#I don't know that I've ever seen any sign that they were actually finished and shipped before the company ...got sold? Shut down?

[gobs-o-dice]

Dice Set #308: Orange Critsicle

[eaterofman]

Yandere Coworker Harem x New Hire Reader: A Meeting with the CEO

Follow up to this post

Finally fed up with it all, you decide to leave... but you learn it may not be that easy.

Content Warnings: General creepiness, yanderes, financial manipulation, manipulation, power difference, gaslighting

AN: Holy shit the first part blew up, more so than any post I've ever made on tumblr... ever. Thank y'all, and I hope this lives up to everyone's expectations? Had to ignore a few asks since they were essentially the plot to this part, haha.

As nice as Jake is... it starts to wear on you. The seclusion from your other coworkers, Warren and Jax's constant attention, it all becomes too much. This was the easiest money you've ever made, but it almost felt... condescending in a way. Seriously, you feel like you haven't actually worked in months, just given simple tasks to complete so that Jax could praise you. Otherwise, you felt like you were just eye candy set in a pretty office. No more, you figure. You make up your mind to go back to HR, it's been a long time coming. They either fix it, or you're gone.

With your mind made up, you return to Leon. He'd been so kind before, surely he'd help, right? As you explain your problems to him, he nods and gently smiles. In your distress, you don't notice his hand moving to cover yours, massaging yours comfortingly. You welcome the comforting sensation, overwhelmed to the point of not really considering the implications. You look into his dark eyes as you finish, silently pleading with him for help.

"That really is something. I'm sorry to hear your experience with the company has been so distressing. Tell me, do you have any proof?"

His demeanor seems to shift instantly back to the colder man you remember from your first sight of him. His fingers rubbing gentle circles into your palm shift into a harsher grip.

"Proof? I-I mean, the cameras have probably caught something?"

You'd say there were eyewitnesses, but all of your other coworkers had been avoiding you. You barely even knew their names...

"Unfortunately, our cameras have been malfunctioning lately, I doubt they'd catch anything. Without any actual witnesses, I'm afraid I can't do anything for you."

"How can you say that without even looking? This place is insane- you know what? I'm just quitting. I can't take this anymore."

You try to remove your hand but he keeps it there. His gaze is suddenly ice cold. He lets your hand go after a few moments of tension, fingers lingering before you yank your hand to your chest.

"Ah, you could quit... but I'd really recommend against it. You'd of course have to pay the dues you signed in your contract, as well as any additional fees. I'm not in charge of finances, but my estimate would be somewhere around... 200 thousand or so?"

You gasp, blood running cold. 200 thousand?! You don't remember signing that, but you also don't recall really reading over the contract in your excitement. You try to think of a way out, surely there had to be some sort of loophole-

"Of course, there's always the option of asking the CEO to change your contract, but..."

You'd tuned anything after that out, insisting to meet with the CEO as soon as possible. Which, to your surprise, was almost immediately. Almost like he'd been... waiting for you? Leon himself lead you to the CEO's room, at the very top of the skyscraper your office resided in. As you're let in, you're met with the biggest office you'd ever seen. It composed of the entire top floor of the skyscraper, massive windows encircling the entire ornate office.

You really try to ignore the feeling that you're walking into a trap.

The CEO was patiently waiting for you. Like a king on a throne, he sat in the middle of the room in front of a surprisingly simple desk. You'd heard of the CEO, Kennedy Grey, but you'd never met him in person before. He had an air of sophistication around him, an older gentlemen with salt and pepper hair and a well trimmed beard. His suit was pristine and looked expensive, probably costing more than your entire yearly salary. He smiled, urging the two of you to sit. His eyes glanced over to Leon's, a slight smirk on his face as if the two were in on a joke you weren't.

"So, what brings you two here? I've heard very good things about you from Jax. Things are going well, I presume?"

You fidget, despite his welcoming tone, he felt oddly... menacing. Like you weren't supposed to disagree with him, even if he asked you a question. You begin to explain your issues, but are quickly stopped with a firm look of disapproval when you bring up the idea of leaving the company.

"Now now, we can't have that, can we? With your contract, that wouldn't be a very smart idea, would it?"

Before you can even respond, he simply continues to talk over you.

"No, no it wouldn't. And you've just been such a good worker, we'd just hate to lose you."

"Well, I was actually hoping we could talk about the contract, I just don't think it's fair-" you can barely get your thoughts out as he cuts you off again.

"Unfair? But my dear, you signed it. I'd just hate to get my lawyers involved... they're top of the line, y'know? Besides, you don't actually want to leave, you're just... stressed. What do you need, a paid week off? A bonus for your hard work?"

"No-"

"Well, now that that's done, let's get back to work, shall we? You'll have a bonus on your next pay-"

You've had enough of his condescension and interruptions, it's time for you to interrupt him.

"You know what, I'll take the lawsuit. You people are insane. You can have the money if you want, but I'm out of here."

As you get up, you find you can't. Leon has moved behind you, surprisingly strong arms holding your chair in, preventing you from moving. You look up at him in angered confusion, but he's sharing a look with Kennedy. You once again feel like you're missing an important part of an inside joke again. You try to struggle, but you're stopped as Kennedy interrupts.

"Apartment 101, Evergreen Apartments, right?"

"W-wha-"

"You know, I've been venturing into the rental market recently. Very profitable at the moment. I actually just bought a few buildings in your area, including your little apartment. Such a shame, you know you could do better, right? All you have to do is ask..."

He smiles at you as if this was a normal conversation to him, like he was doing you a favor.

"I guess that makes me your landlord now, if you think about it!" his smile turns colder, eyes crinkling like he's laughing at you, "That being said, I just don't see how you're going to pay for the rent increase without this job. I hate to do it, but it's a necessity, y'know? Cost of living and such."

He waves his hand like it's no big deal, like he isn't playing with your livelihood and threatening you.

"You could move out, of course, but well, word gets around, and I just don't know how the other investors in the area would react to your... history."

You feel dread well up in the pit of your stomach and tears in your eyes. He... has you. What could you even do? Moving out of the city would mean starting over, and that's if you could even find a place and a job to pay for said place, and paying for the lawsuit-

In your panic, you can only whimper, "I just... why? Why me? i don't understand-"

"That's the beauty of it all, you don't have to. All you have to worry about is coming in and doing your job. We'll handle all the rest."

You jump, having almost forgotten Leon was behind you in your panic. You go to open your mouth-

"Wonderful insight, Leon. Now that we're all on the same foot, let's get back to work, shall we?"

You can only numbly nod your head, too overwhelmed to continue fighting.

You're finally allowed to sit up and begin walking towards the door, trying to speed walk out of the huge room that somehow managed to feel claustrophobic. You just wanted out at this point, you needed somewhere to think.

As you step into the elevator, Leon staying behind in the office-thank god-you're interrupted one final time.

"Oh, and I meant what I said. If you ever need any assistance, anything at all, just come to me. All you have to do is ask."

[unluckilyimnot]

can u do the "i like you I said I like you" thing with any random blue lock boy if u don't know it just search it up and it will be there it's pretty cute and when you do or u already know can u make like a big misunderstanding and it's a happy ending ty!

 I like you - rin, yoichi, hiori

– In which the popular kid (you) asks them out and they can't believe it.

Note: I hope I find the right thing 😭 rin is longer bc i missed the happy ending part at first. reader really doesn't take 'no' for an answer. mia 🤝 writting only with her favs

m.list | rules

Rin isn't the type to make friends in the first place, so when he found a note on his desk asking him to meet up with an anonymous person his first reflexes was to put it in the trash. He had better things to do than to talk to someone he doesn't even know.

He never expected this note to be from you, his pretty seatmate that, surprisingly,  liked to work on a few projects with him. Everyone has a crush on him, but only a few can actually manage his personality. 

But here you were, hands on his desk before he could take his remaining papers before leaving for practice. He glared up at you to realize you were frowning at him too, obviously upset. Yet you weren't saying anything, stealing glances around to see if people would actually leave one day.

"You're waiting for a deluge of what ?!" You yelled at the duo whispering behind him and he heard them running out in a second

"What's your problem?" He asked about your behavior.

"What is your problem! You never came yesterday," you argued, cheeks flush red and he can't tell if it's from embarrassment or anger. "I've waited for a while you jerk."

"You should've signed then." He added while looking away from the small pour on your face, trying to pull away his papers beneath your hand. "Now I have to go so be quick."

Lifting your hand so he can organize his bag, you didn't wait for him to finish before talking.

"I like you." You said, a lower voice, less confident ; a voice that sounded nothing like yours. He scoffed at your face, getting up and putting his bag on his shoulder. As if someone like you could actually have feelings for him, ridiculous.

"I don't have time for your joke. Get lost." Without caring to look back at you, he left the classroom with a bothered face. It's not that he didn't like you, but everything sounded fake. Despite himself, he doesn't want to be the joke of your stupid friends' group.

"Wait Rin !" Your voice followed by footsteps suddenly sends shivers down his back. Couldn't you just leave him alone ?

But your hand grabbed his wrist in a hurry to try and stop him in his tracks. You couldn't bring yourself to look at him, already trying to hide the emotion in your voice.

"I wasn't kidding ! I really do – "

A million thoughts pass by his silly little brain in a second but he sadly didn't have time for this right now. Or he didn't want to think about it at all.

"If you do then let me go." He sounds sharp and uncaring but his heart is weak when you let go of him with a pitiful try to hide the disappointment written on your face. Yet the only thing he does is run away from you, already late for his schedule.

"We'll talk later."

He sent it out of guilt before starting, not liking how he left you like this. Yet the notification of his message fell in deaf ears as you were already crying, hiding yourself in the bathroom.

After crying your emotions out you still went and checked your face after – bad idea. Your eyes are red, cheeks flushed and you can't get rid off the mascara that fell below your eyes. Great.

You sighed, getting yourself together before leaving the building to go home. You've seen his message but honestly you don't think you'll ever have the strength to face him now. Ever. Tears are always on the verge of falling from your eyes and you’ve never felt this shitty in your life. It was the worst day ever ! And your friends would tell you "I told you so." . You hated it.

Yet, without meaning to, you still passed by the football field and saw Rin was still there training, all sweaty and panting as he scored yet another goal. As you ponder if you should stop by and wait for him, since he told you you’ll talk later, you stopped in your tracks right in front of the tribune. From where you stand, you staying or not wouldn’t probably change a thing to your situation. No-one’s waiting for you and you certainly don’t wanna see your friends at that moment. So you decided to stop and take a seat in the front row, gazing at him as your head lay on your arms. 

It doesn’t take long for him to notice you, you can tell and even if you didn’t expect much from him, he stopped and slowly made his way to you.

He feels like an asshole, for once in his life. It’s like he really did something bad that he regrets.

“You’re going to catch a cold.” was all he could think about to break the heavy silence between you two. He doesn’t expect much either, knowing well that you might be upset.

“It’s summer’s end though, it’s still hot…” you answered, muffled in your arms. He was right, the light breeze past nine was in fact colder than you thought but you never wanted to admit that. But you weren’t dumb, you knew he'd notice the goosebumps on your arms. 

Soon his jacket fell on your shoulders, making you blink a few times in a vain attempt to process what happened.

“Take this and go home. Don’t forget it tomorrow.” he finally said before leaving you behind, flustered but with a small smile on your lips. At least he cared more than he looked like.

Putting it on properly, you took your bag and made your way to the exit, following his words – he made sure for you not to get cold, you could at least listen. You expected it to smell like him or some strong cologne he might wear, but instead it simply smells like detergent. And for some reason, it comforted you even more. 

It was a good idea to stop by. 

Hiori never was on the popular side, even if he was a good football player for his two years of high school, he never compared to some of his teammates that got way too much attention for their well being. Not that he ever minded, it was just like this. He prefers his routine to stick to what it is, meeting with his small group of friends, talk about games then go back to his training. It can be boring, but it was simply his life.

Or it was before you came into his life out of nowhere during his last year. You’ve always been in his class but for some reason you two never talked before, he knew your name and that’s it. Until you started to come see him play and encourage him with everything you’ve got.

After that, it seems like you’ve never missed a game and always come to see him at the end of it to tell him how well he played and then proceed to talk with him. It was nothing particularly weird, anybody can start to like football at some point and tell themselves that it’s never too late to befriend someone – beside the fact that you were the prettiest person he had seen.

For some reason, all this happening out of nowhere seems way too suspicious but he never mentioned it to you and was still happy to talk to you and learn more about your interests. He was really awkward at first but as the days went by, turning into months and you never stopped being nice to him, he thought he may have had the wrong idea. Until that day.

“I like you,” you mumbled to him after catching his sleeve before he could leave. Time stopped and your words were echoing in his head endlessly – he couldn't come up with an answer. His mind went blank and all he could do was stare at your feet, trying to ground himself. But you pull on his sleeve once again, right when he feels able to answer.

“Come on, don’t ignore me when I just said that…” He can see you chewing on the inside of your cheek and a disbelief scoffed escaped his mouth.

“Look, I know but it’s just not funny,” he answered lightly but he couldn’t look into your eyes or else he would’ve cried. Saying he didn’t develop a crush on you would be a lie, but he knew it was one sided and was fine with it. But you joking about it wasn’t funny.

“What– No ! I’m not kidding Hiori, listen–”

“I’m sure your friends are laughing a lot but you really should stop now…” he cut you out before you could explain yourself and it felt like it was now or never. You took a step closer to him who was still avoiding your gaze and left a peck on his cheek, close enough to the corner of his lips for him to realize you weren’t lying. His cheeks heat up at your move and he backs down quickly, taking a few steps away from you.

You were the awkward one now, looking away from him. You didn’t want to seem too much of a push over so you nodded to yourself before.

“Just because you don’t like me back doesn’t mean you have to say I’m joking. With that,” you added before waving at him awkwardly and were about to leave but this time it was Hiori who stopped you. Leaving a quick peck on your lips, he smiled shyly at you who was now a blushing mess – trying to hide your face away but with nowhere to do so.

“It just feels weird, because you’re the pretty one you know.” he giggled. “But I like you too.”

When Yoichi discovered the letter in his locker this morning, his heart stopped. It seemed normal from the outside – and thank god for that – but the inside contained words about how the person felt for him but he felt like dying. Nobody ever confessed to him, even less with a letter.

Nothing helped that he knew who it was. It wasn’t as anonymous as he wished it was, it’s always like this in the movie. He looked like his soul left his body, making his friends worry – even more when he never wanted to mention what was up. He couldn't just tell them, they'd ask to read it and he didn't want them to know who it was. While being asked a thousand questions about it, he secretly glanced your way, a blush on his cheeks. 

You were looking their way, not catching his eyes but with a knowing smile on your lips and he prays for them not to look away from him. He needed to talk this through with you, even if he didn't want to. 

You squeal when your arm is suddenly pulled to the opposite side. Yoichi shushed you down, panicked at the idea of you screaming all of sudden. You blinked a few times, flustered at the sudden proximity. He was only a few centimeters away, looking around to be sure nobody would come and annoyed you and your heart had a hard time following. 

Out of nowhere, he took out the letter from his pocket and almost shoveled it into your face. 

“What is this ?” he whispered as if everyone around was listening to him, making you giggle. 

“A love letter ?” you said, trying to hide your trembling voice. You never expected him to face you like this, he was the kind you can easily forget and yet he was bold enough to ask you straight about it. It charmed you even more at first. 

“Yeah I can tell,” he scoffed. “But that's not funny ok. Get it back and leave me alone.” 

The small shadow of a smile fell from your face in a second, horror rushing in your body when he gave you the letter back – more like pushing it in your hands – before leaving the other way. You have to compose yourself a second before gripping on the letter and run after him.

Stepping out of the corner he pulled you, you rushed after him before tugging on his sleeve. Once again, your letter flew away from your hand right to his face.

“I just told you I liked you ! You could at least keep it even if you don’t feel the same !” you yelled in the middle of the highway, people were sending Yoichi weird looks and he couldn’t control the blush on his cheeks. On the other hand, you never felt so dumb in your entire life. It wasn’t because he seems the most normal boy that he would like you back, not when he didn’t know anything about you, yet you really hoped he would at least treat it well.

“I thought you were joking !” he yelled back, not sure what to believe anymore. “you can whoever you want… why me ?” he subtly asked, not daring to look you in the eyes.

“Why not,” you argue with a pour on your lips. “You’re cute, that’s it. You’re caring with your friends and your mom – I overheard you on the phone once.” your ramble started to get a bit creepy, so instead you got close to him and bump into his shoulder. “Even if you don’t like me yet, we could at least, I don’t know, hang out from time to time.”

A sweet smile formed on his lips. “I’d love to.”

let me know if you liked it !

[remember-the-fanfics]

Imagine the first time Gen z Overlord meeting Angel Dust for the first time when Charlie and Vaggie brought Angel Dust to the hotel while GenZ reader was in the hotel preparing the welcome party preparations with Razzle and Dazzle, GenZ reader ignores Angel Dust's attitude and is kind and respectful to him by giving Ángel Dust cake that Genz reader for him?😃😃

"Razzle, Dazzle! This has to be perfect for Charlie and Vaggie will be back with the first guest!" Yelled (Y/n) decorating the not completely burned cake, the last two burnt cakes will be eaten by them or the tiny dragons.

"No- alittle to the left! No Razzle, that's down- finally thank you!" (Y/n) yelled watching the two put up a sign. "Okay, so I don't want to pressure whoever is coming so I think 'HELL-O (the o is silent)' is funny, it's a pun. I'm totally not feeling stressed about this." (Y/n) voiced to Razzle and Dazzle as the two came over to see the cake, words looking like it was blood and covered in rainbow sprinkles.

The pair looked at (Y/n) blankly.

"I used all the white with the actual frosting and being in hell most colors are red, black, and death."

"-and this is the entrance and Oh wow." (Y/n) heard Charlie say, they brought the cake towards the group. "You really decorated well, (Y/n)."

(Y/n) sees Charlie leading a fluffy yet skinny spider man sinner from the doorway with Vaggie trailing behind.

"Thank you, it was mostly Razz and Dazz since I was baking a cake for the guest." (Y/n) said putting the cake on a conveniently placed table, dusting off their hands. "Who are you?"

"You live under a rock? I'm Angel Dust, everyone on the streets knows me or wishes to." He said and (Y/n) blanking starred up at him.

"W-well (Y/n) here doesn't usally watch what you usally star in Angel." Said Charlie.

"Oh! He's an Actor then? I don't often watch TV, I'm usually working or helping Charlie." Said (Y/n) before Angel Dust started to laugh.

"I've never meet anyone who hasn't already seen all of me if you get what I mean." He finished and looked at the cake. "Hah. Funny if it didn't look like a rainbow was trying find me but thanks. Just know I'm only here for the free grub and room."

"Well I hope you atleast give a chance one or twice." Said (Y/n) before a sound from the kitchen was heard. "Shit, they're trying to eat the burnt cakes." They yelled rushing towards.

"How many did you burn? Razzle, Dazzle. Don't eat to much!" Said Charlie speeding after them.

"You never said you had child labor." Said Angel Dust taking a bite of his cake.

"(Y/n) was technically an adult when they dead also they are an Overlord."

"That explains why they've never watch porn with me in it-. Wait. How the hell does that child have that much power?! That's like giving a toddler a knife."

"I questioned it everyday."

-

"Isn't Angel Dust a drug?" Asked (Y/n), sharing the last burnt cake with Vaggie and Charlie because Angel Dust kept his.

"It another word for PCP." Said Vaggie, slightly cringing on how the cake was somehow raw and brunt at the same time.

"Like a pipe for plumbing?"

"That's PCV, kid. How do you not know these things?" Asked Angel.

"I died before I could I guess, my parents would probably kill me if they ever saw me with any drugs." Said (Y/n) shrugged. "So what kind of actor are you? I feel like i heard your name before since you mentioned it earlier."

"I'm porn star."

"...Well that explains alot of why people would be weird when I asked who they were talking about. I hope you enjoy your stay."

[flanaganfilm]

Hey Mike! First off, it makes me so happy to see you out there fighting with your writer friends to ensure they receive a decent living wage for the amazing work that they do.

As for my question, I would love to hear about some of the inspiration for making Before I Wake. It and Absentia were the last two of your films that I watched, and BIW just absolutely destroyed me. No other movie, including and especially a horror flick, has ever made me bawl like a baby like that. The entire tone of the film is so spot-on, and the climax of the nightmare monster “dissolving” from its evil form after being embraced…. To me that scene just perfectly encapsulates what it’s like to be a parent, and human; sometimes we just need someone to hold us and let us know things will be all right. We spend so much of our time making sure that our children feel loved and cared for, that sometimes we forget about ourselves. And you just fucking nailed it, my dude.

Like I said, I would LOVE to read any backstory or inspiration that you have for this film! It’s so beautiful and underrated.

On the WGA front, don't be too impressed with me - I mean, I'm a professional writer, I've been a member of the WGA since Absentia, so I'm out there fighting for myself as much as everyone else.

But on the Before I Wake front, you know I very rarely get asked to talk about this one, so I'm happy to... fair warning for another long post!

Before I Wake was originally titled Somnia, which is latin for "dreams." It was part of an unofficial trilogy of sorts, comprised of Absentia, Oculus and Somnia. All three of those movies were meant to work together as a thematic triptych.

Ultimately, Before I Wake was brutally sabotaged by its own studio, who drastically undermined it creatively and then destroyed any hope of a meaningful release. It remains a particularly heartbreaking chapter of my career... but a film I have and will always have tremendous affection for.

A lot of people think that Somnia was made after Hush and Ouija: Origin of Evil, just before Gerald's Game, but this is entirely incorrect. It was actually the second "real" movie I ever made, and was actually shot before Oculus was even released.

The basic premise of Somnia focused around a little boy whose dreams manifested physically in the world around him, and was an original concept I carried around for a few years before Oculus got picked up by Intrepid Pictures. In fact, I've talked about my first meeting at Intrepid, where I pitched a few ideas that were rejected... Somnia was the first one I pitched. Trevor Macy opted to pursue Oculus that day, but he ended up producing Somnia right after.

This unofficial "latin trilogy" seemed to fit together well. Absentia was a somber and bleak look at the loss of hope, Oculus was more thrilling dive into the labyrinth of past trauma, and Somnia was meant to take that loss and trauma and end the triptych on a note of hope and healing.

In fact, the script for Somnia was written before Oculus was greenlit. On the page, it was my favorite of the three. I was very taken with the story of little Cody and his personal boogeyman, and of the revelation at the end of the story... that with understanding, even the most monstrous of our fears can lose their destructive power.

Cody's birth mother had died of cancer, and he had seen her just before her death. That final image of her, as well as a misunderstanding about the pronunciation of the word "cancer" had led to the creation of a monster in his mind, who he called the "Canker Man"... a gaunt figure who took away people that he loved. When he finally learns the truth about his monster, and about his mother, he begins to understand it all... and the monster loses its awful powers as empathy and understanding take root.

While Absentia finished its festival rounds and Oculus inched its way toward production, Somnia was my first script taken out to market by my new agency. I had signed with APA just as Intrepid engaged me on Oculus, which was my first studio writing and directing job. Jeff Howard and I finished our first draft of Oculus and turned it in to Intrepid, and immediately turned around and started writing Somnia.

The script got some interesting attention. While some of the more mainstream horror companies balked at the emotional ending and preferred a story that was "more about a boy and his monster" than the emotional wrap-up we insisted on, others understood it right away.

Elijah Wood and his producing partner Daniel Noah sought me out when they read the script. We met for drinks in Venice and I was absolutely starstruck, and we've remained friends ever since.

Jada Pinkett Smith was another big fan of the script, which led to a surreal afternoon at her stunning home where we talked about the story at length and watched an early cut of Oculus in her home theater. Will Smith joined us toward the end of the meeting, and I had a difficult time speaking.

I've written before about the drama surrounding Oculus' premiere and eventual sale to Relativity Media, so I won't rehash that now, but as Oculus raced toward release, Trevor Macy at Intrepid made an offer to produce Somnia for Relativity and I eagerly accepted. My first "real" movie was going to be released wide in theaters, and the same studio was going to double-down on me - Somnia was greenlit by Relativity for a big domestic theatrical release. We'd pre-sell our foreign territories on this promise, and they eagerly snatched the movie up. This was my own Hollywood dream, coming to life.

It wouldn't work out that way. In fact, Somnia would turn out to be the first nightmare of my career.

It started well enough. We had filmed Oculus in Daphne, Alabama, taking advantage of an aggressive tax rebate. We would do the same with Somnia, bringing back a lot of my Oculus crew and shooting in and around Fairhope. We began shooting in the fall of 2013, less than a year after we'd wrapped Oculus.

We hit the ground running. Very little time had passed since we wrapped Oculus, and the movie hadn't come out yet, so at first it felt a lot like we were just picking up where we left off.

Bruce Larsen, who also carved the Oculus mirror, working on a prototype of the Canker Man.

We had casting challenges. I was still a relatively unproven director, my first studio film hadn't been released, and this was an ambitious script. After a lengthy search (driven by foreign pre-sales, a process I knew nothing about and now quite detest), Kate Bosworth signed on to play Jessie, and Thomas Jane - who I admired greatly from his recent work in The Mist - joined the production as Mark. (Funny story - Tom arrived with hair down his shoulders, and vehemently didn't want to cut it. That disagreement put us off on an awkward foot, and I ultimately conceded the point to him... though I do regret that now.)

The major discovery was 7 year-old Jacob Tremblay as Cody. Jake had only made one movie before this, he had a small role in The Smurfs 2. His self-tape audition came out of nowhere and we knew was a a phenomenal talent. Right after we wrapped, I got a call that he was being considered for a movie called Room, and we shared some footage to help him get the part (that movie would establish him as one of the biggest and most sought after child actors in the world... but we had him first.)

We were committed to practical effects wherever possible, and creating a striking suit for our monster. It all felt like it was going to work. But the shoot would prove to be much more challenging than we anticipated.

The shoot itself was challenging for the typical reasons. There was a little creative tension on set with particular actors, we didn't have enough money to pull off our more ambitious visual moments, and we were forced to remove several production days at the last minute, throwing our schedule into a bit of chaos.

But none of these issues were particularly unusual for a lower budget film, and while it was more challenging and frustrating than Oculus had been, overall the shoot was just fine. I felt that our third act was pretty drastically under budgeted, and what was scripted to be a deep dive into a child's imagination was stripped down to a few vines on the walls and some moths... but other than that, I don't really have much to complain about.

(Fun fact: it was also the first time I would work with Annabeth Gish. We were fast friends, and though she was only with us for a few days, I knew we'd end up working together again.)

We wrapped the movie, I got to editing, and all seemed fine. It was a unique story, much less horror-centric and much more of a fairy-tale. This was, of course, by design. There was a delicate vibe to the whole thing, anchored on Jacob's arresting performance, and a shadowy magic. It felt innocent, wondrous, and ultimately cathartic.

Then, Relativity got their first look at the cut, and the problems started in earnest.

We had been clear (and aligned, I'd thought) about what kind of movie this was. But almost immediately, despite these conversations, the studio began to push the film more and more toward being a traditional horror movie.

We had designed a practical monster in the Canker Man. Our creature was tactile, practical, and - we believed - appropriately simple. After all, it was meant to have come from the mind of a child.

The studio kicked hard, and the directive came down to try to make the monster "much scarier."

There wasn't a lot we could do; we'd shot what we'd shot, after all. The decision was made to take our footage of our practical monster and drastically alter it using visual effects.

The Canker Man would be digitally warped and molded into a skeletal, grinning creature. The visual effects artists would be using footage that wasn't captured with the intention of being altered that way, so a lot of the artifice would be obvious. He'd become a little rough around the edges. We told ourselves that this would be okay... it was a dream, after all.

Early camera tests of our practical Canker Man suit

The final VFX-enhanced monster This began to nudge our monster away from our core concept. While our practical suit would always need some help from VFX, this was now tilting into an area that strayed from the true identity of the creature.

Another major sticking point was the plot itself.

In the movie, Cody's adopted mother Jessie is shocked to find a physical manifestation of her deceased son, Sean, after Cody sees his picture. She then goes about trying to "rebuild" her dead son in the imagination of her new foster child, hoping to see and interact with him more... "I just want to hear his voice."

This morally questionable exploitation of Cody was, to put it mildly, the entire point of the story. Jessie goes too far, and when she finally resorts to drugging Cody to force him to sleep in the hopes of seeing her lost son, he is unable to wake up from a nightmare and her husband is killed.

Jessie spends the rest of the film clawing her way back to redemption, and having to atone for what she's done, all while finally focusing on Cody's past and healing instead of her own.

As a character, Jessie does things we do not agree with, and they have serious, permanent consequences. And the moral murkiness of this was, frankly, the point.

The studio was flinching hard. "It makes her unlikeable," they argued. There was a push to try to back off of this, and to pull the punch... sure, she could exploit him somewhat, but they wanted to pull it back. Kate Bosworth's performance began to be altered in the cutting room, flinching away from some of the more decisive choices in favor of a more watered-down, morally generic heroine.

This middle ground would prove to be ill-advised.

As we were battling over the edit, something else happened. Oculus was released in theaters in April 2014.

If the movie was a huge hit, it would mean I would likely win more of these arguments, and Somnia would be restored to something closer to my vision. If the movie bombed, the studio could (and likely would) run ramshot over Somnia, twisting it into a more generic studio horror story and jettisoning things they didn't quite understand.

Ultimately, the movie performed... moderately. It was kind of right in the middle. It wasn't a failure, but it wasn't a hit either. Both sides dug in. And suddenly, Somnia was being twisted into something between two tones.

Citing the "disappointing" performance of Oculus (which, frankly, did just fine), the studio insisted that we write and shoot some additional "scares". Among them was one of the worst studio notes I'd ever receive (well, at least until I started working for Netflix.)

The entire premise of the film was that, when Cody slept, his dreams would manifest physically. When he woke up, they would vanish. This was, to put it bluntly, our only rule.

The note came in: "We need a scare set piece to occur when he is awake."

Now, I can't understate how nonsensical this is. It defied the entire premise of the movie. Their rationale (such as it was) was that the audience wouldn't ever be frightened when Cody was awake, because they knew the monsters only came when he was asleep.

"Well yeah," I said. "That's why it's important that the movie isn't just about scares."

But they were insistent. If a monster showed up while Cody was awake, that would be "truly thrilling" and "catch the audience off-guard."

It was the equivalent of saying "the shark in Jaws only attacks people if they're in the water. We need an attack to occur on land." I mean, that would really catch the audience off-guard.

I had no idea how to address this note.

It was early in my career, I didn't have a theatrical hit under my belt, and I didn't have the ammunition to fight it. So I had to address it somehow, and it had to satisfy the studio, or else we may not get our theatrical release after all.

So I ended up writing a scene where Cody is wide awake, only to be attacked in his bed by the specter of a deceased bully (a previous victim of one of his dreams).

How the fuck were we going to make this make any sense? Well, we had to write a whole other scene - much earlier in the film - where a therapist explains the concept of "waking dreams." Jay Karnes (who was a lovely person and one hell of a good sport) had to randomly say "you know, some people can dream while they're awake" to Bosworth, desperately trying to set up this moment.

It doesn't quite work, to say the least. Cody looks under his bed, sits up, and is attacked by this eye-less specter. Then, he's dragged screaming under his bed, until the attack just... stops, for some reason.

We filmed it, and I thought it was the stupidest thing I'd ever shot (it wasn't, though - the stupidest thing I've ever shot remains the on-screen stalking and murder of a cat in the pilot of Midnight Mass, a truly braindead scene that Netflix insisted on adding.)

Along with this scene, which would become the crux of Relativity's trailer, we shot several other random scares that were peppered throughout the movie. Now, this wasn't enough to tip the film entirely into being a horror film... just enough to make it exist awkwardly in between two genres.

It got worse. The addition of all this new "horror" material made the film longer (go figure), so the directive came down to begin removing other elements to make room. Those elements were character development and context.

The cut began to get bumpy. The fairy-tale tone of most of our original footage was at odds with the overt horror tone the studio was insisting upon. Every time we tested one of these cuts, the audience was understandably confused... they really loved the concept, they really loved Jacob, and they all loved the ending revelation - but along the way, what was this movie? Was it a horror film? Was it a drama? A fantasy?

Even with this, our test screenings were actually pretty good. We were testing in the high sixties and seventies - which is, infuriatingly, right in that middle zone: not good enough to kill the studio interference, but not bad enough to let them take over.

So we kept fighting. And we kept cutting. And we kept testing. And with each screening, the studio forced it further and further into this no-man's land.

There were a few victories, though. Danny Elfman came on board to collaborate with the Newton Brothers on our score. Some of our non-horror sequences, like a scene involving Christmas-light butterflies, were being called out by our test audiences in the best ways. But the tug-of-war over the basic identity of the film was tipping decidedly toward the more horror-centric approach.

Finally, the studio came after the title. Somnia was too confusing, they said. Nobody knew what it meant. So, we added a scene where Jay Karnes - once again having to naturally sell force-fed exposition - literally defines the world "somnia" during a therapy scene (these therapy scenes were basically being used to spoon-feed material to the audience.)

That wasn't enough, though. The studio began workshopping other titles, and they landed on perhaps my most hated of all of the options: the ultra-generic Before I Wake, a title already used by a handful of low-budget thrillers over decades. We conceded after it was made clear that it wasn't really up to me in this case, and we limped into what I consider to be the worst title of my career.

With our new uneven tone, a new and "improved" monster, and a groan inducing title, they finally agreed to stop messing with the movie and honor their commitment to releasing it wide.

You tell yourself a lot of things in this business, and I told myself that the heart of the story - the revelation about where the concept of the Canker Man came from - was still intact, so all would be well. Viewers would be able to look past some of the bumps because the payoff was worth it.

But we didn't know what else was happening at Relativity.

They announced the release date for the film, posters started showing up in theaters, and we were anxiously awaiting our big wide theatrical release... when suddenly everything stopped.

We didn't know it yet, but Relativity Media was having huge financial problems. They were on the verge of bankruptcy, as a matter of fact, and though they weren't admitting it yet, internally they were in a state of absolute chaos.

Without warning or explanation, the studio moved us off our date. The movie wouldn't be released after all. We immediately knew something was very wrong, despite Ryan Kavanaugh's insistence that our date was "just a bad date," and that he'd moved the movie in order to make it "an even bigger success." No, this whole thing stunk. It stunk bad.

They set another date, and we watched and waited. But no trailers. No marketing. And then... that date was pushed as well. Again, they insisted everything was fine. But we knew. Something was deeply wrong with the company, and they were lying to us.

Some of this played out publicly. Kavanaugh and I got into a spat on Twitter when I suggested that the studio wasn't able to release the movie theatrically after all (I still don't regret saying this, and man oh man, was I proven right).

Meanwhile, our international distributors were scrambling. We'd sold a lot of international territories off the promise of our big theatrical release in North America, and they weren't going to wait forever. By the third time Relativity pushed our release date, the whole house of cards fell down, and various international territories started releasing the film haphazardly on whatever platforms they could.

There was no coordinated release strategy. Suddenly, the film was just available in Argentina, for example. Or it was On Demand in Russia. I remember being shocked when a German Blu-ray appeared on eBay without warning.

There was no rollout to critics, no coordination at all. Within a few weeks, it was pirated and available on torrent sites everywhere. And without a proper press rollout, the only reviews available were trickling in from these international markets, or random blogs in other countries. A slew of reviews - many of which were from obscure blogs in Russia and Turkey, not even written in English - hit Rotten Tomatoes. With no counterpoint from any credible critics, we debuted with a 30% rotten rating.

It would stay this way for years.

Relativity finally admitted the truth, declared bankruptcy, and went to court. Our movie was dragged down into the vortex with it. Our abysmal tomatometer score suggested that the movie wasn't released because it was bad, not because the studio had gone bankrupt. This assumption stuck to us like glue as the film languished in bankruptcy court.

Heartbroken, we turned our attention elsewhere. I would write and direct both Hush and Ouija: Origin of Evil before the whole distribution saga of Before I Wake was finally resolved.

In the years that followed, very little would be said about Before I Wake, and whatever was said was absolutely not positive... how bad must this movie be, after all, to be so unceremoniously pulled from the release? Some theaters just left the poster up, still saying "Coming Soon." I know of one theater in LA that had it up for over a year.

By the time Relativity finally settled their mess, and the film was unceremoniously given back to us with the most lackluster apology imaginable, and our chances of a domestic theatrical distribution were entirely obliterated. The film was already available online through piracy and a tiny handful of foreign blogs had defined our critical reception. No other studio would touch it.

We were able to arrange one screening of the film once it was unencumbered... we had a single showing at Fantastia in Montreal, a festival I adore. Instead of a huge worldwide theatrical release, the movie would play exactly one time, to one audience.

It was sold out, it played wonderfully, and it remains one of my favorite screenings of my career.

With Mitch Davis, Fantasia's artistic director, Kate Bosworth, and my wife Kate Siegel.

In the years that had passed since we shot Before I Wake, Kate Siegel and I had gotten married. At the premiere, and in the picture above, Kate was pregnant with our son.

We named him Cody, after the little boy in Somnia... the little boy whose dreams came true.

In 2016, Netflix acquired the North American rights to Before I Wake, and quietly dumped it on the service. There was no premiere, no rollout, no screeners sent to critics. One day it just appeared on the service without fanfare, as Netflix does to so many titles.

It didn't even appear on the New Releases tab.

A few critics found the movie on their own, and slowly some new reviews started to trickle out. Bloody Disgusting led the charge, discussing how the film had been wrongfully maligned over the years, and correcting identified it as a "haunted fairy tale" that was being handicapped by the expectations that it was a horror film.

Our tomatometer began to slowly rise. After some time, it tipped out of "rotten" into "fresh"... and today stands comfortably at 66%. Those early, malicious reviews are still there, the movie is still scarred by them... but despite Relativity (and eventually Netflix's) efforts to rebrand the movie as a straight horror film, most critics were able to see it for what it truly was.

Our audience was as well, for the most part. Some viewers yawning their way through the Netflix original horror feature section would find it, and get something maybe just a little more thoughtful than they were expecting. A few people reached out to me to talk about losing their own loved ones to cancer, or about how the sweeter elements of the story impacted them. I've always been grateful for that.

But ultimately, the movie was just brutalized by its studio. I've never again had so much damage inflicted on a project by a creative partner and supposed collaborator. And while Netflix did the bare minimum when it came to releasing the movie, I am still very grateful that that they even did that much... if it wasn't for Netflix picking it up, I think there's every chance Before I Wake would have never been made available at all.

I'm proud of the movie. It's not perfect, by any means - it was an ambitious sophomore effort and I had a lot to learn about a lot of things - but it has some beautiful ideas and some moments that really work. I see its flaws clearly, too, and while I tell myself some were out of my control (like the awkward scares forced on us by Relativity), others were most certainly entirely on me. Not everything works, and that's okay.

But man, Jacob Tremblay is phenomenal in this movie. And I absolutely adore the final ten minutes.

My son Cody is almost 7 now, exactly as old as Jacob was when he was cast to play his namesake. I hope Cody's dreams come true; that's why we named him what we named him.

Sometimes, our dreams don't come true quite how we might expect.

Hollywood is just kinda like that, I guess.

[adamnablelittledevil]

Just finished Part I of The Vampire Lestat and here are my first impressions (I skipped IWTV *for now* since the show has already covered it... I'll read it eventually):

I can't tell yet if I like it or not.

So far, I enjoy the concept and the characters seem to be compelling. In terms of eventfulness, there hasn't been much, but I do have some interest in these people. They all appear to be complicated and have a lot of baggage, which I guess makes them appealing and gives the story potential. Let's see where this goes.

I don't hate, but I also don't love Anne's writing style. I don't think she narrates and describes things very well, she lingers on stuff I don't care that much for and doesn't provide details on things I'm actually curious about? There are some abrupt changes that annoy me sometimes as well.

I do believe this might be an attempt to get ourselves in the mind of Lestat and how he process to the world around him, though? It would make sense considering how chaotic he is.

Another thing I like is how he got so obsessed with the 20th Century, music and theater. The descriptions really give me the idea of someone experiencing the world for the first time (in a while) and considering how isolated he was growing up or after everything that happened with Louis/Claudia, it makes sense that he is so fascinated by all these discoveries. And it's really immersive and sweet to see how he in awe he is with all of it.

He also speaks like he is somebody born in the 1700s. So I give her credits for that as well.

Pretty sure Lestat is neurodivergent at this point (ADHD is basically a yes from me, maybe he has dyslexia and/or autism too).

And his memory is trash. So often he doesn't know if he actually did something, or if it were someone else, or if it was just a thought... I'm like, ARE YOU OKAY (he isn't)? By the way, this is painfully relatable because I also have poor short (and long-term) memory. Heaven help him (and moi).

That boy is a water sign if I've ever seen one.

He cries A LOT. I don't remember ever seeing any (book/show/movie) character cry that much, specially in such a short time lol. And the fact this is coming from a man and not a woman... There you go with defying gender norms, king!

Lestat having Borderline Personality Disorder isn't even a headcanon at this point, but a FACT.

He probably hasn't been hugged enough times in his life and it SHOWS.

Even with the abuse in his family, his frustration with his mother and the "malady of mortality", he manages to stay optimistic in a way that feels so childlike and naive that makes my heart warm and ache for him. I'm like, you deserve better.

Again, I don't know if I'm enjoying or not, but I do like the fact I can imagine Sam's Lestat doing all of this on season 3. Picturing Sam bringing these moments to life is the BEST PART of the reading.

Would I still read these books if the show never existed? That's what I need to find out.

I can see why some people got so invested in this character, though. At least for now. Some stuff hit close to home and I find myself rooting for him. I imagine that for the ones who read it at as a teenager, it must've made them feel less alone and seen to some extent.

At this moment, it's Lestat > Gabrielle > Nicholas for me.

Lestat's father isn't a person I care about, but depending on how the show adapts him, I guess it could be a good opportunity for a blind actor. It would be killing two birds with one stone, because it would develop Lestat's backstory, but also give space for a category that barely gets any job in the industry. I would love to see a powerful guest star that is a an actual disabled person playing a disabled character. Sure, we would hate him, but if someone manages to show their potential, book more roles and maybe even earn an award or nomination, why not?

Whenever Lestat talks about kissing his mother I get confused if the incest is already happening or not lol. Because I normally would just imagine a platonic kiss on the cheek or forehead and I haven't seen anything explicitly inappropriate. I don't know if it's because I'm reading the Brazilian Portuguese version, or if Anne wasn't that clear, or maybe I'm slow and naive, but nothing big seems to have happened? But I'm familiar with those spoilers, so... Anyway, whatever. It's not like I was counting the days to read about incest, so I don't really care about it being evident or not. I just mean that for now they seem to be more of a "parent that didn't want kids, but cares for him in a distant, but still real way and child that seeks for any crumbs of love and affection" kind of relationship.

Speaking of that, Lestat is SO DESPERATE for love, omg. Nicki was basically the first person besides his mother that was nice to him and he told the guy ALL OF HIS LIFE STORY AND FELL IN LOVE almost immediately? Get up!

Peak BPD/ADHD/maybe autistic/water sign/Scorpio behavior. MY GOD.

Still don't know how to picture Gabrielle and who I fancast playing her. I do think I have some sense of who she is now, which is nice. I also have some actors that could pass for Sam's parent and have the appropriate age to play her in my mental library, but I can't form a face yet. Not the face of a real actress or even an imaginary face, it's just a blur so far. Which sucks because I loooooooooove imagining fancasts, specially for a show as great as this one, but I'm just waiting for the revelation to come to me lmao.

[doubleedgemode]

A.B.A: Creature or Bride?

I have previously seen people compare A.B.A with The Bride of Frankenstein, and I used to think they were wrong, as to me, I saw parallels with The Creature instead and, me being frankly unfamiliar about the Bride (salve from very surface references in popular culture) thought they only adscribed the similarity due to being "frankenwomen" lmao. But as it turns out, they might indeed have more in common! They say "A wise man changes his mind sometimes but a fool never" so I do apologise for my incorrect assumption. While I do personally feel her inspiration would lean a little bit more on the Creature, I thought it'd be interesting to see A.B.A, the Creature and the Bride side by side to see their similarities:

(Disclaimer: As of now, I still haven't properly watched any of the classic Frankenstein movies, as I want to wait til I finish the book (which I haven't done yet), my knowledge comes from some research. So while I'm attempting this is all correct information I could perfectly be wrong about some facts. If so feel free to correct me!

(This also especially applies to what I mention about Japanese words, as I don't know that language, I rely on google translator and internet dictionaries. Misunderstandings are bound to happen)

I might revisit this in the future once I get to up to date with the films and the book, if there's more stuff I haven't noticed while I type this. :)

Also, I think all Creature references I mention are related to especifically Film Creature, not the book's, those I can't go without mentioning at least one of A.B.A's traits, her wordiness, wouldn't correlate with any of the movies' simulacra, but the book's Creature, who can give long speeches. And yes, the movie version is refered to as Monster but I've grown fond of using Creature as a catchall for him)

Our first stop is part of these concept art files (which the kind @.famiccha fully uploaded for any A.B.A fan that wants to see them!), where A.B.A has wires in her head. Caveat: This art collection has concepts that didn't fully make it in (like Para resembling A.B.A's headkey or the latter's top clothing having an X on it), I don't think I've ever seen another instance of A.B.A having these wires, but this is an interesting reference of what they had in mind while trying to get A.B.A's design. According to google translator, the text with an arrow pointing at her wires says "a mysterious electric wire appears. This is a female version of Franken)". This is one of the parts I associate more with the creature, as there's no sign of the word bride. (花嫁, hanayome. In Japanese the Bride of Frankenstein movie is called フランケンシュタインの花嫁, which means the same as in English) in the picture, just Franken (フランケン, yes, just Franken, not the full name. Very curious. Btw, Frankenstein is said as, well, you guessed it, フランケンシュタイン) Electricity is obviously associated with both the Creature and the Bride, of course, but A.B.A having a key-shaped screw going through her head (according to ggworld) is something that only the Creature possesses, though in his case they're bolts that work as electrodes. Maybe A.B.A's screw works as an electrode, too... Who knows!

Funnily, I thought A.B.A's mysterious wire could be a way to call back to the Bride's iconic lightning shaped hairstreaks or, if you allow me to do the biggest reach ever, similar to The Bride's hair actually being partly made with wire, so to speak (more on that later, keep a pin on it), but after researching, I'm pretty confident it references the Creature, as he has a forehead scar held with metal clasps, which is close in position as A.B.A's!

“He was apt to cut the top of the skull straight across like a pot lid, hinge it, pop the brain in and then clamp it tight,” Pierce told the magazine. “That’s why I made the monster’s head square and flat like a shoebox and added that big scar across the forehead with the metal clamps to hold it together.”-According to Jack Pierce, the make up artist behind both the Creature and the Bride's looks

So, were we to adscribe a function to her "mysterious wire"... It could perfectly be to keep her head in place lol.

So, with all this and more (her being the one to instigate any romance, her Strive boots's design, and a big etc.) you might ask where did I even find similarities with her and the Bride (aside from uh.. being women and uhh.. Strive A.B.A having long hair???), so I'll explain:

A.B.A fans, isn't the Bride having bandaged arms (and just straight up being fully bandaged at first, when she's born) kind of familiar?

But there's another very important part of A.B.A's (classic) design that is either a reference to The Bride or one of the best coincidences ever:

See, I thought the Bride was supposed to have black hair. After all, the popular culture depiction of her, even some licensed Universal stuff has her sport this... But her movie appearance is played by Elsa Lanchester, who is a redhead. Here's Lanchester in the movie Bell, Book and Candle:

Her hair as the Bride is actually hers but, now, she could have dyed her hair for the Bride movie, right? Well, I couldn't find any report of her as the Bride having dyed hair! Even if not all Bride depictions share that hair color, we have officially seen her as a redhead in some depictions. I chose this illustration by Karoly Grosz, Universal's art director in the 1930's:

And of course, none other than the original movie poster itself!:

I hope you people enjoyed this admitedly wordy dive into some of A.B.A's design's inspirations as much as I did :)

Lastly, two fun facts:

First, here's what I meant with the Bride's hair being Lanchester's but also being sort of made with wire:

"Pierce co-created the Bride's makeup with strong input from Whale, especially regarding the Bride's iconic hair style, based on Nefertiti. Lanchester's hair was given a Marcel wave over a wire frame to achieve the style."-From Wikipedia

Second, in The Bride of Frankenstein movie, we see one of its characters, Dr. Pretorius, has created homunculi! (not refered as such in the movie but Wikipedia calls them as such, which is not surprising considering Pretorius' creations are small artificial humans, who are even (mostly) in jars)

[banditywrites]

20 questions for writers

Thank you for tagging me, @adelfie !!

1. How many works do you have on AO3?

48

2. What's your total AO3 word count?

560,158

3. What fandoms do you write for?

Oh. Gosh. Now it seems to be Batfam and Voltron. But I have also written Fullmetal Alchemist and I can see myself going back there someday.

4. What are your top 5 fics by kudos?

A Lonely Mind- Lance struggles with depression, choosing to hide his problems, he starts down a dangerous road alone.

Luminous Beings- Jason has the ability to see a light around people that are going to die. Tim is the brightest kid he has ever seen.

The Drifter- Lance picks up a "hitchhiker" without realizing it.

O Come Let Us Adore Him-Lance finds himself stranded on a planet that has a hidden danger. It's a good thing he has such welcoming hosts to keep him safe.

Rules and Other Broken Things-5 Times Tim's anxiety took the wheel and 1 time he reached out for help when he needed it

5. Do you respond to comments?

I do now! I didn't used to. I try to get to comment responses within a few days.

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

Hmmmm. I do my best to make sure my fics have peaceful endings at least. But maybe The Drifter. That one still felt quite sad in the end.

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

That's hard to judge too. My characters go through so much... Maybe Luminous Beings actually. Because people were only mildly traumatized.

8. Do you get hate on fics?

Once. On my fic: Upon the Road.

9. Do you write smut? If so, what kind?

No. lol. If I write characters holding hands in a romantic way, I blush super hard. I just can't write those kind of interactions.

10. Do you write crossovers?

No. But back in the day there was almost a Voltron and Fma fic.

11. Have you ever had a fic stolen?

No. I had someone say they bought my fic online, but it turned out they confused me with icypanther. So it was all good.

12. Have you ever had a fic translated?

One time! But I don't think the translator finished working on it.

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

No, but that is intriguing.

14. What's your all-time favorite ship?

Platonic relationships are what I love. I will read ships, just haven't really written them .

15. What's a WIP you want to finish but doubt you will?

The third installment of the O Come Let Us Adore Him series.

16. What are your writing strengths?

Dialogue maybe? Also, being succinct.

17: What are your writing weaknesses?

Describing environments. If I say there is a room, just picture any room you would like basically

18. Thoughts on writing dialogue in another language in fic?

I'm rewriting this answer because I realized I didn't read the whole question. Writing in another language is always hard if you don't know the language. I've tried it out. Not really my thing. But I was more comfortable writing about sign language than any other language.

19. First fandom you wrote for? 

... Pokemon. lol

20. Favourite fic you've written?

For Voltron: O Come Let Us Adore Him

For the rest: Foul Depths (FMA)

I don't know who would like to do this, but anyone who follows me, feel free! Thank you again for this opportunity!

[eldritcheden]

so it's totally past my bedtime but I've been watching NCIS again lately and need to go on a ramble so here goes

...not the full rewatch like back to series one and JAG and Kate and such, just from Netflix's catalogue on so like season 10 or something onwards

it was my number 1 obsession in my tweens and early teens but up until now I had seen little to none of the post Ziva era

here's a collection of thoughts:

I used to ship Tiva soooo hard - like I used to use 'Tiva' in usernames! and now I watch them and am just like euuuhhhh idk I feel like Ziva deserves better. In all honesty a lot of my ships (particularly when I was younger) are basically just a reflection of whatever the piece of media 'wanted' me to ship. like it was all just pattern recognition and the autism y'know.

having said that, and while we're on ships. I enjoyed the ride Ellick (apparently that's their ship name?) took me on. honestly as an extension of Ellie's arc in particular. Like there's that episode when she's dating Qasim but the team doesn't know yet and they talk about her compatibility with Reeves vs Torres, and the thing is like they were totally right Ellie and Torres totally weren't compatible at that point in Ellie's character arc. When she joins she's like the most stable 'normal' member of the team, she's maybe even a little naive, she's happily married to a fellow intellectual business-y soft-boy type. Then there's Qasim, still a fellow intellectual still a soft-boy type but much more of a romantic idealistic(?) soul. And throughout her tenure Ellie becomes more and more 'NCIS'- she gets more reckless and badass etc etc etc until the point where she kinda meets nick at his level for their compatibility. Like his character is comparatively relatively unchanged in that time, like he's settled a little bit really it's Ellie that 'matches his freak'. But her arc wasn't finished- she had to keep going and left him behind in her wake. and I dont think i really latched on until Ellie left but Torres is really one of My Guys at this point - like Elliot Spencer of Leverage flavoured guy. Y'know on the outside a bit of a broody (slightly sassy) lone-wolf badass type, super strong protective drive, vulnerable inside and don't believe they're worthy of love... Love that flavour of guy.

Okay that was a long one but I'm not really done with this topic but just think about the potential this holds for the future. I don't know why the actress left the show and that will effect how likely she'd ever be to come back but ugghhhh just imagine.

They run into Ellie on an op. She's undercover and 'working with' the bad guys. To protect both her cover and Torres she shoots him ala Gibbs and McGee in 1mm. THE ANGST. His little heart broken eyes. the tension the conflict. Nom Nom Nom Nom Nom delicious. She becomes one of their reoccurring 'villains' maybe her pic is even up on the most wanted wall. Maybe there's tie-ins with the Tony and Ziva series? Cause like I've seen that speculation and it kinda makes sense but again I need the drama of her being 'in opposition' to our mains. and anyway I need the friends to lovers to enemies to lovers /enemy lovers pipeline for them. The tension they could deliver, both dramatic and sexual, unprecedented. Sign me up.

I'm rambling, this isn't even general thoughts lol it's all Ellick with an honourable mention to Tiva.

Quick actually general thoughts:

They keep setting mcgee up as future director, and have been for a couple of seasons, I wonder if thats gonna come to fruition any time soon

12 yo me really did have a moment when Ziva came back.

Having said that I'm really not a cast purist. (I probably was at 12 tho lol) Like I don't mind people leaving and being replaced, that happens in long running shows and I feel like so far it's gone relatively well. Even Gibbs leaving- like he was iconic but they managed to make his departure seem refreshing rather than.. 'emptying'.. if that makes sense.

I guess I was surprised to find out that LA was cancelled, just cause it was the most solid spinoff they'd had but honestly I hadn't seen that in years either so who knows how it was actually doing.

I think 12 yo me is very excited for the Tony and Ziva spinoff. I just can't quite hear her over current me's excited projecting about future ellie possibilities- there's so much meat on that bone.

Ok. I really don't even know what I'm talking about at this point. Good. Night.

Edit: I remembered another thought. I was honestly low-key surprised that Knight and Jimmy became a thing cause I feel like at first they were kinda setting knights character up to be a lesbian- the way she clocked Marcy, and I feel like there was at least one other moment that I can't think of off the top of my head. I guess she could still be bi, but idk, I feel like I definately clocked a few hints early on that she wasn't into dudes? She and jimmy were a cute plotline though so I'm not gonna knock it

[blindrapture]

it's time for DJay's Review Corner!

I've seen almost all of Christopher Nolan's movies now. just missing Following and Insomnia, which are also relatively obscure.

I am absolutely fond of his stuff. I even like The Prestige now, only took me three attempts. hell, I *love* it. such a cool movie with compelling themes. Tenet? takes a couple views, but there is depth in there, it is very much a less interesting Homestuck but it's also a lot more *impressive* for managing to convey the time travel stuff on film. Interstellar, took a couple views but it's an incredible space film, I kinda wish it didn't start with like an hour of Earth stuff but I wish the same about 2001 so that's just Space Film Tradition, and *unlike* 2001 I think Interstellar goes to a goddamn perfect place of human drama. Oppenheimer is, like, Actually A Perfect Movie, you don't need me to tell you that, it completely surprised me and shattered my expectations of how a biopic can be. Inception is Inception. the Batman movies are a whole-ass three-part opera cycle in modern times. Memento is okay! I'll like it more if I watch it a few more times.

but I am here to mention Dunkirk, which I just finished watching.

I don't know how long to spend rambling about it, as I don't know truly how much I care.

Dunkirk was.. cool! there were elements of it that got me engaged and kept me so. frankly it was the best world war 1 movie I've ever seen.

....what? it's supposed to be world war 2? haha, no, it'd be one of the *worst* world war 2 movies if that were the case. it rendered the warfare abstract, divorcing all politics and ideology from the matter (the, y'know, reason any of this was happening), and just instead focused *exclusively* on the viscerality and horrors of being there on the beaches, in the sea, in the air, leveraging any drama for the sole sake of suspense. it was a War Is Hell movie. and *that's* world war *one*, that was the War Is Hell war. world war *two* was the Ideology Is Hell war, where the Allies literally *chose* to put themselves back into the visceral Hell of war *because* of the *context*, the *fact* that their enemy truly seriously actually *was* that bad and *needed* to be stopped. to make a movie about a part of world war 2, have hardly any paratext, have hardly any *dialogue*, and never once even show a human from the opposing side, effectively make Cloverfield But With Humans.... well, that's just pointless, a movie that is already obsolete before even being created.

well. Dunkirk was that movie!

it is entirely true that I was not its ideal audience. I went into this movie having no idea *what* "Dunkirk" was. I did not know *when* in the war this took place. I could gather that "Dunkirk" was a *place*, but then I had no idea what was significant that *happened* there to warrant it being a.. self-evident name. like, people can say something happened "at Dunkirk" and everyone around them instinctively knows, "ah yes! you are discussing something that happened during the noteworthy evacuation of Allied Forces from the beach at Dunkirk in 1940!" before I watched this movie, I would not have instinctively known that.

*after* watching this movie, I would not have instinctively known that.

I just fucking looked it up on Wikipedia after the film.

the film did not just *fail* to communicate this context, it *had no interest to begin with*. that is a really interesting choice. not a choice I appreciate.

like. the film did at least communicate some things.

this was a War thing, taking place on a beach near a French town (there were signs with the word "rue" on them). I knew it was world war 2 because of the technology. the fighting had basically *stopped*, with a small number of German stragglers taking potshots at the 400,000 Allied soldiers who had lost interest in fighting ("no, there were definitely a lot of German soldiers, the Allies were losing" yes I know that *now that I have read Wikipedia*, I am telling you what the film, in a vacuum, communicated to me). honestly, if I didn't already know that the English and French were fighting against the Germans, I wouldn't have been able to tell from this movie either, as the movie *insists* on referring to the enemy as... "The Enemy." without fail, other than one implied exception during a rare instance of drama an hour and a half in. and, as mentioned before, we never even *see* The Enemy in this movie, so I wouldn't have been able to tell from their accent or anything.

so. beach near French town. the Allies want to retreat. there is a boat, but just one boat isn't gonna be nearly enough, so everyone has to wait indefinitely, hoping more boats will show up. is there a protagonist? yes there is! what's his name? I couldn't tell you! what does he look like? I cannot tell him apart from any other character! everyone in this movie is a narrow-faced soft-spoken English young man with short black hair, covered in mud and wearing an identical brown coat! well, what about his voice? oh the protagonist hardly speaks! this is not a dialogue film.

but wait, there's two other plots! this was pretty cool, I like having more threads to follow, keeps me engaged. the beach stuff was just plot 1, which the movie tells us takes place "one week." ....what? so like.. one week into a fight, I guess. plot 2 is boat stuff, taking place "one day," except when it.. skips forward in time, which I did not realize until the boat stuff was literally caught up to the beach stuff, because IT'S A FUCKING BOAT ON OPEN WATER, AND WE NEVER SEE IT AT NIGHT, IT'S ONLY EVER FUCKING DAY, I assumed it was always *the same day!* but at least the three characters *here* are very distinct from each other. they are on a civilian boat, this dingy little private yacht or whatever, that's on the way to Dunkirk to help evacuate. or. honestly when I was watching, all I knew was they were gonna deliver some life jackets. there's a young man who looks very similar to the Beach Protagonist, but he's not because the eyes are slightly different, and he dies off-screen after getting injured very quickly in a series of events that really could have been better explained (involving rescuing an Allied soldier only to LOCK HIM UP and NOT LET HIM OUT EVEN WHEN TOLD TO). the other two make it to Dunkirk and successfully evacuate a bunch of soldiers.

then there's plot 3, subtitled "one hour" even though I *highly doubt* the timing of that. three spitfires, planes up in the sky! above the water, and only ever at daytime, so similar problem with gauging passage of time. except we have a big clue this time-- one of the planes' fuel gauge is broken! at "one hour" he has about 50 gallons of fuel left, and periodically we cut back and it seems like fuel is dropping steadily, 5 gallons every..... hour, maybe? but he manages to not run out of fuel until his storyline catches up with the Beach, a fucking week later. anyway, most of this plot is just the other two planes getting shot down (one of those pilots gets rescued by the Boat protagonists!), and then at the end of the movie the guy without fuel manages to save the day, shooting down more planes above the beach even while he's cruising without a running engine. it's a great moment. I love that guy.

so then the bulk of the actual plot is Beach Guy, and his buddy who.. literally looks identical to him. one of the two turns out to be French, and I *cannot* remember which of the two that was. that whole scene was incredible, it felt like the movie acknowledging its own problem, as the whole point was all these other soldiers being like "WAIT THAT GUY, the protagonist, HASN'T SAID A SINGLE WORD, AND THE ENEMY HAS SOMEHOW FOUND OUR HIDING SPOT, HOW DO WE KNOW THAT QUIET GUY ISN'T ACTUALLY GERMAN, A SPY???" and they point guns at him and TWO FUCKING MINUTES OF THIS goes by before protagonist opens his fucking mouth and says "I'm French!" my guy, you *need* to *speak!* this fucking MOVIE needs to fucking speak!!! that scene was the one, the first moment, possibly the only moment in the whole film, where the word "German" is ever said!!! which just made me even more aware of this movie's aversion to, or even *fear of*, communicating any fucking REASON or MEANS OF THE VIEWER BEING ABLE TO DISTINGUISH anything at all.

this wasn't a fucking world war 2 movie! this was just a fucking war movie! as said before, this was Cloverfield!! context is entirely absent, you'd have to go looking on the internet to read up on all the lore. and we never see the antagonist, we just follow the Exciting Suspenseful Will-He-Make-It Action of protagonists, like, existing in the vicinity of explosions, then swimming in the sea, and listening to nearby soldiers say how scared they are or how not-scared they are.

and I *do* think this would have made for a brilliant format for a WW1 movie! that war is traditionally seen as, y'know, *horrific*, soldiers dying to gases and new machines, the *viscerality* of it all! WW2 *needs* the context! we did finally get a *tiny* bit of context at the end of Dunkirk, we got the Churchill speech, and, dammit, that did make all this a little more impactful, that emphasized how all this visceral panic amounted to *one losing battle* and they were gonna need to be committed to potentially a lot more of that. I think we needed even an *excerpt* from that speech given to us *at the beginning* of the movie. even just as text on a black screen.

(hell! this movie *literally started with* text on a black screen! and all it fucking told me was "ooh boy, these French and English soldiers, they're gonna need a *miracle* to get out of this mess!" ......fucking thanks???? literally redundant, literally something the cinematography was going to communicate. the movie needed some text telling us something the cinematography alone *doesn't* communicate!!! aaaargh!!!)

am I making sense here???

god at least it was only 106 minutes! that's like.. the shortest Nolan movie ever. that's a damn surprise to me. maybe this movie *should have* been three hours, just to put in some damn dialogue.

Dunkirk was *all* visceral, no way *in* for people who don't know what's going on. and then it was *hard to distinguish characters or even Times, Whens, from each other*, so even that fucking viscerality stumbled and lost its grip on my brain.

what a fucking *mess*.

will probably get better if I watch it more. especially now that I went and looked up the context *myself*. but dammit, even if this first impression disappears entirely and I end up loving the movie later, I think the shit I'm talking about has some *value*. it has... well, context.

[nakitengoku]

oc interview: 💙Vex💙

Shoutout to @mail-me-a-snail for tagging me in this post and also egging me along with getting into Cyberpunk 2077 and subsequently creating Vex 💫

(I don't have a single good photo of Vex so you instead get the Compilation of sillies I've drawn, many featuring Snail's Vance!)

💙 Name?

"Name's Vex, but call me anything you like."

💙 Nickname?

"Some people used to call me V, but that was a while ago."

He used to be called Ghost when he was younger, being able to slip into the background unnoticed at any moment, but he later grew out of that. When he eventually adopted the name V, it was less of a nickname and more of a stage name. It's mostly forgotten now, but some hardcore fans will still recognize and call him V.

💙 Gender?

"Prettyboy 💖"

💙 Star sign?

"Oh, I used to be really into these! If I remember right, My sun and moon are both Libra. Missy could probably tell you more about what that means though."

I decided to take one out of Max's book and use the first time i drew him as his birthday, which if we're going by the absolute first concept, was September 26, 2022. He's changed a Lot since then. Also, reading up on libras with Vex in mind is just 💥

💙 Height?

".....5'8."

He's actually 5'7 and a half.

💙 Orientation?

"Anyone able and willing. Why, you interested?"

If he cared enough about labels, it'd probably be pansexual. But by the end of the day, he doesn't really care what he gets called. As long as he gets what he wants out of it, anything's fine.

💙 Nationality/Ethnicity?

"White."

💙Favorite Fruit?

"Oh man, okay so I've only had it once at an after party forever ago, but it was this round, redish purple thing. When I bit into it, it was a little tart at first, but the inside was such a sweet taste that I was in heaven. By the time I finished and threw the pit away, there were no more left and I nearly cried. I haven't seen it since and I can't remember the name but man. Best organic thing I've ever tasted."

If you give this man a plum, he'd kill someone for you. Which isn't a lot given that that's his job, but still. He'd do it without expecting to be paid in money.

💙 Favorite season?

"Fall, for sure. While I was in Atlanta, they had these parks with trees that would change their colours to these gorgeous shades of reds and oranges. God, kinda makes me wish I could grow something like that here."

I don't actually know the plant life in Nevada or how much the temperature differentiates between the seasons in Night City, but I imagine that what shrubbery they do have there have leaves that are always green or simply non-existent. Vex saw a plant change colour outside of blooming and immediately fell in love with it.

💙 Favorite flower?

"Officially, Lilacs. But between you and me, I'm very partial to forget-me-nots."

He used to be gifted Lilacs all the time during his first career by Jonathan, his producer, but Vex always found himself enjoying the little forget-me-nots that acted as accent flowers than the actual lilacs themselves.

💙 Coffee, tea or Hot chocolate?

"Hot chocolate. Although, I will drink coffee in a pinch."

This man has the biggest sweet tooth. The amount of sugar he puts in his coffee before he chugs it down for the caffeine should be illegal. [I cannot judge bc I am the same way <3]

💙 Average hours of sleep?

'We talking Mean, Median or Mode?"

It varies so much that the actual average ends up being about 6, but um. Do not be fooled into thinking he's actually sleeping 6 hours every night. Think more along the lines of several all-nighters followed by crashing super hard for a day or two.

💙 Dog or cat person?

"Oh, a cat person. I'm just not home enough for a dog."

💙 Dream trip?

"I saw a pamplet once of Crater Lake in Oregon. It was something about the ten deadliest lakes in the world or something, but I'm just into how Blue it is. If I could, I'd visit the rest of those lakes too, but. Eh, I doubt it."

💙 Favorite Fictional Character?

"Hmm, it's a toss up between a side from this really long and old comic from the 2010's and the protagonist from a just as long manga from the 2000's. I think their names were Kanya and Ruffy? It's been 15 years though so don't quote me on that."

It's Kanaya from homestuck and Luffy from One Piece. He likes Kanaya because of her fashion sense and her dealing with the responsibility of her entire species on her shoulders. And he likes Luffy for his optimism and stubbornness. At one point, he imagined finding friends like Luffy did, being surrounded by so much devotion. The reasoning has since faded and he just barely remembers much about them now.

💙 Number of Blankets you sleep with?

"Eight. I like the weight and warmth."

His AC bill is through the fucking roof but he refuses to take a single blanket off, instead insisting on just making the rest of the room freezing. Giving him a weighted blanket wouldn't fix it, but he'd probably go down to five instead of eight.

💙 Random fact?

"When i was really little, my mom used to take me to a church. Don't think it exists any more, but I remember the Stain glass windows, how the light shone through and fell onto her. In normal lighting, I remember her looking pale a sickly, but once a week, with a statue of a half-god watching over us, my mother glowed. She was gorgeous.

"Anyway, I stopped going after she died. For a while it was because I never remembered what day it was, but later it was because I realized I only ever went to see my mom glow."

~~

Thank you for tagging me, Max! This was much longer than what i thought when i was getting into it but I'm still glad I did it.

I can't think of anyone specific who'd want to do this, so if you see this and want to give it a try, please do and tag me! I'd love to see your little blorbos :)

[justanothermentalhealthblog]

Starting over

So, very recently me and my ex-partner split up. Which honestly sucks. We'd been together for 5 and a half years and some of the fondest memories I have are shared with her. We'd started to build a life together and currently are renting together (More on that situation after). It wasn't a complete shock to me that our relationship was struggling, and the signs had been staring me in the face for a while. However I was blissfully ignorant about how bad the situation was right up to the point where 'the conversation' happened.

Everyone has a conversation like this at some point in their lives. You go to sit down very unaware of the bombshell that's about to be dropped on you. ''when the tenancy is finished, I'm moving out'' - Now the tenancy doesn't end for another 7 and a half months, but I instantly read between the lines, we were done.

The panic instantly set in, and a number of questions flooded into my extremely confused and now very active head while we continued to talk;

Does this mean were ACTUALLY breaking up?

Where am I going to live once the tenancy is up?

How could I have not seen this and prepared myself?

What did I do wrong?

At this point I just go into autopilot, nodding my head and agreeing with what she's saying...

You see my ex-partner has had a rough year of it, she's lost close family members, had others fall very ill, and the strain on her has been immense to just carry on and continue with her life. It's taken a toll on me as well, dealing with the days where nothing is going right, and everything seems like it's going against us. I think that for myself, I've tried to do everything I could to support and be there when she was most vulnerable, but in that moment, I felt like I wasn't enough for her. And I probably wasn't, yes I was assured that it wasn't my fault and it was her perspective that had changed, but I was left with the feeling that I had done something horribly wrong, and this was my fault.

I think it's human nature for us to react like this after a breakup, thinking about what I could have done better, if there was a decision that I could have changed, or if I could have just been the person that they needed, when they needed. I felt like this year had been spent grieving, and we couldn't handle any more loss between. I couldn't have been more wrong.

Not only do we now have to deal with the loss of a partner, along with all the other horrendous things that have happened, we now have to live together while dealing with it. We have just about 7 months left on our tenancy agreement, one we both aren't financially able to just end and move on. So while going through this breakup, we have to live in the same space and co-exist, while hurting, and trying to move on.

We both still want to be in each others lives, but this is a bit full-on by both of our definitions. This is probably going to be the hardest 7 months of my life (so far). Fortunately we have a 2 bedroom flat so we have our own space, but it doesn't make it that much easier.

For the first few days, I was a mess... I rarely cry, but the first 2-3 days, I was in tears over the smallest things. Seeing pictures of us together on the wall, out on our adventures, or just goofing around. Finding little trinkets we'd gifted to each other and remembering how we'd got them, boy this is going to be hard. I rarely slept or ate, and the people i worked with had caught on that I wasn't okay. I don't think I've ever received so many hugs at work before. They knew about the situation at home, and I honestly couldn't have got through it without them, I love you all <3

I've got better since then, going on walks and exercising, eating full meals and re-connecting with old friends. It's going to be a rough journey still but I'm going to share it on here, so hopefully, anyone going through something similar will know that it's going to be okay, because it will.

[eclaire-went-bam]

can we talk more about how npd can really crush your interests

like how is it, whenever i find someone else who likes what i like, i automatically feel attacked or defensive until i can wager in some way i'm more familiar with the subject than them?

unless i myself have instilled that interest in someone, but even then, if they end up liking it more than me, i feel equally defensive.

if someone says i like something bcs of them, i still get defensive.

if i have a talent due to something i have passion in, it is imperative to be better at it than everyone i know, to find the flaws in other people's skills (which can be useful to teach yourself but not so much when you're finding ways to believe you're better). to never spend time leisurely enjoying my talent, but to need to CONSTANTLY top my last record. nothing less is unacceptable. if someone's better than me, then Clearly i must quit growing this talent

if i have a hobby that people look up to me for, i easily turn something i once enjoyed into a steadily raising standard and if i can't constantly be better, i may as well give up before i lose ly dignity

i can hardly pick up new hobbies, because if i'm not good at something immediately, i risk humiliation. i can't be new at anything, because if i'm not perfect immediately, i feel like i'd rather die

if i enjoy or am good at something and nobody's recognising it, then what's the point?

it makes me feel like such a child.

i used to really like reading and writing. i was hyperlexic. early in elementary school, i got into the highest lexile bracket & read everything in the library. i was constantly reading things at home. between the ages of 11 & 12, my state reading scores surpassed about 98% of students my age, i had the reading score of someone in college. i was told i was my english teachers best writer & critical thinker (& i would get upset if i was one lf the best, not the best. there's no point in settling for next best). my creative writing teacher had told the principal about my writing. meanwhile i also liked maths, i easily finished all my work before everyone else without the use of a calculator, but nobody recognised me for it. i got in trouble for getting 0 points on homework i did, but forgot to have a parent sign. i didn't get any recognition for speedy work in comparison to my amab peers. because of that, i decided to not even try. i would much rather fail my classes than be seen as average or not quite good enough. this same attitude persisted throughout highschool. although i was praised for being one of the best writers, i got so tired. i stopped reading, i stopped writing. because somebody might be better than i am. my little sister was good at reading through elementary and middle. she wasn't as good as i was, but she grew up with a much healthier family than i had & she got regularly praised for this when i only had been by my school. i didn't ever try to exert how good i was at english i was too over herw i supported her, but it also made me feel resentful & i just stopped trying to enjoy reading & writing because what was the point anymore? i stopped being known as the person who always asked questions, because i'd met other people that were like that too. i've nearly quit art so lany times. i can't even play a noncompetitive game without competition, because if i'm not constantly getting better at something, if i falter once, it could be grounds for a crash. if i get anything below a 95%, if someone recieves a score higher than me on something i genuinely tried on?

it's much safer to not try & pretend you don't actually care about it, because at least then it's an issue of effort, not what i am and am not capable of doing

yadda yadda yadda having npd fucking SUCKS sometimes but also i'm not gonna pretend my home life & school didn't enable this

[b-a-pigeon]

The thing about Kindle Vella is that it is a dumpster fire, but not even for the reasons people think! (Realized this post is extremely long and about a topic few people care about so I'm dropping it under a read more now sorry)

There are some weird rumors going around (which is fair imo since the ToS is like notoriously vague & untransparent) but nothing as funny as the truth: it was an absolute fuck-up of a money pit on Amazon's part that totally failed to retain authors even after throwing random quantities of cash at (some of) us, and everyone just took the money and ran.

To clarify a couple of rumors I've seen: no, nobody signed a contract guaranteeing Amazon indefinite weekly updates!!! (Lol.) There are also, like, some pretty arbitrary rules about availability, but nothing close to KU's draconian exclusivity policies; my story was serialized concurrently on multiple platforms & has since been published wide in the same places as usual while still available on Vella.

What happened, I think, is that Amazon began offering these mysteriously generous bonuses* (calculated through some arcane and ever-shifting metric that nobody has ever been able to figure out) to attract authors. The problem is that Vella sucks to use for readers, too. It's in beta with almost no visible improvements in two years; it looks like shit, especially on desktop; there was no quality control for a while, so the charts were dominated by scammers posting AI-translated gibberish; there were all these weird glitches that made entire chapters of different stories randomly swap; it's actually more expensive than indie e-books in most cases, etc.

So there were not enough readers to sustain the bonus pool, which used to increase every month but has stagnated at $1mil for several months. Everyone got pissed about the drastic drop in income (mine dipped almost 50% between months despite performing better by all metrics) and left; now this website, which nobody uses, is a graveyard for unfinished stories. Even if they did promote it for once, so much of the stuff there is abandoned! I truly doubt it is long for this world unless they massively overhaul it, but it's clearly not a priority, so...

Anyway I find all of this very funny & think it's a bummer that people don't know about it & instead believe that a bunch of people voluntarily signed up to be permanent content generators for Amazon. Like, no... they were obviously trying to create a system of financial dependency to coerce authors into sticking around a la KU, but made such a bad website that they couldn't even afford that :)

*For reference, just to show how absurd the bonus system used to be: my first year on Vella, I made $100 in royalties (meaning people spent around $200 to read it in total), which is nothing. Only 150 people ever paid to read my work by reading past the sample chapters; of these, only 35 finished the first story arc. I made $4000 in bonuses that first year and stayed on the bestseller-equivalent list (typically bouncing around the top 50-150) basically the entire time. I still don't understand how or why & it still didn't stop me from jumping ship the moment my bonus decreased, but yeah... I made like $30 for each individual person who paid any amount of money to read my story. Incomprehensible.

[seeingteacupsindragons]

What are some of the first pieces of fiction you remember being exposed to, and how did they effect/still effect you?

This is such a hard thing to say, because of course kids were exposed to fiction that was probably at least sort of formative before they remember much of anything. I was reading fairly independently before I have too many memories, so who even knows, at that point!

Some big early pieces that I know were very formative for me include:

Star Wars. It is difficult to explain my family's Thing with Star Wars, but since I can remember my family did this "marathon all the SW movies (that were out at the time) on NYE" tradition until we started moving out, honestly. I have most of the first six movies thusly memorized.

Dungeons and Dragons. While this is not a specific narrative, it is an entire system and design for certain kinds of fiction, and I have been playing since I was probably about five when my father first taught me third edition because 3.5 and Pathfinder weren't even out yet.

I know my parents viciously hated Bananas in Pyjamas because us kids loved it. I don't actually remember watching it. I will possibly always remember their pyjamas.

Do you have any idea what Zenon: Girl of 21st Century is? It was a short kid's series when I was very young. My parents signed up for this Scholastic book box service thing that delivered books every month or couple months that would get compiled into the pile of books that none of us kids properly owned. We got a few of those in the box, alongside a lot of the other long-running Scholastic kid's book series of the time (Droon, The Zack Files, Magic Treehouse, etc....I've never properly read any of those series because we only got them in the box and never kept up with them). Zenon had an impact for some reason I cannot explain, as did a fair number of those other books.

The Black Cauldron. I was too young for this movie; my older brother was not. It's scary. Thank you.

Relatedly, Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator. I was six. It was the first Dahl book I tried to read (yes it's a sequel shhh). I'd never even seen the movies. There are aliens that eat people. My father had to remove the book from my bedroom so I could sleep. I have to this day never finished the book and never intend to. I don't like being scared, okay? I still won't do horror.

Definitely a lot of Disney movies. My parents are into Disney movies. I do remember at one point thinking the Lust Song in The Hunchback of Notre Dame was a Satanic demon summoning. Ah, kids.

Dragon Ball Z. Definitely some other stuff that was on Toonami at the time, but I think this was probably my first anime. I think I was probably in kindergarten or something when I first saw it.

I read the first The Boxcar Children book when I was 6 for second grade after being dumped in the most advanced reading group alone with the teacher. That's what she picked for me to read. There's still something in my that thinks about a group of people somehow surviving together all on their lone in a damn wood with a private space somehow.

I was about 8 when I fell in love with YuYuHakusho. Far from my first media in any respects, but it hit hard and it was the first manga I ever owned!

[lemyondre]

Happy New Years Guys!!

I have so many thoughts for 2024,

like how the gays dominated last year because: we got Luberto canon

Stobonik slightly canon [HE MADE AN ANNOUNCEMENT GUYS]

Deadpool and Woolverine Honda Odessy

Glinda and Elphaba as they are fr. [To be honest, the only piece of Wizard of Oz material I have ever consumed was that stupid animated sequel with Megan Hitly, Hugh Grant and Martin Short] so now that I've seen Wicked, I'm gonna read the books, watch The Wiz and the original Wizard of Oz [I've already seen wicked!]

Representation the whole year just has me holding my heart fr

We got Megatron and Optimus Prime [they were a metaphor for something which is 100% not family.]

I also got Ultraman tugging at my heartstrings

3 robot movies that made me sad for real

I actually enjoyed Spellbound! [Well the soundtrack]

I remember Bluey - The Sign like it was yesterday, because I was bawling my eyes out.

ARCANE. ARCANE. ARCANE. ARCANE.

Starting my year with Squid Game season 1 and ending with season 2 was beautiful. [My spirit animal is Thanos guys]

But we can learn from a few things like

Maybe giving DreamWorks air to breathe because when we don't ask them to do stuff they cook. [Looking at you Megamind 2] I'm so excited for Dog Man and Bad Guys 2!!

But we should also accept that Kung Fu Panda ended at 3 and only had 2 series called Legends of Awesomeness and PAWS of Destiny. I don't know what The Dragon Knight is or what Kung Fu Panda 4 is.

And that not all movies are the best and they have their flaws. [*cough* inside out 2]

And SOME movies should've been nominated for best animated picture MOANA 2. YOU LET MY POOR BOY TRANSFORMERS ONE GET LEFT IN THE WIND.

And now we all know what Disney is like [I've always speculated] We can all tell that Disney isn't giving any room for Pixar or Marvel to do their thing because after trying to watch Mufasa [I couldn't finish the movie guys, I pirated it and I still couldn't finish]

I've made my one point clear. LIN MANUEL MIRANDA IS A AMAZING SONG WRITER!!!! People who complained about him in The Little Mermaid were the ones who needed him in Moana 2! Because I think Encanto would've been a mediocre movie without his creative songwriting, and people don't even know, but they're probably singing Moana's soundtrack without realizing it's him!

And they all rectified their statements AFTER WISH. [Can't believe that failed hope came out 2 years ago]

We never EVER let pop artists write soundtrack.

Thank you for coming to my Ted talk, you can add any highlights of your year!!