We could have had it aaallllll- pet peeve fandoms

YEP
the last book does Not Exist.

yep, pretty much! and it's awful and terrible and stupid

 

Yeahhhhh. Me too.

 

Although I really appreciated the whole god thing getting sorted! I liked Weiryn! And the badger!

I liked a lot of that book... except the squicky romance. Even as a kid I was like nooo.

(Although tbh, tiny!me was similarly squicked by Attack of the Clones because I read Amidala as An Adult and Anakin as clearly a child, so WAIT WHAT THEY DATE?? NO????? ... I'm amused by that now because wow, fourteen, not an adult. Five years is still a big age difference at that age but it's a lot less than I thought at the time.)

 

Tbh Anakin and Padme's relationship is a p good example of a younger person becoming the abuser... (I think it's fascinating bc it's so fucked up and it may have worked if Anakin weren't so...Anakin...he's such a human trainwreck I love it /covers face w hands)

I remember Diane and Numair didn't squick me so much as...bewilder me as a kid? Like I did not understand why it was happening at all.

 

Huh, I might have to rewatch. To be honest, it squicked me so hard that I saw AotC in theaters, and never again, and I've never seen RotS.

 

I'm... not sure if I'd exactly describe it that way? I didn't get the impression that there was an ongoing pattern of abuse in the relationship pre-Sith-Lording, even if it probably wasn't healthy. And post-Sith-Lording there's just the one very, very bad data point. But then, I haven't watched Clone Wars.

 

Clone Wars...I mean, I guess you could argue it either way. They have a fairly equal relationship but there's a plot line where one of Padme's old boyfriends shows up and Anakin gets absurdly jealous and controlling, even tho she's clearly no longer interested in the dude.

Now that Clone Wars exists, despite its flaws (the ending that was butchered because it happened around the time Disney bought Lucasfilm and they laid off the staff working on it :/) it bridges the gap pretty well between the second and third movies. Basically showing that Anakin starts doing more and more questionable shit in the name of what's "right".

I'm not totally coherent right now bc I'm on mobile and it's REALLY hot out but if anyone wants clarification I can elaborate later

 

Spoiler: I don't think this matters to anyone, but Bleach spoilers nevertheless

Bleach deserved better. Bleach deserved so much better, especially the first group of kids. The fact that Chad got an epilogue at all makes me happy to an extent, but also disappointed that he became a professional fighter (wrestler to be exact) and it just feels... It feels expected, same with Ichigo getting the family clinic and Ishida becoming a doctor and also his father in a figurative sense. Rukia married off to Renji, Orihime either ignored or married off to Ichigo depending on where I look. No mentions of Tatsuki or the other initial kids. No mentions of most of the people from Soul Society or Kon either.

It's just... Kubo really just ruined this series so painfully. Left it rotting plot-wise, like a beautiful suede coat from the seventies left to languish in the back of a sketchy thrift store that's probably a mafia front, eaten by moths and eventually just destroyed because a flash flood hit and the owner was too proud to admit he needs to move his stock upstairs only for rain water to wreck it.

I feel especially bad for Ichigo, after an analysis I saw earlier today. Talking about how he went from a spunky if bitchy teenager who's trying to do the right thing but mostly does it via the art of bad 'tude and punching to just this shell of a person who has no desires or wants, just kind of lunking around and waiting for when the next time he needs to go and rescue someone or fight Aizen. Going from proactive to reactive in all senses of the word, to the point where I'm left almost wondering if it's worth trying to write a fic where this turns out to be some form of PTSD. Two solid years, between having friends kidnapped and tortured by nefarious ancient powers, almost unspeakable being who have been dead for so long they're barely human by the time he's going face to face with them, to seeing his other friends and his sisters either left behind at home with no means to protect themselves or going by his side, only to be repeatedly brutalized and tormented, wondering what they did wrong as they fall to the wayside, unable to actually do anything while Ichigo's left to take on the three most powerful beings on his own.

Two years, four times where this happened, back to back, everyone coming off a little worse each time. Is it easier after a while to just let his anger die, let his passion die, just put his life on hold and wait, until Aizen comes back, as he always does, someone is spirited away for horrid acts, and he needs to pick up a sword again.

This is just so unreasonably sad for me.

At least Homestuck and Harry Potter were aware their heroes were traumatized. Tite never seemed to really acknowledge this. Did he know? Or was he just as hurt, after the abusive mangaka writing schedule, 4 hours of sleep a day, 3 hours of free time a week, every single week with no breaks for more than ten years.

At least Hussie had two pauses and the megapause, and Rowling didn't have to post a chapter a day every day until it was finished, under the behest of an editorial staff who didn't respect her work and would oscillate between 'more chapters, longer chapters, more specials, here's a new character poll, push these characters, ignore these ones, make better faster and stronger and do it all now, now, now', or ignoring her work and more until it's hitting the bottom of the reader viewer charts, because the artist and writer is too exhausted to draw and write and everything is pallid and dull, but still gotta get that 21 pages a week out there.

I hope Kubo Tite never works for Shonen Jump again. I hope he can make the jump to Seinen, or can start up a web-comic or an indie publishing, something where he has time to actually draw cool shit, instead of burning himself out and making an ouroboros of a plot, that's easier to predict than a Disney movie and half as fulfilling

 

Something I noticed back when I was reading Bleach is that Kubo seems to have a habit of making a batch of new characters whenever he has to come up with a new arc. I'd bet that half the reason Ichigo lost all personality and characterization over time is that Kubo felt like he had to keep him at the forefront all the time, but he was burned out on him. I feel like he probably would do better with a story structure where he could just... drop most of the cast when an arc was done and focus on some other group in the same setting. Maybe come back to them later, if he wanted to, but not have to keep the stories connected and ongoing.

 

That would suit him really well, maybe some form of an AHS-esque plot where it's a theme but each arc has 99% new characters, and reoccurings tend to be minor characters who can come and go as they please? He really shines at making new characters and their initial sort of plots. As long as he can put then away after the arc instead of being left holding them and having them go "... I'm saaaaaad" would be the best for everyone.

 

oh yikes i'm suddenly glad i dropped out of keeping up with Bleach, that woulda broke my heart :c

my most major pet peeve fandom lately is Dragonriders of Pern
I didn't even know or care much about it before because I was not much into dragons as a kid- but for about uhhhhh six months?? i tried participating in a DRoP roleplay. but i started participating first and then started reading the books. and started getting more and more unhappy with the original source material and the roleplay's decisions for adapting it and the planned metaplot directions- at the same time as i was RPing with characters and people i did genuinely like. so the conflict of those two just kinda ruptured and destroyed my ability to RP in the setting, and it's now become a hatedom for me, nothing will set me off like discussion of Pern nearby omf

i'm also in the 'dissatisfied with HP' crew but i've been learning to be more chill and analytical about it for the sake of friends who do love it a lot more than i do (and it means i get to be their fact checker with different biases so it works out well for us all)

 

I'm pretty sure I've heard a quote from an interview where he specifically said that his standard reaction to writer's block is to make up a bunch of new characters, so yeah. Writing something in a format that would work with that inclination rather than trying to make it workable in an endless shounen series could be a huge improvement.

 

I think he also tends to make characters' abilities up with just one specific Cool Thing he wants to do with them. If you pay attention, almost nobody has a single ability that more than one fight is structured around- there will be one fight where it matters and is a Cool New Thing, and then if they show up again, in the next fight it'll be totally useless and they'll either get creamed or use a new upgrade with different abilities instead.

 

i love his characters, i just...yeah. i hope he can be happy and do something else now that he's escaped shonen jump.

 

Poor guy, I want to keep tabs on him and his stuff like, get a Patreon dude I'll throw into the tip jar.

 

This is interesting.

 

holy shit this video is fascinating :O i love looks into the manga industry (bakuman has my heart 5eva)

....it's also actually making me want to get back into Bleach, once i know what point to stop having high expectations

 

from watching the video it makes sense that the two bakumon creators have had 3 hit manga series basically in a row.

when you're splitting up the work the pressure is probably less extreme/easier to bear

in that vein i think if kubo paired up with a good writer that might turn out really awesome. because then he could -- as the video says he loves to do -- draw cool shit, draw all the cool shit, and leave the plot to someone else.

 

And if the other writer was really nice and understanding, they could even give him excuses to have the characters constantly change clothing so those random fashion plate pages he loves to draw can be canon. :::PPP

 

GUESS WHAT KIDS I'm reviving this thread because I realized I've never subjected people here to one of my patented DENETHOR RANTS(TM). While his crimes against Faramir are better-known, Peter Jackson, the director of the Lord of the Rings and Hobbit movies, did not understand the point of Denethor's character at all and I am perpetually pissed because the Stewards of Gondor in the books are low-key my flavor of terrible family and PJ wrecked it in favor of the shallowest "Daddy loves my brother more than me ;_;" dynamic in the world and now that's all I ever see of Denethor or Faramir in fandom and it fills me with rage.

Spoiler

Denethor's arc in the book is a Shakespearean tragedy. He's an intelligent, powerful, competent, dangerous man who ends up self-destructing as his mistakes catch up to him and miscommunications pile up and he ultimately gives in to despair. In the movie, he's an incompetent idiot who doesn't care about anyone but Boromir and is constantly represented as decadent and callous and not caring about what's going on (because we all know eating while things happen is the ultimate sign of villainy).

Here's what he's like in the book:

Denethor has been fighting a thankless holding battle against Sauron for decades- the movies didn't do a good job of getting this across even back with Boromir in the Council of Elrond, but Gondor as a whole feels like they've been doing all the work while everyone else sits on their asses and looks the other way. (The reason Boromir's immediate thought was "The Ring is a weapon? USE IT" is because of this. He knows Gondor is going to fall sooner or later and wants to save his besieged kingdom and the rest of the world that they're protecting, by winning the war.)

In the book, it's explicitly stated that the reason Denethor likes Faramir less is that they're too much alike. Boromir is a born soldier and military commander, but Faramir, like his dad, is a guy inclined to plans and schemes and looking for the big picture rather than just rushing heroically into battle. Additionally, Denethor and Faramir- but not Boromir- have enough of the blood of Numenor that they have some straight-up psychic powers. Both of them pick information directly out of people's heads, most explicitly when Faramir is interrogating Gollum, and Faramir has a plot-relevant psychic vision whose removal from the movie radically altered the family's dynamic and resulted in the loss of Faramir's best moment in the whole story.

...Buuut I'm getting ahead of myself.

Denethor already disliked Gandalf because from his perspective, Gandalf is a representative of the elven kingdoms that have done jack shit to help while Gondor has been fighting for their lives all these years, and because Gandalf took Faramir under his wing and got him hooked on history and songs and legends about elves that as far as Denethor is concerned are a lot of useless nonsense and a dangerous distraction from the reality of their situation. He felt like Gandalf had stolen Faramir away from him.

Then Faramir has a series of psychic dreams telling him to go to Rivendell. He begs Dad to let him go and Denethor is just like "No >:C" because there's a war on and he doesn't want to give those useless elven assholes the time of day, let alone send one of his sons on a crazy wild goose chase. Especially not the elf fanboy one, he doesn't need any more of that in his head. But Boromir loves his brother and can tell he's really worried about this, so he asks Denethor to send him. Denethor is like "ugh, FINE, if you insist," and figures hey, Boromir is the sensible, practical one, he'll keep his head and not get roped into some elf bullshit.

Spoiler: Boromir gets roped into some elf bullshit.

Double spoiler: Boromir dies because of it.

Denethor then finds this out in the worst possible way, and has two weeks to stew on it until Gandalf strolls in to be his bossy know-it-all self at him and Denethor decides he's sick of this and about bites his head off. He doesn't even bother hiding that he knows about the Ring and the quest to destroy it. He pretty much tells Gandalf, "I'm not going to turn away anyone who says they'll fight with us, but this is too little too late and also I hate you, so go somewhere I don't have to look at you."

(Note: in the books, there's none of that BS about Pippin having to sneak past guards to light the beacons because Denethor won't let them light them for reasons, because Denethor, not being a flaming idiot, has already lit them before Pippin and Gandalf even get there. He's just extremely pessimistic that Rohan will actually respond, and do so in time to be of any help.)

Then Faramir shows up. Faramir in the books did not pointlessly haul Frodo 50 miles out of his way to Osgiliath to have a near-Nazgul experience; he caught Frodo and company, figured out about the Ring through logical deduction, mild telepathy, and having read the same histories Gandalf identified it from, and came to the conclusion that that thing is bad news and Frodo should hang onto it and continue with his quest to destroy it. (This is why PJ made movie!Faramir completely different from the book version- he thought Faramir was a Mary Sue because he rejected the Ring too easily.) Denethor, who knows about all this via the Palantir, does not agree with Faramir's assessment of the situation, and thinks he not only passed up a powerful weapon, but as good as handed it to Sauron because he believed this stupid, idealistic, pie-in-the-sky magic elf bullshit.

You know that scene in the movie where Faramir asks if Denethor would prefer if he'd died instead of Boromir and Denethor is just like "Yes" and Faramir looks very sad and cries a single tear? In the book, that was in the middle of a screaming fight, and Faramir gets mad and fires back with the most hurtful thing he can think of, which is that it's Denethor's fault Boromir died, because Denethor was the one who insisted on sending him instead of Faramir.

(I will never forgive Peter Jackson for this.)

Anyway, book!Denethor also does not send Faramir on a pointless suicide mission. He sends Faramir on a dangerous but viable mission to harry and slow Sauron's army to buy them a few days. And while Faramir does come back in horrible shape, and a lot of people die, he's not the only one to make it back, and in fact gets carried in by his uncle/Denethor's brother-in-law, who yells at Denethor for how he treated Faramir.

So, from Denethor's perspective, status at this point:
Son #1: Dead because of Denethor's decisions.
Son #2: Shot, poisoned, Black Breath'd and in a coma because of Denethor's decisions, and their last conversation was a fight where Denethor told him he wished he was dead.
Superweapon: In enemy hands.
Sauron's armies: At the door.
Gondor's armies: Insufficient.
Rohan's armies: Nowhere to be seen.

So he locks himself up to have an emotional meltdown and lets his armies get on with their thing. And then, at some point during the battle, when the orcs are smashing their way up through the city one level at a time, he gets out the palantir to see what's happening and sees still no Rohirrim, and ships full of enemy reinforcements sailing up the Anduin.

The ships are, in fact, not full of enemy reinforcements- Aragorn's ghost army killed all the enemy reinforcements, and the ships are instead full of Aragorn and a handful of rangers. And the Rohirrim are almost there, they just came by a weird route so they could get to Minas Tirith faster. But Denethor doesn't know either of those things.

And that's when he gives in to despair and decides "Fuck it, at least me and my son can die with dignity instead of getting eaten alive by orcs when they take the city."

And he never gets unceremoniously knocked out by Gandalf in an ultimate expression of directorial disdain for his character.

And he doesn't run HALF A MILE on fire to throw himself off the spire, because WTF.

PETER JACKSON WHY COULDN'T YOU LET ME HAVE MY COMPLEX UNHAPPY FAMILY OF PEOPLE WHO LASH OUT AT EACH OTHER OUT OF PAIN AND GRIEF AND THEN REGRET IT. WHY DID YOU HAVE TO TURN DENETHOR INTO A CARTOON OBSTRUCTIONARY USELESS JACKASS. HE HAD AN ARC. IT WAS THEMATICALLY RELEVANT TO LOTR'S THEMES OF HOPE AND DESPAIR. WHY DID YOU GET RID OF IT. THIS IS LIKE MAKING MACBETH ACT THE SAME WAY HE DOES IN THE LAST SCENE ALL PLAY. WHYYYYYY.