"Wings of Love" is garbage
Sep. 9th, 2019 07:54 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
general_radixSo, remember when I was trying to give the non-offensive parts of "Wings of Love" the benefit of the doubt?..
LanWan (on Discord) has been reading ahead and discussing this series with me (we may end up sporking the whole thing; I've already written one for "Moon Family Secrets").
* NOTHING HAPPENS. Being 99% romantic intrigue with a dash of familial conspiracy (mostly "Moon Family Secrets") would normally be fine, but this isn't terribly interesting, nor are the comparatively few fics which are meant to be action-based. (The latter's not helped by Usagi Carter's clunky action scene prose.) Taken to ridiculous lengths with the Zodiac Senshi fics...which never got to the parts where the Senshi transform, or even introduced the entire Zodiac. You want to see them in action, you're stuck with Alan Gutierrez's art.
* Almost everyone sounds the bloody same, be they canon characters or the many, many minor OCs. Only a few of said OCs get much characterization, and many of them are little more than names (ex. Corona never even appears on-screen before she's revealed to have a terminal illness). It makes keeping track of things harder than it should be.
And, of course, there's very little thematic cohesion with the names. I don't think I'll ever get over Makoto's SM-era mother being named STEPHANIE.
* Speaking of OCs--it sounds like the most fleshed-out one is Sailor Life, and that's mostly because she's an obvious self-insert. Normally I would let that slide...except that her love interest is Nick Carter of the Backstreet Boys.
You may have needed a second to reboot there.
He's an identically-named expy of the real-life Nick Carter (by the way, have you guessed where part of Usagi Carter's pseud came from?), which really isn't much better than this actually being a partial bandom crossover. This is about where the whole thing goes from "dubious" to "farcical".
* I have long since reached the point where I find staunch heterosexuality to be off-putting, and this series has that in abundance. In addition to the prominent gay-erasure ships, the Starlights are treated as male-by-default (when in canon, it's strongly implied that their masculine disguises are just that), and I don't think that Kunzite's and Zoisite's bisexuality is ever mentioned. >Hell, there's even a possible male love interest for goddamn Metalia. EDIT #2: It was a different villain lusting after Usagi. Stringent M/F Shipping: Where Even the Eldritch Abominations Have to be Straight.
Oh, but Usagi Carter DID actually know that Haruka and Michiru are meant to be together--and her way of "acknowledging" that was utterly vomit-inducing. See, she made them bi and established that they were lovers for a time...for the sole purpose of claiming that their love wasn't adequate/real and that only these two men she pulled out of her ass could truly love them.
That's almost worse than just writing them as straight, and to me reads like Usagi Carter was being passive-aggressive with her critics. I try not to get too angry at other fanfic authors, especially when looking at their old work, but Jesus H. Christ.
...so anyway: I dunno if I'll finish it, but working on sporking the first Galen/Haruka fic (oh by the way, that's an adult/minor pairing on top of being lesophobic and technically-incestuous, WILL THE PAIN NEVER CEASE) "inspired" me to start on a non-canon Inmortalitas thing that tears gay-erasure ships to micro-shreds. Let's just say that Vince/Enzo could never work out on any conceivable level.
LanWan (on Discord) has been reading ahead and discussing this series with me (we may end up sporking the whole thing; I've already written one for "Moon Family Secrets").
* NOTHING HAPPENS. Being 99% romantic intrigue with a dash of familial conspiracy (mostly "Moon Family Secrets") would normally be fine, but this isn't terribly interesting, nor are the comparatively few fics which are meant to be action-based. (The latter's not helped by Usagi Carter's clunky action scene prose.) Taken to ridiculous lengths with the Zodiac Senshi fics...which never got to the parts where the Senshi transform, or even introduced the entire Zodiac. You want to see them in action, you're stuck with Alan Gutierrez's art.
* Almost everyone sounds the bloody same, be they canon characters or the many, many minor OCs. Only a few of said OCs get much characterization, and many of them are little more than names (ex. Corona never even appears on-screen before she's revealed to have a terminal illness). It makes keeping track of things harder than it should be.
And, of course, there's very little thematic cohesion with the names. I don't think I'll ever get over Makoto's SM-era mother being named STEPHANIE.
* Speaking of OCs--it sounds like the most fleshed-out one is Sailor Life, and that's mostly because she's an obvious self-insert. Normally I would let that slide...except that her love interest is Nick Carter of the Backstreet Boys.
You may have needed a second to reboot there.
He's an identically-named expy of the real-life Nick Carter (by the way, have you guessed where part of Usagi Carter's pseud came from?), which really isn't much better than this actually being a partial bandom crossover. This is about where the whole thing goes from "dubious" to "farcical".
* I have long since reached the point where I find staunch heterosexuality to be off-putting, and this series has that in abundance. In addition to the prominent gay-erasure ships, the Starlights are treated as male-by-default (when in canon, it's strongly implied that their masculine disguises are just that), and I don't think that Kunzite's and Zoisite's bisexuality is ever mentioned. >Hell, there's even a possible male love interest for goddamn Metalia. EDIT #2: It was a different villain lusting after Usagi. Stringent M/F Shipping: Where Even the Eldritch Abominations Have to be Straight.
Oh, but Usagi Carter DID actually know that Haruka and Michiru are meant to be together--and her way of "acknowledging" that was utterly vomit-inducing. See, she made them bi and established that they were lovers for a time...for the sole purpose of claiming that their love wasn't adequate/real and that only these two men she pulled out of her ass could truly love them.
That's almost worse than just writing them as straight, and to me reads like Usagi Carter was being passive-aggressive with her critics. I try not to get too angry at other fanfic authors, especially when looking at their old work, but Jesus H. Christ.
...so anyway: I dunno if I'll finish it, but working on sporking the first Galen/Haruka fic (oh by the way, that's an adult/minor pairing on top of being lesophobic and technically-incestuous, WILL THE PAIN NEVER CEASE) "inspired" me to start on a non-canon Inmortalitas thing that tears gay-erasure ships to micro-shreds. Let's just say that Vince/Enzo could never work out on any conceivable level.
no subject
Date: 2019-09-10 05:00 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-09-10 05:20 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-09-10 07:27 pm (UTC)(LanWan and I were just talking some more about this trainwreck, actually; turns out that wasn't the only time Usagi Carter showed her disdain for Haruka/Michiru. One instance made LanWan bust out the nuke gif. It was BAD.)
no subject
Date: 2019-09-12 06:42 pm (UTC)