So I just now realized that even tho I don’t have a tumblr blog I can still send asks… my brain activity has truly been hitting a plateau lately 😭 ANYWAYS I saw that you finished TBONA… and I need to hear all of your thoughts!! What pissed you off the most? What would you have changed/done differently? What was one thing Stephanie did right (or could’ve done right, if she went a different direction?)… basically, I wanna hear you rant and give me all the deets :3 - Kai

OMG, KAI, HIIII, HOW HAVE YOU BEEN??? also, NO WORRIES, i didn’t realize you could do that either <//3

oh god…. okay, so. i think most, above all else, was the attempt to make jacks and evangeline… sexually involved with each other? not anything, like, insane, but it’s way too close for comfort—and not only is the age difference thing really weird (i’ll get into that), but the fact that the timing is… rlly bad. like, both characters are under the influence of a magical stone at one point, which makes all their interactions suspect, and the scene where she had literally been flogged and jacks was patching her up turned??? into something weirdly sexually-charged??? disgusting, disgusting, disgusting. that’s a major NO. YOU DON’T FUCKING TALK ABOUT HIM TOUCHING HER WHEN HE’S TRYING TO MEND WOUNDS. WHAT THE FUCK????

i mean, on that topic, forget jacks being like jacks at all. he was more in-character in once upon a broken heart, and he was already horrifically out of character in that one. oh, uh, we find out his backstory and it’s the lamest backstory ever? turns out he was “the archer” in the ballad of the archer and the fox and that’s how he got his cursed kiss (even though that was literally jst part of him being a fate…. let’s not think about how stephanie fucking mauled the concept of fates in this book, btw. she’s acting like they should have humanity when they shouldn’t. we just turned them into super powered humans for this book ://)

apparently jacks is from the magnificent north, which makes no goddamn sense given the original trilogy’s backgrounds <333 but whatever, we have to make sacrifices (i’m literally begging her not to lmao)

then there’s the writing quality, which took a massive downturn. evangeline is the most childish protagonist i’ve read in a while. like, i know i ranted about anatomy and how messy that plot + protagonist was, but guess what? it’s much better than whatever the fuck that just was. whenever she would talk about her ideas of love (“love is a battlefield, love is the greatest force in the world”) i was like…. okay, seventeen year old. you got it. go back to math class.

like…. man, the romance is the cheapest thing i’ve ever read. every moment attempting to be romantic is so forced that it comes out constipated, add to the fact that there’s no chemistry (because stephanie didn’t bother to write characters with depth), and none of the emotional moments pay off. OH MY GOD, ALSO, SO MANY SCENES WERE IN THAT BOOK SO THAT EVANGELINE OR JACKS COULD BE JEALOUS??? LIKE THERE’S NO POINT TO THE BOOK FOR THEM. the checkers scene i mentioned is PURELY written for jacks to flirt with someone else in front of evangeline. again, this is super immature, childish, sophomoric writing and i’m so ???? at everyone saying this is the most romantic book they’ve read. i truly don’t think stephanie understands love at a base level.

(also, i really was struck by how young evangeline was. i feel like if i were her older sister, i’d be begging her to stop trying to get with another man and to spend time single so she can figure herself out. this girl is THE definition of “boy-crazy” and it’s kinda… ew.) also, the jealousy scenes?? REEKING with “i’m not like most girls”—there are no other important female characters, except lala. every other important female character is either someone to her jealous of or a throwaway line. so, uh, feminist win, i guess ://

it’s mostly upsetting bc i recently read this beautiful novel about love and sacrifice and the depths of it can truly be salvation—only for stephanie to say the same thing, but have it ring hollow bc she didn’t bother to add any of that book for further depth. fucking hell.

god, what would i have done differently? i would’ve scrapped this entire fucking series and rewrote it from the ground up and given it a similar vibe to the original trilogy. once again: the world building in this new series is piss-poor. it has no feeling of magic, despite magic being present. it doesn’t feel like the same characters from the original trilogy, nor does it feel like it could possibly be a spin-off.

in addition to that, i’d just write a completely different plot. this one is pointless. it’s stupid. there are no personal stakes to it. OH, THAT’S ANOTHER THING—FOR THIS BOOK HAVING A DEATH CURSE AND A THREAT AGAINST THE ENTIRE MAGNIFICENT NORTH, THERE IS NO FEELING OF TENSION OR FEAR. there is no action to this book except in the first 100 pages. we spend a solid other 100 pages in jacks’s “home” from when he was human (highly disappointed in the jacks human backstory btw, so jst know that i’m completely scrapping it and rewriting it because… how fucking dumb.)

so, basically, i’d, uhhh, fix it. make the romance have meaning. give it some deeper meaning in terms of how humanity can connect with it. make it feel more put together—give it depth. ((i know i already said this, but wow, my chrysijacks fic is…. way better already. it’s got a theme and a solid plot and a good fucking slowburn/getting back together plot. wow.))

…. also, okay. i know i said the writing quality was lower, but when i say it was lower, i mean lower. it feels very rushed. there’s no attempt to truly get you to feel, see, understand a scene. there’s no attempt to make an emotional moment stronger. you don’t need to say “his lips tasted like heaven and hell” when you can say that it stole your breath away or whatever (although he didn’t kiss her…. OKAY, WAIT, THAT’S MY LEAST FAVORITE PART OF THE BOOK. WHEN HE LICKED HER GODDAMN LIPS. WHAT??? THAT’S NOT HOT, THAT’S DISGUSTING. GET YOUR DISGUSTING TONGUE AWAY FROM MY MOUTH.) idk, jst reading higher quality books of late has really taught me of when less is more and how to write something with emotional depth. fucking hell. wow. that was really terrible.

truthfully, i don’t think anything was really done properly. it felt like a first draft, at best. the only saving grace of this book is the vampire ex-boyfriend (turned into a vampire in the last book). that man has no goddamn clue what’s going on at all times and he’s so annoying and self-centered. basically, he was the only fun part of this book. and, god. you have to have fun in your novel if you’re going for a whimsical type of fairy tale.

yeahhhh, uh. it was truly one of the worst books i’ve read this year. i think it’s actually the worst book thus far, bc i gave it two stars in my reading journal. everything else has gotten 4-5 stars primarily (the occasional 3 star)—bc i’m good at telling when is going to be good or bad lol.

tw incest + abuse mention, spoilers for ep 16 and after:

yo fuck this fujo scriptwriter... i mean idk wtf i was expecting but i just watched these yt videos on “uncovering” what was actually said in shl when the actors were acting (pre-dubbing) bc apparently ppl have lip-read (?!) and figured out what was in the script at that stage. and like :^| yeah the original novel was prob fujobait but so many of the lines that were changed are so overtly sexual for no reason instead of just explicitly romantic like i thought it would be :^\ i genuinely liked the dialogue... obviously the nuances in wordplay and everything are really impressive (and inevitably go over my head bc i don’t know the language 😔) and with gong jun + zhang zhehan’s chemistry it’s rly a delight to watch but that was so. their romance is v much not subtext in the show which is rly cool but like did there have to be that many innuendos lol! why are u so fucking obsessed w how two fictional men have sex seek fucking help u homophobic weirdos... ugh

also i haven’t read tian ya ke and i don’t particularly feel a desire to do so even tho i’m obsessed w shl but apparently the side characters are much more developed in the show than in the book including the relationships that they have with other secondary characters some of which were invented for the drama. which brings me to what really made me uncomfortable: there were lines initially that implied scorpion king has a “romantic”/sexual relationship with his father, zhao jing (who i didn’t even realize was his adoptive father until the video designated it as a very important distinction. like im abt to start mauling u) that were dubbed over to not make this... dynamic 🤢... as apparent. and this was also a drama-only addition. like god wtf ! 

why is this kinda shit so fucking popular in these freak circles like why is incest so romanticized like this! it’s literally ridiculous there was no reason to add in this aspect to their already toxic relationship other than for fetishizing it as some taboo/”forbidden love” crap. seeing the lady talk about this in the video... it’s clearly not viewed by fujos (or whoever their target audience was for this) as scorpion king having been and continue to be abused by his father, and i don’t have enough faith in this scriptwriter to assume that this topic is going to be gradually explored in an authentic and meaningful way or something. i just hope xie’er kills him 

ik the actors (probably 😞) didn’t play their roles like that bc i saw smth abt zhao jing’s actor being disgusted at ppl sh*pping them on weibo BUT THEN growing to be supportive of it along w scorpion king’s actor LIKE Y R U LETTING UR BATSHIT FANS CONVINCE U THAT THIS IS OK... it’s just plain fucked up please just stick to ur initial instinctual response to this wtfdghdgjdshd like now that shl is super popular and the actors have gained a lot of recognition i know they have to maintain like a tolerant attitude to all of this crazy shit so their images are good but man i wish they’d just tell ppl off for this shit... zhang zhehan being asked in interviews what he thinks abt being called laopo/wife... and him just being like [sigh] whatever makes y’all happy like king i am so sorry. these fujo fans r a disease and maybe these adaptations should’ve never been created. we need to kill bl and gl labels and the ppl that write for them i’ve had enough i’m doxxing the scriptwriter and just completely eviscerating them i hope u reincarnate into a dung beetle