#ALSO I ACCIDENTALLY WROTE A NOVEL I'M SORRY

[pluckyredhead]

…Sorry if this is a bit weird but do you have any queer romance book recommendations? I ended up finishing the last binding trilogy because you posted about it (you have excellent taste lol) and I’m a bit stuck at the moment with what to read next.

Not weird at all! I absolutely have recs! Also Freya Marske has a brand new book out called Swordcrossed if you want more of her writing. (For people who are not anon: The Last Binding is an Edwardian historical fantasy romance trilogy and it's excellent.)

Okay recs:

KJ Charles: My favorite queer romance author, hands down, and also the most prolific! She's written over 30 queer historical romance novels (and one queer historical mystery), mostly M/M, all historical and set in the UK during various time periods ranging from the 1810s to the 1920s. My two favorite things about her work: 1. It draws very heavily on the history, meaning that her characters never come across like modern people in historical cosplay. And 2. she's great at creating genuine conflict between or around characters. I have read too many romances where everything is uwu softness and nothing hurts but Charles's characters are always either fundamentally divided by politics, class, ethical perspectives, lies, and/or tragic backstories, OR they get along fine but a murderer is trying to kill them, OR, in the best of her books, both.

My favorites are probably The Will Darling Adventures (1920s trilogy all about the same couple fighting a criminal secret society), A Seditious Affair (1810s, a radical firebrand and a Tory government official accidentally fall in love while having extremely kinky sex), An Unnatural Vice (1870s, "spiritualist" con artist and the crusading journalist trying to expose him), and Any Old Diamonds (1890s, The Saddest Boy in the World hires a sexy jewel thief to rob his horrible father, kink ensues), but you can really start anywhere - Think of England is where I jumped on and it's nice because it's more of a standalone (there is a companion book but Think of England comes first). If you liked The Last Binding, you might want to start with her Magpie Lord series because they are also fantasy romance. (Freya Marske is a big KJ Charles fan and it shows, in a good way.)

Allie Therin: Sticking with the fantasy romance angle here for a moment, Therin has a 1920s trilogy called Magic in Manhattan that is all about the same couple, a prickly magic-user named Rory and the big hunky WWI vet who loves him, as they fight various evil magicians. (HUGE oversimplification but you get it.) There's a spinoff trilogy, the Roaring Twenties Magic series, which has two books out so far. I love NYC, the 1920s, fantasy, and queer romance, so obviously I love all of this.

But I'm particularly obsessed with her Sugar and Vice series (also a trilogy, first book is out already and the second one comes out next month) which is set in modern day Seattle and is about an empath named Reece and the super dangerous empath hunter called the Dead Man who may or may not be here to kill Reece, and also there's a serial killer on the loose. This one is a suuuuuuper slow burn (they don't even kiss in the first book!), so you have to be patient but I read the second book early and yeah I'm obsessed and desperate to talk to other people about these books.

Charlie Adhara: More paranormal romance! I wrote about these books at greater length recently, but the short version is: FBI agent gets transferred to the super secret werewolf division of the FBI and partnered with a hot werewolf, they fall in love, spend five books developing into The Ultimate Power Couple, I'm in love with their love. There's a spinoff series called Monster Hunt but only one book is out so far.

TJ Klune: I probably don't have to tell anyone about TJ Klune anymore and I'll admit he can be hit or miss for me but I did really love Wolfsong. As long as we're talking werewolves.

Dessa Lux: Okay these are more erotica than romance but Omega Required is a comfort read for me, which is funny because I'm not usually an omegaverse gal. But this is about a very sweet alpha doctor who offers a marriage of convenience to a very traumatized omega and it's literally just nonstop cuddling and soup. She also has a series that's just ever-growing werewolf gangbangs, if that's a thing you're into. Like. A cartoonish amount of werewolves at the gangbang. It's delightful.

Cat Sebastian: I will admit Sebastian is also a little bit hit or miss for me. I loved her very first trilogy, the Turner series, which is very much in the vein of KJ Charles (Regency romance, class divides, lots of conflict). She wrote some more 19th century stuff after that and then moved into mid-20th century romance (50s-70s) which is honestly very rare. She also basically...stopped writing any conflict at all. I would say a large portion of her books after the Turner series can be accurately described as "two best friends who are secretly in love with each other sit in the same house/apartment and enjoy each other's company until they get together." I know a BUNCH of people who absolutely love that and they are well-written! But I really have to be in the right mood for them.

Sarina Bowen and Elle Kennedy: Okay I am not a hockey person, but you must, you MUST read Him and its sequel, Us. Hockey-playing BFFs, one is gay and secretly in love with the the other, the other one is like "I don't think I'm into dudes but I'd better give you 300 blowjobs to make sure." (Spoiler: he's into dudes.) Honestly the stupidest men imaginable. I love them so much. Bowen has written a few other queer romances solo and I'm working my way through her back catalog now.

Rachel Reid: Yes it's more hockey romance but. BUT. Heated Rivalry. Two of the top players in the NHL, on rival teams, have famously hated each other for years...and have secretly been fucking since they were rookies. Reid is another one where I'm still working my way through her books but Heated Rivalry is something special.

I am SURE there are more I'm forgetting but this is long so I'll stop it here for now! Also folks should feel free to reblog with further recs, she said selfishly.

[whinlatter]

author's note | chapters 13 & 14: the moult & the vulture

now the dust has settled... thank you for reading chapters 13 and 14 of beasts! thank you also to the askbox angels who asked for the author’s note (it is still mad to me someone reads these). now, it's inquiry time, baby - and boy are the gloves coming off, and the secrets spilling out. the wait was long; so were the chapters. sorry, again, about that. so - kindly read on for discussion of some major themes and plot points, a little on song choices, and some juicy deets and a sneak peek of chapter 15... and 16…

✨ spoilers for this chapter below the cut  ✨

writing notes and headcanons

first - a disclaimer: am going to talk about that cliffhanger in a separate post up shortly (i rambled on too long). it will be up shortly!

second - a thank you! the reaction to these chapters has me in absolute bits. i'm a soppy sentimental shit at heart and this really did make me the happiest little girl in the world. so thank you forever and ever for that.

third - an acknowledgement, as ever, to @saintsenara, whom i bounce all the inane details off of, whose takes absolutely slap and who i hope will forgive me for making her boy rookwood such a flop.

divide and conquer/accidentally wrote two chapters again: what am i like! the trouble is - life-stuff aside - i was excited about these chapters (and the reveals), but also put far too much pressure on them to do a huge amount of heavy lifting, and to get the story to a place it wasn’t yet at and needed to get to quick. the writing challenge for these chapters was that i needed a series of plots to hit a rolling boil so we can get to the flashbacks to ginny’s war and all the reveals. and it took fucking ages to work how to structure and serve them as each needs at this point in the fic, and try to find a set of themes/devices to tie those plots together into something cohesive (especially because writing fic is much more like dropping tv show episodes in structure rather than actually sharing a novel, in part because you drop them one at a time at intervals, and i think the more successful ones can stand alone while also serving the overall body of work). i have - i confess - knitted, in my time, and you know when you have really thick wool and thick needles and you’re trying to slowly eek off one stitch onto the other needle and it actually really starts to hurt? it felt like that :) 

two inquiries, both alike in dignity: god, i love an inquiry. the truth being dragged out kicking and screaming by  the state, buffeted by political winds and a rapacious press? inject it. at last, the past is getting properly dredged up, and all sorts of buried secrets are getting unearthed in the process. so: in the present, the hogwarts inquiry is under way, and the wizengamot has assembled to hear what exactly has been going down in that cursed drafty old castle. in the past, though, we have flashbacks to a separate inquiry, into the events of 1992-1993, after the chamber of secrets was opened, where it wasn’t hogwarts on trial, but ginny herself (in a way). the events of ginny’s first year have haunted her in diffuse, quiet, private ways in the flashbacks throughout this fic so far, but we’re moving into the part of the fic where we see just how much they changed the course of her life and who she is as a person. in canon, ofc, we only see harry’s view of the aftermath of ginny’s ordeal in the chamber - dumbledore is reinstated, lucius gets kicked off the governors, ginny weasley is ‘perfectly happy again’... but would that *really* be the end of it? doesn’t it seem perfectly plausible the ministry would investigate given the scale of publicity and threat to student lives, given (as discussed previously) the ministry canonically holds inquiries of varying scales for all sorts of things in canon? wouldn't they hold one for this?

ginny's guilt: in CoS, young harry never blames ginny for any of it: she was hoodwinked, he recognises, and not at all culpable. it’s very harry, and it’s a compassionate read of the situation. but given how little we know dumbledore tells anyone about what the diary actually was (even lucius didn’t know), wouldn’t ginny expect to face at least some questions about her own involvement and culpability, even if she was clearly to some extent also a victim? (the nod to colin’s mum is there as a reminder that there were real victims of the basilisk attacks: ginny could easily have been responsible for the deaths of several children, including her own friends, and if it were my child i think i’d want to ask at least a question or two). what i wanted to show with these flashbacks was this very formative experience for young ginny grappling with her own guilt and her place between two wars, having to face difficult questions about her own complicity in dark magic and attempted murder; for there to be echoes of ginny’s experiences in the experiences of young death eaters during the second wizarding war, and to start to properly draw these themes about choices, moral agency and grey areas, about children’s radicalisation and wars fought both by and through them, and, in particular, where ginny weasley sat within them. what i wanted to show was how ginny’s political and moral worldview was shaped in those pivotal years: her guilt, her sense of her own failings and inadequacies, how discontent she was to be a victim, how obsessed she is with being an agent and a soldier, how much she feels she has to prove. i might bash out a proper meta on this but i think it’s so telling how ginny talks about her second year later on in canon - how haunted she is by the forgetting (in OotP), and how much she sees it as having ‘[taken] orders’ (in HBP), rather than thinking of her possession as just playing host to another entity. here, it’s dumbledore who points out the key traits that led ginny into riddle’s path: her loneliness and isolation, her many insecurities that made her so vulnerable, her fear, a certain desire for self-preservation. even though we know most hogwarts students don’t seem to really know what happened in CoS, and certainly not ginny’s part in it (terry boot in OotP is like ‘lol did you kill a basilisk with a sword!’ which seems to be the extent of the student body’s knowledge of what went down). but i like the idea of there being a record of ginny’s darkest moment in her file, ink and paper proof of this most formative experience in her life, dumbledore dancing around her defence but keeping his cards close to his chest - and also there to pursue if anyone planning a hogwarts takeover was interested in finding someone close to the order of the phoenix who might be a weak link in the chain and be persuaded to flip…

dumbledore: dumbledore appears here only in flashbacks - he’s still absent from his portrait in the present - but it was sooo fun (re)introducing him as a character for the fic for the first time. what i liked about writing dumbledore’s dialogue (though it’s actually much harder than i expected, and i don’t feel that great about some of the lines) was that it was a chance to get a bit meta with the dumbledore bashing tropes that circle around fandom - you work through child soldiers, you monster etc - and try and do something a bit more interesting with them, or at least ask some questions (child soldiers or human shields? can children fight for what they believe in? how you fight a fair fight when the other side sees children as fair game - do you confine children to victimhood, or do you acknowledge, or even encourage, their own moral agency and desire to fight back?) dumbledore is walking a very difficult moral line here: defending ginny, but declining to disclose information that might conclusively exonerate her - eg. the existence of voldemort’s horcruxes - in the name of his most favourite thing, the greater good. in dumbledore’s mind, ginny deserves a defence, but not the whole truth, because that’s too important and bound up in a much bigger picture. dumbledore is always playing 3D chess while everyone else plays chequers. should dumbledore have revealed the horcruxes to conclusively exonerate ginny here? no, right? and yet. one day ginny will name her middle son after this man, and we might start to think about why. is it just loyalty to harry? or something else? i wanted us to see ginny’s political worldview being built, and her view of war and a soldier’s role in it, all themes that will be super important as we go back in time to see her war as she lived it in future chapters.

the intellectuals: one of the least developed but most interesting parts of the wizarding world in canon are the ideas and the people who have em. the series has a lot of important characters that are supposed to be eminent thinkers, but it doesn’t ever really linger on ideology, in the end settling on a kind of boilerplate liberal universalist good vs evil message which is fiiine but much less interesting than actually playing around with the concept of political thinkers and political thought in wizarding culture. it’s why i find the department of mysteries so interesting and so ripe with potential; the idea of a space of intellectual inquiry and investigation, but also a place where the staff’s moral allegiance is kind of a question mark. i loved introducing rookwood here and playing with a different kind of death eater, especially juxtaposed with dumbledore’s reflections in the flashback testimony. rookwood isn’t a bruising thug for fire, or a self-serving machiavellian real politik type or a coward acting out of fear, but someone who really believes in magical supremacy and has built a robust political worldview around it. there’s something really chilling about that. we’ll be seeing him again and i unfortunately am now so rookwood-pilled i worry i will never recover. i knew i’d get hegel in there somewhere! and they said it couldn’t be done! ariana carl schmidt what are you doing here!

kingsley vs minnie: delicious to reignite the minnie discourse, especially to come out to try and beat the minnie-bashing allegations that have jovially dogged me thus far. so far in this fic, kingsley has been an unrelenting goodie, someone who came to ginny to get her endorsement of the inquiry and framed that approach as the righting of a moral wrong in letting the victims of a death eater-run hogwarts have their day in court. minnie, on the other hand, seemed like ginny’s opp, defending a toxic status quo and making wild suggestions like ‘do your homework’ ‘don’t play quidditch when you might die’, like some kind of fucking idiot. in the series ministers of magic are canonically not to be trusted - harry certainly never meets a minister who doesn’t try to put the squeeze on him - and it’s extremely fun to sow these seeds of doubts about kingsley’s motivations here, especially when using ginny the protagonist as canon harry’s mirror (ie. a narrator who is frequently a dumb bitch). what’s kingsley up to? answers on a postcard. but i’ll die on the kingsley is a slytherin hill i’m so sorry! and speaking of minnie…

mother figures (or: the pitfalls of shipping your mum out to the dominions): look i bummed myself out with this one. i have had that the mrs granger knife crime incident scene written for SOoooooo long let me tell you. i’ve written elsewhere about how much this fic is really so much about the girls, and - especially - the girls and their mums, or the people they make mother figures out of. one of the least satisfying of the ‘all was well’ aspect of the series was that actually, at the end of DH, you have a whole host of people who were probably never going to be well again, and i very much see hermione’s parents in that camp. the world and his wife has an opinion on hermione’s decision vis-à-vis her parents. hermione’s stans see it as her deepest personal self-sacrifice; her haters take it as yet more proof of her monstrousness. even if you imagine the grangers were totally mentally well after having their muggle brains messed around with by powerful magic, it is hard to imagine how their relationship with their daughter could ever really be the same again after hermione played god with their minds. but also - as ron says - hermione was motivated by a desperate desire to protect two people who would never really be able to wrap their heads around the peril (such was their distance from her life in the magical world), and who conceivably did need to be yeeted halfway across the world to get them out of harm’s way. the choices made in war - the inglorious, imperfect decisions not of purist heroes but of soldiers in the grimmest of circumstances - are so interesting to play with writing post-war fic, and i have found it so interesting and so sad to play with; especially the idea of girls coming of age and learning to see their mothers clearly, and - in the case of both hermione but also ginny - having to wrap their heads around the possibility that they may never really be ok again, and asking what that means for them, their daughters.

(also hermione brawling at ballet is a tribute to a very dear friend of mine who was in fact asked to leave our ballet lessons for pulling another girl’s hair in a fight over the barre in a pre-primary exam. monstrous competitive precocious stroppy madams unite!) 

hinny: i’ll answer some of the Qs i’ve had about this in a separate little from the postbag post shortly, but i do want to say: the thing with these chapters is that it was really important they happened after harry and ginny have had some breakthrough in the preceding chapter, where ginny has agreed to be honest and harry has asked her to let him help her and not to protect him from the truth. i always wanted harry and ginny to write these letters each other and promise to be honest to work on bridging the gaps between them and overcoming their own failings to work to do better by each other, and for those letters to now look like contracts they have to hold each other to. how will harry take it? they’ve made a commitment to each other. now they’re testing that commitment, and that’s going to take a lot of work, especially on harry’s part. (also ofc he had to find out at shell cottage, the official place of harry realising stuff. he’s going to start declining bill and fleur’s dinner invitations fr.)

ron weasley is our king: this whole fic is just ron apologism and i will never apologise for it. helping his girlfriend's traumatised mentally scarred mother with a bit of tlc and a spot of gardening! rescuing neighbour's children from trees! you will never be able to convince me ron weasley wouldn't be a great fucking boyfriend to one ms hermione granger. do not ever try!

last thing - sodding quidditch: fucking hate writing it!!! hate it with my whole heart!!! i see why everyone writes hermione now. you don’t have to give a shit about those stupid balls if granger's your gal. the mystery of what’s going on with ginny on her broom continues, with ginny’s apparent ability to seek (just about) but not chase throwing up more questions than answers. what was fun about writing this bit was getting to write ginny the captain and the team player, taking on great risk for the team - of injury, of humiliation -  and also place her in this surround that the trio never really operate in: a character who is canonically very popular and liked by her peers, who has played the thoroughly selfless and unrewarding role of backup seeker and potter understudy for years for her house, and who will saddle up at enormous personal expense not just because she is brave, or inherently self-sacrificing, but because she wants to make the people around her happy - her gryffindor family, but also the hogwarts student body at large. the trio are much less motivated by the well-being of the other children around them - they have higher-minded self-sacrificing tendencies about a more abstract moral good. neville and luna, the other two members of the silver trio, are goodies but unpopular oddities. it’s an underplayed part of the series that harry and the trio turn around in their sixth year and clock that somehow ginny turned out to be very liked and respected by the popular and unpopular of hogwarts alike, admired for being a) a laugh and b) someone who cares about other people and wants to get on with them. (makes you realise how often protagonists are removed from their peers in a slightly lofty they don’t understand me or being popular is beneath me vein.) this isn’t just a Nice Thing: i think it’s important for who ginny is as a character, and will be important for thinking about her wartime motivations, too.

reading list:

not done one of these in a while! but most things should come with a reading list, and these chapters are no different.

on ministry bureaucracy and the state (actually read this after these chapters were done but desperately wish i had read it before ffs):

Subluxation by @saintsenara

on hermione's mum/parents:

alone now by Kyra Along the Way by ElizabethCulmer you were broken-hearted and the world was, too by celaenos

on post-war justice and difficult questions:

what you're not to do by irnan

on the potters and the sea (more vibes than subject matter - this is next gen - but this one is gorgeous, and really got me thinking about harry and ginny's family by the sea):

Eyes like Sea Glass by @clerical3rror

songs from the playlist for these chapters:

for chapter 13 i went all moody, building dread, bit of a throwback to michael corner calling ginny a tryer with the taylor swift choice (i've never been a natural/all i do is try, try, try). that kate bush song basically got this chapter written i swear to god:

she is like the swallow by karan casey | waking the witch (2018 remaster) by kate bush | house of the rising sun by joni mitchell | bane by alt-j | afraid of everyone by the national | mirrorball - the long pond studio sessions by taylor swift | what if the birds aren't singing they're screaming by aldous harding

for chapter 14, much more abstract, a bit more instrumental, and out to sea (watershed moment; the tide is rolling in, kids). tortured poets is a deeply flawed deeply uneven album by a deeply un-self-aware artist convinced she knows herself well but but i'm afraid the albatross is very good (so is guilty as sin but it wasn't the moment for a matty healy wank anthem now was it):

the opportunity passed in less than a minute by roy montgomery | the albatross by taylor swift | first of the tide by erland cooper and benge | wash by bon iver | escapism by a. blomqvist

about chapter 15 (and 16…)

the next chapters are ginny's war. they're (almost) all flashback, and i am sooooooo excited about them (and desperately hope you will like them jfc). i am in the unusual position of now picking up great enormous pieces that i wrote over a year ago and dusting them off and sorting them out and rewriting bits and writing new bits around them. there's probably two chapters in it, so am currently expecting chapter 15 and 16 to drop at the same time (that might change, but for now, that feels right to me). i'm tip-tapping as fast as my little fingers can carry me. here's the least spoilery sneak peek i could rustle up!

'I'm not smugglin' in nuthin", says Hagrid. He raises a large muddy finger at her. 'I want yeh to listen to me, for once in yer life. Keep yer head down. Go to yer classes, have yer dinner, put up, and shut up. They're lookin' fer a reason to go after yer family. Reckon the best thing yeh can do for the Order is to keep to verself and stay out o' trouble. Reckon that's what yer mum wants yeh to do. Reckon that's what Harry wants, too.'

[queenlua]

this is probably egregiously cringey and/or STEMbrained of me, but, i think it'd be pretty fun/interesting to make a workbook / writing workshop-type thing with the following format:

* you're given a detailed, just-the-facts, beat-by-beat summary of some story.

* the story, as given, should sound pretty mid. scenes that feel extraneous, unclear overall theme, etc

* you sit down and write out "how i would fix this story if i were the author." which plot threads feel underbaked & do you draw them out more or just cut those threads, do you add/remove any characters, do you change anything to ramp the tension up/down, etc

* if it's a workbook, maybe there's an "answer" "key" of sorts in the back where a couple solid genre authors share what they did. obviously there wouldn't be a Correct Answer™ but i imagine you could glean some interesting insights from seeing both (1) what those authors considered to be Problems To Be Fixed and (2) how they fixed them.

* if you're doing this in a workshop format, you hear how everyone else fixed their stories. hopefully at least one person in the room is kinda good at this lol

like, i feel like in writer's workshops i've been in before, you hear a LOT of talk about individual sentences and style stuff, which is good and valuable knowledge to have! but there's a lot less talk about plot structure, partially due to limitations of the workshop-as-implemented, i think—it's impossible to talk about The Structure Of An Entire Novel if ppl are only ever reading it in 5k word increments. so... why not operate on 1-5k word summaries instead

i'm basing this largely on my experience with this one particular creative writing prof, where like, i got a decent amount of value out of workshop time... but by FAR the most valuable time was whenever i camped in this dude's office hours to be like "hi, sorry, i'm accidentally writing a novella again" (i... i was the bitch who submitted stuff that blew past the word limit for workshop... multiple times... i'm sorry) "and also i'm stuck on this one plot beat, can i tell you what my story is & hear how you'd fix it?" and like. damn. for a dude who wrote a lot of quiet stories where nothing happened, he had pretty strong instincts for How Genre Works, & i always felt like i walked away with some new trick for thinking about story structure

but i'm not sure i've had an experience like that anywhere else!

which seems like a shame. like yeah i've read Save the Cat and similar "plot structure"-y guides but they always feel unhelpfully... abstract, to me? like the thing where you're learning some new technique in a math class and it's like ok that's nice and all but i don't actually *know* it until i watch someone work a few problems and then work a few problems myself. i want to see all the tedious scratchwork and such, i am too stupid to learn it otherwise lol

[relatableblorbopoll]

Round 1 of preliminaries, group 6

The first two places get a place on the bracket

Little reminder: there will be 2 more rounds of preliminaries, the losing blorbos of this poll still have 2 chances of getting in the official bracket

propaganda under the cut

Jesper Fahey (Six of Crows)

No Propaganda

Crowley (Good Omens)

"He's gender. He's been in love with one guy for literally 6000 years and then royally fucks up his entire confession. He yells at his plants. He drapes himself over every fucking surface he sits on. He walks like *that*. He just fuckin makes sounds sometimes. He's me fr."

Dave Strider (Homestuck)

"everything that can be said about Dave's relatability will probably sound redundant, clichéd, or overdone if you are at all familiar with tumblrs sort of blorbo culture. this is exactly why he should be in this tournament.

stop me if you think that you've heard this one before: he hides his genuine emotions behind a persona, deflects sincerity with jokes, but also has a deep desire for validation and connection, so that his persona has many cracks where little bits of his true self slip through. deeply insecure, compares himself to others. a defeatist streak, avoids responsibility. does not wish to be troubled by The Horrors. he just wants to hang out and do his lil creative hobbies (making music and drawing comics). talks a lot to the point of being pretty awkward, rambling, and accidentally saying stuff he shouldnt.

all these things I think tend to resonate deeply with a lot of people, especially on Tumblr - that "person who is insecure and struggles with emotional openness so copes by making jokes" sort of trope, it's just like kin bait (affectionate). he also has a complicated relationship with gender which I know many find relatable (shout out to the "Dave homestuck was my trans awakening" homies) but whether it's about figuring out gender or sexuality or trauma or the apocalypse or anything else, Dave comes at it with an initial, learned, fear and reluctance that I think a lot of people have experienced, because it's very human and very much a part of many readers experiences (we live in a society). but he's always good, and likeable and that makes for a very important sort of relatable character. very comforting. even if he's a mess and he's an idiot you can believe he can get to something better, and you can watch him develop and grow.

also, I think he's extremely relatable because he never really knows what's going on in the comic either. I mean, that's gonna be relatable to most people Vis a vis homestuck. he's confused and he just wants to vibe and make his friends laugh. WHO AMONG US cannot relate?? I do not believe you if you say no.

I wrote too much and got way too weird about it. I'm sorry it's late I'd edit down but I really don't have the brain capacity.. which is very Dave core of me actually"

Junior (Total Drama Presents: The Ridonculous Race)

"i relate to him a lot because his whole character is being embarrassed of his dad who tries too hard to be cool, but still loves him anyways. that is literally me"

Kim Dokja (Omnicient Reader's Viewpoint)

"kim dokja. oh kim dokja. so, without going into spoilers too much, kim dokja is very much a character you are expected to relate to and it makes the novel DEVASTATING. here's just a few things about him: - he is obsessed with a particular piece of media, and finds comfort in it when real life doesn't give him any. he's constantly thinking about it and defending it and trying to recommend it to other people (even though no one else bothers reading it, because it is an objectively bad 3000-chapter webnovel). even beyond that one novel, he's been using fiction as an escape for just about his entire life, something that rings true for a lot of people, especially in the modern world. - he struggles with socializing with other people. the first chapter alone gave me so much second hand embarrassment. it's so real but god it's So bad. he has zero friends and has that sort of loneliness where you're miserable but you can't really bring yourself to feel anything but resigned to it. in general he is just very Resigned to his unfortunate life and can't fully understand or accept it when it finally does get better - he has a complicated relationship with his mother. it's the kind of relationship where the parent genuinely does love their child, but they fail to give them what they need & have to accept that they hurt their kid and that they cannot be the most important person in their life. it's certainly not a universal experience but those sorts of parent-child relationships are woefully common but scarcely acknowledged -the insecurity. god there is so much insecurity in that man. it's hard to even completely tell it's there at first, because it's so ingrained in how he thinks that you don't question it until you know more about his character and suddenly it's all too apparent. he cannot believe that he can be loved (or, if that he can be, that they certainly would not be able to love all of him, only what he chooses to show them), and is selfless but like. the literal meaning of the word, where he will throw away all of his being for the people he loves. in general there is a lot of sacrifice as a love language which like. while i'm not off around throwing myself in front of magic death beams for people or anything i sure would give up everything i could if it meant helping the people i love - ok enough of that. here's some funny things i can relate to. the guy meets his favorite fictional blorbo and instead of worshipping him instead he bullies him constantly and internally complains about how unbearable he is both in the book and in real life. it's like a "i love my blorbo. i would not last 2 seconds in a room with him." You know. he gets so caught up in his fanon characterizations and biases about characters that he completely mischaracterizes them like constantly. he literally kills a guy half because he was his least favorite character. -this is a poll about blorbo relatability. therefore i must mention that kim dokja too related to his blorbo (or at least attempted to) and what is more relatable than that. anyways. kdj made me realize far too much about myself and is by far the most i have ever related to a character (and i Hate it). and tumblr would definitely relate to him too so :thumbs-up:"

"(SPOILERS) He is literally all of us. Reader. Just some guy. And then insane tragic backstory. But he’s also just some guy. He’s special and also just a guy. He’s also god. He can be shipped w anyone. He has versatility and interests and motivations. He also never tells anyone anything ever. He is so me."

"He reads a trashy, long-ass novel as a coping mechanism and doesn't think he's capable of being loved. Bro dissociates when he's emoting too much."

"I'm a homestuck fan, a Dave Strider fan even Never heard of Omnicient Reader's before Voted for the kim fellow because judging by the propaganda it looks like he himself would be a homestuck reader therefore making him more relatable than the homsetuck character himself"

"This guy’s been my companion since I was 11, I’ve grown up with Omniscient Reader’s Viewpoint and I think that’s pretty funny since he grew up with Ways of Survival (the 3149 chapter novel) and therefore I’m straight up mirroring him. I, too, scare everyone off by being too enthusiastic whenever the webnovel is brought up! His insecurities are severe but I do see myself in some parts of him (which is worrying but whatever.) He is absolutely The Guy Ever. Utterly pathetic wet cat of a man. I love him. He represents the crazy fandom tumblrina in all of us."

Donutella (Tokidoki)

"she's made of donuts basically like me at this point"

[fictionfixations]

Hanya: Could it be that the signal from the Shackling Prison is still blocked? Hmm... they proposed maintenance last year, but it's been delayed in the approval process...

i sure hope thats changed now (2.4-2.5 go brr)

OH MY GOD thats a huge wall of text. i was just clicking to speed up the texts and i just get hit with walls upon walls of texts and then it kept going and im like OKAY HOLD ON I CANT READ THAT FAST and trying to speed it up so i can scroll back and read it and theN BRRRR like holy fuck 😭

anyway context: hanya wrote this for her sister (who likes thriller novels). apparently its her first attempt. its called Seawater

Hanya: Judges have forever grappled with the burden of excruciating decisions. Among them, few weigh on their conscience as heavily as the relentless pursuit of the betrayer. Motivated by greed, disdain, or the intoxication of danger, comrades can swiftly transform into enemies. And when the moment arrives to dispense justice upon a former ally in the name of the revered Ten Lords, the torment becomes unbearable. The place I now journey towards bears witness to a heart-rending spectacle. Long ago, I meticulously constructed a trap to ensnare the perpetrator who conspired with the Denizens of Abundance. This elusive criminal, known only as "Seawater," peddled invaluable secrets, unraveling the intricate tapestry of the Alliance within the Ryansnaut Sector. Engaged in an unyielding battle with "Seawater" for an extended duration, I now find myself poised to tighten the noose. As I hasten towards the scene, a vivid tableau unfolds within my mind. A greenhorn Cloud Knight, a spirited street performer, a guileless foxian girl, and one enigmatic Nameless... Which among them could be "Seawater"? And when the truth is ultimately unveiled, how shall I confront the inevitable, merciless denouement...? Without warning, an arrow, launched from the shadows, pierces my heart. I collapse to the ground, I find my gaze locked onto the countenance of the assailant... Trailblazer: Wait, hold on a sec! Are you seriously planning to send me the entire novel through text messages!? Hanya: Sorry. I'm not done yet. "Seawater... It is you!" It ends here. That's all I've managed to write so far. I'm a bit stuck and need some advice.

im so sorry if there are any typos or if i typed the wrong word but thats a lot of text 😭 i usually write the texts together but separating it for each text sent. i dont know if that makes sense, but since she was sending a novel i thought itd be a better idea to actually put space in between the paragraphs so its not just all clumped together in a difficult to read block of text (also its a personal thing because i for the life of me i struggle so bad keeping track of where i am reading SUPER long blocks of text cause i keep accidentally losing my place or reading the wrong sentence in combination with another)

anyways

the reason we are suspects is because xueyi told her its easier to write characters based on familiar faces

Hanya: My sister mentioned that it's easier to write a novel when the characters are based on familiar faces. I've been thinking about it. Maybe it's because you guys are always too kind for me to imagine you doing anything evil. No wonder I'm stuck now. Perhaps I should draw inspiration from the criminals I usually deal with.

also she hasnt decided on who seawater (the criminal) should be

[lunarriviera]

9 people you want to know better!

Thanks for the tag @lonelylonelyghost 😚

Three ships: oh god anyone who knows me already know this but: zhoudu (mo du/justice in the dark), chengyi (under the skin) and pingxie (dmbj), i feel so obvious and simplistic and tacky—

First ship: this will tell you how old i am, but batman/catwoman from the 1966 series; also robin hood/maid marian from the 1973 disney movie, which was the first movie i ever saw. later and for most of my life it was kirk and spock, even though i didn't know what that meant.

Last song: all weekend i was hung up on "emily i'm sorry" by boygenius but also i had a dive back into "suburban legends" (from 1989) and billie eilish: "the greatest," "skinny," and most of all: "chihiro" with which i'm obsessed, i want to make a hundred edits with it. (i want to make edits all the time but it's just so time consuming...)

Last movie: probably one i taught in the spring semester? we ended with everything everywhere all at once, which the students loved. i haven't really watched movies this summer. but my bff and i are going to see shichinen no samurai on a big screen at the art museum this weekend and I AM BESIDE MYSELF WITH EXCITEMENT.

Currently reading: ten danmei at once (case file compendium and little mushroom, also qjj and spl and erha as each book comes out) but then i got distracted by an accidental mo du reread, waylaid when i went into the pdf just to search for a quote and whoops now it's three days later and i'm nearly finished with book 4, and also wrote a ten-page meta last night that i don't know what to do with? how did this happen to me? why does this novel GET TO ME?

Currently watching: i stalled out like halfway through kinnporsche for no clear reason other than that they're happy and it's kind of a nice place to stop? because i'm pretty sure all holy hell is about to break loose and the thai mob is going to try to crush their young love. but look, here they are being happy boyfriends! a nice place to end it.

idk i keep bouncing off dramas but i really want to watch killer and healer, the chinese hikaru no go, and finish the spirealm. my MDL watchlist literally has 70 things on it, it's so tragic T_T

Currently eating: a square of dark chocolate with iced coffee, but i should go make lunch, i just don't want to cook anything, it's hot

Currently craving: another extra month before the fall semester starts in two weeks and i have to teach. can i just have july back pls

tagging: @omaenanimonoda @programmedradly @lquacker @elenothar @theredshoes @aadikah @catholicjigglypuff @emmajanereading @tehfanglyfish and anyone else who likes <3

[nayruwu]

I saw your ca16 post & it's so true I hate reading ca16 because how shinya was treated kagami wrote such an interesting character with fun personality & ideals but put him in back burner like give him one chapter about his backstory that follows up with story but nothing??? It was so insane like that poor kid went through so much & it's for nothing like why did you even mention that?? I thought it will be explored or there will be some reason but at end of day it was about how perfect pure beautiful mahiru is so all those death & suffering is justified the fuck with that & not even gonna talk about girly treating him as if he owes her little miss your family ruined his life what was with that attitude like??? Shinya was really kags middle child but I feel like if he was written like guren kureto or mahiru I would've hated his ass. Rant over I needed this off my chest sorry.

yeah, he's... well.

i don't actually notice this that much while reading the novels, because it is mostly from guren's perspective and he has, like, a million different things going on. he's got 99 problems and a bitch is 97 of them. it's when you're done that you think, hey, what about shinya?

i fully believe it didn't cross the author's mind at all that acknowledging shinya's fucked-up'ness would be something worth writing about, because it's just... not important to the plot.

but he also accidentally made him not only a lovable but also extremely interesting character, so the fact that there are so many missed opportunities to tell us more about him or develop his friendship with guren to a more balanced level just feels bad. he spends so much energy on guiding and checking up on guren but no one ever really thinks to check up on him, lol.

even if it is guren's story, all shinya gets is "god i fucking hate myself" - "wow guren is so great amazing better than me omg" - *dies horribly* like WOW. thanks! there are many things i would have liked to go differently in their relationship and it starts right at their first meeting. not sure if y'all would like to hear.

in the end he's just here to support guren's story and we are all clowns that got attached to the wrong doormat. it is a very intricately woven doormat though, so i won't be leaving.

i'm not gonna talk about mahiru again but i will say that what her family did to shinya wasn't her fault, and i personally don't really mind the way she acted towards him in that scene! but the fact that it focused on her so much really annoyed me.

[allylikethecat]

I just discover your fic of Matty and Taylor taking place in 2014 and I'm really really really liking it, and I also have many questions of where are you leading the story to. I'm jumping on my chair while I'm writing this waiting respectfully for your next update.

Any hints of when that may be? 🙏😊

Yay!! Thank you so much for your kind words! I'm so happy to hear that you're enjoying You Know Where the City Is! I was obsessed with the PR relationship that almost was back when I was in college, and after some encouragement, I decided to actually flesh out my fic about it and post it on AO3.

I've been having so much fun writing about my favorite fictionalized Bisexual Disaster Duo™️ and am so excited to hear that others are enjoying it as well! It's my favorite fic that I am currently working on (sorry!) and might be my favorite fic I've ever written (so far)!

The timing blows my mind though. I did not have the Matty / Taylor IRL situation on my 2023 Bingo card. I feel like I accidentally manifested something.

In terms of what's coming... let's just say 2015-2017 Matty was even messier than present day Matty, and in my fic, I'm excited to explore how the added pressure and fame that would came with being Taylor's boyfriend (even if it's all fake like in my fic) would impact that version of him and how it would have sped up the timeline / severity of some events, and the impact it would have on the trajectory of the band itself.

Plus, 2014/2015 Taylor was pretty messy as well, and not the most reliable narrator in this fic- she is very caught up in her own situation (not in a bad way, but in a very human way) and isn't necessarily aware of the carnage she is leaving in her wake. In this fictionalized version they are for sure enabling each other- this is for sure not one of those "I could fix him, I could make him better" situations and instead one of those "We could make each other worse" ones.

In terms of when the next update will be, I don't have any kind of set date because according to my ex I'm afraid of commitment (he's not wrong...) but I don't anticipate it being a very long wait! Most likely either the end of this week or early next week. I am actively working on the next chapter if that helps!

I'm so sorry I just wrote you a little novel in response to this ask- if you made it this far thank you so much! I am extremely excited about this fic and basically want to talk about it ALL THE TIME and am 100% taking myself way too seriously in analyzing it right now. But alas, that's half the fun (at least for me!)

Thank you so, so much for reading and reaching out! 🥰 I'm so totally overjoyed to hear that you like it!

❤️Ally

[ginathethundergoddess]

So. I saw this post and accidentally wrote a whole think piece about nuance and what is lost in stories over time. I'm sorry. I spent like 2 ½ hours on this. More under the cut. Notes:YES I KNOW THAT JOSEPH CAMPBELL'S HERO.WITH A THOUSAND FACES WAS PUBLISHED AFTER LOTR. I'M USING IT AS A POINT OF REFERENCE AS A LOT OF NARRATIVES WRITTEN BEFORE AND AFTER THAT WORK FALL INTO THESE PATTERNS

I think part of this presumption that lotr is a typical story of simple black and white worldview and very predictable also arises from the fact that the series itself became the foundation of a genre, for better or for worse. Because it was the defining piece of literature for that genre for so long, and many authors based their own narratives off of the story, the nuances are lost over time. Because some other high fantasy stories end up like the aforementioned "simple/black and white" stories where war IS glorified, where the hero DOES succeed flawlessly, some people begin to assume ALL stories in the genre are like that, and some don't do a deeper reading. As time goes on that preconceived notion of what a high fantasy novel consists of-- glory, honor, warriors, etc.-- pervades the general perception of a genre and becomes the dominant view, whether or not the actual defining literature of said genre is that straightforward or not. Literary tropes arise and a standard is set and people come into high fantasy novels expecting these tropes, like good vs evil for example. Or the Hero's Journey! All of which are good things!! The problem arises when the original nuances of the stories are lost in the retellings over and over again and some people then choose not to read the novel for themselves and go off their preconceived notions of the genre. That "it's too simple and doesn't have nuance and is predictable" without realizing that it's predictable because it was the basis for an entire literary genre.

I'm not criticizing here. I'm trying not to generalize as well. But I've noticed this a lot in other media as well.

A prime example of this is classical literature, actually. Like Greek and Latin poetry and mythology, or the genre of epic poetry in general. The nuance of HOW those stories are meant to be presented has metamorphosised over thousands of years from their original form, and multiple different readings emerge from the same poems that have been translated and retranslated over and over again, and analyzed by so many different people in so many different time periods and cultures that the defining literature of the genre ends up with many different meanings, sometimes stripped of their original nuance.

Take the Iliad and the Odyssey; a base reading of the poems, without knowing the context of the Greek Warrior Ideal, may leave first time readers with a sense of "wow these people glorified terrible things. Why am I supposed to like the Greeks?"

I had a history of warfare professor in college who argued that you're not supposed to venerate the Greeks in this story, or Paris of Troy. His argument was that the upper leadership of the Greek army strayed so far from what the Greek Warrior Ideal was at the (presumed) origin of its recitation (based on the earliest known representations of the stories and characters in Greek Artwork) that when Agamemnon does things like refuse the ransom for the captured princess of Troy whose father was the priest of Apollo and followed all the correct steps of begging for the return of his daughter from an enemy force, we as readers are supposed to understand that Agamemnon's refusal to return her is evil and against what the Greeks held as the honorable thing a warrior and king should do. This is why Achilles protests Agamemnon, who makes many such mistakes during the duration of the war as the battles drag on into a decade and the Greeks, disillusioned by the violence and the desire to return home, begin to lose their values. My professor argued that the Iliad is a story on loss-- loss of the self-- as much as it is an example of the Greek Warrior Ideal /how Greeks venerated their heroes, in that we see what the ancient Greeks valued as the characters within lose those same values. Achilles himself loses his humanity for a good portion of the book, acting somewhere between an animal and a god, as his hubris (which is the Greek term for the actual "sin" for lack of a better word-- a mix of biblical Pride and entitlement and greed) leads directly to his lover Patroclus' death. My professor argued that you can see what the ancient Greeks perceived as "honorable and good values" in the actions that the characters of the Iliad did and did not do, but registering these things requires a bit of understanding of the ancient Greek Warrior culture. That Hector was Achilles' foil and supposed to be the "idea warrior" despite Achilles being a perceived protagonist.

A reading of the epic without background knowledge of the Greek Warrior Ideal and what the Greeks viewed as "a good archetype" strips the narrative of much of its context and meaning. Then modern readers impart their own worldview on the narrative-- which isn't a bad thing!!!!-- and view the story through a different lense, without full knowledge of the nuances or culture the stories were originally intended for.

What we have of the epic is an amalgam of the most popular parts of the narrative written down by Homer/the group of people that were Homer, who recorded the story LONG after it had been passed down orally. So who knows how much nuance or how many localized parts of the story were lost before someone decided to record it as a whole? It's why there's that massive passage in the beginning of the narrative about ships and what cities sent how many to Troy."

As the story grew older and survived over the long millenia, new versions arose that changed with the times and cultures they were written in. Rome viewed itself as the direct line between Troy and their culture; the story Aeneas, a survivor of Troy became their lifeline, their way of saying "the city lived through us" and inserting themselves into the narrative not as Greek but as their own thing. This played a massive role in their culture, with the Vestel Virgins and the flame they tended to for the entirety of Roman History, for example.

But in their versions of the stories of the Iliad they had their own separate narrative than the Greek versions; they had a different set of Roman Warrior Ideals that they impress on the Greek characters. They had their own chapters of the tales unseen in Greek stories but have recognizable Greek characters in an unrecognizable story. The Etruscans-- rhe culture that Rome derived most of its religion and culture from-- were fond of Greek pottery and would custom order these scenes from Greek potters to place in funerary settings or as decorations. The names and images/stories these pots would depict would be Etruscan, but the characters themselves would be recognizably Greek/from the Iliad.

So the Greek nuances were lost or changed over time, despite the story originating in Greek culture. The story becomes oversimplified over time, loses the parts of the narrative that make the work nuanced, and eventually people develop preconceived notions of what the work is supposed to be, based off works in the same genre.

Then we get the story today and end up with a film like the movie Troy, which as much as I enjoy the film, ends up a pretty big departure from what the original audiences knew and expected. Because times change and the story has changed and been reinterpreted over and over again-- not necessarily for the bad, either, but sometimes completely oversimplified entirely. In this case all the instances of divine intervention, a major part of the Iliad, where the gods were predestined to choose sides and where fate was a MAJOR part of the story-- are lost. Achilles' youth is lost (in the poem he is fifteen at most when the war begins), and we are given instead a jaded, experienced Achilles who we don't get to see spiral into the character who loses his faith in the system over time, and eventually his humanity to loss and grief and rage.

These stories have a massive impact on readings of the genre as a whole and interpretations of Greek and Roman culture and stories; they form the basis of how stories in these genres are written and how the tales are percieved or tropes in the stories are meant to be percieved. But a lot of these modern stories don't show the full context because not everyone furiously researches it. You reach a wider audience when the audience can more easily relate to the characters. So emphasizing things in a character like, say, Hector, that modern audiences value-- the love he had for his wife and son and his country for example, rather than his prowess in war and the fact he took Pateoclus' armor as was his right when he defeated Patroclus, and then emphasising Hector regretting killing Patroclus-- would be something any audience can relate to regardless of their knowledge of ancient greek culture.

This is much like how some people perceive the lord of the rings; I went into reading the story expecting certain notions, having read a lot of other high fantasy novels and knowing most of the tropes. Chosen Ones, Good vs Evil, all that. I also watched the films before reading the books; i went into the books expecting what I saw in the films, when in reality the films changed the tone of a lot of pivotal scenes in the books. Reading through the books the first time was excruciatingly hard for me because I didn't know the deeper context of Tolkien's life and how it impacted his storytelling. When I read more and learned more, the story took on a different meaning for me; I could read deeper into the story and its characters, and came to view stuff I found as extraneous and pointless with a new light and nuance. Once I figured out where Tolkien drew his lore from for his world things began to make more sense and I could grasp certain characters better. Prime example, Bilbo.

Bilbo became less of a dottering, elderly man who only served as a story catalyst for Frodo and the depth of his character was revealaed; he'd watched someone fall to goldsickness and greed the same way the ring eventually took him. He'd witnessed war and horror and loss, and now his beloved nephew is being sent out on a perilous quest to end the very evil Bilbo brought into their lives. Knowing that Tolkien lost nearly his entire friend group in WWI and then watched his son be sent into yet another devastating war makes the character deeper. Makes the depth of his emotion hit harder, and his need to record and create more human; was this how Tolkien felt when his son went to war? I think I cried when I read the poem "I sit beside the fire and think" with this context in mind.

I remember watching the films again with my dad and he scoffed during the scene in the Two Towers where Sam weeps and talks to frodo about stories they heard when they were young; I asked him why he scoffed like that.

"They didn't cry this much in the book."

I was baffled. Did we not read the same novel? There was so much weeping! And so many people doing it! Not just women but men too, being allowed to show these vulnerable emotions when other media I was exposed to at the time didn't show it.

"Are you kidding me?" I asked, "did we read the same novel? They cried all the time. As they deserved.

My dad doesn't like the overly sentimental, or at least the type of sentimental that allows men to cry. It's a byproduct of the culture of toxic masculinity (to clarify my dad isn't like that. He has come around to the idea of weeping in stories. Of twars and emotions but at the time it wasn't so.) He tried to tell me that other epic heroes don't cry in their stories. They grin and bear it.

But they very emphatically DO NOT.

For him, a high fantasy story had men being "manly" and not showing emotion and walking through these epic tragedies as if nothing affected them.

Idk if he didn't perceive the parts of the lotr trilogy where people wept because of this percieved view of epic high fantasy, or if he misremembered the stories. It took me rereading the books and pointing out every instance of it for him.to get it.

The last thing I want to note is that Frodo's journey, despite him being an unconventional hero, does follow some form of the Hero's Journey as detailed in every English class ever. It follows the rise and fall, the archetypes, etc. But in a different way. It turns the tropes of the Hero's Journey on their heads and gives us a different hero, one shaped by the losses the author experienced during a war that was HIGHLY glorified at the outset and which aa significant population of young men were brutally killed during, and those who survived became known as "The Lost Generation" because of their trauma. The Trilogy does this a lot actually, taking tropes that were common in literature Tolkien would have consumed and studied and changing or warping them entirely, in a way subsequent authors would strive to do.

He doesn't initially ignore the call to adventure but he finds he doesn't have the option to say no anyway; the ringwraiths are coming.

He then realizes that no one else will donthe daunting task of taking the ring to Mordor, so he volunteers to take it himself, stepping over the threshhold.

The story differs though; in every class someone has taught me on the Hero's Journey as defined by Campbell, the hero is expected to take the final steps alone and grow from the solitude.

Frodo's worst moments come from being alone. They come from the parts of the story where he rejects Sam's help, nd in this is where Sam's heroism comes into play; if Frodo did not have Sam with him the story would have ended much sooner. Frodo would have fallen much earlier. Frodo's conviction that he must bear the ring alone is challenged at EVERY TURN, because Sam is there and without Sam offering comfort and companionship, and sacrificing his own comfort and safety to help his dear friend, frodo would have given in. Galadriel states that "to bear a ring of power is to be alone" and this mentality is, at every opportunity, proven a false narrative.

Without Sam, Frodo would have died in Shelob's lair, and the ring would have been lost, or worse yet, made its way to Sauron. When Sam carried the One Ring it tried to tempt him in the way that it tempts most of its bearers, but Sam's love for Frodo and love for his home outweigh any benefit Sam could perceive from keeping the Ring.

Sam's very existence prove that all the wise figures telling Frodo that bearing anything alone is false wisdom; the ring of power cannot be born alone. Because no one can bear burdens like that alone, and no.one should.

Frodo briefly entertains continuing alone in Amon Hen; Sam refuses to let that happen. Frodo tells Sam to leave on the black steps, but Sam does not. They reject the idea that a hero has to make the final.part of his quest alone, breaking the Hero's Journey trope set up in the typical cycle.

Even breaking the trope of eventual solitude doesn't spare Frodo the change wrought by the ring; after months of torment he returns to a home warped and broken by the war. Even when the Shire is Scoured, and Frodo would be expected to find peace he can't; home is truly behind him and he cannot being himself back into the fold, not with the horrors of the Ring Quest haunting him.

So, like most heroes, he leaves. He tried to stay for his friends but it caused him too much pain to do so. And here Frodo finds himself back.on the path of the hero; he leaves. He goes to a place of healing, a place where he can find peace.

But even here he does not go alone; Bilbo comes. And the elves. Tolkien stresses at every chance that Frodo carries this unbelievably heavy burden and the only reason he made it so far as he did was because he was not alone. And even in the end of his story, when he leaves his closest friends behind, Frodo is still not alone.

I think a lot of this nuance is missed by some people when they consume the lord of the rings media. I think a lot of this comes from how media presents itself; for some reason there are people who don't look past the "long journey of good vs evil" aspect of Tolkien's world, and thus don't see the more nuanced aspects of Frodo's journey. Some people ignore or don't perceive the importance compassion and love play into the narrative, don't like to see their heroes falter or fall and sometimes outright bend it in their mind into something it's not. Frodo fails the Hero's Journey-- something that marks him different than other archetypal Hero's in similar tales. He can't go on this adventure alone- another thing that separates him from the archetypal hero people like to use as "Oh this is an example of boring storytelling"-- and he can't succeed alone, and even with a friend alongside him Frodo fails, breaking the cycle of the hero and turning the trope on its head.

Even the concept.of Mercy is touched on!Even the concept of Mercy is touched on. Most classic examples of heroes slare shown triumphing over the ememies in the dark, the things that go out of their way to hurt the protagonists. It's expected of a hero to kill their nemesis; for example Odysseus and Diomedes, who exposed Odysseus lies to avoid the trojan war-- Odysseus eventually frames him for corruption and treason and he's killed for it.

But in lord of the rings Gandalf scolds Frodo for entertaining the idea that Bilbo should have killed Gollum when he had the chance. Every time Gollum appears in the Trilogy Frodo chooses to spare him despite the misgivings of Sam, despite the warnings of Faramir, and despite the mounting evidence that Gollum is not trustworthy. The continuing Mercy Frodo shows Gollum is a testament to his character; he lacks the tendency of violence a hardened warrior would have. He has compassion and empathy (or at least pity) and a fear that if Gollum can't be saved, then what about Bilbo? What about himself?

In the end, it's Bilbo's original mercy, then the mercy and internal fear of Frodo towards Gollum that saves the day. If Gollum had been killed no one would have been able.to lead Frodo and Sam into Mordor; if Gollum had been killed, Frodo would have taken the Ring and Sauron would have triumphed.

When I first watched Return of the King I was fourteen and had some expectations. I knew Frodo would succeed, I knew Aragorn would be king, and I knew Sauron would be defeated. After all dad told me this story defined the genre of high fantasy, and every high fantasy book I'd read to that point had set expectations and tropes and storyline.

My dad watched my face the entire time. He actually let me stay up way later than I was supposed to to finish the movie. I remember the scene on the bridge- the same one Isildur stood on, with the same expectation as frodo.

"This is it," I thought, "he's gonna get rid of the ring!"

And then he didn't. And the film.cut to a commercial and I looked at my dad like "WHAT DO YOU MEAN HE FAILS?!?!?! DID YOU MAKE ME.SIT THROUGH A 5 ½ HOUR MOVIE AFTER LETTING ME GET ATTACHED TO THEM FOR THE OTHER TWO ONLY TO WATCH HIM FAIL!?!?! WHAT THE FUCK?!?!" and my dad told me to watch.

The ring did get destroyed; frodo and Sam live. Presumably no one judges Frodo for failing at the last second-- no one expected him to make it that far. I sat there and cried through all 5 false endings. And asked why Frodo failed. Dad didn't have an answer.

That's what sets the Lord of the Rings apart from other stories that rely on the Hero's Journey as a structural framework for a narrative, and that's what people who view the story as predictable and simplistic fail to see. The defining part of the Lord of the Rings as a genre creating story isn't that good triumphs over evil or that warriors band together to save their world; it's that Frodo breaks the Hero's Journey trope and turns the expected outcome on its head. Yeah, the story turns out all right at the end. Yeah, everyone gets a relatively happy ending-- even gollum died with his goal in hand. But it cost everything and Frodo fell in the end, like Boromir, like Isildur, etc.

Lord of the Rings broke the expectation of a flawless hero. We get to see the lead up and outcome of the ring on frodo. It's not just a story of good vs evil even though that's the main theme of the story overall. The genre-defining narrative that started the epic high fantasy genre and serves as its foundation stands out because it takes this long-held narrative journey, this Hero's Journey Cycle and has the main character fail the ultimate quest. It takes the idea of a solitary hero triumphing and shows us a narrative where that doesn't happen; where the hero didn't have a chance to reject the call to action, where the hero didn't walk alone in the end because if he did he wouldn't gave gotten far in the journey at all; it gave us a story where yes, the love was there, but it didn't matter, it wasn't enough against a burden like the ring; but it gave us a story where everything turns out all right in the end despite all of this, because Frodo wasn't vengeful and chose to spare Gollum; because Frodo didn't want to carry the ring but still answered the call because he understood the gravity of the situation; because Frodo was never truly alone and had Sam beside him; and because in the end Frodo failed.

It's a really cool narrative, and I think a lot of people miss that the genre defining work of Tolkien relies on breaking the cycle of the hero. Over time, because it was the work that more or less invented the genre, people began to associate the various tropes of the epic high fantasy genre to Lord of.the Rings, regardless of whether or not they originated within the Trilogy. After all, where did these literary devices and archetypes come from, if not within the first books of the genre.

I'm so sorry for this. This got way out of hand. I hope it makes sense.

It puzzles me when people cite LOTR as the standard of “simple” or “predictable” or “black and white” fantasy. Because in my copy, the hero fails. Frodo chooses the Ring, and it’s only Gollum’s own desperation for it that inadvertently saves the day. The fate of the world, this whole blood-soaked war, all the millennia-old machinations of elves and gods, comes down to two addicts squabbling over their Precious, and that is precisely and powerfully Tolkien’s point. 

And then the hero goes home, and finds home a smoking desolation, his neighbors turned on one another, that secondary villain no one finished off having destroyed Frodo’s last oasis not even out of evil so much as spite, and then that villain dies pointlessly, and then his killer dies pointlessly. The hero is left not with a cathartic homecoming, the story come full circle in another party; he is left to pick up the pieces of what was and what shall never be again. 

And it’s not enough. The hero cannot heal, and so departs for the fabled western shores in what remains a blunt and bracing metaphor for death (especially given his aged companions). When Sam tells his family, “Well, I’m back” at the very end, it is an earned triumph, but the very fact that someone making it back qualifies as a triumph tells you what kind of story this is: one that is too honest to allow its characters to claim a clean victory over entropy, let alone evil. 

“I can’t recall the taste of food, nor the sound of water, nor the touch of grass. I’m naked in the dark. There’s nothing–no veil between me and the wheel of fire. I can see him with my waking eyes.”

So where’s this silly shallow hippie fever-dream I’ve heard so much about? It sounds like a much lesser story than the one that actually exists.

[booreadsbooks]

Serpent and Dove, Shelby Mahurin, Review

Rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

So, Serpent and Dove. I bought the trilogy after accidentally buying Scarlet Veil sometime last Spring, and read online later that it was best read after the original novels. So I bought them, and then promptly forgot I owned them all until recently. After the Cruel Prince I just couldn't shake the fantasy bug (despite trying to switch things up more lately in between my fantasy reads) so I finally returned to these books. I am SO GLAD that I did!

I've struggled to understand New Adult as a genre ever since I heard about it, but this definitely seems like a great definer/introduction to the concept for me. Younger characters who have so much more to learn about themselves and their place in the world, while tackling harsher topics with more graphic violence (and steamier romance.) I'm actually ace, so I never care much for "spicy" scenes, but honestly there was so much emotion and relevance to the characters' development to the moment in this book, that I actually enjoyed reading it. Hit me right in the feels, to be completely honest.

So I usually take more notes while reading, but I was so engaged while reading this time around, and desperate to see what would happen next, that I have almost nothing. So my actual review will be more broad than usual.

The characters were all so deliciously fun and complex. Lou was fiery and frightened. I loved her wit and ferocity, but also the bravery that shone through when her actual terror had a moment to rear it's head. She is exactly the type of character I love, with simultaneous vulnerability and strength.

Reid was infuriating at first, your typical "no nonsense, stick-up-your-ass jerk". He was a very clear setup for a sort-of "grumpy x sunshine" trope, but shockingly to me, I actually loved it. The way his guard slowly came down for her, that he actually began to joke and tease her back, getting a rise out of her like she usually did to him. It really balanced the scales in their relationship, and it helped prove that they bring the best out in one another.

Coco, Ansel, and Madame Labelle were all compelling side characters that I loved. Coco was fiercely loyal and the resourceful friend that I wish I had. Ansel was sweet and a bit naive, but proved far wiser than most of his brothers when it came to tolerance. Madame Labelle was a mystery from the start, and I am excited to hopefully see more from her in the rest of the series.

The antagonists were all exciting, the plot kept me on the edge of my seat, and it's taking all my restraint not to dive into the sequel right now (I try to space out series a bit, it helps me not get burnt out with it).

ALSO, exciting to me honestly, was like, a reverse-virgin trope. IDK if that's actually a thing. Usually in "historical" settings, the woman has no clue what she's doing when the couple finally gets together, and the man must lead her. It was kinda fun to have that turned on its head here, and in my opinion was a massive service to both characters, and made the moment much sweeter.

Sorry this one was more blog than review, again, I didn't take notes and it's much harder for me to organize my thoughts on plot/vibes/specific things without them. Anyway, here are the *two* quotes I actually wrote down:

"There's something haunting about a body touched by magic. Most people first noticed the smell: not the rot of decay, but a cloying sweetness in their noses, a sharp taste on their tongues. Rare individuals also sense a tingle in the air. A lingering aura on the corpse's skin. As if the magic itself was still present somehow, watching and waiting."

(A very strong opening, and pretty gorgeous prose IMO)

"I loved her. Despite everything. Despite the lies, the betrayal, the hurt. Despite the Archbishop and Morgane le Blanc. Despite my own brothers. I didn't know if she returned that love, and I didn't care.

If she was destined to burn in Hell, I would burn with her."

(I am a SUCKER for a love confession, and even though this one was silent/inner monologue but it was perfect)

[chasingxprongs]

@extremelyxshabby grabbed the wrong boobs

He was minding his own business. Had taken himself to the library in an attempt to finish the History of Magic essay that was already a week late and Moony refused to do for him. Only, despite his best intentions, all he’d managed so far was to doodle snitches on his parchment and constantly check the time for when Lily was going to be done with class. He hadn’t meant to eavesdrop, really—he’d had the best intentions. But as soon as he heard the familiar voices from behind a shelf—he couldn’t help but listen in.  

“I think there’s something about Remus that’s kind of fit—you know, the type of fit you don’t expect until they’re in your bed and a complete animal…” Marlene of course. James had enjoyed that part, had filed it away to tell Moony later. 

He had in fact, by that point, settled in for a good eavesdropping session, with the aim of telling his mates and Lily later. 

“Remember when Lily snogged Remus in fourth year?” Mary’s voice had been loud enough to carry, tinged with the fondness of girls reminiscing. “Apparently he went straight in for the boob grab, so I wouldn’t be surprised.” 

James had waited then, holding his breath, hoping Marlene was going to respond with a laugh—with an assurance that it wasn’t true. That Mary had gotten it wrong and was she talking about someone else instead?

“Never would’ve guessed she’d be with Potter now…next time he makes me do a 7am practice, I’m pointing out that he got Lupin’s sloppy seconds.” 

It had been said with a fondness. With all the tact of Marlene and yet James had heard enough. Couldn’t bear to listen to anymore, his ego bruised and heart fucking shattered he packed up his things and headed back to the tower. He didn’t want to see anyone—didn’t want to see Moony in particular, or his girlfriend. None of them and if Pete and Sirius were even gonna attempt to justify any of it, then he didn’t want to fucking see them either. 

His fury was only intensifying as he walked, so much so that he turned to punch the wall near the portrait, ignoring the chiding calls of the pictures and the crack of his knuckles as he shook out his hand. It hadn’t helped, had done nothing but make him pissed that now he’d fucked up his hand and well maybe Lily would need Remus to help her out with her tits again whilst he was out of action—cause apparently that was Moony’s fucking speciality. 

By the time he was climbing through the portrait hole, he was trembling with rage, these feelings being directed towards Moony an entirely new and terrifying thing. He couldn’t even look at the other boy playing chess with Sirius, didn’t want to face him and yet his mouth was opening before he could stop himself.

“So fourth year?” He questioned loudly, uncaring who was listening and far too angry to temper his tone. “You get a good feel did you Lupin? Shame you didn’t tell me about it sooner, could’ve given me some advice, told me what she likes and all that.”

[daz4i]

congrats! you got it wrong but ily anyway 🖤

the right answer was "melville spends his entire arc hunting a metaphorical whale"! while melville is a character in bsd, his role is very minor. his ability is actually um. how do i describe it. like a spirit of a whale? that's also. a real whale?? but not really?!?! anyway his group turned it into a giant ship that eventually got sunk. but nah, he didn't have an arc or anything, he was just There and he slayed the entire time and i love him.

anyway, explanations under the cut!

edgar allan poe tries to kill a guy he's been obsessed with for years:

that is actually his introduction! he was obsessed with ranpo for 6 years after ranpo beat him in some detective thing, and wrote a book to get him trapped and eventually killed in. needless to say it didn't work and now they're besties (😏)

a guy asks his best friend to kill him so he can write a better mystery novel:

that'd yokomizo! he's trying to write like, an ultimate mystery novel. also he's dying from cancer. so he asks his bestie (😏) to strangle him to death, to give him a better ending, and to make the mystery in his novel more compelling to readers (as it mirrors what happens irl)

goncharov is there. and he's a simp. and can't feel sadness:

hate to be the one breaking it to you but goncharov is a real author. and a character in bsd

dostoevsky gave him a lobotomy, so he can't feel sadness. and bc of that, he considers fyodor his master and is obsessed with him

french men yaoi:

verlaine and rimbaud have a weird gay thing going on. the fun part is the irl poets also had a weird gay thing going on. i'm too lazy to find screenshots of the characters being gay sorry just trust me bro (it's from the light novel stormbringer tho. and mentioned in fifteen iirc tho i'm p sure verlaine isn't named)

a 10 years old child feels the pain of every tree in the country at once:

this one's actually a mistake on my end! they're 13, my bad. i accidentally misled people with this, so sorry. but yeah this is about q; their ability is that they can mind control anyone who hurts them. so, steinbeck attached his ability to them - he can do shit with trees. idk man - to turn them into a mass weapon

the main team beats up gang members for messing with their favorite cafe:

this is the plot of chapter 38, basically. i can't find a good screenshot just go read it it takes like 3 minutes

a 14 y/o farmer solves a crime by being nice:

that's kenji! he's just friends with everyone in the city so they give him clues and secret information bc they like him :)

a clown puts dostoevsky and his narrative foil in a death race:

nikolai, my beloved, my everything, makes fyodor and dazai inject themselves with poison that will kill them in 30 minutes. their goal is to escape the prison they're in before that happens, and whoever gets there first will get the antidote. he's just silly goofy like that

a guy gets stabbed so he can roleplay as a princess with his ex-partner:

i love that this is third place. no this is just dazai. he had a whole elaborate plan in dead apple. eventually he gets stabbed by the guys he's been in cahoots with for said plan. the knife has poison on it too. luckily he had antidote hidden in his mouth but he needed something to get it to work. enter chuuya aka his ex-partner, who fought a dragon and is now looking for dazai in the wreckage, finds him, and punches him which is exactly what breaks the antidote and gets it to work. then this happens

given that he had the antidote ready hours before he got stabbed he knew this would happen, and he trusted chuuya to be there to give him his princess moment (and chuuya knew this, too)

also this isn't a part of it i just need the non-bsd fans who are looking for context to see this which also happens seconds later:

that is all! you are so brave for getting through this bullshit and i am proud of you. go read bungou stray dogs if you haven't yet

well since you all asked so nicely

i felt like "guy throws a building at a dragon" is like basic stuff by now. tried doing stuff i haven't seen in polls before afaik

people who don't know bsd I'm dying to hear your answers ^_^

[1000sunnygo]

Hello! I would love to hear your thoughts about these 5 lovely women. If thats ok. Sorry for randomly asking.

I love them sm i wish we got to know more about them. Also, I do apologize if i accidentally spoiled you.

Hey shobi-enzo!

The Sisters! I thought they're great from the little we've seen of them. Unlike others, the four sisters know who their children are, their existence gave these women a reason to rebel. What happened afterward? Did they personally meet and talk to their kids? Where are they living now anyway? It could be great if we knew more about them.

I dig Matilda's character design! We often talked about her whenever she appeared. I don't know if you'd been around the fandom during serialization but Matilda was part of "Sister-Minerva supporter collaboration to take down Ratris" theory, if I remember correctly, because she's a Sister who appeared in chapter 23 and again in one of the fallen cast scripts in ch. 118 color page.

Which is interesting, because we assumed the fallen scripts belonged to characters who died. She was there either because it wasn't yet decided if she'd remain alive or dead, or Shirai (and Posuka) just wanted the readers to pay attention to this particular character so we can remember her when she becomes relevant.

Shirai once again brought her up in the fanbook, which released a couple of months prior to the release of Isabella side story.

It seems giving focus to sisters was a part of Shirai's old plan, I'm glad he could pull it off eventually.

I don't think Matilda is Norman's mom, by the way. I HC that his mother was highly intelligent and demons wanted more children with her DNA, but she was physically weak and eventually died. Norman was her only child and was deemed extremely valuable, thus was sent to the best plant in spite of his unusually poor health.

Sienna is very likely Sherry or Carol's mom, given red hair is rare and recessive (although we don't know her hair color for sure). She's the "docile and submissive woman hence valuable" meaning suitable for reproducing, probably birthed numerous "high quality" children who were selected for Isabella's plant.

I liked her most tbh, probably because her silent resignation was relatable somehow :')

I'm pretty sure this image is hers and if so, she's even younger than Cecile and there are ~100 children born between her and Isabella. So I don't think she's Emma's mother.

Scarlet being Don's mom is somewhat likely, because her immediate reaction was "I thought s/he died long ago!" -> likely birthed one of the older kids.

I don't have any theory about Jessica but I remember finding her character description funny lol.

As for Cecile, I'd totally eat the theory of her being Norman's mom if I could. But she's a lot younger than Isabella, it's probably not possible.

I think the novel portrayed her better than the side chapter. (Shoutout to @/14thNeah on Twitter and @standreamy for their amazing translation!) This story becoming a side chapter was unexpected because it didn't have to exist in two different versions (novel+manga), it gives me hope that Shirai would write side stories about every major character/faction including the Demons, Ratris, Yugo/Lucas and Lambda.

Whenever we get a new volume that records these side stories, I hope the Sisters will be drawn in color.

Random fun fact: when Shirai wrote Isabella and the Sisters' rebellion against Peter, he was playing P!nk and Lady Gaga's songs for the "female rebellion" inspiration-burst. [S]

[captnjacksparrow]

I don't want to be disrespectful, but I'm also curious to know if you find something off in the way Kishi talks about his family? He said he was surprised that a lot of people expected Naruto to end up with Sakura and that even his wife was angry over the fact that they didn't end up together. He tried to convince her that Hinata was modeled after her, but she caught onto the fact that he was lying. (Doesn't his wife know that he basically wrote a tragic gay love story?) Didn't he also say that she was like Kushina? But Naruto is his self insert? And Boruto is a message to his son? (Please correct me if any of this information is wrong). Do you think he's even divulged the true story he was writing to anyone? I don't know the writing process, but do you think his editors or assistants even know? I guess I'd just like some perspective or to be told that I'm wrong because the stuff my mind is coming up with just makes me think Kishi must be living a lonely life

Heh... You too thought all these things, Anon??? Well, I too gave a thought and then I ignored it altogether...

However, Naruto is Kishi's Self-Insert... A Fact which everyone knows, even Japanese readers made fun of that many times.

Firstly, He said to his wife that Hinata was modeled after her... But an interview later he said Hinata was nothing but her b00bs.😶

Secondly, Didn't Kishi made both Sakura and Hinata to be those shallow girls who never understood anything about their Husband as to who they are and how they feel deep inside??? But His wife who also couldn't Pick up/ Understand the real story his Husband was writing all along is weird as fuck for me. [[Sorry Kishi!! That’s so weird to me]]

I mean, she doesn't have to find Gay Subtexts and ship SNS but atleast she could have found out a simple fact that Sakura is totally irrelevant to the story. Right???

Okay, Let's forget about SNS. But why Kishi always says it's uncomfortable/creepy to date with the female characters that he created??

I don't know why it's creepy to date with a Girl, Hinata but he don't feel shy to date a Boy, Shikamaru🤔🤦🏻‍♀️

That’s kind of spooky...!!!!

I also found another thing to be hilariously weird... But take this as a funny coincidence or a simple joke... Or whatever suits your preference.

So, in December 2013... He gave this following interview..

He said he wanted to go Honeymoon...

In 2014, that is right after the Manga ended...

He still said he wanted to go on a Honeymoon.

But in 2015, New York Comic Con...

Even the Interviewer himself asked about the Honeymoon to which he deflected it by citing 'School' as a reason XD XD XD

This reminds me of...

That time Naruto always showed his Interest in Dating Sakura...

But when she confessed him...

He rejected it🤷🏻‍♀️

Hilarious.... Coincidence (???).

Do you think he's even divulged the true story he was writing to anyone? I don't know the writing process, but do you think his editors or assistants even know?

Can’t say for sure whether he divulged it to his Friends or Family. But When it comes to writing process, He couldn’t have been keeping it secret from his Assistants or even from his Editor forever. My hunch is that not everyone (even his Assistants) would have picked up the Subtexts from the Get-Go. Atleast Not in Part 1. 

They might have very well taken that Accidental Kiss as another Joke and Sasuke dying for Naruto is just a basic Shonen/Chinese novel Concept for Brothers & Friends. Not something specifically Romantic.

But as the series progressed further and further or at least by the end of VoTE1, his Assistants and Editors would’ve found out what he was trying to write. There’s no way that they could be Oblivious beyond that point.... And not for 699 chapters.

Look at this. 

This interview was from a Fanbook that was released around 2008 or 2009, I don’t remember exactly when. But The Author was trying to get a Green Signal from his Editor to use Reverse Harem no Jutsu in his Manga. Well, if that isn’t an Important thing or it's just another Joke which doesn't mean anything, then he didn’t have to be this persistent, you know. And it’s precisely because of it’s Controversial Nature, the Editor refused outright for all those years. 

Do you think that The Editor or Those Assistants didn’t know anything about any of this???

Of Course, they do. 

My guess is that, his Family members might have thought that Kishi was writing some ‘intense’ friendship between Naruto + Sasuke and nothing more... Or they didn’t bother to ask him further as to what's going on with his Story Or they are not at all interested in what he was doing... That we will never know.

But what piqued my curiosity was this...

“I had almost no friends” 

But It feels like he is projecting his true self most of the times... He started out as someone with no acknowledgement, No friends... He failed many times before he got a chance to prove himself as a mangaka... Finally he became a Successful mangaka... And then he casually said that Boruto movie is all about Parent-Child love because he missed spending his time with his Children since he was busy drawing Naruto Manga just like Naruto not spending his time with his Children... 

In that Parent-Child movie, we know that Boruto is the Child... But who is the Parent??? Because that movie was all about Sasuke and Boruto + Naruto.... Man!!! More and More Questions...  

[kedreeva]

It is indeed me!! Hello!!!

I am genuinely (/srs) delighted (pun NOT intended as it is not my fault you have elected to nickname me as such --i do completely disagree with how truthful the nickname is but i must say that my brain certainly has decided to produce the happy chemical at being given a new nickname so much fucking so that i accidentally fucking stimmed my way into earning myself a new bump on the head by accidentally smacking my head into the concrete wall whilst i was Wiggling-- you fucker) to know that i have played a oart in lowering your dread at anon notifications and i hope your levels of dread surrounding that (and in general too obviously) never see fit to rise again

I will also take a page out of your book and straight up wrangle myself into working on that fucking assignment thats so very close to making me fail by not allowing myself to check your blog for a reply until after i have finished the first part of it so that i may actually be motivated to Do It for fucking once since the prospect of slowly approaching doom is apparently not doing it for my brain

Good luck with your chores ked

I'm sorry for your head bump but that is hilarious

my dishes are finally done, my mouse boxes are clean and drying, I did my Outside stuff. I hope you got some work done, too.

the spelling errors is part of the charm

Listen........ i'm not the one to argue about what goes into a toaster with. i put chicken in there. but also there's no ice on eggos??? they are just frozen

WELL you could always come off anon and come to my discord

Why not both? and I have no regrets, you should have to think about baby steve and jonathan in the woods

The last episode is SO GOOD. And there's always, you know. Will coughing up that slug. that slug carries over you know. that's the monster dustin adopts in season 2. practically not even an ending, just a chapter. did not end neatly at all!!!

I mean it definitely sounds like you just wrote an outline into my askbox, you should write the thing.

I've always loved dyslexic and/or dyscalculaic Steve the Most. My friend, early on, rambled sleepily to me about Steve joining the RPG and the kids making sure he got rolls and stuff added up right and Eddie being confused about it at first until they explain and then he helps too. love people helping people. love steve getting loved.

do it do it do it do it

listen, join the fuckin' club I'm supposed to be writing a novel this month and all I want to do is write ST fic. I'm gonna write my fucking novel but god at what cost, I am ignoring my Eddie + Max Siblings Adventures In The Upside Down fic for this. It's killing me. I started a fucking sentinel AU I'm dying to pick back up.

Also I'm not sure tumblr is eating many asks these days. the old problem with ellipses got fixed.

ANYWAY I look forward to you finishing your project and also starting season 2. There are many good things. Steve putting his hands on his hips. Max. Nancy and Jonathan sneaking off to talk to a conspiracy theorist about their actual conspiracy. Max. Will getting possessed. MAX. Eleven dressing like this:

and moving an entire fucking train car with her mind.

it's a good time.

[avocado-frog]

-The word counts might be inaccurate. I'm just copy pasting from ao3 I'm not checking the actual drafts to see the word count

-"If she tried to learn anymore, she'd physically implode. Spontaneously combust. Kaboom." Good thing you're going to school then, Leo

-Headcanon Leo was a not like other girls kid growing up

-Leo quit being so paranoid challenge (impossible)

-Leo gets hit with/by something counter: 2 (yes I am actually keeping count)

-Leo has no idea where she just sent that poor kid. rip

-Leo's ASPD symptom chapter

-Leo's going to be diagnosed when she's eighteen. Technically since she's sixteen, it's conduct disorder

"Leo stifled herself from slamming her hands over her ears, heart suddenly plummeting at the sound" autistic leo autistic leo autistic leo

-Also Definitely not Foreshadowing counter: 5

-Leo's English teacher is based off of my old teacher, who covered the clock because it was disrespectful to check the time, and was. a little problematic actually

-"She had always been fascinated by classic novels as a kid" OH I GET WHY I WROTE THAT

-(accidental) Definitely not Foreshadowing counter: 6

-Leo's science teacher is also based on my eighth grade science teacher. She cried because people complained about the shit music that she played at nine in the morning and quit at the end of the year

"Steal from the rich, give to the poor. Robin Hood, 1973." Leo no

-Yeah I looked up when Robin Hood was written. Yeah Leo just. knows that. apparently

-"A freshman student had been banned from every school in the district because she had gotten into a fight with someone from every grade" based on my brother's friend

Leo gets hit with something counter: 3

-Jude: a Jellicoe Road reference

-Brianna: based on this girl I know from school

-Audrey: part based on this girl I know from school, part based off Aubrey from Omori

-Noel: Noel Gruber ride the cyclone

Jasper: no one in particular. Is based on original draft Jaxon, though

-"It was true. They were lost without her." Leo has a bittt of a complex

-"While her back was turned, Leo took twenty dollars from the tip jar, stuffing the money in her pocket." Put it back

-"Sorry guys, not coming back to school." Foreshadowing Counter: 7

-ELLIOT :(

-THIS CHAPTER IS SCHEDULED THE DAY I START SCHOOL AGAIN

Forget-me-not. 3

Rating: T (see pinned post/ao3 link for additional tags) Warning: Death threats, child abuse, Length: 3,000 words Chapter title: 11/1/2018 Summary: Leo is at school

Leo's head fell against the window of the school bus with a soft thud. The movements from the bus made her head rattle and smack against the window, effectively ruining her nap. She hadn't bothered to sleep the night before, having been too busy trying to find anything she could on her aunt and cousins.

She hadn't found anything. It was like they never existed. She'd gone through every document on every person who died any day after the year 2013, and found no one who looked like her aunt and cousins. It was ridiculous. And now she was tired.

Leo was not above skipping school. She'd done it the day before, she'd do it again. But, the only thing on her mind was learning about her probably-dead family members, and she'd already spent an entire six hours without a break doing that. If she tried to learn anymore, she'd physically implode. Spontaneously combust. Kaboom.

The bus screeched to a halt and hissed as the doors opened. A group of kids filed in, and found their spots easily. Leo glared at each one of them, pointedly placing her backpack next to her so no one could sit there.

Cass usually was the one to sit by her on the bus, but she was currently in the front with some kids on her soccer team. Kai was in the front with his fellow art nerds, and Marcy was in the back with the kids who were also probably going to end up in jail. Leo sat in the middle rows.

The kids crowded around each other and screamed for no discernible reason as they clambered and fought their way out of the bus. Leo watched the chaos from a safe viewing distance, huddling against the metal wall of the bus and holding her black backpack close.

When it was safe and all the other kids got off, Leo made her way down the narrow alley and carefully hopped off onto the sidewalk.

Leo glanced around. There was five minutes left before the doors would open. For now, the kids all stood in a big group together, talking amongst themselves and overall making a block to the door, and paid Leo no mind.

Leo twisted her hoodie string in between her fingers. As a kid, her mother had told her horror stories. Kids like her were cornered and maimed and left for dead. They wouldn't hesitate to do the same thing to her or Cass if they knew.

And of course, they all knew. It was a well known fact. Leo had magic, and Cass had magic, but people liked Cass. Cass was friendly and sociable and overall a good person. No one thought she was dangerous. And Leo was fine with being the bad guy if her sister wasn't in danger.

She liked to think that she wouldn't go out of her way to directly hurt someone. Especially not with her magic. With her fists, sure. With a fireball shot out of her fingertips? No. Hopefully not.

But she could and that was all they needed to know, it was only a matter of time before she was killed in an alleyway.

Some gave her a look as she pushed past them. Some people smiled and waved at her. It was all an act, a front.

A lie Leo was too smart to fall for. She glared down the kids who waved and tightened her grip on her backpack until her fingernails practically dug into the leather straps.

Leo flinched as the bell rang, and the two-thousand kids began swarming inside all at once, mercilessly clawing at each other and smashing into the doorway. The smaller freshman students were crushed and pushed away by their older counterparts, and forced to the back for the bigger ones to fight their way to the front entrance.

Leo, personally, thought it was a bit over the top, as she was shoved into another kid's backpack and her anxiety skyrocketed.

Once inside, the bizarre amount of kids split off into groups, going into different directions like a swarm of bees to their honeycomb cells. They were all desperate to get to their classes first, despite the fact that many had been complaining about being in school in the first place.

Leo found her locker, conveniently located across the building from where her first class was. That had most definitely been on purpose, she was sure of it. The school board was out to get her, now, too.

She carefully moved a stack of money to the side of the locker and set her backpack inside. She took out a stack of paper and placed them in her binder, to hand out to the kids in her first period class without the teacher seeing her.

A slight tap on the arm made her whip around on her heel, startled. A younger girl, probably freshman, held a crumpled-up sheet of paper in shaky hands, looking embarrassed.

"Uh- sorry. I'm- I just got here-" poor kid, can hardly keep it together. She pointed at a room on her schedule. Some science room upstairs, Leo was sure. "Do you know how to get there?"

Leo looked over at the girl's paper, staring at the room number for a moment. "Aw, of course. You're gonna want to go that way-" Leo pointed to some random direction. "-and you'll take a left, then go up the stairs, take a right, go down the stairs, then there'll be an elevator, then you take another right."

She scrunched her nose a little, confused, but nodded to herself after muttering the instructions again. She smiled up at Leo. "Thank you!"

"Sure!" Leo smiled pleasantly, snickering to herself when she started to run off.

She took a deep breath, and booked it in a mad dash to the main hallway, in the process, she nearly rammed headfirst into seven kids, two teachers, the principal, and an angry looking parent yelling at a poor janitor. It truly seemed too early for the both of them.

She fully ignored the teachers who yelled at her to stop running in the hallways, but slowed down as she approached her classroom, smoothed her hair with her hands, and pretended like she wasn't out of breath.

Her teacher was out of the classroom, acting as a hall monitor who had miraculously not seen Leo running through the halls. She seemed good at her job, Leo thought in amusement.

Leo opened the door and sat down in her spot in the front of the classroom. Undoing the binder in front of her, Leo proceeded to sort through the stack of papers.

The previous week, the assignment was to write an essay on their aims in life. Goals and such. Leo had written four different essays on different topics. All these kids had to do was give Leo their topics, and they would pay her ten dollars each to write their essays for them.

Before the teacher could reenter the classroom, Leo flicked the corners of the papers and handed them out to each kid. There was Danny, a kid with fluffy hair and blue eyes, who's goal was to move out of the country, and what a mood that was. Danny gave her a small smile, as they gave her ten dollars, and quietly thanked her.

Alice, she didn't like Leo very much. Leo had spent most of her childhood avoiding that girl. They did the trade silently, neither thanking the other.

And a boy named Noah, who wanted to be a basketball player. Leo didn't know anything about sports, so she had Marcy bullshit some facts about basketball and together, they had thrown a questionable essay together.

Maybe, this was technically on expelling-grounds, suspension at least, but technically, Leo had lunch detention once a week, a mandated counselor session next week on Tuesday and every Tuesday after that, and was hardly ever at school at all anyways, so technically, if Leo was expelled, she wouldn't care all that much.

Leo sat back down at the same time the teacher came back and the same time the bell rang. Leo stifled herself from slamming her hands over her ears, heart suddenly plummeting at the sound. Her hand twitched.

The teacher walked into the room and sat at her desk, folding her arms and staring at the kids behind pink-rimmed glasses. Leo gave the teacher a sweet smile, that the teacher returned.

The teacher was a very strict woman, with high standards, due to the class being an AP level. They did an essay every three weeks, and on top of the current essay, Leo was also in the middle of reading and doing a report on a classic novel. She had picked Dracula, of course. She had always been fascinated by classic novels as a kid, so she was perfectly happy with the project.

Leo sat up as straight as a person who was indeed bisexual could sit, and pretended to pay attention while the teacher collected everyone's essays. As she stood in the middle to read them all off to everyone, Leo tapped her foot on the floor, hand absentmindedly scratching the table.

She was always careful when she wrote other kid's essays, but it was easy to slip up and use the same line twice, or sign her name at the top. She'd never screwed up before. She tensed up even further when the teacher had gotten to her essay. She hadn't known what her goal in life was, really, but wrote a long few paragraphs detailing her plan to move out as soon as she could and added a few facts about where she would move, as well as a budgeting plan. If she ever went through with it, the essay was sure to help her.

Once the teacher read through the last essay to the class, the tension released itself from her shoulders, allowing her to slump forward and relax, tuning out the teacher's lesson on grammar. Leo was sixteen and quite confident in her grammar skills.

She was also quite confident that she had fallen asleep, as the bell suddenly rang again and jolted her back to consciousness.

Her next class was science. Chemistry, technically. Leo's personal favorite and the only class she bothered paying attention to. Cass was in that class with her, and they sat next to each other. Cass didn't know about Leo's whole scheme she had been running for the past few years.

Now, getting to the classroom faster than her twin was not an easy task, with said twin in both track and soccer, while Leo would never run for enjoyment.

She held her binder close and walked down the hallway, took a right, walked a few feet, and made it to her science class. She cringed at the loud pop music playing over the speakers from the teacher's computer. Her science teacher was talking to the one next door.

So, Leo followed the same pattern. She handed out completed homework assignments, got fifty dollars, and sat down before the teacher could see. A lesson happened and Leo already knew all the material so she let herself hide within the comfortable sleeves of her hoodie and teeter on the edge of falling asleep for an hour, while Cass would shake her awake periodically.

Now, her next class was a bit different. In math class, she sat down at her seat, the smell of saltwater taffy and coffee filled the classroom, as well as the 8-bit sounds of video games. Her math teacher was her favorite, as he actively supported her scheme, although he didn't know about the homework one, he supported the one she did in math class.

She pulled out a red pencil case and lined each object up, folding her hands in front of her. One by one, kids came up, picked a pencil, or eraser, or any other school supplies, and gave her fifty cents for it. Now, because they were so much cheaper than the ones at the store, kids would buy them in bulk, and Leo would end up with ten dollars by the end. Her teacher supported it, because it helped the other kids, and he didn't know how much she truly made off of it.

Leo sat in the back of the classroom, so no one could sit behind her, and so no one could see her computer screen. Most of their assignments were online, and Leo finished them before school started, so she could spend her time playing games on the school laptop and continue to sell school supplies.

By the time the lunch bell rang, Leo made ninety dollars off of poor fools who never thought that it could be a scam, and no one ever told the teachers, because everyone relied on her too much, and they couldn't afford to lose her. She could afford it, but that was mostly because she had all their money. She needed it more than they did, anyway.

Steal from the rich, give to the poor. Robin Hood, 1973.

Leo's locker wasn't too far away from her math class, though she avoided the kids who squealed and hugged each other, genuinely in tears, like they hadn't seen each other less than an hour ago. It was bizarre to see other people act like that without feeling embarrassed. Leo felt she would be embarrassed if she ever even talked to another person her age.

Leo had witnessed plenty of school fights in her day. She didn't live in the safest city, after all. A freshman student had been banned from every school in the district because she had gotten into a fight with someone from every grade. A group of girls had nearly pushed a smaller boy in front of the school bus when it was leaving. Two other girls had gotten into a brutal fight in the school bathrooms. Those same girls who had hugged and cried because they saw each other again after five minutes, seemed to have no problem turning straight back around to claw each other's eyes out.

Leo put the newly-earned ninety dollars in her stack in the locker, shoving them all in her backpack, that she slung over her shoulder, and made sure to check that the locker was indeed locked, because kids her age were not above stealing from her, and she was not above stealing from them.

Leo hesitated to call them her friends, but they were the group she hung out with at lunch, and some days after school.

She sat with a group of kids, the ones that the teachers would find any reason to get in trouble. Already, they were gathering by the table in the back, and already, they were throwing apple slices at each other.

Leo didn't greet them when she sat down, and they didn't greet her, other than the slight annoyance of an apple slice to the face. She glowered at the boy- Jude- and turned back to her phone underneath the table. Brianna, the girl beside her, bleached-white hair and long, fake eyelashes, she was known for stealing phones right out of hands as a joke. Leo wasn't in the mood.

She was one of the youngest among the group, one of the only sophomores. The majority were seniors and juniors.

She looked up when her forehead was poked at with a pencil. Jasper, blue eyes and pink hair, blue hoodie, sat back down with a slight grin.

"Leo, what're you doing in your next classes?"

"Whatever you want from me, it's a no," Leo said coolly, hardly paying attention to the group. Another poke. She looked again. "What?"

"I'm just saying, Leo-" Jasper pointed at the doors that led to the student parking. "The teachers aren't there."

Teachers, the hall monitors, usually stood at the door to catch kids trying to skip school during lunch. It clicked. Leo picked her backpack up by the handle. "Yeah, sure. Where do we wanna go?"

"We've got a new café," Audrey suggested. "It's like, across the street."

"By the store?" Leo shrugged, Audrey nodded. "Sure. I've got to go grocery shopping today, anyways."

"No one has tests today? Nothing important?" The oldest of the group, Noel, asked. The others mumbled their responses. Even if they did, it didn't matter enough.

The group stood up, and Leo shot a wary glance at the doors. She looked back. "Guys, go one at a time, don't be stupid about it."

"You act like it's our first time."

"Yeah, because you text me every time I'm not at school to tell me you got caught."

It was true. They were lost without her.

Leo avoided Cass's gaze when the twins made eye contact, just as she slipped through the glass doors, a rush of adrenaline once she was outside with the others.

Cheers and laughter at their success, feet slapping against the sidewalk as they ran like their lives depended on it.

In record time, they made it to the shopping part of town, the Walmart and new Starbucks, and the four other stores, a beauty supply, and chain restaurant, a shoe store, and a Goodwill.

"I'm not paying," Leo decided, the second they entered the coffee shop, the bell ringing overhead. She pushed past the other kids to the front of the line, the barista looked at her, eyes narrowing suspiciously. "A black coffee."

"Shouldn't you kids be in school?" The barista took her money regardless, turning back to the machine. While her back was turned, Leo took twenty dollars from the tip jar, stuffing the money in her pocket.

The kids behind her booed at the question, Leo scoffed. Why she hung out with them was the real mystery. She smiled sweetly at the woman at the counter when she turned back around. "Ha, yeah, probably. We're just here for lunch."

The barista's expression went back to the patented one she had to have, lest she get fired. "Alright, well, have a nice day."

Leo took the coffee from the counter, still smiling. "You too!"

The expression dropped as soon as she turned around, silently mocking the woman. Jasper snickered. She sat down at one of the tables, sipping through the thin, black straw while she waited.

Leo found herself running again in about thirty minutes when they left the coffee shop and had their pockets filled with useless, stolen items. Little things no one would miss; pencils and candy and toy cars. But the alarms still sounded because one of them forgot to pick off the stickers.

As the alarms blared behind them, Leo was dragged along by Jasper's hand, running from the security officer yelling in the distance. Leo was laughing along this time, near-hysterical, as they turned the corner, backs slamming against the brick wall, fighting to catch their breaths.

Silence followed, broken by small giggles and harsh breaths. Leo slid down the wall of the alleyway. She looked around, feeling strangely giddy with adrenaline, actually laughing out loud when she noticed an absence. "Oh my god, we lost Brianna."

Jasper cackled at the realization. "Holy shit! She's gone!"

"Should've moved faster." Leo shrugged. "They got her."

"She's going straight to jail," Noel spoke mildly, helping Leo back up. The five- now four- dropped the things they took out on the ground. Leo moved to claim the chocolate bar.

"God dammit, you guys. I needed to go grocery shopping. Now I'm banned there, too."

"Maybe they didn't see your face, L." Jasper chewed a piece of gum. "You had your hood up."

"Cass is going to kill me." A slight laugh. "Sorry guys, not coming back to school. My sister's ending my life. She definitely saw us leave."

"You will be missed," Noel deadpanned, giving her a salute. Leo chuckled lightly, catching the wrapped piece of gum tossed her way. Mint, she made a face at the spicy taste, sticking it to the brick wall. "Now what?"

"Let's go to Leo's!" Jasper clapped her on the back. She flinched. "Her parents are never home."

"Jasper," Noel scolded, but Leo shrugged.

"Sure. Just leave me alone by the time my sister gets home." She pointed her thumb at Audrey. "-And we can bully Audrey into ordering a pizza, or something."

Audrey groaned into the sky. "What? Why me?"

"Because Brianna just got arrested, that's why."

Leo trailed behind the group, guilt tearing a hole in her stomach. Odd, given that she didn't care about what happened to Brianna, and she didn't expect the others to care the day she finally got caught. No, she didn't care about her.

Again, the polaroid picture she found the night before creeped its way into her thoughts. What would they think about this? Nothing, probably. They were dead. Leo shook her head, almost home.

---

White tile, black tile, white tile, he counted, over and over and over, he can't get past ten. He won't make it past ten. He'll be dead in three weeks. He didn't know how long three weeks was. Black, white, black, white, purple rabbit in the corner, creating a hard contrast. His head slammed against the wall, white hair smacked lightly against his face. Smack, smack. ...Ow.

From the black tiles, an inky substance curled around him, created a small barrier, his heart rattled in his ears, a purple tinge painted his vision.

He dug his fingers in his hair, picking at dead skin anxiously, face buried in his knees. The ink created a shield around him, spiking up at the realization that he could no longer see his stuffed animal in the other corner.

The light swung back and forth from the ceiling, Elliot blinked at it, vision still purple, the ink still there. His gaze trailed to something in the corner of his eye. He shrieked at the sight of the headless figure attached to the ceiling like a spider, covering his eyes with his arms. In response, the black ink spiked.

He could hear it moving closer, and closer, and closer-

His hands moved to cover his ears, blocking the noise of the door starting to open.