I feel like every other media analysis video essay is titled something like “why [x] is an underrated masterpiece” or “[x] is absolute garbage and here’s why” like can we please just say we liked/disliked something without making it a black-or-white objective fact. can we please think of media analysis as something more than saying if something was good or bad. can we please go back to video titles that tell you what kind of analysis is happening in the video rather than a snappy opinion that will get you views. Also I blame Youtube’s algorithm for this

A Court of Wings and Ruin - Christ alive/5 ☆

Warning - this review is 1.2k words, and 98% negative. If you love SJM and the ACOTAR series, love that for you /gen. However, for your own mental health, I genuinely would not recommend you read this. For everyone else, and those who hate-read, Let's begin!

~~~

Okay, so I actually rated this 2 stars on Goodreads because I didn’t hate it the whole time but, I’m mad about it so it gets a special rating. ♡

I honestly lament when I was excited to read this book. Being what I refer to as a Lucien Lover (nuanced), I enjoyed a good bit of the beginning of this book. That’s not to say I wholeheartedly enjoyed every word of the first 100 pages of this book. 

So we start with Feyre in the throes of rage, becoming a master manipulator. Now, before I put just a minute or two of thought into it, I loved it. I love a girl tearing shit apart and using intellegence as a form of strength. However… 

Anybody think she was doing a little too much…?

Like, okay, Tamlin fucked up. Big time. I will admit justice is needed! Love when women take back power! But not only dismantling his entire country but turning everyone against him for things that he actually did not do? Crazy! He sucks! But people still live in that country. We still need order! His life is ruined now and I don’t necessarily think all that was necessary. 

Tamlin sidebar: “my father and my father’s father did the Tithe, so I’m going to do it.” Didn’t you acknowledge two books ago that your father sucks absolute ass? What fucking sense does that make? How in the first book was he the Perfect Moral Man that now can’t see the very evident immorality in the shit you’re doing. Anywhoozers. 

So, Feyre has her cool girl moments and returns to the Night Court. In book one, I was bored out of my mind until we arrived in Rhys-land. (Good one). This time, it was like the moment we arrived here the magic was lost. I was no longer excited to read. And honestly, I think the big issue was actually our beloved bat-boy, Rhysand.

I don’t know her personally, so this is not an attack on her character, but I’m starting to feel like SJM writes Rhysand based off of her fantasy version of what a man is like. Dominating, but soft and loving. Perfectly moral. Capable of evil, deplorable things, but too loving of people and their dreams to be that way. I’m going to be referring to it as PMS (Perfect Man Syndrome). 

Many of her men (sorry, males) are unfortunate PMS victims, but Rhysand is by far the worst. I wish I had underlined it when I was reading so I could cite it, but there’s just something about his actions. He is PMSing so hard that he doesn’t develop at all. He was old enough to be grown during the faerie-UK version of the Amercian Civil War where of course he was anti-slavery the entire time despite being raised by people who appeared to be violent racists. Good for our educated king. He also, of course, runs a sanctuary for abused women. 

Of course, I’m not saying that being anti-slavery and supporting abused women is bad. I love it. But like… be real with me here. I know that this is fictional. It’s not real. We can be happy here. But can I have some dimension, please? This man is the personality version of Flat Stanley. We had two conflicts between them since they got together and both were resolved by Rhys nearly getting on his knees and saying everything is his fault and he’s so sorry. The first conflict was just her thinking she stepped out of her Womenly Line and him not even knowing there was an issue. 

He’s just so. Fucking. Boring. 

Moving on. ♡.

Let’s talk about what makes me so goddamn angry about this book. I’ve seen complaints about SJM where other people are saying that other people call her books feminist literature. I personally have never heard anybody say that, but if I did, I don’t know if I would be able to control the rant that would ensue.  

I’m willing to have a civilized conversation, but I don’t remember Feyre actually doing anything. Yes, SJM puts her women in positions of power. Do they use said power? Maybe once or twice. 

Amren is an ex-god with powers above any character we’ve met so far. We see it used I think once. The rest of the time is spent talking about her power and her holding down the fort at Velaris while everyone else is off to war. 

Morrigan - also very powerful (described only). I remember her power being “truth” and never elaborating on that. She is a known soldier, that doesn’t fight. 

During the two huge battles, Feyre, Nesta, and Morrigan are on the ground while Rhys, Cassian, and Azriel are in the air fighting. After the first battle, Feyre is seen tending to her beloved mate’s wounds, Nesta is fetching water for Cassian, and Morrigan is getting mad at Nesta for wanting to fuck Cassian. So strong of all of them. 

Azriel is there doing… nothing. Which he has a habit of doing. Speaking of habits, SJM will create characters that I like because I’m excited to see how they will grow and develop. 

She then proceeds to do nothing with them.

I know more books are coming, as they will with SJM until the end of time, but it’s starting to drag. I love Elain. Well, I love what Elain could be. She’s a seemingly fragile, docile character. With her Seer powers, I was excited to see her notice the world around her sucks and develop into somone capable of holding their own. Instead, she uses her powers to relay some cryptic messages that no one heeds or even tries to, then she “snaps out of it” and can’t really do anything else. 

Azriel has a tragic backstory and seemingly a big story to tell. God, I wish I could ever fucking hear it. 

This is getting exceptionally long, but I remembered I had a list of things I wanted from ACOWAR and didn’t receive, so I’ll pick one more thing off. 

The Ouroboros. Out of all symbols, the Ouroboros is my favorite. Cycles and inevitability and all that. We spend a good chunk of this book leading up to Feyre retrieving this. It drives everyone mad. Only the strongest can look in it and survive. I was so excited to see what she saw! What the battle with herself would be like! How does she overcome it?

I guess we’ll never know.

She ended up seeing… herself? I guess she wasn’t previously aware of her flaws and then simply accepted them. Would love to have seen it!

And to finally end this review, I think the Ouroboros is a good symbol of every issue I have with this book. There’s so much build up and excitement that ultimately leads nearly no explanation. It’s like there’s ideas and concepts but then no idea how to execute them.

I won’t be reading ACOFAS or ACOSF or anything else. I already didn’t want to, then I found out about the pregnancy thing and. Yeah. I think I’m good off that.

Jukebox reviews part 14! For context, see my post “A Project”   under  this same tag. If you want to see a full list of his EMCSA   stories,  they can be found here, sorted alphabetically.And if you want to see some of his drabbles, check out his blog at @jukeboxemcsa  

 Sharp Dressed Man

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4/10/2010                                     mc mf md

Trust someone in marketing to care more about the presentation of something than the content. And, as a scientist, I do resent the way Nina just acts as though scientists don't know how to dress. Just because I get to wear street clothes to the lab (look, you don't want synthetic fabrics around chemicals. You just don't. Cotton all the way, folks! Or linen or wool, depending) doesn't mean I don't know how to dress up and look stunning when I want to. Or, at least, my partners have used stunning to describe me, but I suppose they may just be biased. REGARDLESS, Nina's being a bit catty here, and that definitely makes me feel like she deserves what she gets. But the control isn't ... it isn't a style I enjoy in my kink stories, so on a lot of levels this is just a miss for me. If you like someone being overwhelmed with ... well, ok, in this universe it's science but no, that isn’t how any of this works, so it's magic. You might just enjoy this. 3/10 spirals.

Show Don’t Tell

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4/17/2010                                     mc ff cb

Given who Adventure Girl makes me think of, it's WEEIRD to see her juxtaposed with Venus Ascendant, given who Venus makes me think of. (Look, her age says Supergirl, but her origin says Ms. Marvel. And I'm a Carol Danvers fan.) But holding that aside, because it isn't really important, gosh this is a Good Story. The Girdle of Minerva works so well, and watching Adventure Girl grapple with the same sorts of "but good girls don't!" that I too had to unlearn is ... cathartic? Kind of? It doesn't hit my hot buttons exactly - too much magic, which if y'all have been following my reviews won't come as a surprise - but it's still really good. 7/10 spirals

  Closer to the Heart

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4/25/2010                                     mc mf fd

How can I even *start* to review this one? This isn't just my favourite Jukebox story - my favourite story on the EMCSA *other* than one my spouse wrote for and dedicated to me! - but it was FORMATIVE to my hypnokink, to my sense of what I might possibly *find* in a relationship. I didn't know what healthy, happy romantic relationships looked like when I was as young as I was when I read this story, back when it was first posted. Not *really.* My parents were always so very private about their relationship, and I knew enough to know that media wasn't ... it just wasn't. Add in the "I'm not really interested in sex itself" with the strong hypnokink, and I was so adrift. Sure, there were, like, 2 book series I read that had Healthy Relationships, but they didn't have any of the kink nuance, so that didn't help.But this story. This story has so many moments that I read and my brain went "that. I want *THAT.*" The mix of romance and fun kinky things in this story became my measuring stick for relationships I was in, and if I realized that a partner wasn't living up to that? That they weren't showing me the respect Lynn shows Michael? I was done. And I needed that, more than once, unfortunately. But it also helped me internalize that I *could* have that kind of relationship. And now I do - 4 times over! I've mentioned before on my blog how a line from this story became a guiding benchmark for me, the idea of "everything we do comes from love." Whether love of community, love of a friend, or romantic love, that central tenant has helped me know when to stop doing something I was no longer doing for the right reasons, and to grow into an adult who knows when to - and how to! - say no.That's a LOT to put into a story, I realize, and it isn't just this story that did it. But it was absolutely a catalyst for so much of that. I would not be who I am today if it weren't for this story. I probably wouldn't have even felt like I belonged in this community without this story, and a few others (one by Jukebox, and a couple by Wiseguy).So all that said, let's get into the actual text of the story, shall we?

While we start with sexual stuff immediately, it's also instantly clearly part of the conditioning/brainwashing process, so that's all good by my standards. There's such obvious love and connection between Michael and Lynn, and she so gently and tenderly reinforcing her control as she moves through the chakras. And then, when we get to the heart chakra, and Michael stops being passive because he loves Lynn so much, and has such a need to communicate that to her... it melts my heart. The way she drops out of pet names and just uses his name in that moment, the mantra... so much good here. And then the moment where we see Michael is so aware of how much Lynn loves him in return is so tender... to me, that's the true climax of this story, the sharing in love that has been well tended and grown by *both* of them. It's just tender and sweet and lovely and I am so very fond of both Michael and Lynn, here and in every story we see with them. 9001/10 spirals.

Already Gone

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5/2/2010                                       mc ff

There's a really interesting suggestion in here, and it's one I definitely plan to use for (short-term) shenanigans with a partner at some point. The idea of them being consumed by curiosity, focusing entirely on a fixation object as it sucks their thoughts away? Oh yes, I'm using that. The rest of this story? It's good enough, but doesn't quite get me invested the way other stories have and do. Some of that is the contrast to Closer to the Heart, of course; I remember 12 years ago, reading this one the week after Closer to the Heart and wishing that this had been closer to that - and I still do. But this one stands well on its own, if I make myself stop comparing it to Closer to the Heart. Seeing how Cat's mind changes in response to the control is *delightful,* and it's well thought out. It's just a bit impersonal for me, is all. 8/10 spirals.

  I Ran So Far Away

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5/8/2010                                       mc mf md

Hmm, another one of those stories that never quite feels erotic - surreal horror, maybe? Still really good for what it is, just a bit ... not quite fitting amongst the rest of the stories on the archive. But it's well written, we really, TRULY get a sense of what Monica was running from and why she's scared, and it fits so very well. Though I have to wonder how nobody's noticed this before now. Surely enough folk gathered by those who serve would have people who miss them! 7/10 spirals

  Zombie

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5/15/2010                                     mc mf md

I feel bad for Addison here; he's mostly an innocent bystander in this one. Wouldn't it have made more sense to just tell him to forget the secrets involved and only have to worry about one person - a seemingly not well-liked one! - disappearing? Ah well, leaving my opinions on what makes sense aside, this is a bit ... clinical? which is the point, of course, but it makes it hard for me to see it as erotic, personally. But the method works, and I enjoy the (entirely too brief) description of the experience Addison has. If you like more detatched/clinical control, you'll likely enjoy this one? 6/10 spirals

  Talking In Your Sleep

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5/22/2010                                     mc ff

This ends the only way it possibly could, and I don't think that's inherently a bad thing? Because the *how* we end up where it ends up is a bigger draw than the "where is this going?" sentiment would be. It's fun to watch how Alicia slowly brainwashes herself with Holly's voice, though I can't help but shake my head at her not realising she was doing that. Ah well, hopefully it will work out for the best and they can be a happy trio; I've seen well how two subby gals can be in love and reinforcing their submission to a shared dominant partner; it can be *super* cute. Though that does involve more consenting submsision, but what can you do, I suppose? I do have to wonder just how much actual rest Holly was getting, but it seemed to work for her? 8/10 spirals

  You’re the Inspiration

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5/30/2010                                     mc

Another of the inductions Jukebox has written, and one very not to my taste; a central image of it is, effectively, serial recruitment, which is a hard limit for me. So it's not an induction I can rate well, though the technique is as solid as always.

  Common People

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6/5/2010                                       mc mf md fd

I feel like the last part of this sort of skews away from what would be - to me! - a much more interesting story. But it ends up more or less exactly where I expected it to - after 139 stories, I think I'm getting a sense of where Jukebox is going with these pretty quickly from the tone. The first two thirds of the story is good - the approach of a telepath who's trying not to give into her powers is fun! But the cruel ending to it, caused by another telepath, is less my vibe. 6/10 spirals.

  Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap

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6/12/2010                                     mc ff

Honestly, do people not understand the idea of too good to be true? I suppose there would be fewer good stories if they did, and after all it can be hard to resist temptation. And to be fair, Isabelle did speak truly, for all she left significant details out. It's a fun story, and the sense of how Sylvia is overwhelmed and conditioned and brainwashed is wonderful. Having said that, I don't actually like the light and sound machines - unless I'm already SUPER fractionated, they just give me a wicked headache (I should know, I experimented with them once upon a time, thanks to Wiseguy) - so I do wince a little at the idea of waking from sleep right into one. But that's a me thing - plenty of folk really like light and sound machines, and I know from friends' testimonies that they can be amazingly hypnotic for a lot of folk! So that just makes all of this feel more real, and more personal. It's just all around a good story that hits a lot of things I like. 9/10 spirals.

Scrooge: A Christmas Carol: How to do “child friendly” RIGHT

Hello, fans. I know we’re two months long overdue, but because of what has been going on in my life, I finally got around to watching Netlfix’s take on a beloved Christmas classic with a good feeling after seeing Netflix’s Pinocchio which was a masterpiece and keeping in mind that not too long ago, Netflix made another Christmas movie that the world fell in love with being Klaus. And you know what? I was absolutely NOT disappointed. In fact, I was very pleased and impressed. I will be the first to admit Scrooge: A Christmas Carol (which I will simply call Scrooge throughout this review) is not the most sophisticated adaptation of the book, but out of all the animated versions, this is the best and so far, the only adaptation that is child friendly the right way since Disney’s Mickey’s Christmas Carol. Just to give you an idea of how well done it was: I am an adult and I loved it. I’ll even go that extra mile by saying this film is criminally misjudged, underrated and was treated rather biasedly.

Be warned that there are spoilers ahead.

Number one, the animation style is CGI yet cartoony. Visually, out of all the animated adaptations of A Christmas Carol, Scrooge is the most beautiful visually and has the best animation. You can tell that a lot of love was put into art because each character is emotive, unique, alive and entertaining while the animation is as smooth as silk with perfect textures. Unlike most CGI that tries to be realistic and in doing so, winds up looking creepy, unnatural and ugly, Scrooge embraces that it is all fantasy lovingly, so the characters are designed to be whimsical which is absolutely perfect for the fantastical elements like the magical sequences, the three spirits and the ghost of Jacob Marley. Because of this, they stay with you.

Number two, the music is catchy and lively. I know that a lot of people deem the music as not being good, but I have to say it, folks, I couldn’t not disagree more. I think the music is absolutely wonderful and the performances feel like something out of Broadway. Just the opening number “I love Christmas” immediately draws you in and already gives you an idea of what kind film you’re going to be watching: it’s a film people made for fun and you’re having fun with them. Plus, the songs themselves are memorable and you will find yourself listening to them again and again. I mean, I can’t get over how sad yet beautiful “Later Never Comes” is and I even find myself rewatching this movie just to listen to the music. Now I know a lot of people out there do not have the same opinion as I do, but here is a case where I have to come to the film’s defense simply because you cannot fault it for being a musical since that’s what it is. Nobody complained when the Muppet Christmas Carol had people singing at random times. Heck, even things, animals and food would sing. I think it’s pretty unfair to say characters singing is out of place because no one does it real life when that is the point of the musical genre.

Number three, the characters are nuanced. While I cannot say these characters are an extreme departure from their original versions, I can definitely say that they are more multi-dimensional than most versions I have seen. Right off of the bat, we get a hint that Ebenezer is not just some old grumpy miser nor is he completely without heart considering he has a pet dog he takes good care of and a watch that is hinted to have emotional meaning. He does have a heart, but he hides it kind of like the Beast did in Disney’s Beauty and the Beast. Even his introduction song “Tell Me” is actually (and ironically) telling the audience that he is not happy and has his reasons for being so bitter. In most versions, he is just a big callous bully and his heart often feels like it was pulled out of nowhere. Instead, we catch glimpses of the old grump having one and we’re learning why he just puts up defenses in the form of cruelty. And it’s not just Ebenezer. His nephew Fred is nuanced too. For once, he is refreshingly shown to be much more aware of his actions rather than just being a cheery buffoon for the sake of contrasting his uncle. Fred is cheerful, kind and hopeful because he actively wants to be the best version of himself to honour his late mother, his uncle’s dear sister, and his uncle is all he has left on her side of the family, so he constantly reaches out to him. I also appreciate that unlike most versions, he doesn’t mock his uncle Ebenezer. He toasts him and even stood up for him which shows that he is also much more mature than he lets on.

Number four, the pacing is just right. A common problem I find in most adaptations of A Christmas Carol is that it tends to be too short or drag on for too long. I recall one version that was so long that is was actually a mini-series not a movie though in its defense, it was the exception. Anyway, Scrooge doesn’t feel like a drag or like it came and went at all. It has good pacing that will keep the attention of children and keep the adults entertained. It uses every single second that is necessary to tell a good story and get the main message across. Plus, it tells us several other ones that are food for thought like making use of your time and not taking your negative experiences for granted.

Number five, it respects the intelligence of the audience. You can tell that this film is meant to be enjoyed by children, but it doesn’t hold their hands nor does it shy away from being able to be serious. It doesn’t just play with the children. It educates them by having themes of death, sickness, regret, egoism and how severely our actions can impact those around us. I can tell you this now as a parent that I really happy to see kid’s medias like this make a comeback. The film is a lesson in how greed and callousness can literally kill. I mean, Ebenezer openly accepts that he has been a jerk who is not worthy of mercy, but asks to be spared because in doing so, Tim Cratchit who does deserve mercy gets spared too. THAT is what I find missing in a lot adaptations of Charles Dickens’ famous tale. Yes, Christmas should be appreciated, but the real point of the story is to see how destructive greed and ego can be. In other words, you could teach the same lesson using any holiday or special day which focuses on generosity and kindness. And when I say that out loud, it would be kind of fun if someone adapted A Christmas Carol with a twist where the holiday was not Christmas for a change yet still captured the same deep message, but I digress. The point is that Ebenezer does indeed stay true to honouring Christmas in his heart, but more importantly, he finally gets that he has been egotistical and cruel.

I give this movie an 9/10. It’s not perfect, but it sure is close to it as far as kid-friendly versions go. If you haven’t seen it, I suggest watching it. And if you have yet don’t think much of it, watch it again and this time, please take a really good look at it because I think you may have misjudged it. I know I have made that mistake too and it took taking a second look to see how wrong I was about something.

Have a great night, everyone. And stay safe.

If you met someone that got into Porky/Daffy shorts bc of their dynamic in LTC, what classic shorts would be the first you’d recommend to them? I think Porky Pig’s Feat, Fool Coverage and ofc The Daffy Doc would be good starting points

OH MANNNN… this is such an interesting question but i really have to think about because “all of them” is not a good answer HAHA OH GEEZ..

i was just thinking yesterday about how i think Duck Soup to Nuts is a very good “definitive” Porky and Daffy short. it’s not my absolute favorite (because there are too many great P+D shorts out there), but i think it strikes a VERY good balance and nuance in terms of humor and characterization especially. i’m a fan of the somewhat more antagonistic Porky and Daffy shorts, and this definitely scratches that itch but it’s not ENTIRELY antagonistic. Daffy is very very charismatic and charming rather than completely obnoxious, he manages to talk circles around Porky through actual cunningness (and Porky’s impressionable tendencies are always helpful too with that) rather than just annoying him into submission, and Porky puts up an equal fight which makes the short interesting—it’s not a guarantee that neither Daffy nor Porky are going to win. that’s one of my favorite aspects of their dynamic in that there is always room for versatility

that versatility can also be a bit of a vice too, in that there are SO MANY variations on their dynamic that you kinda need to know what you’re looking for! you have shorts where they’re enemies, shorts where they’re buddies, shorts where they’re some other third things, shorts where they’re a sidekick/leader duo… LTC tends to follow the formula of “Daffy drives Porky out of his mind by being obnoxious”, and if you like that particular dynamic then maybe i’d recommend shorts likeee My Favorite Duck, Daffy Duck Slept Here, Yankee Doodle Daffy, Fool Coverage.. honestly i think every Bob McKimson directed P+D short could apply here HAHAHA but that’s never a bad thing!!

my personal favorite P+D shorts are probably Baby Bottleneck, Porky Pig’s Feat, You Ought to Be in Pictures, Porky’s Last Stand, My Favorite Duck, Daffy Doodles, Riff Raffy Daffy, The Daffy Doc, Tom Turk and Daffy, Drip Along Daffy… SEE I AM GENUINELY STRUGGLING NOT TO LIST EVERY PORKY AND DAFFY SHORT EVER MADE LOL. i genuinely don’t think there’s a pig and duck cartoon that i don’t like in some form… not counting the 3 or so that revolve around racial stereotypes and even then 2 out of those 3 are essentially the same short. there are so many that can be recommended for a myriad of reasons—i like these particular shorts because i think they strike a great balance with everything i like about the characters. Baby Bottleneck is especially successful in that it has them both as partners and adversaries, and so you get to see both sides of that dynamic (and it ends in a “tie” so they’re on equal footing throughout the whole thing!), and i definitely agree that Porky Pig’s Feat is subjectively objectively one of the best Porky and Daffy shorts around

i could write dissertations on every single Porky and Daffy short and why you should watch them (and i aim to, i’d be lying if i said that wasn’t one of the reasons why i started my review blog), but i think it’s really just something you yourself have to dig into depending on your tastes! Porky’s Duck Hunt i think was the first Porky and Daffy short i saw as an adult because i was curious to see what Daffy’s first short was like—it’s not really a cartoon i would recommend as someone’s first classic exposure to the characters, but in my case it got me thinking about the history and chronology of the characters and… well, we all know how i turned out now!

and i do agree with your choices!! all of those shorts are shorts i love dearly. i love and have seen these shorts so many times that i have a hard time trying to put myself in the shoes of someone who has not/i realize “WATCH THEM ALL” is not a valid answer LOL. but i really do think that they are such a versatile and MALLEABLE pair of characters that there are so many nuances to their multiple dynamics it’s really just something you have to sort of parse out and see for yourself—watch them and see what shorts you tend to gravitate more towards and go from there. but i really would recommend most of them if i could HAHA

Cigarettes After Sex - Cry 12" LP Review - Limited Edition Deluxe Gatefold Vinyl

Ethereal tunes and dreamy vocals for the introverted, best played on vinyl records for beginners IvanYolo Recently, I took some time to sit down and give a proper listen to the Cigarettes After Sex's  album I've been interested in. After some thoughtful review of the ethereal music and delicate vocals displayed in their work, I have to say that I am absolutely smitten.The emotional depth and artistry of the songs really spoke to me, and I knew I needed to have a physical copy of the music for myself. This was no easy task, however. After scouring various websites and online retailers, I finally managed to locate the perfect item - a limited edition, 180g vinyl pressing of Cigarettes After Sex Cry LP.Needless to say, I was ecstatic to find this gem of a recording, and I quickly headed over to Shopee to make my purchase. For a very reasonable cost of RM159, I was able to secure my very own copy of this breathtaking work of art in physical form. It just goes to show that good things really do come to those who wait and seek out the best deals!Whenever I listen to those dreamy tunes, I can't help but feel that they perfectly align with my introverted personality. The soft melodies and gentle rhythms create a relaxing atmosphere that takes me away from the noise and distractions of the outside world. It's like I'm transported to a magical realm where everything is quiet, peaceful, and beautiful.The music helps me to tap into my imagination and emotions, allowing me to explore my inner self without any inhibitions or judgments. As I listen, I feel like I'm dreaming and floating, weightless and free. It's a sublime and almost surreal experience that fills me with a sense of wonder and joy. I'm glad that I have this kind of music in my life; it gives me a good vibe and a reminder that there's always beauty and inspiration to be found, even in the most mundane moments.

Cigarettes After Sex Cry LP, A High Quality Black Vinyl Pressing

Buy on Shopee Buy on Amazon If you're someone who is starting out with vinyl records and are looking for a musical journey that resonates with you, the Cigarettes After Sex Cry LP, 12" Limited Edition Deluxe Gatefold vinyl is the perfect addition to any audiophile's collection! This high-quality vinyl not only features the rich, mellow sounds of Cigarettes After Sex's signature tunes, but it also boasts an eye-catching and unique design that is sure to turn heads. Whether you're a longtime fan of the group or simply love to collect stunning vinyl, this limited edition release is not to be missed. With its superior sound quality and exquisite aesthetics, the Cigarettes After Sex Cry Vinyl LP - 180g Limited Edition is guaranteed to bring your listening experience to new heights. The Cigarettes After Sex Cry LP comes in black. Black vinyl's audio quality is an essential element of any music collection. There's just something about the rich and warm sound that comes from vinyl records that is simply irreplaceable! The depth and nuance of the audio quality on a classic black vinyl record cannot be duplicated by any digital streaming service or modern recording technology. 180g vinyl is a type of vinyl record that is thicker and heavier than standard vinyl records. It is often considered to be a higher-quality vinyl because its increased thickness and weight result in a more stable playing surface and less surface noise. The thicker vinyl also allows for better playback of low frequencies and higher sound quality overall. 180g vinyl has become increasingly popular among audiophiles and collectors who value the superior sound quality and durability of these records. While they may be more expensive than standard vinyl records, many listeners believe that the improved sound quality is worth the investment.

The Sound Quality

After receiving the new turntable, it was finally time to experience the full glory of vinyl records. To start, the turntable was connected to the Yamaha Aventage RX-A860 using the Phono input. The anticipation was palpable as the needle made contact with the record and the sound began to fill the room. It was immediately clear that no other format could truly capture the warmth and depth of vinyl's unique sound. The luscious, analog hues of the music were on full display, delivering a rich and detailed sound that was both engaging and fulfilling. I made it a point to switch to Direct mode on my receiver to bypass the DSP, which significantly enhanced the audio experience and brought it closer to the original music source. The warm vocals of the main singer were particularly stunning,  effortlessly transporting me to another time and place. After this experience, it's easy to see why vinyl remains a relevant and beloved format for music enthusiasts around the world.

Final Thoughts of The LP

Cigarettes After Sex Cry album features 9 phenomenal tracks that are sure to captivate every listener. The album comes fully equipped with a lyric book and a stunning, meticulously designed folded poster. Released in 2023, this album features the best 180g Deluxe Gatefold Vinyl that's manufactured in the heart of Europe, ensuring the highest quality possible.The album is a beautiful fusion of different genres, featuring hit tracks like "Don't Let Me Go," "Kiss It Off Me," "Heavenly," "You're the Only Good Thing in My Life," "Touch," "Hentai," "Cry," "Falling in Love," and "Pure." Each track is masterfully crafted to deliver an unforgettable listening experience like no other.So get ready to fall in love with the hypnotic melodies and charming lyrics of this remarkable album. Is it worth it to be included in your vinyl collection? I would say yes, worth getting your hands on this collector's item to add to your music collection.* This post has links that may earn me money if you buy something through them. This helps me keep the blog going and create more content. Thank you! Share This: You Might Also Like Related Posts Read the full article

Proofreading Services: Finesse Your Translated Content

Utilising professional proofreading services is like the cherry on top of a delicious, freshly baked cake! There are many ingredients which go into making it an exceptional, signature good, but without the finishing touches that set it apart, it instantly becomes another standard dessert.

Without the use of proofreading services, you could compromise the quality of your translated content without knowing it. Consequently, your business model won’t be taken seriously, which naturally, has a negative impact on your reputation.

Why Are Professional Proofreading Services So Important?

For any business looking to make their mark, proofreading any branded text or important documents that have been translated is an essential step in the content creation process. When something has been translated, it’s imperative that the written word is checked over for grammar, sentence structure, intent and localisation to name a few.

Translated content is only ever effective if it is correct. Proofreading ensures complete precision, allowing the true meaning of your message to be conveyed. This will enable you to branch out and target new demographics to further grow your business and build new relationships with overseas counterparts. Accurate translation and proofreading services are a steadfast way to expand business.

The use of professional proofreading services also shows you offer a duty of care to your clientele, helping them to achieve successful results. This will set you apart and help you to stand out in the over-saturated business world. Sincere customer care promotes consistent customer satisfaction. Consequently, client retention will be higher and in business, that is what will ensure the highest return on investment. It’s a futureproof way to overtake your competitors. Check out this recent article from Grammarist , for even more proofreading benefits.

What is Proofreading?

Proofreading something means to give a comprehensive final quality check of written material before publication. ‘Proofing’ a document entails carefully checking it for errors and overall accuracy. This includes layout, consistency in style and presentation, omissions in typography, and accuracy of spelling, grammar and syntax.

Professional proofreading for translated text is a skill that can take years to master. Not only does translation proofreading involve all of the above, but the proofreader must also ensure that the content or document makes complete sense in the language into which it has been translated. To do this, they need to be a native speaker of the language in question, with awareness of the original context and nuances.

What Can Be Proofread?

Any kind of content can be proofread for both business or personal purposes. Most commonly, marketing material and legal documents are the most popular content to have checked.

When choosing professional proofreading services, it’s important that your proofreader truly understands the nature of the content at hand. At Absolute Translations, our proofreaders are not only native speakers of over 200 languages between them, but are experts within their specialist fields too.

Our team set us apart from other services. With a minimum of 5 years’ experience within translations and proofreading, alongside being working professionals within their niche business sector. From Marketing and PR, to the financial and legal fields, Absolute Translations will deliver proofread content that you can trust.

The Difference Between  Proofreading and Editing?

Reviewing translation via both editing and proofreading are important. Both tasks are very similar, ensuring that text is free from error. However, there is a slight difference between the two.

Editing always comes first. An editor will examine text with the intention of improving the flow and overall quality of the writing. It is a multi-layered process that concentrates on form, context and factual integrity. This looks to improve the overall readability of the document. Specific terminologies and idioms should be checked at this stage. An editor will then give their professional opinion back to the translator. They can then action these suggestions, before handing over to proofreading services.

Proofreading comes next. This is where a native speaker of the language will go through the content and fine tune it. Details such as accents and other variations of punctuation in the right place are carefully considered. Localised text is also factored in and checked here; for example, different spellings of words that mean the same thing, depending on their intended audience.

Identifying instances where words or punctuation marks are repeated, checking line spacing and indentations in a finished product, and assessing the overall appearance of printed text is the final step.

By utilising the professionals at Absolute Translations, we ensure that your text is edited and proofread within the same service because of our dual-skilled proofreaders, who are both translation and niche industry professionals. You can rely on us for a thorough, cost-effective service.

Proofreading Services Near Me

With their acute understanding, our team will ensure that your content is exactly accurate, utilising their native linguistic skills, combined with specific industry knowledge and terminology. Our teams work all across the globe in many different time zones; this way, we can meet any deadline, regardless of where our clients are based.

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Personal Review (12/19/22)

...And the Stars Will Sing by Michelle Browne

Summary

Crystal, a human Martian, is sent to the distant reaches of the universe to help create a wormhole for quicker travel. She enjoys the job, but all isn't as it seems. Tears in space and time keep closing and opening, personal conflicts fester among her team, and it all comes to a head when threatening messages start arriving. She narrates it all through letters to her good friend Sarah, who she hopes to see again soon.

A free copy of this book was provided by the author in exchange for a fair and honest review.

Plot 1  2  3  4  5  6  7  8  9  10

For the most part, this book felt almost like a science fiction slice-of-life, which I've never really encountered before. Yes, there are intergalactic governments and advanced technology and something fishy is going on with the religious organizations (in my opinion), but a good majority of the story is about Crystal's day-to-day life. Probably the most interesting aspect was the character relationships, which I'll get into later.

The plot picks up in a more typical sense much later when those aforementioned messages start arriving. I was quite interested in seeing where that was going, but I feel like it was resolved too quickly. I feel like something this book struggled with was that there were so many things going on, but it's only around 150 pages in length. The focus was on interpersonal relationships, but then a typical sci-fi plot point is introduced, and there are also all sorts of hints that something larger is at play. Sarah's work with the Spiritualists feels like the cusp of a theocratic movement, and it is mentioned multiple times that the major conflict feels too easy. However, none of these things come to a semblance of fruition. I know this is a series, but I would've much preferred it if some more concrete events had been offered as the overarching plot.

As for the worldbuilding, it seems so interesting, especially the way Crystal's work with wormholes seems to verge on magic rather than science, but none of it is explained enough. There are all these alien species, allusions to galactic governments, and even new forms of measurement, but none of it is given the attention needed to acclimate the reader to the world. One of the major issues is how opening a wormhole will interrupt the drug trade in this corner of the galaxy, but there's really no explanation of which government would be in charge of cracking down, how they would do it, or even how the local governments are treating the issue. For a series described as a space opera, it doesn't have the political depth necessary for the genre since the story is largely limited to a snippet of Crystal's life with cursory descriptions at best since both the main character and her audience, her friend, are already familiar with the nuances of this world.

Characters 1  2  3  4  5  6  7  8  9  10

The character we are most familiar with is, of course, Crystal, as she is the main character. Unlike other novels which have potential for third-person or POV-switching, everything, absolutely everything, is told from her perspective, and the way things are portrayed tells us a lot about Crystal as a person. My only issue is that while I have a grasp on Crystal's personality, she doesn't really have an arc of development. She addresses some personal issues, such as constantly bickering with Jai, but the issues are so quickly and easily resolved that there's no satisfaction from the change.

That's an issue with a lot of the character/relationship things in this story. Things just move too quickly. Relationships form and break off within a single line, Crystal and Jai go from hating each other to dating (?) in less than twenty pages, and although they all go through a significantly traumatic event, there's basically no attention given to how that affects them emotionally and mentally other than a paragraph or two. This book is so short, and I think properly fleshing out the characters and their relationships with each other wouldn't go amiss.

Writing Style 1  2  3  4  5  6  7  8  9  10

I think most of my issues with this book can be tied back to the writing style, specifically the format chosen. I have never read an epistolary sci-fi book, and while it's unique, I don't think it works that well. Because it is someone used to this world writing to someone used to this world, two people who are already very familiar with each other, so much detail is sacrificed to keep their correspondence realistic. Worldbuilding is glossed over, descriptions and detail are lacking, and basic knowledge is just not provided. For example, I have no idea if Crystal has any living family. If she survives this stint in space, does she have anyone to go back to? These are questions that just can't be answered because of the framing device.

Because of the epistolary format, things also move way too quickly. Major events are resolved so fast that I can't even really bring myself to feel the gravity of them because they're introduced and then resolved almost immediately. Potential solutions to these issues could be changing the frame of the story; maybe Crystal is writing to someone younger, someone without the knowledge a young professional like Sarah would have. Maybe she doesn't know this person at all, like a pen pals kind of thing, so she provides a lot more context, just in case. Maybe these could be personal diary entries, recording what's happening for posterity. Or, honestly, I think I would've preferred to forgo the letter format entirely and just tell the story normally. The plot concept is there, and there's so much room for interesting character developments, but the crazy fast pacing and lack of explanations just diminish all that.

Overall 1  2  3  4  5  6  7  8  9  10

I think this book had a lot of potential. The plot is definitely intriguing, there are so many interesting concepts introduced, and there's a lot of room for conflict in the character relationships. However, and I do attribute part of this to the writing and epistolary format, there is just simply not enough. Nothing is properly explained, there's hardly any detail, and it makes it so rushed and confusing for the reader. With all the plot points introduced in this book, it could easily be twice the length in order to properly address everything introduced. Overall, it was a good start but the execution was lacking.

The Author

Michelle Browne: Canadian, also wrote The Underlighters and After the Garden

The Reviewer

My name is Wonderose; I try to post a review every week, and I do themed recommendations every once in a while. I take suggestions! Check out my about me post for more!

Live life King Size!! Is it really that easy?! People are always thinking of ways to improve their life, finance, business, physical and mental health, but are they truly successful? Even those who claim they are absolutely fine, have had to struggle and are often led into a dark jungle, from where wriggling out was a pain. We all need a guide to lead us from the front towards achieving a happy and successful life. As someone who’s been very curious about living the right kind of life, I came across Ancient Secrets of Kings by Winter Vee in my journey of a good book on personal development. Here I give you an in-depth review of the book and what it teaches. What are the Ancient Secrets of Kings This is a program that helps you change your present self into someone with self-confidence. You should feel powerful and start being the best version of yourself. The Winter Vee believes that we just need to take a cue from the others who have been so. The book takes the examples of three great rulers - Khufu from Egypt, Qin Shi Huang from China, and Solomon from Israel. Three powerful Kings who were the epitome of power. As the book's very name tells us, it talks about what these ancient Kings practiced and how you can adapt their principles to better your life. The program helps you identify your natural talents and understand how gifted you are. Taking off from there, you can develop yourself in the best direction. The eBook comes with modules, and you must learn them individually. The information is easy to understand, and you can implement the principles in your life almost immediately. How The Ancient Secrets of Kings Works This digital course discloses the secrets successful people and kings used for a long time to get happiness and wealth. The program comes in the form of an eBook and DVD, making it simple to comprehend. It starts by telling you what the ancient kings did. You can compare what you have presently with what they had and try to mend your personality. You may initially find yourself a tad uncomfortable with the changes, but you will be guided not to lose hope. The book takes you through very inspiring life pillars. There are three key pillars that Winter Vee talks about. The China Pillar: Here, Vee talks about the nuances of building boundaries to keep yourself from attacks or being misguided in your efforts. You will become more disciplined and shed off all procrastination tendencies. This gives you better control over how you spend your time. You will be able to stay away from unnecessary thoughts, thereby improving productivity. You will focus on staying on track while working and plan better scheduling of events. The distractions of life that break you down are kept away. You will be shown how boundaries are the first stepping stone to lay the foundation for your success. The Egypt Pillar: Here, you will be told the secret of how to get rich and the ways to use your wealth properly. You will learn to plan how to earn the money you very much need. Organization is key. Having a positive frame of mind and keeping people with negativity at bay is very essential for achieving this. The pillar introduces you to the tools that bring abundance to your life by creating it first within you. The Israeli Pillar: This pillar talks about achieving peace by being on good terms with your surroundings. It teaches you the importance of being cordial with one and all around you. The peace, which was what you were looking for, becomes your wealth. You need to live through hard times with patience and not hesitate to get help from somebody when you are unclear about moving ahead. You will learn to keep anger away from you. You are given tools to avoid anger and develop inner peace. Your brain learns to use the resources available to you rather than worry about what you lack. Imbibing these principles will push you towards the goals you want to achieve. The program aims at reducing negativity that will pull you down.

Negative thoughts greatly influence all your actions, so when you tune your mind to performing tasks in a totally different way, your life also changes significantly. Your outlook changes entirely, and you look for other means to get over hardships. It teaches you to plan to be a unique person with changes that others cannot quickly achieve. You will need to list out what your accomplishments should be and plan accordingly. You would have learned to be productive with your time and effort. As a bonus to your order, there are some audio programs for self-improvement, which include: Million Dollar Mind The Success Advantage Credit Score Secrets Personal Reflections Guide Being a Winner Subliminal Music Achieve Peak Performance Subliminal Music Reach Your Goals Subliminal Music Pros Rapid results yielding increased income, success in business, and better relationships Program is straightforward to understand without any boredom or confusion. You do not have to learn multiple things at the same time. Developed by a successful entrepreneur Positive thoughts start developing to overcome tougher situations 60-day money-back guarantee Well organized information Though the secrets are not new, the information provided by Winter Vee is new. The content is well explained with targeted examples. It helps in achieving a powerful mindset like that of a winner. Cons Some feel that the program is a tad expensive. Available only in digital format Success does not come as quickly as people want it to Final verdict The program helps you gain complete power of your life with the secrets used by the three wise rulers. Not only do you get access to secrets of success but also detailed instructions on using them to change your life into one of your dreams. This program is quite simple and effective, and so if you are one of those who want growth and prosperity in life, this product will be worth the amount you pay. You are assured of the safety of your money as the program comes with a 60-day money-back guarantee. This is as good a personal development program as any. Like with all such programs, you are only as successful as well as you are able to implement it in your life. Changing your way of thinking is not easy, but if you decide to work with this program, I'm sure you will be satisfied!

Thank you for posting a review on the book Evolution & Revolution Chinese Dress 1700s - 1990s. It’s so disappointing how the book potentially could’ve been good. What are your favorite books on Chinese fashion history?

Hi, great that you found the review useful! To be completely honest, I haven't really read any books on Chinese fashion before I started this blog, because I mostly used online resources like museums' websites, archaeology reports and other blogs. I actually started this blog in the hopes that people might recommend me some books😅 And I only ever read about the Ming, Qing and republican era so my knowledge is very limited.

Anyway, here are some books people recommended to me that I found great, some that I'm currently reading and some I know to be objectively good:

Ming Dynasty

Q版大明衣冠图志 (2011) 董进著

A classic made by the popular fashion history blogger 撷芳主人 (real name Dong Jin), this book is the ultimate compilation of Ming Dynasty looks illustrated by the most adorable drawings. It has basically everything you need to know about Ming Dynasty garments from informal civilian fashion and theater costumes to the most formal court dress and military uniforms. My only quibble with this book is that it doesn’t specify the decade/year each look is from, giving the false impression that everything could be worn throughout the Ming Dynasty (I heard that he did specify some eras in the new version? I don’t have it so I’m not sure). You can follow the author on Weibo where he regularly posts stuff about the Ming Dynasty, or check out other books and articles written by him. Even if you don’t have the book, you could probably find images of individual entries on the internet. Unfortunately all of it is in Chinese and no English version is available :(

华夏衣冠 中国古代服饰文化 (2016) 孙机著

More of a collection of essays Sun Ji wrote on historical Chinese clothing from a variety of eras, I got it for the chapters on Ming Dynasty xiapei 霞帔 and headwear. Professional, academic language that is still easy to read, plenty of references and neatly traced line drawings of artifacts. Useful diagrams on the structure of 狄髻 diji. However if I remember correctly, Sun had some beef with Dong Jin on the terminology of parts of diji, not sure if that was ever resolved; here’s an article about that. Also only in Chinese (that I know of).

Qing Dynasty

Chinese Reverse Glass Painting 1720-1820 (2020) by Thierry Audric

This is the book form transcript of a dissertation given by the author in 2016. It's more Chinese painting than Chinese fashion but has a lot of wonderful images of 18th century export paintings (with dates even), which depicted fashion realistically. I love 18th century export art in general, they're really beautiful and unusual so I would recommend everybody to check them out. I love this because Chinese oil painting outside of a court context (and all other forms of art that were not literati painting e.g. woodblock print, lithograph, pen and ink illustration) gets very little attention from Chinese art historians. This book could be downloaded for free in pdf form the publisher Peter Lang.

A Fashionable Century: Textile Artistry and Commerce in the Late Qing (2020) by Rachel Silberstein

This book focuses on the 19th century and has some interesting insights on the impact of commercial workshops on Qing fashion, which is a welcome break from the “dragon robes” and women’s domestic work stereotyped in most literature on the Qing. It has rich descriptions of the decoration patterns and fabrics used in the 19th century, accompanied by paintings and photographs. It did kind of fall into the trap of “the late Ming continued into the early Qing” and just dismissed the 18th century altogether, which is a shame. Silberstein’s dating of several prints also appears somewhat incorrect, but it’s still a very useful analysis of the 19th century nonetheless. I read this for free on JSTOR through my university login.

Cinderella’s Sisters: A Revisionist History of Footbinding (2005) by Dorothy Ko

This book is absolutely epic and an undeniable classic on the subject. Ko masterfully avoids all the surface level problematic takes on footbinding and offers an extremely nuanced, extremely well researched overview on the history of footbinding in the Ming, Qing and republican eras, the reasons for its popularity and demise, with a most interesting analysis of the problems with the way people in the republican era went about the abolition of it. The book is more heavy on the social analysis side but also contains a lot of factual description of the process of footbinding, styles popular in different eras etc. I just love how she approaches the topic in the most factual and non-emotionally charged way possible, which is refreshing considering the sheer volume of literature on footbinding that is just brainless condemnation without any nuance, a lot of which also unconsciously perpetuate misogynistic ideas rather than combat them. I don’t know of a way to read this for free, I bought it from Amazon.

Every Step a Lotus (2001) by Dorothy Ko

I haven’t read this yet but apparently it works well as a supplement to Cinderella’s Sisters. Also on footbinding.

China Trade Painting 1750s to 1880s (2014) by Jack S C Lee / 中国外销画 1750s - 1880s 李世庄著

Another book on export art, focusing more on the established painters. Lee digs a bit more into the painters’ experiences and biographies, with big portions on George Chinnery and Lam Qua, but also includes plenty of portraits and scenery paintings depicting men’s clothing and the architecture of the studios at the Guangzhou factories (十三行). It’s great because the paintings included were super realistic and well made with accurate proportions and anatomy----the quality on a par with those produced by the European academies----so they contemplate conventional Chinese portraits made in the same era in showing how the clothing fits on the body. Again I bought this book second hand from Amazon.

----

I don’t know of any reliable books for republican era fashion because for some reasons most discourse on it is centered around the glorification and mystification of the cheongsam... Fortunately, due to the abundance of extant originals and photographs, books are largely not necessary for the research of republican era fashion :3

There are some other books and articles that were recommended to me but I haven’t yet read: x, x

@fouryearsofshades also made a post recently recommending books and it covers other time periods as well.

If anyone knows any other books on the Ming, Qing or republican era please tell me regardless of good or bad. I need to read more😅

I know different interpretations of a work are generally enriching and cool... but c!dream villan interpretations is like how to tell me you only watch Tommy without saying you only watch tommy.... which would be fine but its not a great place to be making statements about the whole nature of the dsmp lol

Wild speculation, but sometimes I wonder if like, because the dsmp didn't really start as a narrative, and a lot of fans don't nessecarily enter it expecting a narrative, but then there is one and the fandom is really discourse heavy and everyone is sort of excpeted to have an opinion while maybe not expecting to form one from the begining or not having a ton of experience with narrative in a way that would "expect" them to have an opinion or not take things at face value??, I don't know if I explained that well at all... and I don't really even think thats right nessecarily... but like wow sometimes some of the takes about power and government and villany...

Honestly, it makes sense!!!

I think something interesting is like.... looking at how animatics have shaped the like tone and culture of the fandom essentially. Like, an interesting fact that I didn't really fully grasp until SUPER recently is like...

c!Wilbur out the gate admits he is manipulating c!Tommy. Like his first youtube video on the Dream SMP he admits his goal is to manipulate c!Tommy and people like c!Tommy into helping him achieve a potion ("drug") empire to monopolize on potions because there were a lot of people on the server who like to min-max, which is to put all of your effort into this one specific skill essentially. so like... i know minecraft doesnt have a skill tree but if it did, it would be putting all your points into that one specific branch of a skill tree. So he wanted to exploit the labor of all the TommyInnits to.... maintain a Potion Empire.

THIS IS A LONG POST BC I GOT CARRIED AWAY SO BUCKLE UP

And I don't think a lot of the fandom who joined later on knows this. I certainly didn't until like a week or so ago? Like... I knew c!Wilbur had been manipulative from the start because I'm a mod of (shameless self promo incoming) @dsmpanalysis and we have a lot of different POVs in that mod team and discord and we talk about it really frequently. I joined the fandom as someone who was really big on L'manburg ESPECIALLY crimeboys, and have turned into.... *gestures vaguely to my blog*

And ngl I owe a lot of it to @1-michibiki-1 in terms of c!Dream "Apologism" but all of the mods there have expanded my thoughts and views on the storylines of this narrative.

My application consisted of like largely essays about like... how I think Dream was the villain but he was meant to be the villain because you don't get any insight into his character WHICH.... IS A FAIR ASSUMPTION AT FIRST GLANCE. People are easily villainized when you cannot get a glimpse into their thought process. It's easy to dwindle someone down into this flat character and starting out I knew Dream didn't stream the SMP on purpose.

And I personally came to the conclusion of "Oh! So Dream is supposed to be the villain." However as the story continued and I learned more about what Dream went through I began to realize that... it's more than likely a form of a red herring. My opinions on this were immediately solidified when I watched Ranboo's 2 MIL stream because both Ranboo AND Dream agree on enjoying red herrings.

There have been MANY times were Dream has said that c!Dream is a complex character and he's not a wholly evil guy and there have been times where the narrative has honestly just proved that.

Anyways, what's important though was that... I learned most of this from other people who were more focused on c!Dream rather than myself. Eventually I shifted from c!Tommy to c!Ranboo and c!Techno after c!Tommy betrayed c!Techno and I began to realize.... everything I learned before hopping in wasn't exactly what it seemed.

Part of this is because I'm older, I heavily identify with c!Techno's sense of loyalty and philosophies on government, but I especially identify with the anguish c!Techno voiced in... a lot of lore but especially the lore around Doomsday.

I'm not 16 anymore. I don't always feel wronged by adults, or older people in my case, whenever they absolutely have done something wrong by me, but I do feel wronged by my close friends. I also felt like c!Tommy's sense of loyalty didn't line up with mine after what felt like him constantly flip-flopping and refusing to understand c!Techno's morals on government didn't line up with his.

In short, it was easier to identify with Tommy in these animatics versus in the actual stream content because c!Tommy is played by a 16 year old. I'm not a teenager and my line of thinking doesn't entirely line up with people that age anymore. It's harder to place myself in the same shoes of someone's OC who is played closer to their actual age, because I'm not that age.

Regardless, I was still on the c!Dream is a villain train. I wasn't ever like... c!Dream is repulsive I hate him, but I was like omg hot villain lad go brrr.

Even when the first like... mellohi, panic room, Ranboo lore stream popped up I thought "Oh! c!Ranboo corruption arc?"

And I was excited because I really wanted this shy, nervous character to turn into villain buddies with his good pal c!Dream. I'm a total sucker for villains and corruption arcs and all that good shit.

SO I STARTED GETTING REALLY INTERESTED IN ENDERSMILE. I'VE BEEN ON ENDERSMILE SQUAD OUT THE GATE. NOT THE SAME WAY I AM NOW, BUT I'VE ALWAYS WANTED THEM TO TEAM UP.

So... upon not really keeping up with c!Dream and being relatively??? indifferent? I don't think I started arguments on c!Dream back then, but I might have. But I remember like... starting to participate more whenever c!Dream came up and looking more into Dream's character BUT ESPECIALLY TALKING WITH OUR SERVER'S C!DREAM SPECIALIST MICHI ABOUT DREAM A LOT MORE.

And because Michi has been a watcher since day one and was a DTeam fan rather than a SBI fan, she was able to provide me with more information on how the server worked pre-Tommy but especially pre-Wilbur.

Now, you could definitely argue well Michi probably has clear bias but it made sense to me when I looked back on how the storyline had been constructed and was going along, and everyone in the server talks a lot about our own biases and how we want people to maybe not lean so hard on them. Michi would also provide like anecdotes on what had happened and I'm sure links were probably provided at one point but the point was I felt like Michi had no reason to lie or manipulate how the story was told and if she did, eventually someone would have pointed it out because... Group of like... right now it's around 20 or more analysts but I don't remember how many at the time there were. POINT BEING, WE'VE ALL GOT POINTS TO PROVE AND IN MY EXPERIENCE NOT MANY OF US HAVE BEEN SHY TO PROVE THEM.

So if anyone ever had any differing opinions they would be talked about and we literally had and still have discussions.

REGARDLESS.... I DIDN'T FACT CHECK IN DEPTH BECAUSE I THOUGHT PEER REVIEW WAS ENOUGH WHEN YOU HAVE LIKE HOURS UPON HOURS OF STREAMS TO WATCH.

Anyways. Eventually I started paying closer attention and looking more into c!Dream lore but only recently have I started to triple check before speaking about c!Wilbur lore because I know everyone has biases and while I did trust everyone's thoughts and analysis in the discord, whenever I make essays I typically like it to be largely air tight and if theres a mistake, I want it to be because I forgot not because I just trusted what was said. Plus, I wanted to get down to the specifics of how Wilbur had always started with manipulation on the mind.

SO I WATCHED HIS FIRST VIDEO ON THE DREAM SMP.

AND WHAT I WAS NOT BY ANY MEANS EXPECTING WAS WILBUR TO SAY WORD FOR WORD, VERBATIM,

"SO WHY DON'T I START AN INDUSTRY WHERE I USE THE TOMMYINNITS OF THE WORLD TO WORK FOR ME, TO CREATE THINGS THAT THE MIN-MAXERS OF THE WORLD WILL WANT."

Like... this is in no way an attempt to like hardcore villainize c!Wilbur like everyone does Dream, it's just more so to like REALLY outline how far off a lot of fandom interpretation of c!Wilbur is....

Because of SBI focused animatics.

Now, when I joined I watched A LOT of animatics that really highlighted like... Wilbur being this self-loathing JD-esque, "I destroyed it because I had to because the world was against me because no one loved us, Tommy" type of character. At least... that's what it came across as.

And it definitely highlighted the fact that Tommy was a victim, which he is. He is undoubtedly a victim and no not even any dream apologist can change my mind otherwise. Tommy, despite being an instigator sometimes, didn't deserve the abuse he received.

But these animatics never shown the fact that c!Wilbur started L'manburg as a shady ploy to exploit people like c!Tommy and vilify c!Dream so he could have power.

And that was easy because Dream and Tommy had wars before. They had spars and pranks and here's the plan to take back my disks and here's the plan to out smart the thieving little child etc etc.

And all of the animatics I watched never mentioned this. Neither did the recaps though. The recaps gave the events flat out, there didn't sound like there was bias, and honestly I don't really know if there was rather than like... a lack of nuance. And it's hard to provide a recap with that much nuance in a short period of time for a youtube video, to be perfectly fair.

However, this creates a perfect formula for entirely rewriting the history of a server. c!Wilbur quite literally fucking succeeded TO A META LEVEL. He slandered and ran smear campaigns against Dream and like he even does that with Sapnap in the beginning. But what's crazy is that it transferred over into the meta! Most of this fandom understands Wilbur as a victim of mental illness, and yeah maybe? He definitely wasn't mentally well by the end of pogtopia, but he never started out with honorable intentions. L'manburg was never a victim, only its citizens. The TommyInnits of the world.

I just think it's like... such an interesting case study. Because this is like... an opinion like shared by at least half of the fandom, but the vilifying of c!Dream is shared by MOST of the fandom I would argue. Which is like even more crazy for me because that was c!Wilbur's goal!!!

LIKE I GO INSANE WHEN I THINK OF THIS BECAUSE HIS REACH IS JUST TOO POWERFUL. HE'S NOT EVEN ENTIRELY REAL, JUST A MANIPULATIVE PERSONA OF SOME BRITISH GUY.

And I mean... maybe people who have watched Wilbur's video on the SMP still maintain this idea that Wilbur wasn't always the bad guy, but honestly... I wouldn't be surprised if their introduction was still an animatic. Like bias is hard to check and I'm not going to lie I could have sworn I watched both Wilbur's AND Tommy's video on the SMP in the beginning and yet I STILL was a ride or die for tragic yet on some level still honorable Wilbur and a resilient Tommy.

Like... upon watching Wilbur's first video... possibly again I was surprised because I thought I did watch it like right before I even started watching the streams and yet I was still so invested in c!Wilbur as this tortured anti-hero.

It took 6 months of... not being in an echo chamber, full of multiple different people of different ages, different stream POVS, and people who joined the fandom at different points in time.

IDK IF THIS WAS EVEN ENTIRELY RELEVANT IT JUST FELT TANGENTIALLY RELEVANT AND THIS WAS SOMETHING I'VE BEEN THINKING ABOUT FOR A HOT MINUTE AFTER LIKE WATCHING WILBUR'S FIRST VIDEO AGAIN.

TLDR;

SBI CENTRIC ANIMATICS HAD A LASTING AFFECT ON THIS FANDOM AS IT'S HARD TO GO BACK AND ACTUALLY CHECK THE NARRATIVE FOR SOLID FACTS FOR YOUR OWN INTERPRETATION BASED ON THE FACT THAT THIS NARRATIVE SPANS OVER HUNDREDS OF HOURS WORTH OF TWITCH STREAMS.

Recommendation engines and "lean-back" media

In William Gibson’s 1992 novel “Idoru,” a media executive describes her company’s core audience:

“Best visualized as a vicious, lazy, profoundly ignorant, perpetually hungry organism craving the warm god-flesh of the anointed. Personally I like to imagine something the size of a baby hippo, the color of a week-old boiled potato, that lives by itself, in the dark, in a double-wide on the outskirts of Topeka. It’s covered with eyes and it sweats constantly. The sweat runs into those eyes and makes them sting. It has no mouth…no genitals, and can only express its mute extremes of murderous rage and infantile desire by changing the channels on a universal remote. Or by voting in presidential elections.”

It’s an astonishingly great passage, not just for the image it evokes, but for how it captures the character of the speaker and her contempt for the people who made her fortune.

It’s also a beautiful distillation of the 1990s anxiety about TV’s role in a societal “dumbing down,” that had brewed for a long time, at least since the Nixon-JFK televised debates, whose outcome was widely attributed not to JFK’s ideas, but to Nixon’s terrible TV manner.

Neil Postman’s 1985 “Amusing Ourselves To Death” was a watershed here, comparing the soundbitey Reagan-Dukakis debates with the long, rhetorically complex Lincoln-Douglas debates of the previous century.

(Incidentally, when I finally experienced those debates for myself, courtesy of the 2009 BBC America audiobook, I was more surprised by Lincoln’s unequivocal, forceful repudiations of slavery abolition than by the rhetoric’s nuance)

https://memex.craphound.com/2009/01/20/lincoln-douglas-debate-audiobook-civics-history-and-rhetoric-lesson-in-16-hours/

“Media literacy” scholarship entered the spotlight, and its left flank — epitomized by Chomsky’s 1988 “Manufacturing Consent” — claimed that an increasingly oligarchic media industry was steering society, rather than reflecting it.

Thus, when the internet was demilitarized and the general public started trickling — and then rushing — to use it, there was a widespread hope that we might break free of the tyranny of concentrated, linear programming (in the sense of “what’s on,” and “what it does to you”).

Much of the excitement over Napster wasn’t about getting music for free — it was about the mix-tapification of all music, where your custom playlists would replace the linear album.

Likewise Tivo, whose ad-skipping was ultimately less important than the ability to watch the shows you liked, rather than the shows that were on.

Blogging, too: the promise was that a community of reader-writers could assemble a daily “newsfeed” that reflected their idiosyncratic interests across a variety of sources, surfacing ideas from other places and even other times.

The heady feeling of the time is hard to recall, honestly, but there was a thrill to getting up and reading the news that you chose, listening to a playlist you created, then watching a show you picked.

And while there were those who fretted about the “Daily Me” (what we later came to call the “filter bubble”) the truth was that this kind of active media creation/consumption ranged far more widely than the monopolistic media did.

The real “bubble” wasn’t choosing your own programming — it was everyone turning on their TV on Thursday nights to Friends, Seinfeld and The Simpsons.

The optimism of the era is best summarized in a taxonomy that grouped media into two categories: “lean back” (turn it on and passively consume it) and “lean forward” (steer your media consumption with a series of conscious decisions that explores a vast landscape).

Lean-forward media was intensely sociable: not just because of the distributed conversation that consisted of blog-reblog-reply, but also thanks to user reviews and fannish message-board analysis and recommendations.

I remember the thrill of being in a hotel room years after I’d left my hometown, using Napster to grab rare live recordings of a band I’d grown up seeing in clubs, and striking up a chat with the node’s proprietor that ranged fondly and widely over the shows we’d both seen.

But that sociability was markedly different from the “social” in social media. From the earliest days of Myspace and Facebook, it was clear that this was a sea-change, though it was hard to say exactly what was changing and how.

Around the time Rupert Murdoch bought Myspace, a close friend a blazing argument with a TV executive who insisted that the internet was just a passing fad: that the day would come when all these online kids grew up, got beaten down by work and just wanted to lean back.

To collapse on the sofa and consume media that someone else had programmed for them, anaesthetizing themselves with passive media that didn’t make them think too hard.

This guy was obviously wrong — the internet didn’t disappear — but he was also right about the resurgence of passive, linear media.

But this passive media wasn’t the “must-see TV” of the 80s and 90s.

Rather, it was the passivity of the recommendation algorithm, which created a per-user linear media feed, coupled with mechanisms like “endless scroll” and “autoplay,” that incinerated any trace of an active role for the “consumer” (a very apt term here).

It took me a long time to figure out exactly what I disliked about algorithmic recommendation/autoplay, but I knew I hated it. The reason my 2008 novel LITTLE BROTHER doesn’t have any social media? Wishful thinking. I was hoping it would all die in a fire.

Today, active media is viewed with suspicion, considered synonymous with Qanon-addled boomers who flee Facebook for Parler so they can stan their favorite insurrectionists in peace, freed from the tyranny of the dread shadowban.

But I’m still on team active media. I would rather people actively choose their media diets, in a truly sociable mode of consumption and production, than leaning back and getting fed whatever is served up by the feed.

Today on Wired, Duke public policy scholar Philip M Napoli writes about lean forward and lean back in the context of Trump’s catastrophic failure to launch an independent blog, “From the Desk of Donald J Trump.”

https://www.wired.com/story/opinion-trumps-failed-blog-proves-he-was-just-howling-into-the-void/

In a nutshell, Trump started a blog which he grandiosely characterized as a replacement for the social media monopolists who’d kicked him off their platforms. Within a month, he shut it down.

While Trump claimed the shut-down was all part of the plan, it’s painfully obvious that the real reason was that no one was visiting his website.

Now, there are many possible, non-exclusive explanations for this.

For starters, it was a very bad social media website. It lacked even rudimentary social tools. The Washington Post called it “a primitive one-way loudspeaker,” noting its lack of per-post comments, a decades old commonplace.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2021/05/21/trump-online-traffic-plunge/

Trump paid (or more likely, stiffed) a grifter crony to build the site for him, and it shows: the “Like” buttons didn’t do anything, the video-sharing buttons created links to nowhere, etc. From the Desk… was cursed at birth.

But Napoli’s argument is that even if Trump had built a good blog, it would have failed. Trump has a highly motivated cult of tens of millions of people — people who deliberately risked death to follow him, some even ingesting fish-tank cleaner and bleach at his urging.

The fact that these cult-members were willing to risk their lives, but not endure poor web design, says a lot about the nature of the Trump cult, and its relationship to passive media.

The Trump cult is a “push media” cult, simultaneously completely committed to Trump but unwilling to do much to follow him.

That’s the common thread between Fox News (and its successors like OANN) and MAGA Facebook.

And it echoes the despairing testimony of the children of Fox cultists, that their boomer parents consume endless linear TV, turning on Fox from the moment they arise and leaving it on until they fall asleep in front of it (also, reportedly, how Trump spent his presidency).

Napoli says that Trump’s success on monopoly social media platforms and his failure as a blogger reveals the role that algorithmically derived, per-user, endless scroll linear media played in the ascendancy of his views.

It makes me think of that TV exec and his prediction of the internet’s imminent disappearance (which, come to think of it, is not so far off from my own wishful thinking about social media’s disappearance in Little Brother).

He was absolutely right that this century has left so many of us exhausted, wanting nothing more than the numbness of lean-back, linear feeds.

But up against that is another phenomenon: the resurgence of active political movements.

After a 12-month period that saw widescale civil unrest, from last summer’s BLM uprising to the bizarre storming of the capital, you can’t really call this the golden age of passivity.

While Fox and OANN consumption might be the passive daily round of one of Idoru’s “vicious, lazy, profoundly ignorant, perpetually hungry organisms craving the warm god-flesh of the anointed,” that is in no way true of Qanon.

Qanon is an active pastime, a form of collaborative storytelling with all the mechanics of the Alternate Reality Games that the lean-forward media advocates who came out of the blogging era love so fiercely:

https://pluralistic.net/2020/08/06/no-vitiated-air/#other-hon

Meanwhile, the “clicktivism” that progressive cynics decried as useless performance a decade ago has become an active contact sport, welding together global movements from Occupy to BLM that use the digital to organize the highly physical.

That’s the paradox of lean-forward and lean-back: sometimes, the things you learn while leaning back make you lean forward — in fact, they might just get you off the couch altogether.

I think that Napoli is onto something. The fact that Trump’s cultists didn’t follow him to his crummy blog tells us that Trump was an effect, not a cause (something many of us suspected all along, as he’s clearly neither bright nor competent enough to inspire a movement).

But the fact that “cyberspace keeps everting” (to paraphrase “Spook Country,” another William Gibson novel) tells us that passive media consumption isn’t a guarantee of passivity in the rest of your life (and sometimes, it’s a guarantee of the opposite).

And it clarifies the role that social media plays in our discourse — not so much a “radicalizer” as a means to corral likeminded people together without them having to do much. Within those groups are those who are poised for action, or who can be moved to it.

The ease with which these people find one another doesn’t produce a deterministic outcome. Sometimes, the feed satisfies your urge for change (“clicktivism”). Sometimes, it fuels it (“radicalizing”).

Notwithstanding smug media execs, the digital realm equips us to “express our mute extremes of murderous rage and infantile desire” by doing much more than “changing the channels on a universal remote” — for better and for worse.

Image: Ian Burt (modified) https://www.flickr.com/photos/oddsock/267206444

CC BY: https://creativecommo

ns.org/licenses/by/2.0/

The Girl Who Gets to Have It All: Buffy Summers

So with @linkspooky​‘s encouragement, I have binged Buffy the Vampire Slayer and relived my childhood culture. And, it's a 10/10 for me. Not that it doesn't have flaws, but it's genuinely one of the best stories I've seen, with consistent character arcs, powerful themes, and a beautiful message. It's also like... purportedly about vampires and demons and superpowered chosen ones, but it's actually all about humanity.

Buffy was able to be a teenage girl, allowed to like the things teen girls are scorned for (boys, shopping, etc), to be insecure about the thing teenage girls are insecure about (future careers, dating, school, parents), and to be a superhero with its good and its bad aspects. The story wasn’t afraid to call Buffy on her flaws (sometimes she got in a very ‘I am the righteous chosen one’ mode) and to respect and honor each of her desires (to be a good person, to be loved, and more). The story listened to what she wanted and respected her desires, giving her the challenges needed to overcome her flaws while also never teaching her a lesson about wanting bad boys or romance is silly or any manner of dark warnings stories like to throw at teenage girls. 

It respected teenage girls--nerdy girls like Willow, jocks like Buffy, lonely wallflowers with trauma like Dawn, and popular/snobby ones like Cordelia, girls gone wild like Faith. It never once reduced them to the stereotypes that were lurking right there: each character was fully rounded, human, flawed and yet with respected interests and goals. This is so rare for a story that I’m still in awe. 

The story as a whole follows Buffy from 15 to 21, of her as she grows from teenager to adult. She acts like a teenager and grows to act like a young adult, wrestling with loneliness and duty. The adults, like Giles, Joyce, and Jenny, are not perfect either, but neither are they “bad parents” or “bad mentors” necessarily. Joyce in particular says something terrible to Buffy, but she tries to do better, and it’s rare to see a parent in YA stories shown with such nuance. Basically, it wrote the long-lasting adult characters as human beings, too. 

Speaking of growing up, I appreciated how Buffy’s love interests mirrored this. Angel was someone Buffy loved and admired, wanted to be like, but who was always either extreme good or extreme bad, and combined with Buffy’s own tendencies towards black-white thinking, made for a beautiful relationship to help her grow, but didn’t necessarily form a foundation for a long-term partner. Spike, on the other hand... they both saw each other at their worst and were drawn to each other even then, and were inspired to become better because they couldn’t bear to be a person who treated the other person so wrongly. They pushed each other to become the best them they could be, and believed in each other. Also, Spuffy is an enemies to lovers ship for the ages. 

(Also, most of the other ships were well-done or at least can be understood. Riley was very obviously wrong for Buffy which paralleled Harmony and Spike in being 100% wrong for each other. Cordelia and Xander were a fun ship even if we all knew it would never last, and Willow and Oz were beautiful and cute. But Xander and Anya and Willow and Tara? OTPs. As were Giles and Jenny, the librarian and the computer teacher.) 

That said, it’s not a perfect series. No story is. All of the characters and ships had problematic aspects to them worthy of critique, and the writing is very 90s in a lot of ways. It’s a product of its time, and in many ways it’s good society has progressed beyond some of the tropes/metaphors used in the show. In other way, though, the show was ahead of its time, and in a good way it wasn’t bound by the fear of purity policing with its takes on redemption (many characters would never fly today). 

So, in order of seasons ranked from my very favorite to my “still enjoyed it very much” (no season was actually bad, imo), here’s my review. I’ll also review my top 10 villains in the show, because Buffy does villains very well in terms of the redeemable and irredeemable.  

Season 7:  Yep, the final season was my favorite. 

Overall Opinion: Buffy's finale is literally "f*ck them men, our power is ours" and while it seems cheesy it actually works (also, f*ck in both a literal and figurative sense). The series strongly hit all the themes: love as strength, and redemption. Buffy consistently shows love as her strength--*all* kinds of love. Friendship w Willow/Xander, familial with Joyce/Dawn, romantic with Spike/Angel. These types of love are also never pitted against each other as is so often the case in current-day media. It's beautiful. Also, Spike’s confrontation with Wood was so powerful in terms of exploring forgiveness, redemption, and reconciliation: where they overlap and where they don't, and what it means to move forward. 

Unpopular Opinion: I have seen a lot didn’t like the inclusion of Potential Slayers, and while I agree they could have been better incorporated/characterized, it was a great way to show Buffy’s final stage of growing up to be ending her chosen one status and projecting/multiplying her powers over the world. 

Biggest Critique: Kennedy was female Riley--the anti-Tara to Riley’s anti-Angel (by ‘anti’ I mean opposite in every way). Kennedy was annoying and immature. Her role, like Riley’s, was less about exploring her as a character and more about her just being stamped as “love interest: lesbian.” 

Favorite Episodes: Beneath You, Lies My Parents Told Me, Touched, Chosen

Season 6: 

Overall Opinion: I said this on Twitter, but I felt like this was Buffy’s The Last Jedi or Empire Strikes Back moment. It is polarizing and dark, deconstructing the tropes it stands on--but by digging to the core of these tropes, it actually makes what’s good about them shine brighter. Everyone’s enemy was the worst versions of themselves. Giles left Buffy, Willow's struggle to relate to the world led to her trying to destroy it, Buffy hurt everyone through her anger, Xander abandoned Anya at the altar, Spike... yeah. It ages well as an integral part of the story, and the Trio were eerily prophetic. 

Unpopular Opinion: Dawn is a great character with a good arc. A traumatized teen acting out and struggling to come to terms with loss and identity? She wasn’t whiny; she was realistic. 

Biggest Critique: Willow’s addiction coding (I’ll discuss this below) and Seeing Red as an episode. I see the argument for both of its controversial scenes from a narrative perspective: Willow starts the season not grieving Buffy but instead being determined to fix it with magic and needs to learn to grieve, but. Still. Bury your gays is not a good look. For the Spike scene... he conflates sex/passion and violence (”love is blood, children” is something he said way back in season 3), but like Tara’s death, it had more to do with Spike (as Tara’s death did for Willow) than with Buffy’s arc, and as for the actual execution... they really botched that. Did it like... have to go on that long or go that far? No. Also, the framing was good, but inconsistent with the rest of the series (Xander to Buffy in the hyena episode, Faith to Xander and to Riley, etc.) 

Favorite Episodes: Once More With Feeling, Smashed, Grave

Season 3 (tied with Season 5):

Overall Opinion: The opening continuity of Buffy meeting Lily/Anne after saving her life in Season 2 was sweet. The Witchhunt episode had really powerful subtext: stories of deaths that aren’t even true are actually demons that possess the town and convince them to turn against their children in the name of protecting the children. It’s a good commentary on, oh, everything in society. Faith’s character arc was fantastic, and her chemistry with Buffy was off the charts (look, I may be Spuffy all the way, but Fuffy has rights). The finale was satisfying in so many ways, seeing the entire graduating class unite to destroy the Mayor and the school with it, symbolizing Buffy et al’s readiness to move on to college. Oz's relationship with Willow was very sweet and meaningful for a first romance for Willow. 

Unpopular Opinion: I actually don’t really have one. Maybe that the miracle in Amends was earned? I think you can make a decent case that Season 3 is the best written of the seasons, but can only truly be thematically appreciated to its full potential in the light of subsequent seasons (which finish Faith’s arc and deconstruct Buffy’s).  

Biggest Critique: It forgot Buffy killed the hyena guy in Season 1, making her continual insistence that she can’t kill people very ????? 

Favorite Episodes: Lovers Walk, Amends, Graduation Day Part 2 

Season 5, which ties with Season 3:

Overall Opinion: The entire season is about family and what it means, from Tara’s to Buffy’s to the Scoobies. I loved Glory aka Enoshima Junko as the Big Bad, I loved Dawn’s interesting meta commentary on retconning (like, the fact that she’s retconned in matters), and most of my ships are still alive. Joyce’s relationship with Spike is one of the most heartwarming aspects, and Spike’s arc’s desire is clearly highlighted: he wants to be seen as a person. The episodes after Joyce’s death are the most honest portrayals of grief I’ve ever seen, and absolutely brutal to watch. 

Unpopular Opinion: Buffy’s choice at the end seems a deliberate inversion of her choice at the end of Season 2 (sacrifice a loved one to save the world), but it actually isn’t: much like at the end of Season 2 where Buffy skips town because she’s devastated after killing Angel and doesn’t want to sort out being expelled, her mom knowing she’s the slayer, and her own trauma, Buffy’s sacrifice here was as much about her wanting the easy way out of relationships, family, college, etc. as it was about saving Dawn. Buffy’s death is coded as a suicide, which Season 6 emphasizes as well. 

Biggest Critique: Like Season 3, I don’t have a lot to critique here. I wish the suicidal coding had been a little more obvious in Season 5 itself, but also I’m not sure it could have been more obvious; it’s pretty apparent if you pay attention. Maybe also that Buffy and Riley’s relationship failing should have been more squarely blamed on Riley, you know, being insecure and cheating. 

Favorite Episodes: Family, Fool for Love, Intervention. 

Season 2:

Overall Opinion: Heartbreakingly tragic but exciting and revealing at the same time. It asked the viewer interesting questions about redemption and forgiveness and atonement through Angel being honest about his past, and then decided to show us his past now reenacted, challenging us. And still, we saw them save him in a parallel to saving Willow in Season 6 (but Season 2 was tragic because it wasn’t enough, while Season 6 was not). Jenny’s death was agonizing, and the scene were Angel watches Buffy, Willow, and Joyce get the news through the window was powerful. We didn’t have to hear them to get the grief. 

Unpopular Opinion: Jenny’s death isn’t a fridging; it works for her arc too when you consider her history. She worked to save the person whose life she was tasked to ruin, and it cost her her own--yet she still succeeded, because Jenny brought joy and wisdom to the show. Kendra’s death, on the other hand... was because they needed the stakes to be high--but we already knew that before she died. So, her death was useless. 

Biggest Critique: The subtext was Not It. It was essentially “do not have sex. Your older boyfriend will lose his soul, kill your friends, you’ll lose your family, your school, your home, and have to kill your true love or else hell will literally swallow earth.” 

Favorite Episodes: School Hard, Passion, Becoming Part 2.

Season 1:

Overall Opinion: I really liked it; it’s just lower on this list because the others are just better. It’s a great introduction to the series and to its characters, from Giles to Buffy to Willow to Jenny to Cordelia. It has great subtext a lot of the time (for example, Natalie French as She-Mantis is a literal predatory bug who engages in predatory behavior with students). Additionally, it subverts the typical YA trope of two guys and a girl, in which the girl is usually the least interesting character. Buffy and Willow were both fully fledged characters from the beginning with distinct strengths (even before Willow became a witch, as she wasn’t one in season 1 yet), while Xander was the more ordinary of the group. 

Unpopular Opinion/Biggest Critique: Xander’s arc showed its first flaws that unfortunately continued throughout the series: his writing was either very good or very indulgent in ways it never was for other characters.  (cough, the hyena episode, cough, in which he gets to skirt responsibility--and acknowledges that he is skirting it--for something the show will later hold others to account for). Xander’s just kind of inconsistent, which weakened his character over all. (Which is why both his love interests--Cordelia and then ultimately Anya--were good for him: they did not indulge him.) 

Favorite Episode: Witch, Nightmares. 

Season 4:

Overall Opinion: it’s still a good season. It’s a good portrayal of college and the growing pains of branching out, the strains of college growth on relationships (romantic and platonic). It shows us the first hints of Spuffy, giving us some serious Jungian symbolism between Spike and Buffy early on, and does well in establishing Xander/Anya and Willow/Tara as beautiful OTPs. Faith and Buffy’s foiling is fantastic. The Halloween episode was very fun as well. However, it suffers because its Big Bad, Adam, is not all that compelling thematically--yet, he could have been. See, the final battle pulls off the Power of Friendship in a really strong way but notably the season does not end there. Instead, it ends on dreams of each character’s worst fears, continuing what we saw in Nightmares in Season 1. Why? Because it shows us that the characters’ wars aren’t against monsters, but monsters of their own making: their flaws. Adam, as a literal Frankenstein, exemplifies this, but it wasn’t capitalized on as well as it could have been. 

Unpopular Opinion: Beer Bad isn’t a bad episode, at the very least because Buffy gets to punch Parker. It’s not one of the series’ best, obviously, but it does give Buffy an arc in that she gets her daydream of Parker begging her to come back, but she has overcome that desire and her desire for revenge. If we wanna talk about bad subtext in Season 4, Season 2′s Not It sex subtext continues in the Where the Wild Things Are episode in this season; it’s a powerful callout of abusive purity-culture churches, until the fact that the shame creates a literal curse undermines the progressive message it’s supposed to send. Also, the Thanksgiving episode (Pangs) is a nightmare of white guilt and Oh God Shut Up White People. 

Biggest Critique: Riley is awful. Like Kennedy, he had “love interest:normal” stamped on him and that was it. The thing is, he could have worked as an Angel foil, representative of the normal-life aspect of Buffy to Angel’s vampire/supernatural aspect, but the writers never explore this and seemed to even try to back away from that later on. They threw all the romantic cliches at the wall to see what sticks, from klutzy “I dropped my schoolbooks, that’s how we met” to cliché lines that had me rolling my eyes. Do you know how bad a romance has to be to make me dislike romantic tropes? 

Favorite Episodes: Fear Itself, Hush, Restless

Villain rankings: 

Dark Willow, the only villain to be truly sympathetic. While the addiction coding was insensitive and, while unsurprising for its time, aged extremely poorly. That said, Willow’s turn to the dark side after Tara’s death worked well for her character and the story: it was believable and paid off what had been building since Season 1's “Nightmares” episode (Willow’s inferiority complex). 

Glory managed to be genuinely terrifying, and humorous/enjoyable too. Her minions and their numerous nicknames for Glorificus were hilarious, as was her intense vanity. Her merging with Ben--a human being who genuinely wanted to be kind and good--added complexity and tragedy to her role. 

The First. A really good take on Satan. The seventh season as well as the First’s first appearance in season 3′s “Amends” had kind of blatant Christian symbolism, and so the First being essentially Satan works. Their disguising themselves as dead loved ones and the subtle manipulation they used to alienate people was really disturbing and well done. 

The Mayor, who was a terrible person but a truly good father. He provided an interesting contrast to the normal ‘bad dad’ bad guy character, in that he provided Faith exactly what the other characters refused to: he saw the best in her and offered her parental support, while the heroes didn’t and wound up pushing her away. 

The Trio, who were villains ahead of their time: whiny fanboy reddit dudebros, basically. The stakes seemed so much lower than fighting Glory, a literal god, the previous season. But that’s why they worked so well for Season 6′s human themes, and were especially disturbing because we all know people like them. I also appreciated the surprisingly sensitive takes on Jonathan and Andrew, who got to redeem themselves, but Warren did not, and I don’t think he should have either. 

Angelus + Drusilla. I’m ranking them below the Trio because Angelus was just sooooo different from Angel that it was difficult for me to feel the same way for him. He was still Angel, so it wasn’t possible to enjoy his villainy, but he also wasn’t nearly as sympathetic as Dark Willow, had no redeeming qualities like the Mayor, and wasn’t as disturbingly realistic as the Trio. However, the emotional stakes were excellently executed with him as the Big Bad, in that you were never quite sure how to feel and it just plain hurt. Also, Drusilla was a favorite recurring character. She was sympathetic and yet batsh*t enough to be enjoyable as a villain at the same time. 

The Master, who was just completely camp and really worked as an introductory villain. He was scary enough to believe he was a threat, and was funny enough to introduce the series’ humor as well. He was, like Glory, an enjoyable Big Bad. 

The Gentlemen, the one-off villains of Season 4′s Hush who were genuinely terrifying. It’s not as if they got a lot of explanation or any backstory, but they didn’t need it. 

Caleb, the misogynist priest. Fitting with the First’s Christian symbolism, Caleb serving as a spokesperson of all bad religious beliefs felt appropriate. He was also a good foil to Warren--being actually supernaturally powered instead of a wannabe--and to Tara’s family in being full-out evil. I despised him. 

Snyder. Okay Snyder is not a Big Bad like Adam is, but let’s face it: Adam is lame compared to the other villains. But Snyder as a principal? He was so irritating and yet really well used in the series to critique overly strict, hypocritical teachers. Like, we all know teachers like him. I loved to hate him, and his ending was so satisfying. 

Gideon the Ninth Book Review

Gideon the Ninth Book Review by Tamsyn Muir 

It would be only a slight hyperbole to say that a million people have either recommended this book to me or have told me to read it. I’ve heard for years now that this book is incredible and extremely well written and beloved by many. So, if that’s the case why did I wait so long to read it?

I don’t have a good answer. Sometimes a book is on your radar, but either the time isn’t right, other books take priority, or in my case, it’s adult fiction and I held slight trepidation that I wouldn’t love it as much as everyone else in the world seemed to. 

Thank goodness, that didn’t end up being the case and I’ll get into why in a moment. 

First, Gideon the Ninth has the most amazing descriptive sentence belonging on any front cover of any book ever. 

I shall put it here for prosperity and awe: “Lesbian necromancers explore a haunted gothic palace in space!” -Charles Stross. 

Now, I don’t know who you are Mr. Stross, but that has to be the best sentence written in the English language since its conception. If that isn’t enough intrigue for you to crack open the novel then I truly don’t know what is or what it would take. 

That being said, Mr. Stross wasn’t entirely accurate, but that’ll be clear soon enough. 

The novel surrounds our main protagonist, Gideon Nav, or, known as Gideon the Ninth, the primary cavalier to the Ninth House necromancer. Essentially, this world takes place in a different solar system with its own sun star known as Dominicus as well as nine planets also known as the Nine Houses. 

Each House has a specific specialty for what is known for, and as summarized helpfully, but also overwhelmingly, at the beginning of the novel, the Ninth House is also known as the keepers of the Locked Tomb, House of the Sewn Tongue, and home to the Black Vestals. 

This meant nothing to me at the beginning and quite truthfully, I still struggled to remember throughout the novel who belonged to the Third House, or the Fifth and what that quite meant, as once again, each House has a reputation and expected skill set that precedes them. 

Not to say that it was poorly written because it wasn’t. Muir just has a lot of characters with specific titles and while she actually does quite a good job of categorizing them and helpfully reminding you who is who, I still struggled with just the sheer amount of information and people. 

Normally, this would be a massive criticism, like it was with the cast of characters in Lore but in this case it’s not Muir’s fault. She’s giving me all the information necessary to understand. It was just my brain that struggled trying to recognize and categorize everyone. If anything, I’m excited to re-read Gideon the Ninth and have it sink in like a second skin eventually. 

Having this large cast of characters, the book revolves around each of the Nine Houses (except for the First House) sending their best necromancer, a wielder of both thanergy (death energy) and thalergy (life energy) in the form of a House Adept, someone who is able to wield this kind of energy either in bone magic, flesh magic, or spirit magic. 

In accompaniment, each Necromancer Adept has a primary Cavalier, a trained fighter that is both protector, companion, and often, necessary energy suppliers to their Adept in both horrendous and acceptable ways. 

The goal of these pairs, having been sent to the First planet, is to become a Lyctor, an immortal servant to the Undying Emperor. The catch is that once the Necromancers and their Cavaliers arrive on the First, the shuttle departs and they are trapped in an abandoned, dilapidated, once-regal and great mansion that boasts hundreds of floors, secret doors, and mystery upon mystery. 

Each pair expects a streamlined process to Lyctorhood once they arrive, a methodical procedure, perhaps some training, and ultimately a test. What they don’t expect is a mellow man by the name of Teacher that claims to know nothing about the process himself, but is the overseer of the First. 

What follows is a mind-boggling search to become a Lyctor and unravel the mysteries of the haunted palace. What the pairs don’t expect is the death of their own, gruesome murders at the hand of someone in their very own positions and an evil danger beyond any of their imagination lurking in the mansion. 

This novel was a great concoction of mystery, action, interpersonal relationships, character growth, dazzling descriptions, and world building. 

The world of Dominicus and the Nine Houses is expansive and rich, something that I haven’t been able to sink my teeth into, and not for lack of trying, but because it is so deep and so layered that I simply need to take several bites to get it all down.

The mystery is fulfilling and strangely, to me at least, reminiscent of a game called Danganronpa. If you know what that is, and even if you don’t, it centers around the idea of a murder mystery, but where the killer is one of your own and the mystery is trying to figure out not ony the who, but the why of what they are doing, amongst a slew of other deadly riddles.

Gideon the Ninth is the same. As people continue to get picked off and brutally murdered, as a reader you find yourself trying to puzzle out not only who, but why someone would commit such atrocities and the motivation behind it. 

The plot itself of Gideon the Ninth was extremely satisfying and alluring. There were times where I personally found that novel bogged down with excessive description, but it was usually broken up with Gideon’s personal brand of crass humor, a very much needed breather with the expansive exposition, that, while extremely well done, well researched, and well written, did get a tad boring from time to time for me personally, even if it allowed for clear imagery as well as adding to already well formed world building. 

In addition to the plot, all of the characters were well done and as fleshed out as they could be considering the amount of characters involved. First, even though this is set in a fantasy sci-fi setting, each of the characters seemed realistic and like they could potentially be real people. 

A large criticism of books I often have, especially in YA, is that the characters often come across like caricatures, and not real flesh and blood humans with both positive and negative qualities. 

Each character, some developed more than others, have both flaws and strengths, even the main characters, which I highly appreciated. Not only does it make the story more real and palatable, but it also is just more interesting to read about as it’s actually based in humanity and the nature of human beings rather than some perfect carbon copy of one. 

Gideon as a narrator was hilarious. She was often crass, blunt, horny, humorous and ignorant. But on the other hand, she was also an extremely talented fighter, actually very sweet deep down, forgiving, and loving. 

This mix in a main character was a welcome one in addition to making Gideon feel like a real person, despite all the bone magic and necromancy, and often her thought process and dialogue made me laugh out loud. 

Another main character, Harrowhark Nonagesimus (What a name!) is Gideon’s Necromancer and main companion. She’s bitter, rude, spiteful, and ruthless. She’s also hardworking, intelligent, and stubborn. 

If you’re catching the pattern here, Muir isn’t just writing archetypes and passing them off as characters. She’s writing complex and nuanced personalities that are intriguing and interesting and well developed. 

I could get into the other plethora of characters like Camila, Dulcinea, Palamedes, Magnus, Judith and so on, but this review would be a thousand pages long so I’ll just settle for saying that every character was well done and lovingly crafted and not one of them, even the annoying ones, were characters that I hated. 

One important thing to note was Muir’s writing itself. It was incredible. Such descriptions! Such characterization! Such detail! Such vocabulary! I was supremely impressed with her writing as a whole and often found myself having to look up words that I had never heard of in my life (always a welcome change of pace). I was blown away by her sheet talent and creativity. 

The last two things I have to note might get me in trouble. 

One, the ending for me was...bittersweet. For fear of spoiling someone, I won’t get into details, but I found it both lacking and simultaneously making absolute sense. I wanted both more and yet, found that everything was just enough. It’s hard to put into words, but if you know, you know. 

I do have a slightly sinking feeling though that the ending twist will somehow be undone in the sequel. I don’t know if this is true (although I will eventually find out), and I can’t decide if I’m going to be happy or dismayed by it. 

Such conflicting feelings are in of itself homage to Muir’s skill as a writer and the complexities of her tale. 

Lastly, the one aspect that might get me into the stickiest of predicaments: Harrowhark’s and Gideon’s relationship. I don’t know if I like it or not. On the one hand, I absolutely love it. It's a hate-to-love slow burn, which really is the only way an OTP makes its way into my heart. I love that they’re so different and yet so compatible, one flesh and one blood and all that other nonsense. 

They see each other as equals, as adversaries, and I adore that dynamic in any pairing. I also love the F/F representation of some badass women and that they’re not traditionally attractive and beautiful. 

One of my favorite lines came from the end of the book where Gideon describes Harrowhark’s face as, “bitter” and “hateful”. I just love when characters aren’t conventionally gorgeous and yet beautiful in the eyes of the beholder and all that jazz. 

Now. Onto the problems. 

Harrowhark’s and Gideon’s relationship is kinda...toxic? It grows into something less so, but it definitely starts off that way. I really hate imbalances of power of any kind and Harrowhark definitely has power over Gideon, power that she creully abuses. I asked myself: if Harrowhark was a man and treated Gideon so abysmally for years, and then Gideon eventually forgave him and loved him despite everything, would I think differently?

And the answer is yes, yes I would. 

Is that fair? Probably not. But I can’t help but think how the dynamics change with the two of them being women, and how in my opinion, I think more is forgiven of Harrowhark because of it, even when it’s not deserved. 

Now, Harrowhark is a complex character and has traumas of her own, but I just can’t help but think of all the things she did to Gideon and the things she took away from her and forced her to do and then think of them together and it’s...not great. 

Overall, my feelings on their relationship are complicated (which is a repeated pattern when it comes to Muir’s writing) and I don’t mind that it’s complicated, it makes it interesting, but I also would be bereft to mention it here. I look forward to seeing how it develops and if my feelings change and grow on the matter as well. 

In total, Gideon the Ninth is a fantastic read. It has everything you want inlaid with characters who not only push the plot along, but incentivize you to read more. It has complicated issues and complicated characters, but that means it’s nuanced and complex and juicy enough to bite into. 

Don’t do what I did and wait years for this novel. If you need a good read, you don’t need to look any further and then let yourself be swept along for the necromantic ride. 

Recommendation: “Lesbian necromancers explore a haunted gothic palace in space!” -Charles Stross. I mean. Come on people, what more can you ask for?

Score: 8/10 

Yu-yu Kondo and Vanguard overDress’s Greatest Flaw

    I love Cardfight!! Vanguard. It means so much to me, more than I have time to articulate here. Which is why it disappoints me so much to have to have this discussion. Let’s take ourselves back to earlier in the year. Why don’t we? Cardfight!! Vanguard overDress is announced to be a real, actual seasonal anime. A seasonal anime with a real, renowned animation studio and character designers. On top of this, the actual card game is about to become the best it has ever been. We are shown new artwork of the story’s main characters week after week to hype us up even more. Then, WSlasher releases a video. “What Bushiroad isn’t Telling About Vanguard Overdress”. This was the beginning of the end.

    In WSlasher’s video, released 3 months before the airing of the first episode, he asserts that Yu-yu will wear girls’ clothes and a wig in Vanguard overDress. He also liberally uses the word Trap, doubling down when confronted about its modern transphobic usage. This alone would worry me as a trans card fighter. The worst possible outcome in my mind was WSlasher’s video being accurate. Despite my fears, I held out hope that Yu-yu would be handled with respect and care, rather than being used for transphobic comedy at his own expense. 

    The first episode of overDress came and went. People loved it. It saw rave reviews from Vanguard Fans and non-Vanguard Fans alike for its gorgeous animation and beautiful soundtrack. I was so happy to see Cardfight!! Vanguard winning and yet… Something bothered me. Yu-yu was forced into clothes, even forced into lacy underwear by his family. It was all very uncomfortable to watch. Add this to the show’s very reductive view of gender. Megumi comments on Yu-yu wearing “boys’ shoes” and a “boys’ backpack”. The show tells us this is a contradiction. The show threatens that the slightest nuance in gender presentation will out Yu-yu as not what he appears. The cherry on top was the fact that Yu-yu wasn’t even the one to tell the others he wasn’t a girl. That was Tomari. If you think about the situation in any realistic context, there was a high chance Tomari Seto outed a transgender teenager against their will while they were far away from home in the middle of the night. She did not know Yu-yu’s side of the story. Yu-yu did not give her permission to say what she said. Tomari seemed to be unaware of the potential consequences of her actions. It hurts to see and quickly establishes Tomari as someone I absolutely would not trust. overDress was off to a rough start for me. I was not allowed to enjoy it as much as my cisgender and/or heterosexual peers. That feeling only got worse as every other episode seemed to add in playful, joking, gay scenes between Yu-yu and the 7-years-older Danji. Before the first episode aired, we were told a core theme of the show would be diversity. Instead, the diversities held by very real people were used as quick jokes. 

    However, overDress was not quite hopeless in this regard. In episode 2, the topic of Yu-yu’s clothes is broached once more. Zakusa says some words to him that borrow from very common gender metaphors. As he sketches butterflies he asks Yu-yu, “Do you think butterflies know how to fly as soon as they leave their cocoons? Perhaps they know that they will one day soar from the moment they are born.” Butterflies change their form and learn to fly, much like a trans person coming into their true self and becoming stronger and happier for it. Lines like this being uttered so early in the show’s run gave me hope. I genuinely had faith that perhaps Yu-yu’s relationship to gender and even to his sisters would be explored. Perhaps Yu-yu would come to realize that the problem wasn’t that they were girls’ clothes. The problem was that they were not clothes he CHOSE. Yu-yu doesn’t even have to straight up be a trans girl to be an inspiration for gender non-conforming teens watching overDress every week. Is this a turn for the better? Is this a major struggle of Yu-yu’s that the show explores? No. No, it is not. Instead, Yu-yu and dresses are brought up together for the sake of throwaway gags. In episode 5, we see Yu-yu don the dress his sisters gave him again so that he can be a ring girl at Danji’s Cardfight Pro Wrestling match. This is complete with the audience fawning over him and Megumi being angry that he receives attention from men that she does not. In episode 7, a member of Team Blackout asks Yu-yu to wear a frilly, pink dress so that he can watch. Tomari buys Yu-yu a little girls’ pretend doctor outfit in the same episode, expecting him to wear it. Tomari is the one who makes the most jokes at Yu-yu’s expense. When combined with her outing Yu-yu, it’s not a good look. 

    Cardfight!! Vanguard overDress’s greatest flaw is not its pacing, its lack of conflict, or any animation errors. The greatest flaw this show has is that a significant portion of its viewerbase is treated as a joke. It is acceptable to make fun of the idea that Danji or Yu-yu could be gay. It is acceptable to call Yu-yu a trap and ridicule him for being “reduced” to wearing dresses. In turn, it is acceptable to turn that mockery on queer cardfighters who want something better. While doing so, the show sprinkles little hints that maybe it does care and maybe it does wish to be kind to us in hopes that we don’t stop watching. Cardfight!! Vanguard means so much to me. It means much more than I could ever articulate here and it’s a shame to see it turn its back on people like me. 

Voyager. Now that’s a kettle of fish. Obviously watch/enjoy whatever you wish, but I do recommend also checking out SFDebris’ reviews of the episodes (he’s the rwde of Voyager). He is a lot smarter and more eloquent than me.

Putting these two asks together since my thoughts on both are all jumbled! 

Now, I want to emphasize that I’ve only watched the first 16 episodes (Season One + Season 2 premiere), so idk if Voyager is going to go seriously downhill later on, but right now I do really like it. And not in a, “Lol yeah compared to the other crap on it’s good, I guess” way, but in a completely honest, “It has its flaws, but is overall a solid, compelling show with lovable characters” way. Out of curiosity I watched SFDebris’ review of “Phage,” though I’m afraid I didn’t agree with it. The only part were I was like, “Yeah okay” was pointing out that they had the Doctor using a keypad when he supposedly wasn’t solid, but that’s precisely the sort of continuity error that, in an otherwise strong show, I’m willing to shrug off. For all the major points, it sounds like SFDebris is concerned primarily with the show he wants Voyager to be, rather than the show Voyager actually is. Which I know sounds familiar--I’ve heard that criticism leveled at my own work: “You just want RWBY to be a totally different show”--but the difference is that Voyager is a part of an established franchise, following three other TV shows, an animated series, and a collection of films. It’s not an original show (like RWBY) that can take itself in any direction the story may need/claim to want (again, RWBY). It has a brand and those established characteristics seem to be bumping up against SFDebris’ critiques: 

Hating Neelix as a character - You’re supposed to hate him. Or at least find him frustrating (I don’t personally hate him) because that’s what all the characters are grappling with too. From Tuvok forced to have an awkward conversation while Neelix is in the bath to Janeway dealing with him taking over her dining room, Neelix’s conflict revolves around how others learn to accept him. Star Trek as a franchise is about “Infinite diversity in infinite combinations.” Voyager begins with the problem of how the trained Federation officers are supposed to work with the more violent Maquis. Difference doesn’t just create “Wow, you’re so amazing!” reactions, it also includes frustration, disagreement, and outright hostility. Creating an outsider character with a kind heart but incredibly overbearing personality is a great way to test the other characters’ convictions. Do they actually care about all life in the universe? Or do they only care about life when they personally find it palatable? Having Neelix around is a great reminder for them--and the viewer--that just because someone annoys you at times doesn’t mean they’re any less worthy of love, respect, and companionship. It also doesn’t mean they don’t have something to offer: he keeps the crew fed even if his cooking is horrible, he provides information about this area of space even if he sometimes gets it wrong, we roll our eyes at the “Morale Officer” stuff, but Neelix does provide much needed perspective for characters like Tuvok. If Neelix made fewer mistakes, stopped bugging the crew, became a “cooler” character for the audience to root for rather than be frustrated by... a lot of the point of his character would be lost. 

Frustration about discoveries not carrying over to the next episode - AKA, the crew finds inanely powerful, alien tech and then (presumably) never uses it again. This would indeed be a big problem in a serialized story (like RWBY) but Voyager maintains much of Star Trek’s original, episodic nature. Though we have continuity in the form of them inching towards home and evolving as characters, the world still resets to a certain point at the end of each episode. This is what allows Star Trek to explore so many different questions and have so many different adventures. If you demand that serialized continuity--this character needs to have an arc to deal with this traumatic experience, the crew has to follow the thread they just discovered, our Doctor needs to do something with the new tech they just found--then you lose the variety that Star Trek is known for. Instead of a new story each week (or, occasionally, across two weeks) you’ve got a single story spanning months. Neither form is better or worse than the other, it’s absolutely a preference, but there’s a very specific, structural, intentional reason why the characters “forget” about the things they’ve discovered and, at times, experienced. Unlike Ozpin forgetting that he has a nuke in his cane for seven volumes, or Ruby forgetting to use her eyes at crucial points, Star Trek deliberately sets things aside to ensure there’s room for new ideas and questions next episode. 

Janeway doesn’t kill the Vidiians to get Neelix his lungs back - No Starfleet captain would. At least, not during this period of Star Trek. Sisko has development in that regard (making morally gray choices), but that’s built into the heart of the show from the start: he’s on a station, not a starship, that is jointly run by the Federation and the Bajorans, and built by the Cardassians. The rules of the Federation always had a tenuous hold there and Sisko as a character always pushed the boundary of the Federations expectations (Q: “Picard never hit me!”) Janeway, in contrast, is 100% a Federation captain and, more importantly, has explicitly told her crew that they will be operating as a Federation vessel, despite being so far from home. That’s the conflict between the officers and the Maquis. That’s why Tuvok accepts the alien tech in “Prime Factors,” recognizing that Janeway can’t. That’s why Seska is a compelling antagonist, pressuring the crew to abandon their ideals for survival. The series (or at least that first season) revolves around questions about identity and whether they’re willing to give that identity up now that they’re out from under the Federation’s thumb. Overwhelmingly, they choose not to... which would make murdering the Vidiian a complete 180 for her character. We’re not necessarily supposed to agree with Janeway’s choice, we’re supposed to acknowledge that murdering another sentient being is not some simple choice to make, especially when you’re a leader devoted to a certain set of ideals. We’re supposed to recognize the challenges here (many of which SFDebris doesn’t acknowledge) like how you’re supposed to keep a prisoner for the next 75 years when you’re already struggling to feed and take care of the crew you have, or the fact that they claim to take organs from dead bodies and this was a rare time when they couldn’t. (It’s only in “Faces” that we learn this is complete BS and they actively kidnap people to work as slaves and then be harvested.) The frustration that Janeway doesn’t act here stems from wanting her to be a character who is, fundamentally, not a Star Trek captain. 

Granted, I only watched one review, but that’s what the whole thing felt like: wanting a series that’s not Star Trek. Something without a token, challenging character, without hand-wavy science, that’s more serialized, and doesn’t adhere to a “do no harm” code. (I just started “Initiations” and Chakotay asks a vessel to stand down three times, while actively being attacked, before finally retaliating and then he tries to reestablish communications and then he warns them about their engine and then he beams them aboard his shuttle. That’s what Star Trek (usually) is: that idealized love of life, even when that life is actively hostile). And like, that’s obviously fine! As you say, Flawartist, “watch/enjoy whatever you wish,” but just based on this one review I wonder if SFDebris just wants something other than Star Trek. 

I think one of the reasons why I feel passionately about this (beyond my love of context and recognizing when shows are actively trying to accomplish something specific) is that I went through this with DS9. For years I heard about how horrible the show was. It’s trash. It’s a mess. It’s not TNG, so don’t even bother. Or, if you do, be prepared for disappointment. There was this whole, strong rhetoric about how silly it all is--Star Trek is, by default, silly, so supposedly only the Shakespeare loving, archeology obsessed captain is sophisticated enough to save it--and then... I found nothing of the sort. I mean yeah, obviously Star Trek is silly as hell (that’s part of its charm), but DS9 was also a complex, nuanced look into everything from personal agency to the threat of genocide. There’s so much wonderful storytelling there... little of which made it into my cultural understanding of DS9. And now I’m seeing the same thing with Voyager. When I did some quick googling I was bombarded by articles saying how bad it is and now I have an ask comparing it to a show I don’t think has even a quarter of the heart the Star Trek franchise does. Which is is not AT ALL meant as a knock against you, anon. I’m just fascinated by this cultural summary of Star Trek: TOS is ridiculous but fun if you’re willing to ignore large swaths of it, TNG is a masterpiece and that’s that, DS9 is bad, Voyager is bad, and to be frank I haven’t heard much of anything about Enterprise. It’s weird! Because I watch these shows and I’m like, “Holy shit there’s so much good storytelling here.” Is it perfect? Not on your life, but it’s trying in a way that I can really appreciate. It’s Star Trek and Star Trek (at least at the time) meant something pretty specific. Criticisms about divisive characters or idealized forgiveness feel like walking out of a Fast and Furious film and going, “There was too much driving and silly combat. Why didn’t they just fix the situation in this easy way?” Because then we wouldn’t have a film about lots of driving and silly combat! If you make all the characters palatable, make Janeway harder, extend the impact of all the discoveries, remove the ridiculous science that doesn’t make any sense... then you don’t have Star Trek anymore.