

Walt Disney Studios was built on this movie. No no; you're not understanding me. Literally, the studio in Burbank, out of which has come legends of this craft of animated filmmaking, was literally built on the incredible, odds-defying, record-breaking profits of just Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, specifically.

Speaking of record-breaking profits, this movie is the highest-grossing animated film in history. Still. TO THIS DAY. And it was made during the Great Depression.

In fact, it made four times as much money than any other film, in any other genre, released during that time period. It was actually THE highest-grossing film of all time, in any genre, until nothing less than Gone With the Wind, herself, came along to take the throne.

It was the first-ever animated movie to be selected for the National Film Registry. Actually, it was one of the first movies, period, to ever go into the registry at all. You know what else is in the NFR? The original West Side Story, the remake of which is responsible for Rachel Ziegler's widespread fame.

Walt Disney sacrificed for this movie to be invented. Literally, he took out a mortgage on his house and screened the movie to banks for loans to finish paying for it, because everyone from the media to his own wife and brother told him he was crazy to make this movie. And you want to tell me it's just an 85-year-old cartoon that needs the most meaningless of updates, with your tender 8 years in the business?

Speaking of sacrifice, this movie employed over 750 people, and they worked immeasurable hours of overtime, and invented--literally invented--so many new techniques that are still used in filmmaking today, that Walt Disney, in a move that NO OTHER STUDIO IN HOLLYWOOD was doing in the 30's, put this in the opening credits: "My sincere appreciation to the members of my staff whose loyalty and creative endeavor made possible this production." Not the end credits, like movies love to do today as a virtue-signal. The opening credits.

It's legacy endures. Your little "85-year-old cartoon" sold more than 1 million DVD copies upon re-release. Just on its first day. The Beatles quoted Snow White in one of their songs. Legacy directors call it "the greatest film ever made." Everything from Rolling Stones to the American Film Institute call this move one of the most influential masterpieces of our culture. This movie doesn't need anything from anybody. This movie is a cultural juggernaut for America. It's a staple in the art of filmmaking--and art, in general. It is the foundation of the Walt Disney Company, of modern children's media in the West, and of modern adaptations of classical fairy tales in the West. When you think only in the base, low, mean terms of "race" and "progressivism" you start taking things that are actually worlds-away from being in your league to judge, and you relegate them to silly ignorant phrases like "85-year-old cartoon" to explain why what you're doing is somehow better.

Sit down and be humble. Who the heck are you?

#Snow White #Snow White and the seven dwarfs #snow #snow white 1937 #snow white and the seven dwarfs 1937 #Snow White 2024 #Rachel zegler #west side story #poc #Disney #live action Disney hate #animation history #Do not go see this movie. Do not stream this movie. #Anime #anime history

[gotchaocha]

Ughh stuck on writing a scene again 

On the bright side, I already got 3 chapter of the possible-novel written! 

I try not to think about the fact that I´m trying to write a nove because I feel like understanding the long ass path of trying to acomplish such a thing will stop me from trying in the first place. You know normal stuff

#writing #I don´t know what the characters should talk about grr #and I am not having fun which is a sign things are not going well #i like both foolishness and torturing my characters so something is up #and on the novel side I swear I´m just going #Oh i guess i should write the next chapter #and moving on #because i think i stopped to think about thing like fucking #how much time imma spend editing the money to actually publish a book beta readers etc etc #imma just stop #as a wise tumblr post one said a story needs to exist first to be edited #so Imma try and make it exist first lol

[infiniteseriesofhalfways]

Of all the towns in Florida I could have based this story on, I picked the one whose High School posts to Facebook about every two days.

#idk i like having visuals of wherever I'm writing a story #so since i set it in florida i spent days deciding on the right town #and i found one up by jacksonville that im actually gonna go to one day because boy would i love to see the place im writing about #in real life #and anyway a couple of characters are in high school and that was one of the qualifications for the town #that the high school would make sense location wise in relation to a mechanic's and a house and such #and today i was like oh what actual date would graduation be? among other things. so i went to the school's facebook and my GOD do they #like to keep people updated #i was reminded that prom exists so thats a thing #idk what im even gonna call this but i really do love the charcters #and im having a good time working on it #idk i can talk more about it if anyone wants to hear about it? #ks gets personal

[elvesofnoldor]

after finished watching the finale to r*ngs of power, i honestly was gonna make a post about how i found it very interesting that for a character motivated largely by the need to seek retribution and obtain revenge, Galadriel’s inability to let go of her anger towards the target of her vengeance (sauron) is the very thing that kept her from damnation. Had she been able to forgive sauron for killing her brother, she would have never been able to find peace and make it back home (and eventually back to her brother, who canonically came back to life in Aman, and her family). And despite not being very impressed with any part of the show, I found the way they wrote galadriel’s tale of vengeance to be very interesting. Then i logged on tumblr dot org and found out that apparently everybody was making halbrand!sauron x galadriel friends to enemies to lovers 3k slow burn fics and sitting around in circles singing “sauron and galadriel sitting under the tree K-I-S-S-I-N-G” and i think this is part of the reason why i didn’t log on for almost a month and half. 

#i mean it's been months and months of me logging on tumblr dot org and going 'what in the goddamn are you all talking abt' #when i took a look at the tags of the shows i've watched #but anyways im not even mad abt this whole charade of people shipping sauron and galadriel #one thing changed abt me while i was busy touching grass: i loosen up a lot and care abt a lot of unimportant things a lot less #unimportant thing like people are shipping galadriel and sauron #sauron was canonically weirdly obsessed with galadriel so who cares #but i still thought it was so weird nobody cared to talk about galadriel's personal tale of vengeance and how refreshing it was #cause i personally care abt it more than whatever chemistry she might have had with trop writers' sauron oc #mae overshares #i do have to say i like they explored some of galadriel's potential as a character #was too busy simping feanor and his sons (maedhros and maglor) to imagine what galadriel's story could have been #i know i know that's so un-feminist of me #there are actually a number of things that i found somewhat interesting in the show and galadriel's arc is one of them #yeah the show is acting like maedhros and maglor never existed and elrond never met them thus far #and i dont wanna talk abt celebrimbor smh i dont wanna talk about anything abt him in this show #but one thing that i love abt the feanorians is that their story is ultimately a journey seeking retribution and justice #like all the heroes of the myths and legends. they tried to uphold duty and honour. but the interesting thing is that #in doing so. they found themselves driven to dishonourable and even immoral actions #their journey of seeking justice lead them down a dark path and have them unwittingly helped their enemies #and i don't mind that sons of feanor have been so ignored in trop because galadriel's story has elements #that made the sons of feanor so interesting to me in the first place

[makethosenarratorsfight]

UNRELIABLE NARRATORS; FINALS.

Eugenides Propaganda:

the entire plot hinges on a detail he lets the reader (and every other character) assume is true. I don't want to spoil it because it's a really fun reveal but he is lying from the first second he appears on the page and you can't trust him to tell the full truth about ANYTHING related to himself and his goals. he mostly does it to keep his advantage and not have other characters be suspicious of him but it's just so fun when you realise he's been lying the whole time

Lemony Snicket Propaganda:

(I would like to preface this by saying that Lemony Snicket is the author's pen name, not a real person, and he exists as a character in-universe as well as being the one in-universe who writes the books!) I'd say he's unreliable because he spent time collecting information about the Baudelaire kids and then... wrote books about it. He has no idea what any of their dialogue actually was, what they were thinking, or even the whole plot, he's just doing research into the incidents and then filling in the gaps to make it a story. What ACTUALLY happened to the Baudelaires? Nobody really knows for sure

While the Baudelaire siblings are in potentially life threatening danger, he will randomly start talking about his own life and just leave the siblings hanging. For example, once Count Olaf was threatening to kill Violet, and then Lemony randomly began talking about how he met the love of his life at a costume party. This man CANNOT stay on topic. Usually when a new character is introduced, Lemony tells us right at the start that they’re either going to die or that the Baudelaire siblings will never see them again. Foreshadowing is not subtle in these books. CONSTANTLY emphasizes how miserable he feels while writing these books. At one point he admits that he had to put his pencil down and go cry for a while because of how sad it made him. Once he filled an entire page with nothing but the word “ever” to emphasize how dangerous it is to put forks in electrical outlets. He also repeated a paragraph about deja vu later on in the book to give the reader deja vu.

#lemony snicket #a series of unfortunate events #asoue #asoue books #asoue netflix #eugenides #queens thief #queen's thief #the queens thief #the queen's thief #megan whalen turner #unreliable narrator battle #unreliable narrators #polls #finals #this is gonna be a coughing baby vs hydrogen bomb isn't it.