#I actually write myself into characters. It’s the reverse!!! I am not ‘becoming’ them! am putting what I already am into them

[lionblaze03-2]

clangen… the bastion of mental illness

[brilliantfantasticgeronimo]

thought to myself u know what. i havent watched falsettos enough. so here's a couple things i noticed in my latest impromptu rewatch (rewatch number 52th probably?? 67th?) + just some nice bits n parallel that are always Good (tm):

"he loves another" "i agree" with ("-man") going unsaid

the chess games following trina's song about stupid men and their little games

"that's the king. please protect him" That's marvin saying "please protect me. don't hurt me"

whizzer moves the pieces randomly in the revival but i like to imagine he's actually beating marvin at the game in the end... and the whole thing was him pretending to not know how to play, and that hurt marvin's ego more than anything

"now marvin, bend" as a sexy moment but later gets re-framed as a "unwillingness to change perspective" moment

"nothing is everything to me / except sex / and money" in that money whizzer is playing to marvin's insecurity that he's only sticking with marvin for his money- is so needlessly cruel (and thus such... delicious character writing lol)

"and he loves me so" that "so" at the end is sort of a "loves me so much" but also a dare. he loves me, so what can you even do about that?"

"ask me if i love him, it depends on the day"// "do i love him?… no"

"son with a brain, and nice bright mother" showing mendel is like marvin (+ many, many men) and wants a wife half just to do domestic labor for him (goes well with the "washing your laundry, washing your socks!" line)

"he loves his father" // "i love things i never had"

"im everything he wanted" here trina finally realizes how she was such a insecure woman for such a long time and why she could put up with so much / settle for so little ("love me for what i am, not what i try to be" etc)

i love that "what ive done to you is rotten" is the slap to trina, is not taking to jason about his sexuality, and is Also telling trina and jason he "never ever, wanted to love" them. triple treat of bad parenting lol (but our man gets there in the end #bless him)

"a man kid, you'll be kid, whatever your song" the kind of reversed coming out metaphor of it all. ugh. so good!! (also i always cry at this bit bc... i will never have this with my parents :) rip haha whoops)

"pretty boys are in demand" just a good line for the whole gay men dying everywhere + the 'dating frenzy' energy of the era

"im not a giant man" /"good" // "one day i hope to be / as mature as my son who is 12 and a half / and this tall… that's all i want to be, that's all"

"we'll spent BILLIONS of dollars" and then the actual thing plays the way it does

"making the most pathetical errors" as a metaphor for marvin's arc…. making constant errors in love but making a homerun at the end

"should i take this new promotion OR should i take this IBM job?" is an amazing, anti-corporate lyric that fits greatly w/ the most explicitly political (likely authorial) song in the musical that, imho, shouldn't have been cut in the revival. in hindsight tho i imagine the revival people felt very proud and """progressive""" when they made that cut lol is very much a typical liberal move: "cant have true emancipation or revolutions but u cant have some \~upward mobility in the job market xoxo". also on the same vein, cutting the line "i'll change my life, and hire a maid" from the og "and fire the maid" like it's this huge feminist moment lol ughhhh hh

(other line-cuts that frustrate me… "it's queer, mr. marvin", "i could use a little drink" and "i just bought a family" . i feel w/ all of these they tooks some "edge" of the OG characters and kind of attempted to make them "nicer". but it really just makes them a little flatter, a little less real) ( and also some scenes just plain make less sense (marvin's drink line leading to his outburst)

(but bc it's not All Bad sdklfj in fairness, i belie the whole "why don't we tell him, that we don't have the awnsers? (…) this is the start to his becoming a man" bit - is SUCH a great part for mendel, it goes so hard and from what i remember is not in the original falsettos? correct me if im wrong but if it was a new addition in the revival, imo it's a huge improvement to the scene flow… and dare i say, brings the whole climax together, and spells out The Aesop for people who hadn't gotten it by the end of Act 2) -"let me go, im not ashamed to have loved you" // "what's the matter trina, darling, why cant you let go?" -"feel all right for the rest of your life" The Message of the play implicit in it.. "even if it's cut short"

"you save lives, and i serve chicken fat / i can't fucking deal wit hthat" / "maybe is not dumb the way this whole thing ends / the food tastes really yummy!"

"it's about growing up, getting older, living on a lover's shoulder" /"but i confess, you grow up, you get old, you hate less"

"the ground shifting, the rules keeps changing" and it's when the set changes for the first time!!! (/eats all my walls)

"isn't it enough i love you every night?" "who?" // "we had trouble parking, just like on our second date" "i hyperventilate"

"good men never fail" // "but i can't help but feeling i've failed " proving once again those machista lessons marvin learned when young were wrong.... it's clear that him showing weakness at that moment to whizzer was The Right Thing To Do. and what the moment called for.

"the last little mountain ill climb" sound of music ref? maybe?

i only wanted to love and not be blamed " // "who would i blame my life on?"

[nqmonarch]

Red Flags in HSR Characters

I have a problem of simping for the most red flagged characters except I can't handle red flags. Like violence makes me nope the fuck out of any relationship, I am so scared of getting hurt in any way, shape, or form. In real life I'm fucking terrified of being manipulated into being dependent on someone because I've experienced that shit and it isn't fun. Hate being insulted, degraded, all of that.

But the red flagged characters are just too cool???

Like Dr. Ratio, sure he's a pompous shit and would probably end up degrading you which I hate but he's so cool?! So I need to find some way to make him into this weird yellow flag without making myself into some super genius because no way is that gonna happen.

So instead put him in like a tutor AU, he's teaching you and when you get something wrong he gives you such a side ways insult. Like it takes a minute to realize it's an insult, it's worded in such a creative peculiar way. The second it registers you begin doing ten times worse on every question. It doesn't take long for him to realize that being told you're shit isn't inspiring to everyone. So he takes a... kinder approach. He's still a hard ass and strict but he's actively trying to do better and you can tell, when he starts a sentence suddenly stops and then brings that sentence in a completely different direction. You both end up learning. You end up learning the material and he ends up learning how to be somewhat better at dealing with people whose ideal day isn't being insulted.

Then there's the aeons. i simp for all of them, like how can you not??? Especially Nanook (using he/him pronouns for Nanook), Yaoshi, IX, and Aha. Now first off IX isn't a red flag IX is a lovely little black hole who I will defend with my life. But the other three??? They're as red as a stop sign.

Like sure, Nanook would probably destroy you the first chance he gets. Maybe Nanook is the destruction because he wants to be destroyed. I, I don't know man. Like he's so beautiful but how the hell do you even write romance with him? That isn't just like destroying the love interest.

Maybe he's had an insatiable urge to destroy everything ever since the dawn of his existence and he can't remember why. He's always been filled with rage, hatred, toward everything that's existed. Then he sees you and it all comes rushing back toward him. Your death, the hole it filled, the only thing that could really be blamed was the universe. It was everyone and everything's fault. So he would destroy it all to protect you.

Still a red flag but man I'm trying my best, no matter what Nanook will always be a red flag. Yaoshi on the other hand... surely there's a way I can make Yaoshi into a yellow flag after all they just want to help.

Yaoshi who would save your entire planet, heal every individual part of the ecosystem and every person, just to see you smile. They would ask nothing in return and instead remain by your side, enjoying the beautiful of the world. Then the mara strikes, people begin to lose their minds and themselves and you're left to beg them for a way to reverse this. But this is the price of life.

Yaoshi assures you that this is natural but they still watch on in horror as you inevitably succumb to the mara as well. Only then do they try to figure out how to fix it.

The further I get the more hopeless I become. Then there's Aha...

They probably found you entertaining at first, a human full of surprises and excitement, someone that could survive any trial. Then you grew on them a bit more and they found himself becoming attached. Aha wasn't supposed to be attached but this of course just makes an opportunity for more entertainment! Now they're actually invested and can experience the nail biting tension of all this drama!

Just another form of entertainment, it'll be a shame when you're gone though.

Then there's all the other beautiful red flags Ruan Mei, Jing Liu, Blade, Luocha, and Aventurine and Sunday seem like red flags as well even though they're not out. Like if bad to date why do I want to date?

Their red flags are a part of them and it's hard to work around it, so sometimes you just gotta embrace it. Life's rough man. In the end it's my fault for liking red flags. I'll just stick to Jing Yuan for now, peak husband material.

[butterflydm]

this is random but i just remembered that ages ago i saw an ask game for asking fic writers their 5 favorites/ones they're most proud of of their own fics, and i would love to know yours if you're up for it! it would be so interesting to hear a Butterfly Career Retrospective haha

feel free to be flexible on the number and discuss as many or as few fics as you feel like, and to count a whole series as a single entry (like voice, although if you have any particular favorite installments or interludes within that that you'd like to note i'd be curious to hear that too!)

This took a while but I finally got it done, @markantonys!

I have written a lot of fics, so this was a difficult challenge. I am somewhat helped out by the fact that old fics tend to fade out of my memory… but then if I reread a bit of them, I tend to remember why I wrote them and what I loved about them. I did not limit myself to five fics (I tried!) but these are roughly in reverse chronological order of when I posted them.

not in the stars, but in ourselves - trying to bob and weave and make something that feels narratively satisfying out of the mess that is Mat Cauthon's late series arc has become something of a hobby of mine! This is fic is one of several where I narratively examine parts of the canon that didn't work so well for me and try to rearrange them into something that feels like it rings true for the previous characterization and choices.

This fic in particular really made me see how the roadblocks that existed in each of the character's main plotlines was so much easier to solve if they had access to the other main characters (and I suspect that's part of why Jordan kept them so unnaturally separated during these arcs).

I also really enjoy the romance in this fic, and how the characters interact with prophecy in more unexpected ways, and how Rand and Mat help each other through their traumas, and how each of the members of the polycule bring their own perspective to the relationship.

the caffrey exception in White Collar fandom - this fic languished mostly unfinished on my harddrive for a long time before polyweek gave me an excuse to finish it up and post it! I wasn’t really in White Collar fandom, was the problem, and I always write and post more consistently when I have fellow fandom people to encourage me. I also was originally watching WC with my (now ex-)girlfriend and I stopped watching after we broke up, iirc, so I didn’t actually finish the show until years later. And by the time I was writing it, I didn’t feel like there was all that much visible fandom around. But it had a nice little response during polyshipweek, so I was really happy with how it all turned out. Makes me think that one day maybe I’ll finish up and post that RENT fanfic that’s been on my harddrive for eighteen million years.

negotiating with the truth in The Wheel of Time fandom - you can tell I got fancy with this fic because I gave the chapters titles, lol. This fic leans hard into Mat being an unreliable narrator and playing around with that, and it was a lot of fun to focus on and explore that part of him. I do love a lot of the fics I've written in WoT so trying to narrow it down more was tough (and I still only managed to narrow down to three!) but I really loved writing this one and exploring the differing ways that Mat and Rand were approaching this relationship of theirs and how they come to a compromise in the end. I think I really liked that they genuinely do have different wants and desires that need to be navigated.

voice interlude: feels like falling for the first time in The Wheel of Time fandom - this is, a little bit, subbing in for the Voice series as a whole, but I wanted to pick out a complete story and not something still in progress. I am pretty hopeful that Voice will get finished (there are three more main fics in the series, I think — one that mostly spoils through bk9: winter’s heart; one that mostly spoils through bk12: the gathering storm; and then one with whole-series spoilers) but I have some fairly long unfinished works in past fandoms, so eggs and hatching & etc.

What makes this fic in particular stand out to me is how I was able to really take this one moment in time in the series and expand on it so that I could deep-dive into Mat’s characterization and what he was thinking and feeling, and it’s such a revelatory moment for Mat. I enjoy showing characterization via writing about sex, and the interludes in the Voice series really allow me to do that.

my mouth (your lips) my hands (your hips) in The Magicians fandom - This fic where Margo and Eliot approach Quentin on this more equal ground (of them competing to see which of them can land him first) and it developing into a true polyam relationship… I really loved exploring how messy but ultimately loving it was. I also loved delving into Margo as an aromantic character in this fic, and how the great love of her life is her best friend.

A lot of my own fears and pains and worries made it into the three main characters in this one, though all in ways that make sense with their own base characterization, I think. There’s this one line that Eliot thinks - “he had always been better at self-preservation than bravery” and that is 100% canon Eliot but… yeah, it’s also me. One of the things I am working on in therapy is loosening the stranglehold of my self-preservation so that I can be a little braver when it comes to reaching out to other people.

If you like my poly fics in WoT fandom, you might also enjoy my marqueliot fics (but I wouldn’t recommend the show tbh. Or, well, I might rec it up until the episode “All That Hard Glossy Armor”. That’s a good one to end on. And it’s a Margo episode!).

searching for a sound (we hadn’t heard before) in The Magicians fandom - I wrote some serious fix-it fics in this fandom. But this fic was me taking the kind of ridiculous angle on a plotline that I think that the show might have actually pulled off, if it had been so inclined. This fic was also me balling up all my frustration at the poor writing choices and lobbing it at the show’s forehead. It was very cathartic to write. And I think it’s pretty funny too, so that’s a bonus.

(I’m Not Calling You A) Liar for Steven Universe fandom — I am cheating here and including a vid. This vid is… if I sliced up my heart (Hannibal style) and laid it out on a plate, it would look something like this vid. I actually started watching Steven Universe because I saw the “Stronger Together” clip with Garnet but soon after I started watching… holy shit, Pearl and her deep heartbreak over Rose just grabbed me by the throat and did not let me go. Watching her slowly process and begin to resolve her grief was a very healing experience when I was watching the show. There was something very much intensely yearning about Pearl at the start of SU, and how she was trying so hard to hide it (from Steven but from the other gems as well). But she can’t move on until she confronts and heals!

My favorite of the vids that I’ve made, I think, and the one I’m proudest of. There is maybe one single clip that I would change now if I went back to edit it again, but that’s it. I’m fully satisfied with the rest of it; and this is not the case with most of my vids. My Yuri! On Ice vid is probably the other one that comes closest to feeling like I wouldn’t change anything now.

Enyo’s Daughter in MCU fandom — so I am a bit of an odd one out in MCU fandom, because the ship that I liked the best, over any other… Tony and Natasha. Iron Man and Black Widow. It’s a complex and thorny ship, but I liked exploring it. Tony and Natasha both get to be messy and fucked up and exploring situations like that can be interesting. It was written pretty soon after the first Avengers movie came out, if I recall correctly. I never did finish the sequel to this fic, which I am kinda sad about.

Any fandom where canon is currently developing can be kinda tough for me to stay ahead of, in terms of writing any big fic series(es) — this is also why my big Star Wars WIP is destined never to be finished, tbh. I started writing it before a lot of the current canon even exists, and trying to go back and finish it would be difficult because the new shows & movies have changed so much and it can be hard to mentally reconcile what I knew back then vs what I know now when it comes to canon. Once the new MCU movies after Avengers came out, this fic was kinda doomed to never get the sequel finished, alas. And this is why WoT having a closed book canon has made writing fic for it easier, I think.

Melt into Time from American Idol RPF — time-travel fic! I’ve attempted it from time to time, but this one I actually finished. I don’t remember the actual process of writing this anymore, because my memory is for crap, as I mentioned at the start, but it is probably my favorite fic that I wrote in this fandom overall. It deals with second chances and a lot of yearning and people being emotionally messy (a theme for me, for sure).

Justice, Be Not Blind from Dexter — my one and only Dexter fic. What I remember most about writing this fic is that despite how short it is (less than 1k), I did so much research. Miguel Prado was hands-down my favorite character who ever appeared on Dexter and so I wanted to write a fic for him, but I wanted it to sound as true to his character voice as possible. I don’t even really remember the extent of the research that I did and it’s been so long that I couldn’t tell you anymore whether or not the character voice is accurate, but I remember how much I wanted to get this right and how much work I put into trying to get Miguel to feel genuine.

Travelers Without Map or Compass for Doctor Who fandom - cute romantic fluff, but I’m very fond of it. It captures a sort of vibe in the Doctor & Rose relationship that was very appealing to me, and I enjoyed exploring and expanding my thoughts on some of the rooms in the TARDIS.

Another Nameless Planet in the Star Wars (Prequel) fandom — I wrote longer fics in Star Wars fandom but honestly I think I captured Anakin best in this small fic that’s not really about anything in particular except Anakin wanting to be treated as an equal (by Obi-Wan specifically).

I have fics that I wrote before this point, but most of them I genuinely don’t remember writing to the point of going, “huh, oh, wow, I guess that was me, huh?” lol. But going back over my fics… man, it really is like having the deepest yearnings of your heart spread out in front of the world sometimes, isn’t it?

Thanks for sending me on this journey to the past! I hope you enjoyed it. <3

[lemonhemlock]

so, after having a little break and seeing the last two episodes in pretty quick succession of each other, i will have to say that overall i thought they were fair to middling, sometimes decent, sometimes with abysmal plot choices, alternating with nuggets of greatness (welcome back, alyssa targaryen).

i don't think they are going to solve my fundamental problem with this adaptation, in that, with my specific narrative preferences, i just find myself uninspired when presented with a heroic framing vs a villain-adjacent one. this dynamic remains too simplistic for me to be super enjoying the writing. i just find myself weighing out these interactions and coming off dissatisfied.

i'm turning into a broken record, but it's disappointing to see how they just always seem to lean towards showing the greens as supremely disconnected, cynical and cold to each other, disassociated from any kind of positive emotion or bond, except for a couple of very brief, very rare moments (eg. aegon/jaehaerys). i am a little surprised at the reviews suggesting that the blacks stagnate in their boring ways, because, to me, the writing for tb has improved massively since last season. if the children were borderline NPCs in season 1, i thought they did a pretty decent job in fleshing them out this time, making effective use of limited screen time.

jace, baela and rhaena get to be frustrated with their family, confused, struggling, but also get scenes of genuine connection, they seem to like each other, they look like an actual team. people who could fight for each other and who have kinship even if they don't have perfect relationships.

that being said, i was appalled at how they completely reversed the corlys-baela dynamic (that man did everything in his power to prevent baela from inheriting) and had baela say with her own mouth that she wasn't suited to be the heir to driftmark. i maintain that baela & rhaena should have developed resentment for being cheated by rhaenyra (and corlys!) out of their inheritance and will probably die on this hill. they tried doing this a little with rhaenys by highlighting this point of conflict with her husband, but to have baela outright refuse driftmark is nuts. a targaryen dragonrider can't hold a keep of her own? on what grounds? is dragonstone not also an island surrounded by salt water and boats and sailors? rhaena has this storyline of feeling useless and sidelined by her family because she doesn't have a dragon, yet being overlooked for driftmark doesn't make her feel any kind of way?

imo that remains a huge weak point in how they're writing the girls, but at the very least i can appreciate that they are trying to forge a sense of connection between these people, because they still have to explain how they didn't betray each other and go on their merry way. human relationships can be complicated and sometimes the ones you love the most hurt you and disappoint you the most, so there maybe even is a believable story here.

a story that could very well also be applied to the greens, but they are just almost invariably made to act so frigid with one another. it would be something else if it were just one or two characters, but all of them? all the time? while the other side get to be friendly and affectionate? even rhaenyra and mysaria get scenes of sincere camaraderie. whereas whatever the greens get, it's always in this somber negative light. the non-canon additions overwhelmingly carry this nefarious vibe: aemond tries to kill aegon (not canon), aegon is too dumb to speak high valyrian (not canon), killing the ratcatchers is suddenly so upsetting it can damage the war effort (not canon),* the smallfolk are eager to rebel in king's landing (not canon), alicent actively opposes and is distressed at aemond becoming regent (not canon), the smallfolk think slaying meleys (who killed a lot of innocent people during her escape) is an ill-omen (what the hell?), even the not-canon alicole can't just be sexy, it has to be frostily tinged somehow with the guilt of child murder. compare that with the non-canon addition of rhaenyra and jace working together to organize the dragonseeds or the messianic speech she gives him about how he has to pass on aegon's prophecy.

*they even have AEMOND, who, by then, has committed kinslaying twice and has one attempted regicide under his belt, comment on how, yes, the ratcatchers should be absolutely taken down because it is bad form.🤦‍♀️

it would be something else entirely if the greens were in a stand-alone story and this was the characterisation given to them. we would be having a completely different conversation about dysfunctional family relationships. but they are presented IN COMPARISON to another side and thus you cannot analyse them in a vacuum and it is impossible to escape this comparative approach or pretend that it doesn't directly invite the viewer to a pre-determined conclusion.

(even cersei & tyrion or tyrion & tywin had moments when they were just chilling and not at each other's throats)

likewise, they make every decision taken by the greens range from bad to catastrophic. name one thing that otto, alicent, criston, aemond or aegon get to do that the writers chose to paint in a positive light. one success. it's alicent wanting peace because she feels sorry for rhaenyra. meanwhile, tb has ONE character that acts out and on whom everything unsavory can be pinned: daemon. everything unappealing about rhaenyra's war effort can be traced back to daemon. everyone else in her camp is just so earnestly engaged in harm-reduction.

i'm not even getting into how AEGON of all people is the least developed dragonrider in the show, he who was supposed to have the best and purest bond with his dragon🤦‍♀️meanwhile we've seen how many shots of caraxes and syrax by now? even MOONDANCER. i'm sorry, guys, but baela rode her ass just THEE ONE TIME. for fuck's sake. even rhaena is going to have more flying time than aegon by the end of this show.

the way i can explain my dissatisfaction better is like. imagine succession (yes, it always comes back to this, doesn't it). only that, alongside the dysfunctional roys and their hot mess of a family and questionable (atrocious) morals, you would simultaneously be presented with, say, the old-money pierces. only THEY get to be a quirky bunch of honest-to-god people just tryna do their gosh darn best in this wacky late stage capitalism. unironically. maybe they have a couple of flaws, maybe they even fight sometimes and say things they regret, maybe they have an old crazy un-woke uncle that they try to keep under wraps (hey! nobody's perfect!). but with little to no commentary on their misdeeds and heroic framing compared to the roys. also completely ignoring that they, too, have a corruptible media empire of their own. it would be much worse as a show, no?

[chdarling]

I can count on one hand when snape has lost his cool in canon . in poa when harry saved sirius , in OOTP when sirius vs snape , when harry saw his memories . In hbp when harry called him a coward . And that's about it . While majority of time he is composed , confident and insults people with coolness and sass . The list is too long . Like he has coolly sassed Bellatrix , peter , sirius , harry , Ron , hermione , james , lockhart etc .

I love and deeply appreciate your talent but imo snape's behaviour is reversed in TLE , he is just too angry here to think coherently let alone insult or attempt at sarcasm .

I mean Remus has more sarcasm and wit than he has in canon and i have no complain there as i am a sucker for wity banter and humor , but it feels like injustice to Snape's personality to me .

I’m sorry you feel that way! I emphatically (and amicably) disagree.

I think for me it comes down to the fact that I am not trying to replicate the characters exactly as they were in the books. TLE is a prequel, and thus for all the characters — but especially Snape because he actually survives — this is a story of becoming. They’re not meant to be perfectly reflected versions of who they were in the '90s, but rather versions of themselves that could feasibly grow into the characters we see in canon.

The Snape in canon is a 35ish year old man who has survived a war and had years and years to master his emotions and become a top-notch spy who, as you say, sasses the likes of Bellatrix, not to mention lies to Voldemort's face. The Snape I’m writing in TLE is a 17-year-old boy who has done none of that yet but is raw and bitter and wrathful enough to be convinced joining a fascist hate group is a really swell idea.

To me, the moments you point out when Snape loses his cool in canon are the entire point of his characterization, not an occasional aberration, and these scenes were crucial to me when building his character. Rage is crucial to his character. It’s notable, I think, that almost all of these moments are related to the Marauders/Lily in some way. It’s the moment the mask slips and the wounded teenager comes out.

A few examples, just for fun (emphasis mine).

(This got a little long, but I was distracting myself during some severe weather that was stressing me, so I hope you’ll take this in the spirit of fun discussion, and not anything else. 🙂)

From POA, after Sirius escapes:

“THEY HELPED HIM ESCAPE, I KNOW IT!” Snape howled, pointing at Harry and Hermione. His face was twisted; spit was flying from his mouth. “Calm down, man!” Fudge barked. “You’re talking nonsense!” “YOU DON’T KNOW POTTER!” shrieked Snape. “HE DID IT, I KNOW HE DID IT—!”

“Fellow seems quite unbalanced,” said Fudge, staring after him. “I’d watch out for him if I were you, Dumbledore.” “Oh, he’s not unbalanced,” said Dumbledore quietly. “He’s just suffered a severe disappointment.”

From OOTP after Harry sees his worst memory:

“So,” said Snape, gripping Harry’s arm so tightly Harry’s hand was starting to feel numb. “So…been enjoying yourself, Potter?” “N-no…” said Harry, trying to free his arm. It was scary: Snape’s lips were shaking, his face was white, his teeth were bared. “Amusing man, your father, wasn’t he?” Said Snape, shaking Harry so hard that his glasses slipped down his nose. “I—didn’t—“ Snape threw Harry from him with all his might. Harry fell hard on to the dungeon floor.

From Half-Blood Prince, after Harry calls him a coward:

“DON’T—” screamed Snape, and his face was suddenly demented, inhuman, as though he was in as much pain as the yelping, howling dog stuck in the burning house behind them— “CALL ME COWARD!”

These are all such extreme reactions that, rare as they might be, they definitely suggest an undercurrent of deep rage and, I might add, a pattern of losing control when provoked with certain memories.

And then, of course, there are the flashbacks in which we actually DO get glimpses of young Snape:

“Tuney!” said Lily, surprise and welcome in her voice, but Snape had jumped to his feet. “Who’s spying now?” he shouted. What d’you want?”

(Interesting, I think, that his first instinct is to shout. Petunia hasn't said anything yet.)

There was a crack: A branch over Petunia’s head had fallen. Lily screamed: The branch caught Petunia on the shoulder, and she staggered backward and burst into tears. “Tuney!” But Petunia was running away. Lily rounded on Snape. “Did you make that happen?” “No.” He looked both defiant and scared. “You did!” She was backing away from him. “You did! You hurt her!” “No — no I didn’t!” But the lie did not convince Lily: After one last burning look, she ran from the little thicket, off after her sister, and Snape looked miserable and confused…

Snape’s whole face contorted and he spluttered, “Saved? Saved? You think he was playing the hero? He was saving his neck and his friends’ too! You’re not going to — I won’t let you —“ “Let me? Let me?” Lily’s bright green eyes were slits. Snape backtracked at once. “I didn’t mean — I just won’t want to see you made a fool of — He fancies you, James Potter fancies you!” The words seemed wrenched from him against his will. “And he’s not…everyone thinks…big Quidditch hero—“ Snape’s bitterness and dislike were rendering him incoherent, and Lily’s eyebrows were traveling farther and farther up her forehead.

He opened his mouth, but closed it without speaking. “I can’t pretend anymore. You’ve chosen your way, I’ve chosen mine.” “No—listen, I didn’t mean—“ “—to call me Mudblood? But you call everyone of my birth Mudblood, Severus. Why should I be any different?” He struggled on the verge of speech, but with a contemptuous look she turned and climbed back through the portrait hole…

This to me does not read as a composed, confident boy. This is (in my opinion) an extremely angry, troubled boy who is buffeted around by his emotions, who hasn’t yet learned to articulate them fully, let alone control them. Learning to conquer these emotions and be the cool, calm, and collected double-agent-man we see in canon is a big part of his journey, but it's certainly not something he's mastered yet at 17.

.......But, at the end of the day, this is just a fanfic and everyone has different interpretations of these characters. Which is fine and fun! TLE Snape has always been somewhat polarizing, but I'm pretty set in my interpretation of him. I'm looking forward to exploring more of his journey as he grows into book Snape. He's just not there yet. :)

[iztea]

Maybe you have some drawing tips for beginners?

Your style is incredibly beautiful and it just inspires this thing inside me to grab my iPad and start drawing but unfortunately I have no idea where to even begin

Or maybe you have some recs where to look to learn how to draw stuff?

But I understand completely that it’s your thing and artists should never feel pressured to share all their techniques and secrets, you worked hard on it!

I just really really love your art to the point where I just look at it for 30 minutes straight with this big feeling in my chest

<3

ah it was never about being secretive, i'm pretty open about my drawing process since gatekeeping knowledge is a big pet peeve of mine. It was more like,, laziness because writing a cohesive and helpful drawing tutorial is pretty difficult and i wouldn't even know where to start; i'm afraid i'll get maybe too technical and what have you.

As for tips for beginners, i've shared plenty on my couriouscat so you can scroll through the answers there, i also have some drawing timelapses on my twitter account as well (albeit you'll have to scroll a little)

I'm very flattered you feel that way about my art, it really means a lot to me and i'm glad to have inspired you to draw as well that's awesome and i wish you best of luck!

I actually don't know how different drawing on an iPad is compared to a graphic tablet+desktop, so I am actually pretty clueless in that regard. I think Procreate is the most used digital art app for iPad so you can start by getting it and familiarizing yourself with the UI. I think this step is often overlooked. The brushes and the chosen program can make or break the drawing experience. If you simply find yourself not enjoying Procreate, experiment with other apps or maybe try switching to a graphic tablet, maybe that feels better and is more suited to your tastes.

To be completely honest, one "bad" piece of advice that i should probably keep to myself is to draw something you actually enjoy: fanart, Pretty Girl Portrait(tm), your cat, landscapes etc even if it's above your skill level (becoming obsessed/ fixated on some character from a piece of media also works wonders i'm just gonna throw that out there). The main point is to actually care about your chosen subject in order to get inspired and to have that inner desire of "doing them justice" aka drawing them well. The traditional art learning route probably involves studying the fundamentals, shading spheres and cones and simple 3D forms blablbablah which. Yeah ! sure that's probably better advice but i'm telling you what will make you want to keep going and not get discouraged after a few failed attempts.

As for the drawing subject, I highly recommend having photo references to guide you.. you always need refs it's a recurring thing. My fastest artworks are the ones where I have the right references. the less references the more difficult it is to draw something

As a beginner it is also a good practice to draw OVER your photo reference to get the proportions right ( i'm not talking about literally tracing the contour of a face or limb ( just an example ), but moreso identifying the Main shape which makes up that body part and observe how long is it in respect to the other components, how does it connect to the other parts etc - big difference. Tracing won't help you in the long run).

Another thing you can do is to study your favourite artists and see how They tackle whatever it is that you like in their work. how do they simplify facial features? what about anatomy? color/ light etc and kinda reverse engineer your way through their process. ( but i highly recommend to just keep these practice sketches to yourself, and to not share them on social media- unless you get the artist's permission)

This is how i got into drawing and what i did back then, again, for more technical hands-on information i did answer similar CCs before so with a little bit of stalking you'll find them in no time

I wanna finish this with some resources that helped me:

>youtube guys - sinix, ahmed aldoori, marco bucci, and also just speedpaints in general i highly recommend watching those

>for simplified anatomy i found @/ taco1704 's ref sheets to be very helpful but ........... I'm pretty dry here i just look up refs on Pinterest tbvh

speaking of, here's my pinterest i have a bunch of art related boards board cool stuff overall maybe they can help guide you towards some direction or inspire you in some way idk

ok i kinda suck in the resource department listeN. im starving too just.................. watch youtube speedpaints ok

SORRY IT'S SO LONGGGBGGG i hope it was at least a bit helpful? this was all over the place... I'll try to come up with a tutorial as well but i really gotta be careful with how i go about it. I'll leave you with this for the time being. Again, thank you a lot for the kind words, I really am very grateful and touched esp by that last part about staring with the big feeling stuff eeeeeeeeeeeeee really wow T T that's so lovely and a big compliment thanks ty ly

[parkjayssi]

Hellooo, I hope you are doing well, I'm happy the fictional character game won, and I would like to participate, please!

Info: My initials are ASLS. I'm Ara~, leo Sun, and my favorite color is orange.

Characters you can choose for me (I'm writing several in case you don't know them from highest priority to lowest, so it doesn't take you that much time, hehe).

1. Yuki Sōma from fruits basket. (Big number 1 😭)

2. Tsukasa Kazuki from romance killer.

3. Ash Lynx from banana fish

4. Kureno Sōma from fruits basket

5. Kurapika from Hunter x Hunter.

6. Haruka Nanase from free!

My reading:

The character I chose for you is:

♡ Howl from Howl's Moving Castle ♡

First of all I feel that at the beginning they wouldn't get along at all, maybe the way they met was a misunderstanding, making Howl treat you in the most egocentric way possible, however, you have that "something" that makes him want to take care of you, making little by little his attention more and more directed to you, making him do little actions on the sly, like leaving you an umbrella when it's raining and you don't have one, or leaving a little flower in your window when you are sad, however he would do those things hoping you wouldn't know it's him, but he would make a mistake, so you would know it's him, despite his main attitude you wouldn't have any problem or annoyance with him, it would just be like "What's wrong with this guy? " Confused, but he would get your attention, yes do I get it? Well we come back, because of these actions you would start to like him a little bit, and he would have this sense of protection, but he would be in denial of romantic feelings, the love trope of "She falls first, but he falls harder" comes to mind. You would become friends, he cares for you and you like him, then you would realize that each other's personality and principles do match, and he would start to realize that he has feelings for you, but, he would go into denial "I can't fall in love.", "We're just friends.". Realizing that he actually has feelings for you, he would feel a little regret over his major actions, treating you better, but without confessing his feelings, waiting to see if his feelings are reciprocal, however, before confessing something would happen that you would have to separate for a while, a trip to another city with your family, or something like that, in that time he would realize that his feelings are sincere and what he wants is to have you by his side, after the confession that the feeling is mutual, he would have this thought (Channeled messages) of "I will be a prince for you. ", "I want to teach you everything I am.", "Everything I do is for you.", "Let's be together forever.", "Be my princess.", "Whatever you go, I'll find you.", "No matter if in your life you didn't feel like one, I will make you happy because you are my princess.", something I heard a lot was "Forever together."

Songs:

I hope you like it 💓

thank you for joining and the reading! i can see myself in that kind of dynamic with howl, and honestly sounds like a dream come true haha. you're lucky i know all of the characters mentioned here, even if haven't watched them properly. so i will be doing a reading between you and yuki sohma as requested.

YOUR STORY: the dynamic and your fate card pulled : strength (rx), three of pentacles, 2 of pentacles, nine of cups(rx) so the card i pulled is strength, and that too, reversed. we all know yuki has major self-esteem issues and that affects about how he feels for you in general. there is a certain blooming crush from his side which has been held back. when i asked my guides for more context, the cards kept falling down, which i believe tell me that this is his indecisiveness against his own feelings. i still ended up pulling three of pentacles. he still is willing to put his effort at the end of the day to figure out what he feels for you. he is willing to try and understand, working through his issues at the same time. with the two of pentacles, i can see yuki appearing in your life when you are in a situation where you have to make a choice if you want to put the effort with him or not. whether you want to be with him when he already is questioning his feelings can be tricky. nonetheless, my guides show me that you and him do, in fact, work through his and your feelings, one step at a time. sadly, nine of cups is a bad card for relationships and you both end up breaking away, knowing that yuki is still not fully healed, as he realises it's not your responsibility to heal him, and dealing with that kind of person can be tiring. my guides show me that you two would still, ultimately end up with a good note. this seems a karmic relationship, where you both learn from each other. and even then, you both cherish each other as a good memory than drowning yourselves with toxicity. they say "all's well that ends well" and that can be certainly applied here, albeit you both would need time before you can see each other again without regretting things extra messages : " thank you for giving me a chance", "i hope we can still be friends in future", "sorry for disappointing you", "i promise, one day, we'll be happy, even if we didn't find it together", "i'll always cherish you for giving me such good memories" aww he does regret how things turned out to be :( since you also provided songs, here's some for you:

(this kept looping in my mind while i did your reading)

hope you liked your reading! please provide me feedback if you can. that helps a lot with increasing the quality of my readings

[raging-violets]

I don’t know if you rb’d it caus it was funny or for prompts, but i would be interested in seeing what you do with Instead of fake dating, everyone is convinced that you aren’t actually dating + dealers choice if you want!

A/N: My first thought was to do this Reverse Trope Writing Prompt for Cisco and Averey, but I felt like everyone thought it made sense that they were dating. So, I decided to go with The Artful Dodger. This was a plot point I had thinking for season 2, should it ever be made – or if I have to make it up myself. So, we’ll see how this idea goes!

-

The Artful Dodger: Just Don't Tell Me That | SneedxOC 

Authored by: Rhuben

Original Character: Molly Atwood

-

“You and Rainsford?”

Both Fanny and Belle asked the same question in response to Molly’s subtle announcement: Fanny with a high squeak of excitement that cut over Belle’s flat, disbelieving tone, which was just heard over the snap of the carrot she was snacking on.

Molly laughed quietly to herself.

Sometimes it was funny just how different the Fox sisters were. One who accepted her role in Port Victory’s society wholeheartedly, and the other whose wanted out since before she’s left the shores of London. One who loved love and one who didn’t understand it. At least for a while, she didn’t.

“No,” Belle said, emphasizing her word with another loud crunch-bite of a carrot. “No. I scarce believe what I am hearing. No. No!”

“Well, I suppose if it couldn’t be me,” Fanny commented, (ignoring Belle’s “Or me, thankfully”) clasping her fingers together, a broad grin crossing her face, “there’s no better choice. This is so exciting, isn’t it, Belle?”

“Bizarre,” Belle said over top her sister. “This is not exciting. This is…this is absurd is what it is.” She shook her head back and forth, sprigs of her honey-blonde hair swinging from side to side. “You’ve not actually fallen for Rainsford Sneed. There’s no way. No way.” Her eyebrows lifted when Molly merely pressed her lips together. “Molly?”

“Lady Belle you are quite intelligent,” Molly commented, removing flour from her fingers with a damp rag. She rest her palms on the table, leaning towards her friend. “You understand those medical texts. I don’t suppose those are easier to understand than this?” Belle sniffed. “Yes, I have, indeed fallen for Rainsford Sneed.”

Fanny twisted her mouth to the side, a sparkle coming to her eye. “I think our Molly may have fancied him for a while, Belle,” she said. “And I suppose not just the idea of him.”

“Of course not just the idea of him,” Molly replied, returning Fanny’s smile with one of her own.

“I think the heat in here may have done something you, Molly,” Belle said, dotting the air with her fingertip. “Because I can’t believe…Rainsford of all people.” She sighed. “Well, you’ve at least managed to say more to the man than announcing your love of soup. I suppose that’s a small point in your favor for the type of woman Sneed would want.”

Fanny’s lips made a buzzing sound as she let out a loud, long, sigh.

“Don’t listen to her,” Molly said, giving Belle an annoyed look. Molly had become friends with the Fox sisters since her employment in the Governor’s House upon her arrival in Port Victory. She and Belle were the same; wanting more from their lives than what society deemed to be the only acceptable roles for them.  And why not?”

“Because he’s arrogant—"

“Intelligent.”

“Old fashioned with medicine—"

“A skilled surgeon.”

“And only wants to advance in life.”

“Don’t we all?” Molly asked dryly. Belle opened and closed her mouth before falling silent, alternating between blinking rapidly and scoffing. “Fanny, you understand this, yes?”

“Oh, don’t ask her,” Belle said before Fanny could say a word. “He nearly had me killed!”

“And equally recognized that Jack Dawkins did, in fact, save your life and is the best surgeon in the colony,” Molly explained. “Which, might I add, won him over to the Governor and Lady Jane.”

“You do not want to be part of this,” Lady Belle said with a shake of her head, “these dinners where the men pat themselves on the back for existing, where we have no voice, where…where…”

“Where I get to spend time with my best friends on even footing for once?” Molly asked, looking around the kitchen. “Instead of being reminded how I’m only a house maid? And being treated as thus?” She knew Lady Jane wouldn’t be happy with either of her daughters interacting with the house servant. Molly’s job was to tend to the family and not be seen as much as possible. “Believe me, I am aware just how this would look to the colony. Which is why we haven’t told anyone.” She lifted a carrot and pointed it in Belle’s direction. “You, Lady Belle, are not the only woman in the colony that wants more in her life.” She emphasized her point with a loud snap of her own.

Belle gave Molly a smile that was half a smirk. A silent “Ok, I see your point.”

“Has he given you a ring?” Fanny asked, ignoring her sister.

“I suppose if he’s suddenly performed alchemy?” Belle asked with a laugh. “Has he learned how to turn nutmeg into gold?”

“Some of us like the smell of nutmeg, m’lady,” Molly said with a laugh of her own.

“Are you using nutmeg?” Jack walked into the Governor’s home, sniffing the air. He frowned. “I don’t smell any. Are you making your soup? You always use nutmeg in your soups.” He pointed a finger at the mound of dough before taking a carrot for himself. “Bread for the soup?”

Molly shook her head. All these people in her kitchen. How was she going to get anything done? “There will be no soup if you keep eating all my carrots,” she said, planting her hands on her hips.

“I don’t suppose you have any extra nutmeg seeds?” Jack asked. “I could use them.”

“You would have to ask Rainsford, I suppose,” Belle said.

Jack snorted. “Why would I ask Sneed for nutmeg?”

“Because his brother has given him 10% of his nutmeg trade.”

“So?” Jack crunched on another piece of carrot.

“So Rainsford and Molly are in a courtship,” Fanny said with an excited squeal, lifting up onto the balls of her feet.

“You and Rainsford,” Jack said around his loud crunching, and a laugh. “That’s funny.”

“Oh, no,” Belle contradicted him, “no, she’s being serious.”

“Oh.” Jack’s eyebrows lifted upwards, the corners of his lips turning downwards as he contemplated Belle’s words. “Oh well, that’s—” He looked over his shoulder at Belle who silently stared back at him. He faced forward again. “That’s interesting news.” He then squinted at Molly, tilting his head to the side. “You are aware that he thinks very highly of himself?”

“Yes, a trait most men in the colony share I’ve come to find,” Molly replied with a charming smile.

Jack made a humming sound of surprise, turning to look at Belle again, this time in amusement. “Maybe this will be of some interest to me,” he said with some finality. Turning back towards Molly he started to laugh. “Something to brighten the day a bit from time to time. After all, I have been known to enjoy a match of wits time and again. Though, I suppose, speaking with Sneed that would be easy for any man here.”

Molly lifted an eyebrow.

“Or woman.” Belle made a noise in the back of her throat. “Yes, definitely a woman.” He sucked in a breath of air, looking around. Trying to find something he could change the subject to. “So…are you going to be making any soup?” His eyes widened when he realized all the women were staring at him. “It’s…good soup.”

Silence filled the kitchen until Fanny took in a breath and asked, "What did you think of kissing a man with a mustache?"

Molly blinked rapidly at her question. "I'm sorry?" she asked over Jack's loud groan of disgust.

"Well, I've only done it the once, and it kind of felt like a fuzzy caterpillar on my lips, but I suppose after some time, I'd come to enjoy it."

"Don't answer that," Belle said, her upper lip curling.

[lonicera-edulis]

Yknow how in isekai it's always truck-kun who isekai's the protagonists? Who or what would isekai the hobbit characters :0 (also, saw a reverse isekai au drawing and i think it was you, but i have horrible memory aH. But it was very cute :D)

I am afraid I didn't watch much of isekai stuff (it must be a big thing for anime and I don't watch anime, so I am unaware of truck-kun thing; and for other stuff I can only mention The 10th Kingdom or Voyage of the Unicorn and suchlike stuff where it is usually some magical portals/vehicles between two worlds).

• In my first reverse isekai AU I thought that the characters just went though invisible barrier that got broken for some reason (I don't know what reason yet and if it is even needed to be explained in the story).

I will put the rest to make post shoter as usual and if anyone is interested in these at all since I already kinda answered your question.

Before that I need to explain that these forms of characters are not them originally, but reincarnated or after-life forms, and they live in secluded places where modern Men can't get to. And thus Bilbo would be lured (by a distant song through the forest) from the after-life place of the hobbits, and dwarves would dig from below (in legendarium it is said that dwarves digged deep uderground and they were never seen again; could be that they also got instinct, while hobbits were hunted down, but I made it so that dwarves just lived all these eras very deep in earth).

I had some sketch for the beginning actually (from summer 2022 when I only got into fandom). This is how Bilbo reunited with his dwarves, but no one of them remembers their past lives, and they will be finding some puzzles while trying to get back to their homes.

I even made a rough draft of a map, need to redraw it some day to look pleasant. The other thing I like in this AU is that Gimli and Legolas are already in this modern world (made Gimli immortal, ok, I can't separate him and Lego, they are a set now forever; and elves were allowed to return to this world, but with a good set of rules for them to live among humans; plus Thranduil never left the place, imagine how cranky he has become after living through so many years and not having 'elven therapy'). Also in my mind (yet) there is just a such bittersweet scene between Gloin and Gimli (because this time Gimli wasn't born to him). This AU is actually a huge thing because I could still focus on a big story with many characters, unlike current time (I need to patch my mental health up first to continue working on any of my AUs).

• My second reverse isekai AU is where only Bilbo appears in a modern world. (Here is a first sketch explaning about dwarves in this world and elves are like in a previous one.)

Here it is his after life form, put in earth (under the oak, heh) to sleep until the end of times. Thorin digs him out accidentely, and Bilbo then is 'reintroduced' to all of The Company. There will be problems of course, since he is supposed to slumber and modern world is kinda depressing him, but all my stories have good ends as usual.

Also in none of these stories there is a good explanation why all these characters meet each other again and again, and not living new lives with new people. Can only explain it by their connections from past lives, although it can be not in favor to some who will decide to check on these AUs.

• I had an isekai AU too actually, where Bilbo is a writer, and gets into his own story he is writing. Not sure I will elaborate further on this idea though.

And these are just my alternatives for modern AUs, so they are imperfect and silly of course. Breaking many rules of Tolkien/'movieverse in some cases too' world (I do like when there is maximum of original rules, although I myself can't keep them in my head when thinking of AUs), and making up some unexplainable nonsense. So don't take them serious.

[burins]

i was doing comics livetweets on twitter but that seems... dangerous given the longevity of that site so i'm going to bring them over here so that in six months when i go "what comic was that in" i can find it. i'm breaking my "no new 52" rule to read greg pak's action comics run bc i've heard it's good! i already read the first tpb but it was on my desk shift so i emailed panels to myself. Country Kids Make Do!

AC (2011) #25: clark is so so charming in this run! he also breaks martha's finger AS A BABY which is a bold move on a writing level. if i found a baby in a cornfield and it broke my finger i might consider leaving that baby at the nearest hospital even if it was as adorable and round-cheeked as clark is here. ma kent is obviously made of sterner stuff than I.

CUTE!

now that we've gotten the backstory out of the way it's time for clark to fight the wind. literally. he tries to reverse a hurricane.

frankly i also find this charming! this is such a young thing to do. i also thought i was god's answer to every problem when i was 20. fortunately i did not have superhuman powers so i never accidentally tossed a whale in the air.

the art in these next few issues is Pretty Rough in the face department. aaron kuder does some rly lovely backgrounds and landscapes and action scenes and then you get a close up and we have some real adult animation ass mouths. it's still not as bad as this though!

AC 26: after clark fights the wind we have a charming moment where we learn that jimmy thinks clark plays a lot of sudoku bc he's always on his phone looking at Metropolis Nextdoor and trying to find crimes. clark have you ever considered going on normal gossip?

jokes aside these panels make me pretty emo about the intrinsic horror of being clark kent. you can hear every bad thing that happens, all of the time, and you also have the power and the will to stop it, or at least to try to. and that's your whole life forever!! woof!!!!

smash cut to the rainforest, where lana lang, electrical engineer, is busy excavating deep under the earth for geothermal energy. now i myself am not an electrical engineer but i don't think this is usually how that works. it's also been years since i took envi or geos classes but i do think that if you disturb forest soils in one of the most delicate and biodiverse areas on earth. this might be a problem. it's fine though bc lana lang is a hashtag girlboss and grabs a gun the first chance she gets.

clark shows up to fight the monster that of course appears, and immediately gets shook like a chew toy. delightful. he makes friends with the monster (also delightful!) and immediately gets stabbed by a ghost soldier (literally that is this character's name.)

AC 27: next issue we learn that clark has adopted the monster, who is actually a child. very very cute. in an alternate universe i think this kid becomes his robin and he and bruce meet up earlier to exchange parenting tips for underqualified 20somethings who accidentally ended up with very rambunctious wards.

clark's exasperation about lana's total inability to use his superhero name is deeply relatable. also clark what else did you pretend to throw into the sun and not actually throw into the sun

AC 28: we go underground and learn about an ancient secret society. i'm skimming this plot. lana is very excited about sustainable energy.

i had to look at this face so you do too!

i REALLY do not know how i feel about leonard sawyer, mahican nation, ghost soldier for (I think?) the US government! especially bc in about ten pages he is gonna literally stab clark in the back. hm!!!!

AC 29:

that's my special guy--

we get some more fighting... clark loses his newly adopted son who is actually a secret prince of underground. hey do we ever hear about the underground civilization again? here i was setting my fic in space so i could write aliens, like a chump. i guess i will find out when i read the next volume!

overall i'm enjoying this run, it's making me feel the clark kent emotion TM. god i do hope we get a new artist soon. sorry mr kuder but i need you to learn how mouths work (eta i looked this up and it's kuder most of the way through this run. sigh. i will simply zoom out a little on hoopla.)

[thepartyishere]

This is long winded rant about Cogwheels by Akutagawa

I wrote this a while back in a fit of obsession over the irl Akutagawa (that will never go away). I'd consider it vague analysis/ summary and not 100% focused on the BSD character if that's what you're looking for. Tbh I'm practicing my analysis/ writing skills and I'm not very confident in them yet. All this warning, it's not actually that bad I think (hope), I just have high standards for myself.

Anyways this is for @twinksintrees who asked about it

PDF of Cogwheels by Akutagawa Ryunosuke that I used:

https://documents.pub/document/ryunosuke-akutagawa-cogwheels.html?page=1

Cogwheels is a fictional work by Akutagawa Ryunosuke, but it’s widely acknowledged to be a thinly veiled autobiography. It was written in 1927, the same year the author commits suicide. 

 The story follows the main character’s thought processes in his day to day life. The events that occur aren’t what captivates me, but the emotions and thought patterns described. The mood is consistently very alone, different, and other from the population. This feeling of otherness is furthered by the paranoia the main character is experiencing, which drives him away from the few people he knows and the various physical illnesses he struggles with. His thought patterns feel disjointed to the reader, containing lots of logical leaps. He'll notice a recurring theme or object, like seeing an airplane several times in different situations and become paranoid and obsessive over the meaning of it. Throughout the work these varying recurring themes seem random and unimportant to the reader until the climax in which the character goes on a walk and encounters each of the subjects of those recurring themes, which he had been perceiving as premonitions of insanity and death. The culmination of all the foreshadowed repetition and the subsequent breakdown he has as he believes he is dying breaks down the distance the reader feels to the illogical fears and thoughts. The paranoia becomes justified to an outside observer when it all comes together.

Cogwheels reflects Akutagawa’s deteriorating mental state, as he successfully committed suicide the same year it was written. According to his Wikipedia page, he had intensifying and persistent visual hallucinations throughout his life as well as anxiety. We’ll never know the specifics of his mental illness, but I believe liberties can be taken to apply the experiences of the main character in Cogwheels to its author as the story is mostly autobiographical. The main character’s thought patterns revealed what I interpreted as compulsions and possibly OCD (but I am not particularly knowledgeable on the subject), depression, paranoia and other symptoms I may not be able to diagnose. The way in which these experiences are written and the feelings the descriptions invoke could not have been done by someone who wasn’t experiencing those exact things. 

The story feels like a very honest look into how Akutagawa thought and his worldview. This was written as his struggles and illnesses (mental and physical) were coming to climax. Another detail that may be Akutagawa’s thoughts projected is that multiple times in the story the character wants to admit himself to a mental hospital, but, "to go there meant death to me." Akutagawa’s life was plagued by fear of inheriting his mother’s madness. She was admitted to a mental institution when he was very young. Toward the end of his life that fear only grew as well as, "a vague sense of anxiety about my own future," which is one main reason for his suicide, given in his suicide note.

Regarding suicide, I can't help but think of how Dazai and Akutagawa's roles are reversed in BSD as they are in real life. The author Dazai greatly looked up to Akutagawa and I wonder what he may have thought and felt reading the works of a similarly depressed author. He was very affected by Akutagawa's death, being around 18 when it happened (Akutagawa was 35). The authors really are very similar, their works known for being bleak. It’s as if everyone else can't see how horrible things are and they are uniquely miserable in the world. As I continue to learn about the two authors I hope to compare their similarities in writing style and lifestyle in more depth. 

Akutagawa also had connections to Junichiro, with whom he publicly disagreed over whether the content or the structure of a story is more important in writing. Akutagawa argued that structure, or how the story is told, is more important. Any relationships between the real life inspirations for the Bungou Stray Dogs characters interests me, and I find this opinion held by Akutagawa relevant to Cogwheels. The content of the story is the quite mundane and sad life of the character, while the descriptions of declining sanity and the emotions conveyed are what I believe make the work so compelling. I’d be interested in reading Junichiro’s work to compare how his preference for the content and plot of a story impacts his writing.

In Cogwheels, the character’s emotions are constantly being influenced by anything he may perceive as or relate to something negative. His “normal” thought patterns or casual day will be interrupted once he makes any sort of negative connection or suspicious observation. He will obsess over the meaning of it, spiraling into distress and anxiety. 

This is my favorite example of that:

""Asylum" was precisely what it was. I somehow felt something soothing in the rosy tint of the wall and relaxed at a table. Fortunately there were only a few other customers there. I sipped a cup of cocoa and started to drag on a cigarette, as usual. The smoke rose in a faint blue stream up the rosy wall. The harmonious mingling of the soft colors was agreeable to me. But after a time I discovered a portrait of Napoleon on the wall to my left and began to feel uneasy again. When Napoleon was only a student, he had written on the last page of his geography notebook: "Saint Akutagawa Helena, a small island." lt might have been, as we say, only a coincidence. But it must have made even Napoleon shiver eventually . . . Gazing at Napoleon, I thought about my own work. And there burst upon me certain phrases in A Fool's Life. (Especially the words, "Life is more hellish than hell itself.") And also the hero's fate in my Hell Screen-a painter called Yoshihide. Then.. smoking I looked around the cafe trying to escape such memories. I had taken shelter here no more than five minutes earlier. Already the place had undergone a complete change. What made me most uncomfortable was the fact that the chairs and tables of imitation mahogany did not go with the rosy walls. Afraid I should fall into an agony imperceptible to others, I tried to get out of the cafe by quickly tossing down a silver coin."

This passage shows how one thing (a painting of Napoleon) will remind him of something negative and cause a downward spiral that seems to contain leaps between subjects, and he becomes distressed. As a fan of the writing style, I especially notice and admire the way Akutagawa describes the color of the wall as soothing in the beginning, with pleasant imagery, then cites the colors of the furniture and walls as his greatest source of discomfort in the end of the passage. The character feels as though the very environment around him has turned against him, changing with his shifting moods. What was pleasant has become hostile, the outside mirroring his inner state.

The last paragraph of Cogwheels is something that has struck me since the first time I read it. It’s the character’s reaction to the climax of the story, in which he went on a walk and had a breakdown over the culmination of the recurring premonitions:

“It was the most frightening experience in my life- l haven't the strength to go on writing. lt is inexpressibly painful to live in such a frame of mind. lsn't there anyone to come and strangle me quietly in my sleep?”

I am reminded of what Asagiri said in an interview: “This story (Bungou Stray Dogs) is not for people who are good at living.” Akutagawa was also arguably not good at living, which creates a connection between the inspiration for the manga character and its reader that fascinates me. 

As much as I describe the thought patterns and paranoia in Cogwheels as something somewhat foreign, something experienced by someone who was nearing the end and reaching the height of their lifelong mental illness, I find some familiarity in it. Akutagawa was far from good at living and the lack of control and fear I sense in his life and in this story resonate with me. I’m drawn to the hopeless tone of his works and the tragedies of his life. 

Sources and Further Info:

Akutagawa’s Wikipedia page

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ry%C5%ABnosuke_Akutagawa

Some of his childhood and analysis/ comparison to Edgar Allen Poe

https://www.washburn.edu/reference/bridge24/Akutagawa.html

BSD Wiki for some of the relationship between author Dazai and Akutagawa

https://bungostraydogs.fandom.com/wiki/Real-life_References

A partial translation of the Asagiri interview  (@Popopretty1 on Twitter)

https://twitter.com/Popopretty1/status/16634469970163916

[thief-of-eggs]

fic writer meme

Thank you thank you to the timkon QUEEN @hearteyeshayley for tagging me <33

1. How many works do you have on Ao3?

67

2. What's your total Ao3 word count?

322,925

3. What fandoms do you write for?

I mostly write for DC, but I also write for Marvel, as well as TBOSAS, ATLA, and any other book/show that randomly grabs my interest

4. What are your top 5 fics by kudos?

Mark Me Like a Bloodstain (Most unfortunately, because i hate to think that this is my AO3 legacy. Smut for Miguel O’hara that I wrote in an hour…)

Thoughts of You Consume (More smut! I didn’t expect this one to gain so much traction, but it is super fun to write!)

The Hardest Thing to Lose is You (…more Miguel O’hara smut..)

Like Melting Snow (Aaaand more snowjanus smut) ((This one is especially awkward seeing as I promised to never write Omegaverse, and yet here we are))

Guilt and Greed (One that I am actually proud of!!!! Not my greatest work but I did enjoy making this one.)

5. Do you respond to comments?

I try my hardest to!! I’m a bit behind right now, but I also haven’t been on my AO3 much this last month. I reread every comment at least 5 times, they genuinely are the food that gets me through it all. I love love LOVE talking to others about my works, and so getting to talk to yall in the comment section is SO fun for me!!!

6. What is the fic you wrote with the angstiest ending?

Probably Memory’s Embrace. While it is not my angstiest work by far, I usually throw some comfort in there as well to let it not end angsty. This fic, however, is the only one that truly ends without a happy ending.

7. What's the fic you wrote with the happiest ending?

I think So If You Will, Please Fall in Love With Me may be my happiest ending. I absolutely adore this fic, I love fluff but don’t write it nearly as much as I’d like to.

8. Do you get hate on fics?

Yup! The Snowjanus fandom, while ever so kind and supportive, also shockingly is full of haters as well! I’ve received everything from death threats to blatant slams of my writing. They make me giggle every time

9. Do you write smut?

I told myself I wouldn’t, and yet… here we are.

10. Do you write crossovers? What's the craziest one you have written?

No, I’m boring :(

11. Have you ever had a fic stolen?

Twice actually! (To my knowledge)

12. Have you ever had a fic translated?

Yes!!!! I had one turned into a podfic (literally made me CRY, I was so so happy)

13. Have you ever co-written a fic before?

No but I’ve talked about doing so with a few writer friends!! I am so down to

14. What's your all time favorite ship?

This is a very tricky question for me. I tend to love things with my entire being when I hyperfixate on them, and then I tend to feel very ‘meh’ about them after. So picking an all time is difficult, since my interests are always fluctuating.

HOWEVER, I would say that Timkon and Drarry are the two that have remained constant. (And while I am new to Andreil, I can already see it becoming another core ship for me)

15. What is a WIP you want to finish but doubt you ever will?

I have an entire half-written Timkon Reverse Robins AU where Tim is red hood, and Kon ends up an accomplice. @sophiasrant has heard way too much about this AU.

As much as I would love to expand upon it and actually finish writing it, I don’t think I’ll ever have the time to do it justice. It would end up as SUCH a long fic (though I do have full written scenes if anyone is ever interested)

16. What are your writing strengths?

I like how I describe emotions and feelings. I am not very good at articulating how I am feeling, but give me a character and suddenly I have a million shades of color to paint the particular emotion they are feeling. I love to be poetic in writing, and I think I sometimes achieve that.

I also think I have a talent with smut, though I am not sure. The feedback would say so, but I literally do not know how to judge smut writing. It always feels cringe, but maybe all smut feels that way.

17. What are your writing weaknesses?

I never plan ahead. Like, ever. I lack discipline and I never do enough editing. As soon as a work is finished it gets posted. There are quite a few works that I know I could have done better, if only I weren’t so impatient. But alas, I cannot make myself wait.

18. Thoughts of writing dialogue in another language in fics?

I’ve only ever done it once, in a fic with Bucky Barnes and Natasha. I feel neutral on the topic. Just do research if you plan on doing it.

19. First fandom you wrote for?

Downton abbey! I wrote it for me and for me only, and then decided to share it. I still never got around to finishing it…

20. Favorite fic you have written?

I have quite a few!!! (Because it’s so hard for me to pick favorites)

All of my favorites are non smut fics. I love the ones where I managed to be particularly poetic, or especially fluffy. Like, the words just flowed, and I was quite happy with the outcomes.

Those include:

So If You Will, Please Fall in Love With Me

Born From Ash

Rough on The Surface (But You Cut Through Like a Knife)

That Which Lies Beneath

I'm tagging @nanachachasposts <33 As well as anyone else who would love to do it!!

[fazedlight]

mel i loved your post about your full timeline of s5 from a character’s perspective and i eagerly await the fic!!! i’ve never actually posted fic or anything but sometimes i kind of quietly write things i don’t think i’d ever post and honestly i both hate the amount of background you need when all you had was a scene in mind but i have to admit i also love it. it’s like this logic puzzle where you’re trying to slot everything in so it makes sense and adheres to a timeline and the headcanon speculation of it is so fun (insert crazy murderboard jpg here) and i would love to hear any of that sort of background stuff that never made it into your fics but that was painstakingly pieced together if you would care to share! i loved when you shared your gender headcanons.

AHHHHH I genuinely freak out when people put things in my inbox, thank you 💗💗 I'm going to answer this in almost-reverse order! Starting with some stuff that never made it into the fics (I forget a lot of them over time, but these are some off the top of my head):

My Crisis rewrite had some headcanons around how people processed time at the Vanishing Point. More "super" people like Sara and Kara processed time more slowly, whereas humans like Lena and Ryan processed time more quickly. This kind of shows up in the writing with how Kara angsts in the background, and how Sara doesn't really sleep, but ultimately I didn't use it.

In It's a Metallo Life, the team briefly heads to MIT - I have a lot of headcanons around Lena's time at MIT (I went there myself), including certain unauthorized activities she may have participated in. Ultimately, I didn't find a good excuse to include much of that in the fic, but let's just say as a student she spent a lot of time in strange places and setting things on fire.

For Even Though You're Kryptonian, I actually have a separate science summary post that you might enjoy. I really thought a lot about the science there, but it didn't make it into the fic itself.

I love the logic puzzle aspect!! Putting together the outline of the story is the part of writing that really feels like storycrafting to me. When I finally have that working outline, it gives me the same high as engineering a working piece of code.

Last year, I went into posting my very first chapter thinking "What am I even doing? I'm not a writer" - but it ended up unlocking this part of me that I had hidden away, becoming a really worthwhile experience. So I hear you on being shy to post, and I know it's a vulnerable feeling, so no pressure. But if you're feeling that inkling to give it a try, I'd encourage you to ❤️

As for the fic I was posting about... funny thing, it's not supercorp (except as background characters), and it doesn't really need the timeline at all (I just needed to know how much I was going to break canon). Maybe you'll enjoy it anyway, or maybe not.

If not, I have 3 other supercorp fics (after my current WIP) that I plan to release into the world too. So more stories will be coming regardless 💕

Thank you so much for the ask, I hope you have a marvelous day!

[thenookienostradamus]

20 questions for fic writers

Okay so this one looks insanely fun; I couldn't not hop on board. Tagged by the fantastic @nocompromise-noregrets. These are some juicy questions!

1. How many works do you have on Ao3? 45. Oh shit I just realized I have one fic for each year of my life.

2. What’s your total Ao3 word count? 957,606

3. What fandoms do you write for? Many of the ones I have written for I don't anymore, but I've written for some enormous fandoms like Hannibal, Tolkien/Silmarillion, Star Wars, Sherlock, and SPN, a couple biggish ones (Detroit: Become Human , Midnight Mass, and Foundation -TV), and a shitload of tiny fandoms including The Alienist (TV), The Following, True Detective, The Exorcist (TV), and Preacher (TV).

4. What are your top five fics by kudos? Cernunnos (Hannibal) - 1,189; Misericorde (Hannibal) - 727; Exit Music (D:BH) - 716; The Detective Doth Protest Too Much (D:BH) - 638; The Stolen Prey (Hannibal) - 579.

5. Do you respond to comments? Yes! It's super important to me to take time and thank people who have commented. Also I'm not super crazy popular so I don't get a shit-ton of comments anyway. They're all gems!

6. What is the fic you wrote with the angstiest ending? Hm. Most likely Nightmare Angel, my lone Supernatural fic which nobody reads because I kill Dean and send Sam on an automobile-assisted vengeance quest. Listen, it's a book-based AU and the book isn't exactly the happiest.

7. What’s the fic you wrote with the happiest ending? Probably This Night at the Edge of the World, which is a surprisingly poignant modern AU take on a Star Wars crack ship. Matt the fucking Radar Technician. Who knew?

8. Do you get hate on fics? Rarely. I've gotten a couple of comments along the lines of "Why didn't you do x?" or "If this was my fic I would have..." and I've found that a lot of those come from people who are well intentioned but possibly neurodivergent, so I try to be kind.

9. Do you write smut? If so, what kind? Yep. All but 8 of my fics are Explicit-rated. Not sure what is meant by "what kind" - but like...hopefully the sexy kind? This is a reflection of the reason why I read fanfic. If I want character development, an engrossing story, an ingenious plot, whatever, I read original fiction. If I want to read about make-believe people banging, I read fic. I don't like longfic or romance or slow burn or whatever. Reading fic, for me, is purely for horndog reasons.

10. Do you write crossovers? What’s the craziest one you’ve written? I guess the closest I've come to that is the Techienician ship, AKA Matt the Radar Technician (Adam Driver's undercover Star Wars character from a Saturday Night Live sketch) x Techie from Dredd (2012) as played by Domhnall Gleeson.

11. (there doesn't seem to be a question 11) Free space! I am loving the recent proliferation of interesting, complicated female characters in media!

12. Have you ever had a fic translated? Uh. I think so? Not sure if it was on AO3, though.

13. Have you ever co-written a fic before? Tons of them, actually. Which is weird because I typically like to write alone. But I've had some amazing collabs. I cowrote one of my Following fics with a friend (we've since lost touch). I wrote a crackfic called It's Hard Out There for a Balrog for a reverse bang, collaborating with @melkors-big-tits and his ridiculously amazing art and awesome ideas. My fave collab, of course, was the extraordinarily cracky Kylux holiday fic, Merry Huxmas, which I co-wrote with my sister, @gefionne.

14. What’s your all time favorite ship? Uh...I don't really have an all-time favorite. Just whatever is occupying my mind at the time.

15. What’s a WIP you want to finish but doubt you ever will? I'm not entirely sure I'll ever finish The Unresisting Heart, which is a Maglor/Sauron fic. It was an experiment in style and I enjoyed it, but I'm not sure I'm in the frame of mind to finish. I keep telling myself I'll finish In Eorum Nominibus, my Midnight Mass Riley/Father Paul fic. But again...not sure.

16. What are your writing strengths? Characterization, probably. I'm pretty decent at putting together a plot with a lot of moving pieces. Dialogue. Also making things not read like fanfic.

17. What are your writing weaknesses? I sometimes miss opportunities for character interiority, especially with a fast-moving plot. I try not to, but my writing is vague sometimes. I don't particularly think it's a weakness, but fic readers love flowery, pretty language and I refuse to write that way.

18. Thoughts on writing dialogue in another language in fic? Largely unnecessary. If you do, translate. But throwing words from another language in makes you sound like a non-native speaker trying to appear cool. If you're fluent in another language, why not just write in that language, too?

19. First fandom you wrote for? Well, if you don't count Mary Sue stories written in a spiral notebook before the computer era, probably The Matrix. Revolutions, specifically. It's not posted. It will never be posted.

20. Favourite fic you’ve written? Exit Music. Because its totally invented AU plot went on to inspire an original novel that may or may not be published before I die. People really do not want to read "unlikeable female characters." Sigh.

Tagging some new friends, including @mycapeisplaid and @madsmilfelsen, plus some beloved old friends: @thefangirlibrarian, @niennawept, @ruiniel, @i-did-not-mean-to, @cilil, and the obligatory @gefionne because she has the same parents as I do and also because she's awesome.

[storytime-reviews]

Romantic Comedy Book Review

With a series of heartbreaks under her belt, Sally Milz - successful script writer for a legendary late-night TV comedy show - has long abandoned the search for love.

But when her friend and fellow writer begins to date a glamorous actress, he joins the growing club of interesting but average-looking men who get romantically involved with accomplished, beautiful women. Sally channels her annoyance into a sketch, poking fun at this 'social rule'. The reverse never happens for a woman.

Then Sally meets Noah, a pop idol with a reputation for dating models. But this isn't a romantic comedy - it's real life. Would someone like him ever date someone like her?

Rating: ★★★ 1/2

So my main problem is that there were some aspects of this book that I loved and some that I really didn't like, although I will admit that the narrative gets better along the way. Most of my issues with Romantic Comedy occurred in the first third or so, so it's surprising that I actually continued with it. I guess you could say that I saw some promise in it, and I am glad that I kept going.

Something that stood out to me with the first third or so of the book, much of which occurs at the studio in which Sally works as a comedy writer (clearly inspired by Saturday Night Live) is that for a book about a comedy writer, Romantic Comedy is just not funny. That's not to say it has to be, the problem is that this book is definitely trying to be, and it just isn't. Especially when it focuses so heavily on the comedy sketches at the beginning. I also didn't like how Noah spoke in that first pitch meeting, it sounded so fake, like when you can tell a character is written because it just doesn't feel realistic.

Sally is incredibly preoccupied with the appearance of other women to the point it's incredibly noticeable and felt uncomfortable for me to read. In using her point of view here I understand it's meant to get the point across that she's different, and really emphasise she's not someone that a musical star would typically fall for, but it felt like too much. Something else that just didn't work for me in this book is how some of the 'issues' mentioned feel very performative, especially with the two white main characters discussing racism and BLM protests.

However, once Romantic Comedy switched to the emails format, I found myself enjoying this book immensely. It was fun to be a little bit different, and a great way to showcase the perspectives of both Sally and Noah and get them interacting a little more directly. I loved this approach because it allowed them to develop their banter and chemistry and kept it interesting as they dealt with constant miscommunication, defensiveness and jealousy issues.

Their interactions feel realistic, especially the ways in which they respond negatively and then have to work on their communication to address their feelings. Of course they make plenty of mistakes and assumptions about each other, but I loved watching it play out as they struggled to stop letting their own issues impact on the other person. There is plenty of chemistry between them, especially in those emails. In fact, I think Sittenfeld did her best writing with these emails than in any of the other scenes.

Sally in particular gets combative and aggressive when things get real and become emotional, and I love it so much because it makes her real to me. Because this is exactly what I do. So as much as some aspects of her characterisation drive me nuts, there are other parts like this that make me so glad I read this book until the end. The characterisations of both Sally and Noah are deepened throughout the narrative and pulled apart and put back together. What I also enjoy about their relationship is that they call each other out on their shit.

Warnings: sexism & misogyny, references to racism, references to drug use and addiction, references to eating disorders and suicide, sex scenes