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coffeeandcalligraphy · 2 years ago

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Immaculate Mary | BODY BACK Update #2

Harrison's back, and he's only getting worse! <3

Let's talk chapter 2 of my novella BODY BACK. We're all about villain eras, unexpected developments, Mother Mary, Jesus thirst traps (yes...) & more. Check out update #1 if you missed it!

Post starts under the cut!

Unexpected developments

I'd already planned that Suzanna, Harrison's mother, wasn't going to be a major character in BB as she is in Feeding Habits. I didn't think we'd see her "on-screen" in BB, but when you get caught breaking into a stranger's pool & need your mother to bail you out...

Suzanna & Harrison

CW: child neglect, addiction

Suz and Harrison have SUCH a complicated relationship. They were once extremely close, but are now near-strangers. Having abandoned Harrison when he was a child amidst her own substance-abuse problems, Suz also never reconnected with her son after she got sober. She is only part of his life now out of fluke (the fluke is Lonan, who runs into her by chance in Moth Work--you can read that chapter update HERE though it's old!).

Harrison isn't sure what to make of their relationship. On one hand, it's a relief to have his mother back in his life because he's missed her (amongst other feelings) and also has a safety net when he makes bad decisions (chapter 1 lmao). But on the other hand, he's *extremely* resentful of Suzanna (and rightly so). At this point, they've only been reconnected for 2 weeks, and while Suz is trying to transition their lives together as seamlessly as possible, the last time they meaningfully knew each other was ~15 years prior (1990-ish), which makes this task, especially on Harrison's end, impossible.

This relationship is probably one of the most complex things I've ever written. It's hard to verbalize/describe it because at times it's irrational, frustrating, lovely, horrifying, hilarious, and comforting (and sometimes all at once). This culminates to a volatile emotional climax for Harrison that serves as the inciting incident for BB.

Immaculate Mary

We open "Immaculate Mary" with Harrison and Suz in the Bakers' bathroom (the couple whose house Harrison broke into). This chapter is about motherhood, yes, but also sonhood, and how Harrison believes his sonhood intersects with Suz's motherhood (and conversely, how Jesus' sonhood intersects with Mary's motherhood).

The title was just an inclination I had that addressed the chapter's holy and maternal themes. I was also aware this was a hymn, HOWEVER, upon writing this update (as in RIGHT NOW), I've realized this is a Catholic hymn I used to sing all the time in choir. So I guess I blocked that out?? LMAO

Scene A:

Suz attempts to blow-dry Harrison's hair which is soaked with pool water. This goes badly.

Scene B:

Desperate and unsure how to help her reckless son (lol), Suz drives Harrison to Eliza's apartment--where his ex, Lonan, now lives--in hopes he will talk to him. This also goes badly.

Scene B is *critical* here. Harrison isn't ready to face Lonan, even if that means merely facing the potential of seeing him. Suz rushing him into a conversation he isn't ready to have flips a switch inside of him. This is how we get to Chaotic Party Harrison, whose primary concern is A) forgetting and B) having a good time so he can forget some more.

The writing process

Writing this chapter was faster than chapter 1 because it's more action/dialogue heavy with longer scenes (it's also not as clean, lol).

I wrote a large portion of this chapter as a writing prompt for a class. The bathroom scene with Harrison & Suz was almost exclusively hand-written as a screenplay, so I had to adapt it. It was a lot of fun to have the dialogue/scene skeleton laid out, since it's not often I have a plan before going into writing sessions.

I similarly followed the circular plot structure I talked about in update 1. The "satellite" in this case was "mother/sonhood/mother Mary/Jesus." Mary x Jesus are critical to this chapter--not only does Harrison project himself onto Jesus, he also does the same to Suz, but with Mary. What does it mean to Mary to be the mother of the Messiah, and what does it mean to Suz to be the mother of Harrison? These are two questions we keep circling back to.

Excerpts

Guess who didn't share every single excerpt from this chapter so I actually have *some* new content??? :)

A plastic fantastic description of the Bakers' bathroom:

They stand in the Bakers’ bathroom. It vomits ‘under-the-sea’—a theme a child might request, but according to the living room’s unstained couch cushions and front mat’s lack of tiny shoes, no children live here. Perhaps Nash requested the décor. That might check out—a Ken doll on the outside dying to be coffined in his plasticky packaging, or in this case, plasticky bathroom. High-gloss cerulean walls. A clownfish soap dispenser. The toilet seat cover ridged into a lilac clam. A translucent blue shower curtain that flickers iridescent waves when you walk past it.

Here, we explore Harrison's psychology more overtly. Is he expecting to be yelled at--and why is that something he craves now?

In Suz’s body, Harrison expects rage. How far did she drive to get here? Honestly, he hadn’t tracked the length of the car ride when he’d hitchhiked. He analyzes her shoulders as she shuffles through the Bakers’ cabinet and emerges with a hairdryer, but she’s blanker than a blank slate—the empty air in front of God before he creates. If she’d only impale the wall socket with the dryer’s prongs. If she’d only grab his hair by the roots and hang him up to dry.

Harrison tracks the similarities of his and his mother's reflections:

Harrison stares at himself in the bathroom mirror. On his wrist: a gold herringbone bracelet Sadie hung on the key holder. In his ear: Lonan’s earring. His wet hair curls weakly around his ears, drips down his twiggy eyebrows. Last week, he caught his own reflection in the dishware cabinet and was so startled to find Suzanna’s face staring back that he dropped his cup. The crash pealed like a death knell long after the sound disappeared. Picking glass from the tile, it angered him that he looked like her. His father’s eyes, sure, but his mother’s bulbous nose, spare mouth, minky hair, stubby nail beds. The last time he’d compared their reflections, they stood in front of a funhouse mirror. They wore chromized party hats, technicolour butterflies painted on their left cheeks. He was five.

Here we have a description of Harrison wearing a (stolen) ring. This excerpt will be relevant in chapter three (also JEREMIAH BAIT):

He wears Jeremiah’s silver signet ring on his pinkie, and it clicks against the marble. Perhaps he’s been looking for it since Harrison’s been away. Hands and knees. Stuffing his head under his bedframe, a flimsy flashlight in hand, his mouth wide open.

(also... I may or may not have bought this ring... for myself)

The LINE of the century:

Harrison crosses his arms. The soaked leather of his jacket squelches, baptized by pool water just like him. His mouth is twitching again—he’d like to get high tonight, see neon, taste Jesus.

This is the unholy excerpt I vowed I wouldn't share (in other words, Jesus Thirst Trap -- take with that what you will):

How did Mary feel to mother Jesus? Listen, Harrison knows he’s no Christ. But Jesus was twenty-one once, wasn’t he? What did he do in his free time besides praise the Word of the Lord, perform miracles, etcetera, etcetera? He was a carpenter sure, nailed pleats of wood bare-backed in the tart Nazareth sun, flicked pearls of sweat off his tanned forehead. But did he ever break into a stranger’s pool? Did he ever wake up one morning, stumble out of bed, stick a frayed toothbrush into his mouth, stare at himself in the mirror and feel, with certainty, an unending urge to run?

Suz is exhausted:

Suz squeezes her nose bridge. She’s aged since August, if that’s even possible. The bags beneath her eyes are violet like the fleshy interior of a blueberry, the veins scarlet lightning bolts.

“Why are you upset?” Harrison asks, drumming his ringed finger against the counter’s lip.

This is a direct continuation of the above! This is actually sad I'm sorry:

What does Suzanna see when she looks at him? A miniature version of her wearing a jacket that once belonged to her at his age, and an earring that once belonged to another mother? Or is he a stranger? They know each other best by genetics. If she asked Harrison what he thought her favourite colour was, he’d have no idea. “This isn’t a big deal.”

“Oh, please,” Suz says, teary like the actresses on her favourite Portuguese soaps. Sure, Harrison doesn’t know his mother’s favourite colour, if in childhood she was the type of girl to make rings out of peach pits, if she was the type of girl to rip worms bare-handed, if she’d eat cottage cheese with cantaloupe, if she thought about enrolling in a life drawing class before she got pregnant, if her idols are pop icons of the 80s like his are, her favourite way to fold a paper airplane, when her birthday is. But he does know she does not cry.

When young Jesus stayed in Jerusalem unbeknownst to his mother, what did Mary do? Perhaps she stared at her hands, thought of the last time she touched him. Perhaps she wept. Or perhaps she found the closest mirror, wiped her sleeve against the glass until it glossed, and tried to find her son in her own reflection.

Emo boi dialogue (this is an ouchie lol):

Suz soothes her index finger over her thumb over and over. “Things have been so…”

“So what?” Harrison knows she could mean so many things. So raw. So indelicate. So tense. So like we’re a VHS set in reverse. “This isn’t a big deal. No one was hurt.”

“You cannot come and go as you please in other people’s houses, Harrison.” She can’t even look at him. He could call her out by name again—Suzanna, Suzanna, Suzanna. She winces every time he does, plays it off as a sudden headache or a flighty twitch.

“Isn’t that what I do at your place?” he says instead, his throat heady with the need to scream, or perhaps cry. “Parade around as your son and then crash on the couch?”

“Harrison,” Suz says. Her eyes are pellets of amber, her pupils preserved in their warmth. As a child, Harrison climbed onto the bathroom counter, pried his own eyes open between his chewed fingernails. The colour was wrong, too light, too cold, too much like his father’s—and what was a father? God is as much a father as he is a traitor to his own sacrificial son. Harrison stood there for so long his eyes stung, and when his lid eventually snapped back in place, the world stippled.

“What?” he asks now. Where the hell is God in this dim bathroom? Sucked up in the fan? Hiding in shower drain hairballs? And where is his father? Both perpetually missing like a television remote, a set of house keys. That’s right. God’s not here—not in the olive wall paint, not in the patterned hand towels, not in the piranha portrait above the toilet tank, not against Harrison’s chest like he used to be. He’s the only one here in front of his mother, all seven of Mary’s sorrows etched into a man. He almost laughs. “And my name is kind of idiotic, isn’t it? Harry’s son—but I’m nobody’s son.”

“You’re my son.”

(^^ Funnily, the Harry's son bit was in the handwritten draft and I thought it was kind of stupid, but I have been unable to delete it... there's something very real about that line, lol, yikes)

This finishes off scene A:

He kicks off the counter, pushes past his mother, walks down the hall and back into the living room. His ears ring. He’s not even sure what’s so bad about what she’s said. Change is good, isn’t it?

“Change is good,” he mutters to himself. “Change is good.”

The Bakers gape at him from the couch. This defectless couple like the blue and pink pegs screwed into a Game of Life car. Their faces scream GET MARRIED, JOB SEARCH, BUY A HOUSE.

Harrison looks at Sadie, her sad, dead eyes. “Do something with your life,” he says, then salutes and walks right out the front door.

Scene B starts very normally, right? Here's Harrison wondering what'd be like if he was... a shirt:

The city isn’t as interesting when it’s just cars, in fact, it’s not much different to Boston, to New York. Everything is brilliant and irrelevant and bleary and transparent, like a raw brain spinning around a washing machine. Harrison might like to walk to the laundromat ten minutes from Suz’s apartment, hop into someone else’s load and just let himself swivel until he’s unsure if he’s a man or a chemise blouse. The dreaminess of it all, the way silk knows it’s as defenseless as it is coveted. Harrison could be both, couldn’t he?

Harrison starts getting an inclination of where Suz is driving him:

“Suzanna,” Harrison says, wincing when the wild cherry air freshener noosed around her rear-view flails in his direction.

She takes the next exit, the car even faster now—seventy-five, eighty.

“Suz.”

“I want better for you.” Suz slows, now weaving through a residential neighbourhood. Men sit on unruly lawns, grimy hands fisted around beer bottles. At the next turn, a teenage girl hurries a sheltie down a crosswalk. A mother squints at a bus schedule while she nudges a stroller back and forth with her heel. Boardgame people just waiting for their next play.

Would you rather have a single conversation with your ex or jump out of a moving vehicle? We know Harrison's answer:

When she doesn’t answer, he wants to ask the question again, but something changes. Perhaps it’s the texture of the wheels beneath him, the way he remembers the grit of asphalt under the rubber like someone remembers the sound of their loved one’s footsteps. Perhaps it’s the way the sidewalk shimmers with rain that’s so familiar, the way the streetlamps seem to flash as they appear like a signal lamp, or perhaps Harrison’s not a fucking idiot. “Mom,” he says, already unclicking his seatbelt. She’s not going as fast now—maybe forty miles an hour, perhaps less. He watched a documentary the other day about jumping from moving cars, the best techniques.

'My heart is fine' and other lies this man tells himself (AKA em-dash wars):

“What’s heartbreak to you? A little boohoo? My heart is fine. Let me out of the car.”

“I know you think so—”

“Let me out of the—”

“But you can’t fight a battle and run from it at the same—”

“Suzanna—”

“You loved him—”

“And what the fuck would you know?” Harrison slams his fist so hard against the dashboard the plastic fractures, the break like the entire Pacific sloshing against an eardrum. Harrison doesn’t care. He does it again, again, until shards clatter, until his hand’s bloody, until Suz is horrified because he can be horrifying—and not just horrifying, but the entire fucking horror.

(also this horror line is... fantastic lol)

Aaaand final paragraph. He is not in denial. No way!

Perhaps Jesus would enter that apartment like it were his father’s temple. But Harrison is tired of gods, of ghosts, of men. He repeats this to himself as he hustles through the rain. No gods, no ghosts, no men. His teeth chatter. His hands shake. He’s not wise. He never wants to be again. No gods, no ghosts, no men. It’s easier this way, no need to contemplate the open window overlooking the parking lot, no need to contemplate who lives there now, who makes a bed there every morning, who drinks his coffee with half a cream no sugar at the breakfast table, who grinds an inkstick to practice his new interest in calligraphy, who reads poetry on the balcony every Wednesday, who finishes a one-thousand piece puzzle in an afternoon, who wears Suzanna’s angel pendant and says he bought it vintage, who takes up pottery, herb gardening, darts whenever he feels like it, who sleeps with both eyes closed at last. No need to contemplate what might happen if he spared one glance. Who he might see if he just looked back.

Harrison from now on:

Yes you will bb!

That's it! :) Chapter 3 is writing itself. I'll be back soon lol.

Rachel

#writeblr #writing #amwriting #writerblr #the way this sets us up for 24-karat harrison lol #like he said 'i will absolutely ruin my own life thank you mother'#anyway the catholic allusions hit different here #the mary x jesus relationship genuinely does intrigue me #happy to explore it (sort of LOL) here!#writingupdates #bodyback

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katyspersonal · 1 year ago

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Wait why do you mean Asthon (your vicar oc) is cut content?! Bro is real? Like really real?! Wait you got me curious. (or is it just about the fact that we don't know in detail the other vicars? I personally headcanon the woman praying in the grand cathedral of the nightmare as (one) the Vicar between Laurence and Amelia)

Argh, well, it is complicated! Yes, he is very OC-ish, but the thing is, this name WAS featured in cut content:

( x )

Basically, at some point, the names were switched, and Willem was called Laurence, the scholar that detracted from him was called Ashton, when actual Willem was also 'husk of Micolash', when there was also another face featured, called Herbert (Norbert in English)! Like, I think you know most of the cut content by now, but yeah, some names are obscure.

(It is also this same site in which I've learned that Norbert's name was also mistranslated! ヘルベルト is 'Heruberuto', and Lance McDolands also noticed that before in this ( x ) Tweet!)

You might recognise the first dialogue, too! Micolash has some voice files for cut dialogue ( x ), it was a little mistranslated, hence I am using this Japanese site, but the gist is still here!

So, yeah... Ashton and Herbert are the only names mentioned across the cut content that appear to be same/close in status to what Laurence and Emilia are! That's why I just took what I could, and in my thing there were four Healing Church heads in total; Laurence, Ashton, Herbert and Emilia, in this order! And each would bring something different during their era. In fact, I did want to make a line-up explaining who did what - whereas Laurence is self-explanatory, it is worth to mention how Healing Church was living after Laurence became a beast. But like, I first want to finalize the DRIP designs for them all, and I can't even get past Laurence's one already, because I am always distracted/working/sick/dead/etc fdsjhfh

Like, yeah, basically they're 'OCs with a prompt', since I had to design and write literally everything about them, but I still consider them to be revived cut content, because I hate giving myself any credit. xd

Fun fact! Ashton can also be a female name! I really wish I learned of it before I already wrote him as a male character, because we do need more nasty, evil women. But I tend to be a little rigid when I've already written a character in a certain way. Not gonna lie though, I often consider retconing him as a female character, because explain me how, HOW you can have """too many""" female villains? For now though he just really loves feminine things. Same as Damian. Or Micolash. Or Valtr. Or Ludwig. ...damn, I like slapping feminine aesthetic like FLEX APE too much, even where it doesn't quite fit. MOTHER OF MERGO, I AM-

(It's just an inside joke. It's funny because Gehrman would've dressed every hunter into a pretty dress if he could. xd)

But yeah, basically, I took what I could from the cut content, and tried to base my ideas on what it gave us. So, if Ashton used to be someone under Laurence - then that should be the dynamic in my thing too! So, underling of him in Healing Church, and the next vicar. Herbert was also mentioned to have been a previous leader of the Church, so that was saved too!

Fun fact - because Emilia used to be named Laura in cut content, I also have a secret 5th Vicar that went unused, with Laura being Herbert's daughter that didn't get to live to be the next Vicar. Well, TECHNICALLY, she is still alive! Remember that big Celestial Emissary in orphanage, who acts like the 'leader', and also, interesingly, drops Communion rune? I headcanon that the emissaries in that Orphanage are children that were taught to Think With Cosmos by the Choir, and Laura used to be their overseer while Herbert was at the position and she had not too much to do. But more or less, she refused to abandon the children when Croir's base crumbled the hell out, and sort of ascended with them. In either case, this is not quite Laura anymore.. But, after Orphanage got nuked, Herbert was the one to take in orphans that he could take and raise them within the walls of the Healing Church! Like I mentioned, Adella was one of kids (well, teens) he basically adopted. But she had the biggest adopted daughter energy to him, hence she became a successor.

Ashton, though? Honestly, he started and is still going as my "punching bag" djfdshfd I did not want to use Laurence as obligatory 'evil cleric' at the time, since he had too much tragedy potential, and too much complexity. But yes, Ashton is more or less the combination of some traits I just looooooove. -_- Self-projecting, bullying people for what he himself has, provoking someone to feel a certain way and then blaming their reaction as them being "insane" or "irrational", fuckin'... flirting with someone and when they start returning the h0rny, blaming them for "daring" to think that he, such a HOOOOOOLY man, would EVER feel this way, and force them to apologize etc etc dshdh + Every time I reblog that video where a woman pushes a priest off the platform, I caption it as 'this is Rom when Ashton was being homophobic' and it is still canon, so that too.

Like... I can write a list that will actually make your phone lag upon scrolling so much, but you already get the idea of what type of a person he is. However yeah, jokes or not, but he managed to gain enough of reputation of a 'saint', by both appearing rather oppressive in demeanor and by secretly normalizing cannibalism (he'd sometimes feed people concerned with falling into beasthood meat or blood of enemies of the Healing Church, that they'd not know about, but they'd feel "easier' after that (of course...), and would be easily gaslit by Ashton into thinking that he had something personally to do with it, to offer remedy :') Like... It was kind of a big deal while it lasted. That you didn't have to be burnt/shot/trapped into one of those coffins if you start feeling beasthood but you could like, idk, talk with Ashton and feel better? I love to think that his beast form would reflect that, where his back would resemble a Kin way more than a beast, and you'd only see his hideous true form when he turns around! So yeah, like 'wolf in a sheep clothing' sorta!!)

______________

But yeah, these are the ideas! I really love the guy, but at the same time a lot about him comes from a couple of years ago, when my knowledge on Bloodborne lore was a bit limited, so for now I question whether Ashton "stole" too much from the thing LAURENCE should've been doing during his corruption arc. So yes, just take it as me tossing ideas around. Thank you for the ask, I really needed to revisit this stuff!

#bloodborne #ask replies #bloodborne headcanons #cut content #vicar ashton #vicar herbert #father norbert

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sigmadolos · 2 years ago

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Anonymous said: Proshippers aren’t drama hun, they’re vile pedophiles using RP to whack off to. If you are okay following people like that.I’m gonna warn all my bsd moots to block you asap for condoning nasty shit

In all my years on Tumblr I’ve never had to deal with this sort of bs and I don’t like to give voice to hate, but alright here we go. Although I am fighting the flu and is like 5 a.m. so maybe not my most coherent post.

Anon, I don’t see you posting hate about Kafka Asagiri? You know, the man who WROTE BSD and the characters? The one who allows for child soldiers to blow themselves up? Who blew up a bus full of orphans? Who has Dazai abusing the shit out of Akutagawa? Or Naomi and Junichirio (esp Bones for this one) ? That’s problematic my friend. MOST media is problematic. But people LOVE Fyodor, they LOVE Dazai, but heaven forbid someone like’s Mori or some of these other characters. You can like a character and not condone what the character does. Dazai kills, Fyodor kills, Chuuya kills, Sigma kills. Does that mean I condone killing because I write a character that kills? No. Nor do i condone the religious extremism of Fyodor, or the torture Nikolai puts people though, or a million other things in media that I like. Also, I like mythology and let me tell you. That shit is problematic as fuck but funny enough, a lot of people even anti’s are like well no, THAT’S okay! Which.......I genuinely do not understand. Like...why is THAT okay? I do genuinely want to hear an explanation for that.

I don’t deal with the whole pro/anti shipper drama that goes around these days. But if I don’t like something? I block it. Be it a person, a ship tag, a character tag, whatever it is. YOU are responsible for curating your space. There are ships I loathe, ships that disgust me and I never ever want to see, and so I block those tags and that’s that. Easy, drama-free, and now my space is free from it. At the end of the day, it’s YOUR (well my in this example) responsibility to curate your online space. And that’s what blocking is for. I can recommend Tumblr Servant as an extension, you can write a URL or tag or whatever in it and have it so it’s not just blocked but just never appears if the URL is mentioned anywhere in the post. There’s a lot of subjects that need to be handled VERY carefully like abuse and mental illnesses and such, and I for one would never ever write certain topics in RP or ever, like pedophilia or rape & so on and so forth. And I don’t follow those who do because it makes me uncomfortable to see in RP. If your issue is DazAku and DazAtsu (which doesn’t?? even apply to me??) in both cases they’re 2 years different and both are 20+ ? And if its something about it not being perfectly healthy, boy do I have news for you because Soukoku, Fyolai, Fyozai, Shin-Soukoku, a lOT of those aren’t healthy from where they stand in canon. Not fanon, but canon. I will never, ever send death threats to someone, least of all over fiction. Because let me tell you, a lot of the real life authors? Very Problematic by today’s standards and sometimes their own.

Also, frankly, i’ve been in the Hunter x Hunter fandom and there’s way worse there. Like...canonly. FYI since I know the blog sending this or at least one, KuroKura isn’t underage (though far from my cup of tea for many other reasons) , Kurapika is 18/19 in that arc and Chrollo is somewhere close to 24/26 ish. Not my cup of tea for many reasons, but figured I’d point that out for you so you might want to delete that post if you’re trying to make that blog a good ‘evidence’ source.

While I’m at it. You can LIKE a character and despise what they do and who they are. There’s characters i HATE, but I can appreciate how they’re a good hero, antihereo, or villain, or how they move the plot forward. Characters are (optimally) vehicles for the narrative. A character can be WELL written and despicable, some are written PURPOSEFULLY for the audience to hate that character as a character.

Anyways, there’s my stance on things. If you want to soft or hardblock me, that’s fine. I’m not going to hate you for it, or stalk you over it, or whatever else people do. Please do whatever makes you comfortable. I will not perpetuate this circle of hatred. If I write with someone you don’t like, either block their tag (i tag it all) or if you need to softblock, that’s fine too Your health matters.

#drama tw #i hope this post is coherent enough #but here you are anon #if you want to block me then go for it #whatever you need to do to feel comfortable #ooc || an absolute mythology nerd

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bg-sparrow · 2 years ago

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17, 21, and 30 for the A03 Wrapped!

Yay, I love tumblr asks! And AO3 Wrapped looks so fun! Thanks for the ask, my friend!

17. Your favorite character to write this year?

I'm gonna go Buford Tannen on this one. I've been writing Marty, Doc, and Emma for so long that they feel like an extension of me at this point, but I hadn't tried writing Buford until February-ish when I wrote There Are No Roads.

He's so vastly different from Biff, too, and I really wanted him to feel like a threat, you know? In the films, Buford is the antagonist and comedic relief, but I wanted him to feel like the guy who had killed 12 men (not including Indians and chinamen). So diving into his character was really interesting and fun (and I was surprisingly pretty good at it)!

21. How many kudos in total did you get this year?

According to AO3, when I hit the "2022" button on my Stats page, I have accumulated 253 kudos this year.

30. Biggest surprise while writing this year?

A few! I'm not bad at writing villains? That was a surprise. I'm 2/2 on writing villains people love to hate since I got back into writing last year. The output has been a huge surprise. I never thought I'd write this much again. I also wrote some really dark stuff a therapist would question, and I wrote my first-ever slash. For someone writing fanfic for 18 years, that was a long time coming!

Thanks again for the ask! I've enjoyed the brief interlude in concluding my late cowboyvember conclusion! :D

#ao3 wrapped #bgsparrow #fanfic writing #fanfic writer ask #answered asks #ask game #writer ask game #just for fun #ao3 #tumblr asks

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rockynfriends · 2 years ago

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Hey everyone,

Mod Cleo here, and I’ve come to make an announcement.

No, not that one.

Rockynfriends started as “dailyrocketchu” back on June 2nd, 2017. At the time, I was friends with someone on Tumblr who ran a Mewtwo blog. I was running a whole Mario fanfic site at the time, so I’d created a Tumblr account and I reached out to them to see if they wanted to collaborate. They told me that I should try my hand at Pokemon blogging. I replied that I didn’t really know how to draw, and would not feel qualified to run an ask blog. They replied that I should give it a whack, and that I’d figure out what I wanted to do along the way.

I was studying cinematography and filmmaking then, so I was used to having a camera. I realized I needed a character who would be capable of multiple expressions, without me having to draw all of them. I searched my brain for Pokemon that had been represented in a physical form many times so that I’d be able to take advantage of those expressions, and of course, settled on Pikachu, the ubiquitous Pokemon mascot. Plushie acquired, character design figured.

But how to make him unique?

It’s hard to believe, but at the time I really didn’t know anyone had created Team Rocket Pikachu OCs. I wasn’t a part of fandom culture growing up due to living in a fairly conservative household and really only having one pop culture passion. So I thought I was doing something unique-ish by introducing Rocky, a Pikachu in Team Rocket who I planned to portray as a bumbling goofball villain, utterly failing at actual mischief.

That lasted two weeks, before @sometimesampharos, in conjunction with @adventuresquadharmony, made me realize that Rocky really shone when he was a clueless sweetheart, rather than an ill-meaning comedic relief.

I taught myself more editing and photography techniques, interacting with other blogs and inviting asks. My first photos were done on a flip phone because yes, I really WAS that behind the times. I was always limited by the fact I couldn’t draw other folks’ PokeOCs, and I do think that this probably meant some blogs ignored Rocky, but at the same time he managed to develop some close friends, and as he became closer to characters, I began to befriend their mods. Cynthia and Cassiopeia joined the team, and they helped round out his personality with their own unique attributes. I had a small cast of developing characters and the beginnings of a story.

One day, after a particularly discouraging interaction where I was dismissed for my lack of illustrative capacity, I received a contact from @duskffyart. They wanted to collaborate. I couldn’t believe my luck, and frankly, I still can’t. I not only found someone who could illustrate the emotions and situations I had imagined, but who could temper my wackier ideas and introduce ideas of their own. Rocky became more fleshed out still, and gained a little brother, as his friends became his family. All the while the Pokeblog community continued to evolve (ha) and while some blogs went away, others remained, and still others befriended Rocky all over again. We wrote a long, complex narrative, and eventually did a reboot that, in retrospect, signaled the beginning of the end, though we didn’t know it yet.

A lot happened in my life since Rocky became a part of it. I’ve found out I’m actually a woman. I’ve traveled to several countries, found a new career, lost friends, gained friends. I’ve started a Twitch channel, bought a house and a car, and finished college with flying colors. I lost my dad to a heart attack, underwent betrayal from people with religious affiliations, grappled with the effects of a pandemic that’s STILL ongoing, struggled with self-loathing and insecurity, and more than once, wondered if my life was really doing any good for anyone.

If you told me when I started this blog what life had in store, I would not have believed you. But Rocky, Cass, Cynthia, and Riley have all, in some measure, been there for me through all of it. They mean a lot to me, but lately I’ve felt that I’m going through the motions.

That’s not because of metrics, by the way. Rocky never broke 750 followers at any point. I’m told that’s a small audience -- and yet some of the kindness that it showed to me is impossible to forget. No, my exhaustion comes down to the fact that the story has been mostly written, but thanks to circumstances beyond anyone’s control, life has not allowed us to execute on it.

If Rocky and his family did anything for anyone reading this, I hope it was good. In a way, we’re one of the last ‘old guard’ Pokemon blogs, and I realize that shutting off means we’re one page closer to the end of a whole chapter in this community.

It’s been a serious privilege to do this. I don’t discount for a moment the absolute joy I’ve felt at times working on this, and my co-mod is a delight to work with. I look forward to continuing our collaboration on other things.

I’m also not saying that the gang will never come back...but if they do, it’s unlikely to be on this blog. I think they’d deserve a fresh place to begin.

The goal was always to make people smile. If you’re reading this, thanks for making it to the end. I know I get verbose. No words are going to be enough to really say how much this all means to me, and it’s not easy admitting I need to move on. But I hope to look back on this fondly as the longest continuing project, besides my self, of course, that I’ve ever worked on, and I hope that, even if it was just for a few seconds every couple of days, that we brought a little extra light into your life.

Take care, everyone!

#pokemon #rocky #cynthia #cassiopeia #riley #long post

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traincat · 3 years ago

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I’ve been trying to piece together a few things from your Twitter and Tumblr posts alike and still can’t make heads or tales of things, so would you mind helping out a FF & spideytorch noob? 1) what is currently happening with Johnny in the comics? (I’ve fallen head over heels for this guy, largely all your doing) 2) when’s the last time he and Peter have interacted, canon wise? (And do you think upcoming interactions are likely?) 3) your thoughts on if they’ll have him come out in the near future? (has that ‘biggest change to the fantastic four’ teaser come to pass yet?) Love all your content, thank you!

I'd say no problem but then I started thinking about this current run again and got a headache. But yes, I can do that to save you from reading it, because it is very largely not good.

So I don't think it's unfair to just flat out say the current Fantastic Four run is not very good, largely due to writer Dan Slott's efforts. Slott was previously on Amazing Spider-Man for 10 years, to mixed opinions, but a large portion of Spider-Man fandom, myself included, blames him near singlehandedly for the decline in quality of Spider-Man books over those ten years. I will say, in the interest of fairness, that Slott as a writer has an incredible fondness for the Spider-Man/Human Torch relationship, and that a lot of the recent teamups and interactions between them have been written or co-written by him. So it's all not all negative here. But in general, I personally find Slott's more recent comics (the last seven-ish years especially) to be badly plotted out, messily characterized disasters that feature characters written with all the emotion of a cardboard cutout. That's me putting it nicely.

To explain this fully, you have to understand the position Fantastic Four comics were in from the years 2015 through 2018, both in the fictional 616 universe and in the real publishing world. Following the 2015 Secret Wars event (great if you want some Johnny angst in the background of your plot), the Fantastic Four were disbanded -- Reed, Sue, and their many biological and found family children were presumed dead but in reality were remaking the multiverse, unable, for a reason that was never clearly defined, to reach home. Ben and Johnny were left on Earth. They had an unspecified falling out, likely due to Reed and Sue's absence, and went their separate ways -- Ben joined the Guardians of the Galaxy and went to space. Johnny was featured on both Inhumans and Avengers books. What's notable about this period is that it's the first time since 1961 that there was no Fantastic Four book being published by Marvel. Now the real world reason behind this is both complicated and extremely petty: Marvel really wanted the Fantastic Four film rights. Marvel denied this explanation at the time, stating that the reason was sales motivated, but it was a thoroughly flimsy excuse and Jonathan Hickman, writer of 2015's Secret Wars and overseer of the current X-Men plot, gave an interview saying the decision was film rights motivated. This decision kept the Fantastic Four books off the shelves for three years, up until the Disney-Fox merger, which secured the X-Men and Fantastic Four rights for Disney's Marvel Studios. Marvel then announced that the Fantastic Four book would be returning. So that's a little bit of background as to the precarious place the Fantastic Four currently occupy in the Marvel universe -- it's worth noting that this year is their 60th anniversary, and Marvel has done very little for it. Compare this to the X-Men, whose film rights Marvel also obtained during the Disney-Fox merger, and whose books are currently dominating the publishing lineup. The Fantastic Four definitely occupy an unpopular position, one Marvel themselves is at least partially responsible for forcing them into.

But to move back into the actual content of the book -- the readjustment period Slott wrote reintroducing the Fantastic Four into the Marvel universe can be described as clumsy, at best. It's never fully explained why Reed, Sue, and the kids couldn't return to Earth, something that was explored in Chip Zdarsky's 2017 Marvel Two-in-One, which featured Ben, Johnny, and Doom on a multiversal roadtrip to try and find their family and which I on the whole recommend, despite it having an awkward ending due to being cut short by Slott's announced Fantastic Four main title.

(Marvel Two-in-One 2017 #4)

Instead, the Fantastic Four return to a Marvel universe a little different than how they left it, with the Baxter Building -- formerly the offices of Parker Industries, the company Doc Ock started in Peter's body during Superior Spider-Man that Peter inherited after his defeat and then lost spectacularly when he trashed his own company to fight nazis (good for him) -- occupied by a different fantastic foursome in a plot that goes nowhere and does nothing. This is somewhat emblematic of the early days of Slott's run -- he introduces ideas that fail to go anywhere, including Johnny's rekindled relationship with his other best friend and former college roommate, Wyatt Wingfoot, who he was seen being very cuddly with in the early issues.

(FF 2018 #1) A small group of Fantastic Four fans have argued for a while that if Marvel was to have Johnny come out, a relationship with Wyatt would feel very natural -- they're already close, with Wyatt being an important Fantastic Four supporting character since the '60s. I have some further analysis here on the conspiracy theory that Johnny and Wyatt were supposed to be in relationship at the beginning of this run but that that plot was, for whatever reason, nixed. I don't know that I entirely believe this theory, for the record -- but I do think the pieces line up remarkably well.

Anyway, that didn't/hasn't yet happened, obviously. Slott instead for the most part put Johnny on the back burner for the beginning of his run, up until the Spyre arc, which I have reason to believe is the main story he pitched that he credits with securing him the Fantastic Four title. The Spyre arc suggests that the Fantastic Four's failed space exploration during which they got their powers wasn't just to beat the commies to the moon, as Lee and Kirby envisioned (simpler days), but to reach a specific planet outside of our galaxy. When the team sets out to conquer this mission, they arrive at the planet, but are quickly captured. The planet, they find out, operates like a soulmate AU -- everyone has a fated person that they are matched to via a gold armband. Reed and Sue are soulmates (and Ben is confined to an underground subterranean with the other monsters, because this is a Fantastic Four comic) while it's discovered! Shocker! That Johnny is actually the soulmate of the one the planet's inhabitants, a winged woman named Sky, with the suggestion that this is both why Johnny's previous relationships have never worked and why he loves space exploration -- he was just trying to get to his Soulmate TM.

(FF 2018 #15) "What's going on here? Where are my clothes?" As you can see, this didn't start off super great, with Johnny being separated from his family, stripped naked, and put in Sky's bed with a soulmate armband slapped on him. Did I mention they're only removable if your soulmate takes it off for you? And that Sky has consistently refused despite Johnny asking her to? Yeah. It's bad. (I think it's important to note Johnny's long history as a victim of assault plays into this narrative, whether or not Slott is personally holding that in mind while writing, which I don't believe he is. cw in the linked post for discussions of sexual assault.) There's an additional issue here in that Slott has a history of problematic writing regarding women of color, featuring characters he's created to act as love interests being oversexualized, infantilized, villainized, or some mix of all three, with two examples of this phenomena being Cindy Moon and Lian Tang, both of whom he introduced in quick succession in Amazing Spider-Man. Slott certainly didn't have to write Sky as manipulative or controlling towards Johnny, but that's what he chose to do, and that factors into the bigger picture of unfortunate themes in his writing.

Sky returns to Earth with the Fantastic Four despite Johnny appearing unenthused about the idea and initially generally reluctant to interact with her. Apparently they went on a few dates after this and kind of made up. I don't know because I stopped reading for about ten issues in there but I feel confident I missed very little. It's hard to talk about the Sky plot without referencing Johnny's previous interactions with a character named Lyja, a Skrull whose relationship to Johnny I have a long breakdown of here. It's doubly hard, because Lyja actually showed back up in Fantastic Four during this plot. Lyja's modus operandi has remained consistent throughout almost all of her appearances, which I guess makes sense, because she literally has no storylines that do not involve her being obsessed with Johnny, and this recent story isn't any different: Lyja shows up, Lyja disguises herself as another woman in Johnny's life to get close to Johnny, Lyja gets caught and claims it was all fine because she did it for love. This time she disguised herself as Sky.

(FF 2018 #32) Not gonna lie, kind of proud of him for this one. That's one of my problems with Slott -- very occasionally, he busts out good moments, only to undermine them with the rest of his narrative.

In the same issue, Alicia Masters, the first woman Lyja impersonated in order to get close to Johnny, uses her supervillain stepfather's radioactive clay to control Lyja's mind and send her back to space, and I do think she utilized girl power when she did this. Johnny, left reeling after Lyja's latest attempts to trick him into a relationship, ends this issue by sleeping with Victorious, Dr. Doom's right hand woman.

I know she pegged him. I know it. This scene was a little controversial in Johnny fandom, because a lot of people viewed it as Johnny cheating on Sky and thought that that action was out of character for Johnny. I'm personally of a little different opinion, which is that regardless of whether or not you view Johnny and Sky in a committed enough relationship that Johnny's tryst would count as infidelity when all Johnny and Sky are bound by are magic plot soulmate bracelets, I think Lyja's involvement changes things significantly when it comes to Johnny's characterization. All of Johnny's "playboy" periods, if we can call them that, coincide directly with Lyja having been in and then left his life again, which I think makes a certain amount of sense -- it's Johnny trying to wrest control back after a situation where he had none. None of this is explicitly canon, I have to note, but sometimes in comics you have to do the work yourself. So I think this is a case of something being accidentally extremely in character that Slott accidentally stumbled into because he had these love triangles in mind, not because he put a lot of thought into it.

Speaking of love triangles! Johnny sleeping with Victorious gets more complicated when Dr. Doom announces his intent to marry Victorious -- not because he has any romantic interest in her (this engagement caused a lot of uproar in Fantastic Four because Victorious had been previously referred to as being like Doom's adopted daughter) but in order to install her as Latverian regent in his absence. I'm not going to lie, I love a political wedding. Victorious, for some reason, thinks Doom will be deeply upset that she slept with some closeted blond twink and the member of the Fantastic Four he views least as an enemy and more as an annoyance. Johnny, who Sky is currently not talking to because she "felt" him sleeping with Victorious through their magic plot soulmate bracelets, also feels nervous about Doom finding out about this, which I guess is slightly more valid. Anyway, for some completely ridiculous reason, Victorious decides the best time to tell Doom about this little indiscretion is when they're standing at the altar, which coincidentally the Fantastic Four are also standing at, because Doom asked Reed to be his best man in a not at all homoerotic little setup involving midnight swordfighting and Reed slipping Doom's emerald ring onto his own finger. Sorry to sidetrack into DoomReed territory here but it's just like. It's just a lot.

(FF 2018 #33) Also, Ben walked the bride down the aisle. :,) Look at his gigantic hand.

Anyway then Doom decides he's going to kill everyone in a completely reasonable and not at all overblown reaction to Johnny and Zora having what was most likely both disappointing for Zora and weepy for Johnny sex. And that brings us up to where Fantastic Four comics left us yesterday -- in answer to your "big change" question, that's most likely coming up in the next issue, so it hasn't come to pass yet.

Having gotten all that out of the way -- the last time Johnny and Peter interacted canon-wise was in the recent Empyre Fallout Fantastic Four, at the end of the Empyre event:

It was cute! Slott does right good interactions between them. This is possibly the Stockholm Syndrome talking. I don't know if more interactions are likely imminent -- the Empyre event was fairly recent. On the other hand, Slott does like writing interactions between them. So I'd give it about a 50/50 shot. I was skimming the letter page in the latest issue and someone wrote in asking if Peter was likely to appear in the pages of Fantastic Four again any time soon, so there is definitely a demand.

As for Johnny coming out -- I don't know. It's not a call I feel comfortable making at this moment, which I guess means I wouldn't bet money on it. I'd like to say yes, especially because I think Slott set up, whether that was his intention or more likely not, several good places in his run where Johnny could have come out. The beginning, when he's implied to be living with Wyatt again and where he and Wyatt are paralleled against Ben and Alicia. Ben's bachelor party, where Johnny laments not finding the right person -- specifically person and not woman -- and where Ben tells him to "be brave, Johnny Storm." And the soulmate planet plot, where I think could have had a very different and much better ending if Johnny had told Sky that she couldn't be his romantic soulmate, because he knows he wants to be with a man. But those are just places that I think would have made good opportunities for a coming out story. Instead, Johnny's been involved (dubiously) with three different women over the space of the last 10 issues, which is more heterosexuality at one time than he's been confronted with in the last 60 years. So my thoughts are still that it's going to happen eventually, but quite possibly not anytime soon.

Hope that helps! And that my incredibly long answer about what's currently going on with Johnny in comics sheds some light on things!

#johnny storm #traincat talks comics #*replies #long post/#wednesday spoilers

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janiedean · 3 years ago

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I feel bad for all the nice J*nsa shippers who like their ship for whatever reasons (tropes, pretty art, aesthetic appeal, whatever) and know it's not canon but get associated with the misogynistic Dany hating crowd who act like Jon being attracted to Ygritte is J*nsa foreshadowing because red hair (I guess Jon should fuck Edmure Tully too? Omg give me Dark!Jon getting revenge on Catelyn by seducing her brother!) Tell me something. I'm new to the fandom but was J*nsa popular before the show? And I've heard something about the OG J*nsa shippers being alienated by the new shippers who insisted it had to be canon and acted like the series is called, "A song of J*nsa #danysux." I don't find that hard to believe because I know people who are now ashamed of calling themselves J*nsa shippers. Like, at this point, it's not only rival shippers who hate it. Even Gendrya/Braime/Jon stans/etc have started disliking that ship. You know your fandom is a problem when people who have nothing to do with Jnsa have a problem with it.

me: reads this ask

me: iwastheregandalf.gif which I can't find now but

okay anon buckle up because I am sadly well-equipped to answer this ask but before I do lemme tell you dark jon seducing edmure to take revenge on cat is LITERALLY THE BEST THING I'VE EVER HEARD but *clears throat* ALL RIGHT THEN.

disclaimer: as anon says I have no issue with like the shippers mentioned by anon in the beginning and ngl I agree, I have ABSOLUTELY ZERO FUCKING STAKES in the j*nsa vs j*nerys war and the only het jon ship I gaf about is jon/ygritte and we all know where that ended up I just... have been here since 2011/adwd was over and all the fic around was just for the books under secret lj communities and asoiaf qualified for yuletide and I have... seen... things.... and I actually have like uh had... beef... with some people in there and I know things bc ppl who hated those others told me stuff so anyway *sigh* buckle up anon I'mma tell you the story of jon shipwars through the years

in order, the old gods help me here, under the cut bc this is long as fuck

when I got into fandom also given what numbers were on ao3 one ship was popular and it was sansan. no like sansan was lit. the only asoiaf ship on ao3 with more than 200 fics. jb had twenty when i checked first. jc had like around 100-ish because of the show but sansan dwarfed anything. I posted the first jon/ygritte fic on the ao3 tag and the fourth throbb fic and like the others were all reposts from lj kinkmemes. nothing was popular before the show except for sansan when it comes to huge numbers bc grrm doesn't like fic and it was all hush hush until the show made it impossible to control and that ship was the one with a huge enough fanbase it actually had numbers, so like... j*nsa wasn't popular in the way nothing else was popular until it got screentime on the show

now, that stated, j*nsa had a... fair amount of fic for a rareship which was mostly book-based and from og shippers that were there from before the show and liked it for what it was but literally none of them thought it was gonna be canon, like it wasn't huge or anything but it had a small but dedicated fanbase who did their own thing and thought it was fun/liked the idea but that was it

that fandom had their own niche of hcs that they cultivated and shit except that like... at the end of S5/beginning of S6 there was a surge in shipping for... well obvious reasons bc it was obv sansa was getting to the wall and that would have been all nice and good but a) it was the time puritanical shipping was starting to take root and the 'shipping sansa with sandor or tyrion is hella problematic' rhetoric had started to circle coming from sans*ery shippers mostly but I'mma not open that fucking can of worms here, b) while the ending of S5 had more of a theon/sansa spike, the j*nsa stuff started getting big

now here we have to mention my villain origin story ie: j*nsa fandom had this one stan whose name I won't make because honestly it's been years and if she's still around I don't want her to remember I exist who was a bnf, wrote for... the website that created the whole larry/carol thing etc who was really fixed on this thing that j*nsa was actually canon and started writing extremely popular meta about it. now you're gonna ask how do you know, I know because this person once wrote a meta named 'why robb stark is a dick' and I told her that it was really fucking bad meta and she took it so badly she kept on trash talking me on her blog/her podcast (I was apparently the insane robb stark fangirl l m a o good lord) and like that was when some sane ppl who argued with her informed me in pvt that she was basically harping on the CANON thing when they'd have been okay with like... it being crackshipping and that she was basically cultivating a hoarde of followers who were harping on them/the ogs and basically ostracizing them;

I would like to add that this person - before her tumblr got 'accidentally deleted' and remade it therefore deleted most receipts for, er, her so-called meta which included stuff like ned and cat raised sansa as a sexual object and only wanted to sell her like cattle - had at some point started a round robin fic thing where... some of the characters mocked openly said stuff that some of the og fans had said specifically targeting them and people in that side basically went harassing anyone who didn't agree with that specific notion

now never mind that this person basically coined an entire term to describe ppl who liked white guys and excused all their wrongdoings out of my conversation re robb basically lying about everything I said as if I didn't have the receipts and tried to sell shirts with it and it didn't work and like then she got kicked out of her own website because she was telling her commenters disagreeing pretty shitty insults (considering I was called psychotic for disagreeing with her that time I don't doubt it) I think at some point she stepped back from fandom bc idk wtf she's up to these days and I don't want to, but basically at that point the dam was broken and there was a bunch of puritanical shippers harping on anyone who didn't agree with j*nsa is canon endgame stuff

this also includes an incident when those ppl were like... passing themselves as throbb shippers and ended up trying to tell t*hramsay shippers off the theon tag based on moral reasons and I ended up arguing with all of them (and they were all from that crowd) which in turn landed me in contact with other og j*nsa shippers who were like detached from that fandom bc those same people harassed them away as well ssooooo fun

anyway when S6 happened everyone was high on it and whatnot but I wasn't gonna begrudge them that I mean... you shipped it for years, canon is delivering you, good for you, but then j*nerys happened

god j*nerys happened

aaand basically...... I mean personally I was there like are y'all seriously arguing about the best incest jon ship out there but like basically the j*nsa endgame side was like AH JON IS PLAYING DANY SEE IF IT DOESN'T HAPPEN, the j*nerys obv got defensive af and both sides were sort of alternatively shitting on jon/ygritte anyway and depicting any other romantic rship jon could have as abusive™ and during S8 it just got worse and like I tried to stay out of it but basically from what I'm seeing now idk how the j*neryses are doing but on the j*nsa one it's ah jon's gonna play dany anyway and she's going to go insane like in the show so SHOW TRUTHING EVERY OTHER WAY and like again denying that sandor exists or that tyrion exists and like I barely touch my corner (sansan) but I ended up arguing with j*nsa/th*nsa people on twitter who were antis and is2g it was white-hair inducing and I know for sure the sansa/tyrion shippers were harassed to hell and back throughout so FUN

and even if the show didn't go there now since everyone there banked on the jnsa endgame thing and admitting you're wrong is like... not a thing, they still haven't let go of it and attach to that ship any shred of evidence which honestly is grasping at straws half of the time (like... the sansa/alysanne parallels like guys please no) and which is why every other ship is starting to get fed up, attaching canon proof of stuff from other ships onto theirs see that batb argument and jb is platonic but jonsa is not nvm taking all the sansan stuff and throwing it on j*nsa but then denying that sansan has canon evidence (like guys I had to read sansa touching his shoulder when saying gregor wasn't a true knight wasn't meaningful and we were seeing things please) and blah blah blah

this also goes hand in hand with the fixation on like... villanizing dany at all costs and like is2g I have zero investment in dany or her storyline I don't even remember it and I don't particularly care abt her either way and sure af I'm not for j*nerys endgame but like.... some stuff I read is completely excessive esp when fixing on how she's a completely mad tyrant who's gonna have to be put down and like... guys no

(also there's some srs stannis hate in that corner which I honestly don't get why they even care abt stannis but I had to read stuff like ppl don't recognize that dany and stannis are the real villains in this saga and like........ idek)

I think most of the og shippers are gone or don't ship it openly bc they don't want to be attached to the drama but like I also think they're pissing off everyone else bc like... I mean a bunch of them also were down with sansa being paired with other ppl as long as it meant a good ending for her except those ppl were... like everyone but the ppl she has actual contact with in canon which meant that at some point sansa/gendry was a thing and like.... you can imagine why arya/gendry shippers & arya stans were fed up, and there's also this tendency to behave like sansa is the center of the entire saga which like these books is named a song of jon snow basically can we pls make peace with it and personally I've had it with both j*nsa and j*nerys people since they started with that dumbass JON/YGRITTE WAS AN ABUSIVE RELATIONSHIP rhetoric but I'm also fed up with the total ignoring that sandor exists/depicting us as delusional and honestly I also was by proxy fed up from the harassing of the sansa/tyrion shippers soooooooooooo

there were also instances of 'well theon is an acceptable choice other than jon bc he can't threaten her' which... i mean we all know what that meant and I'm not even commenting it bc it's one AM and I have no force to but I don't have to explain why it's not a progressive take now do I

there were also metas about how cousin incest being legal in half of the world means that jondany is a worse incest and j*nsa doesn't count as such and I was basically there like guys please just fucking own up to it but honestly I chose to forgot where I read that and I couldn't find the link if I tried

tldr: no one wants to admit that it's not gonna be endgame which considering the amount of fic they have on ao3 is imvho useless bc they have more content than like.. anything I ship that's not jb or that's actually like canon *cries in joncon/rhaegar but I mean renly/loras is canon and has less fic than them* so idk what's the problem with enjoying that instead of insisting it's gonna be canon when not even the show validated it while show truthing anyway when the only show truthing that can be truthed is the small council made of minorities and possibly jon eventually fucking off with the wildlings but not like that but like most people who thought it wasn't gonna be endgame had left/were made to leave by the time S7 rolled by and at this point since wow isn't out yet everyone is fandom-grasping at straws to find stuff to discourse on and we're here beating dead horses *shrug*

so that's... how it is but I would again like to point out that I don't judge ppl on their shipping, I don't particularly care about this entire feud bc I only ship jon with ppl he's not related to in whichever way and I try to stay out of this mess bc I don't really care to argue with ppl who have already decided to bend canon to whatever they want and will have to realize that it's not what grrm wrote at some point but like I have a very good memory and the above rant is as objective as possible also bc again I don't literally have a stake in that race I just think romantic/endgame j*nsa is not a thing and that ppl should stay in their lane and not harping on other ppl who ship whatever in general but especially when their ship is the most popular thing in fandom in the first place /two cents

#1 #2 #3 #4 #5 #anonymous #ask post #anti-jonsa #anti jonsa #anti-jonerys #anti jonerys #both of them for equality

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savnofilter · 4 years ago

Text

Second to Last Catch

Dabi x 『FEM』Reader

ᴡᴀʀɴɪɴɢ(s): dabi is a slight asshole.

ᴡᴄ: 1.3k words [5 mins, 10 seconds].

ᴀ/ɴ: ilyt babe! i hope this turned out good, i kinda wanna writer a second part,, this is a little crack-ish cause i wrote this at 4 in the morning kfbnbv thank you, anon!

Dabi isn’t use to people getting in the way of his plans.

~ yk,,, ever since he left the bird’s nest.

anyways, Dabi was a lad to always go solo dolo. before he even heard or thought of the LoV is when he had already been tallying up his kill score for his own personal vendetta.

it wasn’t until one fateful night when he itched to get his next target, one who deserved it.

you see, he wasn’t one to deep dive searches on his counts, but this one was what peaked his interest.

the grade A scum he was about to burn alive was ready to take.

he spent so many nights perfecting to catch the damn criminal -- and for Dabi to consider this guy worse than him meant that there was a severe problem.

Dabi had spent nights, days even just to get this guy the pain he deserved.

but unlike his other easy and quick (at least to him) kills, you were there already finishing the deed...

“What the hell.” Dabi said in the same stoic tone he used. His short sentence had gained your attention, cerulean blue eyes meeting with your e/c orbs. Your pupils widened and shrunk in exact confirmation that you were seeing the correct person in front of you.

“You.” That was all you said. His brows quirked curiously at you, his once wide and wandering gaze narrowed to a condescending look you’d have to catch if you read his words wrong.”

“You?” Dabi repeated after you, stepping through the window and into the office of the man he planned to kill. His nose flared as he watched the ink from your blade-like feathers impale the ‘trash’ that laid on the floor.

“Yes, you!”

Oh, so we were playing games now.

He had been confused for a second, staring at it for a second before giving you a look over once again. He hadn’t noticed the quite measurable pair of black wings that sat on your back. Your lips twitched into a proud grin at his ogling, spreading your wings to give him a good look at them. He rolled his eyes at your cocky attitude. He didn’t like it and he was sure he wasn’t going to like you either.

You on the other hand? You were going to have so much fun.

“I’ve seen you on the news. That little group who terrorizes those little student soldiers.” Had it been for you not grinning already you would’ve broken character. You had always had a way of picking at people's buttons, never fully pressing it to trigger them so much more.

Your response had left him stunned, at least he didn’t show but you could see right through him. If he could blush it would’ve given him away right about now. His jaw clenched as he had been grouped up with Shigaraki’s hot mess of a plan, knowing damn well for himself he could give a rats ass about what they were doing. Or maybe he was getting so heated that you had boiled down their plans as “terrorizing” teens. Or the fact that he was just a bit goofy for not even thinking about it that way.

“Didn’t know birds squawked this much at night, you should shut up.” Dabi relaxed his jaw as he tried to calm himself down. Something was tugging at the back of his head, and it seemed that you weren’t the only one who recognized one another. You laughed at his words, crossing your arms as you leaned against the wooden desk.

“Wow. You know making remarks about people’s appearances because of their quirks these days is a touchy subject right…” You trailed off, lifting your hand to cover your mouth as you finish your sentence “Burnt fry.”

His stance relaxed, already use to the comments about his skin and appearance. While he let your trash travel from one ear through the other, he had examined the crime scene that he sadly didn’t have the chance to commit. It took almost too long for him to realize before it clicked to him.

You were a vigilante. More a less a broke, cheap, rip-off of the no-good hero society. Still clinging onto saving the day with the last remaining bits of hope you could offer to the world. He wasn’t surprised to find out and put the pieces together about who you were. He was amused to find that the talk of the city wasn’t what he had thought. This one -- correction, you were interesting. He huffed to himself as he concluded his inner monologue, looking at you again once the image of your murder had been ingrained into his head. If he looked too long it never did him any good.

“Hellooo-”

“Don’t you have a curfew to abide by instead of flirting with a villain, Princess?” He remarks, smugly shoving his hands in his pockets and leaning against the open window that welcomed the drafty breeze in.

Your cheeks heat up at his remark. You knew that he was talking some bullshit and yet you still let him surprise you like this. “I do not need a curfew.” Damnit. Was that all you could come up with? Really?

Dabi made a move to walk towards you, instinctively making you move away from him. You tripped over your own feet as you watched him get closer, plucking one of your large feathers and sticking the now poisonous and knife weapon at him. “S-Stay back!”

Of course, he didn’t listen. Soon enough he had backed you up against a wall, only about five feet apart from you. He looked down at the pointed blade, his eyes were narrow again as he slapped it away from your hand. The feather flipped and firmly stuck into the floor of the office. You didn’t dare to look back at him and your beautiful wings shrunk along with your witty responses.

You had no idea why you were so nervous, there should be no way why the person you’re supposed to fight against was making you stammer like this. You were hoping that if you just stayed still enough that you’d stay still. You held your breath as you froze in place, earning a snort from the villain.

“What are you doing?”

“If I can’t see you, you can’t see me.”

The silence that passes between you is pregnant. He couldn’t figure out how… bold you were. Thankfully two could play at that game.

He grabbed your jaw and moved your head to look at him. The look in your eyes was of a different breed and it made him uncomfortable. You two were fighting a silent war to outwit (if it’s that what we want to call it) each other while still feeling the odd cringe of how you got along. You watched up at him expectantly, hands pressed against the wall to give you some support against the curiosity if he would burn your chaotic ass or not.

“We should work together,” Dabi started carefully, a teasing edge to his voice. He leaned down to your ear, lips ever so slightly brushing against your earlobe. “As a team.” You spluttered at the feeling, pushing him away and squealing as you patted your ear trying to rid of the butterflies in your stomach and the flutter of your heart.

“Ew, you even squeal like a bird.”

You whipped around and glared at him, reaching over and under the forgotten desk to press the emergency button. His eyes widened as he watched you scrambling to find files that you needed, taking whatever you needed and shoving it in your duffle he didn’t even realize you had brought with you.

“My business card. Back pocket.” You pointed at him before shifting nodding for him to get the message. You wasted no time in diddle dallying. You left no room to give him a choice to talk, speed walking to the window and hopping out with a smile. “Call me if you’re lonely!”

Dabi was left standing there awkward just like when he had originally entered. His hand skeptically reached to touch his butt pocket, hesitating upon feeling that there was something stiff in it. He tilted his head in curiosity and pulled out the piece of ripped up paper. Though, your vigilante name and number read clear as day. He scoffed thinking about how fast the interaction had been, already finding himself missing your company.

He frowned at the sound of the police arriving outside the business building, taking it as a sign to finally leave as well. He gave your shitty card another look over before stuffing it in his pocket once again, shaking his head as he made his exit using the window as well and closing it behind him.

He’d have to call you soon.

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beggingwolf · 3 years ago

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hi so I've just eaten too much ice cream, feel vaguely ill, and I'm here to tell you All About How I Failed At Outlining for SGKF this year!

that's partially just a fun tagline, but it's also a bit true. I told my friends I'd be trying to use several different outlining methods to try and knock out a plotty piece for the fest, and things did not go to plan!

important to begin with: I am what is referred to as a "pantser." I tend to just start writing. this is strangely contradictory to my personality, which deeply loves plans. unfortunately, what often happens is plans and outlines ruin my excitement and drive while working on a project (it tricks me into thinking I've done all the work and resolved the plot), leading me to abandon it.

and though I can throw together pretty words and made a decent fic, my fics never turned out as good as they could have been. I kept telling myself that if I planned in advanced and worked out what I was doing BEFORE I did it, I'd be able to craft a fic with such care and attention as to make it really SHINE.

so, uh, kinkfest rolls around, and since I was a mod I could see all the prompts before they even got released to the public, so I basically had a WHOLE EXTRA two-ish weeks to start planning and writing.

did I? NO.

so, despite the fact that I collect writing advice like a magpie , I'm not the greatest at implementing it. if you go into my SGKF google folder, you'll find a few instances of me TRYING to implement writing advice like metawriting:

(and you'll see some fics that didn't get finished/make it into the fest!)

my issue was (and still is) that I think I value every little word too much. this is a bad thing: I'm an overwriter by nature. when I get words down, I want to keep them because I feel like I worked hard for them, even if they're not great or don't actually serve the story in the way they should. that's not to say all my metawriting was bad; it wasn't. I tried it out for A Drowning in California as well [which will henceforth just be referred to as "California").

I had a whole subfolder for California. what kind of amazed me is how different my initial notes for the prompt are from what the story actually ended up being. here, take a look:

literally almost none of this is in california. the WWE and UFC stuff made it in, and so did sid wrestling with horny, but that was it. I was going to start this fic in the locker room, with sid wrestling someone, and it was seriously going to be a story about sex—about sid wanting to hold geno down in bed. that was the premise.

and instead, we got a really emotional story about familial rejection and the isolation it can make people feel. SO! something happened along the way, right?

when I started getting into the plot that would support this supposed sexfest, this is where I went at first:

geno wants the relationship to get serious, sid is like mentally still a 12 year old who just wants to wrestle people and doesn't want to talk about his emotions, and prefers to use physicality to communicate. this doesn't work for geno, who wants ... more

we can start to see the actual emotions come through, the things I was interested in: sid using touch to talk, and geno desperately wanting more

what did the most good for me, in the end, was "doing" the metawriting by talking with my friends.

I told them what i thought this story was about ("I'm thinking about making this a story about relationship-defining, maybe? and the communication needed for a lasting adult relationship? I think I'm going to set it in california/LA, where Sid has invited Geno along for the first time for his California Summer Fun/Training/Escape, whatever, and Geno's going to be emotionally preoccupied with Defining The Relationship—maybe they've been on-again-off-again? maybe they're just new to this, like almost a year deep, and they're not getting younger—and thinking this trip is about that [or hoping this trip is about that, and realizing it isn't, and being disappointed].") and they told me what jumped out at them.

Jes told me what would ramp up the tension would be a deadline of some sort; "Geno’s going to break up with Sid or make some decision or something, or there’s something approaching where they have to make a will they or won’t they decision of some kind related to the core ‘defining the relationship’ issue. Geno’s going back to russia and in previous summers they’ve always slept with other people while apart? or Sid has a wedding coming up and he’s offhandedly mentioned taking someone else as his plus one?"

I liked her thoughts. it made sense to add an external pressure to all this, and that wedding idea stuck out to me the most.

Lis said I should add a jealousy angle, so you can largely credit her for the club scene: "one thing i like to sort of headcanon/imply about sid's california trips is he uses them to hook up anonymously. so you could have, like, sid and geno seeing sid's friends, but also accidentally running into some of sid's friends. and geno's like oh, great, so here i am doing this horrible summertime training that i hate because i don't need to train in the offseason actually, and i'm learning what exactly sid gets up to when we're apart."

My magical solution these days is GOING FOR WALKS. do it if you're able. it clears out your brain. so on my walks I ended up deciding that I wanted a taylor crosby wedding. I like taylor as a character, and as a person with sisters I just like writing her in. best of all, she and sid are close and I like writing "I'd do anything for my family" sid.

and then I was like. oh. what if it's not that sid is afraid/nervous to bring geno, it's that he can't.

I... wasn't as conflicted as I thought I'd be about writing sid's parents as homophobic. I prefer to write them as supportive; I think troy crosby's been eviscerated more than he should have been in older fanworks, and though I respect their right to make fictional!troy whatever they want, I've been a little skeptical of outlandish takes on him ("he doesn't say I love you to his son because a camera caught them mid-interaction once!") ever since I read how the media has found him a convenient narrative villain while he tried to keep his underage son safe from the media as a child and while they needed to cook up Spicy Stories about squeaky-clean sid.

uh, tangent aside, I always thought I'd never write a "parents are the villains" story, but I did here. it felt right. it was easier, too, because they're not PRESENT in the story. I didn't have to write trina actually being horrible to her son. I just had to skirt the edges of the wound.

which works well on two fronts: I don't have to actively write the crosbys being horrible to sid, and I also leave more to the imagination of the reader, and that almost never fails to make the work better. whatever the reader imagines them saying to sid, it's going to be 10x more hurtful than anything I'd write.

I dug really deep on some personal emotions and fears I experience as a gay person for a lot of sid's arc here. sid is deeply imperfect in this story, and he's internalizing his pain and the horrible thing that's happened to him, which is making him pull away from his partner, and sid is not responding how geno wants, nor is he responding well, period, though he's trying in his own wounded, stilted way.

and beloved geno, whose tender heart is so hidden away for fear of someone hurting it. I really like writing geno; he's huffy and emotional and sometimes bitchy and feels things SO deeply.

once I had more of an idea, I was already working on a more detailed outline. this is where I seriously took Jes's advice and WROTE EVERYTHING OUT! it made it so much less daunting, because I didn't have to be figuring out my next steps AND crafting sentences at the same time. also this is where I tell you that the title of this post is mostly a lie, it was metawriting I failed at.

This outline also meant I avoided writing large swaths of things that should've been cut. Another beta told me I should delete three scenes and condense a bunch of emotions into the club scene, and she was SO right. Cutting events out of an outline is WAY easier than cutting out pages of text.

Ironically my outline kind of deteriorated after the club scene, but that's alright: after I wrote the club scene, I actually had a clear vision of what I wanted the end to be. I just had to trust myself. I CAN do this, I CAN still just write intuitively sometimes!

I think California did what I wanted it to do. I'd love to try something out that's longer and has more story arcs in it (jes has a post for that too!) but I think that's best saved for another, longer project, though 18k isn't short.

next up is maggie stief's writing seminar that I bought a month back. I'm going to start working on that this month and see how I like it. I have a few halloween fic ideas, plus spookfest, so these next two months we should be cooking in the kitchen!

#on writing

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merinnan · 4 years ago

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Fic Tag Game

Grabbed from @hils79, because it looked like fun.

Name: Merinnan, which I’ve gone by for... fifteen years now, I think? Prior to that, I mostly used Calicia (and sometimes Zoi).

Fandoms: Like Hils, I’m only going to list the fandoms I’ve actually written fic for.

Star Trek: My very first fandom, and the one I’ve written the most fics for (so far - I suspect that DMBJ will overtake it. It certainly already has in terms of word count). I was (and am still) primarily a DS9 fan, and was a huge Kira/Dukat and Garak/Bashir shipper back in the day. Most of my Trekfics are DS9 fics, but I also dabbled a little bit in TOS and TNG, and had one or two crackfic crossovers that involved Voyager characters. Discovery has tempted me with a few fic ideas, but I haven’t written anything for it yet.

Bishoujo Senshi Sailormoon: aka, the show that first had me seriously questioning my sexuality. Look, Haruka and Michiru are #goals, don’t judge me. This is also where my Zoi name came from, after the first season villain Zoisite, whom I cosplayed several times. Unsurprisingly, my main ships are HaruMichi and KunZoi. Despite this fact, neither of my published Sailormoon fics are HaruMichi.

Bubblegum Crisis Tokyo 2040: A short-lived fandom, but one I still liked enough to write a fic for and get the OST CD.

World of Warcraft: I wouldn’t say I’m really part of the fandom, per se, but I’ve been playing since the dying days of Burning Crusade, am a huge lore nerd, and started writing a crossover fic that is currently on indefinite hiatus. I do plan to come back and finish it, but first RL got in the way, and now I have to try and remember where I’d actually been planning to go with it.

A Court of Thorns and Roses: That crossover fic I just mentioned? Yeah, this is what it’s a crossover with. ACoTaR fandom went sleepy for awhile, but it’s back up and kicking now that A Court of Silver Flames is out - if any of you are still following me, it’s great to see everyone active again! To the surprise of no-one who knows me, I’m a big Nessian shipper.

Mo Dao Zu Shi / Chen Qing Ling / The Untamed: I came to this fandom via ACoTaR, actually, after a certain person (hi, @rhysand-vs-fenrys!) wouldn’t stop gushing about it :-) This is the fandom that really and seriously got me back into regular fic writing again after 15-ish years. I’m a multishipper here, and have written / am writing WangXian, NieLan, XiCheng, XuanLi, and XiSang.

Guardian / Zhen Hun: MDZS fandom led me to Guardian, which, along with DMBJ, has devoured my life in a way that hasn’t happened since my Star Trek days, and I love it! WeiLan is my major ship, but I’m also quite fond of the DaMian life raft.

Zhu Yilong: Yes, I’m going to list a person as a fandom. Zhu Yilong is one of the stars of Guardian, and is both incredibly pretty and an incredibly talented actor. So much so that I have suffered through some truly terrible dramas just to watch him in them. I do not write Z1L-fic, since RPF of living people is a personal squick of mine, but I am working on a massive crossover fic of most of his characters.

Mo Du: Guardian led me along to more of Priest’s works, such as Mo Du, which is now officially my favourite book, and I adore the main WenZhou ship. The Mo Du fandom right now is pretty tiny, and I’m still working on my first fic for it, but I hope that it will grow with the donghua due out this year, and the drama having just started filming.

Daomu Biji / The Lost Tomb: I initially came into this fandom because of Zhu Yilong, who played Wu Xie in the Reboot / Reunion / Chongqi drama, and then I got sucked into the fandom pit of all of the books and dramas and spinoffs, and it’s wonderful and fantastic. I have written so much for it, and have so much more planned. PingXie and PingXieSang are my main ships here, but I’m also a HeiHua fan, and very much enjoying the RiSang pool noodle that @kholran created.

Tropes: Hurt/Comfort and crack are my major ones.

Fic I spent most time on: A toss-up between Endings and Beginnings and Reunion, both DS9 fics. Endings and Beginnings is an alternate ending to the show, while Reunion is a Gul Dukat-centric fic set around, oh, season 5ish? Both were written for and initially published in print fanzines, so in addition to time spent writing, there was a lot of back and forth for editing, etc.

Favourite fic(s) you’ve written: Look, I honestly couldn’t say. I like most of the fics I’ve written, and there are several that I’m really proud of and really like.

Fic I spent least time on: Silent Graves, a super angsty DMBJ/Lost Tomb Xiaoge fic. I think I wrote it in like 15 minutes.

Longest fic: Cat’s Paw, a DMBJ/Lost Tomb PingXieSang canon rewrite fic I co-wrote with @xantissa, at 247 826 words. For fics written by just me, not with a co-writer, then that would be Nevermore, my WIP MDZS/CQL XiCheng Pacific Rim AU, at 22 276 words and counting.

Shortest fic: Every entry in my DS9 Drabbles series, with each one at exactly 100 words. Although if you count them as a quintdrabble, then Indiscretion (a DS9 missing scene vignette about Gul Dukat, set during the episode of the same name) at 169 words.

Most hits/kudos/comments/bookmarks/subscriptions: The answer to all of these is either Cat’s Paw or Nevermore, so I’m going to give the next highest.

Hits: Those who fear darkness have never seen what light can do, a DMBJ/Lost Tomb PingXie supernatural AU fic co-written with xantissa.

Since this fic also takes the highest kudos, bookmarks, and subscriptions after Cat’s Paw/Nevermore, I’ll skip to the next fic along on each of those.

Kudos: Stars fall like diamonds, a DMBJ/Lost Tomb PingXie missing scene fic from Reboot/Reunion/Chongqi.

Bookmarks: A Knight in Bloody Armour, another DMBJ/Lost Tomb PingXieSang supernatural AU fic (but a different supernatural AU) co-written with xantissa.

Comments: Ears and Other Related Calamities, yet another DMBJ/Lost Tomb PingXieSang supernatural AU fic (of a different again supernatural AU) co-written with xantissa.

Subscriptions: The Rescue Job, a Guardian WeiLan Leverage AU, currently at one chapter complete and posted out of a planned five chapters.

Fic you want to rewrite/expand on: We have plans for a prequel and a sequel to A Knight in Bloody Armour, and a spinoff fic for The Zhang Identity (a DMBJ/Lost Tomb PingXie AU that is complete but not yet posted. It will be posted in April as part of the Small Fandoms Big Bang).

Share a bit of a WIP: This is from an as-yet-unnamed post-canon fix-it fic for the Guardian drama:

It was hurting again. Zhao Yunlan curled up into a tight ball under the hospital blankets, trying to ignore it enough to try to get back to sleep. He knew it wouldn't work, because he couldn't remember a time when it ever did, but it was always worth a shot, right? He squeezed his eyes shut and held himself tightly for a few...moments? Minutes?...before grabbing his stuffed cat and clutching it while he forced himself to breathe deep, slow breaths the way the doctors back in Spring City had taught him.

Eventually, the pain died back down to its usual dull ache, the one that was bearable and let him play, and watch TV, and do school lessons with his mother. One day, she said, they'd find a doctor who knew what was wrong, why he hurt all the time, and the doctor would give him medicine that would keep the worst pain away so that he could go to an actual school and meet more kids than the ones who lived in their apartment block or who frequented the same playground that he liked to go to.

Zhao Yunlan tried closing his eyes again, seeing if he could go back to sleep, but he was far too awake now. He sighed, sitting up in bed and looking around the room. Again. It was just like the hospital rooms in Spring City, and in Kiyota City. He figured that if the doctors here in Tomorrow Mountains couldn't help, his parents would take him to yet another city, and the hospital rooms there would probably look the same, too.

Then, over the faint beeping of hospital equipment, and the quiet murmurs further down the corridor of nurses at the nurse station or seeing to other patients, he heard a soft sniffling sound, like someone was trying not to cry too loudly. He picked up his stuffed cat and looked at it.

"What do you think, Dead Cat?" he asked it. "Should we go and find them?"

Dead Cat didn't answer, of course, but that didn't stop Zhao Yunlan from assuming that it agreed with him, and slipping out of bed. His feet touched the cold tile floor with barely a sound, and, still holding Dead Cat tightly, Zhao Yunlan padded over to the door. He looked up and down the corridor, then left his room to track down the sniffling noise.

He wasn't surprised that it came from the next room. He was surprised that it came from another kid, a boy who looked to be about his age, huddled in bed and wiping his eyes.

"Hi," Zhao Yunlan whispered. The other boy looked up in surprise, then stopped to clutch his chest as he began to cough. Once he'd finished coughing, Zhao Yunlan and Dead Cat were perched on the end of his bed.

"I'm Zhao Yunlan, and this is Dead Cat." He held up Dead Cat, moving one of the paws to wave hello. "What's your name?"

The boy wiped his eyes again. "Shen Ye."

I tag: ALL OF YOU! Are you a writer who hasn’t done this yet? Consider yourself tagged if you want to be.

#fanfic meme #dmbj #daomu biji #guardian #mo du #star trek #ds9 #bishoujo senshi sailor moon #sailor moon #mdzs #cql #acotar #bubblegum crisis #world of warcraft #zhu yilong

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andromeda3116 · 4 years ago

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now that atla is on netflix and the avatar renaissance has begun, i decided to dust off my favorite atla/zutara fanfic (half asleep by @seserakh) and see if i still loved it as much as i did in 2010 and goddamn but do i ever

it’s like if hayao miyazaki wrote a sequel to avatar: the last airbender. it’s got the creepiness of the spirit world, it’s got meaningful and meaty emotional arcs, it’s got katara being a badass, it’s got nuanced portrayals of all the characters, especially aang and mai (who so often get shafted in zutara fics). it’s so freaking well-written and intense and plotty while still being so character-driven and amazing and deep.

aang is so well-written in this fic, i tried to think of this version of aang when i was writing such selfish prayers, he feels so much like himself, while still acknowledging the problems inherent in his relationship with katara. he’s never vilified and their relationship is never belittled -- it’s messy and realistic and painful and you really really want them both to find closure and move on to being friends again. it’s so complex, and tbh, she did it much better than i did in my own fic. this fic is the gold standard of aangst and how to do it right.

and my god, mai! especially in 2010 when it was first published, so many fics turned her into a straight villain that i sort of expected it to be going that way (and it encourages you to suspect her in the beginning) but she’s so in-character and sincere, and even though she and zuko aren’t together anymore, she’s genuinely offended at the presumption that this somehow means she would work against him or not want to help him. the way their relationship -- and the problems with their relationship -- is discussed is, again, so real and messy and painful and human. and her budding friendship with katara gives me life.

it’s so evocative, too. i mean, in describing the spirit world and the sensations and feeling of being there, it’s so vivid you can practically smell it. “hollow bones on hollow wood” is a phrase that still comes to mind nearly ten years after i first read it, it’s such a good description not just of a sound but also of a feeling that a sound leaves in you when you hear it. it really leans into the creepy spirits that we saw in season one, into the otherworldly feeling of the spirit world, and crafts a tale that lingers, both as a haunt and as a warm memory. that’s such a difficult thing to pull off, to be able to describe something so alien in such a way that you really see and hear and smell and taste it and it echoes in the back of your throat and stays there for a long time.

that’s what makes me say that it’s very miyazaki-ish in how it reads. it leaves that same taste in your mouth as princess mononoke or spirited away -- that indescribable breathless feeling like you’ve just wandered through a fairy forest and had a supernatural experience that no one around you could understand unless they went through it, too. it leaves you blinking in the sunlight and feeling shifted, and it sticks with you so much that -- well, it’s been ten years since it was posted and i first read it and here i am making this long rambling post about how incredible it is. like, even if you don’t like zutara, you should read this story just for how amazing it is.

now that i’m ten years older and rereading it, it’s even better than i remember it being. it’s so damn good, guys. my single and only complaint is that it’s on FFN rather than AO3. like, the only fault in this story is that you gotta read it on Ye Olde Pit.

half-asleep. read it. my god, read it.

#zutara #zutara fic rec #avatar the last airbender #atla #atla fic #i vastly prefer this fic to anything that the comics ever dreamed of giving us and am frankly offended that they didn't make a comic of it #i would 100000000% read a comic version of this story oh my god i can't even imagine how beautiful and incredible that would be #god this fic is so damn good #READ IT

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rsadelle · 4 years ago

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The best books I read in 2020

I read 167 books in 2020, which is a little more than one and a half times as many as I read in 2019. (I had a crisis of counting at one point when I read a string of novellas, but ultimately came down on the side of if I can check out the ebook from the library as a single volume, then it counts as a book for the purposes of my list.) Only ten of those are books I reread, which is a fairly low reread number/percentage for me. The large number of books I read this year made it extra difficult to narrow down a small number of the best ones, which is why this list is longer than in previous years. It is, in fact, long enough that I have put it behind a cut to spare your dash.

Top 11 fiction books/series I read for the first time in 2020

Bread Alone trilogy (Bread Alone, The Baker's Apprentice, and Baker's Blues) by Judith Ryan Hendricks - I so enjoyed this trilogy about bread baking and figuring out your life and building a home/community and love. I read it at the beginning of the pandemic, when everyone was baking bread, and it was one of those things I was sad to finish because I didn't want to leave the characters.

Never Have I Ever by Joshilyn Jackson - I have read a lot of suburban housewife with a secret books over the last couple of years. This was an excellent example of the genre with the good use of a thematic motif and a second secret reveal after you learn what you think is the biggest secret. Content notes: I had to skim a few chapters because of the large amount of weight and disordered eating content (which is relevant to the character), and there is sexual abuse of a young teenager by an adult as part of the story.

The City We Became by N.K. Jemisin - This was such an interesting concept and done so well. It was one of the most popular books my sci fi book club read this year, and the New Yorker in our group said it was her favorite New York book ever. The most disappointing part of this book is that it's the first book in a trilogy and the other books haven't been published yet. Content notes: eldritch horror and realistic racism.

The Sci-Regency Series (My Fair Captain, The Englor Affair, My Regelence Rake, Diplomatic Relations, and My Highland Laird) by J.L. Langley - The delightfully ludicrous premise of this series is that there is a gay Regency society in space, which makes for some really fun romances. I've loved this series for over a decade, and I was thrilled to reread the first three books before reading the two new books that came out this summer. I recommend reading the novels in order, as there is an overarching plot involving the Intergalactic Navy that is interesting and ongoing without overshadowing the romances. Content note: these are on the erotica end of the romance spectrum, which means they have very explicit sex scenes. I wrote a lot more about this series in a Yuletide promo post comment.

The Most Fun We Ever Had by Claire Lombardo - I was so sad to finish this book! I have read a lot of commercial/literary fiction about families in the past few years, and this might be my favorite. I found the characters really compelling and enjoyed seeing their differing perspectives. I didn't want to leave this family.

Throne of Glass series (Throne of Glass, Crown of Midnight, Heir of Fire, Queen of Shadows, Empire of Storms, Tower of Dawn, and Kingdom of Ash) by Sarah J. Maas - This YA fantasy series shouldn't work given its constant escalation, and yet, somehow it does. I greatly enjoyed it, and I cried more than once at the last book. This is a series where I recommend not reading anything about future books until you've read all the books before them so you can enjoy the continual reveals. These are very much genre novels, and if you don't like the genre, these books will not be for you. Content note: there is a lot of genre-typical violence.

The Great Believers by Rebecca Makkai - I admit that I was mildly skeptical about this book given that what I knew about it was that it was a story about the AIDS epidemic where one of the two timelines is about a woman trying to reconnect with her daughter, but I ended up loving it. The two alternating timelines fit together beautifully, and I thought it did a good job of not eliding the horror of the AIDS epidemic experienced by the gay community in favor of the straight woman's experience. I do remain skeptical of how many awards it won; while it was a genuinely excellent book, I also know that awards bodies love dead queer people.

We Set the Dark on Fire and We Unleash the Merciless Storm by Tehlor Kay Mejia - I loved this YA dystopianish (more cultural class divide than apocalypse or singular villain in control) duology about queer women falling in love while working toward revolution. The world building was good, the plot was good, and the romance was good.

Sisters of the Vast Black by Lina Rather - This novella about an order of nuns who travel through space in an organic slug-like spaceship was absolutely wonderful. It deals with issues of faith, purpose, central control, and doing what you can to make the world a better place.

Sorcery of Thorns by Margaret Rogerson - I loved this YA novel in a sort of Regency-ish setting about a girl who grew up in a library full of magic books and her dealings with some sorcerers, complete with a romance. Content note: attempted mental coercion and institutionalization.

The Wren Hunt and The Wickerlight by Mary Watson - This is a YA duology about rival druid groups in modern day Ireland. I found both books totally compelling with interesting druid politics and magic. It was also really interesting how well we get to see the worst of both sides of the rival druid groups in the two different books.

Top 5 books/series I read and then thought about a lot in 2020

The Twisted Ones by T. Kingfisher - A friend recommended the author to me. This particularly book is a supernatural horror novel I don't necessarily recommend. However, I have continued to think about elements of it since I read it. (Before you @ me about the author's other work, this was the third of her books I read and the other two were in the more beloved fantasy novel genre.)

The Calculating Stars by Mary Robinette Kowal - I actually didn't like this book that much. We read it for a book club, and it had an interesting concept that wasn't super well executed. However, I have thought about elements of it a lot since then, particularly in comparison to some of the other sci fi I encountered this year.

Gideon the Ninth and Harrow the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir - I don't know how much "I actively thought about these a lot" describes my actual experience of having read these, but given their popularity and the number of conversations I had about them, I can't omit them from this post entirely. I liked the first one once I figured out what kind of story it actually was, had absolutely no idea what was happening at any point in the second one, and discovered with both of them that I have a much more limited vocabulary than I thought, at least when it comes to death-related words. I am invested enough that I will read the third book when it comes out, but probably won't read any more of the author's work beyond that. If you want to know more about what I thought, I wrote a very spoilery post about them.

The Sixth World (Trail of Lightning and Storm of Locusts) by Rebecca Roanhorse - This is a pair of novels set in a post-apocalyptic world where there's a magically/divinely-erected wall around Dinétah (the Navajo lands). The worldbuilding and characters are so interesting, and it's a series where some of the details stuck with me and I would randomly think of them. I'm looking forward to reading one of her other books in a few months for my sci fi book club.

Wild Mercy: Living the Fierce and Tender Wisdom of the Women Mystics by Mirabai Starr - This was one of two books about women mystics I read and disliked this year, and the more disappointing of the two as I'd heard an interview with the author that I found interesting. I continued to think about this one a lot in an angry, "and another thing!" way, which did help me articulate more of the things I dislike about new age-ish framing of "feminine" wisdom/divinity/knowledge.