And the rest is rust and stardust.

Italian male | 26 yo | INTJ | Main fandoms: Buffy The Vampire Slayer, The Hunger Games, Six Of Crows, Sense8 (finale excluded), The Before Trilogy. Kanej believer. Kalagang is and always will be an everlasting presence here. The Before Trilogy is a cinematic gift and we should all be thankful for it | Enjoy your stay. 

[holden-norgorov]

Coming back to Sense8 a decade later: some thoughts.

Hello, everyone. I never thought this day would come.

Don't know if you remember, but I was heavily involved in the Sense8 fandom on this platform especially between 2017 and 2018. I was a staunch Kalagang worshipper and one of the loudest voices here against Rajalagang and the whole finale. The show's abrupt cancellation on June 2017 had left me speechless, incredulous, depressed, and I had welcomed the news of a last-minute special granted by Netflix to wrap everything up with hope, joy and trepidous expectation. After all, the production costs were so onerous that the writers themselves had most likely already had to shelve their initial plan for a five seasons show in favour of a three seasons endevour, which meant that the story could have been satisfactorily concluded had one last season been greenlighted. A two-and-a-half hour special would have had to sacrifice some things in favour of others, sure, but to this day I do believe it was an incredibly good compromise and could have provided a good ending.

But when it came out, it felt like the entire world came crushing down onto me. I remember it not feeling like Sense8 at all, having a lot of pacing, writing and directing issues, and plenty of OOC moments and character destruction all around. It effectively killed my attachment to the show and somewhat left me in a mourning state for at least an entire year. But as you all know, time mends; life gest messy and busy; I was finally able to move on to other things. Covid also happened, which obviously changed everything and which I'm sure, if Sense8 hadn't been cancelled before, would have significantly impacted its production as well, forcing the writers and producers to make other kinds of compromises. It's entirely possible that Sense8, as it was envisioned at the beginning and carefully built in the first two seasons, was simply not destined to fulfil his great premises and come to fruition. Life is unpredictable, and many other promising shows took Covid's toll and died because of it. That said, despite moving on from Sense8, I was sure I wouldn't be able to come to a time and place where I could revisit the show with enough detachment that could make me able to enjoy it again, anew. But this year, that time finally came, and I rewatched it for the first time since the finale came out in 2018.

And I have to say, despite having changed in many ways since that period, I was surprised to realize how little my own opinions have changed on the show. I still think Sense8 is great and had all the possibilities to become a generational show and fulfil the Wachowski's plan, which was to create something for TV that could have had the same impact The Matrix had had on cinema. I still totally see and feel that. The show has not aged a single bit, especially in the cinematography compartment, except maybe in some faltering bits of writing which, as far as I'm concerned, has always been the show's Achille's heel. The concept is still the coolest thing I have ever seen and I constantly see it somewhat replicated in other ventures (last but not least, in Spielberg's Disclosure Day). The characters are so full of life and with so much potential. Season 1 starts fairly slow buy once it picks up it quickly gest amazing. Season 2 is phenomenal. What left me particularly surprised is the acting: I admit I didn't remember it being this consistently good (not only from the mains but also secondaries and guest appearances), especially given how diverse of a cast there was on set.

Season 2 was so good, in fact, that by approaching the dreadful finale I was really under the impression that maybe my first reaction to it had been exaggerated, colored by my devotion to Kalagang and by how many scenarios I had the time to envision between May 2017 and June 2018 on how it could have all ended. It couldn't have been as bad as I remembered; surely I would change my mind or my outlook on it. But I really, really didn't. I was able to last half the episode, but as soon as the infamous scene with Kala and Wolfgang meeting for the first time began, I had to turn it off. It's shocking how bad it is. In terms of pacing, it's all over the place and it's a complete shift from the atmosphere the previous episode had ended on, which the binge-watching made it even more difficult to ignore. The writing is disgraceful. Most characters are either unrecognizable (Kala, Capheus, Lito, Sun, Mun, Wolfgang once he's rescued) or sloppy and incredibly chopped down (Will, Riley, Hernando, Daniela, Whispers, Jonas, Lila). I mantain my original idea that the only characters well-served by this episode, and well-written, are Nomi and Amanita (but sadly, often at this expense of all the others, which makes it unbearable to witness). Overall, this episode is so bad and on so many fronts that I don't know how this managed to escape, and still manages to escape, so many people.

Having clarified that, some things about the show I changed opinion on. For one, I'm much more sympathetic towards Rajan and much less towards Kala with relation to the way their story unfolds. Rajan is nothing but always, completely accomodating to her, and I don't think the show actually ever wants you to think he doesn't sincerely love Kala. In S1, he does nothing but speak highly of her, is willing to go against his cultural traditions and wear a wedding ring to outwardly express his commitment to her, is willing to marry her a second time despite Kala trying to manipulate him in not doing so and is willing to fight his father's opposition, something upon which Kala tries to conjure up an imputation of malice. From his point of view, the story is clear and coherent, and he never once wishes anything on Kala that it isn't her happiness, and everything he does is a direct result of Kala lying to him and leading him on on the belief that their union is a love marriage, which she knows it's not. The same thing happens in the Christmas special: because of Wolfgang pushing her away, Kala is gaslighting herself into thinking she actively wants to build a life with Rajan, and he indulges her out of complete innocence. Talking with Priya behind her back on their lack of sex is surely questionable, but it's somewhat understandable given the fact that Rajan is as new to marriage as Kala is, thinks Kala loves him and yet has to face the fact that something has to be wrong. And however, even besides that, he instantly apologizes to her, and while acting morally-righteous she proceeds to lie to him again by saying she doesn't have second thoughts anymore.

And then there's Rajan's Pharma fraud uncovered by mid-S2, which is unequivocally the greater stain on Rajan's character. But, and I never would have thought it would come a day where I say this, the tendency from Kalagang stans to exploit this fraud to try to characterize Rajan as an irredeamable, evil at heart monster is incredibly disingenuous and short-sighted. I think that episode clarifies that: 1) Rajan was merely following without thinking the standard procedure his father's company, and likely every other company, had been operating on since forever, which at best could make him reckless or irresponsible, not exactly wicked; and 2) as soon as Kala confronts him about it, he is actively shown to put into question everything he has ever believed and been taught for all his life by his father regarding his company, which he characterizes as a religious belief, and the episode clearly wants you to take from this that Rajan is going to change these practices and fight corruption.

All of this to say that, Rajan is certainly not without his flaws, but I don't think the show was portraying him as an evil man, and I don't think Kala herself has ever thought he was anything other than a good man, which is why she was unmoving, until the end, on not wanting to hurt him. But of course, this changes nothing on the matter: Kala's storyline had nothing to do with Rajan's goodness and everything to do with her lack of feelings towards him and her need to free herself from this self-made cage she entrapped herself into in order to please others and satisfy cultural expectations. The fact that Rajan was a good man, on a narrative standpoint, was not supposed to be an excuse for Kala to not overcome this obstacle: it was supposed to be a factor that made overcoming this obstacle even harder, and therefore more necessary and satisfying on a storytelling perspective. Besides, Kala had A LOT to own up to, both to Wolfgang and to Rajan, and the finale egregiously failed to give her character the moral chatarsis she desperately needed to atone for her lies and misleading behavior. What the finale did, by pretending Kala was merely afraid Rajan wouldn't believe her about being a sensate and undecided on her feelings for two men, not only eradicated her need to choose, which was pivotal to her character, but also the responsibilities and consequences she had to face and own up to. That ultimately makes it very hard to sympathize with her, because it looks like her questionable behavior for two seasons is ultimately excused by the narrative. In fact, on a moral standpoint, Rajan clearly ends up having the higher ground on her, which is incredibly sad - if anything, because Rajan is a supportive character and Kala is a main, so the story feels broken, inverted in a fundamental way.

On a closing note, I remember and get the amount of hate directed at Netflix at the time for the show's cancellation, but now I think they handled this as well as they could, and granting the final episode was indeed incredibly generous given the lack of viewership and the giant production costs involved. If anything, their mistake was failing to properly advertise that S2 was coming out when it did, even though their modus operandi has always been to pump up a new show by highly publicizing its first season and then barely make notice for the following seasons, with the exception of their peak products in popularity (such as Stranger Things, Bridgerton, Wednesday, etc.).

Anyhow, it has been so good to be able to rewatch the show and discover that the pain and disappointment I felt once is now gone. That makes me so excited about future rewatches as well. I don't think this show will ever truly die.

[the-borgias]

BEFORE MIDNIGHT (2013) dir. Richard Linklater

[logray]

THE FELLOWSHIP OF THE RING (2001) THE RETURN OF THE KING (2003)

[slutty-gantu]

Listen she literally jumped into a hell portal

That's how she died

The first time I watched I assumed it didn't matter that she had saved the world a thousand and one times because she literally jumped into hell

At this point in the show, we're not even sure heaven exists

We KNOW there's multiple hell dimensions but before the beginning of s6, even Giles doesn't know if heaven exists because no one they knew had ever gone there and come back

It's absolutely valid for her friends to assume she was in the exact dimension she jumped into and to want to save her from that

There was literally no possible way for them no know where she was

I am Buffy Summers's number one fan and I assumed she was in hell because of the nature of her death

The Scoobies are not perfect but I'm getting real sick of y'all acting like they weren't trying to save her from eternal torture

[misselesava]

buffy the vampire slayer ⇾ 1.12

[notebooks-and-laptops]

'why is Xander the heart when he's Like That' guys Xander is the heart because he is everything that comes with that. In Xanders best moments he is loving, willing to throw himself into danger even though he's the weakest member to protect people he sees as in his circle. In his worst moments Xander is jealousy personified; he views the people he loves as his and gets mad when they don't act in ways he wants them to. Xander will stand in front of Willow as she destroys the world and tell her he will always love her and Xander will also get pissed at Buffy for sleeping with spike despite the fact that its none of his business. He is all the emotions related to being 'the heart' in both healthy and unhealthy degrees. Most of his awful decisions are in some way made out of a sense of love like leaving Anya at the alter because he doesn't want to hurt her further down the line, hell even the cheating with Willow he does both out of love (he loves her) and out of jealousy (she's not focused on him all the time anymore). He is the heart he is the heart he is the heart. And that's not always pretty, but it is what he is.

[dailybtvs]

Buffy the Vampire Slayer 2.04 ― "Inca Mummy Girl"

[yesitsterriblysimple]

The worst kind of BtVS discourse is about how Willow and Tara didn't pay rent, or anything along the lines of how the gang could have handled Buffy's financial situation better in season 6.

The only way to approach this question is from a Doylist perspective, you cannot blame Willow or Tara or Giles or anyone for the money problem because the POINT of season 6 is for Buffy to struggle with real-life, adult challenges. I.e. getting a job and paying bills. Willow, Tara, Giles... none of them were EVER going to solve Buffy's money problems for good because that's not the story the writers wanted to tell.

You have to understand BtVS as a narrative first and foremost, not as a collection of individuals you are tasked with passing judgment on. That's not the point of storytelling.

[slayerbuffy]

I can be alone with you here.

[inthemoodforblastt]

Buffy is a radical heroine precisely because she refuses to conform neither to the stereotypical femininity imposed on female protagonists nor to the hyper-masculine mold that dominates the classical hero’s journey. Yes, she carries the archetypal weight of a traditionally male-coded role: she’s the Chosen One, the one on whose shoulders rests the fate of the world, the one who must confront the ultimate evil, the one expected to sacrifice her life—repeatedly—for the sake of the greater good. But what makes Buffy subversive is that she inhabits this role on her own terms, and through it, exposes its contradictions.

Unlike the classical male hero —who usually embraces his destiny with stoic detachment or egotistical bravado— Buffy resists it. She doesn’t want to be the Slayer. It’s not a romanticized quest for glory. It’s a burden. And that resistance, that refusal to glorify suffering or noble sacrifice, is profoundly political. Because Buffy doesn’t accept her role out of fatalism or legacy: she accepts it as a conscious ethical position. She chooses, with full awareness of the cost, to save others. Not because it makes her exceptional, but because she refuses to let anyone else carry the pain she knows too intimately.

What’s even more radical is how she does it: without amputating her emotions, without repressing her pain, without adopting the affective coldness that stories have historically rewarded in male heroes. Buffy doesn’t perform strength through detachment. Her power is explicitly emotional. Her vulnerability is not a weakness to overcome: it is a weapon. She continues to love, to feel, to break down, to rage, to mourn and all of that is framed not as a flaw, but as a source of power. She is not strong despite her emotions, she is strong through them.

This is where Buffy directly confronts the patriarchal foundation of the “hero’s journey.” She doesn’t just challenge the damsel-in-distress trope (though she absolutely obliterates it) she also rejects the masculinized “girlboss” fantasy that demands emotional sterility as a precondition for leadership. She is not a woman in a man’s role. She reshapes the role itself. And she does it while never losing sight of what matters: not honor, not destiny, not recognition, but people. Buffy is not guided by ego, nor by duty to abstract ideals. Her compass is rooted in care, in community, in love.

She’s not a knight on a noble quest. She’s not even interested in heroism as a myth. She is a Slayer. A worker. A survivor. And by embracing that, she collapses the romanticized masculinity of the classical hero and rebuilds it from a place of collective responsibility, emotional truth, and moral clarity. That is her revolution.

[sevenslayerdip]

Dawn’s shoplifting is a parallel for Buffy’s sexual relationship with Spike. They begin in the same episode (“Intervention,” which is the first time we see Buffy show textual interest in Spike and the first time Dawn steals something) and conclude, basically, within an episode of each other ("Older and Far Away" and "As You Were"). They share a few other key moments. "Once More, With Feeling" shows Dawn's klepto habit with its first consequence, getting her kidnapped, and features the kiss that kicks off Spike and Buffy's sexual relationship in earnest. "Entropy" also highlights the fallout of both of these plotlines.

If Dawn is Buffy’s inner child, then they’re manifestations of the same stress, but Dawn’s is the adolescent foible and Buffy’s is, ahem, more adult. While we generally think of Buffy’s relationship with Spike as self-destructive in the context of their sexual relationship in the sixth season (which contains physical violence and literal destruction), I think it’s valuable to trace it back to the fifth season, when Buffy first initiates a sexual contact with Spike, in "Intervention." Because, of course, the fifth season is all about self destruction and the death drive—Buffy’s finale “gift.”

I’m inclined to use Dawn’s shoplifting as a key (pardon the pun) to understanding Buffy’s sexual relationship with Spike, because the latter is so much more complicated. So what does it mean for Dawn to be shoplifting? It’s the thrill of rule breaking. It’s an attempt to exert control in the face of life’s uncontrollability—her mother’s death, the imminent threat to her life, then, later, the sense of purposelessness that accompanies no longer having a fate. These are both very obviously motivations for Buffy as well. But shop lifting is also, famously and in Dawn’s particular case, a cry for attention: even negative attention is better than nothing for the neglected child. For the conflict-averse Buffy, the idea that she’s using a sexual relationship with Spike, at least in part, as a bid for negative attention is incredibly compelling.

In particular, this motivation helps to explain the kiss in “Intervention.” The theme of the episode is love, and one aspect is Buffy’s fear that she cannot receive it. Extrapolating out, it would seem that Buffy isn’t receiving a lot of love from her friends, or at least isn’t feeling that love. This is exacerbated when Buffy finds out that her friends were unable to distinguish her from the Buffybot (the reveal is played for comic effect, but the fact that it plays on this theme carries more than throw-away weight). What we get is that there is some real alienation between Buffy and her friends; at least, an alienation between Buffy’s deeper self and her friends. In the course of discovering this explicitly, she also finds out something else: that her friends would stage an intervention for her if she were to sleep with Spike. This is to say that her friends would view this behavior as, literally, a cry for help, to which they would respond. At this point in the season, Buffy has just buried her mother and is at constant risk of losing her sister, for whom she is now a full time guardian. All of the reasons that her friends cite as justifications for her “worrying” behavior when they mistake the Buffybot for Buffy herself are still there. She is struggling, and she does want more attention and support from her friends. She doesn’t have sex with Spike, but a kiss, here, is the gateway, which she walks through in the following season.

It’s notable that Dawn’s klepto habit has its first real consequence in “Once More, With Feeling,” which is also when Buffy and Spike’s relationship begins in earnest, but I’m particularly interested in the parallel between Dawn’s shoplifting and Buffy’s relationship with Spike as it manifests in “Older and Far Away.” Dawn’s and Buffy’s habits have both become blatant: Dawn gives a stolen leather coat to Buffy, which she could in no way have afforded and which still has the security tag on it; Spike walks around the party with the evidence of Buffy’s abuse on his face. Neither of these things causes any actual suspicion: the bids for attention have failed. Dawn’s most blatant bid is ignored by Buffy; Buffy’s visible sin is ignored by the group. Ultimately, however, Dawn’s secret is uncovered, while Buffy’s remains. In order to discover Dawn’s shoplifting, Anya has to actively invade Dawn’s privacy, in a really unethical moment. It’s the sort of overstep that would only be taken against a child. In a season that’s concerned with growing up, it’s a reflection of the monkey’s paw of adulthood: no one can stop you from doing anything, but also no one is going to stop you. Buffy wants a grown up to break open her diary and catch her, but there aren’t any of those left. She’s the grown up now.

Buffy’s behavior becomes increasingly more reckless with Spike in the following episode, “As You Were,” which we can read as an escalation following her experience in “Older and Far Away.” It’s hard not to see Buffy’s choice to have sex in her front lawn as a blatant attempt to get caught—and afterward, she doesn’t bother to make sure there isn’t any evidence of her tryst (Willow spots a grass stain on her coat, which wasn’t there before), and she even makes a sloppy reference to Spike and barely covers it (“Some vamp get rough with you?” / “He’s not getting any gentler.” / “ ‘He?’ “ / “They. Them. Vampires, in the general population sense.”). When she does finally get caught, she’s chosen to fuck Spike in the middle of doing recon with two other people and subsequently fall asleep. And it’s clear that this wasn’t inevitable: everything about it has a sense of very-special-episode contrivance. A former regular has to make a guest appearance, his character has to travel halfway around the world, and Buffy’s behavior still has to be extraordinarily blatant. Riley, here, plays the role of Anya in “Older and Far Away”: he violates appropriate privacy because he feels entitled to both Spike and Buffy’s lives. While I don’t know that I would go so far as to say that he infantilizes Buffy (he may—I just don’t think it’s even necessary to bother thinking about it), he is a character who, in a way, is time-traveling from season 5, when Buffy was a child in the important ways, particularly because he left before her mother’s death. (And, generally, the burdens of her newfound adulthood all arose in the sixth season, following the resurrection that also symbolized her entrance into adulthood).

In the biggest deviance from Anya’s role, though, Riley doesn’t tell anyone. He finds out—and as a result, Buffy admits the reality of what’s going on with Spike—but he doesn’t have the power to tell Buffy what to do. In fact, when he offers to solve her problem for her, by killing Spike as per his mission in Sunnydale, Buffy asks him not to. She is, after all, actually an adult: she’s the only one who can be in charge of her personal life. (We might consider Joyce’s interference with Buffy and Angel’s high school relationship, which puts an end to that chapter in Buffy’s life: her romance’s story was decided by two adults, just as Buffy lingered on the cusp of childhood’s end, her high school graduation.) But because Buffy doesn’t have anyone keeping her honest, she only half solves her own problem. While she puts an end to a relationship that isn’t currently satisfying her (regardless of the reasons or their validity, she finds their sexual relationship incompatible with the life she wants to have), she maintains the secrecy which constituted at least half of her angst. A large part of her feelings of alienation from her friends had to do with the fact that she was lying to them and believed that these parts of her life would be unacceptable to them.

And this is where we get the final parallel, in “Entropy.” Dawn and Buffy walk around Sunnydale and experience the ramifications of Dawn’s shoplifting: they can no longer go into many of the stores, and Dawn has to make some sort of reparation for the things that she couldn’t return. Crucially, Buffy doesn’t want Dawn to take on the responsibility alone (Buffy:“We're paying for the rest.”/Dawn:”I'm paying for the rest.” Buffy: “We'll figure it out.” (Note that Buffy refuses to use the second person, and always corrects Dawn’s first-person singular into a first-person plural)). There’s something important, too, about the fact that they’re having this conversation in broad daylight, where, metaphorically, secrets no longer exist, and, of course, that they’re spending time together. This was Dawn’s (unconscious) attention-seeking goal, which can now be achieved only because everything is out in the open. The good of their repaired relationship has to be accompanied by the burdens of her mistakes, but even those burdens aren’t hers alone.

But Buffy still has to face up to the consequences of her relationship, and her secret has to come out. Anya is sort of the cause of this as well: Spike and Anya are caught on camera, having sex at the Magic Box. In contrast to Dawn's experience, we see the extent to which Buffy's friends fail to protect her. Willow tries (and fails) to warn Xander not to look at the footage of Spike and Anya, knowing that it will hurt him, but she doesn’t even know that she needs to shield Buffy, too. And then Willow never seems to have any conversation with Buffy about it: she confirms the details with Tara, but never has the chance—or later makes room, on screen—to provide that support to Buffy.

Xander is obviously the more egregious case. He berates Anya for sleeping with Spike, using language that feels bigoted in addition to the slut shaming he does, while unknowingly insulting Buffy, to whom all of his vitriol also applies. It affects Buffy so obviously that Spike’s interjection exposing their affair (the wildly crude, “it was good enough for Buffy”) almost feels chivalrous: he stops Xander from continuing to accidentally be cruel to Buffy (and also distracts him from his abuse of Anya). In the subsequent episode, he actually doubles down on chastising Buffy for her actions (Buffy having sex with Spike and her lying to Xander about it seem to be equivalent sins to Xander) before eventually expressing love and support—notably only after Spike has assaulted Buffy. It's a far cry from the titular intervention they tried to have for Buffy in the previous season.

It’s Dawn, and only Dawn, who who provides Buffy with a compassionate response. She’s also the first—she approaches Buffy immediately after seeing Buffy's reaction to the sex tape. It’s a touching role-reversal when Dawn gets to say to Buffy, “I wish you’d told me,” bringing out a parental axiom to now play the part of sister-mother that Buffy has taken throughout season 6. (It’s also a contradiction of what Dawn said earlier in the episode, when she told Anya that she no longer uses the word “wish.” Perhaps this wish is one that it’s worth making—not a flippant use of the word, but genuine.) She even goes on to express sympathy for what Buffy’s been going through (“I know it must hurt. To feel like you have to hide, to keep secrets from everybody…”), but Buffy is pulled away before she can have the full conversation with Dawn.

It’s notable that Buffy is forced to leave because Xander is doing something dangerous, and that Willow is the one who alerts her—only Dawn, who’s just been through this ordeal herself in the form of petty theft, is able to support Buffy. And if Dawn represents Buffy’s inner child, there’s a moving irony to fact that she is able to see maturely to the heart of the matter, unclouded by the (self) hatred that fuels Buffy’s guilt. It’s the sort of problem that too much maturity actually makes worse. Buffy’s unable to acknowledge that she’s still learning how to navigate the world, that mistakes are a facet of that, and that we make more mistakes the more we’re struggling. But Dawn, like all children, mirrors the behavior of the adult in her life: because Buffy refuses to let Dawn carry her burdens alone, Dawn does the same for Buffy. Even, of course, if Buffy won’t quite let her.

[spaceprincessem]

rewatching sense8 (again) and guys i gotta be honest no one is doing it like kala and wolfgang. romance of all time.

[gudvina]

What I find the most appaling is, not only an overwhelming majority of people have literally ONLY positive things to say about SOTR, but the fact that they don't elaborate on it further. All the positive reviews are filled with things like "it made me cry", "heartbreaking", "i'm traumatised", "I'm gonna need therapy after this", "destroyed me", "foaming at the mouth", "this book wrecked me", etc. I rarely came across a review or reaction, which has at least a few words on the actual quality of the book.

All most people seem to care about while making a judgement on the book's worth and quality, is how emotional it made them feel, how many of their old favourite characters returned, how much lore dump they got. They don't even consider quality of writing, or looking at it from a critical angle.

I have no problem with people loving the book even though I hated it. Everyone has the right to love a flawed piece of work. It is the lack of thought behind the emotions, and the refusal to acknowledge and analyse any flaws, that shocks me. No one seems to focus on the book itself — was the story well written?, was the plot well executed?, were the characters and themes properly developed in the narrative?, was the actual writing of a good quality? None of these questions are given any thought.

I've been through Instagram, Youtube, and Pinterest, and I've been attacked by posts talking about how perfect and flawless it is. Maybe it's because I'm a critical reader, and believes that no book or writer should be above criticism, but I find the lack of a different perspective strange and fairly a bit shocking. When Mockingjay (my favourite in the series) and TBOSS (which I liked, but not as much as the og books) were coming out, they were many mixed reviews, that were critical, and explained why they felt so. But not with SOTR, oh no, SOTR is above criticism, it's all "you fell for the capitol propaganda", or "you didn't get it".

I'm genuinely curious to know why lots of people loved it, to gain an understanding of both perspectives, but most of these reviewers seems to have anything of substance to say.

That's the part that upsets me. The people who criticise this book are often put in the spotlight as if they have said one of the most problematic things, or are just being told they are wrong or even that we should stop posting, and yet our points are not disputes.

No one is telling us what made this book great on a literary level, or exactly what part of the writing was good. No one is opening up a debate to tell us why the execution of SOTR actually works well with the themes, or why the characterisations are well done.

No. We are just told we are wrong, this book is great and we fell for Capitol propaganda. Or bombarded with quotes that were written to be reposted on social media stripped of their content.

I also don't see any problem with people liking this book, but what I do see a problem with is that anytime someone criticises this book they are shut down without a proper argument AND have to deal with people posting screenshots on other social media.

Clearly, they did a poor job of understanding the theme of the book.

[binarisunset]

you weren't "tricked by the Capitol's propaganda" for believing Haymitch's games went the way they did for so many years. the author just rewrote the story she had presented initially in a very weak attempt to portray an example of propaganda, but she sure as hell wasn't thinking about it when she first wrote about Haymitch's games in Catching Fire.

that was the original story. you weren't tricked by any propaganda for believing it. that's the original story the author wrote. what she's doing now is a retcon. which is okay, happens all the time in other franchises. but the way y'all are making it look like it was intentional, like it was a stroke of brilliance from her part is not it. it's just a retcon. a bad one at that, that undermines a lot of the themes and characters and dynamics from the original trilogy, but a retcon all the same.

[nocauseislost]

Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl

[shunjiwais]

What are you cooking up for us now? Another film with no hope?

8½ (1963)  dir. by Federico Fellini

[forthehonoroflove]

SPUFFY in 7x09: NEVER LEAVE ME