#dude's handsome that's all I know. sad backstory but VERY attractive

[martianbugsbunny]

OUAT Thoughts Pt.52--Episodes 17-18

I have watched through S5E18; spoilers DNI. Also, spoiler warning for anyone further behind than I am.

—Belle basically told Rumple he wasn’t worth saving. What the heck, lady. And I’m pretty sure if my husband was about to be shot and killed, I wouldn’t hesitate to knock his attempted murderer to his death. Yeah, Belle sent Gaston into the River of Souls. Big whoop, he fricking sucks. And Belle knows how nasty he is! How could she possibly act like letting him kill Rumple was a better option?

—And exqueEEeze me, but this is not like when Snow or Emma acquired some darkness. Belle fell in love with the Dark One, for gosh sakes, she’s the princess most likely to do some dubious things!

—And it’s now confirmed that she doesn’t love Rumple. If she did, she wouldn’t need her father to break the sleeping curse. It’s obvious that Rumple loves her.

—Mulan was watching Dorothy and Red with the world’s most knowing look on her face and I am all here for it. But what about Mulan? She needs to get her happy ending! —Now that I’ve complained….Wolfie and Kansas, sitting in a tree! K-I-S-S-I-N-G!

—I will not get over them together. They have everything: falling in love ridiculously fast; a meet-cute involving the dog; similarly tragic backstories; adorable nicknames—it’s everything I want! And you know, Toto’s gonna love having a bigger dog in his life. Red is the the best possible second dog mom for him.

—It’s cool that Dorothy taught Toto to bark at witches. Very smart.

—I adore David for sending Snow back to Storybrooke. That’s some quality husbanding right there. But all of their promises to be reunited eventually? That means for sure at least one of them dies. And since they share a heart, they’ll probably both die. Leaving Emma (and Hook?) to raise Neal. So sad.

—I also adore Hook for helping David with that. I like that Hook and David are getting along better now. Their personalities don’t put them at natural opposition to each other, so now that David is used to Hook and Emma being together, them being friendly is the right move.

—Hades is an exceedingly strange man. Every now and then he makes a comment that catches me off guard and makes me laugh. His sense of humor is peculiar, and kinda shady, but I like it. Which annoys me to no end.

—He’s not particularly handsome imo, but he is attractive. He’s completely riveting. Regardless of whether or not he’s being an ass to my faves (which he is), I can’t deny that he has presence.

—Still hate Zelena. I will not stop hating her. I will not feel sorry for her ever. And I’m still disgruntled about her and Hades being together. They have little to no chemistry.

—They shouldn’t have put Hades in the same room as Gaston. Once again, the hextreme vibes appeared. How can they expect me to believe him with Zelena when he’s *meh* with her and acts the way he does around all these dudes? (The count, by now, is three. Three men he’s had way more chemistry with than Zelena. And I do predict more such occurrences in the future.)

—MMMkay, I hate Gaston, big surprise, but he was right about one thing. The way to a bookworm’s heart is to tell them that ‘because it’s your favorite book, Imma read every word.’ That is just peak.

—I’m so tired of hearing guys saying how they’ve been looking for a woman of substance. It implies that a woman who is not shallow is a rare find, which I think is quite insulting. Also, not to go too deep, but we all know what kind of girls Gaston-types are thinking of when they say shallow, and I love those girls. Pink and makeup and girly-girl things? Bring em on, honey! If I had a girlfriend like that, whether or not she was the type of girl who wanted to have existential conversations (which is fr not for everybody, regardless of gender), I would adore her and love her so much she wouldn’t know what to do with me. And tbh, Gaston is more vain than he believes those girls to be, so….But, it’s very much in character for him to say something piggish like that, so I can live with it. Context is everything, friends.

#once upon a time #ouat #belle #rumplestiltskin #Gaston #mulan #dorothy gale #red riding hood #dorothy x red #toto #prince David charming #Snow White #Captain Hook #zelena #hades #martianbugsbunny reviews

[dillydedalus]

january reading

why was this january at least 3 months long

unequal affections, lara s. ormiston (audio) this is jane austen fanfiction about an alternate version of the story where lizzy does accept darcy’s first proposal - their ensuing engagement, which (because lizzy doesn’t go off about how she feels about darc in this one) is full of unspoken conflicts and tensions & hella awks. the initial premise needed some suspension of disbelief but once i got over that i found it super enjoyable, pretty believable in terms of character interactions and interiority (darcy is a dick), funny & sweet. i don’t think i will necessarily start getting into JAFF now (tho goodreads rly thinks i should), but this was just. nice. wholesome. also now i want to reread p&p..... 3/5

lincoln in the bardo, george saunders (uni) ya know what i really liked this. this is about abraham lincoln mourning his young son willie during the civil war, not exactly a topic i’m particularly (at all) interested in, but the execution is so cool - it’s told partly thru fragments from historical records, books, letters (both real and imagined) and partly thru the voices of the many ghosts stuck in a kind of limbo in the graveyard, who are trying to get willie to move on, while they themselves desperately try to stay in limbo, bitter about what went wrong in their lives and in denial about their state. & it’s done really well, the polyphony and contradiction of the historical record (one chapter has a bunch of quotes about how ugly lincoln was & then the last is like ‘idk i thought he was kinda handsome’), and the ghosts are so sad & bitter & desperate & hopeful. 4/5

the steppe & other stories, anton chekhov (tr. from russian) bunch of short stories from 1880-1890s russia. to be honest, i found most of them pretty boring, although ‘the duel’ is pretty good, an interesting look at how sticking too closely to your worldview/ideology/morality will probably either make you a useless disaster person or a eugenicist douchebag. some of the other stories were okay as well, but overall: 2/5, i’mma stick with his plays

perfectly preventable deaths, deirdre sullivan  teenage ocd witch book! this is a pretty good YA witchy horror book about twins who move into their new stepdad’s castle (yeah he has a castle) in a weird irish village where girls have been going missing for decades. creepy magical-ish things start happening (of course) & our narrator isn’t sure whether her sister’s new age-inappropriate boyfriend is just creepy, or creepy. i love the concept of ocd witchery & the atmosphere is really good as well, but the pacing is off, with slow build-up & a climax that happens way too quickly. also like can someone please say the word ocd it’s not gonna kill ya. 3/5

the priory of the orange tree, samantha shannon gonna be controversial here & say... yeah this should have been a duology. give the world some room to breathe, give the characters some room to breathe (give me another book w/ a cover this spectacular). anyway, this is a bigass book about eastern vs western dragon lore, a holy queendom (go sabran of inys!!), dragonriders, lesbian sword mages, how religion & historiography marginalises women, and magical trees. & like, okay, i wrote a lil thing right after finishing it about how i had some quibbles with it but enjoyed it overall but you know what? the more i think about it/let it sit the more complaints i have and the more annoyed/disappointed i get. 1) i liked all the characters fine, but none of them feel like they have any depth - i feel like i could sum all of the main characters up in like 3-4 words, and while i was rooting for ead/sabran, even this, the most central relationship of the book felt... surface-level. like, there were some big emotional moments but generally all i felt was like ‘good for her’ or ‘that sucks i guess’, 2) this world & its mythology is very much inspired by eastern vs western dragonlore so i understand the need to ground the fantasy world with real-world parallels but the extent to which some of the countries are literally just fantasy versions of real countries was... frustrating? irritating?? this is especially grating as, while inys is very clearly fantasy!britain, there is a lot of cool world-building (religion, aristocracy, history/myth) to make it more than that, while fantasy!japan and fantasy!china are literally just ... ‘what if japan but with dragons’. i did like fantasy!netherlands because at least you don’t see that a lot. 3) so much of the plot is just people travelling to different locations to get and transport different items but most of the travelling is cut short by some magical animal/being turning up and just transporting them in a cutscene.. 4) considering that this is all about dragonlore the dragons sure aren’t as important in the end as the three macguffins of power. 5) i loved so much about kalyba but not where it led, that said i want a kalyba-hawthorn-nurtha backstory.   okay that’s it for now but like. idk. this had a lot of potential but the execution was just severely flawed. 2/5 

trust exercise, susan choi this was super hyped, especially for a game-changing twist of some kind, but has a rather low rating on goodreads (3.18!) so y’all know i was intrigued. i’m not going to give away the twist because it is genuinely really cool if not really all that original, but this is a really clever & cool book about theatre kids, teenage dramatics, constructing your own narrative and what that excludes, elides, changes, and most of all consent & abuse (some very triggering depictions of sex/sexual abuse here). i really liked this, and am considering buying a copy so i can reread it. 4/5

soldiers of salamis, javier cercas (tr. from spanish by anne mclean) very meta novel about a writer called javier cercas writing a book (tentatively called soldiers of salamis) about a (real) falangist poet who escaped a mass execution & survived in the forest for a while with a group of republican deserters. ‘cercas’ researches, speculates, despairs, talks to roberto bolano (who compliments his previous books lol), and finally tracks down the man who he believes/imagines/hopes to be the soldier who let said fascist poet go, leading him to consider who really should be remembered & written about. made me think about that one poem about reading ezra pount that ends w/ a veteran saying ‘if i knew a fascist was a great poet, i’d shoot him anyway.’ interesting book altho i far prefer his book anatomy of a moment, one of the weirdest & most fascinating nonfic books i’ve read. 3/5

the stopping places, damian le bas (audio) damian le bas comes from a settled british romani family and, feeling somewhat unsure about his place in & connection to the community, he decided to go on a roadtrip through britain (+france) in a van to seek out the atchin tans or stopping places, starting with the ones his great-grandmother remembers from her childhood before the family became settled. he combines the travelogue with insights into romani culture(s) (mainly british) and history, as well as his own family history. it’s really interesting & engaging (the history&culture more so than the travelogue) and le bas narrates the audiobook himself & sounds like a cool dude. 3.5/5

confessions of a bookseller, shaun bythell  bythell records a year of working as a second-hand bookseller, with an entry for every day. he talks about the impact of amazon, rude & weird customers (but also nice customers), his weird staff, and some of the books he’s reading. the look into bookselling in the age of amazon is pretty interesting but much of this is banal & repetitive, & if it wasn’t the perfect thing to read in little bits while at work i probably would have dnf’d it. 2/5

giacomo joyce, james..... joyce  super short story by my man jamesy joyce that never made it out of manuscript (literal). not much to say about this - it’s interesting to see jj play around with themes while still working on portrait & thinking bout ulysses & the prose is nice, but the whole english tutor feels attracted to his student is a bit... eh. 3/5

#the books i read #one major disappoint but oh well :/// #long post

[ars-daemonum]

I DO read tags and I’m OVERJOYED at the amount of people talking about how handsome WoL is in the tags because I HOPED I could make him look half as good as he does 

#ars rambles #listen I've been stuck in this pit for a bit after finally acknowledging it and it's NICE #dude's handsome that's all I know. sad backstory but VERY attractive #holds him gentl like my dragon hamburgers

[kaedekayano]

okay, i decided to disregard/circumvent the stayfocusd time limit just for tonight because fuck it, i don’t have anything to do tonight and i definitely deserve a break. and i like thinking about characters. so i just finished bnha ep 13 (the finale), and here’s my thoughts! finally on the computer yay

for those who know bnha/follow the manga, of course you’re welcome to discuss this stuff with me, but please don’t spoil me on anything or i will cry

i’m still trying to decide the fate of all might. like i said before, he started at the top and he’s got nowhere to go but down. there are a couple routes i think he could take: he lives for a while, then dies tragically but inevitably at the end like korosensei did; he gets abruptly killed off in the middle at a climactic, suspenseful moment, shocking everyone and terrifying them because what will they do without their symbol of peace; he lives, but he has to stop being a full-time superhero and finds another way to live, basically. of course, while i do like analyzing plot for plot twists and all that, i’ve always preferred doing character analysis to everything else, and i’m not that good at predicting plot.

but honestly, sounds like the dude’s gonna die. and if he does, i hope it’s soon, because this was being foreshadowed from episode #1 and i’ve been waiting this entire season, thinking every single episode, “is this the episode he’s going to die?” and he’s not a favorite, but i do like him enough (and am aware enough of how his death will emotionally wreck izuku as well as other characters) that the constant dread is wearing down on me. i am constantly in a state of terrible suspense. (but like i said no spoilers no one is allowed to tell me what happens okay i gotta find out for myself)

kind of a tangent but everything comes back to AC on this blog, so. AC changed the way i think about a lot of things because getting so heavily involved in the canon and fandom, and being exposed to others’ interests, made me far more open-minded than i used to be. for example, i really wasn’t good at shows with large casts (AC and the almost 30 students, BNHA’s students + teachers) before, b/c i didn’t track them very well and am shit at matching names to faces as well as recalling personalities, but hey, obsessing over the entirety of class 3-E for months will change that. also, all my favorites were. usually. karma types, for lack of a better phrasing. i could never relate to cinnamon roll (TM) characters. or characters who weren’t emotional disasters. (boy i had trouble liking nagisa at first.)

regarding what i keep saying about types: the girls, in terms of personalities, aren’t quite my usual thing. the closest person in terms of preference to the characters i typically like are yaoyoruzu and jirou. but honestly who cares because right now i like them all, and they are great and fabulous and uraraka is adorable and i like her a lot. i wanna see her have some character development first, though, and oh god the girls are my aesthetic. momo’s hair and jinou’s general aloof aura + earphones and tsu’s frog quirk and holy shit, pink alien girl? i don’t know her, she hasn’t had much time in the anime yet, but she’s. she’s a girl. who’s pink with alien features. how the fuck is that not the coolest shit ever

as fond of todoroki, as always. i looked up a bit on him on the wikia but i don’t want to spoil myself. but i did pick up enough to solidify my adoration for him. >.< i need to stop but god, i’m really fond of him. fuck. so fond.

izuku’s character continues to develop and it’s really wonderful. i used to live for mentor-student relationships, but then i realised (and AC did not help) that the mentor usually ends up dying, so i’m trying not to get attached to this mentor-student relationship and it’s not fucking working. the conversation he and all might had in the hospital beds at the end. shit, man. don’t get attached don’t get attached don’t get attached

something i really appreciate is that i knew this fandom really adores bakugou (and i say this as someone who literally doesn’t know shit about the bnha fandom), so i assumed he’d be one of those assholes who gets glorified by the narrative because it’s okay if he’s an asshole as long as he’s talented and handsome uwu he’s just being snarky haha how funny!! i mean yes he is an asshole but he isn’t glorified by the narrative, the narrative doesn’t hide at all that, while not totally evil, he’s a complicated character who genuinely can be unlikable and is kinda fucking awful. so that’s a pleasant surprise. i thought the narrative would revolve around him more b/c the fandom’s so fond of him but it doesn’t and i’m really glad, the whole class is really great (and imo the school too, i’ll talk worldbuilding later) and they all deserve focus.

i’m usually incredibly fond of villains, but i also mostly read YA fantasy, where the villains are very often attractive young characters who are snarky, charismatic types who draw the reader in and are way too likable. AC villains weren’t like that for me (although i ended up liking them anyway, just blame my friends lmao). the villains in BNHA so far aren’t quite the attractive young character archetypes either, but i really like them anyway. i wanna know their motivations a lot. what’s the relationship between nomu and shigaraki (i kinda already brotp it)? what led shigaraki and kurogiri to want to kill all might so badly? who made nomu the way he was? if the motive is a personal grudge or a tragic backstory, fuck. i’m weak as fuck for personal grudges and/or tragic backstories in villains, alright? 

also, shigaraki’s hands shit + the way his quirk behaves/is animated is this level of slightly surreal horror — not really over-the-top gory/melodramatically creepy, but definitely disturbing — that’s an aesthetic i’m quite fond of, although only in moderation.

uraraka’s power, while hardly unusual, is imo something that can go really far and has incredible potential. it’s definitely gone amazing places in past characters who have the same power in other fiction. i wanna see her develop it.

and now i’m gonna talk worldbuilding, because while i’m not that great at analyzing it or doing it myself — i’m decent enough to pull together a convincing world for my fiction, but that’s about it, since i’m not great at understanding how the world works, let alone how changes would affect it on a wide scale — superpowers are something i’m quite fond of.

so, there’s this one YA series called the reckoners, by brandon sanderson. he writes a lot of stuff about people with magic, and i love his work, especially the reckoners. i am bringing this up for two things. one, the protagonist is also a guy with no powers who’s unusually obsessed with the intricacies of the superpowered people and their superpowers in a world where superpowers just started randomly appearing and became integrated into society, although he’s obsessed because of a vastly different reason from izuku.

two, the worldbuilding is really good, and the powers are unique. it’s very different from your typical story about superpowers. in my opinion, every kind of basic power — telekinesis, manipulating elements, reading/controlling minds — has been used. i wouldn’t say it’s impossible to come up with new basic powers, but it’s damn near close. but what’s good about superpowers nowadays, what makes them interesting and original, is not the power itself, but its limits. how far can it go? what are the weaknesses? how can it be used?

i’m gonna give an example i’m really fond of — regalia from the reckoners. she’s a character who first appears in the second book. regalia has the ability to manipulate water, which we’ve all seen plenty of times in fiction, right? but it’s not just typical shit like “oh, look at this huge tide destroying a building!” my memory is fuzzy, but one of the things she can do is use the reflections created by water as windows. 

it’s hard to explain, but like, if you look into a puddle (and remember, water can reflect), and she’s paying attention, she can appear and look back at you and talk, like in a mirror. she’s able to communicate with you through it. she can keep an eye on the city she rules over because she flooded the entire place with water, making it a sort of island, and is able to watch everyone through its reflections. now that’s something new, even though water powers have been done to death.

i like how bnha handles the drawbacks of superpowers — it makes a little more unique. i’m not entirely pleased, but:

one post i’ve read on howtofightwrite (an excellent tumblr, writers who write action or anything involving combat should check it out!) is how, realistically, if you have super strength, every time you actually use it to anywhere near its fullest potential, it will fucking shatter your body. which is kinda what’s happening to izuku, i’ll explain in a sec. but like, if you punch someone, your knuckles hurt afterwards. except izuku’s punches are super super strong, so it hurts him way more than the normal person.

so i think that’s good! it’s a nice twist on how super strength usually works! but i’m still a bit displeased, because seriously, super strength is not at all new and it’s implied he’ll learn to control it instead of continuing to just have to deal with this particular drawback. all might learned to control it, which i don’t see how it makes physical sense, but whatever, fuck it, magic is magic. so i don’t think the blowback (looking for a word here?) resulting from his punches are actually because of realistic physical reasons TM that i just theorized, it’s just magic/being unable to control it, which is sad because c’mon, science and magic working together is cooler instead of “he got used to it by getting Good at his powers!”, but oh well. i’m not a doctor, anyway

honestly, i’m kinda disappointed that the most powerful heroes have super strength/superspeed, and that’s the only twist on it, and not even a terribly big one if izuku’s just gonna learn to control it through the power of experience. it’s not unique or new and i’d like to see something a little cleverer, i guess? like, i really like the idea of people adjusting to their powers and any drawbacks through just intelligence and the power of science and technology and wit, instead of practice/improvement upon the ability itself.

anyway, enough about izuku’s power. something else i’d like to see addressed is the emotional impact of izuku being quirkless all his life, and suddenly he has a power and everyone thinks he’s amazing. because it sounds like being quirkless fucked him up a ton. the protag of the reckoners is powerless and makes the best of it, and that’s what i really appreciate about the series — he never ever gets a power, he just figures out how to get through terrible life-or-death situations based on wit and his allies and cleverness and being amazing because you can still do amazing things without being born with those things. while i’m not saying izuku needed to take that route — what is it when he’s thought all his life he’s inferior, worshipped this one guy who turns out to be horribly vulnerable, and suddenly he’s got one of the most powerful quirks out there? (im assuming this gets addressed later though)

something else: how does society restructure itself now that everyone has a quirk? here’s the best thing about the reckoners: the people with the powers are the bad guys. like, not “oh, some people misuse their quirks” but almost everyone does, and what all the superpowered ones do, after they suddenly get their powers, is basically taken over the world. they’ve set up this tyrannical government in the usa where different superpowered people rule the cities and it’s basically a dystopia with superpowers, but the superpowered ones aren’t the rebels, they’re the oppressors. it’s a great twist on the typical superhero narrative. it changes the structure of society a lot. think legend of korra, but worse, more pronounced, a more oppressive regime.

so like, how does the world in bnha change now that 80% of people have a quirk? i really wanna know. UA is a start, but there’s got to be more to it than “there are schools trained to teach heroes, quirkless people feel bad about themselves, and heroes fight villains. and the villains don’t like the heroes because of that.” give! me! more! you don’t have to write me an encyclopedia of information (dear matsui, thank you for building your characters so much shit like the rollbook info exists, but not everyone does that) but what else is there? there has to be more than that.

some of the superpowers are interesting, yeah, but none of them stick out so much. i’ve read too much stuff about superpowers to be easily impressed, but really, “school of heroes” has been done a lot and while i like bnha a lot so far, they’re gonna have to go above and beyond what they’re currently doing to really impress me. rn i’m really curious what they’re gonna do with mineta ‘cause his power seems so fucking useless but he’s clearly there for a reason (how’d he pass the entrance exam?). the other powers don’t stick out much to me. stuff like tsu’s frog quirk or todoroki’s half-hot, half-cold shit (instead of just one) are just unconventional enough for me to raise an eyebrow, but not much more.

anyway. hoping they expand on that. but the worldbuilding isn’t horrendous or anything, i’m really enjoying all the powers and the worldbuilding’s good enough, just could be taken a lot farther. like, the potential is wow. god, i already love the characters so much, though

oh, also. not interested into getting into bnha fandom or the manga as of right now, and this blog is staying AC, but talking about it is still fun (i like discussing things!) and i’m gonna watch s2 when it comes out.

#bnha lb #i decided to readmore this because i realised it's 2.4k words and it's not even like structured meta just me talking