#I make no promises to actually write something with this - I'll have to re-watch the first two season and kind of update as I watch the

[twpsyn-who]

Soulmates AU in which when your soulmate is in a situation that can result in their death you get to see through their eyes. Like, I don't know how to explain this- it kind of flashes between what you see and what your soulmate sees. You know those edits where there's a scene going on and there's another one faded in the background happening at the same time? Similar to that. The idea is that you get to see what your soulmate sees too, on top of what you're seeing.

Now, this AU but JeanMarco. With Marco asking the others where's Jean, just for him to start seeing a corpse right in front of his eyes not even a second after asking. Seeing through Jean's eyes as he's trying to get hold of that gear and stuff. And once Jean's safe, once it clicks that you know his best friend is his soulmate Marco can't wait for them to graduate so he can you know tell him that.

Then, you know. That happens. And Jean is so fucking confused because he keeps seeing Annie crying, looking down on him. Only when Annie starts getting off the gear, when his soulmate starts moving around trying to get away he starts panicking, starts moving around faster than before. And maybe he's too late. Or maybe he shows up in time and kills the titan. I don't know. That's not where I'm trying to get, but to the second option AKA Marco pulling an UNO reverse on Annie because he's a smart sneaky bastard like that and being like 'Hey you can't kill me, my soulmate will know it was you' which makes her stop trying to take off his gear. Reiner keeps telling her to do it, Bertholdt keeps yelling about that titan coming closer, but Annie... she has seen things, at some point. Flashes of moments that weren't hers, happening right in Trost- right in that moment. And she didn't give them too much thought until that moment, until it got confirmed that it has nothing to do with her titan powers.

'What do you mean by that?' she asks, because she needs to know more. Because she wants to know more. And Marco starts explaining how it works. Tells them that he has found his soulmate, that they will put all the blame on them for his death. Reiner doesn't believe him, keeps insisting that he's playing them around - he, and anyone born and raised on Marley, has never heard of something like that before, it doesn't exist - but Annie tells him to shut up and to let Marco go. Cue to the plot of any fic in which Marco doesn't straight up die after finding up their secret.

Anyway I don't know man, just,,, We need more soulmate aus for JeanMarco. That's an order.

[lurkingshan]

(Different anon) I agree with and understand your points re: ~why you watch GMMTV if don't like??~ and why the question is/feels hostile.

But taking the question itself in good faith as "why do you (should I) keep watching shows I think/know I will not like based on how others have been handled?" in the genuine spirit of "explain like I'm 5 because I don't understand the lingo and background but want to understand the concept, how would you explain it to people not as into/knowledgeable/etc BL and the history of GMMTV?

Hi anon! This is an interesting question, because it depends so much on you as an individual and what makes you happy.

I think there is often a misconception that people who post critical meta are having a miserable time and torturing themselves with media they hate, but it's just not true. For folks like me who enjoy thinking critically, this is how we have fun. When I love something, I want to rip open its guts and see how it's all assembled. It's what stimulates my brain and gets me excited. And when I don't love something wholeheartedly, I am interested in figuring out why. I've often had the experience of watching something that I know should be working on me, and if it isn't, that creates an intellectual puzzle that I find very satisfying to solve. Why isn't it working, and what can that help me learn about storytelling? This is also fun for me.

Another misconception I often see in fandom is that if you like something, you can't have negative thoughts about it and you have to pretend it's perfect to be a good fan. Nonsense! Being a hater is fun, especially about things you truly love. I'll give you a really concrete example: Bad Buddy is one of my all time favorite shows. It first aired three years ago and I still think about it nearly every day. It's a show that stimulates my brain but also hits me straight in the heart. But I do not think it's perfect and I get a lot of joy from thinking about the parts that did not work (Wai's redemption, that stupid fake out in the finale, all of episode 9) and making fun of it (have you heard that PAT GOT SHOT??). This, too, is a form of love and source of joy.

So with those misconceptions addressed, why do I keep watching shows I suspect I won't like? First, because you truly never know until you try, and I like to be pleasantly surprised. Two of my favorite shows of this year, Cherry Magic Thailand and Knock Knock Boys, shocked the hell out of me. I went into CMT deeply skeptical only to be charmed against my will and so impressed by how they adapted it, and I went into KKB expecting it to be like 95% of weak Thai pulps only to realize its writing and themes were stronger than they had any right to be. If I stayed away from all media I thought I might not like, I would have never had the amazing experience of watching and discussing those two shows live with friends who also loved them.

Second, like I said above, I still have fun examining shows that are not quite working for me, and sometimes I am compelled by the ambition of shows even if I don't think the execution is serving. A great example of that is The Sign. I wanted to support that show because of who was making it, and it had so much early promise that when it fell apart halfway through, I stuck it out to try to make sense of what went wrong. In cases like that, I like to figure out what a show thinks it's doing, what it's actually doing, and where the disconnect is. It's a fun puzzle for me to sort through such an ambitious mess of a show. This is why, btw, I am never really moved by fanwanks to fill in gaps in story and characterization. I understand why others enjoy fixing shows in their brains and then pretending that's what they actually saw, but it's not what motivates me. My goal with shows like this is not to get myself to like it no matter what, it's to figure out why I don't like it and what could be changed to address that.

Third, I care about ql as a genre, and I like to be aware of how it's evolving and be part of the collective experience of watching it. QL fandom is tiny and I like to know what my friends are talking about! I can't watch everything because there is simply way too much content these days, but I like to watch or at least pay attention to most of the big buzzy shows to track trends and see what's getting the fandom frustrated or excited. I didn't watch We Are because I knew enough about what it was doing and who was involved to understand it was not for me, but I did pay attention to reactions to it. Watching Jack & Joker with Thai bl fandom right now is some of the most fun we've had since Only Friends killed our spirit. J&J is directed by my parasocial frenemy Tee Bundit, whose shows often frustrate the hell out of me and whom I have ripped to shreds on this platform many times over. But I'm not gonna let that stop me from having fun with this new show, because Joke is The Moment and we're all in this together.

So truly, anon: whether or not you should be like me and watch things you may not like or continue watching shows you don't think are very good depends on what motivates you. You should figure out what is most fun for you re: media consumption, and do that. You can seek out people who enjoy media the same way you do, and also befriend people who think differently if you want to learn from each other and don't mind a bit of productive discomfort from time to time. I have gotten better recently at recognizing when I'm just getting nothing out of a show and dropping it like a hot potato (because some shows are not bad in an interesting way, they are just bad), or realizing which shows I will like better on a binge (usually the ones with terrible pacing, that is not as tortuous for me when I can just watch it all in one go). You gotta do some testing to figure it out.

All of this has all been a really long-winded way to say you should do what makes you happy, and don't assume that just because someone else's happiness looks different from yours, that it's wrong.

[yoonia]

Writing Update: 06.05.2024

It's time for my regular update report drop to let you know that I'm still alive! Below are the fics that I've been working on and will be releasing (hopefully this month):

Bedroom Hymns (myg x reader) ⏤ this month's target/estimated word count: chapter(s) 18, 19, 20; 16k words total ⏤ progress written: 6,4k words of the total word count goal (first draft writing) I keep jumping between scenes, so even if I'm close to finishing chapter 18 at the moment, I'm not sure if I'll be posting it soon since I've been moving to other scenes/chapters between writing this part. These next few chapters are going to be so much fun to read. I promise :)

Ever a Never After (jjk x reader; ksj x reader)  ⏤ this week's target/estimated word count: act 1; 12k words ⏤ progress written: 6,2k words (final draft writing) I switched my writing process with this one by finalising a scene before moving onto the next since I wanted to have an opening scene/prologue that is fun for everyone to read. I'm also using a couple of beta readers to help me work on this one which is why the process takes a bit longer than usual

Hot Mess (kth x reader) ⏤ estimated word count: 6-7k words ⏤ progress written: 2,5k words (first-second draft writing) Why did the number decrease, you ask? Because I've been re-writing it from the start lol. I actually finished this fic a while ago after sharing the progress back in January, but I didn't like the story flow and how everything went. So I scrapped everything and started over when I opened the draft again a couple of days ago. I'm pretty sure I can finish this one nicely this time

I'm going to continue working on these fics with the hope of dropping something new this week. See you then.

note | If you’re interested in being added into my permanent taglist, please enter your url on this link or if you want to be tagged for EANA, drop your url here. If you only want to be added on a specific update, please add your url and the fic you’re looking for in the replies below, and remember to make sure that your url can be easily found/tagged. You can also subscribe to my Patreon to gain access to my writing journal and watch my daily writing process.

xoxo, Dia

[ladyylavenderrr]

Re: Garak and psychosis

Hi! I do a lot of thinking about Garak, and I also read a lot of psychotic traits on him! I think while they didn't write him thinking of textbook psychosis, a man who has lied so much he can't really tell truth from lie because, to him, "truth is in the eye of the beholder" has to have some level of separation from reality. This is a rather looooong analysis, mostly of events that happen in "The Wire",  but I promise I have a point lol. 

So. I've been thinking about his "lies" to Bashir about his past, and one thing that caught my attention was the hesitation at calling Elim "... my friend"; 

once we found out that he is Elim himself, some stuff from the infirmary monologue got very curious: "we grew up together", true; "we were closer than brothers", true, in a very literal way; "for some reason, Enabrin Tain took a liking to us" well, the reason is that he is his father, that's some reason; 

Now, I'll address his separation of Elim from Garak: I'd say that growing up keeping the secret about who his father was, living a double life from the beggining, then such a split of the ego is almost inevitable. 

Elim is the son, the one who knows the truth, the one who knows Cardassia's love of the family and the people is a lie told to keep powerful men powerful; Tain was the Order, the Order was Cardassia, thus Cardassia's symbol is a man who is a hypocrite, one who betrays his own family- And Garak is the spy. The citizen, the servant of the State. As Tain says himself, he never had to ask Garak to put the implant in his brain, or to do anything - he was so eager to please, and that's what made him special. 

He would keep the truth, one that would make his work unbearable, as something of Elim, while he would be plain and simple Garak, the muscle, the man who did the dirty work without asking any questions. The man to whom family and state, two things he was alienated from from birth, were everything, regardless of how much his work went against that.

Onto the next bit, now: in the end of his monologue, Garak tells a more complicated story to fit into this analogy- he says he faked records to incriminate Elim, only to find out in the end that Elim had beaten him to it; Elim had destroyed him, and before he knew what was going on, he was sentenced to exile; 

But once we know that he is Elim, and if we keep the same logic that Elim represents his inner sense of truth - of knowing he is being used in a very cruel way and that none of that makes any sense - then it's logical that he would sometimes be one step ahead, and sometimes be killed by Garak in the blindness of duty; sometimes watching in horror as he let himself be driven by hunger or fatigue instead of seeing his duty to the end, for he knew the consequences; 

Then, it would be Garak's inner sense of truth, of reality, what destroyed him as the soldier, the spy. Maybe he actually did let those bajorans go for any reason whatsoever, maybe he framed himself for it- I'd say he broke down, some way or another. And he says he deserves it for what he tried to do to Elim, his own screaming sense of reason; much like Marritza killed his past self to die as Darheel - it is the coward, who covered his ears because he couldn't stand to hear the screams for mercy of the Bajorans, who couldn't stand to look at the truth and do something about it, the one who deserves to be punished. 

He became a man who is distressed and anxious during an interrogation, willing to take any answer no matter how irrelevant, just so he doesn't have to keep torturing someone he's kind of friends with, like what happens with Odo later on. We didn't see him do any torturing before that, so maybe he wasnt capable of doing it like he used to before he was exiled, not as a consequence of it; Imo life on DS9 made it "worse" as he became, slowly, part of a community like never before. 

And then, there's Bashir. Again, Garak is a man who adores the state and the family, and has neither. A man who spent his life having no ties to anyone that he couldnt cut immediately, sometimes by killing the person if it was the most efficient way.

On his deathbed, after being really rude and hateful towards Bashir while Bashir lost sleep and thought of nothing but saving him for days, he comes up with this magnificent story, that ends with something that can be interpreted as "I deserve this. Not for betraying Cardassia, the State, but for betraying my best friend." And as he says "my best friend", he stares at Bashir. He then asks for forgiveness, as if he was also asking for Bashir to forgive him for his betrayal of their friendship, for the things he said. He needs to know that, if he can't forgive himself for the horrors, at least someone is capable of forgiving him.

Always full of layers to his half truths and truthful lies, even when he really thinks he's gonna die. He haf-believes it, as a half-truth, even the bits that are made-up; That's where I'd say his link to reality is broken. Idk if any of this makes sense, but this is how I read into it, as someone who has psychotic symptoms and traits, but also as a nerd who loves to nit-pick complex characters like him. 

Peace and long life 🖖

I think it’s always really interesting if Garak truly does believe some of the lies he tells, at least partially. I really like your analysis!!

[vidavalor]

I just happened upon your blog (right terminology?) and I’m learning a lot. One thing that startled me was your referring to Crowley and Aziraphale’s love (sex) life as a matter of course, something seemingly everyone but me knew about. I was blown away and really wanted it to be true. After all, they’ve had to do without so much—openness, safety, the expectation of future togetherness. It would too unfair if they had to do without physical consummation too. What’s the deal with this? How do we know it’s so? What’s the history? Please enlighten me. Have you written posts about this? I’d love to read them. Thanks

Hello! Thanks for the ask. Nice to meet you. I call it a blog because I'm old and don't know the cool terms but we can call it whatever lol. I have no idea re: how many people who view the show and are able to see that Crowley & Aziraphale are more than friends (because, believe it or not, that concept still shocks some lol) who think that they're already lovers. I do think I'm sort of in the minority, maybe, even if there are a bunch of people who think that they're already a thing. When scrolling through the Ineffable Husbands tag on here, I tend to see a lot more posts that suggest that they aren't lovers and that 2.06 was their first kiss. (Let's hope that it's not lol.)

I guess I would say that if you are thinking about whether or not they might be, consider that Good Omens shows you most of its story out of chronological order in order to give layered meaning to the stuff you've already seen so, just with that knowledge alone, it would be actually pretty surprising if 2.06 was the first time they'd kissed. In S2 itself, earlier on, there's some heavy suggestion that it's not. If you want to read about when I think that happened, go here and I'll link you one more post at the bottom of this response here:

While I like to read all points of view-- I read a lot of aro ace GO stuff as well, even if I don't necessarily see that in my own interpretations of things-- I have thought they were sleeping together since the first time I watched S1 a few years back and S2 just kinda reinforced that for me. I think that, technically-speaking, there's a path to either they still haven't gotten together or that they're long-time lovers. I say that but honestly... it's more like if they somehow do something that suggests that they're only getting together during/after S3, I think it could kinda work but I honestly don't actually think that's the story they're writing. I'm pretty firmly set on the idea that they've been sleeping together for, uh, a very long time at this point. Someone told me the other day via messages that they would burn my house down if I did not finish a sex meta that I promised people so I best maybe get on that and also potentially call the police lol. (I am both flattered and scared?). So, uh, I'll get that up soon... I wrote a couple of longer metas lately about different eras of their relationship that are replies to recent asks on my blog-- I'd probably recommend the one about what they call each other and coded love confessions in 1941, if you're looking to read about them as a couple that's already a couple (even if they would have an anxiety attack at the word 'couple', as Crowley does in 2.06 lol). Will link it below. I'm very flattered that you and others have asked to read more of what I think and I have gotten asked a lot for more sex-related content so, uh, watch this space, I guess? :)

Make yourself a tea first or plan to come back to it as I'm wordy lol:

[tavyliasin]

BG3 FicFeb NSFW - Day 3

I'll be honest with you darlings I had every intention of making this one spicy but then feelings happened? Still, it was fun to write, and an interesting scenario I might re-use at a later date. Shortfic below the cut (still NSFW) with some CW/Tags for angst, hurt/comfort, scars, wounds, mention of character trauma, but I promise it is mostly on the fluffy comforting side~

----- -----

Day 3 - Body Worship

It had been far too long since Tav had found an opportunity to bathe properly. Not just scrubbing off with a damp cloth, or dunking into a freezing lake, a proper warm bath. Of course, taking advantage of having access to a brothel’s finer rooms whilst investigating a disappearance was something she took very seriously. She had to be completely certain she wouldn’t miss a vital clue amongst the perfumed soaps and soft towels. Who knew when the last piece of information they needed might be at the bottom of a wine bottle, or lurking in the bowl of fresh fruit…

“Well, that is certainly better than a murky pond.” Astarion echoed her thoughts as he sank into the water beside her. “Gods that feels good.” 

“We should take up the role of investigators more often.” Tav chuckled, reaching for the silver bowl that held a fresh sponge and some soaps. “Here, let me, for once.” 

“You don’t need to-”

“I want to.” She left little room for further complaint, taking his hand in her own and delicately sponging away the dirt that seemed to cling to his nails.

“I am not about to break, you know.” He watched her with an eyebrow raised as she continued to be far more gentle than he felt he deserved. 

“I know.” If anything, Tav slowed slightly, taking a moment to caress his fingers reverently. “But the world has been rough enough with you lately. Is there anything wrong with a little tenderness instead?” 

“Yes- No. Maybe.” He wasn’t even sure what he was trying to say as she brought his hand to her lips and kissed each fingertip in turn. “You…Well…” He sighed, giving in to her care instead for now.

“Relax, Astarion, please.” She trailed a line of kisses up his forearm to his elbow, her fingers gently brushing the faint lines of decades old scars and far fresher bruises marking his pale form. “You know, you really are beautiful.” 

“I know.” He replied, out of reflex. “Sorry, old habits… I suppose truly I have no idea if I am or not, other than the parts of myself I can see clearly. Even the water doesn’t hold my reflection any more.”

“Then let me be your mirror.” She smiled, brushing a stray lock of hair that threatened to fall forwards into his eye. “Now, where was I?” 

Tav began to wash his other hand and arm, with the same reverence she had used before, but this time giving voice to the thoughts that floated through her mind as she did. 

“Here, your fingers. I could comment on how skilled they are, how you can make me feel, but what I admire most is how they always find a solution. You’ve picked locks, disarmed traps-”

“You can do that just as well as I, my love.” He protested, though just as quickly his arguments met their rebuttal.

“Maybe, but you were the one who unlocked my heart.” Tav laughed at the absurdity of her own statement. “It’s cheesier than an entire dairy, I know, but it’s true. I spent my whole life just going from one fling to the next, living each day like it might be my last. Living like that…well you just don’t think of a future. Or who you might spend it with. It was better to just enjoy what I could when I could. Besides, attachments could be exploited.”

“And you see a future now? With tadpoles in our brains, and the threat of an actual mindflayer Elder Brain looming quite literally over our heads?” Despite his words, his expression was soft in the low light of the room.

“I see one worth fighting for.” She leaned forwards and stole a kiss, but only for a moment, pulling back to leave him wanting more.

“Such a tease, my love.” 

“I learned from the best~” She put on the hint of a flirtatious tone to match his voice. “Anyway… Here. This part next.”

“A scar, darling? Really?” He almost pulled his arm back, like her touch burned the mark deeper into his skin.

“This was not long after we met. I remember worrying that you might lose too much blood if the wound were just a fraction to the left.” Tav dipped the sponge in the warm bathwater again and carefully cleaned the area, rinsing off the soap when she was done. “But that’s not what I think most when I look at it, or any of the other marks that battle has left upon you.”

“Enlighten me, what is it that you see in such a blemish?” Astarion frowned, struggling to see what she meant.

“Endurance. A fight that didn’t end you. A strength that goes beyond what you can lift in your arms.” She sat back a moment, the myriad of scars across her own body clearer to see as she gestured to them. “Something we share, our will to live, and to be more than the world tried to make of us.” 

“Well…I suppose…” He sighed, looking closer at Tav’s form now. Subtle muscles and soft curves, the map of old wounds telling as many stories as his own, and not one of them diminished her beauty in his eyes. “There is some charm to them, maybe.”

She continued to cleanse the sweat and marks of the long days from his body with tender care, her praise like a balm to the bruises on his soul. She almost paused when it was time to move around to his back. “Is it alright if I…?”

“There is nobody I trust more to resist the urge to put a dagger between my ribs.” He mimicked the motion playfully with empty hands as he spoke. “Oh no need to be so serious, my darling, the point is that I trust you. Completely.” 

The vampire shifted, turning his back to her. The view was always a painful one - he was free, but the marks remained, the knowledge of the pain in their making broke her heart if she let those thoughts back in. “Even this,” she began carefully, “has never once diminished your worth.”

Tension rose in his shoulders, even as she tried to massage it away. “A poem of subjugation is all that is, a beautiful lie that promised power.”

“And yet you are more powerful than ever, you didn’t let the lie consume you. How about this instead.” She put the sponge aside, and began carefully tracing her own pattern across his back as if overwriting the scars his past had left. “I’ll write my own verse for you, let it erase the old one.”

“What is it exactly that you’re writing?” A hint of worry tinted the curiosity in his voice as it dropped a little quieter than it had been before. 

She leaned forward and whispered close in his ear. “My wedding vows.”

[teriwrites]

about me: a writeblr re-re-re-introduction

Hello! My old pinned post is officially over a year old and makes me cringe whenever I'm on my blog, so it's time to freshen things up again!

me

I'm Teri, I'm smack dab in the middle of my 20s and figuring out life. My writing is pretty exclusively original stuff, a lot of novels and a lot of fantasy, but I play around with various genres in short stories. Sort of a jack-of-all-trades in regards to hobbies - aside from writing, there's anything from baking to drawing with my ancient art tablet to cross-stitch to playing music to rambling around the patch of woods near my house to watching long-form D&D let's plays.

my goals

I recognize that every time I post something like this, it's with the intention of finally becoming as active on writeblr as I was during the pandemic. I also recognize I've never quite managed that.

So here are some more general goals to get me through 2024:

Finish my 2nd draft of Beyond Alder Creek

Write as cringey and brutally honest as I never allowed myself to as a teenager.

Speaking of, a large reading/writing goal of mine is to go back through every NaNo draft I've ever written (I've participated since 2011). So aside from just reading that and likely turning it into a whole spectacle on here for people's amusement, generally just survive reading through the writing from 8th grade. Stay tuned for more on that in the coming weeks lol

Finally, I have a general goal every year of reaching 100K words, between writing and editing and the like, but I'd happily be a little looser with that goal if it meant getting through others.

And now, without further ado:

my writing

Before I get specifically into WIPs, a general overview of the kind of writing you can expect from me:

As I said, I'm a fantasy nerd. I love worldbuilding, both on a large scale (nations and cultures and political relationships) and a small scale (a magic shop in an otherwise contemporary setting).

There's not a lot of romance in my writing, but there Are a lot of transformational relationships and codependency. Friendships, siblings, guardians, general ride-or-dies.

Thought experiments. I've been trying to catch and indulge more in my 'wait, what if?' ideas. Sometimes, that's fun little snippets of silly ideas, sometimes it's a majorly emotionally heavy scene for a story I'll never write. Sometimes, it's coming up with ideas to 'combine genres'. It's all about expanding the range.

wips*

Beyond Alder Creek /// draft 2 /// tag: bac

Winnie Pewitt has never believed in the fae. That is, until her little brother disappears, and she stumbles upon a faerie ring on the edge of town. Inside, a man seemingly carved from gold suggests that he knows who took the boy. With everyone else around their hometown accepting her brother's fate as certainty, Winnie takes it upon herself to craft the perfect deal and enter the realm of the fae with her new companion in tow.

The Lies in the Legend /// draft 1 /// tag: litl

The fictional autobiography of an elven noblewoman who rose rapidly in station and influence from an unremarkable youth to a diplomatic powerhouse. Spanning centuries during the prime of her life, Lady Ghislaine Agassi charts the course of her career and reputation, and highlights the dangers of making myths out of our idols.

*Though these are my primary WIPs, I have a page that covers various other WIPs and projects that I've brought up over the past few years.

I think that about covers everything! As always, I can't make any promises about how the year will wind up and where it takes us. But I will say, I've actually been writing recently, and yk I'm just gonna ride that high.

And for fun, here's some random facts about me:

fun facts

I have degrees in psychology and music!

I've lived across three continents, but currently live in upstate New York for whatever reason lol

The animals I've ridden on the back of include: horse, pony, elephant, and ostrich. The horse was my least favorite. By far.

I got diagnosed with Type 1 Diabetes a couple months after Covid landed stateside (in May 2020) and am Always ready to talk someone's ear off about it.

The first story I ever wrote was on PowerPoint and was about war breaking out between humans and aliens that had taken refuge on Earth after their planet was destroyed. I was 8. There was a Lot of Clipart involved.

I've never been published, but I once secretly planned out, wrote, edited, and self-printed a couple copies of a novel about my best friends and our college apartment. They received it for Christmas last year and loved it (or at least were kind enough to tell me they did)!

[moralesmilesanhour]

trackmeet (re-write!) 01

summary: you didn't like to lose, especially not to someone like Miles. wc: 500-ish A/N: I felt like the original version of this fic had potential to be an interesting story but needed a lil polish. So here I am! The reader is kinda ridiculous but we're rolling with it lmao enjoy! (I know absolutely fuck-all about running track so pls don't jump me sdfghjk I'll research more in the future I promise)

read the original here...at ur own risk

This would be your third year trying out for the track team.

You and a handful of other students were strewn about the area next to the actual track, stretching in various positions to prepare. You spent nearly all of August keeping in shape - sweating through your shirt in the gym, running around your yard, around the park, around your block - all to make sure that your fastest time remained the fastest on the entire team. So far, your routine hasn't failed you yet.

Your thoughts were interrupted by the clang of your water bottle being knocked over by a pair of red and white Jordans.

“S-sorry!” exclaimed the boy they were attached to as he stumbled over his own feet to get back to his spot. You cut your eyes at him, but paid him no further attention.

“Alright people, to the white line!”

Your heartbeat surged with excitement as you followed the coach’s directions and kneeled in front of the line, absolutely certain that the only record you’d have to beat was your own.

The sound of the whistle sent you flying, immediately leaving almost all of the other candidates in the dust.

All except one.

A blurry figure zipped past you in a gust of wind, crossing the finish line an entire five seconds before you could get to it. 

How the hell…?

Heaving incredulously, you looked up to see who had somehow managed to give you competition after all these years. It was the boy with the fancy sneakers. 

He was tall and lanky–not an uncommon trait among this particular group of students–with a high-top fade and warm brown skin. Once you landed on his eyes, they were staring directly at you and widened in fear. The boy scurried off of the track as soon as the coach dismissed everyone. 

So it seemed that Visions had somehow finally enrolled someone speedier than you. Disappointing, but an easy fix with enough focused practice. What made your eyes narrow in suspicion, however, was spotting the boy reaching into his bag just outside the door fastening something around his wrists. His head turned every which way, as if surveying the area for fear of being caught. 

Naturally, you followed him.

Was it kinda stalking? Maybe. But was it absolutely necessary? Of course. 

Worst case scenario, you find nothing and go home. Best case scenario, you find something that would get him kicked off the team.

With light steps, you hid behind the corner of an old building as you watched him size up a fire escape, expecting him to climb up the steps.

Then he leaps. He leaps again. And again. Without taking a single step.

He lands on top of the fire escape without so much as breaking a sweat, and just as you were about to find out where he was going…

He disappears.

There’s no other way you could’ve possibly explained it; the boy had simply vanished despite there being nothing blocking your view. Had you hallucinated his existence the entire time?

No, couldn’t have. He’d knocked over your water bottle! The coach had smiled at him! He had to be real.And tomorrow, you were going to find out what he was up to.

[wackapedia]

Comeback-ish

Hi guys!

Its been exactly nine months since I last posted a story on this blog. I'm still here, trying (albeit struggling) to write for the fandoms we love. Over the past few months I've tried my hand with writing for OCs just for exercise but I still feel like I'm all rusty. But I know this space is full of love and consideration that you wouldn't really mind having a different flavor every now and then.

With that being said, I'll do my best to come back to writing for the fandoms very soon. I don't have a new obsession lately so I might come back to some fics that I left hanging. As an appetizer, I'm going to share with you my old fics from various fandoms posted on this blog with a little bit of background as to what was going on with my life, and how it served as a prompt for me to come up with the said story. I'll try to keep it lighthearted, I promise!

Wackapedia Diaries

Fandom: The Last Kingdom | The Lady Of Devon Sihtric x Reader x Finan

I wrote this as an escape. I know a lot of us always craved that 'i need to disappear right now' vibe at some point. When things blew over during this period in my life, I realized that a lot of people would be sad if I did disappear. It didn't stop me from thinking that way but somehow this felt like blowing off the steam that was building at during this time.

Fandom: Top Gun Maverick | Until I Found You (Bob Floyd x reader)

This was based on a real experience I used to get with my crush. Whenever I'm around them, it feels like a lovesong is playing inside my head. It always makes me hum or sing along and I've daydreamed a few times that they'd hear me singing or humming and maybe start a conversation.

Fandom: Swann Arlaud | Remnant (Vincent Renzi x reader)

Again, themes of isolation and solitude. When I watched the movie, I thought I could just live in that lovely cabin and then Sandra's husband just had to ruin it Maybe its some sort of a call for help whenever I'm wanting to be alone, hoping someone would distract me from the internal noise and worries of being an adult.

Fandom: House Of The Dragon | Stay (Aemond X reader)

This is based on my real actual father issues and abandonment. I don't want to trauma dump too much but the most heartbreaking scene in the flashback of this fic was a legit real experience I had. The end also somehow is a projection of my anxiety that no one really stays for another person- (I'll save you the rest of this tangent, this was an entire 2 pages in my journal btw)

So there you have it! I don't know where I was going with this massive text, maybe i'm just talking to the void, maybe i had too much free time, maybe i'm trying to escape reality again but I hope you'll enjoy re-reading my old stuff because new stuff is coming real soon! Please inbox me if you want me to prioritize something from any fandoms you and I stan. Actually, maybe I'll soon start taking requests!

I hope you guys are taking care of yourselves! 🤍🩷

[devilishmango]

Kenneski [DEVLOG 5/5/2024]

Hey guys!

This isn't an update to Kenneski, but I just wanted to bring you guys a devlog so you know how things are going and what to expect. ☺️

I'm about half-way through chapter 2, which is exciting. I'm not entirely sure where the chapter is going to end up, because I only have a basic outline of how I want the entire story to go. [Yes, I know, I'm horribly disorganized 😅] So for now, I'm just kind of going with the flow, and waiting for that pivotal, important part to pop up and stuff. The good part about that, though, is that I'm not afraid to go off on different paths and stuff for you to take. I think that'll definitely be fun to play through the story multiple times to see all that you can find out in each one.

Anyway! Down to more technical stuff- I rewrote the beginning of chapter 1, and added a bunch of new coding and whatnot. So, when the time comes to play chapter 2, you will need to re-play the entire thing. But, you will definitely want to, because I've improved a lot of different parts in the first chapter!

Relationship and character-wise, you get to learn A LOT more about each RO, because you get to spend some quality time with each of them. I'm already so excited to get to the romantic parts, but I have to keep restraining myself and let the relationships develop naturally. This can't be a PWP 😂 [I mean, if you guys are interested in some PWP side-stories, I can definitely oblige you... 👀] You also get to learn a little more about MC, one thing being kind of a major spoiler so I can't say anything about it for now. You'll just have to wait to find out about it when I upload the demo!

SO! Speaking of uploading the demo: I'm hoping to have chapter 2 finished by the beginning of June... But it may reach towards the middle of June. It all depends on how much writing I can get done THIS month. 🥲

Anyway, that's all I have for now! I'll hopefully get you the update next month. See you guys then!

CURRENT WORD COUNT: 30,635 45,440 [+14,805]

Also, as promised, there's a little sneak peak under the cut!

With a quick glance back at the door, I make sure no one is watching before I quickly pick up the little dagger and hold it in my good hand, feeling the weight and cold metal against my palm. Then, I realize that I have no idea how I’m going to keep this weapon hidden away in my sleeve without it falling out… That is, until I see a few pieces of thin rope lying on the floor.  Deftly, I pick the rope up and place the cold dagger against my left arm, careful of the stitches. Then, after some finessing, I’m able to wrap the rope around my arm a few times, before tying the ends into a knot with the help of my free hand and teeth. After I pull my sleeve down, I can feel a sigh of relief escape my lungs when I realize that the sleeves are //just// loose enough that the dagger is unnoticeable. Feeling rather proud of myself, and a little reassured that I now have a weapon, I continue my search of the storage closet.  Farther into the storage closet, I can barely see anything except for vague silhouettes on the wall. There seems to be some sort of handle, but I’m unsure what it’s connected to. Is it another door? Why would there be a separate entrance to this storage closet? Where does it go?  I stumble my way into the dark, my good arm out to guide me, before I suddenly stop dead in my tracks. The hairs on the back of my neck stand on end as a cold breeze drifts through the storage closet, bringing along //something else//… A feeling. A feeling that I’m being watched.  Looking around is pointless, as I can’t see much of anything. But that means I’m unsure if there’s actually someone in this closet with me, or if I’m just being paranoid. And if I can’t see my surroundings, how do I know if it’s safe to retreat?  Something catches my attention- a small movement in the back corner of the storage room. I squint my eyes, trying to see into the inky blackness… only to realize that I’m staring at a //figure//. Whoever this figure is, it’s hard to see them clearly. They must be wearing dark clothes since they blend into the darkness so well…

[euroquision]

"The Fairest of Them All" A EuroQuision Article

Hello everyone! I hope you're ready for the first official EuroQuision article release! This one is a mathematical doozy, but trust me when I say this is worth the read. If you wanna download a PDF of the article, you can do so here!

And if you don't feel like downloading the whole thing, I'll be copying the entire article into this post after the section break so you can read it here! Thanks so much to the Patrons and other supporters that make this work possible!

The Fairest of Them All

By Beatrice Quinn

Quickly: what is the most overrated song of Eurovision 2024?

…got an answer? Ok, now: Prove it.

Today we’re talking about one of the most ambiguous, aimless, misunderstood metrics we use to say whether a song is overrated or not, and that is: Ratings. Literally! Now, we’re familiar with “ranking” Eurovision songs – dragging and re-dragging “Halo” up and down your 2022 scoreboard depending on whether or not you think Pia Maria is a real person or not – and other such activities! Ranking is crucial and emblematic to the existence of Eurovision and its fans, it hardly needs to be said. Developing babies watch the dancing fruits of Cocomelon, we watch a series of rectangles and numbers combine to shift and jump around aimlessly until they eventually settle in place. And once they’ve settled in place, forever to remain unmoving from those results, fans all across the world will continue to exist in a frenzy about how they should have landed instead.

But what’s the difference between ranking and rating? And by extension, why are the phrases “overrated” and “underrated” thrown around so frequently? Well, ranking songs is an action that always exists in and around the context of all competing songs that year. That’s why when the first Eurovision song of the season rolls around – usually courtesy of our lovely Albanians – it’s ridiculous and repeatedly unfunny to see YouTubers upload their “Eurovision 2021: Top 1 Ranking” videos. Rating a song is something you can do whether you’re talking about one song, or 42 songs. You don’t have to judge the songs ranked against each other. You can judge it based on its own merits or whatever frame of reference you have. I’m not here to write an article trying to tell people how they can or can’t rate songs – I would only ever tell that to the WiwiJury. And I would tell them politely, yet firmly, to stop.

No, I’m writing all this to do one thing: To give you a quick math lesson! And by quick, I really mean it, I promise. I swear I’m not a nerd! Well, that’s a lie. I’m a huge nerd. But I’m not a math nerd. It would be more accurate to say I’m a numbers nerd – specifically, Eurovision numbers. That’s the kind of numbers we like! We’ve seen our share of Twitter polls, asking us to choose between anything from Biggest National Final Robberies to “do you think Joker Out read the fanfic?” We just love stats and percentages! So I’m here to put those to the test in the most straight-forward, least-opinionated way possible. And let me be so clear about this: This article is not going to try and definitely prove anyone’s personal tastes right or wrong. This is about the mathematical results of how we rate Eurovision songs and whether or not this provides any accuracy.

Before we get into all the numbers: Let’s say you’re an Albania stan – a type of stan I’m familiar with, fond of, and am deeply frightened by – and you go to EurovisionWorld.com to excitedly check the results of the star ratings left by online visitors from every end of the earth, all coming to rate a song you’re excited to rate and enjoy yourself. You get there and you see: 2 stars – 2,815 ratings. Your heart sinks. “Only two stars? Is this actually a bad song? Do people hate the song? Am I dumb for liking it?” These are all things we’ve all felt about certain songs we hold dear to our heart, but it really doesn’t make sense, right? Why should a number generated by the preferences of 2,815 people sway your feelings towards a song you like? Then, as the season goes on, more songs pop up and get rated as well. As your Albanian gem middles out around 2.3 stars after 5,000 or so people decided to rate it, you see a grinning Dutch lad beating out the majority of the competition in terms of stars. “Wait, that just has so many views and over ten thousand more ratings than Albania has, what gives?” Then: the accusations start. “Joost is overrated!!” “Baby Lasagna’s hype won’t last forever.” “Vidbir said they’ll announce the results after six business days, not counting shipping and handling, but when they do, they’re gonna be so overrated.” And on the flip side: “Everyone is sleeping on Dons.” “Hera shock Q in May.” Various statements that however passionate are sadly not actually provable – at least, not in the moment.

It goes without saying that a Eurovision song’s rating out of 5 stars on EurovisionWorld does not, in any way, affect the results and winners of Eurovision. Instead, these ratings exist as a rare form of communal discussion. While the subjectivity of musical taste varies, we all get to share our opinions. And this process is what leaves us with two sides of the same undefinable coin: Over or Under Rated. 

We all have experiences with people or conversations where a fun song may be chastised for being overrated, or overly praised for being underrated. The attitude for or against a song doesn’t always exist like this – you can love an overrated song and hate an underrated one, I don’t care. But the point here is: these terms are something we relate to being an idea or descriptor, rather than something that can be mathematically determined. In fact, by treating the Eurovision “rating” system in its current state as purely a matter of statistics, we can then use that information to reference other claims against it. It’s quite scientific, if I do say so myself. Now, are both my college degrees in film, music, and writing? Yes. Did I ever get anything higher than a B in any math class I’ve ever taken? No. But allow  me to explain!

If someone were to say “Sweden is overrated,” what if there were a way to actually find out if that’s accurate or not? And once you find that out with some quick math, you can use that as evidence as to why or why not Sweden is overrated. My hope is that once we find out whether a song is mathematically overrated or underrated, we can then discuss possible reasons why or why not. Of course, this kind of question is going to be answered by collecting a LOT of numbers and doing a LOT of organization. Luckily I know someone who personally is sick enough in the head to sit down and pour through all the numbers, make the spreadsheets, make the graph, explain the equation, and write the article about it.

…it’s me. I think the “write the article” part was a giveaway, but here we are! So enough fluff, let’s get rating!

CHAPTER 1: The EuroQuision Equation!

Say that five times fast. And if you choose not to say that five times fast: I respect your decision, but I am disappointed in you.

So, we’re working with numbers. That means I am now tasked with figuring out the best way to observe the information I’m given, find out how it all balances out, and how do we compare all of that together? For context, there are two key components to finding out how over or underrated a Eurovision song is. As you’ll see while scrolling down the songs of any Eurovision year, you’ll see the stars beside them which are a result of ratings given by any IP address that rates the song. So not only do you get to see a song’s star rating, you can also see how many people contributed to that average rating. For anyone who doesn’t know, averages are a mathematical result of adding up the values of a set of inputs, then dividing that total by the amount of inputs. It’s hard to explain averages in a proper sentence, so here’s an example. If you are given the numbers 4, 8, and 3, you would first add up the numbers. 4+8+3 equals 15. Then, you take the sum (15) and divide it by how many numbers you added together. You added 3 numbers, so you divide (15 / 3) and find the average of 4, 8, and 3 is 5.

This is how those star ratings show up the way they do. If a song is rated by 10,000 people, you would add up the total stars given by each person, then divide that by 10,000. However, there’s another statistic we can find out by collecting all of this information. Like I said before in the Albania example, there are songs that only get 10,000 ratings by April, and others have hit over 40,000. You would think it’s as simple as saying “The songs with the most ratings are overrated, case closed.” But I’m here to say: not quite! If you were to rank the songs by most to least amount of ratings, that’s one result to find, sure. But I’m choosing to ask: what’s the average amount of ratings themselves? It’s something we can actually find out, since we have all the information!

Needing only the numbers provided by EurovisionWorld.com, we can find out what the average number of ratings is, and what the average number of stars is. We can’t really say who is over or underrated until we have an idea of how many people have contributed to these ratings. After finding these averages, the next step would be to compare and contrast how close or far each country deviates from those averages. Let’s say, if I were to add up all the star scores and find their average, I get an average of 3 stars. Therefore, any song that scores fewer stars than that is under average, and those scoring higher are above average. The same goes for ratings. After adding up EVERY number of ratings from each country and dividing by 37, we’ll know the average number of times a Eurovision 2024 song is rated. This will matter greatly in comparison to other years because the global attention to Eurovision grows every year. A year like 2014 is going to have a significantly lower average number of ratings simply because not as many people rated the songs in comparison to 2024. Sounds easy enough, right?

Ok, even if it’s not “easy” to understand now, it will be very soon! To help guide us into the numbers of it all, I made some visual aids! Let’s stop talking about the numbers and actually start crunching them!

CHAPTER 2: Playing With Numbers

Before we find out if any country is over or underrated, we gotta find our global averages first! Let’s look at the stars first. As you know, a song can achieve anywhere from 1 to 5 stars on EurovisionWorld.com – a very standard format! While we the voters/raters can only select a whole number of stars (one star, four stars, etc.), the website takes all those scores and calculates the average for us and displays that as a more accurate number often with a decimal point. Another important note is that I know this information doesn’t exist in stasis: songs can continue to be rated long after the contest is over. So for accuracy’s sake, I gathered ALL numerical information for this essay on one day: April 25th! This is to account for a few factors. Like I said, the amount of ratings grows over time and has a recency bias, so I didn’t want to get the ratings in late March. I also didn’t want to wait after the contest, just in case any results of the contest cause a shift in mass ratings from the rest of the world. I chose April 25th to write down every song’s current amount of ratings and current star score so that it reflected nothing but expectation and audience reaction, and without any influence from rehearsals or live shows.

Now, a song’s release day does play a part in how many ratings and stars it gets…most times. We’ll discuss that in the analysis chapter AFTER we go over all the numbers. So, this is all you need to know right now: I collected these numbers on April 25th, 2024. Additionally, there’s something else I did for making the math easier and more score-like, which is that I convert a song’s total amount of ratings into a whole number with one decimal point so that I’m operating with two factors closer to each other in size. For example, if a song has 18,311 ratings, I’m converting that to 18.3 so that I’m working with a star score of, for example, 3.6 and a rating total of 18.3, which are easier to put into the equation and find a Deviation Score that is represented by a small, whole number. The last important detail is that there WILL be more visual aids, and if any of this is still confusing by the end, let me know and I’ll figure out how to make this easier for everyone!

Lastly, you might wonder why I’m looking at both stars and ratings in this big equation. If this is about who is or isn’t fairly rated, why do the star scores matter? Well, I’m factoring both ratings and stars in a song’s Deviation Score because these numbers don’t exist separately from each other. A song only gets a star score after thousands of people leave their opinions, and people share those opinions in this medium by clicking somewhere between one and five stars. Therefore, it isn’t fair to say a song is “overrated” simply because more people have rated that song compared to others. Spam rating exists (as EurovisionWorld has learned the hard way), and there are songs every year that are perceivably more “popular” based on things like YouTube video views or Spotify streams. Those things don’t factor into this because simply watching the video or streaming the song isn’t the same thing as “rating” it. Spotify only has stream counts, and YouTube has a like or dislike button. EurovisionWorld has a conventional 5-star rating system that is determined by people from all around the world and is mathematically calculated. So by giving a song a Deviation Score that’s based on how close/far from average a song is in stars and ratings, we’re acknowledging all the factors that go into this question.

Now onto the numbers! Do you wanna take a guess as to how many ratings were left on EurovisionWorld.com from the start of the season through Apr. 25th? There was a staggering total of 689,968 ratings across 37 songs! Over half a million ratings is a lot of opinions, right? And still that’s barely a fraction of the total people who watch the show itself. Regardless, that’s the information we have to work with! So, if there’s a total of 689,986 ratings given out to 37 different songs, that means our avg. # of ratings is: 689,968 / 37 = 18,647.7838. Obviously, 18,647.7838 is an awfully long, complicated number to use. Therefore, I’m simplifying it to just 18.6 (approx. 18,600 ratings). So, 18.6 is our avg. # of ratings. As for avg. # of stars, there is a grand total of 130.1 stars totalled up between all the songs. This is a really good number, when you consider the math. For example, if every song of 2024 only got on average one (1) star, then we’d have a total of just 37 stars. So with this info, it means our avg. # of stars is: 130.1 / 37 = 3.51621622…… and many more numbers after that. Therefore, I’ll state our avg. # of stars is 3.5. Once again, this is a good number! On a scale of only one to five stars, the average of that would just be 2.5 stars, right in the middle. That means the public thinks that overall, Eurovision 2024 is a bit above an average level of quality. And I would agree! Anyway, just to sum up all the numbers we just found out, I’ll list them here:

Total amount of ratings from all songs: 689,968

Avg. amount of ratings per song: 18.6 (simplified from 18,647)

Total amount of stars from all songs: 130.1

Avg. amount of stars per song: 3.5 (simplified from 3.5162…)

For me, the easy part is over and the hard part begins. Now is when we begin to document every song’s amount of ratings, their star scores, and running the math to see how far above or below the averages they are. For the super hot and cool nerds that like excel sheets, I’ll link the viewable sheet of all the info at the end of the article! For the sake of this article, I’m going to choose a couple key examples, and those are: Sweden, the Netherlands, Iceland, and…sadly, “Israel.”

CHAPTER 3: Do We Have a Valid Result?

Let’s actually see this equation in action and find out what we can learn from all of this. The reason we’re going to be looking at these select countries is that each of them exists at a very specific point on the spectrum of overrated or underrated. We’ll begin with the country that receives arguably the most “overrated” accusations thrown at them in a given Eurovision season, and that is: Sweden! Did you find the twins’ song unforgettable? Regardless, let’s run their numbers through our equation and figure out just how “rated” they are.

As you remember from our graphic, the equation we use is shown as (a - x) + (b - y) = z. Let’s take a look at Sweden’s stats, which are documented altogether in the same list as all 37 songs. “a” is Sweden’s star score. Sweden, as of April 25th, has a score of 3.4 stars. “x” is the total average of stars across all songs, which is 3.5. (3.4 - 3.5) = -0.1. This -0.1 means that Sweden is just ever so slightly below the average score, which is something I would agree with (but that part’s just my opinion). The second half of our equation is about ratings. Sweden was rated on EurovisionWorld a total of 18,259 times. We simplify that big number just to 18.2, and we subtract the average number of ratings from that number. (18.2 - 18.6) = -0.4. Now, we can also observe that in its total number of ratings, Sweden is actually still below average, even though not by a whole lot. Now that we have -0.1 and -0.4 reflecting Sweden’s relationship to the global average of stars and ratings respectively, we combine those! (-0.1) + (-0.4) = -0.5. There you go! Sweden got a score of, overall, slightly underrated. Shocking, right? That’s right, in numbers and stats alone, Sweden is very close to the global averages. However, the claim that they’re “underrated” isn’t as true as it sounds once we look at another country through this equation.

Next, let’s take a look at a country that was 1st in the odds…only to fall from those heights down to a last place finish in their semi-final. Iceland’s song “Scared of Heights” is an interesting case. I won’t try and pretend that these ratings exist separately from a song’s public perception – or at times, their public drama. So don’t worry, we’ll address that and much more after we do more fun math activities. Not many people were running around saying “Husavik 2025!” when this got selected, but how was it rated? Iceland has the literal lowest star score out of all 37 songs this year, sitting at 2 whole stars. Since we know the global average is 3.5, that means Iceland is -1.5 stars from the average. However, this is where we can see the ways ratings and stars can differ. When it comes to stars, a song scores anywhere from 1 to 5; it’s not a very wide range. But for ratings, Iceland only has 10,951 ratings (shown as 10.9). Even compared to Sweden, that’s eight thousand fewer ratings, meaning: people either chose not to go out of their way to leave a rating, or it's just not as popular. From the average of 18.6, Iceland’s 10.9 ratings is a whole -7.7 away from the average. Let’s combine those two differences: (-1.5) + (-7.7) = -9.2. In comparison to Sweden, Iceland is actually “underrated” when we look at the numbers. That final score of -9.2 is a culmination of the song not only getting a lower score, but it comes from fewer people deciding to rate it. Would “Scared of Heights” be closer to the average amount of stars if more people had chosen to give it a rating? Or would more ratings just reflect the same sad score of 2 stars? This is something to consider when we have more context about who/which countries have more ratings than our first two examples.

They may have been disqualified for total BS reasons, but they’ll never be disqualified from my heart! The Netherlands’ “Europapa” is a song that has a lot to give it a leg up over a country like Iceland when it comes to public perception: Joost Klein is a more  “established” artist in comparison to most Eurovision competition. “Europapa” contains satirical-yet-universal lyrics that touch on personal and international topics at the same time, and the whole thing is a lot of good fun, even with a touching ending. However, this can all add up to what no sounds like a very reasonable claim of “overrated”-ness. Do the numbers reflect that? Unsurprisingly: yes, yes they do. The Netherlands has a star score of 4.1, which is the average score from a total of 35,557 ratings. Again, we see how the number of ratings can vary much wider than just star scores on their own – I can only imagine how it feels to see someone else’s song get 20,000 more ratings than yours. Let’s run the equation!. (4.1 - 3.5) + (35.5 - 18.6) => (0.6) + (16.9) = 17.5. As you can see, now that we move to the opposite end of the spectrum, the difference in influence is more observable. That score of 17.5 now properly reflects how a star score of 4.1 comes from a severe increase in number of ratings, and Joost’s popularity can very well be a factor in that, all regardless if the song is “good” or “bad.”. Like I promised, we’ll talk about the implications and conclusions these numbers can represent in a moment. We have one more “country” to look at.

“Israel,” as I’m sure you need no reminding, is the reason all of Eurovision 2024 was a complex, un-fun, total mess of a season. All the reasons supporting this can fill up their own article, so we’re going to be focusing on how 2024’s hottest potato fares in terms of stars and ratings. “Israel” and their song “Octo–” sorry, “Hurricane” has the same star score as the Netherlands, which is 4.1 stars out of 5. However, “Hurricane” has almost ten thousand more ratings than “Europapa,” at 45,255 ratings. (4.1 - 3.5) + (45.2 - 18.6) => (0.6) + (26.6) = 27.2. Just for another moment, let’s disregard the implications of this number and just compare it to the 3 other examples we’ve done. At one end of the spectrum, Iceland is underrated with a Deviation Score of -9.2, and Sweden has a Dev. Score of -0.5. As a reminder, if a country is completely and perfectly “average,” they would receive a score of 0; as in, it’s not overrated nor is it underrated. However, the score for songs being underrated are a lot less severe than the others. The Netherlands’ Dev. Score of 17.5 and “Israel’s” 27.2 are up in the double digits, but why?

Well, the first explanation is very easily observable: “Israel,” the Netherlands, and several other countries are simply rated more than other countries are. Therefore, this is evidence to support the claim that more people overrate songs than people who underrate other songs. For context, the country with the lowest number of ratings is Albania, with only 9,094 ratings and a star score of 3.1 stars. The country with the highest number of ratings is actually Croatia, with 47,315 ratings as of April 25th and has the highest “overrated” Dev. Score with 29.5. And now that we have our equation and can actually tell who is statistically over or underrated, let’s actually ask what that “means.”

CHAPTER 4: Take (It) Away

At ten pages (and two visual aids) in, we finally have some concrete numbers to look at and discuss, leading with the question: What are we meant to take away? If being over/underrated is now mathematically observable, what does it all mean? To answer that question, we need to look at the entirety of our data table and apply real-world context to the numbers we’re looking at. As I mentioned near the beginning of this article, this is not about simple labels. Let’s start with the observation I made right before this chapter, “More people are more likely to overrate songs than people are to underrate them.” This is visible in multiple ways. First, as we discovered when we found the global average of each song’s star score, we got a score of 3.5/5 – above average! But it’s not just about the stars; there’s another noticeable trend between the highest star-scoring songs and how many people have rated them. Ten songs from 2024 have a star score of 4 stars or higher – Croatia, Greece, and Serbia were all tied at 4.3 stars. Between all ten songs, they have a total of 292,504 ratings. Now at the other end of the star spectrum, how do the lowest scorers look?

Well, no song this year got less than 2 stars, now matter how much I dislike “Scared of Heights.” However, there are eight songs that scored below 3 stars, in comparison to the ten higher scoring songs. Fun fact: Finland’s “No Rules!” is the lowest-ranking song that qualified for the final (as of April 25th), whereas the highest ranked NQ was Belgium. Anyway, between those eight songs underneath 3 stars, there’s only 129,063 ratings, which is approx. 170 thousand fewer ratings. The numbers don’t lie: if anyone ever claims “Eurofans just like to hate things,” statistically that’s wrong! It’s not impossible, either. On that note, though, one would be allowed to ask “But doesn’t that mean there are songs that are overrated?” And if you’re talking about the literal, specific definition of songs having a greater number of ratings than others, then yes you’re right. But I have a feeling that most people say the word “overrated” more emotionally than logically. Remember how I introduced Sweden as one of the most frequently overrated countries? My guess is that you didn’t disagree with that claim. And I’m not just guessing: I’ve seen every upset Kaarija stan, Mans-hater, and person with ears that dislikes “If I Were Sorry.” Sweden’s no stranger to the overrated accusation, but we just saw how this year that’s statistically untrue. The most perfectly middle-rated song this year is Luxembourg’s “Fighter” with a Deviation Score of -0.4. Sweden, Slovenia, Austria, and Czechia round out the Top 5 Most-Midrated Songs of 2024. And like the title of this article says, these five songs are by all definition “the fairest” of them all. Czechia is actually closest to the average number of ratings (that 18.6 we’ve been using in the equation) with 18,614 ratings. But hey, I like to indulge my own curiosity, so I wondered if these numbers are connected at all to who did or didn’t qualify. In Eurovision 2024, 11 songs did not qualify to the Grand Final. So, let’s look at the 11 most statistically-underrated songs!

They are from lowest to highest (of the low): Albania, Iceland, Azerbaijan, Moldova, Australia, San Marino, Armenia, Portugal, Malta, Latvia, and Cyprus. Now, Denmark and Poland aren’t that much higher than these 11, but they managed to not be in the bottom 11. And of these lowest 11 Dev. Scores, 7 ended up being NQ’s. In fact, it’s more understandable why the few Q’s of the bottom 11 are here. Armenia was the last-revealed song of 2024, and Portugal had the very last National Final of the season. They didn’t have as much time between their selection and April 25th when I collected the numbers like other songs had. And yet, Albania was one of the earliest selections and sits at the very bottom of the list – time may not heal all wounds. 

Cyprus and Latvia are the other two songs from the Bottom 11 of the Underrated’s that qualified, and I genuinely think this is where the legitimate factor of chance plays a part. Cyprus came 6th in its semi, so we can state that the live performance and competition of the semi elevated Cyprus to a better position in the televoters’ preference, despite the odds! Latvia could be a similar case, as it finished 7th in the second semi-final. Then come Saturday, the two songs ended up right next to each other on the scoreboard with Cyprus at 15th and Latvia at 16th. As we keep moving up the list of Deviation Scores, we can spot the four songs that did qualify in the eyes of the raters, but not in the show itself. Denmark is just above Cyprus, and two more spots up is Poland. Four more spots up is Czechia among the most midrated songs of the year, so they were a true “Could go either way” case. Then in the biggest jump to our final non-qualifier, Belgium is 11 spots higher than Czechia and sits at being the 9th Most Overrated of 2024. Here and now, we have finally arrived at the fabled: Shock NQ. Now, a non-qualifier being a “shock” is up to your own opinion. If you’re me, you’re sitting here writing this article knowing damn well you knew Belgium’s Q-streak was over before Mustii hit the stage. This is the honest truth, and only Silia Kapsis has the right to try and say otherwise. But it also can be said that it’s not about asking “Who was the Shock NQ?” and more about asking “Who had the most attention before they NQ’d?” And the answer would be Belgium! Anyway, at this point I’m starting to think to myself “Huh, can using this over/underrated equation be a method to possibly predict a country’s qualification?”

…and then I remembered: Qualifiers are chosen entirely by televote. Therefore, if the Deviation Scores can predict the qualifiers with about 64% accuracy, can it predict the televoting Top Ten?...Let’s find out!

When looking at the Top Ten Most Overrated Songs of 2024, we have:

1st. Croatia

2nd. Israel

3rd. Netherlands

4th. Switzerland

5th. Italy

6th. France

7th. Ukraine

8th. Greece

9th. Belgium

10th. Ireland

(11th: Lithuania)

And for comparison, let’s look at the Top Ten of the 2024 Televote:

1st. Croatia

2nd. Israel

3rd. Ukraine

4th. France

5th. Switzerland

6th. Ireland

7th. Italy

8th. Greece

9th. Armenia

10th. Lithuania

To begin, you’ll notice I included the 11th Most Overrated song in parenthesis, which is Lithuania. I did this to reflect that even though the Netherlands is 3rd Most Overrated, they sadly weren’t able to receive the televotes they deserved the night of the Final. Using the data from this table alone, my conclusion on the Netherlands is that they were easily going to place Top Ten in the Televote, which would then leave who in 11th? Lithuania. All that’s left is to replace Belgium – a poorly-staged pop ballad with a party-harshing climax – with Armenia, which is a song bursting with fun, flawless vocals, and something so Armenian it caused Azerbaijan to get sent to the Doom Dimension. Additionally, mostly out of curiosity, I checked how many more reviews “Jako” has on EurovisionWorld as of May 22nd, and they’re up from ~12,000 ratings to ~18,000 while maintaining their 3.7 star score both times – that’s a show of quality and enjoyment from audiences over time. So other than those cases…I think I just mathematically figured out how to predict the televote? And, I don’t even mean the Top Ten – I mean the whole competition.

So I ask you this: What do we do when we are suddenly given information about the ways the results of Eurovision can be reflected in data before the fact? The answer is not “try and make a profit.” No, that’s not how EuroQuision works. Instead: we use it as mathematical evidence that propaganda fucking works.

CHAPTER 5: Couldn’t See It Comin’

Except: now we know we did see it coming.

Before we dive into the serious stuff, you might be thinking that what I’ve presented is an attempt or desire to “break Eurovision” or take advantage of this information for personal gain. I won’t deny that bets play a huge role in Eurovision – it’s how we get the odds in the first place. But if you know me, you know I’m not in this for the money, even though that may differ from the EBU’s intentions. The truth is that I don’t have any practical means to try and “profit” from any way this information could be used. Part of journalism and sharing of information is the inability I have to control how it’s used despite my best intention.

My intention with this article is to provide evidence that “Israel’s” attempts at utilizing Eurovision to get a good result and repaint their global image was nearly perfect, and the numbers said it was going to happen the whole time. Even without the numbers from EurovisionWorld, we knew how desperate “Israel’s” pleas for votes from the world were. From Duolingo’ing her way across the internet to coordinated efforts to vote en masse in various countries, Eden Golan was gunning for a televote win that she nearly reached, and that’s assuming every single one of those votes were completely legitimate. This is not said to try and accuse anyone of fraudulent voting when I don’t have evidence to support that. I mention it because vote buying is a practice that has been done in the past and actual delegations received punishment for doing so. Given the context of every other effort “Israel” put into their campaign for votes – and I mean everything: begging other artists/teams for positive press and harassing them to the point of retaliation – doesn’t make fraudulent voting seem out of the question. 

Unfortunately, I am no expert on voter fraud – ironic, me being an American and all, but I digress. This is something that, if proven true, will be revealed in the time post-Eurovision 2024. And if it’s true, I will happily discuss it! But for now, I can only  talk about what we do know, which is the newfound connection between EurovisionWorld’s sample of public ratings indicating a song’s predicted success or failure in the contest. This connection is reflective of the greatest tool a Eurovision song has: public perception. Or as some countries treat it: propaganda. Even though “Israel” is a country being sued by the ICJ for genocide, actively commit acts of violence to Palestinians as well as fellow-EBU member countries Lebanon, Jordan, and Egpyt, and were told multiple times by the EBU reference group to rewrite their political song lyrics, they still performed and qualified and finished Top Ten. Truly, did we even need my equation to prove “Hurricane” was overrated? Not really. Instead, “Hurricane” being so statistically overrated was a symptom of the larger effect of a successful PR campaign. When you consider that “Israel’s” mere existence inside of Eurovision is in itself a PR campaign, none of this is surprising. “Israeli” media took every possible moment to try and tell the world that their Eurovision participation was a good thing and truly represented being “united by music.” They did this in commercials and even in what “Israel” calls a sketch comedy show. 

All of these factors had me worried that despite my best hopes and efforts, somehow “Israel” would pull off a good result when they should have been removed months ago. However, the numbers were there the whole time. As we can see, the numbers don’t only apply to solely to “Israel.” Just as they came 2nd in my list and 2nd in the televote, Croatia was 1st in both, and the accuracy of the Top Ten as well as the bottom eleven/NQ’s can’t be ignored either. Truly think about that for a moment: on April 25th – several days before we saw any rehearsal footage or official performance – we knew with 80-90% accuracy the Grand Final televote results and who wasn’t going to qualify with 64% accuracy. And before you suggest that this was a Eurovision 2024-exclusive phenomenon, I thought of that too! So as a surprise fun addition, I ran my equation with the 2023 songs as well!

Since I can’t travel back in time to April 25th 2023, there’s no way I could collect all the ratings and stars with the same accuracy as I did for 2024, Thankfully, using the Wayback Machine Internet Archive. I managed to “go back in time” to a window of time spanning from mid-April to early-May and collect all the numbers. Even with a wider window of information, the 2023 Deviation Scores proved to be almost identical in accuracy – even more accurate in some cases. Starting with the Bottom 11 Most Underrated according to my equation, 9 of those countries turned out to be NQ’s. At the other end with the Top 10 Most Overrated, 7 out of those 10 did in fact finish in the Televote Top 10. And who was the most “overrated” of 2023? Not Finland, not Sweden, but “Israel” and “Unicorn.” This shows that for two years in a row, despite the drastic shift in public opinion and discussion concerning Israel’s participation, their songs that directly correlate to geopolitical aggression and self-victimization proved effective in the realm of Eurovision. So once again, I ask you, the reader: What do we do? CONCLUSION

Since I’m aware that a 20-page article is a bit long, I will go ahead and just list out the most important bits of information I covered and discussed:

Using the information from EurovisionWorld.com, we created an equation that figures out how close or far a song is from the global average of both stars and number of ratings.

Comparing these Deviation Scores reflects a somewhat-accurate correlation between how much the public “rates” a song and whether that song qualifies or potentially comes Top Ten in the Televote

Once these connections can be observed, we can discuss what factors or influences play a part in these connections (Is a song more popular? Is it less popular? Is it representing a country committing war crimes and hopes no one notices? Etc etc.)

Finally, here in the conclusion of all of this, we can answer that third point. As I mentioned, cases like Joost and “Europapa” being overrated are fairly easy to explain; well-known artist, extremely radio-friendly banger song, the list goes on. It also reflects why Iceland and “Scared of Heights” is near the bottom; a more “generic” paint-by-numbers pop song with simple English lyrics, a very unambitious composition, etc etc. However, there’s a difference between a song being over/underrated based on merit, and those with scores based on skewed public opinion one way or another.

I won’t pretend for a moment that spam-liking or spam-disliking doesn’t exist. For example, I’m aware of how Bashar Murad was the clear favorite to win over Hera Bjork, but sadly finished 2nd in what felt like a very devastating blow to the potential of Palestinian representation at Eurovision when it’s needed most. Anyone who rated Iceland poorly because of this is able to do so just as fairly as those who rate it low based on song quality alone. I cannot control the reasons as to why people choose to rate a song high vs. low.

Conversely, you might reasonably be saying “If ‘Israel’ is continuing to treat this as one big PR stunt, wouldn’t that mean all those positive ratings and their televote score are a result of artificially inflating the numbers and/or buying votes?” And as much as that’s one possible explanation, I’ll remind you that there are people who genuinely just enjoy “Hurricane” and dislike having to engage in contextualizing “Israel’s” Eurovision participation. For example, Worldvishawn is a Eurovision TikTok creator with over 300,000 followers, and on multiple occasions has published videos voicing his enjoyment and support of “Hurricane” this year. In a video discussing “Hurricane’s” rehearsals, he notes that the song is a “9/10” and is a case where “the live vocals are better than the studio version.” The issue here is not the fact that a fan of Eurovision has a positive opinion of a song that a lot of people dislike, that’s never a problem with me. The issue is that people with large platforms are able to give their opinions to hundreds of thousands of people with the click of a button and provides a space where people can attempt to remove any context of “Hurricane” and “Israel” whatsoever and just say the song is good. This is what indicates to me that all the positive numbers surrounding this song aren’t all completely fabricated and this should not conclude in a baseless accusation of buying or faking votes.

Eurovision 2024 was a year where at every level of control, nearly everyone chose to do nothing rather than doing something. At the tippy top of the ranks, it was up to the EBU to remove “Israel” because of their own previously-established actions and morals concerning geopolitical violence during Eurovision, specifically in the case of Russia. After they refused to do that, it was the responsibility of participating broadcasters to withdraw and refuse to participate. After all 37 broadcasters refused to actually do anything, it was up to the artists to put their career aside and take a stand in the public eye. And then, none of the artists did that! Some showed and voiced their advocacy, but none of them showed solidarity. If you aren’t familiar with the difference between advocacy and solidarity, advocacy is when you “advocate” your morals and beliefs in your words and attitude. Solidarity is when you put those words to action and actually do something actionable to disrupt the status quo to be in solidarity with those who are suffering and against a system of power that is ignoring them. And since none of the artists’ advocacy led to solidarity, there we were with a Grand Final with “Israel” coming 2nd in the televote and no one doing anything about it.

Now, I could go down the entire chain of responsibility of “Who needs to do something about this?” and eventually land where I and many others have been for months, which is the fun destination of Boycottville, but a lot of people hear the B-word and think its an invitation to start arguing and calling me a hypocrite. What I will state is this: boycotting is not something asked of us to try and simply prove our morals for show or optics, and it is not something we ask people do to in order to shame them should they choose not to. Boycotting is what we do when every level of command above us refuses to do anything about a system that is completely broken and exploitable. The numbers were there from the beginning and even I can admit I was foolish when I stated in my own video essay that “‘Israel’ isn’t going to get an enormous televote score.” That is something I said based on optimism and my own reasoning, before I actually came up with this equation and ran all the numbers. I was proven very wrong and I think I’m not the only one.

In the end, I need to remind us all that this was never about the results, it was never about “making sure ‘Israel’ doesn’t win.” If this were truly about making sure “Israel” didn’t win, then we would all have had to agree on one (1) artist to mass-vote for AND hope the juries liked as well, but that would be literally impossible. Whereas Eurofans could argue “Let’s mass-vote Croatia!” or “Mass-vote Ukraine again,” that is nowhere as easily and streamlined as it is for Zionists, “fake” votes, and “Israeli” fans to just spend all their money on voting for “Hurricane.” So once again: THIS IS NOT ABOUT RESULTS. The numbers sadly reflected “Israel” succeeding in their campaign nearly the entire way, and because they know that Eurovision is a system where everyone from the broadcasters to the fans don’t actually want to do anything that poses a threat to this silly contest, they’ll get the numbers they want. Trying to beat “Israel” at the game of Eurovision is a mathematical impossibility as things currently stand, and if EVERYONE continues to not want to change their behavior (the EBU, the broadcasters, the artists, the news websites, even the fans themselves), then “Israel” will keep playing this game successfully for years to come.

“The Fairest of Them All”

Researched and Written by Beatrice Quinn

Research Data Links:

Eurovision 2024: Deviation Scores

Eurovision 2023: Deviation Scores

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[forcebookish]

Do you re-read your own fics?

What's your fav fic you wrote and why?

What's one of your favorite lines you've written?

Is there something you've written you would never want your family to see?

Do you have playlists to listen to while writing?

hello jaime thank u :3

2. Do you read/reread your own fics?

totally, 100%. unfortunately, i read my own fics more than i read other fics lol i also kind of have to because i have certain prose/phrases that i tend to default to, and it's good to every once in a while be like "ok i've used that in like two other fics maybe i leave it out of this one" fjkdsjglds

3. What’s your favorite fic that you’ve written?

hmmmm, i honestly don't know. maybe Extrême or a compelling argument since i reread them a lot (idk what to tell u, i like blow jobs). i don't reread my old ones as much anymore, but more than I could ever promise holds a very dear place in my heart. honestly, i think the weight in her heart will be my new favorite once i finish it, since it's both so fluffy and angsty 🤌 sometimes it gives me a hard time, but it's REALLY fun to write!

18. What’s one of your favorite lines you’ve written in a fic?

am i allowed to say the whole of rukia's death scene in twihh? i wrote, like, three drafts and i'm really proud of it. if not, i've already cited this line in an earlier ask meme as one of the first that i wrote for make my heart tremble, but i do really love this: [...]Top pulls out the razorwire wit he never thought he’d choke Mew with[.]

i also really like this passage from thirty minutes:

Mesmerized, Force marvels at Book’s reflection in the mirror. Watches his eyelids flutter, the sweat drip down his cheek, his cock dribble onto the floor. Fawn skin flushed, blooming with pink petals. Bitten lips, swollen and sanguine.

i actually think my favorite lines are from one of my WIPs right now? i love anything that has a poetic play-on-words, alliteration, or a specific rhythm to it 👌👌👌👌

26. Is there something you’ve written that you would never want your family to see?

i answered this in my last ask, but the tl;dr is all of it lol

11. Do you have specific playlists for writing fics?

if they're really long or if i have a deadline i have to meet, yes. otherwise, i'll just have a ship-specific playlist or put one song on repeat for hours 🤣🤣🤣

thank you for dropping in!!!!!!!!!! 💖💖💖

(fanfic writer asks! go on! ask me!)

[siriuslysatorusimping]

Kiko I hope you had a great first day at your new job!!!! And I hope the shit weather we're getting in Louisiana isn't hitting your part of your state cuz boy am I not having fun anymore lol. I have 2 things to bug you with on this Tuesday morning- I do have a teeny tiny lil Goinko ask: I am so curious to hear Gojo's inner dialogue when he's watching Rinko fight. Like the genuine sorta oh shit she's tough, oh shit she aint weak, Jesus what a badass... I'm gonna fuck her xD The second- I have been toying with the idea of writing my own fanfic with my own OC and um... I can't seem to start. I have a decent idea of the general plot, no clue how it will end, but I open up Word, type two words, and then close the program. Idk if I need advice or encouragement lol but I look up to you a lot as a writer so I decided to make it your problem too 😅

RAI, HELLO! 💕

I did have a great first day! It was long and exhausting, but in a good way! 😊

The weather has just been kinda cold and foggy. Like, my drive home today was very foggy. Could barely see at all. But other than that, it. hasn't been too bad!!

YOU ARE NOT BUGGING ME BUT I WILL PLAY ALONG 😂

My answers are below the cut!!

Gojo's inner monologue when he sees Rinko fighting? 🤔🤔

In a few situations, he's super smug that she's doing so well because he knows she doesn't even realize or acknowledge how strong she actually is. So when she's just destroying something, he's all cocky and proud of her. It reminds him how much he loves her because she can take care of herself. One of the things he's always appreciated about her is that she doesn't let her insecurities or pride get her into situations that are too much for her to take. She's not arrogant. She doesn't show off. She's just there to get the job done. But that's what makes it so sexy to him.

So when he sees Rinko fighting, he's literally just like, 'That's my girl. So sexy and strong. I love her so much. Ass looks incredible, too. And she needs to hurry because as soon as she wraps this up, she's mine. Wonder how pissed she'll be if I just take her here-' because he's a horny boi who always wants to be inside her 😂😂

Advice for how to start with your fic?

Don't try to start from the beginning. Start somewhere in the middle, and work from there. The ending doesn't have to be established right away, either. That can develop as you figure out the story! But as for how and where to start, anywhere. Have a random bit of dialogue? Start with that. It doesn't have to stay in the end, but having something there will really help you. Write nonsense. Write ideas. Concepts. Anything to get those juices flowing. Because nothing is more daunting than a blank page.

Two things I saw recently made me realize that I already did these things most of the time:

Writing choppy, maybe cheesy or dumb dialogue. You can fill in the rest later, or not at all. You can change it up or edit it, but cutting and editing, or even re-writing, is easier than getting yourself to write the initial draft.

"You look like shit." "Sure know how to charm a girl, huh?" "You'd be more pissed if I lied to you." "True." "Still look awful, though." "Fuck off."

You don't have to put markers or indicators because it's a first draft. First draft and final draft are rarely going to match, and that's okay. Preferred most of the time, actually. But yeah, just toss that dialogue down to help you get started and then go from there!

Start with notes or random shit about what you want to happen. Some people put it in brackets to describe the setting, scene, or character's actions so that they can continue writing without being bogged down by the pressure to figure out the rest perfectly.

I'll provide an example or two from a WIP of the lockout key idea dump I posted a while ago. (I make no promises that I'll ever finish or post this, but it's the best example I could find that doesn't spoil a bunch of stuff for the other stories)

[he comes to ask for a key even though he's already maxed out his number of lockout keys. he ends up trying to lean in closer and she shoves a cookie in his mouth instead] - this one is a general idea and one thing I definitely want to happen in that scene/snippet

[fire drill in the middle of the night forcing everyone outside until the alarm stops going off. he forgets his key because he had to rush out while he was half-asleep.] - this one is describing the primary setting for the scene/snippet: they're outside, he's very sleepy, and he forgot his key.

All in all, don't be afraid of being random and choppy for your first draft!

I hope this advice helped, Rai! I'm afraid I might have babbled a bit... 🙃

IT WAS GOOD TO HEAR FROM YOU. I HOPE YOU'RE WELL!! 💕💕💕💕

[malkaleh]

All righty then...here, have some emoji asks!

🎥 Pick a fic and I'll tell you the song I imagine playing during its movie trailer. - for Such A Time As This, please.

👄 Your OTP are having their first kiss. What song do you imagine is playing?

🦉Is there another author that helped inspire you to write?

🚿Where do your best ideas seem to strike?

🍎What's something you learned while researching for a fic?

🦗Do you write in sequence or jump around?

🎬One of your fics gets turned into a TV series. Which one is it and what network is it on?

🐸 If you incorporated your OTP into a Disney movie plot, which would it be?

⏳If you could go back in time and tell your younger writer self something, what would it be?

👩‍🏫Pick a character and I'll tell you their favorite season and why. - for Anne, Thomas and Henry please.

I'm sorry there are so many, I couldn't choose!

🎥 Pick a fic and I'll tell you the song I imagine playing during its movie trailer. For Such A Time As This (there’s a translation in the description and it just..it fits. I’d honestly love to get Maureen Nehedar to write a song for the soundtrack specifically).

👄 Your OTP are having their first kiss. What song do you imagine is playing?

🦉Is there another author that helped inspire you to write? So @eidetictelekinetic made me think it was possible to write Queer Tudor Fic Content. All my friends really inspire me a lot honestly. In terms of published authors - Tolkien, Leigh Bardugo, Tamora Pierce, Spinning Silver by Naomi Novik has a lot to do with Such A Time As This coming to be. You for the expanded Tudors OT3 historian/archives universe.

🚿Where do your best ideas seem to strike? I feel like so often it’s after a swim/when I’m drifting off to sleep (I have learned to write them down on my phones notes app)

🍎What's something you learned while researching for a fic? I learned that sofas really came to England after the 16th century! (This was actually an interesting one because Mihrimah brings them earlier in the Tudors OT3 verse and it’s also part of the reason fashion changes)

🦗Do you write in sequence or jump around? I’d say I actually write in sequence when writing the story but I absolutely get snippets of what happens later that I’ll write down once I’ve got the basic plot in my brain (my fics basically always start with what I call ‘a trailer’ so there’s a ‘clip image + dialogue and sometimes even music’ (sometimes just the images/internal dialogue sometimes just the images but it does start at the beginning of the story where I want to start (not always ‘the beginning’ but the beginning of where I start writing even if I go backwards if that makes any sense!

🎬One of your fics gets turned into a TV series. Which one is it and what network is it on? Tudors OT3 on the BBC. I was going to say Such A Time As This on the BBC but uh, maybe not. (I would say Amazon purely for budget reasons because I refuse to give Netflix content even in my imagination /salty Shadow and Bone fan)

🐸 If you incorporated your OTP into a Disney movie plot, which would it be? Me: so okay Tudors OT3 verse in universe Disney movie about them is my new favourite thought EVER. (Me: oh is it like Cinderella but with a King and a Queen looking for a consort?)

⏳If you could go back in time and tell your younger writer self something, what would it be? It’s okay to write. It’s okay. You can write the self indulgent thing. I promise, you are okay, you are allowed to write that.

👩‍🏫Pick a character and I'll tell you their favorite season and why. - for Anne, Thomas and Henry please. Listen I love everything Natalie Dormer does and while I do strategically ignore some/a lot of the writing/executive choices re Anne’s depiction in The Tudors (mostly in Season One) Natalie is always always incredible to watch. I think Thomas is, like do not get me wrong, love S3 Thomas but somehow, somehow James Frain gets me to feel for him during SEASON TWO. SOMEHOW. Acting dot gif. I really think JRM does a genuinely amazing job in S4 - show makeup choices not withstanding but you can feel Henry’s regrets/denial of those regrets so much.

[thelordofgifs]

absolutely loved the new part of tfs!! sorry for not sending the ask earlier <3

maedhros!! beloved!! am i imagining the paralles with one of earlier installments? where thingol had him chained?? with maglor wounded?? but now there's no maglor because maedhros IS what wounded him and aaaahhhhhh WHY are you doing this to me

fingon actively avoiding executing curufin is hilarious. the house of feanor will go lenghts to fulfill their oath and meanwhile fingon is like "if i ignore it it didn't happen"

also love the potential for further fingon and maedhros development - will maedhros be angry with fingon not telling him? will there be "what other secrets are you keeping from me" scene? because wouldn't that be the perfect opportunity to say "i promised thingol to execute your other brother"

curufin... baby... he changed so much over the course of the fic. i hate him a lot but someone please give it a hug. also love how he and maglor are now on a roadtrip. roadtrips are a thing in this fic i see

and also. do it. kill maglor. i'll watch. you've been dragging him half alive for like 10 chapters of the fic. do you really think it would be satisfying to let him die?

and love mandos in this one. he's just. regretting the revival for elves isn't mandatory. regretting all of his life choices actually.

anyways i love this fic a lot, and your writing is amazing as always <3

Ahhh you are the sweetest and I love you to pieces!! You don’t need to apologise for not sending the ask earlier don’t be silly – this is such a lovely ask to see ❤️❤️

You are very much Not imagining the parallels with the chaining! Also of course he was rather famously shackled on Thangorodrim and Fingon is very unhappy about having to chain him up now :(

ok so the thing with Fingon is. he is Fully Convinced that he is the only sensible guy in Himring atm and he’s… he’s so wrong about this?? And he doesn’t even realise?? Now that we’re coming to the end of arc 2 (one more part!!) it’s easier to look back over it and say that the main focus of the last nine parts has been Fëanorian Melodrama, but that doesn’t mean Fingon doesn’t have plenty of character stuff he will need to work out.

and yes Plans coming up for Curufin and Maglor hehe!! Poor Curufin keeps having to go on road trips. He is so sick of road trips.

bestie wdym “ten chapters” Maglor has been badly injured in some way or another since part ONE. I might kill him. I might not. It depends. (It doesn’t actually I already know what I’m going to do.) he’s such a pincushion!! Why does he keep doing that!!

hehe am very glad you liked Mandos here! Between Lúthien and Finrod he’s just kind of like “you can’t… you can’t DO that…” The whole “Finrod refuses to leave Mandos” was something I pondered for a while before I actually decided to go down that route. Firstly I am always very scared of writing Finrod: he’s such a complicated and intimidating character!! And secondly I didn’t want to give him an edgy anti-Valar arc because that’s not what he’s doing exactly. He is (kind of) grateful for the chance to be re-embodied. But I need Celegorm’s death to have continuing ripple effects and once Finrod jumped into the story I realised this might be a good and thematically relevant way of doing it. And at some point I want to start digging into politics in Aman too, which makes the canon divergence important! (Hint hint who do you think might be showing up eventually 👀)

[sardonic-sprite]

I'm Back!

Wow, so Lent is over now, so my tumblr fast is also over and I'm still a little in shock, lol. I had hoped the past six weeks? I don't know, Time is weird, would be more productive but at least I got SOME stuff written/posted. Anyway, I have one more month of school and then fucking FINALS so expect sporadic updates at idiot-o-clock hours of the night, and maybe yell at me to sleep, eat, study, or drink water whenever i do post 😅

I am up to SO EFFING MANY wips rn on so many different fronts you guys have no freaking idea 😭 so here's a status report for EVERYTHING on or going on sardonic_sprite. (Its gonna be a monster post, y'all, bear with me)

in absolutely no particular order:

Wayne4Ham: We have a LONG way to go with this one, so just be patient and I'll slowly but steadily plug on through. Aaron Burr, Sir, should theoretically take me no longer than end of april

Wayne-Crazy: there's like 4 specific requests on it, plus a few 'series' i started, but after those, say 6-7, i'll probably mark as complete and only re-open if someone offers me an idea

Batman Beginners: i'll tell y'all up front, this one will take me forever. i don't even know what all I intend to cover, but know that i'm halfway done with the DITF arc, and it'll probably come out in the next two months

Just A Kid: this was my shits-and-giggles fic that got like 3000 notes in a weekend lmao. it's something i do intend to continue bc its so fun and i enjoy the concepts in it, but i don't have plans to actively write more of it in the immediate future.

Rev Wayne: just gave y'all Jason's fic, so the next probably won't come until late in summer, extrapolating from my few data points. if anyone has ideas for timmy's intro, let me know, i'd love some inspiration

Celeb Batwaynes: reported separate from wayne-crazy for reasons. i think theres like 12 specific requests plus 2 ideas of my own. i may put out a poll for the next one to write, but not until after school's out, because these fics are HUGE time-eaters for me. speaking of, are non-tumblr-users able to vote on polls?

Welcome to Gotham U: this was again, me doing shit bc why not. will probably add more in the style that i first posted, but i doubt i will write any prose for it. if you would like to give it a try, please reach out, i'd love to see what you write!

One Diamond: every time i touch this i make the cliffhanger worse lmao. i finally do have a direction, but execution is gonna have to wait a while.

The Young, Innocent, and Righteous: this is mostly just for me anyway, but i'm just gonna say that i'm waiting until i finish watching miraculous season 5 before i go any further

AS you wish: i have 5 more requests to do and i am so sorry to everyone waiting you do not deserve this lmao. i promise im trying, i love your ideas, it just takes me a really long time to fill in the rest and then actually write it. the next one on my list is particularly hard to pin down and so it's halting the ones behind it to. if not before, then after finals i will sit and bang my head on the keyboard until something good comes out

Light Isn't Fadin': soooooo many people have asked me about this one oof. SOMEDAY, i swear. right now its a huge, nebulous, hulking monster and im sorry it's just not happening yet.

A christmas carol: wait until december. please

Father's Day: june.

A Little Problem: over the summer, i will watch marvel movies until they once again hijack my brain and fuel this to completion. maybe.

easter eggs: how the fuck did i forget this lmao. i'm doing as much as i can in april, but when the month is done, i'm sorry, we'll all be waiting until next lenten season. hopefully it won't come to that.

aaaaand i THINK that's finally it. there's also a bunch of random paragraphs in word and google docs that may appear, not to mention ideas that kidnap me in dark alleys. but i also have like a good half dozen other wips for other places that im trying to attend to, so please be forgiving if it seems like its taking a while to post something as sprite.

as always, i love questions, comments, concerns, even some complaints, so feel free to interact.

See ya when I see ya!

sprite