#tldr i think writing quality has dropped and i feel awful for thinking that

[alexanderlightweight]

So I put in a prompt and I don't know if you've answered it about more disabled Alec? I don't know if Tumblr ate it or if you've put that you don't want to do anymore of that prompt? If you have no more intrest in that I understand and I didn't know how to ask without sounding pushy.

oh hey nonny! you're okay!

okay so i'm going to answer this honestly but this is me just being blunt. there is nothing wrong with the question and i'm not upset, i'm just kind of blunt because of anxiety and i hate misunderstandings so i tend to lay out all the facts and overexplain.

so i answer prompts based on my mood because i don't want to burn out, if that makes sense? so sometimes i have to temporarily avoid prompts that 1) require a lot of research (because i take my research seriously, even if i don't need to. autism special interest thing), 2) or i'm not up for dealing with how much meta belongs in a certain verse, 3) or are emotional in a certain way that i might not be up to dealing with? cause writing is super charged for me. it's basically my therapy so that means sometimes i'm mentally fucked up a bit and dealing with some things.

the agony of living, alec has chronic!pain and right now @saeths in a major flare up (Say's back is feeling out of sorts and she's had three medical procedures on it in six months) and i couldn't find my brace so my bad knee got overused. right now, writing about pain wouldn't be super cathartic because i'm still in pain and people i love are still in pain and the pain isn't going anywhere. all i'd be doing was focusing on it.

my brain is not happy right now and it wants to get into the nitty and gritty of chronic!pain:

i want to write about alec refusing to eat because the pain is too intense for him to feel hunger and all he can feel is nausea

i want to write about alec forcing himself not to shout at Mirai because she's forcing him to drink electrolyte water and all he wants to do is drop to the floor and scream but he can't let himself.

about an alec who can't make it to his room every morning so he has a special bed in his office.

and while those aren't bad things to write about, for me they wouldn't be helpful to focus on rn. because then i'll just make myself sad and wilty.

i actually really enjoy writing in this verse and i'm happy to explore it more. i just also have to be careful i don't overlap too much and burn out because i accidentally overfocus on things that are actually diminishing my quality of life in rl.

the weeks i write the agony of living are honestly, the weeks i feel the best and i'm taking Nightshade on walks and hikes and keeping on top of the housework and yardwork and cooking and work are when i want to write it.

when i can think about everything that can go into the story without reliving and focusing on how awful everything is in the moment. so this is probably tldr and tmi.

so TDLR:

i only write the agony of living when things are doing good physically in RL because otherwise it's too depressing.

i hope that helps make sense? you were very polite and not at all pushy and there was nothing wrong with this ask. it just happens to have an intense answer but i'm happy i was able to clarify and i have your prompt saved in my drafts so tumblr can't eat that! i'm trying to do that with all the prompts i get and it takes a while, but i love all the prompts and i hate when tumblr eats them

<3 lumine

#lumine talks to ppl #lumine answers asks #writing wednesday answers

[zoronoas]

i just finished how to get away with murder, so under the cut for in depth discussion and yes it has spoilers.

tldr; if you like murder shows and you like well written characters & plot PLEASE watch it. it’s amazing and it became one of my favorite shows in the span it took for me to finish it.

i remember first watching how to get away with murder years ago when everyone was still on the very start, around 2016 or something? and i was younger then, obviously, and it’s so much clear to me now how so much went over my head. tbf tumblr was on a OMG THIS SHOW HAS GAY CHARACTERS!!! so i think thats why i started watching it? but i ran out of episodes really fast so i dropped it, not remembering about it until years later.

now that i watched it again nd finished, i find myself being so entranced by annalises character, her qualities and faults and how it very much clearly takes a black woman to portray another black woman w the care & love they deserve. to be watching the iconic scene when viola davis takes out the wig and make up, how touching it is. to watch annalise w open and raw and angry and sensitive, watch them desconstruct the idea of the strong powerful black women stereotype but not transform her into anything she isnt. its like so so so touching and so moving.

how the plot twists, if made by any other show, would be ridiculous and a reach and over the top but htgawm makes it work. it makes sense, it rolls, it sticks. how slowly we learned more about each character, sam’s back story really really messed w me bc it did come a bit out of left field and still made sm sense. michaela as well, who is a bitch but it still is so meaningful w her background, her own past nd story nd truth.

obviously this show has a lot about the african usamerican experience, and i can only see it as an outsider, but from all the media i ever saw (as a non black foreign of course, my access to usa media is lesser than that of a native), i think this was a first that a ~~popular with the mainstream show had such a loving and careful descption of black woman not only as side characters but as the main.

i really really like shows w murders, they are my favourite thing ever, but i hate when its just the detective doing awful cop things like NO i dont care about cops! shut up about cops i dont care about cops being corrupt and doing unlawful things

and how to get away with murder hits all the spots for me. great representation is nothing without great writing, and it has both and so much more. connor and oliver are such a lovely incredible couple, nd them ending up together made me go !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!. so so so so so so so happy. to see annalise finally accept herself as a bisexual black woman, to allow herself to be w tegan, even for a bit, for nate to get justice... maybe not everyone got what they wanted, but what they deserved.

i dont know how i particularly feel about bonnie nd frank dying like that, but regardless it was a great ending and it was so so so so incredibly well done. i also really liked ashers and michaelas relationship as well, i thought i wouldnt but i did. very sweet. gabriel wasnt my favourite, annoying dude obsessed w his father. even though i understand why hes like that, i still think it shouldnt take two different black woman telling you a white man was awful for you to believe it so he absolutely isnt my favorite!

but the thing w this show is that even if you didnt like a character you CANT say they are badly written, bc theyre not. there isnt 1 single lose end on this end it shows

also to finish it off i LOVED the editing, the format of the episodes, the forward and backwards thing... perfect!!!!!!!!

franks whole italian mafia type of thing always felt a little corny but then when you get to the end and realises........ and then you dont stop realising....... its all a lot !!!

anyway i loved it so much (: im so happy!!!

#now im going to watch anything shonda rhimes ever did cause shes INCREDIBLE at what she does #n

[dicecast]

Why did you think TFA was boring?

You mean “The Force Awakens” right?  If so, good question.  Long answer

Just a few disclaimers first. I think it was very good that Star Wars moved in the direction of being more inclusive, having the two protagonists be a women and a black man was a good movie, and the fact that the movie has become a creepy alt right recruitment movement is pretty disgusting.  Also Ray isn’t a Mary Sue, most of the actors were good, and in fact the core characters were good, if only they had somebody who was less of a hack than JJ Abrams. 

Other disclaimer.  I liked the original trilogy but I am not a huge star wars fan, I don’t mind changing things, and I think there have only been like...5 good star wars properties ever (The Original Triology Plus the Old Republic games) 

Other disclaimer: I think JJ Abrams is a mediocre director and everything his makes is simultaneously unimpressive and pretentious.  The Mystery Box is an absolutely awful writing  technique, he is like a poor man’s stephen Moffat 

Ok so to explain why I don’t like TFA i have to first explain what the orignial Star Wars did right, which is weird for me because I don’t think those movies are like...master pieces.  But part of the reason why a weird grudge sci fi movie blew into the most valuable intellectual property in history is because of how..unconventional the original movies are.  To prevent this from being a whole essay, i’ll narrow it a single point.  George Lucas was trying to be an experimental film maker.  So while the dialogue in the first movie is awful, the plot is pretty standard and characters are quite flat, the movie has this very...unique feel to it.  Part of this is because the movie drops you in the middle of a series and never bothers to explain itself, giving you this odd alienated quality to it (seriously its fucking weird that the first movie is episode 4, like...why?)  Part of it is despite how mythic the narrative is, its actually fairly unconventional, like Luke is not a very masculine protagonist, the Force is a pretty odd element, and we don’t even meet our protagonist for 30 mins in.  Part of it is that Lucus thought he was making a profound anti Vietnam War statement, which while....didn’t work it does lend the movie more of an specific edge.  

    Most importantly however,  Lucus designed the original Star Wars as sort of a cinematic Frankenstein.  Each part of the triology, espicially the first movie, is like...a different type of other movie, ranging from Kurosawa Films, Westerns, Kurosawa Films, 1940s Serials, WIzard of Oz, Kurosawa films, B-Movie monster films, Kurosawa Films, WWII plane movies, anti Vietnam War movies, and Kurosawa films.  Each scene in Star Wars is like you are in a different film genre, so even though the plot itself is...not great, you are constantly shifting between a bunch of different of genre sand style so the movie feels totally different than any other movie like it.  So what I would want from TFA is that they do so for all of the movies which have come out since 1977 but...yeah nope.  Its just cosplaying as A New Hope which...just isn’t a good enough movie to make that interesting 

    And as is typical of a lot of modern disney projects (and JJ ABRAMS) there is a lot of very grand imitation which doesn’t seem to have much purpose beyond a marketer being like “oh people like this in the original product, we need to respect the brand.”  Like...why did there have to be some sort of Super Weapon in TFA?  It wasn’t really tied into the plot and in fact its weird that the New Order, which is effectively a terrorist organization, was able to somehow get a more powerful weapon than the Death Star.  It feels like it is there..because the original movie had the Death Star.  

   For that matter, the New Order themselves are a pretty good example of the kind of souless property of TFA in terms of themes.  Like the original Empire were basically discount Fascists because Lucus was a hippie in the 70s pissed off about Vietnam.  They were a big empire, so they had Stormtroopers and large armies, and big space ships.  

     But if the New Order is basically a rebellion against the existing republic, they should have a different aesthetic, maybe reflecting how a lot of Neo Nazis or Neo Confederates present themselves as scrappy rebels against the Federal Government, or model them after something like ISIS or other insurgent groups. This is supported by Kylo Ren being a discount Vader, its Neo Nazis trying to imitate fascists.  

    Instead they are the Empire...again even though it doesn’t really seem to fit the story or the themes they were going for.  Like if the movie is about how fascism reemerges under the guise of rebellion, or how running a state its difficult or breaking down the black and white morality of the first trilogy, why are the New Order basically just The Empire again with just enough redesign to make them sell a new set of action figures.  

      TFA doesn’t have any themes, big ideas, or even confidence in its own material.  The fact that each of the three movies is a response to the one before rather than really be its own story is super telling to me.  

TLDR: Rather than tell its own story, TFA just tried to retell A New Hope, which wasn’t a good enough story to be told in a new and interesting way. 

#ask evilelitest #The Force Awakens #Star Wars #A New Hope #George Lucus #Darth Vader #still better than the prequels #Kylo Ren #rey palpatine #Finn