Fedora Aften

Here’s the link: https://gofund.me/e67a1221 & here’s a picture of her adorable cat:

i got inspired by Lavendertowne’s series where she turned pride flags into art, so I made my own for the sapphic flag, I might do more in the future if I get any ideas

Here have some art i finished the entire shadow & bone trilogy last night & now im going to watch the terrible adaptation might die idk, wish me luck

Disclaimer: I am in no way a writing professional, I’ve just consumed a shit ton of media over the years which I have overanalyzed & seen other reviews on so I can understand what does & doesn’t work. Of course this will involve my opinion on things, if you don’t like it feel free to politely correct me, or you can just ignore me. 

To start with the positives, I think that the artstyle, designs, & worldbuilding are great. I wouldn’t say they’re flawless because I don’t really like how there’s a wide variety of alien species in the cast if each species hails from their own planet, but that’s really just a nitpick. Latgbg is a decent show which I think more people should check out. 

Now on to the negatives, we’re starting with the characters. There is a not very prevalent but existent issue I’ve noticed in the past that no one has really spoken on, so I’m gonna do it. *ahem* There is too much representation but not enough meaning to it. I bet you’re running the comments right now to call me a bigot or homophobic, but firstly, I’m unlabelled using any/all, why would I hate on my own community, & secondly, what I said makes more sense when I explain it in detail. Upon looking at the official website for this show, you’ll find that there is a page with all of the cast on it (except Aries for some reason?), & from there you’ll see that the only characters that use one pronoun are Lumi & Davin, who use they/them. Every single other character, even Felicity, uses she/they or he/they(Excluding Void who we don’t know enough about to talk about), but, (& this was probably unintentional) they don’t seem to commit to it. Every pronoun in these characters descriptions & every use of those characters pronouns is either she or he, so it doesn’t really seem like there’s any reason to give these characters multiple pronouns.

Here is my breakdown of all the characters:

Siona: I have mixed feelings about her. I like her personality, but I feel like she’s a little too likable. Something a lot of writer’s fail to realize is that just because they’re meant to be an all around good person doesn’t mean all their flaws need to be ignorable. A really well written character will have one key flaw which the audience can’t really forget about. For example, Raina De Aro, the mc of my project Hero Complex(I will be referencing my own projects a lot so take this with a grain of salt), is pretty similar to Siona, she’s nerdy & extroverted, & nobody believes her about something. But Raina’s major flaw is that she is way too confident, she thinks that she alone will be able to solve a case, even if it means actively putting herself in danger or pushing others away. Siona’s flaw, according to her website description, is that she is quote “a little reckless”, this really just feels like the series is trying to make her flawed, but at the same time you can ignore them, making me feel like her internal journey either won’t occur at all, or if it does it’ll be subtle.

Lumi: Oh dear GooBee how I do not like this little star. Lumi is a non-character, their personality shows to be that of an animal sidekick, so why exactly is this the hyped-up title character?? All they do is cause a commotion, make a bunch of annoying sounds, & support the plot in the worst way possible, which is not at all. Lumi could’ve worked if they either were an animalistic character, or were a character that could speak like the rest of the cast. They sort of seem like a macguffin, although they’ll probably get more development later so I could be wrong. Also, small nitpick, when Siona is introducing them to her friends, she just somehow knows their name & it irks me greatly. If she said “I’m going to call them Lumi” or when she first met them she said “oh your name is Lumi” (Implying some sort of psychic-esc communication), it would’ve made more sense. 

Davin: Davin is an ok character, their design & personality is generally pretty good, & out of all of the cast, they are one of the few characters whose existence makes sense. As a writer, I have a rule for myself that each character must be there for a reason to fill a role only they can fill, an example being in my project She of the Moon Knight, almost every character exists because they have something Mindy wants or needs, distracting her from how she’s building a genuine connection with them. In Latgbg, Davin exists as a way to balance out Siona, they are her opposite, working to ground her & oppose her negative thoughts. While this troupe is nothing new, it doesn’t mean it’s bad, what matters is how it’s handled, & in this case it’s handled well.

Holden: I love Holden on his own… but why is he here? He perfectly fills his role as the comedic relief, but thats all he contributes. In terms of his description on the website, Holden is looking for a place he belongs, & that’s actually a pretty good idea, especially when the cast is traveling across the galaxy. Problem is, that isn’t really shown to the audience in the pilot. An idea of how you could make this work could be to make him seem a little awkward among the rest of the group, he could crack jokes no one gets, or be shown to not understand the people around him. Maybe lean into his relationship with Davin & Siona as one he doesn’t feel fully apart of, or even make him jealous of their closeness & understanding of one another.

Felicity: Similar to Holden, she would work better if she was used differently. She’s intended to be the redeemable mean girl, but her rudeness is never once justifiable, so she really just seems like a bitch. When she crashes out at Siona, this is meant to demonstrate Siona’s flaws & how she messed up, but all it does is make Felicity look like an insufferable prick who takes out her anger on her friends despite them doing nothing wrong, she essentially acts like if Regina George was a Sephora 5 year old. If you want to make a likeable mean girl character, they’ve got to look cool as hell doing it, if you want to make a bitchy character who can get better then she needs to seem like her actions could be justified from her point of view. In SotMK, Mindy is rude toward anyone who isn’t from her kingdom because thats how she thinks she’s supposed to act, & that the only way to be good is to feel like she’s better than others. Felicity is implied to be under some kind of parental pressure, so work with that in later episodes & show us what misbelief was forced upon her to make her think it’s reasonable to act how she does. 

Mika: He definitely needs more time in the spotlight since so far all he is is an add on to Felicity who does whatever she says & always agrees with her. Their dynamic does work currently since he’s part of the reason why Felicity acts so petty, it just takes away from his character. In later episodes I think it’d be great to see more of Mika beyond bowing to Felicity’s every will. Perhaps show why he’s so loyal to her, &/or put him in a situation where he’d have to disagree with her. In his character description, it states his flaw is being to strict & uptight, but I think what you should really lean into is how he isn’t his own person, give him a character arc where he has to try & be himself, rather than Felicity’s echo, & boom, peak fiction.

As for Hala, Void, & Eliot’s, they chill, I haven’t gotten enough of them to truly judge them but for now I like where things are going with them. (Also justice for Aries they deserve a character profile too because I want to learn more about them)

Moving on to the plot, I do not know what’s happening. All I get from the first episode is “uh, I think they’re going to travel the galaxy, yada yada they somehow fight void stop hala save elios happily ever after yay” I think the first issue needing to be addressed is how the goal isn’t really established, we’re sort of left here trying to assume it based on a few lines of dialogue in the ending. If your audience doesn’t know what’s going on in the story, a lot of the time they won’t come back for more. The best way I can think of establishing the goal without redoing the whole pilot would be to have the second episode start off with some kind of planning sequence, possibly a meeting in a secret hideout where Siona explains to Holden & Davin what the plan is, this will at the very least help the audience infer what the goal is. Another thing that could’ve been done better was probably Siona’s “disrupting” of Felicity’s speech, because it’s not disrupting at all. She said something a little loudly, & Felicity called her out on it, essentially ruining her own speech, since nobody was paying attention to Siona until after Felicity yelled at her. If Siona had done something truly reckless, like climbing the statue of Elios to get closer to Lumi, or anything really that would actually have everyone else ignoring Felicity for her, it would’ve made a lot more sense. Maybe if Lumi’s crash landing on to Botanica caused the Elios statue to be destroyed, it could also justify why Felicity was so mad about Siona needing something interesting to happen; since it was stated everyone though what happened was a faulty firework, Felicity could’ve thought that Siona brought some kind of explosives. 

Another quick thing I noticed was a lack of stakes, something I always try to put into my stories. Considering it’s only the first episode, I know larger stakes are likely going to be introduced later, but I’m thinking about the little stakes, which many disregard. Getting from point A to point B should never be completely easy breezy, one or 2 problems make a story more interesting. Although, this for now can be excused, as Siona didn’t really go anywhere most of the pilot, which is perfectly fine as that gives her plenty of character moments & establishes a lot about her.