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felinemotif · 6 months

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coryyyy!! 2, 16, 35, 57, 93, 110, 117 from the book ask game <333

hi maya thank you for stopping by /ᐠ - ˕ -マ all but one of these recs are written in english; the last one, compañeras, is written in a mix of spanish & 'spanglish'.

2. a book with a blue cover

i was so ready to say my husband by maud ventura for this but it turns out that??? the cover! is not blue. only the title is. so. with that said i'll go with all's well by mona awad.

i wasn't too sure about reading this at first but i had read and loved bunny by this author, so i figured i'd give it a chance despite my hesitation regarding the topic. glad i did, i'd give it 4 out of 5 stars. it could have been higher, but the ending was... well i don't want to spoil it if anyone is reading it/wants to read it, but it was definitely a very awad-esque ending in that it was neutral and honestly? a bit unsatisfying.

we follow a vengeful actor turned theatre director with debilitating chronic pain who slowly over time loses her sense of empathy as she gets lost in her anger. very, very unhinged. i saw dominique defoe say that it was disturbing to dive into a feminine rage book that wasn't set in a fantasy world where a lack of morality could be smoothed over by the greater good; all's well is a modern contemporary with real world problems. lots of references to two shakespeare plays (which you could probably tell by the title anyway lol).

my usual advice to ppl when they go to read a mona awad book is to have something fun and light to read after because rarely will you be happy with the 'resolution' in her writing.

16. a book you'd recommend to your younger self.

listen. little me was a pretentious fuck lol. i was walking around reading plato's the republic in middle school. i read electra by sophocles for the first time when i was like? 13 i think. both great reads but i really could have benefited from some less heavy material back then. something comforting and silly. with that said, and taking into thought what was already published by that time, i would say any of the lizzie mcguire books.

35. a book featuring the found family trope.

i actually don't read much found family outside of fanfiction but ig six of crows by leigh bardugo. i haven't touched that book since it was published but i remember really enjoying the dynamics between the characters, particularly kaz and wylan. i was also shocked by the huge improvement in the quality of writing compared to her shadow and bone series which i ended up never finishing.

57. a book you want to hit your head with

(assuming this means in a frustrated way) i'll go with the secret history by donna tart. it took me over a week and a half to finish that damn book. for reference normally i can finish a book of that length in two-three days. it was so slow. in over 100 pages the only thing that happened was the main character was able to get into a class he wanted and one of the female characters cut her?? finger?? foot?? smth. it wasn't a life threatening injury either.

the pacing was unbearable but the atmosphere made up for it. i spent some of my formative years where the book is set in the beginning so i did enjoy that aspect, and once i got over half way through it really picked up in intensity but yeah. it's a modern classic for a reason but i think in the future if i want to read a classic, i'll stick with dostoevsky.

93. a book featuring an unreliable narrator.

(the secret history also fits this but since i used that for 57) i'll say we have always lived in the castle by shirley jackson. if you haven't read a book by jackson before,,, do so. immediately. she does NOT disappoint.

this book is about two sisters taking refuge in their family manor together after almost their entire family is killed via poison. the townspeople, naturally, point the finger at the sisters and their surviving uncle but are unsure which one of the three committed the crime.

the narrator, 18 year old sister mary katherine, is very childish (to the point that ppl forget she and her sister aren't children). very much a story of sisterhood and trauma and a house is haunted by the living.

110. your favourite psychological thriller.

i can't think of anything off the top of my head so i'll just suggest the one i'm going to read at the start of the new year: a flicker in the dark by stacy willingham. I've heard excellent things about this book. the main character's father was convicted of her murder two decades ago, and while he's behind bars, someone with the same motive---or perhaps the actual killer all along---starts kidnapping young girls again.

117. your favourite anthology.

this really depends on the genre for me but the first to come to mind is one i recently read: compañeras, which is a collection of oral histories, short stories, poetry and essays by and about lesbian latinas.

my own experience with being a bisexual latina woman made this an especially meaningful read to me. in our culture, you don't really discuss your sexuality with your family if you aren't straight. there's a lot of shame in it. i had it a bit easier, given i didn't grow up around many other latines; so the cultural shame wasn't as prevalent for me outside of family. but it was still there.

being a hispanic/latino queer still very commonly results in being disowned once you come out or are outed. i remember when i spoke to my abuela about it (after having already come out) she nearly drove us into a tree.

this collection digs deep into the shame and familial and cultural expectations put on latina women, and it dives into how confusing and lonely it can be to learn about your identity in a household where you can't speak about your experience with the people meant to guide you (elders).

this anthology was also originally published in the late 80s by the latina lesbian history project! and even all this time later, we still face many of the same issues with oppression and family disownment and expectations that the women were talking about in this collection.

a lot of this was written in english, but some were in spanish & spanglish so if you don't speak spanish and want to read this you will have to look for translations for some of the content.

talk books with me

#ty for asking <3 #ask games #waffleinator-inator #replies #lit

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demenior · 10 months

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1, 4, 18, 53 for the writer game?

Fic Writers Asks (thank you!)

1.Do you daydream a lot before you write, or go for it as soon as the ideas strike?

I daydream like it's an olympic sport and I am the returning gold medalist with somehting to prove. The entire tumblr phrase 'rotating [a character] in my mind'? Yeah. I'm doing that. But it's more to the effect that I am constantly thinking about what aspects/traits I love about a character and wondering what's the best way (a scenario) to highlight those things. This is usually done to music. My music and daydreaming are highly entwined.

4. How do you choose which fics to write?

I feel like I get a million ideas a day, that could all branch off into another million ideas. The ones that stick around go through a lot of filtering to catch things like "is this even in character for said character or just a fun little thought experiment for me, personally?" or "are you actually interested in writing that or do you just think it's neat" and "is there even a story here or is the line they said in your head just cool" and other things like that. I also ponder a lot on what an overall story progression would look like- a LOT of my story ideas start out as WAAAYYYYY too ambitious and would require a huge amount of buildup to my idea (typically something around the climax moment), and I have to figure out if there's an actual interesting narative to be built or if it would be boring (for me, to write) from the start and will I lose steam on it.

I used to write anything and everything that came into my head, but I'm a lot more selective of what I actually do commit to actually writing as a story these days. For example, I wrote what feels like 40+ stories for Voltron in like 2 years before I decided to get pickier, but note that a huge amount of those are unfinished due to lost interest, vs I now publish 1-2 stories a year, but they are all completed.

18. Do you enjoy research? Which fic of yours required the most research?

It's 50/50, which is the worst answer to give.

I like fact-checking myself, and looking up things to help enrich stories (ex) slang/terms for ship parts for sailor characters, flora/fauna native to certain climates to add into backgrounds) but I do not like hard research such as knowing the history behind potato cultivation in our world so I can accurately state whether a fantasy society would be able to cook with potatos.

The most research I've ever truly done for a fic would be a tie between the Spn series The Love It Takes as I did a lot of cross-checking canon events to real world locations, and also planning out actual routes for the characters to take, as Spn is, at it's heart, a road trip across America and I don't know jack shit about that place. I specifically did a LOT of location research for an upcoming piece in that series (I had to learn what Bucc-ee's was!)

The other story would be Awake My Soul for the 100 series. The research there was, again, geographic so I could map out distances in a post-apocalyptic world, and also some brushing up on how to treat illnesses without modern medicine, and gene flow.

My research is never done to portray total accruacy, but so that I can do the writer thing of "take something real, and then shift it a few degrees to the realm of fantasy".

53. What is the most-used tag on your ao3?

Established relationship!

This would be because I either write pre-relationship stories, ambiguously romantic, or I write established relationships as I find the pacing for budgeoning romance to be very hard and my hat is off to all you amazing writers who tackle that particular narative thread because you are all geniuses and I respect you so much for your bravery and your service.

#asks #replies #dem speaks #ty!!!!

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icharchivist · 6 months

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OSP are heroes tbh

Anyway, do you want to share your redemption arc thoughts with the class or are you fine by yourself?

I've only watched a couple of their videos but that was really such a good take, i'm very delighted about it.

As for redemption arcs oooh boy i have Thoughts.

There's a tendency in the modern discourse around redemption arc to center the victims of the characters rather than the character themselves, while ideally it should be a balance of both. If the character you're discussing is meant to have a rich inner life and isn't just defined by the way their antagonism (therefore, not characters who are meant to be allegories, but characters who are meant to be people), denying them the ability to get better over the idea that their victims shouldn't forgive them for their actions is denying any attempt at recovery and self improvement. Crazy, but you can actually think that the victims shouldn't forgive them, while also agreeing for the character to be able to move forward on a path of recovery and self improvement.

Ultimately i believe the dichotomy "does a character deserve a redemption arc?" doesn't matter at all and is a smokescreen for people to prove their own morality over actually engaging with the text. Questions should be on what themes would this redemption bring? What would getting better bring to the victim? to the character? what does it say on a social level? on a personal level? Are you acknowledging the discussions regarding Trauma when it comes to it? Could you forgive someone who did this to you? could you forgive yourself if you slip up and end up the bad guy?

I'm personally a lover of character who *deeply fuck up*, i love when characters do unredeemable actions and have to dwell with its consequences, especially when they end up regretting those actions. To me it's an act of self-sympathy. I'm not projecting people who hurt me on this type of character - but the person i could be if i was misguided, if i lashed out, if the pain and guilt i'm feeling is unleashed tenth fold. Can i give myself the sympathy to declare i can move on? If i believe this character deserve better, then doesn't it mean i do too? Though i sometimes i also project people who hurt me in this type of character and there is an aspect of fantasy of seeing someone actually apologize and attempt at being a better person after the hurt they committed. That's a fantasy aspect, a catharsis, that is a hard one to deny either. What if you finally get to hear an apology for a hurt you were never even given any acknowledgement about by the people who hurt you? Can you not understand that some people would actually be very receptive to that?

Defining hard rules over what allows a character to be redeemed or not is stripping people from their personal experience and the way they can connect to a story on a personal level. A character who will be unredeemable for someone can be a salvation for someone else. We bring our lives with us when we interreact with fiction. Hard rules over how someone is supposed to accept a character's change of heart is just denying that.

i was also thinking about it in term of revenge stories bc i saw too many "ue ue stories about "revenge bad are bad" or stuff like that and it drives me insane. if you only think of stories as "revenge good/bad?" dichotomy you've lost the plot. What's the theme of the story? what does revenge bring? is it a fantasy or a reflexion of reality? so on and so forth.

Those imo come from the same root issue of reading media analysis in a sense of "can i use this work of fiction to make myself morally superior?" rather than exploring various degree in which it can demand us to intereact with your humanity, our dark sides, in a controlled environment.

The discourse around Redemption arc have turned fully punitive over the year: is the character suffering enough for what they did? and to me that's the least interesting reading of a text you could get.

Anyway i got super angry at the comments on a webtoon i was reading where the villain had done unredeemable things and by the end she was sent in exile and she has to reflect on the horrors she did and in this one chapter she realizes she ruined her own life and the life of people around her for nothing and she cries and asks just to be able to send a letter to her brother, seemingly to apologize, and that's the last we see of her, but the comments were filled with "NO DONT GIVE HER A REDEMPTION ARC SHE DOESNT DESERVE ONE???" and like. Bro it's not a redemption arc, and also we don't even know if her brother is going to accept her apology, but why are you so mad that her story ends on her realizing she was wrong?? how is it so bad??? You're so caught up on trying to punish characters that you don't give them the grace to actually try to move forward and acknowledge that they fucked up. No one is asking anyone to accept her apology it's a personal journey for heeerrr (the webtoon wasn't even like something i was super invested in, and i don't even like this character, but i reached the comments wanting to set people on fire)

Anyway my actual conclusion is that if people cannot accept that characters who fuck up are allowed to move forward and recover no matter how messy this journey is and no matter how they victim feel about it, then they shouldn't be surprised that i unconditionally support them when they continue killing people. Refuse them the grace to not be treated like monsters and i'll cheer on them when they give in fully on their dark side. what are you going to do about it. be even more boring? pff.

#i try very hard to be positive on this webbed site #and i've managed mostly to surround myself with people who mostly vibe with my vibe #so i usually have nothing to complain about. until i get out of my comfort zone.#and boy are people absolutely fucked when it comes to character with dubious behaviors #if you don't want them at their attempt to get better you only deserve them to be right about their killings. xoxo.#ichareply #anonymous #ichasalty

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onewomancitadel · 2 years

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Hello again. What are the most appealing aspects of anime to you? what draws you in?

Hi again anon, hope you're having a good evening! XD Thank you for asking for my opinion, I hope I give an interesting answer.

Well, I don't like most anime fan culture. I find it unappealing and uninteresting. I don't like anime for the sake of anime, BUT I like a lot of anime, because it's very obviously artistic and thoughtful. Artistic and thoughtful enough for Black Swan or Inception to joyfully 'borrow' from Satoshi Kon, or equally considered too artistic and thoughtful in making live action adaptations such as Ghost in the Shell (2017). The director literally said the original film adaptation had too much philosophy in it and wanted to take that out. Gut the original Ghost in the Shell film of its thematic drive and you're left with shallow action schlock and no motivator. Oh wait, that's exactly what they did!

So anime as an artform is in this sort of weird position where you get anime films such as Angel's Egg or Ghost in the Shell (my two favourites) as being formative to video games and film, and other such bleedover entertainment (I'm pretty sure Angel's Egg really inspired the Dark Souls series - Ghost in the Shell, obviously, The Matrix) and then you kind of get that dismissal of anime as a serious medium for conveying ideas, because animation is for children. (My issues with certain anime probably has less bearing on the issue).

I think the conflation of 'animation is for children' is interesting because you can probably make the argument that it is true, in a sense; animation can reach heights of fantasy it's hard for live action to do, and fantastical things - especially bright and colourful stuff - is generally considered for children. I'm with C.S. Lewis on this one: 'Some day you will be old enough to start reading fairy tales again.' But I think most anime viewers would agree that with that heightened fantasy, you can also get some of the most out of this world stuff with adult themes conveyed appropriately.

The thing with animation too is that essentially every single shot is controlled, and is profoundly purposeful. This isn't something I'd immediately dismiss in live action (for instance, The Matrix does this a lot, though I would argue here this may be the anime influence) but I like thoughtful things, and I like metaphor a great deal. But on this front, I prefer hand-drawn anime. Which is ironic, since I'm a fan of R/WBY, but I actually just prefer the commitment to 3D animation. I find digital 2D very, very ugly, and I would rather just not watch it. In fact, most modern art-styles of anime I really don't enjoy at all. Little bug-eyed things which need to be swatted with a newspaper. I think the effort and the kind of texture you get from hand-drawn anime is like nothing else, and it distresses me when the swiftness of digital is prioritised over the artistry of hand-drawn. *shrug* I'm not the one being catered to anyway, so I'm not sure my opinion matters. (Obviously with R/WBY here as well, the 3D animation lets an independent team make their art, so you win some and lose some, but again, I like just the 3D).

So I'm very picky with anime, but I'm picky with most things in ways other people are not picky. Ater all, I'm a huge fan of R/WBY, and I've heard enough from people who don't like it. But we probably don't share anime opinions either. As I've noted before, Ghost in the Shell and Angel's Egg both utilise Jung in their storytelling, which I notice and am a fan of in R/WBY as well, so I'm not interested in the same sorts of traditional things. (If you're an Eva fan, you know it's packed full of Freud; Freud is a bit more unusual. Yes, I like Eva, I'm like that, but I don't want anything to do with the rebuilds. Icky. Leave old stuff alone).

But yes, I like anime the same way I like film. I wouldn't say I have an encyclopaedic knowledge of it at all; I just watch what I like. I've heard it all from anime fans before in high school about Bleach, Naruto, whathaveyou, and I don't like it, but I don't like the Marvel films, but that doesn't mean I don't like cinema.

(I promise I'm not a total contrarian. I am an avowed Reylo shipper, the most normie ship of all time - seriously, you should see the numbers on that ship, and how many people were into it that had never shipped before).

Anyway, I think animation is great, it's moving and very beautiful and thoughtful (I especially like the pacing, quite often) and some of my favourite moving picture shots are from anime. See my pinned post lol.

Also yeah I watched The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya and Fruit's Basket when I was a kid online, after DBZ, before I knew the annoying kids at school who kept me captive at a sleepover to watch Naruto. (One of the girls went to school dressed up as Sasuke on no-uniform days and non-uniform days, though the others wore their Akatsuki cloaks). So they are kind of the exception to the 2D digital animation rule, but I haven't seen those in years. Also Haruhi Suzumiya is a weird one because it's obviously SO referential to other anime and watching it without a frame of reference is really funny. Also Fruit's Basket and yummy yummy monster romance, very formative. I remember watching a choppy 240p upload of Tohru confronting The Monster Boyfriend in his monster form in the rain and yeah, that explains a lot.

Anyway, big epic fantastical pictures.

My favourite shot ever of all time. I actually saw it the first time at a rescreening at the cinema. Walked out of there not the same.

#seraphina's asks #user: anonymouse #sorry in advance if I sound annoying stupid or pretentious or all three at once #I am just the way I am and my silly little blog is where I derive a tiny bit of joy

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cedricstower · 4 years

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Hear me out but poly relationship of Cedric x Reader x Greylock?

oh ABSOLUTELY!

~gender neutral reader~

Poly Relationship between Cedric x Greylock x Reader

how all three of you end up together is beyond me or anyone else in Enchancia

at first it was just you and Cedric, you guys had been incredibly committed to each other albeit for a short while, but you guys seemed to have something really special between the two of you

the day you meet Greylock is when you two cross paths at a Conjurer’s Conference (if you’re magical, it’s probably your first time going together, but if you’re not, Cedric probably offered to show you around and you’re beyond excited), much to Cedric’s confusion because he thought Greylock would’ve been exiled by now

“All I had to do was use the ol’ charm on them and I got re-instated in three years time!”

“Of course” Cedric grumbles, annoyed beyond belief

you however are fascinated, taken with this jester-esc wizard. You begin to ask him a multitude of questions, annoying and confusing Cedric even further.

“So what did you tell the guards?” “What did you do?” “Are you a royal sorcerer too?”

Greylock was more than happy to answer all your questions, quite endeared by your wide-eyedness

Cedric’s probably standing there like “what is happening????”

You get distracted by a booth that catches your eye, give Cedric a kiss on the cheek and tell him you’ll be right back after checking it out while he catches up with his friend

You run off, and a smug looking Greylock walks up beside a still grumpy but slightly softer Cedric

“Well, they’re quite a catch, aren’t they, Cedric old chum?” He says, giving his comrade a wink

“I will fucking stab you” is what Cedric wish he could’ve said, however he settled for crossing his arms and grumbling something incoherent, good call, Ceddy.

over time the more you and Greylock cross paths, the more you guys get to know and enjoy each others company. Much to Cedric’s distaste.

You really don’t understand what Cedric doesn’t like about Greylock, but you decide not to push any questions on him for now

every time you two hang out, Greylock dazzles you with magic tricks, humors you with harmless pranks on the villagers, and occasionally attempts to woo you say via conjuring a lovely pink tulip for you.

You always have so much fun with Greylock. He was charming, witty, and smarter than people gave him credit for... sort of like your Ceddy. They didn’t see it, but they have a lot more in common then they both think

it’s not like Cedric stops you from hanging out with Greylock, god forbid he let himself be one of those boyfriends. He’d sooner throw himself back in the dungeon than control any aspect of your life (unless of course you were cheating on him or harming yourself in any way shape or form, stuff like that, but those aren’t relevant here so we’re not gonna unpack all of that)

however he starts getting suspicious when you two act a little more than friendly around him...

you were bidding Greylock goodbye when you gave him a small kiss on his cheek, to which he smiled and told you he’d keep it there forever.

this made you laugh, he always did

heading back to give Cedric a hug, he continued to stare off in the direction that his “old friend” had taken off to

“what was that about?” he asks

“huh?”

“Th-that, that kiss you just gave to him.”

You wave your hand. “Aw, hun, don’t worry about it. It was just a friendly little kiss.” You said, gently and playfully pinching his cheek which always caused the blood to rush to his face from embarrassment.

Cedric trusts you, he always has. It’s Greylock he doesn’t trust. They way that man looks at you... he knows what it means because he’s had to give you the exact same look for a whole year before you realized he liked you. However Cedric was much less crude about it.

he’s not proud to say it’s something he thinks and worries about a lot, his own insecurities of not being good enough slipping in every now and again, not that he’d tell you though

but he’s shockingly unsurprised when you and Greylock, as gently as possible, approach him about a relationship.

“All three of us, together! I think... I think it can really work out.”

“And I concur! Whadaya say, Cedric old chum?”

Immediately Cedric’s first thought was “No. Absolutely not.” No way was he willing to let you go about gallivanting with this jester of a sorcerer in a romantic sense.

It’s not that he didn’t want you to be happy, he really did, but it was Cedric who wholeheartedly denied he and Greylock could ever get along in a romantic sense, they were barely able to stay cordial for Merlin’s sake!

he’s shaking a little, but gulps down his internal thoughts and sighs. “I’ll think about it.”

the following week is a bit awkward for you two, every time you touch Cedric’s shoulder, it’s the lightest of feather touches and you speak to him extra carefully and softly, because you know this sort of proposal is telling him one thing

that he isn’t good enough for you

it comes to a point when you’re both lying in bed, and he’s finally ready to talk about it with you. He takes both your hands in his and locks his hazel eyes onto yours.

“Y/n, I-I really want you to be happy and... and have a fulfilling relationship but... before I continue, I need you to promise that... that it isn’t me. Is it?”

you know exactly what he means by that. And how could it be him? He was looking at you with wide eyes glossy on the verge of tears, it made your heart shatter and those tiny pieces melt.

“Oh, Cedric...” you brought a hand to his cheek, softly caressing him. You never used his full name unless you were being completely serious. It was always either ‘Ceddy’ or one of the various sweet pet names you had for him. “Of course it’s not you. You’re perfect.”

He’s hesitant at first, but he felt the honesty drip from your tone and radiating from your soul. Softening, he smiled. “Well, in that case, I suppose I don’t see the harm in you two having a relationship.”

You are beyond excited and leap into his arms for a hug, blurting out a thousand ‘thank you’s’ while feverishly kissing him up and down the side of his face, sending Cedric into a giggling mess.

Goodness gracious you were adorable, if he caught Greylock treating you with even the slightest bit of mistreatment, he’d be sure to cut all ties between you two and that monocle-wearing warlock immediately

as time went on, you and Greylock became inseparable. Prompting you to always convince Cedric to join in on your dates.

at first he’d only come along for you, and any time Greylock attempted to put the moves on him Cedric swerved that bitch.

but the more those two are forced to spend time together for your sake, the more they actually start to bond

at first, it’s mostly over their adoration for you

“Isn’t y/n just the cutest little crum, Cedric ol’ pal?”

“I suppose I can’t argue with you there, but do be careful with the “cute” word around them, they absolutely hate it.”

“Oh? I bet they’re adorable when they’re mad~”

Cedric rolls his eyes playfully. “Oh on the contrary, they’re horrifying. But... their cheeks do puff up and get red and it’s admittedly endearing.”

this was the start of a beautiful... romance? friendship? nobody really knows, least of all Cedric and Greylock

you notice how much more Cedric starts to loosen up around Greylock, he actually laughed at one of his jokes for the first time! It made your stomach do flips and your heart squeeze itself in your chest.

it makes you so happy to see your boys getting along <3

and it’s only a matter of time until Greylock had successfully won Cedric over, and he needs to announce it in the most dramatic way possible

he storms into the workshop one day, where you waited for Cedric because he “had a surprise” for you

Greylock kicks down the door with Cedric being carried in his arms (much to his embarrassment, his arms crossed and his face on fire) and loudly proclaims that he had finally “claimed Cedric’s ass”

this causes Cedric to yell out a surprised, “WHAT?” and push Greylocks face away while he stumbles out of his arms. “I did not agree to you saying that!”

too bad, it got you laughing and Cedric blushing, which is all Greylock wanted out of this to be honest

from then on, you three are the most chaotic polyamory in Enchanica

Greylock’s always trying to get you both to laugh, thought it’s easier for you then Cedric

yes, he occasionally resorts to tickling him, and Cedric is extremely ticklish

they still bicker a lot though, and you’re typically the peace-keeper. Though luckily none of you actually argue.

it’s usually over petty things, like how the bed shouldn't be used as a cracker platter Greylock

“Well then why is it called a spread sheet, Cedric?”

yeah this is usually how mornings go.

obviously they’ve calmed down a lot since dating though, knowing if they wanted this relationship to work, they’d have to be more level-headed with each other

dates are always super fun though! You guys alternate between your interests and even have a whole weekly date-night chart (courtesy of Cedric)

Greylock, because he’s a clown at heart, really likes the stereotypical “fun” dates like amusement parks, carnivals, swimming, dancing, bars, ect.

Cedric is partial staying inside because at heart, he’s an introvert and an old soul, so a day inside the workshop with the two of you, some tea, snacks, and a game of chess is more than enough for him (in a modern AU he’d enjoy movie nights at home and cuddling on the couch, fantasy/fantastical being his favorite genre)

you’re a little more adventurous than Cedric, but not quite as outgoing as Greylock, so you enjoy outdoor dates like festivals, nature walks, concerts, picnics, all that Fun Summer jazz.

however if you guys literally have no idea what else to do, going out for dinner is your go-to.

Cuddle-piles that turn into naps??? 100%

Cedric clings onto you and Greylock while Greylock has you in his lap, and his arm around Cedric while you three are lying down

Greylock is one for giving you both creative surprise smooches. Once he gave Cedric one of those squirt flowers but instead of spraying him with water a pair of comically puckered lips jumped out and planted one right on Cedric’s mouth.

Of course what he thought was gonna be a sweet gift turned into a gag, but Greylock made it up by giving him a real peck on the lips after

he tried the same thing on you after, but you were smart and declined, even after Greylock pretending to pout and beg you to take it lest he die from your lack of love, but you weren’t having it and laughed while tapping his nose

“Nice try, hunny bun.”

you know that meme that’s like “What if I put the oven to 40000000 degrees and baked the cookies for 1 second?” and one friend on the line is like “no wtf you’ll burn your house” and the other is like “lmao do it”? Yeah, that’s Greylock, Cedric, and you, in that order.

#ask #anon #this was so much fun to write thank you #sofia the first #sofia the first headcanons #stf #sofia the fandom #cedric the sorcerer #cedric the sorcerer headcanons #cedric the sorcerer x reader #cedric the sensational #cedric the sensational headcanons #cedric the sensational x reader #greylock the grand #greylock the grand headcanons #greylock the grand x reader

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sinterblackwell · 3 years

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kaylina’s top ten books of 2020 🖤

update 01/13/21: i stupidly forgot about a book that upended my life and made me fall in love with historical fiction, and so thus,,,everything has changed 😔

what that means is that a few of the original titles listed here have either been moved around or removed; i apologize to myself for the inconvenience. i do recommend reading through a bit of this again if you already read it the first time as i also revised my thoughts on one book mentioned here, so just something.

one of the things i wish for the most in 2021 is that i get to share more about my love for reading, so here’s the first post of many to satisfy that wish.

throughout 2020, i wrote some posts on a complete whim about the stories i was reading and they just kept piling on and on because i was so caught up in the euphoria of having something to turn to when school was dragging me down. i found myself to really enjoy talking about these books while i was on here so i felt it would be a worthwhile conclusion to give a good wrap-up of the top ten books that made 2020 more bearable among all of the bad.

this post is very long so if you’re curious to see what ten books stood out to me this year to make it to this list, you can keep reading in the cut below. it’s all sort of a ranking so it’ll explain why the list is backwards, and i’ll also link more information on the titles in case any of you are interested :’)

first things first, here are three honorable mentions that didn’t quite make the cut but are still important to me one way or another.

3. circe by madeline miller

i have to give thanks to scylla for being one of the main reasons i considered this book as one of my top favorites, a nymph-turned- monster that circe has to face more than once in this story.

also, miller herself building this book upon a figure who was barely considered in the odyssey is like a big slap to all the scholars out there who didn’t consider circe anything else but a jealous madwoman who used sorcery as her vengeance for all the sailors who came across her island.

cheers to the author for having actual critical thinking skills 🥂

2. the invisible life of addie larue by v.e. schwab

i did write a review for this book that i don’t find nearly as coherent as any other review i’ve written in 2020 but here it is if any of you are interested.

the fantastical elements of this story, along with some of the portrayal of certain characters such as luc and those that passed addie by made me fall in love with what v.e. schwab had to offer.

however, i can’t help but think that there’s s a lack of depth regarding minorities in this historical fantasy also set in the modern day. there were bits and pieces of this story that made me pause and feel like something was missing, aspects to it that left something to be desired. thinking back to it now, and after seeing a reviewer’s update on their review of this story, i‘ve come to understand that it could be because i knew this book could’ve been so much stronger if the mc was BIPOC or there were more characters of color who could give their own piece to the story as well.

there’s so much more i can say about it, but that’s a post entirely of its own to be made in future, i hope.

1. the year of the witching by alexis henderson

probably the best reading experience i ever had in 2020. here’s a review that goes into a bit more detail :’)

and here we go!!

10. clown in a cornfield by adam cesare

this book was so fun. i didn’t realize how much of a good time with this story i had until i was thinking about it last night. i mention in my review that i’m not a big horror reader but you can genuinely tell how much the author themself was a big fan of the genre and poured so much of their love into this book. it’s because of that love that i’m grateful for how much i enjoyed this story as a reader who typically is drawn more towards fantasy and contemporary fiction.

i didn’t have much of an attachment to the characters but they did make me laugh and smile despite this being a slasher horror, and because of that, this has become a pretty memorable book for me.

9. sex with shakespeare by jillian keenan

sex, to me, has always felt like a taboo topic, not just because i don’t have experience in it but because it all seems so complicated to me so just talking about it feels like i’m way out of my depth. what made this such an enlightening read for me was seeing how the author was discovering her sexuality through the influence of shakespeare’s works. keenan is very open and considerate of what readers may think going in learning about her fetish but she holds her own when it comes to her personal experience and how much more complicated one’s sexuality really is.

i highly recommend reading this article she wrote for the new york times here for more insight about her sexuality before this book came to be.

in this compelling memoir, the author literally brought shakespeare’s own characters to life and made them feel real, connecting them to her journey throughout her life. this to me, was something i could completely relate to because there are fictional characters i envision in moments of my life where i need them most and seeing the author herself explore that felt so real and imaginative to me.

this book was funny, light-hearted in some parts but incredibly vulnerable overall. i found the insightful analyses she’s made with shakespeare’s works so smart and well-written, i couldn’t give this book anything less than a five-star.

8. blood water paint by joy mccullough

written in verse, this historical fiction took me a while to get through but only because it was just one of those weeks where reading wasn’t that easy for me. once i finally got back into the stick of things, i completely devoured the rest of this story in less than a day.

the main character’s love for art was written with so much vision and spilled out in all these bright colors as depicted on the cover. what i particularly loved about this story were the interludes, little pieces inbetween chapters where the main character reflects on her deceased mother’s stories that were told to her when she was young. these characters that the mother envisioned in her storytelling became a source of light for the main character in her real life, where she then is raped by a popular artist in her village that was a mentor to her for a brief time. the aftermath of this assault culminated into a trial that got quite bloody, particularly involving self-afflicted torture in a matter of dignity.

the title makes sense once we’re in the aftermath of this trial, but how the characters from her mother’s storytelling come to life in the moments when she feels vulnerable are something i was completely enraptured in. this was because it wasn’t just their stories being told, but it was also the main character’s. seeing fiction and reality converge in such a time where women were used and borrowed felt like a vindication of sorts, very telling in how the arts works wonders upon a world that prioritizes logic over matter.

7. everything i never told you by celeste ng

this is a story about a family who’s dealing with the grief of the middle child, who’s assumed to have committed suicide. having the story reflect on each family member before and after lydia’s death, each of them dealing with grief in their own ways, impacted me just the same as how i saw how much they were grieving even before everything was torn down to pieces, all to the point where there was no way to go back. family sagas in literary fiction are always something i find myself to really connect with, and this one was no exception.

i’d also recommend listening to “ven” by cami, if not because you yourself might understand my feelings about this story a bit better then just because it’s a really good song that i discovered as i was reading this book.

6. darius the great is not okay by adib khorram

there’s one particular post i made regarding this story that i’d love to share here. through that post, i share a bit about my connection to darius as our narrator in this first book and then going on to the second book, “darius the great deserves better”, review for that sequel here.

just as darius felt a disconnect to not just his persian side of the family, but also from his entire family as a whole, i felt the same when it came to my dominican heritage. reading his journey throughout this first book in his own voice meant a lot to me then and it means a lot to me now.

seeing him grow and create bonds with characters like sohrab, his depression not being put off to the side but not beholding itself as the center of the story, and then just the persian culture all in itself when darius and his family travel to iran due to personal circumstances--all of it, makes this story something so incredibly special to me.

i learned a lot from this book, and seeing family at the forefront throughout all this was everything.

5. autoboyography by christina lauren

lo and behold my 2020 comfort book of the year + one of my favorite books of all-time. it’s the same feeling i had with “verona comics”, except even stronger because i came into this book thinking it’d be a nice and light read but it was so much more than that.

not only did this story center around two teenage boys in love but it also took into account of the relationships that they both had with other characters in this story. the portrayal of both tanner and sebastian’s families moved me beyond belief, for entirely different reasons, but seeing their story play out along with these two characters made this story hit even harder than i would expect. the location of this story and the significance of that plays such a huge role when it came to how tanner’s bisexuality was represented throughout, and how sebastian’s own grapple with his sexuality affected parts of the story. the author’s note at the end was just about anything i could ever want when it comes to understanding the purpose of one specific story, except i already learned so much from it that reading that note made the characters feel even more real.

may i suggest listening to “someone” by michael schulte because the lyrics of this song and the singer’s voice itself remind me strongly of tanner and sebastian’s relationship? which thus led it to becoming a big comfort song for me? so much so that it was my 2020 song of the year on spotify? no? yes? cool :’)

4. clap when you land by elizabeth acevedo

this was my first acevedo book, “the poet x” being her most popular work, but “clap when you land” for me too important a read that i didn’t want to miss as i was first going into acevedo’s writing. you can say that it’s because of how much this book means to me that it motivated me to read her sophomore novel “with the fire on high” and motivates me to finally read her debut “the poet x”.

i’ve talked to myself a lot about the personal connection i have with this book, but i’ll just say here that the context behind how these two main characters weren’t aware of each other’s existence and what it meant as they were also dealing with the fact that their now-dead father was still there for them despite having them in two different places,,,,,it’s just too monumental for me to put into words here. this author being afro-latina just like me and having written this story about a flight destined to dominican republic that never actually made it, and with so much heart above it all, i connected with it a lot.

as a dominican who feels both connected and disconnected to her heritage, this story breathed so much life into me. i wish you can know just how much.

3. lobizona by romina garber

the fact that i thought everyone would talk about this 2020 release with so much fervor and yet here i am holding the weight of this story with both shoulders,,,,unbelievable. i always feel insecure when it comes to recommending a book because the fact that i thought this one was incredible but not a lot people have talked about it, it makes me wonder why that is.

i really loved this book because as fast of a read as it was, there was so much to take in that you can tell how much effort the author put into it. as a fantasy, it’s connection to our reality is so grounded that it makes you wonder if it actually exists, and the background of our main character raises the stakes of a story like this where one’s identity matters too much to simply be blurred into the background. i loved seeing how there was animosity between these characters that we meet and the main character because despite having ties between each other, that doesn’t ignore how much labels in our society and the connotations that come with it carry its weight. seeing the sacrifices that were made and the discoveries coming at our main character with such a force, there was something so exciting that came from reading this book but it was very solemn overall.

the reason why this story isn’t at the #1 spot is because of technicalities, as i do admit that the ending did feel a bit rushed. but!! it made me more excited to see what’s to come in the second book of this series, “cazadora” (set to release in august 2021) so there we have it.

2. black sun by rebecca roanhorse

inspired by the pre-Columbia Americas, this story and its different narrators enraptured me in each and every page, my love for naranpa and serapio as characters soaring beyond the pages. all these different narrators appeared to have started this story as if they had no ties to each other but really, these web of characters are so interwoven with each other that there’s no telling what their destinies reveal. seeing how naranpa and serapio’s fates were tied together (not romantic, just a note in case i made it seem as such) put me on edge because there was so much political conflict and then here was a prophecy that put so many lives at stake, it was hard to know what could possibly happen. because of this, the ending of this first book in the “between earth and sky” series absolutely bowled me over and i cannot wait to see what could possibly happen next.

let me also just show my appreciation for one of the narrators, xiala, who for some reason made me think for a brief moment that her part in the story was over but really, that could not be further from the truth, i have to believe in that.

here is a review written by one of my favorite book bloggers about this story, listing five reasons as to why reading “black sun” could be an absolutely brilliant reading experience for you. it’s much more detailed and brings so much justice to this story than i ever could so if you’re interested, i highly recommend you check it out.

1. “lovely war” by julie berry

a mythic historical fiction that explored ww1 spanning a circle of characters, including the greek gods themselves—it was bound to catch my attention.

the beginning of this story immediately solidified my interest in the plot, the gods and aphrodite herself regaling the tale of mortals caught in the brink of a war that not only came with death and terror but music and bonds formed under strenuous circumstances.

watching as this journey didn’t exclude the gods themselves and how they were affected in what’s ultimately a love story, but not exclusively a romantic one, made this book become something so close to my heart, i’ll never let it go. i highly recommend.

and we’re done!! thank you to those who’ve read this far, this was actually a lot of work with a lot of links but i hope there’s something that you guys got out of it in the end. i’m really proud that i did this but i’m more proud of myself for having read so much in 2020 to have even been able to make this post.

thank you to all the new characters i met who will stay in my heart forever but most importantly, my thanks go to the authors who worked so incredibly hard to get their books out there, some with debuts and others with a beginning of a new series; you guys have done so much among all the trials of 2020 and i, along with so many other readers, will continue working to get your stories out there this year and the years ahead, that’s for sure.

happy new year to all of you and stay safe, everyone.

#❣️#this is a lot ik but i tried :’)#booklr

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rosecorcoranwrites · 4 years

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Villain Motivation and the Banality of Evil

Motivation in Fact and Fiction

As you know by now, I am a huge true crime fan. I've read books by FBI profilers and crime historians, am addicted to the Investigation Discovery channel, and have even attended a semester of my local police departments "citizens police academy". This is a professional as well as a personal interest, given that I am currently outlining a mystery WIP set in an alternate version of our world. Thus, I want to understand crime investigation, different types of evidence, and, of course, motive. It's this last one—the motivation behind a villain's acts—that many authors, not just those who write mystery—concern themselves with. And, after examining hundreds of real-life crimes, I'm here to tell you that it's not that important.

Ok, it's a little important, in that a villain needs a motive, but it's not important that it be extremely groundbreaking, or extremely relatable, or extremely anything. Motives tend to be common place, not extreme, no matter how shocking the other aspects of a crime.

For example, the excellent book The Father of Forensics: The Groundbreaking Cases of Sir Bernard Spilsbury and the Beginnings of Modern CSI, which I raved about previously, contains a number of sensational cases where the bodies were either hideously mutilated or, conversely, found without any scratch on them. To add intrigue to injury, the murders happened in the early days of forensics, when procedures for dealing with evidence were still being worked out and when more modern investigative tools like AFIS, DNA testing, and psychological profiling were still decades away. Every case was fascinating in its details and in its eventual solution. Almost every case had, as a motive, either money or getting out of an unwanted relationship. That was it. The oddities of the bodies were the killers' attempts at not being caught, but the reasons for there being bodies in the first place were as average as could be.

In fact, the three main motives, according to Lt. Joe Kenda, of ID channel fame, are money, revenge, and sex. The more headline-catching serial-killer crimes happen, it seems, due to a desire for power or a thrill. I would say these five motives sum up most murders, maybe even most crimes. Once you cut away the mystery and the gore, all you're left with are some pretty average human desires: money/stuff, vengeance/justice, sex, power/control, and thrill/excitement. When people talk about the banality of evil, this is what they mean.

Take the motive of "money". We're all familiar with the idea, in real and fictional crime, of robbing banks or killing someone for their life insurance. Writers seem to find this an acceptable plot point: villain wants a lot of money and thus does very bad things. Yet, if you watch enough crime TV, you will know that real murders happen for sums as low as $400 or even $40. There was an episode of Homicide Hunter: Lt. Joe Kenda where a man was shot and almost killed over an argument about 25 cents!

It also needn't be money, but material possessions. In one of the citizen's police academy classes, we learned about a local case where three teenagers broke into a man's house and stole, among other things, his corncob pipe. This pipe was the item he was most upset about, and often discussed in subsequent weeks. So the man lured one of the teenagers out to the woods and shot him execution-style. He was planning to do the same to the other two, and blame the whole crime on his teenaged lover. So that was one life ruined—and it would have been three others, had he not been caught—with the motive of revenge for a lost corncob pipe!

The Gap Between Good and Evil

I thus wonder why it is that we, as writers, tend to overlook such commonplace motivations. There's an unspoken assumption that the motivation of a villain must scale with their actions, so while sub-bosses or henchmen might get away with being in it for the money or the thrill, the Big Bad needs a more exciting or deep motivation. There's also a more recent idea being bandied about in internet circles that the villain should think he's the hero. I think both of these concepts are flawed, but let's take them one at a time.

Although I personally love "True Believer" villains that really do believe they are doing what is right, I don't think it's fair to say that all villains must be this way. After all, a great many real-life villains don't think they're doing something good; they just don't care. They want what they want and do what they can to get it without worrying about morality. I think the reason that this second sort of villain--the thrill-killer, the evil sorcerer, the bully--get a bad rap is that people (both readers and writers), don't understand evil. Yes, a villain who only desires evil is unrealistic, because, in fact, it's impossible to desire evil. But maybe I'm getting ahead of myself.

In the Catholic tradition, we hold that evil doesn't exist; it has no metaphysical reality. Evil is a privation, or absence, of good, similar to how a shadow doesn't exist, but is a privation, or absence, of light. Thus, a person cannot desire evil in and of itself, because they would be desiring nothing. Every evil act is done because someone is desiring something good, but disproportionately, or in a way that removes part of the good from that thing. Again, look at the five motives for murder. Each of those is a good, in and of themselves, but none justifies violating another person.

And thus we come to the other assumption about villains, that their actions must scale with their motives. I think, in fact, the opposite tends to make a more interesting villain. The motive can be something small--wanting revenge for some slight, or a peaceful life, or to be like everyone else. These might even be the same goods that the hero desires. What makes the villain villainous, and what can make them even more interesting, is what they are willing to do to fulfill these desires. Who or what are they willing to throw away? What rules are they willing to break? That distance, between what they want and how they get it is what separates them from the hero.

Types of Villains

This principle, that a villain must desire a good, but desire it disproportionately, can work for any type of villain.

Take the True Believer types: those that believe they are doing what's right. In this category, I would put people like Thanos (Avengers: Infinity War), as well as A.I.s like Agent Smith (The Matrix), VIKI (iRobot), and the Terminators (Terminator... obviously). Thanos is widely lauded as one of Marvel's best villains because he really does think he's doing the right thing. He is willing to throw away half of all sapient beings, plus the one person who he actually cares about, in order to save the other half. What he wants--peace and prosperity--is understandable, but while the gap between that and his genocidal actions is mathematically non-existent, it is morally huge. Similarly, the three A.I.s I mentioned are trying to save either robot-kind or human-kind, but are willing to murder thousands or even billions of humans in order to do it. Essentially, these villains are doing the classic Utilitarian trolley problem, but on a massive scale. They think they are the heroes, and truly do desire a good outcome, but the actions taken to bring that about are inexcusably evil.

Similar to the True Believers are a type of villain I will call the Desperate. These people are also trying to bring about good, but know that what they are doing is wrong. Mr. Freeze (Batman) is a classic example, as he commits crimes to get money and technology to save his wife. Actually, there are a whole slew of villains, mostly in anime and JRPGs, whose entire motivation is to save or resurrect a dead wife or girlfriend. They're trying to save someone they love, but they rarely brand themselves as saviors or heroes; Desperate types hold no such illusions. Sebastian, in my own series, is such a villain, in that he is willing to betray his friends and ally himself to bad people in order to save Chiaroscuro and make up for his past sins. He's willing to do evil that good may come of it, and actually uses the "I'm a bad person anyway" excuse as a justification for his actions.

On the flip side are those who don't care about whether or not they're doing good, which I will divide into three types: Dark Lords, Thrill Killers, and Egoists.

Dark Lords, obviously, include literal Dark Lords, such as Sauron and Voldemort, but I'm also going to throw in your average serial killer into this category. Why? Because they all want the same thing: power. The books I've read by FBI profilers chronicle the most gruesome crimes with motives ranging from rage to lust, but there is an ever present need of the killers to control, whether that's controlling their victims, the situation, or the police and firefighters (in the case of arsonists). Control is related to power, and power, in and of itself, is a good. This, in fact, is why it's wrong for these villains to take away the power or freedom of their victims. While a True Believer like Thanos sought balance, Dark Lords seek an imbalance, and want everything for themselves in an attempt to prove to themselves that they are more powerful, and thus better, than everyone else. These types of villains are, sadly, very realistic, but don't lend themselves to stories requiring a strong interpersonal conflict between hero and villain. They tend to act as a force of nature the hero must work against--whether in a fantasy against a Dark Lord or in a thriller against a serial murderer--and thus don't do much in the way of interpersonal conflict.

Better, in my opinion, are the Thrill Killer types, who see the world as a game, and are willing to do whatever it takes to have fun. Example of this are The Joker (Batman) and Mr. Sato (Ajin). Though The Joker is a bank-robbing thug, he's mostly in it for the laughs, and cares very deeply about whether or not things are funny. That doesn't make him any less abusive or violent, but the gap between his humor and his barbarity is what make him an interesting character. Mr. Sato, similarly, sees the world like one huge videogame, in which he has been given extra lives. Fun and games are a normal and natural good, but his villainy stems from what he is willing to do in this "game". Mr. Sato has absolutely no concern for human life, even his own, and kills hundreds of people (including himself, on multiple occasions!). The interest in this type of villain comes from watching their crazy schemes and then trying to figure out how the hero can possibly beat them. These villains are similar to Dark Lords in that they are something like a force of nature, but different in that the hero usually has to face off against them personally, outwit them, and deal with them as an individual person.

Finally, there are those who want something personally good, but have no regard for others. Technically, this could also describe Dark Lords and Thrill Killers, but here I mean really personal, as in specific to that person. Rather than something big like power or a crazy thrill, they tend to desire the utterly ordinary. Take the robot in Ex Machina. I'm not sure everyone would classify her as a villain, though she certainly did some evil things (it's up to interpretation whether she understands good and evil, though). What was her motivation? She wanted to go watch a crowd. She was, essentially, created to gather information, so that's what she went to go do. It makes sense that that's what she wants, but it doesn't justify what she did to the main character (even if he was kind of a doofus). Or Rezo the Red Priest (Slayers), who, in my opinion, has one of the best motivations of any villain ever. He was born blind and wanted to see. That's a totally understandable motivation. But he's willing to sacrifice the entire world to a demon lord in order to get that wish. Now that is a heckofa gap between a good desire and an evil action! And yet, is it really all that different from the sort of selfishness present in a man who would murder three teenagers over a corncob pipe? Real evil motivations are banal, and real evil actions are completely disproportionate to those motivations. Art, in the case of these last villains, is simply imitating life.

Asking What the Villains Want

Obviously, there are a million different ways of combining these villain type and motivations. Some villains want money so they can save a dying loved one. Some villains desire revenge because they truly believe they have been wronged. A Thrill Killer might find excitement in killing criminals. There is no one right way to write a villain, and there is no one motivation that is the only interesting kind. To anyone trying to write a villain, I suggest reading about or watching shows on real life criminals, from the Big Bads like Hitler, Stalin, and Mao to famous killers like Jack the Ripper and Ted Bundy to run of the mill criminals in your local newspaper. People don't become mass murderers or even petty thieves for no reason, but they also don't just do evil because it's the evil thing to do. Even the most gruesome atrocities were rooted in the desire for misplaced revenge, or disproportionate control, or a false belief in some so-called greater good. Then, I suggest reading and watching your favorite stories and asking what makes these villains tick. Is it the same as in real life? Is it different? What makes a great villain so great? You'll may just find that it's simply a matter of proportion.

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gayregis · 4 years

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I've listened to the part where Geralt talks with a very ill Cahir about Ciri and vengeance... it was one of the most emotional parts of the book by itself but also thanks to your take about the lost innocence of Ciri ! I felt it thrice hard in the feelings! Also, do you have thoughts on the declared love of Cahir for Ciri? Personally I see it as disturbingly romantic, let's say. Thank you for your commitment to the books and sorry to bother you

omg thank you for the ask. first of all i have to say you’re not bothering me!! tbh i have been loving getting asks because it gives me an opportunity to like bring more discussion to the witcher community...

i feel like although reblogging pretty gifs of characters/landscapes from tw3 and any good fanart i can find is nice, my FAVORITE thing to do is write or read a really long textpost about the witcher books, i really like the discussion aspect of fandoms where people post their reactions and opinions to the content they like, because you get a bunch of shared reactions and differing opinions.

so no this is NOT a bother at all, and its nice especially to get asks about topics that i have strong feelings about but have not made posts about yet, like this one

ok, as for the actual topic: i hate forced heterosexuality, so you KNOW i hate that canon cahiri! it was out of line from sapkowski and imo, it came out of absolutely nowhere in tower of the swallow, it wasn’t something built up to or foreshadowed at all, so it felt not only weird in context but weird for sapkowski as an author.

my main problem with canon cahiri: i think it’s super creepy!

first of all, let’s discuss the age difference. cahir in baptism of fire is estimated to be “not over 25,” which i see as putting him around 20 to 25 years old, and i usually take the median of this which is around 23. while this “not over 25″ comment is said in the context of the hansa to remark upon how young cahir is (i believe it’s thought of by either geralt or dandelion, and geralt is around 60 years old and as a witcher he looks 45, and dandelion is 38 in tower of the swallow), and how cahir is described as a young man in time of contempt to illustrate that he has a sense of innocence to him as ciri cuts him down, his age gap with ciri is super innappropriate for anything to occur between them, since she is 10 or 11 during the massacre of cintra (as stated by geralt in something more), so she would be around 14 at thanedd, and 15-16 during baptism of fire to lady of the lake. so sapkowski deemed it fit to pair a 23 year old man with a 16 year old girl. this isn’t the first time he’s done something like this, what with essi being “not over 18″ and shani also bein around 18 / college age, and yennefer canonically looking around 20. listen, the man has some messed up values when it comes to women’s ages. we have to take it upon ourselves as people who like the not-weird parts of canon to understand how worldviews and personal biases affect one’s writing, and change it for ourselves to make it right so we can continue interacting with it, if we so choose (tldr: retcon some shit when it’s fucked up in canon).

now, before someone argues that “it’s fantasy medieval world, medieval relationships between men and women were just like that,” believe me, i am aware. i study ancient greece/rome and men who were in their 30s were most often paired with women in their teens as part of their arranged marriages. that is how their ancient societies functioned more than 2000 years ago. the issue is that this is a fantasy world, in which societal norms and laws do not have to conform to real-life earth history, and this is the work of a modern writer writing in the 1990s. it’s not “just how the times were,” it’s deliberately choosing to include an age gap like that to be something canonically acceptable by their society/ies.

also, one could argue that the age gap would be fine once they are older, like, when ciri becomes an adult she is already medievally-style betrothed to cahir so they start dating when she’s like 20 and he’s like 27. eh... that’s still an uncomfortable age gap, at least for when they’re in their 20s. people in their older 20s have more life experience than people in their younger 20s. but at least it wouldn’t land cahir in modern-day jail.

it’s still just an uncomfortably large age gap, and if you think about it, it’s even creepier considering that cahir met ciri when she was a helpless child around 10 - 11 and it just makes the bathing scene excruciatingly creepy too if you put it in the context that he eventually would fall in love with her. it even begins to not be about strictly age, but about life experience, development, and power imbalance within the relationship. i mean, he did literally kidnap her.

cahir in tos calls ciri a “woman” when she is like, 15 or 16 (with the rose tattoo) (to anyone reading, please don’t come at me with that “the age of consent is 15 in poland, just because it’s 18 in the US doesn’t mean your laws and culture apply to everyone” ... please do not try and justify this with laws, legality is not morality. only saying this because i’ve seen it in other posts). like.... hm! don’t like that! she is a teenager... he is in his 20s... this should not be occuring.

sorry for the loooong explanation, but every time someone brings up the subject of age gaps on tumblr it turns into crazy discourse with everyone trying to justify it.

but yeah, CANONICALLY cahir would have been 16-21 (median 18) when he met ciri at 10-11, and 20-25 (median 23) when he declares his love for her at 15-16. that’s ... not good ... to put it more into perspective, these are their ages on a traditional school system path: a 18 year old is a high school senior, an 11 year old is a 6th grader. a 23 year old has been out of college for 2 years, a 16 year old is a high school sophomore. ITS NOT GOOD

my other problem with canon cahiri: it’s boring and contradicts sapkowski at his own game.

all of the witcher is about taking fantasy tropes and inverting them, like you can’t have some random peasant kill a dragon, you’d need a professional, and also guess what, the dragon isn’t evil but a dad trying to protect his wife and child.

all of the characters in the hansa (as well as the four main characters of geralt, yennefer, ciri, and dandelion) are inversions of the tropes they represent. for some examples, milva’s trope is something like the hot action girl who only exists to be the only girl in the company and to be sexy eye candy. instead of falling into this, she is actually an action girl, not bothering with sexiness and appeal to the gaze of a male audience but a “get shit done” type, who also dresses and acts “like a man.” regis’ trope is all vampire tropes ever. he/vampires in the witcher doesn’t/don’t fall into any of the traditional european vampire myths like burning in sunlight, needing to drink blood to stay alive, being disdainful of humanity, having aversions to garlic, belonging to a super-secret orderful society that lurks in the shadows and controls everything like puppetmasters, etc... instead, he is the epitome of redemption arcs and overall “goody-goodiness,” understands humanity perfectly and does things out of his good nature. i already talk about regis too much, so i’ll quit it.

cahir is an inversion of every knight trope ever, particularly the evil knight. he scars ciri’s memory as a night terror, but actually is not ... a bad person. he’s just some guy, pressured by his family and his society to do what he saw as an assignment like a college kid might see their final essay assignment posted on canvas. except you know. the final exam was to kidnap a girl. and he got an F on that and failed the course (ie got thrown in prison). ANYWAYS, cahir is meant to be this inversion of the knight tropes, so WHY, WHY, WHY make him become the knight trope of being the one to romance and to save a hapless princess? if we’ve learned anything about ciri, it’s that she’s the inversion of the princess trope! she KILLS PEOPLE. she ALMOST KILLED CAHIR. she can defend herself and kill for herself, she doesn’t need the knight trope going to protect her!

heterosexual romance as the Big Reason and Motivation behind all of a character’s actions is tiring, annoying, boring, and not well-thought out. it’s so base and not unique, it doesn’t fit in with everything else about the witcher.

how i would fix it: not make them fall in love.

cahir already HAS a motivation to find ciri and to help her. he needs to APOLOGIZE. he needs to say, hey, i’m sorry i kidnapped you and ruined your life, i made peace with your dad, he doesn’t wanna kill me anymore, i can only hope that you can forgive me too after i SET THINGS RIGHT.

as opposed to regis’s arc (i swear i am not playing favorites with regis, i just tend to compare and contrast regis and cahir’s redemptions because they are quite different yet they join the hansa side by side so they’re bound to be compared), cahir actually can find the one (not many) people he wronged, and set things right on his own accord, not go forth with a larger mission to assist all humanity, or whatever.

i think cahir also had this WONDERFULLY UNDERUTILIZED anti-imperialist message as part of his character that pains me to see being swept under the rug for some cheap lame romance story. sapkowski already created some anti-war sentiments with the battle of the bridge in baptism of fire, and he tried to create anti-racism sentiments throughout the book/at the end of lady of the lake. anti-imperialism fits with the rest of the saga as a message.

the fact that cahir was instructed by his family to hate the northern kingdoms, despite the fact that they were related to northerners, is really profound as something to happen to a character, and holds a lot of meaning in today’s society. the fact that he broke, finally, after he lost ciri, just completely lost his mind and had to be restrained because he was wailing so hard, because of the pressure that this society put him under to succeed and achieve pride for his family, is such a great example of the tragedies of society. then he speaks out against his leader and is jailed... and yet, after this, he gets to learn from his mistakes and redeem himself as a good person, and his character has developed SO much. he is not doing what his country wants him to do, he is not doing what his family wants him to do. he is doing what he wants to do because it is the RIGHT thing to do. that already is such a powerful message, he doesn’t need anymore character motivation!

so yep that’s my thoughts on why cahir is a good character asides from all that forced romance biz

#ask #cahir #ciri #master-dellamorte

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tacitcantos · 4 years

Video

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Why 2019′s Twilight Zone is Boring

Though 70 years old at this point, the original 1950 Rod Sterling Twilight Zone is still one of the creepiest and smartest works of speculative and weird fiction ever committed to TV. It’s a series that poses strange questions and offers even stranger answers, a series that’s moody and atmospheric and thought provoking, a dark parable that’s gone on to inspire other works of weird fiction.

It’s no wonder then that there have been so many attempts throughout the years to revive it: a movie in 1983, a series in 1985, and another series in 2002. Each has been greeted with varying levels of critical success, but none have been as culturally impactful as the original.

The 2019 remake... won’t be breaking that tradition.

Don’t get me wrong, the new Twilight Zone has a distressing amount of quality and talent involved. The cast is solid throughout, and the only reason certain episodes work at all is the powerful performances of the actors involved. There’s also a nice push for racial diversity in the cast, and sometimes in the themes of a few of the episodes like Replay and The Traveler.

The visuals of each of the ten episodes are gorgeous and moody, and the music wonderful and atmospheric and reminiscent of the discordant jangles and strings of the late and great 2013 Hannibal tv show. It’s a lot of quality to be draped on a fundamentally flawed structure.

To understand the fundamental flaw in the new series, we have to go back to the original Rod Sterling Twilight Zone. And the thing that has to be understood about the original series is that it’s not science fiction despite looking like it on the surface.

Science Fiction

Though there are dozens of definitions of science fiction, at its core one of the key aspects of science fiction is that it introduces a technology or technologies we don’t have in the modern day, and it explores and maps out the impact and implications they’d have on individuals and society.

For example, I, Robot by Isaac Asimov is interested in the implications of what sentient artificial intelligence means for our understanding of personhood, how an AI would define and think about itself, and how society would go about trying to control it, leading to the three laws of robotics for which the book is most famous.

This definition of science fiction is also why something like Star Wars, at its heart, is not science fiction despite having a lot of the trappings of it. It has a lot of technologies that don’t exist in the modern day, but it’s not interested in the impact of them. It has lightsabers because they’re cool, not because it wants to speculate about how they would change warfare.

Even the implications of the force, the speculative aspect of its universe that’s most critical to the story, isn’t really explored. How does the force change the universe? You get mystical samurai cops, and that’s about it. Nothing about the force is actually key to the functioning of the star wars universe. You could take it out and the movies would be a lot less fun, but the universe wouldn’t really be changed. This isn’t to disparage Star Wars: I love Star Wars, but despite its trappings it’s fantasy, and to say it’s science fiction just isn't accurate.

Parable

Much like Star Wars, despite its trappings The Twilight Zone isn’t science fiction. But it’s not fantasy either. The Twilight Zone is a much older and simpler form of story. It’s a parable. Each episode is a self contained story of right and wrong, with the strange or impossible element there to hammer home a message, not be explored.

All three of these genres we’ve talked about, Science Fiction, Fantasy, and parable, have strengths and weaknesses unique to them. One of the strengths of a parable is its clarity. There’s right and wrong, and not a lot else to be said. Almost by necessity, parables have to be streamlined and simple in structure. In a parable there’s a message or lesson and the story is really just a vehicle to illustrate it.

The parable of the boy who cried wolf doesn’t go into the emotional underpinnings of why a boy would consistently sound a false alarm over and over again, because it’s not important. Did he have an abusive childhood? Was it a metaphor for trying to escape abuse and the unwillingness of society to listen? Is the wolf symbolically his abuser? The parable doesn’t care and it isn’t important to the point it’s trying to make; don’t sound false alarms or no one will pay attention to you when the threat is real.

Simplicity of Structure

The original 1950’s Twilight Zone understood that simplicity of structure was key to a successful parable: each episode was a half hour in length; just long enough for setup, twist, and falling action. You can tell this simple structure was key to the Twilight Zone’s success because most of what people remember about any given Twilight Zone episode is the ending.

And while having such a simple structure might seem restrictive, I’d argue that not only is it the most effective way of telling a parable, but that there’s a lot of freedom in structure, that the simplicity of the structure allowed Rod Sterling and the other writers to grapple with issues other shows on TV couldn’t at the time, and allowed the episodes to breath in the grace notes.

And exhibit A in my argument is the new Twilight Zone.

Where the original Twilight Zone was a half hour, the 2019 incarnation is twice that length at an hour. And while I’m sure the writers and producers thought that was a great chance to expand and tell a more complete and complicated story than the original show, what it actually does is put the episodes in an uncomfortable limbo. They’re too long to be able to embrace the simplicity of the original show, that structure of setup twist and falling action, and too short to really be able to explore the core concept and theme of each episode. There’s a reason most movies aren’t an hour long, and that’s because it’s simply not a conducive length for telling a good story. With each episode of the New Twilight Zone I found myself bored around the thirty minute mark, impatient for the twist out of curiosity but not really invested in the characters or plot.

Not All Men

Episode 7, Not All Men, is a good example of the problems the extended run time of the new Twilight Zone can cause. The core concept is that there’s a meteor that falls and causes all men in the area to become violent. This is sort of a dumb concept to begin with, but not completely doomed. The main character even goes through some growth. She starts the episode unassertive and meek in the face of the patriarchal hierarchy of the company she works at and ends it standing up for herself against male harassment:

This isn’t an inherently bad arc, but it’s execution is pitiful, without enough weight for we the audience to become invested in. We never get any real indication of why the character starts the way she does, what her life experience has been to shape her into who she is, and there’s no sacrifice or growth involved in her change.

If the episode was longer it could’ve delved into that material, made the main character a fully realized and three dimensional person that we could’ve become invested in and root for, but as the episode stands she and her growth are more perfunctory than anything else. She’s meek, she runs from agro dudes for a bit, then stands up for herself.

The twist of the episode also isn’t worth waiting a whole hour for. At the climax of the episode it’s revealed that while the meteor makes men more violent, it’s not an overriding urge: the episode implies that the affected men didn’t resist simply because they wanted an excuse to inflict violence. But, because the twist comes so late, its not really given enough time to breathe and be explored in a meaningful way.

Simple Messages

This ties into another fundamental problem with the 2019 series, which is that it isn’t anywhere near as smart as it thinks it is. Often the idea or message at the heart of an episode is borderline offensive in how simple it is. By trying to avoid destiny you create it? Paranoia is bad? You should care about the suffering of others? Mind boggling. Truly.

They’re not bad messages, but they’re simple. And the television audience of 2019 isn’t the audience of 1959: the modern audience is more schooled and experienced with scifi and weird fiction. We’re not shocked or provoked into thought anymore just by the introduction of a weird element like your car coming to life and stalking you. It’s not enough.

This isn’t to say audiences of 1959 were dumb, but the discourse around scifi and weird fiction for even the casual tv watcher of today is a lot more complex than it was back then. We’re not in the 101 level anymore, more like the 103 level: we’ve seen the initial introduction of most ideas, seen them explored and challenged and subverted, and are now bored by those first two levels of discussion.

This is why the core message of an episode like Point of Origin, in which refugees from another world are rounded up and placed in concentration camps, falls flat. The episode follows a woman who’s privileged life is stripped from her when a government agency identifies her as an unwitting refugee from another dimension, and imprisons her in a concentration camp.

The episode’s message isn’t subtle: you should care about the suffering as others, you should treat immigrants as people: and that even before her fall from grace the woman should’ve cared more about the fate of her immigrant housekeeper and illegal immigrants broadly.

It’s not a bad message, and it’s one that a mind boggling amount of people nowadays somehow still don’t understand, but from a fictive perspective it’s too simple and trite to spark interest and engagement or make the audience think.

Preach Fatigue

And it’s also a message we’ve heard several thousand times. The way we consume information nowadays is different from when the original Twilight Zone first aired; the discourse around topics like immigration or gender nowadays is in many ways saturated and as an audience we suffer from a type of preach fatigue where we’ve been told so many times the given side of a given topic is bad or good that we’ve sort of stopped listening.

This wasn’t as much of an issue in 1960, and it especially wasn’t an issue with the Twilight Zone. Back then scifi and weird fiction wasn’t considered a mode of serious social commentary in the tv arena, which meant The Twilight Zone could lure audiences in for a fun and spooky time, their cognitive defenses lowered, and then sucker punch them with something deeper than what they expected.

That advantage of bypassing and audiences preach defenses is completely lost in 2019’s Twilight Zone. We all know that science fiction can effectively tackle big issues, and we know the deal with The Twilight Zone specifically: that it’s going to have a twist in the last act that makes us question our complicity in some social issue. Our preach fatigue hackles are already raised.

In 1960 the Twilight Zone was adding a new element to the discussion, but now, the social topics it was concerned with are are so heavily examined that to do truly do a comparable job, it needed to be way, way more clever than Point of Origin’s premise of "imagine its aliens instead of Mexicans". To be as effective as the original, 2019’s Twilight Zone really needed to tackle issues that are less clear cut than men having a choice in their violent behavior or whether illegal immigrants deserve basic human rights, issues that are less overtly preachy because they’re less discussed.

For example, Point of Origin actually has the kernel of a complex and interesting idea in it, it just doesn’t do anything in it. In the episode as it is now the main character’s fall from grace serves largely as a kind of gotcha moment of the irony in how the tables have turned, but in a better version of the episode her arc could be used to explore the idea that social lines are largely arbitrary and fickle, and that whether you’re part of a group or not can change on a whim.

It’s an idea that’s worth examining the facets of, the causes and effects of how and why and where social lines are erected, and one that’s more complex than Point of Origin’s trite message about how you should treat immigrants like people. There’s more material there for an audience to chew on and engage with, and one that’s less preachy and more thought provoking.

Metaphor and Censorship

Another element that made the Twilight Zone successful and relevant in 1959 but doesn’t really apply today, is the issue of censorship. In 1959 what could be portrayed on screen, and which topics could be explored was far less permissive than it is today.

There’s an interview with Rod Sterling right before The Twilight Zone first aired where he talks about being tired of clashing with sponsors and executives over what content and social issues his screenplays could include. One example he brings up comes from a teleplay on the Nuremberg trials in which the company American Gas insisted on an edit:

“In it as you recall, mention was made of gas chambers. And the line was deleted, cut off the soundtrack. And it mattered little to these guys that the gas involved in concentration camps was cynanide which bore no resemblance physical or otherwise to the gas used in stoves. They cut the line.”

“Because the sponsor was-”

“They did not want that awful association made between what was the horror and misery of Nazi Germany with the nice chrome, wonderfully antiseciptically clean beautiful kitchen appliance that they were selling.”

But just as with the point about the lack of complexity in it’s themes, the new Twilight Zone exists in a different era than the original. We’re at a point in television and fiction where creators don’t have to bow as much to advertisers or censors and can actually just say what they mean. Point of Origin doesn’t need to veil it’s message about immigrants and their demonization in scifi terms; it could just tell a story about real world immigrants and refugees. This doesn’t mean it has to be bereft of weird elements, those still have a valid role to play, but it does mean it can address the issues it’s about head on and directly, and I’d argue there’s value in that kind of clarity.

Some people will make an argument that veiling issues in scifi metaphors lowers an audience member’s kneejerk defenses and lets them look at an issue stripped of their preconceptions and prejudices. And there’s certainly a tradition of creators using weird fiction to try and accomplish that.

Rod Sterling himself spoke about it in several interviews throughout his career, though he seems to have been somewhat split on the utility of using scifi metaphors. At one point he said about audiences:

“You may have to tell them a story of prejudice in parable form in which they may step aside as third persons and cluck how awful we treat our minority groups but at least they know that it’s an evil, and they will recognize it as such. And by osmosis or some incredible process will somewhere along the line, be faced with a situation in which they too may have to exorcise a prejudice and be conscious of it as an evil.”

“Now on Twilight Zone for example, we made a comment on prejudice, on conformity, on intolerance, on censorship, but it’s easy to do it when you’re talking about Buck Rogers isn’t allowed to write his memoirs in the way he wants to write them so he puts on his backpack, his rocket pack, and he zooms over to the publisher. And they applaud and laugh and think how interesting. Now it may well be that the inner message never gets through, but I think peripherally it does get through.”

But in that same interview Sterling also emphasizes the need for clarity, immediacy, and hitting the audience where they live when discussing social issues:

“I think the- the purpose, the point of a dramatic show that’s used as a vehicle of social criticism is to involve an audience, to show them wherein their guilt lies, or at least indeed their association.

This latter point is the one I think is more valid. I’d argue that veiling real world social issues through weird fiction metaphors to make audiences think is a nice sentiment, it’s not a particularly effective technique, and often the metaphor simply goes over people’s heads.

How many red-hatted build-a-wall-enthusiasts watched Point of Origin and thought to themselves after; “yeah, you know what, immigrants aren’t so bad and we shouldn’t round them up into concentration camps.” I’d argue none. It’s far, far too easy for an audience member to simply think that sure, in this case what happened was unfair, but this real world case is different for x y and z reasons, no matter how insignificant those x y z differences are to the core situation.

Fundamentally, people are simply very, very good at ignoring and minimizing information that destabilizes their world view, and it’s relatively simple to do it with fiction. And none of the new Twilight Zone episodes are pointed enough to break through that cognitive barrier.

Get Out (Or In...?)

What’s ironic, is that for all that Jordan Peele shows up in the new Twilight Zone, his own movie Get Out is a far more effective blueprint of what the Twilight Zone should be, and a good contrast to it. To begin with, the scifi concept at the heart of it, that there’s an enclave of rich white people stealing black people’s bodies for themselves, is a manifestation of a complex and nuanced form of racism that often isn’t acknowledged or discussed.

Racism is generally thought of as a simple dislike or belief in the inferiority of another race, and while that’s accurate as far as it goes, racism can also fetishize or simply allow for superior traits in the othered racial group while still denying the people themselves their agency and basic humanity. It’s a form of racism that was one of the bedrocks of slavery, that as an institution it perfectly paired black bodily strength with white intellect, and you can see a modern expression of it in how until recenly most quarterbacks are white while the offensive line black, the black members serving as the muscle to the quarterbacks mind.

The racism at the center of Get Out is a far more complex and nuanced than Point of Origin’s message about treating immigrants like people. It complicates most people’s understanding of racism as the simple belief that races that aren’t their own are inferior, and makes us question our complicity and assumptions: as much as we don’t think other races our worse than our own, are we as careful about how we assume parts of them may be better while still not valuing their core humanity?

At 144 minutes, Get Out also not only has enough time to explore this idea, but also to breathe and build to its twist and flesh out its main character. Unlike Not All Men’s main character, Get Out’s main character is a real and multifaceted person with weight and history, and goes through a coherent character arc. We never get a concrete reason for why Not All Men’s main character starts the episode meek, which makes her blurry and poorly defined: by contrast, we’re shown Get Out’s main character was traumatized by what he feels was his complicity in his mother’s death, which gives his eventual overcoming of it real emotional heft.

The alternate ending of Get Out even threads his emotional growth through the themes of racism: despite having his body imprisoned, the main character is mentally free, an inverse of the fate he would’ve suffered at the hands of the Armitage family. Here’s director Jordan Peele explaining the scene:

“He beat the dragon, but more importantly for Chris when he says ‘I beat it’ he’s talking about his inner demon. And that was the moment he went back for Georgina after hitting her in the car, he defeated his personal demon of when he didn’t go and get his mother. So in a way he made the only decision that would free his soul. And even though he’s in prison like many black men are unjustly in, his soul is free.”

Get Out also has the advantage of being in a genre that, just like the original Twilight Zone, isn’t oversaturated with serious political commentary. While there are smart and socially intelligent horror movies out there, many people still think of them as dumb fun, and thus Get Out can effectively draw you in with the promise of cheap thrill before sucker punching you with depth and message.

Get Out has clear cut right and wrong, it’s not like we don’t know who to root for and who is evil, but these three elements together, a complex theme, a real character, and low expectations, save Get Out from the preach fatigue I talked about before and from which the 2019 Twilight Zone suffers so heavily.

Ultimately, 2019’s Twilight Zone feels like an outdated show, stiff and limited and slow. Worse, it’s boring, which is really the greatest sin. It’s stuck in an uncomfortable limbo both in terms of era and length; it’s mired in the past trying to emulate a tv show that’s sixty years old at this point while also upending its structure and replacing it with one that’s incompatible with what it’s trying to imitate.

#twilight zone #2019 twilight zone #new twilight zone #get out #jordan peele

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sylleboi · 4 years

Text

𝕮𝖔𝖒𝖎𝖈 𝖇𝖔𝖔𝖐 𝖈𝖔𝖓𝖋𝖎𝖉𝖊𝖓𝖙𝖎𝖆𝖑 𝖆𝖓𝖉 𝖘𝖚𝖒𝖒𝖊𝖗 𝖕𝖗𝖔𝖏𝖊𝖈𝖙 - 𝕾𝖙𝖆𝖌𝖊 𝖔𝖓𝖊 | 02/06/20

There are two types of textures;- Implied texture is basically texture that appears to be there, but it’s an illusion.- Actual texture is texture that exists and can be felt by touch.So I have been falling behind with what we as a class have been doing online on Moodle, making it feel increasingly difficult to approach it and get things done since it feels like things just keep piling up, but I have decided to give it a shot and just go for it!

The following message/messages were left for us on the Moodle forum;

“Hi guys,

Thanks to those that attended the Zoom meeting this week. Well done.

If you are committed to progressing next year I will need to see the following:

- Post a reply to this thread to show you are checking in with Moodle

- Interact with a least 1 of the summer school activities

- Attendance at ALL subsequent Zoom classes.

- A Conscientious and studious approach to the summer project

The time line for what happens next in terms of your studies will be as follows:

Tuesday 26th May - Summer project posted to Moodle and emailed directly to college emails (This will give you a chance to read/obtain equipment/purchase core text)

Monday 1st June - Zoom Lecture - Reviewing the brief and discussing research activities and practical tasks. Q & A

Monday 8th June - Zoom show & tell - Discussing progress so far / issues / findings / examples / Work in Progress

Monday 15th June - Zoom Break out groups / Smaller discussions

Please if you are in contact with any of your classmates/peers who have not be interacting can you please encourage them to do so, the longer we abstain from learning the harder it will be when we do get back to the 'New normal'.

Happy Wednesday!”

- Post a reply to this thread to show you are checking in with Moodle

I posted a short reply to show that I am active on Moodle.

- Interact with a least 1 of the summer school activities

I am yet to do this, but will be attempting my best to catch up.

- Attendance at ALL subsequent Zoom classes.

I have already failed this, but will attend the Zoom classes schedule ahead.

- A Conscientious and studious approach to the summer project

I will be working towards living up to this over the next few weeks as we work on the Summer School Project.

“Hi guys,

Hope you had as good bank holiday, here is the Summer project as promised. 'Comic Book Confidential' is a project that will allow us to start thinking about the type of work we will create in our 2nd year as well as addressing the theoretical and academic ideas we will need to start thinking abound discussing in detail when we return.

This week, I want you to do the following:

- Read the brief thoroughly and write down any questions you may have

- Order your core text book, Scott McCloud's 'Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art'

- Obtain any of the necessary equipment if you do not currently have this

Please ensure you start your research from Stage 1, and begin to write notes for the questions; as I will be asking you to relay your new knowledge next Monday (1st June) in our first Zoom lecture/discussion. I will forward an invite in a separate email and on moodle. I look forward to working with you guys on this, it will be a good one.

Best Regards,

David Dixon”

𝕮𝖔𝖒𝖎𝖈 𝖇𝖔𝖔𝖐 𝖈𝖔𝖓𝖋𝖎𝖉𝖊𝖓𝖙𝖎𝖆𝖑

The brief;

“Hi guys,

Thank you everyone who joined us yesterday for the launch of our Comic Book Confidential Summer Project, there was a great turn out.

I have attached the PDF of the presentation for you to look at and use as a resource.

Please begin stage 1 and make sure for next week you have your viewfinder made and you are able to talk about either a comic book of your choosing or answer some of the questions of stage 1 with clarity.

Any question please post to here and I will answer as soon as possible.

Cheers

DD”

I missed this zoom call, but got some notes and insight to what was talked about during the call from a peer.

This brief is the first surrounding the topic of sequence art/comics that we have done as a class. Comics can be described as being a “sequence through illustration”; a series of images, sometimes with no dialogue showing an action or conveying a space of time in just a few panels, like glimpses of a film, showing key moments to portray the meaning of the sequence.

On another note, we are allowed to animate the project if we want to.

For this brief/project, we are required to put some form of narrative together, based off of our own personal experiences with the 2020 lockdown, making it a personal project to each of us. It is also required to be non verbal.

During the process of making our comic sequence, a short film showing the process from start to finish.

AIMS:

Make at least 5 comic book pages with at least three panels per page

Build a narrative exploring the ideas of isolation and coming out of lockdown

Understand how to create the passing of time

Explore the basic characteristics of a comic, BASICS!

A series of juxtaposed images creating a narrative or a selection of images.

An aesthetic response to our viewer done using a selection of images in a deliberate sequence. - “Sequence art”

Can we link this back to year 1?

I did a workshop at the very beginning of the year (19/09/19) called Fragments/Clips. It focused on experimental editing and making something unconventional with what resources we were given, much like we are asked to do with this brief; creating comic strips from the resources we find within and around us.

𝕶𝖊𝖞 𝖆𝖗𝖙𝖎𝖘𝖙𝖘:

We can find our own if we like but the suggested artists are;

- Hokusai

- Aiden Koch

- Sam Elston - former student from our course that will be visiting us.

Can you define what a comic is in your own words?

Comics can be described as being a “sequence through illustration”; a series of images, sometimes with no dialogue showing an action or conveying a space of time in just a few panels, like glimpses of a film, showing key moments to portray the meaning of the sequence.

What are the characteristics of a non verbal comic?

The primary characteristic for non verbal comics is the lack of words used. Non verbal comics are told solely through illustrations that, when you “read” it, will come alive like an animation that doesn't move. An example of non verbal communication could be something as simple as a smile, often indicating happiness, or perhaps a lack of expression can indicate boredom or something of a much darker background, like contempt or bloodlust.

What different forms of comic can you find, and how are they different?

A number of comic genres pop into mind immediately; Science-fiction comics, Superhero comics, Fantasy comics, Teen comics (humour), Adult/Erotic comics, Manga etc. Comics can also come in many different types of mediums, some that I can think of being Webcomics, Graphic Novels and Comic books.

How do comics communicate their messages?

In comics, with both verbal and non verbal communication within them, the major selling point is the illustrative work. Each panel represents a time, with each gap between the panels representing a passing of time. Much like glimpses of a sequence, put together in a harmonic composition with the goal to be compelling to ones eye. The message/messages that the artist want to portray can be executed through visual language; line, shape, form, texture, value and colour. All of these elements play into a successful comic strip.

I will give a simple example of each of these used to convey the same thing;

* Note that all of these will be left as examples and may look a little rough around the edges since they are just there to show the effects of visual language and nothing more.

Line:

Within visual language, line work is one of the most prominent and frequently used across all comic genres. In fact, the earliest comic that has been traced back to being from 1837 is made up of only line work, meaning no use of colours, values, textures etc.

It was called The Adventures of Mr. Obadiah Oldbuck and was originally published in several different languages across Europe, among them an English translation meant for the British in 1941.

For this first example, I have used only line work and included some shading using various hatching techniques (much like what has been used for the comic of The Adventures of Mr. Obadiah Oldbuck). This has resulted in a very classic feel of comics, made up by only blacks and whites.

I attempted to make this classic style transform into a more modern style by applying a few halftones on top, resulting in the following outcome:

As you can see, by applying these halftones as overlays, the piece successfully achieves the look of a manga/comic book/webcomic, rather than the previous classic style.

Shape:

By using shape in art, one can easily and effectively archive much with little. Shapes can be used in several different ways to convey different emotions. Because this ‘comic’ page is based on action and a narrative of climax, I chose to emphasise on sharp edges as they are commonly known to communicate danger. For example, I changed the smoke into fire and made it look much alike shattered pieces of glass, yet again to indicate it as being something dangerous to touch.

Each line is straight and rarely bends; creating some interesting shapes, squares, and triangles;

Form:

Form is most often describes and applied to something that is a three-dimensional subject, such as clay sculpting, although generally speaking, it is connected to things that are 3D, (three-dimensional) meaning there is an aspect of extra depth that you can’t normally archive with 2D. This is emphasised by light and dark values. (low and high contrast), otherwise known as shading.

For this example I attempted to make the line-art I had done earlier feel more real and lifelike by adding these different shades of grey.

Texture:

There are two types of textures;

- Implied texture is texture that appears to be there, but is really an illusion.

- Actual texture is texture that exists and can be felt physically by touch.

Since I am doing this digitally to speed up the process, I will be doing this by using the technique of implied texture.

For a long while now, I have been building up a collection of high quality scans and pictures of a large variety, based on the advice of my teacher when we were playing around with the visual language of texture in a past project. Out of these, I chose just a couple to play around with in Krita;

Now all that was left to do was to layer these on top of the artwork I had done earlier and have, as I mention before, a play around with them using different layer modes such as colour dodge, screen, overlay, soft light, hard light, multiply etc. I came up with a handful of different textured outcomes, but will be posting just a few of my favourites and put the rest into a gif;

The reason that I chose this one as being one of my favourites is due to how successful both the textures layered together translated so clearly and well. It gives a lovely look of it being aged as if it were torn out of an old comic book and scanned into a computer.

Now this one I am especially a big fan of! Although inverting the values got rid of the majority of the details within the art work, It doesn’t take away from the subjects and narrative, but the most compelling thing about it is how it strongly reminds me to the look of lino printing.

An example of a great artist I found that specialises in this medium of artwork is Valdis Baskirovs. I have chosen to compare their work to this comic strip in particular because their subjects are also most often animals, including canines.

Below are some examples of their work and work process doing lino printing:

Value:

Value is often described as a way of drawing with light, where value is based on how light or dark a given colour or hue is. Values can easier be understood once they are visualised on a scale or a gradient.

The scale above ranges from white to black, with a number of grey tones in between, but any hue/tone has a similar scale that goes from light to dark;

Different colours or values can be achieved by adding light or dark hues, in the case shown above, adding white to it to lighting it, or by darkening it with black.

Colour:

Last but not least, colour is an incredibly important part of visual language. It is used to convey a feeling, narrative or meaning within a given piece of artwork.

For this comic page, I have decided to go for a more cartoony and simplistic style, since that is what the line art communicates with it’s sharp and clear edges; but instead of just splashing any random colour on, I wanted to try and make it monochromiatic, meaning that all the colours have the same base tone, and therefor relate and harmonise with each other. The base tone for the example shown below is a muted orange-yellow.

I applied a layer of texture on top for two reasons; one being to make the piece feel more connected, but also for the reason being that this texture makes the page look like damaged or burnt paper, again to subconsciously communicate the fire being dangerous.

Can you list the similarities and differences between the three artists (Katsushika Hokusai, Aidan Koch & Sam Elston)

From looking at these three artists work side by side, I came to notice that they all seem able and confident in portraying more with less. Everything from line work and choice of colour is basic, simple, yet it still shines through as strong artwork. It feels like there is room to breathe due to the lack of business.

All of the three pieces of artworks shown below have the above in common. They feel light and minimalistic, using a variety of pastel colours and light values with the occasional dark black lines and/or splashes here and there.

I will be keeping this in mind for when I attempt drawing my own non verbal comics/sequences - the saying that less is more.

Example of the work of Katsushika Hokusai.

Example of the work of Aidan Koch.

Example of the work of Sam Elston.

- - -

𝕱𝖗𝖆𝖓𝖘 𝕸𝖆𝖘𝖊𝖗𝖊𝖊𝖑

Frans Masereel (1889–1972) is the creator of the wordless graphic novel “The Sun”, or “Le Soleil”. Frans was a Flemish painter and graphic artist whom worked primarily in France, completing over 20 wordless novel during his career, with his novel “Passionate Journey” or “Mon livre d'heures” from 1919, allegedly being his best work.

“The Sun”/“Le Soleil” Consists of 63 pages showing prints from woodcuttings, and is a contemporary retelling of the Greek myth of Icarus. Briefly explained, the protagonist of the novel continuously attempts to seek to the Sun by any means possible, but before he succeeds, he is sent plummeting back down to Earth.

𝕾𝖍𝖆𝖚𝖓 𝕿𝖆𝖓

Another artist that has added to the genre of wordless novels is Shaun Tan, which work we have studied for a past brief before. I will be talking more particularly about his graphic novel “The Arrival”, originally published in 2006, it is made up by 128 pages intricately drawn in pencil and later edited to fit the aesthetic and look off an old book.

After “reading” through this graphic novel, I was left thinking that this book is very touching and makes your mind wander off in thought.

It follows a man that cannot use words, thus the readers are experiencing everything as he is; silently. The protagonist, a man, leaves his wife and daughter to board a steamship to cross the ocean; all for the reason of building a better future for his family. - This book touches on the journeys that immigrant’s go through and experience on their travels. Although the reader clearly experiences the mans inner isolation, they also get to share his new found joys.

Below are some of the pages found within this book:

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battlestar-royco · 4 years

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my movies during coronavirus march

I decided to document all the movies I watched since the pandemic was announced. Seeing as it’s the end of the month, I thought I’d share what I’ve been watching!

TL;DR: I highly recommend Fast Color, 10 Cloverfield Lane, and Portrait of a Lady on Fire. Also, Unicorn Store wasn’t my favorite, but I did like it and I think some of you would like it too :). Some of these are rated R for language/sex/violence, so proceed with caution. Short synopses and reviews under the cut.

3/14: FAST COLOR (2018). 4.5/5 ⭐. Soft, subtle dystopian/sci fi/superhero film starring Gugu Mbatha-Raw as one in many generations of black women possessing magic powers.

3/17: Phenomena (1985). 2.5 ⭐. Sci fi about a girl in boarding school who uses the power to control insects to investigate a murder. I thought this would be one of those movies that age really funny, but it was just kind of boring.

3/18: The Host (2006). 4.5 ⭐. Sci fi directed by Bong Joon-ho about a sewer monster that kidnaps a young girl, leading her father to search for her.

3/21: Cloverfield (2008). 3 ⭐. Found-footage sci fi about an alien attack on New York City. Generic idea and execution, but I liked the found footage aspect.

3/21: 10 CLOVERFIELD LANE (2016). 5 ⭐. Apocalypse sci fi. Almost completely disconnected continuation of the franchise; a woman wakes up in a bunker with a man who insists there’s been an alien apocalypse. I absolutely loved this one. Great atmosphere, acting, and tension throughout.

3/23: Abduction (2011). .5 ⭐. Action movie about Taylor Launtner doing... something? I don’t remember. I really only watched this to make fun of it with a friend over Facetime. That’s the only way I’d recommend watching this movie.

3/23: Snow White: A Tale of Terror (1997). 4.5 ⭐. Dark fantasy retelling of Snow White starring Sigourney Weaver. Weird, pretty, fun.

3/24: Mirror Mirror (2012). 1 ⭐. Yet another Snow White retelling, starring Lilly Collins and Julia Roberts. Yikes. I don’t think it added anything new to the Snow White story, and it was mostly super cringey.

3/25: Jennifer’s Body (2009). 4 ⭐. Horror/comedy about a teenage girl who gets possessed by a demon that drives her to eat men, starring Amanda Seyfried and Megan Fox. So fun, but I wish it ended a little differently!

3/26: Horns (2013). 2.5 ⭐. Fantasy about a guy who grows horns that compel people to confess their sins to him. I mostly watched this because Daniel Radcliffe is in it. Good concept, but I wish it had either been a serious drama or a dark comedy because it just ended up being weird and cringey.

3/26: The Love Witch (2016). 1.5 ⭐. Fantasy about a modern witch who uses potions and spells to find a man to fall in love with her. The interesting thing about the movie is that it completely looks like it was shot in the 1960s, but story-wise it was way too focused on female anatomy as women’s empowerment. I don’t recommend.

3/26: Upgrade (2018). 4 ⭐. Sci fi about a disabled man who installs an AI in his spine to help him walk and investigate the murder of his wife. I don’t feel I can recommend this one due to the ableist premise and fridging, but the visuals and world were super interesting.

3/27: The Cloverfield Paradox (2018). 2 ⭐. Sci fi. Space crew finds themselves transported into a parallel dimension of reality. I liked the cast and there were one or two truly good scenes but it just felt like a stupid and generic version of Alien.

3/28: The Witch (2015). 4 ⭐. Um this is classified as a horror movie but I almost didn’t find it scary at all except one scene in the beginning? Like it honestly felt more like a thriller period drama or a dark fantasy imo. But if you’re easily scared I would stay far away because this movie allegedly scares the shit out of everyone. At first I thought it was meh but I ended up watching it 3 times in a row and I started appreciating it more.

3/29: PORTRAIT OF A LADY ON FIRE (2019). 4.5 ⭐. Period drama. A young French aristocrat refuses to be painted for a potential betrothal, but her mother hires another young woman to paint her and they fall in love. Loved this!!! It had me in my feels the entire time.

3/30: UNICORN STORE. 3.5 ⭐. Contemporary fantasy starring and directed by Brie Larson. It’s about a millennial who, after getting kicked out of art school, is approached by a salesman who offers her a unicorn. Very charming idea, made me shed a tear. I wish it was a little more committed to the fantastical elements though! I also wish the cinematography, costumes etc were more stylized.

3/31: Train to Busan. 4.5 ⭐. Zombie horror/sci fi: just as a man and his daughter embark on a train ride to visit a relative, a viral outbreak occurs. One infected person jumps on the train seconds before it leaves the station. Thank you to everyone in this movie for proving that zombie stories don’t have to entirely rely on gore.

3/31: Cargo. 2 ⭐. Yet another zombie sci fi. After being bitten, you have two days until you turn. An Australian father (Martin Freeman) is bitten and spends his 48 hours seeking shelter for his baby. I don’t know, this one is highly acclaimed, but I just found it kind of boring and tropey?

#maxine talks movies

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avoutput · 4 years

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Gaps Between Worlds || Mega Man X

Recently I have been searching for the answer to a problem I have been drowning in: Do I still love playing video games? There was a time when new video game releases would get me hyped, and it could just be that I am getting older and my priorities are changing, or my love for games is evolving, but I think there is a better answer that sounds more analytical and less like a platitude. I had to start thinking about what made me fall in love with games in the first place, which was easy enough to do; it was an escape. We need to go deeper. What about games, about the escape grabbed me. Looking back at my most recent completions: Dark Souls, Persona 5, Final Fantasy VII Remake, and Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII, most of them offered a balance between challenge and story. For a long time in between the excitement of a title, I had been relying on a game either appealing to the challenge or the story, on a sliding scale in one direction or another. Whenever I feel overwhelmed by my lack of enthusiasm for new games, I pick up a game from my childhood, something that made me feel nostalgic, something like Mega Man X. They have this ability to lift my spirit and invigorate me. That’s when I realized what was missing from modern games: my imagination.

When I booted up my copy of Mega Man X this weekend, it was like it was calling to me. I did it subconsciously. I was struggling with my drive to play Persona 4 Golden, and picked up Nioh, a playstation plus game that had been sitting around for awhile. I was working on a boss, and I just wasn’t feeling it. That’s when I went looking through my games library. I had actually picked up a copy of Mega Man X Legends a while back, installed it, and never played it. Without thinking, just like I did when I was a kid, I just started playing it. The Capcom sound plays and the Mega Man logo flashes across the screen and I am instantly back on my friends bedroom floor, hogging the controller. When the first level starts, it’s instantly chaos, cars flying down the highway, trying to escape the ensuing carnage. You can find out why if you wait for the demo screen that explains the game instead of instantly pressing start, but I never did as a kid, and this led precisely to what I am here to talk about. I filled the gaps with my imagination, even in places where the game didn’t ask me to. I was hungry for a world that I could make cohesive. One that offers a clear definition, a map that leads the eye and the mind to a conclusion, but open enough to let that conclusion be anything that suits you. (The opposite of the Nomura-verse!)

In the era of 8-bit and 16-bit games, the worlds were often presented as flat, layered objects, but drawn to appear in three dimensions like a diorama or, as they often called levels back then, a stage. After you beat the opening level and receive a helping hand from your… friend… or brother… or just some other robot who looks cooler than you, Zero, you are introduced to the classic Mega Man selection screen, but with an interesting tweak. You now can access the enemy’s location via the map screen. This really got my imagination going as a kid and still does to this day. It’s just a minor tweak to the usual formula for the series, but it suddenly added a new layer of depth. I always knew they had to exist somewhere, but it never occurred to me that there was an interconnected ecosystem. They boldly took this approach a step further. Defeating certain Mavericks (the stage bosses) affected another Maverick’s stage. For example, defeating Storm Eagle causes the plane you fight on to crash into Spark Mandrils’ stage. I loved this because as much sense as it made, it also really didn’t make any sense.

Take a look at the map. It is an incredibly dense locale, seemingly made up only of the locations related to the Mavericks. You start the game in some sort of cityscape, but now, you appear to be on some kind of island or peninsula that maybe… supplies all of the needs of the people in the city? Some of the functions of these stages are clear, some you have to make a stretch, and others defy clear explanation. You have a power plant, an airport, a mine, and a factory, all pretty straightforward. As a stretch, we have a forest that possibly processes carbon into oxygen. It doesn’t seem to produce wood, the trees are all made of electronics and covered in a wood veneer. The sea port is also a bit mysterious. It seems more military related than shipping related. All of the robots aren’t the repurposed kinds you see in other stages. They already have missiles and lasers, they are attack focused. So this is probably a military research facility. In the unexplainable, first we have the icy mountain stage, which could be a mine or maybe a research station. I often thought that it produced and controlled weather, but what exactly does a mountain have to do with that? Maybe it is rooted in science, but as a kid, the mind isn’t fully formed, and as an adult, you just know that water becomes clouds and it rains. The American Education system is broken. Lastly, we have a tower that appears to be surrounded by a moat. As a kid, I used to think this was the control tower for the airport, but now I am thinking it might be the control tower for the entire peninsula’s robot ecosystem. It’s not clear, at all, but that's what makes it fun. It is the inconsequential nature of their necessity that makes it fun to explore in your imagination. The bosses don’t speak between each battler or even introduce themselves beyond the shonen bad guy thumbs down, phase in, or muscle flex posturing. If you dig, I am sure there is some concrete answer, but the power is that it ultimately doesn’t matter, it’s just fun to play and explore, either way you go about it.

What also stands out about the construction of the map is how one stage actually interacts with another. If you notice, the Chill Penguin stage is way up at the north side of the map and the factory is to the south, and yet, when you beat Mr. Chill, you Flame Mammoth’s stage is frozen over. There are other stages between the mountain and the factory that are totally in the way of the possible avalanche that would have hit the factory, and yet they are unfazed. I get it, fire is weak to ice, but since there isn’t really an overall method to the madness in the construction of the Map image, as far as I can tell, I just can’t figure why they didn’t move the stages into proximity of the stage that is affected by the defeat of a Maverick master. What is hilarious, the defeat of Launch Octopus causes the forest to overflow, and wouldn’t you know it, they are right next to each other. Same with the airport and power plant, helmed by Storm Eagle and Spark Mandrill respectively. The funny thing about the airport is that because you destroy an airplane in midair, you could have destroyed any stage on the map, and it would have made sense. It would have been even cooler if they had made it so that the longer it takes to defeat Storm Eagle, that changes where the plane falls, and thus the stage it destroys.

It’s not that modern games don’t have these imaginative gaps, it’s just that there are much fewer obvious gaps in the world because they have so much more space to create in. Just looking at the file size between games of the past and today, it’s like comparing the size of Mercury to Jupiter. With that in mind, it could be that I haven’t spent the time to really dive in and find the cracks in modern games. As a kid, I just played the same games over and over again and committed these gaps to memory.

I decided I would use this title to discuss different aspects of the gaps between the imaginative leaps that storytelling asks us to make. Like how we all came up with a particular internal story about what happens inside a Pokeball. I was part of the crowd that thought maybe they get their own personal oasis that suited their type. Or maybe we can discuss the implication of the relationship that Zelda and Link must have based on the minimal interactions we actually get to see them in. Mega Man X has many more facets as series we can dive into, like how exactly his buster arm might actually function and be powered? Maybe it is an internal nuclear reactor offset or totally green and powered by the sun. If it was nuclear, does he leave behind fallout at every defeat? Hopefully I can dedicate more time to this! Thanks for reading.

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ilusionis · 4 years

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THE MEGA RP PLOTTING SHEET / MEME.

First and foremost, recall that no one is perfect, we all have witnessed some plotting once which did not went too well, be it because of us or our partner. So here have this, which may help for future plotting. It’s a lot! Yes, but perhaps give your partners some insight? Anyway BOLD what fully applies, italicize if only somewhat.

Mun Name: vinn (or ila, for close friends) Age: 22 Contact: IM, discord

Character(s) I rp: aizen sosuke on here, askin nakk ke vaar (@ levaer) and lille barro (@ firstritter, sideblog) Which muse(s) inspires you the most atm?(for MM): all of them actually. Current Fandom(s): bleach. Fandom(s) you have an AU for: none. i’ve been debating about making a modern au but i wouldn’t be sure what to explore in it. within the context of bleach, though, i’m very interested in developing a bunch of AUs. My language(s): i’m only confident in writing in italian or english. Themes I’m interested in for rp: Fantasy / Science fiction / Horror / Western / Romance / Thriller / Mystery / Dystopia / Adventure / Modern / Erotic / Crime / Mythology / Classic / History / Renaissance / Medieval / Ancient / War / Family / Politics / Religion / School / Adulthood / Childhood / Apocalyptic / Gods / Sport / Music / Science / Fights / Angst / Smut / Drama / etc. Themes/Genres you have an AU for: none.

Preferred Thread length: one-liner / 1 para / 2 para / 3+ / novella. Asks can be send by: Mutuals / Non-Mutuals / Personals / Anons. Can Asks be continued?: YES / NO only by Mutuals?: YES / NO. Preferred thread type: crack / casual nothing too deep / serious / deep as heck. Is realism / research important for you in certain themes?: YES / NO. Are you atm open for new plots?: YES / NO / DEPENDS. Do you handle your draft / ask - count well?: YES / NO / SOMEWHAT. How long do you usually take to reply?: 24h / 1 week / 2 weeks / 3+ / months / years. I’m okay with interacting: original characters / a relative of my character (an oc) / duplicates / my fandom / crossovers / multi-muses / self-inserts / people with no AU verse for my fandom / canon-divergent portrayals / au-versions (as main or only verse). Do you post more ic or occ?: IC / OOC. Are you selective with following others?: YES / NO / DEPENDS.

Best ways to approach you for rp/plotting: if you want to plot, it would be best to send me an IM and ask me, then we can definitely move to discord if you’d rather. it’s possible to approach me for rp without plotting first, best way would be to send me a meme when i reblog them or simply an ic ask, which i will answer, while memes might get lost. ic asks are good ice-breakers, we can continue plotting from there.

What expectations do you hold towards your plotting partner: i need my partners to be as interested in our plot as i am. it would be great if you already have an idea, but it’s still good if you don’t, i get that coming up with ideas can be hard sometimes; mostly, i require honesty. you can definitely tell me that you got no ideas and i will do my best to help, ask questions, try to spark something. i do require the feeling of having that commitment reciprocated.

When you notice the plotting is rather one-sided, what do you do?: i tend to straight up drop the conversation lmao. no hard feelings, but if i get the feeling you’re not interested, i will take my distance - i won’t waste my energy on a plot if my partner doesn’t share my enthusiasm. still, you can always approach me again, if you’re feeling up to it / have new ideas / whatever. nice thing of online convos is that they don’t have an expiration date lol.

How do you usually plot with others, do you give input or leave most work towards your partner?: i always ask if they got any ideas to begin with. if my partner already knows, more or less, what kind of dynamic they wanna build with my character(s), that makes it infinitely easier to build something meaningful. it’s still fine if they don’t, i will usually ask a lot of questions regarding their muse’s opinions / feelings / etc., and try to navigate from there. a question i usually ask is: is there any aspect of your muse you’d like to explore? i think that’s a pivotal point in any interaction.

When a partner drops the thread, do you wish to know?: YES / NO / DEPENDS. - And why?: if they feel like telling me, why not. but usually, i don’t warn when i drop a thread, so it’s not expected of my partners ever. - What should your partner do when dropping a thread?: nothing in particular tbh. they can tell me or approach me to start a new thread if they wish to, but it’s not required.

What could possibly lead you to drop a thread?: i might lose interest in a thread, especially if i feel like it’s going nowhere or if the inspiration for it simply doesn’t come. it’s never happened so far that i had to drop a thread because it was making me uncomfortable, but that could still be a reason for me to. in general, though, i would approach my partner in that case. - Will you tell your partner?: YES / NO / DEPENDS.

Is communication in the rpc important to you? YES / NO. - And why?: absolutely. i’d rather avoid awkward situations or misunderstandings of any kind; if something’s up, tell me. i also like to communicate with my writing partners (be it in the tags of our threads or in IMs), makes me feel like the enthusiasm is not one-sided and i find it generally pleasant. - Are you okay with absolute honesty, even if it may means hearing something negative about you and/or portrayal?: sure. we gotta stay polite, but honest. - Do you think you can handle such situation in a mature way? YES / NO.

Why do you rp again, is there a goal?: to have fun, to cultivate my writing skills and my english, and to explore my favorite characters.

Wishlist, be it plots or scenarios: i want to develop aizen’s wandenreich verse, because i’m deep in quincy hell and i think his dynamics with quincy muses could be super interesting. anything involving the intricacies of bleach politics is super interesting to me, be it with aizen or with my two quincy muses - who, btw, are also good to explore dynamics between quincies / their culture / relationships etc.

Themes I won’t ever rp / explore: i won’t write anything pertaining to sexual assault.

What Type of Starters do you prefer / dislike, can’t work with?: it’s gotten difficult to work with starters such as “you summoned me / do you need anything / did you call for me” etc. i used to receive that kind of starters all the time with aizen, and i can’t come up with something new every damn time. i also have a hard time working with starters / replies that already feel like a closed conversation and don’t give me anything to reply to.

What type of characters catch your interest the most?: i’m not sure i have a type. aizen is pretty much an exception, the only example of an already well-built character i write, since i tend to gravitate around minor ones that don’t have much material and that i can work on and expand without being affected by the fandom’s opinion or whatever. somehow i always tend to rp tall guys-

What type of characters catch your interest the least?: children and teenagers don’t interest me for the most part. characters who don’t have a shred of an opinion or can’t offer any interesting conflicts. overly friendly, mushy, affectionate and flowery characters are really not my cup of tea either.

What are your strong aspects as rp partner?: oh god i have no idea. i’m very laid-back, i guess. i’ll never pressure my partners for replies, i don’t think i’m owed a reply in the first place because we all have lives offline, so i’ll never take it to heart if a partner drops a thread. if i really feel like our roleplaying styles don’t mesh, it will be at my own discretion to do something about it. another strong aspect i have ....... i think i have a decent grasp on all my muses? especially aizen. of course ur free to disagree lol. also, lately i’ve been p active, so that’s it.

What are your weak aspects as rp partner?: i’m really slow. i might speed up for my closest friends, with whom i plot / rp regularly, but usually i take quite some time to reply to random unplotted threads. i probably have a thousand other flaws as a rper, but this is the biggest one that comes to my mind rn.

Do you rp smut?: YES / NO. Do you prefer to go into detail?: YES / NO / DEPENDS. Are you okay with black curtain?: YES / NO. - When do you rp smut? More out of fun or character development?: i don’t write detailed sex scenes. sorry lmao they’re just not interesting to me. however, i’m super-ok with writing anything around it, like intimate scenes etc. in fact i find it somewhat soothing. - Anything you would not want to rp there?: the nitty-gritty part is already a no, but i guess also sexual violence and shit like that. it’s a no.

Are ships important to you?: YES / NO. Would you say your blog is ship-focused?: YES / NO. Do you use read more?: YES / NO / SOMETIMES. Are you: Multi-Ship / Single-Ship / Dual-Ship — Multiverse / Singleverse. - What do you love to explore the most in your ships?: all my ships are with snow 8′) and ur never bored with her. in general, i love being able to explore the muses’ relationships, their conflicts and their peaceful moments, especially in relation to canon events! - What is your smut tag?: nsfw / ........ my n*sfw posts are rare anyway.

Are you okay with pre-established relationships?: YES / NO. - And what kind of ones?: to an extent, i prefer pre-est relationships to first meetings - which they can get a bit dull after some time. i’m ok with mostly anything, and only more selective when it comes to relationships that might severely alter my muse’s canon / past / overall character.

► SECTION ABOUT YOUR MUSE.

- What could possibly make your Muse interesting towards others, why should they rp with this particular character of yours now, what possible plots do they offer?: not to stroke my own feathers but aizen offers a perfect chance at character development to any and all bleach characters. he’s the main villain, he holds some wild opinions, and whether you agree or disagree with him, he leaves no one indifferent. aizen is the main cornerstone of bleach, and if you want your muse to questions themselves and the system / world around them, interacting with him is the best way to start. also, aizen interacted with a fuckton of people, knows practically everything there is to know, is responsible for significant amount of canon events, so you see ... whatever character you write, aizen has the full potential to be extremely relevant in the course of their development.

- With what type of Muses do you usually struggle to rp with?: children, ordinary low-ranked shinigami (i find it hard when it’s out of the blue, even in aizen’s captain and lieutenant verses ... because interactions would likely be only work-related, and won’t go far), characters whose personalities really have nothing to do with aizen. unfortunately, he’s not my easiest muse, and i don’t want to force interactions with him. - With what type of Muses do they usually work well with?: characters who have opinions, some political involvement, in general characters with whom aizen had a dynamic in canon.

- What interests your Muse(s) in general: reading, calligraphy, philosophy (especially in-world philosophy), science (again, mostly related to the specificity of the bleach universe), the very careful crafting of his plan- - What do they desire, is their goal?: kill the soul king and take its place, destroy the institutions of soul society, subdue them. and then rule, as the soul king never did before. - What catches their interest first when meeting someone new?: the idiosyncracies in their behavior, the particularities, their possible weaknesses. - What do they value in a person?: very little, usually. he may appreciate a resolute personality, strength, and intelligence. - What themes do they like talking about?: speaking mostly of mundane talks, he likes conversing about his interests. it takes a lot for him to share any personal information, though. - Which themes bore them?: anything about the greater good, friendship, love, very human topics.

- Did they ever went through something traumatic?: seeing the soul king, in all things like a ghost stalking his dreams, and well ... spending his early life in rukongai as a whole. being forced to consume other souls in order to survive. the first times his reiatsu killed anyone who tried to get near him. - What could possibly trigger them?: it’s rare that he will outwardly show signs of distress, i’d say almost impossible. the few times the soul king still appears in his mind, greatly upsets him though. - What could set them off, enrage them?: the soul king gets him particularly heated. urahara, as we witnessed. after his defeat, ichigo, to an extent. - What could lead to an instant kill?: kubo was a coward who didn’t dare let him kill any relevant character, but actually aizen kills very liberally.

- Is there someone /-thing they hate?: the soul king, urahara. he has a strong disdain for yamamoto, and that joke of C46. - Is there someone /-thing they love?: himself. tousen

Is your Muse easy to approach?: YES / NO. - Best ways to approach them?: he’s only really easy to approach for bleach characters, who, depending on who they are, have different eligible verses to further facilitate the interaction. humans / powerless bleach characters can’t really interact with him tho. - Where are they usually to find?: soul society or hueco mundo. i have a verse set in the wandenreich.

Something you may still want to point out about your muse?: aizen is not a particularly easy muse, but it’s part of his overall mosaic to be somewhat unapproachable and distant. i’m not out to make him someone he is not, so forgive me in advance if plotting with me turns out to be difficult in a way or another. he’s very dear to me, and i try my best to do him justice! while my main headcanons may not affect our interactions specifically, i still ask my partners to look them up (they’re linked in my about page) because they’re essential to my portrayal and it makes me happy to have them acknowledged. i think that’s all lmao. come visit me over at my quincy boys too.

CONGRATS!!! You managed it, now tag your mutuals! ♥

Tagged by: @skyvar I DID IT AT LAST. Tagging: i don’t know who has been tagged so, you know what to do.

#ooc.#whew #this took forever

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creativity-is-rebellion · 4 years

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More Top 20 Must-See Horror Movies

Especially now we are in isolation, who doesn’t crave a good horror movie to watch? To that purpose, I have created yet another top 20 must-see horror movies, along with why you should be watching them. So get into your comfy clothes and blanket, grab some popcorn, and settle in to watch these horror gems (WARNING: May contain spoilers).

1) Ginger Snaps (2000)

I first saw this movie when I was fifteen years old, and, watching it recently, I was still impressed how it handles the perils of transitioning from teenhood to womanhood. Ginger Snaps follows the story of two outcast sisters, Ginger (Katharine Isabelle) and Brigitte (Emily Perkins), in the mindless suburban town of Bailey Downs. On the night of Ginger's first period, she is savagely attacked by a wild creature. Ginger Snaps is a terrifying movie with good character development, acting is convincing and it has a fast-paced story line. If you're into well-done horror movies Ginger Snaps is the movie for you. It is one of the best modern werewolf movies I have seen.

2) Annihilation (2018)

Drawing on mythology and body horror, Annihilation is an intelligent film that asks big questions and refuses to provide easy answers. It is Sci-fi horror at its best, boasting a very intriguing and unique idea whilst entertaining the viewer throughout the film. Definitely a must-watch.

3) Green Room (2015)

A punk rock band becomes trapped in a secluded venue after finding a scene of violence. For what they saw, the band themselves become targets of violence from a gang of white power skinheads who want to eliminate all evidence of the crime. Influenced by exploitation movies of the 1970s (and punk music of the 1980s), this horror-thriller is rooted in a gripping, grisly kind of realism without resorting to lazy coincidence or stupidity. This is again a fresh take on horror and worth a view.

4) 1922 (2017)

I learned from a great film critic many years back that your own best judgement of a movie is best discovered when you realise that you are still thinking of it many days later. This Stephen King film stays true to the iconic master with all the tell-tale signs of a Kings classic: A haunting grimness that lingers throughout the movie, a tragedy and of course, outstanding performances. The mother that returns from the dead leaves you in a crazy suspense of whether it is simply a dream, a man’s demented insanity, or an actual reality. Thomas Jane’s performance was stellar and totally believable as a farmer in rural America in 1922. He actually takes you through the movie as if you were part of him and what is going on. The message that Stephen King leaves you with is dreadfully powerful of how greed can destroy all. Definitely worth the watch, especially for Stephen King fans.

5) Evil Dead (1981; remake 2013)

Both versions of this movie are great, but I have a special fondness for the original, which was Sam Raimi’s directorial debut. The camerawork is amazing for a low-budget film, and the creepy atmosphere is eerily accurate. We feel Ash’s pain when his friend, sister and girlfriend are one-by-one changed into Deadites, and the ending keeps you guessing, and wanting, a sequel. I am quite a fan of the Evil Dead franchise actually, and have just finished watching the TV adaptation Ash vs. Evil Dead. I’m savouring the last episodes, and am sad that it got cancelled. I look forward to more from this franchise, hopefully in the not-to-distant future.

6) Get Out (2017)

This film is unique, telling the tale of young black man who meets his white girlfriend’s parents for the first time. Jordan Peele’s film delivers a chilling satire of liberal racism in the US. More than just a standard-issue thriller, this brutal, smart movie is impeccably made, as well as surprising, shocking, and funny, while also offering a compassionate, thoughtful look at race. Expect only the very best a film has to offer, with a nasty twist at the end that you won’t see coming.

7) Hell Night (1981)

One of the best things about this movie which follows fraternity and sorority pledges who spend the night in a mansion haunted by victims of a family massacre is that it stars legendary Scream Queen of The Exorcist fame, Linda Blair. Other than that, prepare for a fun, wild ride, the way every good slasher movie should be.

8) Insidious Part 2 (2013)

I actually enjoyed this sequel more than the first movie, as it was less plodding and more action-packed, with an intriguing antagonist in the form of the mysterious “Bride in Black,” who turns out to be the evil spirit of serial killer Parker Crane, who, as we know from the previous movie (SPOILER ALERT) has taken over the body of Josh Lambert, and is fighting for control of his soul. I enjoyed seeing the return of Elise Rainier, who was (SPOILER ALERT AGAIN) killed off in the previous movie. James Wan directed this second helping even more masterfully than the first. A must-watch.

9) Sleepaway Camp (1983)

This is a campy slasher gem, where they cast real teenagers, which elevated the drama of the plot somewhat. Sleepaway Camp tells the story of a young girl named Angela who goes to Camp Arawak with her cousin Ricky. Once the two arrive at camp, a series of events/killings leads the campers to discover that there is a killer on the loose. Sleepaway Camp is not in any way intense or fast paced. However, even though many initially might look at as a “rip off” slasher film, the movie does get creative when it comes to the brutal killings and certain aspects to the film that no one saw coming. Including the jaw-dropping twist at the end. I’m not giving it away. You just have to watch it.

10) Cold Prey (Fritt Vilt) (2006)

This movie takes full advantage of its snowy, secluded set-pieces, using Norway’s harsh winter landscape to masterfully build tension and heighten the sense of isolation. As horror movies go, Cold Prey is a slow-starter, committing the first third of its running time to investigating the signs of violence scattered throughout the hotel, allowing the characters to theorise about what pernicious acts may have taken place before the hotel’s abandonment. It begins at the intriguing yet deliberate pace of a psychological horror film as the sequestered friends, initially inebriated and giggly, explore the hotel and sharing secrets, but the movie’s party-hard atmosphere bursts open at the 40-minute mark to reveal a black horror centre. Slick and stylish, Cold Prey is a genuine pleasure to watch.

11) The Hills Have Eyes (1977; remake 2006)

Even if it echoes a better film (namely, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre), the original movie is still an important one to view for lovers of the horror genre. This is a sometimes ghastly - and occasionally absurd - shocker that really gets under one's skin. Though many critics initially despised the original outing, it has since been called one of the best horror movies of the 1970s. Scary-movie specialist Wes Craven made this viscerally-violent feature on a low budget, and some horror connoisseurs call it his best. Ultimately the "normal" people strike back with a ferocious blood-lust they didn't know they had, and the question is how much a "civilised" person can be pushed before one becomes a savage. Are the Carters really all that much "better" than Jupiter and his spawn? That is a question that you, as the audience member, are required to ponder.

12) The Dawn of the Dead (2004)

This remake of George A. Romero's 1978 sequel to Night of the Living Dead soups up the zombies, cranks up the gross factor to 11, and has a lot of cheeky in-jokes about its predecessor. In comparison with the original, out are the shrieking blondes and rampaging looters, in are smart, controlled Ana (Sarah Polley as a believable nurse not afraid to wield a fire poker) and Kenneth (Ving Rhames), who is exactly the kind of cop you want walking beside you if you are facing scores of the undead.

The zombies are a bit spryer in this film, and the pregnancy of one of the main characters is not the life-giving promise it was in the first movie. But the ending is what differs most from the original. If you're a fan of the horror genre, then this flick is a welcome, if derivative, fright-fest in the school of Romero's classics.

13) The Cabin in The Woods (2011)

What starts out as another five-band teen getaway to a cabin in the woods ends up becoming a fresh take on the trope, with puppeteers behind what is taking place, in a twisted game of Choose Your Adventure. The ending is fittingly grim, but you won’t be disappointed. Definitely worth one hour and thirty-five minutes of your time.

14) The Babadook (2014)

The feature debut of writer-director Jennifer Kent is not just genuinely, deeply scary, but also a beautifully told tale of a mother and son, enriched with layers of contradiction and ambiguity. It presents grief as a demon, questions reality, and creeps out the viewer by making psychopathology seem like something that could happen to anybody. The style of the film is not teasing exactly - it's too sad and lonely - but there is certainly a hair-pulling mixture of glum laughter and vast apprehension. Is the demon real? Does it matter? That’s for you to judge. Either way, if it’s in a word, or if it’s with a look, you can’t get rid of the Babadook.

15) Suspiria (Original and the Remake - 1977 and 2019 respectively)

Suspiria is a baroque piece of esoteric expressionism that you enter - and exit - without understanding so much as feeling. It's always fascinating to watch; the thrills and spills are so classy and fast that the movie becomes in effect what horror movies seemed like when you were too young to get in to see them. Director Dario Agento works so hard for his effects -- throwing around shock cuts, coloured lights, and peculiar camera angles -that it would be impolite not to be a little frightened. This entry stands out as it is a visually beautiful horror movie, a bright fantasy that lives off its aesthetic. If you are a horror fan and haven’t seen this movie yet, then you’re not living right. The remake is also worth a watch, something that is oftentimes unique in the horror genre.

16) A Quiet Place (2018)

This gripping, clever monster movie is one of those rare genre treats that seizes on a simple, unique idea and executes it so perfectly and concisely that it elicits satisfying squeals of delight. It's directed and co-written by Krasinski, who's best known for his work in comedy but translates his experience in that genre to the expert building and releasing of tension here. A Quiet Place is, in many ways, like an extended classic horror movie sequence, such as famous ones in The Birds or Aliens, wherein the heroes must try not to disturb packs of resting monsters.

At the same time, Krasinski uses his quiet moments like music, ranging from moments of restful beauty -- including a father-son trip to a waterfall, where it's noisy enough that they can talk and even shout -- to moments of pause. A loud noise can cause a jump, but it's immediately followed by tension and dread: Will the creatures come this time? The real beauty is the movie's primal quality, based on the most basic elements of life, such as survival and protection of the species. No explanation is given for the monsters' existence; they, like us, are just here. Images of water, sand, bare feet, crops, and plant life serve to underline the theme of life itself. A few overly familiar horror movie clichés keep it from being perfect, but otherwise A Quiet Place is so good that it will leave viewers speechless.

17) The Exorcist (1973)

Once famously dubbed ‘the most terrifying movie ever made,” this movie is steeped in urban legend, especially concerning the unfortunate happenings that occurred when it was being made.

If you think your teen is ready for this shocking film, keep in mind that some audience members in the '70s reportedly fainted after seeing Dick Smith's grisly makeup effects on Blair. In some extreme cases, viewers even required psychiatric care. Also, the moans, snarls, and profane utterances from Regan (most are actually the dubbed-in voice of a well-known older actress, Mercedes McCambridge) amount to some of the most chilling audio ever done for film.

Thanks in part to Linda Blair's wrenching, Oscar-nominated performance, The Exorcist was a huge hit, earning back 10 times its $10 million budget (a then-lavish sum, outrageous for a "mere" horror flick). Movie historians cite it (along with The Texas Chainsaw Massacre) as the conclusive end of old-school spook shows featuring Dracula and Frankenstein and bobbing rubber bats. If you haven’t watched it yet, you may have your horror movie fan card revoked.

18) The Final Destination Franchise (2000 - 2011)

If I had to list all of the movies in the Final Destination franchise in order of quality, I would say 5, 1, 2, 3, and 4. Fourth instalment withstanding, the series is a formidable addition to the horror genre, as the invisible killer, Death Itself, stalks its victims and kills them off in creatively gruesome ways after they initially cheat death. The fifth addition contains an awesome twist at the end which in hindsight you should have seen coming throughout the entire movie. Pay close attention. The only downside is (SPOILER ALERT) that none of the characters throughout the series really survive.

19) Let the Right One In (Lat den Ratte Komma In) (2008)

Please watch the Swedish version, and power through the subtitles. This is a horror movie that is tragic on multiple levels, as it deals with a lonely and bullied boy who so happens to live next door to a pubescent vampire. When her benefactor dies, we see how the main character’s life will also unfold, and what lies in his future. A must-see film that is more than just your average horror movie.

20) Terrifier (2017)

This movie definitely gets back to basics by paying homage to the original slasher classics. Art the Clown, who we are originally introduced to in the 2013 movie All Hallow’s Eve (also worth a watch), is a vicious horror movie villain who kills just for kicks. He also subverts the horror movie trope by using a weapon which was previously considered off-limits to horror movie villains, especially those with supernatural abilites (mostly, anyway). This movie also contains one of the bloodiest deaths in recent horror movie history. I like the use of practical effects over the often-overdone CGI. What is Art the Clown? Deranged killer? Demonic entity? Who cares? Its all good fun. Watch it now on Netflix.

I’ll probably be back again some time in the future with a further 20 horror movies that are worth a watch, because there are so many of them. To everyone, take care during these uncertain times.

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writeinspiration · 5 years

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How Long Should Your Novel Be? (The Definitive Answer)

Text of the article pasted below!

Many aspiring novelists ask themselves, “How long should my novel be?” The answer to this question is surprisingly complex. There are multiple issues that need to be to addressed… and I’m going to cover ALL of them in this article.So let’s get it!

My Journey

It took me eight years to craft my debut novel, The Page Turners.

Eight years is far too long to spend writing a first book. Looking back, I cringe at the thought of what I could have created in the time I wasted drafting and redrafting that novel.

One of the many reasons it took me so long to write my first book was that, like many rookie authors, I wanted my debut to be an epic story. I had twenty-five years worth of life experiences, thoughts, emotions, and stories to draw from, and I was determined to cram all of it into a novel that would dazzle readers and immediately launch my literary career into the stratosphere of superstardom!

At one point, the manuscript for The Page Turners was up to 130,000 words, but the published version is a little over 55,000; hardly an epic.

But you know what? Stephen King’s first novel wasn’t The Stand. It was a tight-packed little masterpiece called Carrie.

Once I followed King’s lead by focusing on intimacy and letting go of my aspirations of a sweeping and grand narrative, the project finally become manageable. After years spent struggling with this beast of a story, I was suddenly dealing with a focused and fast-paced narrative that had a clear theme and a nice sense of rhythm and harmony.

Before long, finally publishing the book was no longer a distant pipe dream; it had actually become an attainable goal. In shortening the length of my novel, I made my life as a writer much easier.

The Benefits of Short

It’s easier to redraft and review a shorter novel.

It’s easier to convince beta readers to give it a look, and you get their feedback much quicker.

As an indie author, it’s significantly cheaper to pay for copy-editing of a shorter novel, and the production costs of printing the final books are also more affordable.

Across the board, virtually everything becomes easier and more do-able once you commit to shortening your novel.

A shorter book also forces an author to focus with laser-like accuracy on the story’s most important elements: the plot and lead characters. Tangents, supporting characters, and non-relevant aspects of the narrative are kept to a bare minimum because there simply isn’t room for them in a short book.

Tell an enthusiastic young writer you need them to write a 2,000-word article, and there’s a good chance they’ll return with 4,000 words of mostly unusable material. On the other hand, tell them you need 500 words and not a single word more… and they might just come up with something great!

I’m quite fond of the Orson Well’s quote, “The enemy of art is the absence of limitations,” and I think it can be applied wonderfully to word count. Keep the book short, and you’re much more likely to create good art. At the very least, you’ll reduce the chances of creating bad art. (The only thing worse than a bad novel is a bad novel of epic length!)

With all of this in mind, I tell my writing students to aim for a 55,000 word novel for their debut book. A total of 55,000 words is the perfect length for a rookie author. It’s short and sweet, and it forces the writer to stick to the point, something young writers often struggle with. And, of course, as mentioned earlier, it makes the entire project more manageable.

Is a 55,000 Word Manuscript Novel Length?

In his article, “Word Count: How Long Should a Book Be?”, Glen C Strathy turns to The Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America’s (SFFWA) criteria for the Nebula Awards to determine his word count criteria.

Here’s how the SFFWA defines the stories they review for the award:

Short story – under 7,500 words

Novelette – 7,500 to 17,500 words

Novella – 17,500 to 40,000 words

Novel – anything over 40,000 words

National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) (an annual event that challenges writers to craft a novel within the month of November) identifies 50,000 words as the minimum target for their definition of a novel.

As such, by either the SFFWA or the NaNoWriMo’s definition, a 55,000-word book is certainly novel-length.

That said, if you would prefer to turn to general opinion and/or critical regard to determine the minimum length of a novel, consider The Great Gatsby. F. Scott Fitzgerald’s masterpiece is only 55,000 words long, and it’s considered by many – myself included – to be one of the greatest novels ever written.

In fact, a number of my favourite novels of all time are around this length: The Outsiders by S.E. Hinton, Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury, The Turn of the Screw by Henry James, The Old Man and the Sea by Earnest Hemingway, Lord of the Flies by William Golding, The Catcher in the Ryeby J.D. Salinger, To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf, The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka, Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad, The Picture of Dorian Grey by Oscar Wilde, Notes from Underground by Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll, Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut, and The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams, to name but a few!

As this list clearly demonstrates, despite what many young authors mistakenly believe, more words are not always better. From Kafka to Carroll, some of the greatest prose writers ever to live chose to produce shorter novels.

In Praise of Long

Despite my recommendation that aspiring authors focus their efforts on producing a shorter book as their initial publication, I would be remiss to ignore the variety of well-loved long novels out there.

In her Salon.com article, “Why we love loooong novels”, Laura Miller provides a convincing argument in praise of the epic. She also references the New York Times report that author Garth Risk Hallberg received a $2 million advance for his 900-page debut, City on Fire – a clear indication a shorter debut novel is not always the best route to critical acclaim and financial riches!

Riffing on Miller’s article, Maddie Crum’s Huffington Post article, “An Ode to Unaccelerated Reading” lists ten excellent novels well worth their page count, and I’m sure we all have a beloved epic tome or two weighing down our bookshelves.

In fact, it was likely my love of Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings and Stephen’s King’s The Stand that got me into trouble with The Page Turners word count in the first place.

I’m not arguing that a novel must be short to be great; I’m simply suggesting that if you want to make the transition from aspiring author to published author in as smooth a manner as possible, you may want to save your epic for your sophomore release.

Industry Standards by Genre

Of course, only a few of the short novels I mentioned earlier were debut releases, and today’s modern writers, especially those looking to break into the mainstream publishing industry, would be wise to take into account industry standards when it comes to determining world count for their work in progress.

In a helpful article written for Writer’s Digest in 2012, Chuck Sambuchino outlines recommended word counts for various different genres of books. His recommended word counts are as follows:

Commercial and literary novels for adults – 80K to 90K

Sci-fi and Fantasy – 100K to 115K

Young Adult – 55K to 70K

In another article on word count and book length, “How Long is a Book? Determine Your Novel’s Genre, Subgenre, and Best Word Count”, Ronnie Smith expands on Sambuchino’s list by adding some additional genres to the mix:

Romance – 80K to 100K

Mystery – 75K to 100K

Thriller – 90K to 100K

Western – 45K – 75K

These recommendations are extremely helpful to keep in mind while working on your book, particularly if you intend to secure an agent and a traditional publisher for your work.

Keep in mind, however, that Sambuchino and Smith’s recommendations are based on the long-entrenched requirements of the traditional book publishing industry. As such, the recommended word counts are largely the result of industrial standards and therefore have more to do with the production requirements of paperback books than they do anything related to storytelling technique, artistic aspirations, or the preferences of readers.

New Standards

In recent years, the rise of ebooks, along with the ever-increasing ease with which independent authors can self-publish their work via web and print-on-demand has completely changed book industry standards in terms of word counts requirements.

With storytelling becoming increasingly digitalized, the very meaning of terms like “books” and “novels” are being consistently destabilized.

Ebooks come in a variety of forms and lengths, and print-on-demand can turn a project of any reasonable word count into a paperback publication. Authors are now free to craft books and novels with word counts that are bound only by the author’s imagination and creativity, and the audience’s receptivity.

Hugh Howey’s hit self-published “novel” Wool was originally released as a series of e-novellas. Authors Johnny B. Truant and Sean Platt are releasing serial fiction that is then collected together into “seasons”, thereby combining 19th century Charles Dickens-like publishing model with that of modern television. Erotic authors, riding the surging 50 Shades of Grey wave, are consistently finding new and innovative ways to get their work into reader’s hands, including bundling books from several authors together to create what is, essentially, an anthology of novellas.

Where to From Here?

If it was difficult to determine exactly how long a novel should be in the past, it’s only going to become increasingly more difficult in the future. As independent authors continue to push the boundaries and test what digital publishing and print-on-demand have to offer, and as the traditional publishing industry attempts to keep up with technological innovations reshaping the publishing landscape, there’s no telling what a “book” might look like in the years to come.

If you’re looking for a career in traditional publishing, educate yourself on the word counts the publishers and agents you’re targeting are looking for. If you are embracing independent publishing, get creative! There’s an exciting world of storytelling possibilities out there, and whether your book is a short jaunt or an epic journey is totally up to you. Remain true to your vision, give your audience the read of a lifetime, and the last thing they will be thinking about is word count.

#writer #writing #write #writeinspiration #writeblr #original content or from the Internet at large

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