#I wish it was written a little better so I like the version I rewrote in my brain too lol

[alizibtheterrible]

Inside my heart is breaking, my makeup may be flaking

but my smile still stays on

wanted to draw this man for a while now. This song popped up on my recommended and all my brain cells started working overtime. Anyways Happy Thanksgiving!

[grandtheftaristotle]

Hey so I was inspired by @likeadevils's brilliant album reworkings to do one of my own cause I LOVE finding new ways to procrastinate on homework

I decided to do Speak Now cause it's one of my favourite Taylor albums and while I think the current order is great, it was a fun challenge to try and come up with something else. So here's what I have!

So first of all, I think I’m gonna call this rework The Story of Us. Not only is Speak Now the song not on this version, but The Story of Us fits these vibes better Each song is its own contained story that forms an overall narrative, kinda like folklore.

Timeless: It feels so much like a closing track that it gives off a nice ‘end at the beginning’ vibe. Also parallels nicely with the closing track.

Sparks Fly: I like the idea of the earliest written song on the record being track 2. Although she rewrote it to be less naive, I do like how Foolish One could be its answer. Also it leads into…

The Story of Us: ‘How we met and the sparks flew instantly’. Too obvious? Nahhhh. I like that it foreshadows the heartbreak of the later album but frames it in an upbeat way so as not to let us down too much. Plus the awkward party element leads us nicely into the next track.

Enchanted: Is it the same party? A later party? Not sure, but it continues the vibes of the last song, while also offering one last little piece of fairytale whimsy and romance before the latter half rips our hearts out.

Mean: As you can see, I am not adhering to the track 5 rule lol. But this is a set up for Castles Crumbling and Innocent, with the talk of fame and the different ways of responding to criticism.

When Emma Falls In Love: This song kinda makes me insane when I think about the context in which Taylor wrote it. She was dealing with everything surrounding JM when she wrote the line ‘she won’t lose herself in love the way that I did’. The last line (‘between me and you, sometimes I wish I was her’) is a GREAT set up for the next half of the album; it establishes everything Taylor didn’t do in these relationships and the person she wishes she had been. Part of me wants to do another rearrangement with this as the opening track, cause again, that last line.

Back to December: We have an excellent lead in with Emma; ‘I wish I was her’ and then a song about how badly she screwed up a relationship. Plus, the rest of the album is like an explanation of why she screwed it up. We’re slowly zooming in…

Last Kiss: Almost a flipped perspective of Back to December? I’m a little shaky on this placement, I almost feel like this song and the next could switch places, but idk how I feel about Last Kiss and Dear John back to back. Therefore, the next song is…

Ours: Getting into another relationship after heartbreak, one that others don’t approve of but that makes her happy. It’s a love song, but an understated one, not as bombastic as Sparks Fly or as sweepingly romantic as Enchanted. Cute, but careful.

Dear John: THE AFTERMATH. Christ. The parallel of Emma and the result of Ours and the events that led to Back to December. The fireworks line is a slight parallel to Sparks Fly and The Story of Us as well. It’s a moment of triumph amidst the heartbreak. ‘I lost you, but I’m still shining for the crowd. Oh wait…’

Castles Crumbling: AND NOW SHE’S LOSING THE CROWD. The formal demolition of her fairytale outlook and the parallel to Mean. She’s living in the big old city, but the big old city’s getting tired of her. It also looks ahead to the last track, where she hopes to be remembered regardless.

Haunted: I just like that we have Enchanted on the first half and Haunted on the flip side. She’s no longer enchanted by a stranger, she’s haunted by someone she thought she knew well. I also like how the word haunted works with Castles lol.

Innocent: Even on the OG record, I feel like this should’ve gone after Haunted if just for the ‘you and I walk a fragile line’ ‘lost your balance on a tightrope’ of it all. On some level I get why she didn’t cause it would’ve been this song and then Last Kiss, which, ouch. But anyway, I know this is about Kanye but FUCK that guy so now within the narrative it’s her talking to herself (just ignore the 32 part). Even after everything she’s been through she’s still an innocent, and it’s not too late to regain her balance.

Foolish One: Again, kinda shaky on this placement, I feel like it should be earlier in the second half. But as is, it’s a parallel to Sparks Fly where she’s cautiously optimistic about a guy; that song was sung by the voice in her head she talks about here. It’s also a follow up to Innocent; you may be innocent, but it doesn’t mean you have to be foolish. PLUS it’s a little bit of a hope spot after all the heartbreak (‘the day is gonna come for your confessions of love / he just wasn’t the one’). As an aside, I am fully convinced she added that line for the rerecord. She sings the rest of the song in a higher register matching her voice in 2010, but for that line she lowers her voice closer to her current register, making it seem like it’s her future self talking. Plus she recorded that when she was still with Joe; something something ‘this ain’t our fairytale’.

Long Live: Our moment of triumph!! After Castles Crumbling, this is where she says ‘hey, even if people run me off, we’ll still be remembered’. Parallels our opener both in title (Timeless / Long Live) and in subject matter; she and the guy weren’t timeless, but the legacy of her and her band will live forever. Edit: ALSO. Can’t believe this didn’t occur to me before. But starting off the album with the stories of other people that have become folklore (haha) of sorts and the ending the album with the hope that one day Taylor and her band will become similar folklore. Yes PLEASE. “These precious things that time forgot” vs “one day we will be remembered”.

BONUS TRACKS

Better Than Revenge: Really my only justification for this is that I couldn’t fit it on the main album but if she hadn’t released it in 2010 we NEVER would’ve gotten it. Plus it being a bonus track gives off the vibe of ‘oh you thought you were off the hook??? You thought I wasn’t gonna write about you??? Lmao fuck you’.

If This Was A Movie: Similar justification for this as with Better Than Revenge; since she kinda rebranded it as a Fearless song with the rerecord, if she didn’t put it out in 2010 we may not have gotten it at all (she wrote it in 2009 so I don’t think it could’ve been a Fearless vault track either). That said, it fits the ‘story’ themes of the album so I think it works. Plus I like how it interacts with BTR; from pure unfiltered rage to ‘BUT I’D TAKE IT ALL BACK NOW’.

Mine: It KILLED me to leave this off the main album, it really did. Maybe one of my all time favourite songs of hers. Part of me wants to switch this and Timeless, but I also like the idea of having Mine as the last track just because of how it rounds out the album. The narrator is very disillusioned with love at the beginning, so it could easily be taking place after this string of heartbreak she experienced throughout the record. I also love how it ends with ‘hold on, make it last’; after being burned so many times, she finally starts to believe in love again and the notion that they could be forever. The way it interacts with Timeless, which was a portrait of very idyllic fairytale romances that last forever (love letters during a war, forbidden lovers eloping, two people growing old together), this song focuses on the more mundane parts of life that still make up a beautiful relationship. Also if we’re thinking about this as part of her album timeline, the next album she puts out is Red, so we go from ‘there’s a drawer of my things at your place’ to ‘you’ve still got [my scarf] in your drawer even now’. OW.

And as vault tracks we have Speak Now, Superman, I Can See You, Never Grow Up, Electric Touch, and Battle. Because I’m still a little offended we never got an official version of that song :/

[armed-saphire]

NOW ITS UR TURN WHO ARE YOUR MGS FAVS AND WHY!1!1?1!1?1!1?11!1! ٩( 'ω' )و

EHEHEEEE OK SO I'll say my fav from each game

Mgs1 is def Liquid he. He's so overdramatic it's really funny. He did so many backflips while explaining his tragic backstory 🥰 and then he just fucking died and turned into an arm which is the real tragedy (I have so many random HCs for him it's insane... I also rewrote his backstory a little...the recessive thing is so dumb)

Mgs2 I think it's a split between Raiden and Fortune. Raiden I really enjoyed playing as a character who is just... idk how to put it I just like that he's flawed and not some morally perfect charismatic guy. It feels like he's set up to be that way and then he whines about everything and is very dismissive at some points. It feels like he's a real person and not perfectly crafted to be the ultimate stereotypical good guy protagonist who can stay cool and collected in every situation. He has his moments where he lets emotion get the better of him and I like it a lot.

Fortune I have less to say about her but it doesn't mean I like her less. I think she's a really tragic character backstory wise but I also like how she sort of "plays into it" I guess? Ocelot points it out himself near the end of the game ("you couldn't get enough of the drama"). I thought the ending where she found out she could've died any time and she didn't have some magic ability was sad too and I lowkey wish she didn't die and was like redeemed somehow (imagine she comes back in mgs4 and has to go against Vamp or something that would've been so cool)..anyway I guess I didn't actually have less to say I like Fortune a lot blehhh😋

mgs3 AGH.. EVA ILY she is such a well written character and I love her so much I could write an essay on her if I wanted but I'll keep it more brief here. She's like a perfect subversion of the typical sexualized woman in video game thing...it's what she's doing as a spy for the mission and the best part is it doesn't even really work lol nice job snake. The game itself even adheres to whether Eva is in her Eva persona or her Tatyana one. It's....aghhhhghhh so great. (I have so many thoughts about her and Liquid btw)

Mgs4...difficult but probably Screaming Mantis. For real this time not a lot to say about her but I do like her a lot more since playing the game she went from my least fav B&B unit member to my fav one. She was really fun to watch in all her cutscenes and her boss fight was one of the best MGS boss fights I've ever done tbh. The callbacks and references to the first game were so good I won't lie I was giggling kicking my feet a lil bit. Screaming Mantis ily I have so many thoughts <333

Peace Walker ermmm Kaz and Paz equal I can't decide..also maybe Amanda. Yeah I like everyone a lot 😭 and Cécile....not Snake tho sorry lol. I haven't finished the game so I haven't gotten the full character arcs of everyone so it's hard to pinpoint exact explanations but you know I love Kaz forever and ever mwah mwah (I'm also a transfem Kaz truther and I'm RIGHT!!!). Amanda has a lot of really cool tapes explaining a lot of...not really exposition but it gives a lot of great context to her character. And her voice acting especially in cutscenes is some of the best voice acting I've seen in an mgs game so it adds a lot. Paz I need to learn more about her. I know basic plot points but not the inbetween stuff that really lets you get to know her. I do feel really sad for her though, Kojima decided he wanted shock value instead of a female character having a nice ending 🤷‍♀️ Sucks.

Mgsv QUIET!!!! QUIET ILY!!! she's soooooo OUGH. I'm glad a lot of the fandom has fixed her from her extremely flawed portrayal in the game because it shows what really could've been and I think I latch more onto that than the version of her in the game just a little. The foundation they were working with was still really good. The way they show her and venom building such a strong bond despite never having a single conversation is really well done and I like it a lot. Quiet ily my favourite creaturething killgirl my favourite ear biter offer...

[thebreakfastgenie]

something deleted for mash hamlet hawkeye fic and/or the one around best of enemies that youve pinned (i adored both of them 10/10 very good!!)

Thank you so much!! I'm so glad you liked them!

✄: something i deleted before the final draft

From the Hamlet fic (the play's the thing), nothing really got deleted! I wrote it spontaneously and used it as kind of a writing exercise and then I added to it later to flesh it out and rephrased a few things, but nothing really got cut. The only thing that did was a line after this:

He smiles back at her, but he doesn’t answer. He doesn’t know how to explain that it isn’t stage fright.

spending a little more time on stage fright:

Stage fright is a matter of anatomy, and he knows his inside and out. He checks himself for the symptoms: increased heart rate, dry mouth, sweaty palms.

This was a suggestion that came up in conversation with my kind editor, @hamiltonsteele. I liked how the line came out, with the part about how well he knows his anatomy referring back to how much time he spends in the anatomy lab and reminding us that he's pre-med and very good at it, and I just liked the structure and how it sounded, but ultimately I followed my original instinct to leave it at "it isn't stage fright." I didn't want to over-explain what was going on, especially when Hawkeye isn't quite sure. Still, I liked to enough to save the line when I cut it from the final fic!

I don't think I cut anything major from the Best of Enemies fic (safe travels) either. I worked on that one for a long time, with a long period of being stuck in the middle, so I might be forgetting something. I did a lot of rewriting of that climactic heart-to-heart between BJ and Hawkeye, and in one version, quite close to the end, Hawkeye was avoiding looking BJ in the eye because he knew if he did he'd break and tell him what happened, and BJ caught him off-guard by saying his name sort of softly, so Hawkeye automatically looked up and caught BJ's eye and that's when he relented.

I think it would work in a visual medium, but written down like that, at least with my prose, it was just too much. I like the tone I ended up with in the final draft where it's more "fine if you want to know so bad I'll tell you but just remember this was your idea," while at the same time Hawkeye does desperately want to open up to him (that part isn't explicitly stated but I think is in keeping with his character). Unfortunately, I didn't save this version when I rewrote it; I only do that if I'm happy with a line but think it's better for the overall piece to remove/rewrite it; I keep them for me and to potentially cannibalize for a different piece someday and this was cut because it wasn't working. There are just only so many times you can use the phrase "look him in the eye." Bleurgh.

It was something like:

BJ catches him off-guard. He turns at the sound of his name and meets his eye.

It was not exactly that; it was slightly--but not much--better writing. I'm glad I cut it, but I kinda wish I'd saved it just because it's bugging me now.

Sometimes I do have big deleted scenes but not so much for these fics! Thanks for the ask, it was really fun!!!

Edit: apparently the "BJ catches him off-guard" part, which was the one part I liked, actually did make it into the final draft! I forgot because this fic is recent enough that I can't really read it yet.

[i-dont-want-your-hysteria]

The Leppard Albums: A Summary

(inspired by Every Beatles Album)

Happy Saturday night everyone

The Def Leppard EP

Joe is 19 and just wants to ride a motorcycle okay

Groupie fantasy

Zeppelin lyrics meet Rush with an underappreciated bass line

On Though the Night

IT'S!!! ROCK!!! N ROLL!!! BABEY!!!

Joe is 20 and just really doesn't wanna work in a factory anymore okay

pls D; girl D; stop D; hiding D; your D; pain!!

another... groupie fantasy... I think? ...???

Leppard in Space

Joe is 20 and just wants to write something edgy okay leave him alone

STEVE 👏👏👏 FUCKING 👏👏👏 CLARK!!!! 👏👏🔥👏🔥👏���👌

the original groupie fantasy but it's been re-recorded

girl?? make up?? your mind???

let's be mysteriously edgy ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)

Zeppelin lyrics meets Rush but it's been re-recorded (but don't worry they still kept the underappreciated bass line)

High N Dry

everyone in this band is a slutty bottom and this is the song that proves it

we have Mutt Lange now and this is the song that proves it

drONK TIEM

betcha didn't think we could write a ballad, did ya ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)

STÊVË!!!!! 👏👏👏👏 FÜCKÎÑ!!!!!! 👏👏👏👏👏 C L Ã R K!!!!!!!!!!!!! 🔥🔥🔥🔥👏👌👌🤙👏👌🔥👌🎉🎉

underappreciated and that's all there is to it

noooo don't go you're too mysterious and sexy hahhaha

oh god Dx oh god no Dx we don't sound like this anymore we swear Dx

betcha thought we stopped writing Beowulf-esque pop songs didn't ya ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)

🚫🚫⛔👎🚫🙅‍♂️👎🚫⛔🙅‍♂️⛔ *Joe tearing his throat up for 2 solid minutes*

Pyromania

IT'S ROCK!!!!!! N ROLL!!!! BABEY!!!!!!!1!!!!1!!1!! AGAIN!!!!! 😆😆😆

the Classic Rock Fandom™ in a nutshell 😓

INTRODUCING PHIL 👌👌👌 FUCKING👏👏 COLLEN 🔥🔥🔥

betcha thought we abandoned the idea of doing a ballad didn't ya ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)

Joe's back at it again with the edgy songs and is getting a lot better at it too

( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°) ∆ ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)

Gunter 🙃 Glieben 🙃 Glauchen 🙃 Globen

the most underappreciated song on this whole entire fucking list sorry I don't make the rules

Alright, WHO in this band wants to be in a porno >:C

Joe's back at it yet again with the edgy songs but it's even BETTER this time

Hysteria

Girls Girls Girls ALL WOMEN ARE QUEENS ANAKIN

🎸we!!! fucking!!! love!!!! glam rock!!!!!! and african drum rhythms!!!!!!!!!🥁

we're not furries we swear we're just kinky D: also fuck you DJs here's some false endings

we haven't made a ballad that HURTS yet so here we go (with an underappreciated bass line)

the song that invented "( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)" (AKA when you cram for a test the minute before and end up getting 100%)

( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)😏( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)😏( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)

S T E V E 😭👏👏 F U C K I N 😭😭😭 C L A R K 👏👏👏😭👏😭

nooo don't shoot me you're too kinky hahaha

a song about rioting and being #punk, but the only crime the man singing it has ever committed was getting a speeding ticket when he was 19/20

oh. oh shit. oh god. holy shi- I can't believe... ...we just accidentally made the most perfect song to ever exist :o like seriously- people are achieving nirvana as we speak I'm not joking I think we went too far with the perfection this time guys

THIS SONG IS ABOUT S E X AND WE AIN'T BEING SHY ABOUT IT EITHER LET'S FUCKIN GO BABE-

Don't 👏 give 👏 me 👏 love 👏

Adrenalize

gkKLglldlflhlADKSLALLFLSS 😆😆😆

I fucking love my wife uWu

fkKMglgllsLLslgflephpGLDLPT 😆(͠≖ ͜ʖ͠≖)😆

We're just gonna get extremely romantic and passionate for 4 minutes and 3 seconds if that's alright with you (͠≖ ͜ʖ͠≖)

this album was the most painful thing any of us have ever had to do, so here's the most serious song we've ever done to date. Steve ✊ Fucking ✊ Clark ✊ -n-

now that our mental breakdown is over, we're gonna get extremely passionate and romantic again but for a lil longer this time aiight 🤙

one of us has a protection/ownership kink but we're not gonna tell you who

you know what this album needs? a little bit more pain

we're layin down the line (and by that we mean we want sex)

we're layin down the line pt.2 (we still want sex btw)

Retro Active

Beowulf songs are back babey 🤙

I'll say that again if I have to^

we!!! still!!! fucking!!! love!!!! glam rock!!!!! we even covered something to prove it!!!!!!

Joe has now officially mastered ballads

I fucking love my wife part 2: she's a badass top

While Joe was off mastering ballads, Phil studied the blade

We covered something else bc again!!! we fucking!!! love!!! glam!!!

We rewrote Joe's motorcycle song bc we now realize it was cringe af (and it was an excuse for Joe to talk to Ian Hunter so that made him happy)

Joe has now officially mastered edgy/serious songs

it's a total bop but oh god. No. Please. No. Oh God. No. Don't. Please. No. Pls. No. Oh god. Don't.

This should've been on Adrenalize and you can Fight Me On That

Phil studies the blade (electric version)

Joe masters ballads (electric version)

Vault (there's only one new song on here so that's all I'm doing)

babe nooooo D';

Slang

Epic edgelords part 1

Epic edgelords part 2: Phil wrote it this time

everyone in this band is a slutty bottom and this is the song that proves it Volume 2: Electric Bugaloo

soft breakdown :'c

hOT DOGGITY DAMN JOE'S VOICE HOLY HELL TAKE ME N- *clears throat* I mean introducing Vivian Campbell :3 aND THERE'S A BASS SOLO MMMM 🤤🤤👌 THIS SONG IS JUST SEXY FUCKIN LIFT ME UP AND-

Phil's marriage isn't going too well

in fact, no one's marriages are going too well

severely underrated bop

We're still not over Steve's death and we never will be :c

Joe makes edgy ballads his bitch yet again 👏👏

severely underrated banger 🔥🔥🔥

Euphoria

wE STILL MAKE FAST BOPS IN CASE YOU FORGOT 🤘🤘🤘🤘🤘🤘🤘

Holy shit I didn't know Joe could hit a note that high

The 90s sucked for us but we'rE STILL HERE BICH 🖕

Can we pls give Sav more songwriting space on albums thx 😭💗

everyone in this band is a slutty bottom and this is the song that proves it Volume 3: Even Sluttier This Time 😏

totally different from everything we've ever done and WE 👏 MADE IT 👏 OUR 👏 EDGY 👏 BITCH

uwu but it's sad so it's actually umu

partying like it's 1999- oh wait, it actually is 1999

*hugs Viv and scREEEEEEEEAAAMMS*

Phil studied the blade and attacks you with it

*gets escorted into the back of a police car* IM GUILTY!! I'M GUILTY!!! I'M NOT INNOCENT!!! 😫😫😫

whatever edginess we couldn't fit into Paper Sun we put into this song instead

we're entering the new millennium as Kings and there's nothing you can do about it 👑🖕

X (Ten)

Stand on a balcony at sunset when you listen to this one

(insert Vizzini saying "INCONCEIVABLE" here)

the big UwU

I got ghosted and it’s actually a lot more dark and depressing than I thought also I wish I was never awake

soft and edgy and sad acoustic dads

F-U-C-K SPELLS F- I mean L-O-V-E spells love uWu

babe nOOOooO I'm sorry I suck so much DD;

this sounds like out if Work It Out and Day After Day had a kid

we're gonna have a Funky Good Time whether you like it or not 😎

E D G E L O R D S 2 0 0 2

we can't decide if we want this album to be edgy or uwu so we're gonna make it both

the same passion as Tonight but less sexy and more (you guessed it) uwu

E D G E L O R D S 2 0 0 2 P A R T 2

Betcha thought our emo phase was over didn't ya ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)

Yeah!

bops have been and will ALWAYS be something we have mastered- even if the song we're playing isn't ours

SAV'S TIME TO SHINE

betcha thought we couldn't cover a Blondie song, did ya ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)

Phil's just getting nostalgic about London it's fine 👍

don't worry joe's still sCREAMIN

in which we make this song a million times better than the original

WE LOVE ROXY MUSIC SO MUCH WE CANTEXPLAINWEJUSTLOVEHEMRMFLGPHPH

we're letting Joe have his moment ok just let him have this 👨‍🎤

yeah we like Free- so whAT??

okay NOW we're letting Joe have his real moment- he's been waiting for this moment ever since he was like 12 okay just. let him. have this just. this one time. pls.

in which we confuse literally everyone by making them think this is a song that we wrote

we just need ONE more bop, okay? Just ONE more we swear then we'll stop being fanboys (for now...)

we'll be right back, it's Bow Down To Thin Lizzy Hour

*Phil tearing up his throat for 4 and a half solid minutes*

Songs From The Sparkle Lounge

this one's actually kinda dark and heavy? :o

honky tonk time 🤠🤙

FINALLY ONE OF SAV'S SONGS IS THE MOST POPULAR SONG OFF AN ALBUM 🙏🙏🙏🙏😩

FINALLY WE HAVE MORE SAV MATERIAL I LOVE IT SM ;∆; !!!!

Phil's songs are severely underrated tho pls give them more attention

it's time for one (1) badass religious song and if you don't like it then you can Fuck Off kindly 🙃

This whole album is "Songs That Were Written By Phil and Viv and Sav" heaven

I think sometimes people forget that we, even as a band, are fans of the Classic Rock Fandom™ too, and we feel the same pain as the other fans :'^)🤙

Joe's three minutes of fame on this album

Joe's three minutes of fame on this album part 2

Viv's songs are severely underrated tho pls give them more attention

Mirror Ball (bonus tracks)

we grabbed fate by the balls and screamed fUCK YOU 🖕🖕

We are still Kings™ in case anyone was wondering 👑🖕

✨PHIL BELIEVES!!!! IN!!!!! LOVE!!!!!!!! AND!!!!!!!!!! BELIEVING!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!✨

Def Leppard (Self Titled 2015)

Is this song about playing a live show? Probably. Is it also about having a fight? Is it also about angry sex? The world may never know.

Okay this one just absolutely SLAPS, periodt.

bootleg Another One Bites The Dust

*SOBBING* THEY'RE ALL SINGING LEAD I'M-

being badass, That's The Power Of Love

don't worry, we still know how to be Poetically Edgy

iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii'm *bump bump* hooked on a feeeeling

I've Got a Spiritual Romantic Boner

Can't Keep Away From The Flame edginess gets crossed with some Zeppelin charm and badassery

someone in this band is fucking piSSED 😠😠😠😠

we're gonna @ someone tonight fellas

sAV OH MY GOD BABYYYYY 😰😰😭😭😭😭 DO YOU NEED A HUG

what if we tried to cross newer Metallica with Nickelback 🤔

what if we turned this into We All Need Christmas three years from now... 🤔

Bonus: Personal Jesus/We All Need Christmas

Viv really wanted to cover ABBA but everyone said no so he settled for cowboy goth™ instead

What better man to write a warm and fuzzy Christmas song than the warm and fuzziest man alive (Sav)

[mannatea]

Fireside Dreams, a Rose of Versailles ‘fic

Words: 5,176 Summary: Oscar was in love. Pairing/Character: Oscar/André Extra Info: This was originally posted on Fanfiction.net back in 2008. It is a full rewrite. Rating: I’d say T bordering on M, but it’s rated M on AO3 just to be safe. :) Genre: Romance and Friendship with a dash of Angst. Kind of character-study-ish, too.

Notes, if  anyone’s interested in them.

All right, so...if you read the original version of this story, you’ll notice the rewrite is...very different.

A few little things:

I use the French manga as my usual reference, so you’ll see a lot of lines quoted that might not match up perfectly with the Japanese-to-English translations that many people are used to. There is one line I did pull from the Japanese though, I believe it was: “One eye isn’t too much to sacrifice for you, Oscar.”

The French version says, instead, “I’ll always be ready to sacrifice an eye for you, Oscar.” I like this too, but I don’t think it really conveys that deep emotional impact that the scene was supposed to have on the reader. Rather, it almost sounds goofy (since he only has one other eye to sacrifice)! 

I guess I could have gone with a loose translation of the French (maybe, “If it’s for you, Oscar, I’ll sacrifice my other eye without complaint.”) but I wanted something the audience would be familiar with.

I do believe the intent of the original line is supposed to convey: 1) I’d do it again, 2) No regrets, and 3) harken back to André’s promise to put his life on the line for Oscar some day...even though the eye thing was a complete accident in the manga.

The lines for the lips I know are my creative translation of the French manga.

I feel like I shouldn’t HAVE to put translations for the French in here, but...I dunno. Why did I put them in the story like some kind of ouiaboo? Because there are some words that just don’t have the same meaning in English, my dudes.

Mon Dieu = My God!

d’accord = okay, yes, [agreement] 

Whenever Oscar tells André to do anything, in the French manga, this is how he responds. I could have just written “okay,” but I can’t help but feel that it’s too informal/not respectful enough, and “yes ma’am” (which is closer to how I read it) just feels too formal.

Je t’aime = I love you. André shouts it over and over in The Incident Scene, which is what I’m referring to by using it.

I actually hate the title (“Fireside Dreams”) but I’ve known it as this for so long I couldn’t change it.

I changed the ending A LOT for reasons I’ll talk about below, but...I kept the cheesy last line. Well, I rewrote it, but I kept the general feeling of corniness that existed in the original!

------------------------------

Goals when writing this were as follows:

Try for a tone that felt as if it could have been part of the manga.

Eliminate André’s POV (more on this later).

Deep-dive into Oscar’s POV.

Treat the story like a fanficcified Character Study piece.

The manga tone thing was frustrating, because the manga lends itself to this really flowery, romantic language that I don’t actually think Oscar would use very often (mostly because the entire series tells us that she is Not That Kind of Person and I don’t appreciate her suddenly Becoming That Person Because Love). A lot of the fandom will disagree with me on this point, and that’s okay. I tried to strike more of a balance where Oscar thinks some of these types of things, but says Logical Oscar Things.

André’s POV originally came in when he did: at Oscar’s door. It also transitioned suddenly into third person omniscient from third person limited, aaaaand when I reread it...I didn’t like it. I felt like it made it harder to follow! The original was supposed to be more of Oscar’s story anyway, so I just committed to it in the rewrite. Overall I do feel this was better for the story, but I lost some lines I really liked from the original that were in André’s POV! Who knows, though, maybe they’ll make an appearance in another story, someday!

Regarding this story as a character study, though... Okay, I’ll try not to let this get long, because I haven’t eaten all day and it’s already getting late here, but I want to address this.

Something that always stuck with me about the manga was how Oscar confessed her love to André quite early on compared to the anime, and how it felt to have their relationship evolve before the end of the series (when she asks André to marry her).

1. I am always ALWAYS ALWAYS a sucker for the woman to ask the man to marry them, ESPECIALLY in period dramas, and

2. See the image below.

Oscar as a character has always interested me greatly, and been highly #relatable, but on my last rewatch I feel like I understand her better than I ever did as an early 20-something.

Despite being in a relationship with André when she asks him to make her his wife, she’s still afraid of actually following through with the act! That’s not something we get to see in the media very often, so I enjoyed getting a peek at it in Rose of Versailles.

Additionally, I felt that Oscar’s whole romance arc was kind of its own character study for her in the canon. She spends most of her life being efficient and logical. Love confuses her. Feelings are difficult to navigate and express. She would not have defended André so passionately I think if she did not love him, but when faced with those feelings she doesn’t even tell him she cares. If the author wanted to make Oscar astute/in tune with her own feelings, she could have written that scene a hundred different ways, but instead we get “I didn’t do it for you, I did it for Nanny! Hahaha!” Part of Oscar’s issue is most assuredly due to the way she was raised, but I feel it didn’t create that character trait so much as it expanded upon it.

Anyway, something difficult to put into words is Oscar’s wondering in the story about being “broken.” I’m writing this from a very specific perspective, but I feel like Oscar’s feeling is relatable to many different types of people. I mean, raise your hand if you’ve ever felt like you were broken, if there was something deeply wrong with you. Now raise it higher if you feel that way and yet...you’re also pretty satisfied with yourself and like who you are, and you don’t really wish to change.

Oscar’s in an interesting position. She’s a woman who identifies as a woman, but she lives as a man. She wears men’s clothes, she does men’s work, she has men’s hobbies, and she’s expected to publicly Act Like a Man. She’s good at these things. She enjoys these things. She delights in her own skill, and has a lot of fun springing the fact that she’s a woman on poor unsuspecting people (like Rosalie, lol) while also shooting down things typically associated with being a woman (like when she glared at André for suggesting she had an understanding of something because of women’s intuition). It’s easy to understand Oscar’s POV: she wants to be free to be herself, and that means picking and choosing from gender stereotypes as she sees fit, identifying herself as what she is and what she is not.

At the end of the day, Oscar is...Oscar...which is how I imagine André feels about it.

I’m sure if you read the story, and you went out of your way to read this far, you probably have a personally complex view of Oscar yourself, so please don’t feel as if my view of her has to match yours. Everyone will read her a little differently!

I wanted to explore the confusion that Oscar feels. The confusion that makes her put on a dress even though she isn’t comfortable in one, the confusion of falling for someone you already knew from the beginning was unattainable (though I didn’t go into detail on this particular point), the difficulty in expressing feelings when you’ve been raised to not do that, and the understanding that different does not mean broken.

Oscar is not broken. You are not broken. I am not broken.

------------------------------

One last note about this story, and it’s related to The Incident Scene. I’m choosing to interpret it in my own way, so if it’s different than yours, I hope my interpretation wasn’t too jarring!

I look at the scene, particularly in the manga, to be kind of a Domino Effect of less-than-stellar choices. Oscar tries to communicate her feelings but does a very poor job of it, and in the process hurts the person she’s trying to communicate with. As a result, he makes a bad choice and hurts her in turn. I don’t feel that any of the hurt was intentional (these two people love each other, after all), but circumstances have put them into positions where some kind of hurt was inevitable.

André undoubtedly would have been rejected by Oscar no matter when he confessed (just because she wouldn’t be mentally capable of processing it quickly enough to spare him), but he chose to confess to an Oscar 1) as part of an emotional outburst/explosion, and 2) physically.

Oscar is not used to Intimate physical contact, and understandably freaks out. She’s also not used to André as a Passionate Person. He’s always been so mellow! It’s frightening to her on multiple levels.

NOTHING EXCUSES ANDRE, BY THE WAY! Taking his frustration and sorrow and fear and emotion out on Oscar was terrible.

But context is important, I think, to understand how manga!Oscar forgives him before he even leaves her rooms. André’s outburst was never about him being horny, or him wanting to be intimate with Oscar. If you look closely I think it’s clear that it’s a chain of André trying to communicate to her in turn, and failing repeatedly until he rips her shirt (that he’s already holding onto)—something I don’t believe he meant to do, or he wouldn’t feel such immediate shame for it.

It was an outburst of fear that she was abandoning him. It was an explosion of all the love he legally wasn’t allowed to feel for years of his life. It was frustration and sorrow over seeing the person he loves best denying Who She Is in the face of an unrequited crush.

I never felt that André was insisting she was a woman instead of the man she wanted to be so much as he was insisting that Oscar Is Oscar, and she cannot change that, and shouldn’t change it out of fear or embarrassment AS WELL AS SAYING, “You are who you are and I LOVE YOU FOR THAT! I LOVE YOU SO MUCH!!! PLEASE HEAR ME AND DON’T HURT YOURSELF BY TRYING TO BE SOMEONE YOU’RE NOT!”

Unfortunately André fails to speak plainly enough and the whole thing Backfires. (Now you can consider how he was raised to speak to his betters.)

I know all of the above wasn’t necessary to read the story (or even afterward), but I thought it would assist if anyone read my ‘fic and came away from it wondering if they’d read/watched a completely different version of The Incident. 

If you made it this far, thanks for reading! I sure hope you leave a comment over on AO3, since you can do so anonymously, and Feedback Is Life!! ♥

[itscookieoverlordtoyou]

40 Questions — Meme for Fic Writers

Don’t you sometimes see those ask games and wish you could just fkg do them all? On this sunny Saturday, we make our dreams reality lolol

1.  Describe your comfort zone—a typical you-fic.

Short fic, I usually get a small scene I want written so I write around it, plus I love short stories with interesting punchline.

2.  Is there a trope you’ve yet to try your hand at, but really want to?

Probably, I don’t know them all ^^’

3.  Is there a trope you wouldn’t touch with a ten foot pole?

Writing about stuff that disgust me I guess.

4.  How many fic ideas are you nurturing right now? Care to share one of them?

Like 5-6? I want to write about a restaurant but set in a world where people have powers I think the combo could be very funny. The main character has the power of insight, the plonge is a giant pool where you swim around cleaning. Backstories of characters with shitty and amazing powers and how they ended up here. Rival to lover character that has the power to see into the future.

5. Share one of your strengths.

Dialogues, subversion, and humor; classmates often said I have a touch to spin a sad story into something positive/happier.

6.  Share one of your weaknesses?

I get tired when I describe something for longer than 4 sentences.

7.  Share a snippet from one of your favorite pieces of prose you’ve written and explain why you’re proud of it.

“In what kind of trouble have we walked right into?”, I ask my companions as they’re idly fixing their attire. Together, we’ve face many perils and this mission ranks among one of the most dangerous. Yet, the others had been…how should I say it…professional! Rescuing kidnapped princesses, vanquishing terrifying monsters, quests to restore mythical artifacts, save nations from insidious plots. Oddly enough, “Does this dress make me look fat?”, is not the answer I’m looking for.

Ribbon in my hair is the first time I wrote about my knights, I first dreamt about them when I as 18, my boyfriend at the time called my idea stupid and my world building pointless so I only started writing about them when I was 21. Now I write about them a little bit every year :)

8. Share a snippet from one of your favorite dialogue scenes you’ve written and explain why you’re proud of it.

“Do you really want your last words to be complaints?”

“I die as I lived.”

“Will we become a fruit tree?”

“I don’t think so, it’s never been the case for my ancestors.”

“I’d love it if we could turn into a banana tree.”

“I’m not from the southern regions, plus I like apples more.”

“Just imagine, our fruits could have been banana flambée”

This death scene was a big finale to a story I wrote for a class in Uni, a story of war between clan of forest and volcano people, of the supposedly brutal death of a Goddess, of a mysterious apple tree whose fruit give vision of the past. I should revisit it.

9.  Which fic as been the hardest to write?

My analysis on D’Artagnan and the figure of the hero. Granted it’s an essay for school but I deeply loved it. I was too afraid to write or ask for help from the professor in charge of me (which made our relationship tense ^^’) but when I did, it was beautiful and I was very proud got 89% :D

10.  Which fic has been the easiest to write?

A play called Adelaide where an old couple reads their old fairytale book about a Prince on a quest to save a Princess. They bicker about the other misreading the story but we finally get to the part where the Prince tosses the princess apart to get a better view of the dragon of which he falls instantly in love. The book is actually their wedding album.

11.  Is writing your passion or just a fun hobby?

It’s one of my passions, but it’s not something I think I could live on so I delegated it to my hobby.

12.  Is there an episode above all others that inspires you just a little bit more?

The wedding scene in Shrek 2, my mind was blown when I saw it in theaters and when I need inspiration to write, I rewatch it.

13.  What’s the best writing advice you’ve ever come across?

Presentation is important. If trying to read you gives people headaches, they’ll stop. Choose a nice big font, space with paragraphs, be mindful of your spelling and missing words. Read out loud because some things written are bad said.

14.  What’s the worst writing advice you’ve ever come across?

I must’ve been lucky in this regard, I don’t think I’ve ever received advice that made me go NO, but I did have to listen/read stuff that made me gag.

15.  If you could choose one of your fics to be filmed, which would you choose?

I would love to the Adelaide acted out, some adjustments would be required because I’m no expert in play writing but I think I’d be great.

16.  If you only could write one pairing for the rest of your life, which pairing would it be?

Luyenor’a and Taram, names are placeholders as of now but they’re two of my knight, being the “only pairing I’m allow to write about forever” means I’d get more knight shenanigans done.

17.  Do you write your story from start to finish, or do you write the scenes out of order?

I’m doing bullets point of what I want to happen and write stuff without much order. Some days I have no inspirations for what goes in the beginning but have loads for a later point. I surf the wave when it presents itself.

18.  Do you use any tools, like worksheets or outlines?

Word on my computer, a notebook in my bag, the note app in my phone.

19. Stephen King once said that his muse is a man who lives in the basement. Do you have a muse?

I have little trinkets all around my computer to invite inspiration.

20. Describe your perfect writing conditions.

Freshly woken up, having eaten, drinking something sugary and sometimes apple cider because the alcohol help lower my inhibition.

21.  How many times do you usually revise your fic/chapter before posting?

I read out loud at least once the whole thing, helps with missing words but dude I reread my stuff on ao3 and always find mistakes still ^^’

22. Choose a passage from one of your earlier fics and edit it into your current writing style. (Person sending the ask is free to make suggestions).

I’m not going to put here because it’s in French and I don’t want to translate now but I wrote Vision of a world, mine when I was 16 and damn was I already depressed then?

23.  If you were to revise one of your older fics from start to finish, which would it be and why?

The Princess and the Soldier, some gay fairytale I think my first one, I’m sure I can do better bow

I also have one about a janitor and it’s a murder mystery I could redo

24. Have you ever deleted one of your published fics?

Once by accident, I was so angry I never rewrote it.

25.  What do you look for in a beta?

I don’t really use beta (beta reader right?) but I guess I’ve had like 3-4 when I was in Uni and had to read people’s wip and they read mine. They’d talk about what they liked, links they noticed, things that seemed weak or to change

26.  Do you beta yourself? If so, what kind of beta are you?

I usually just point out the stuff I like

27.  How do you feel about collaborations?

For a class in college, we had to act out a play we wrote collectively. Ten sketches written in pairs/alone. I made sure I was alone so I wouldn’t be saddled with someone else to write my sketch

28. Share three of your favorite fic writers and why you like them so much.

I don’t follow fic writers; I just am in a mood for a ship and read what’s available. I do like my friend @alumort ‘s fics tho ^^

29.  If you could write the sequel (or prequel) to any fic out there not written by yourself, which would you choose?

There was a Phineas and Ferb fic focused on Perry I really loved. Their world building was something I’d never seen and they abandoned the story, so I did fanfic of a fic. Never dared to post it anywhere I mean it was their world to begin with.

30.  Do you accept prompts?

Of course, when inspiration is given I accept

31.  Do you take liberties with canon or are you very strict about your fic being canon compliant?

I don’t care about canon but I do love using it when there are little trivia to enrich the character.

32.  How do you feel about smut?

Love to read it sometimes, would love to write it. Some I’m like………….youveneverhadsexhaveyou…………………

33.  How do you feel about crack?

Love it!!!!!!!! I’m too self-conscious to write it tho. Oh maybe that could be a never before written trope I could try?

34.  What are your thoughts on non-con and dub-con?

Rape I can’t, dub-con where underlying requited feelings exist but anxiety™ don’t let the characters express them but they’re drunk so it surfaces is okay

35.  Would you ever kill off a canon character?

Hell yeah! I do when/if the death makes sense (I am still pissed at Kishi for Neji)

36.  Which is your favorite site to post fic?

Ao3 is where I post,I used devianart when I had one

37.  Talk about your current wips.

Marry Me for the Love of Cake: God I’m so sorry to the few people who followed it, I said I’d pick it up before the end of 2019 and well……I have the ending in bullet points

Yours, with Love: I hope I’ll finish it…I have most of the ending in bullet points

I guess I’m into rom com at the moment lolol

38.  Talk about a review that made your day.

I made my best friend read All this for a Roll Cake, and she laughed so much at my work, I took a picture I look at from time to time to remain humble.

39.  Do you ever get rude reviews and how do you deal with them?

Thankfully I’ve never received a rude review. My professor once told me it seemed kinda unnatural how unlucky my protagonist was vs. how lucky his love interest was (All this for a Roll Cake) but that was the whole point of the story so I just ignored her.

40.  Write an alternative ending to [insert fic title] (or just the summary of one).

Writing this I realised I lost my final version of All this for a Roll Cake T^T so I guess I’d rewrite the ending I have of the before the last version I still have.

Well this was fun ^^ got to revisit my works and remember many beloved pieces of fiction I wrote, I look forward to my next projects

[heythererosetyler-blog]

10th Doctor Novels Review from ‘oh give me a break’ to ‘more of that please!’ There are DW novels and then there are DW NOVELS and today, fellow Whovians, I will be giving you MY list of the top 5ish best and worst novels from the 10th Doctors’ run.  I think all the books in the best category could be switched around depending on what you are looking for from #10.  For instance, I like him best when he is alone so you don’t get the classic, ‘must save companion’ story and I also like the one’s where he is a hairs-breath away from being killed. It bears repeating that, except for the book at the #1 spot which no one who has read it would ever argue that it doesn’t deserve that honor, this is simply how ‘I’ would rank them.  YMMV.   Also, and this is a big one if you keep going YOU WILL SEE SPOILERS, so proceed with caution if you plan on reading any of the books on the list.  So, go on and read/listen to it…. we will wait. (Taps foot and drums fingers while whistling the DW theme.  Badly.) Welllll…I said we will wait but, welllll…. I really meant that I would wait but welllll…. nah, you had your chance so just tread lightly.  Or read with your eyes closed because, and let me repeat this…. THERE ARE SOME MAJOR, MAJOR SPOILERS!! )))))*((((( Imho and without going into too much detail, the following can be passed by without missing out on anything.   In fact, if you read any of these first you may just be turned off of DW books completely.   The Last Dodo by Jacqueline Rayner Ummm, if you are interested in trying to figure out where the Dodo went, this might appeal to you.  The only interesting feature is that where it ended up is where the Doctor might end up unless he and Martha can free the missing creatures from all across the universe from this evil zoo.  Trust me, not as exciting as it sounds but it might have been if it been written better.  And in that same vein we have…… The Doctor Trap by Simon Messingham I don’t know what it is about trying to catch the Doctor because he is the last of his kind that just cannot be written right, but here is another.  I had high hopes for this one because it starts out pretty good but after the first chapter or so you just want to scream ‘CATCH HIM ALREADY AND MAKE THE PAIN OF READING THIS STOP!!’   The Wooden Heart by Martin Day Has nothing to do with a heart that is wooden.  I am still unsure as to why it is called what it’s called.  On the ‘Goodreads’ website the description of the book states: A trip through space becomes a nightmare walk in the woods for the Doctor and Martha.  Period.  End of description.  I think the reason it ends there is because there is nothing much more to say.  I have read much better fanfic than this.   Others that I consider a touch better, with maybe a little less snore factor are…. The Slitheen Excursion by Simon Guerrier The Many Hands by Dale Smith )))))*((((( Whew, let’s all take a deep breath and get into the tasty 10 tales, shall we? The Stone Rose by Jacqueline Rayner How do you take a story about ancient Rome, a 2000 year old statue of Rose aka the goddess Fortuna found at the British Museum, a genie, fake astrologer, evil sculptor and a crazed Doctor who is panic stricken while trying to save her but gets thrown into the REAL lion’s den and forced to fight in the Colosseum, and make it all work?  Write a book like this!  If you like your books a bit timey-wimey you will eat this one up.  AND this is the only published story where I think you will ever read the lines…. “(His) arms flexed and grabbed Rose into a hug. Soft lips pressed hers with a kiss of gratitude and joy and unspeakable pleasure at being alive.” A gazillion Ten/Rose shippers just punched the air.  They also would agree with Rose when, a line or two later she says…. “I think you must be real…my imagination’s not that good.”   Neither is ours Rose, neither is ours.  A fast and :: cough:: satisfying read! In the Blood by Jenny Colgan Ok, I know that a lot of people have a problem with the fact that whoever did the proof-reading was obviously sleeping on the job, but I still think it is a great book.   And strangely enough, I really wasn’t thrilled by the premise of the story; an infection is let loose over the internet turning normally calm, everyday people into violent pressure cookers who die when their anger gets too much for their hearts to handle.   What I DO love is how much the author just ‘gets’ the Doctor and Donna and the predicaments she puts them in.  I mean she just nails them and by doing so it elevates the story into something special.  On top of that Colgan introduces a near perfect pseudo-villain named Fief.  He is a big brute of a guy from the planet Cadmia who is unpredictable and whose loyalties are to his people and to retrieving the source of the infection no matter what he has to do to get it.  He is unfeeling, totally logical and robotic (picture the Terminator and he comes pretty close) and wears an earpiece that connects him to his world who are all raised on and made of sound.  When the Doctor entrusts him to care for Donna as he believes he is going to his death, Fief obeys and holds Donna back from following him.  He seems to connect to Donna which is fascinating to read.  Meanwhile back on the train, the Doctor disconnects the engine so that the cars slow and stop but he has to get the train to jump the tracks before it barrels into the town.  The big problem is that the train is suspended over a huge viaduct located in the Brazilian rainforest and it is one hell of a long way down.  And since the engine is heavier than he is it will burst into a huge ball of flame which our hero will land in as well.  Colgan comes up with some of the most beautiful writing here as the Doctor falls…. “And, as he cut through the air, all the things that fall pulsed through his head: a glorious downed pheasant on the wing; and a windfall apple in Lincolnshire; and a golden ball in Pisa; and a hammer and a feather on the moon; and a wall in the bitter east; and every passing snowflake and lonely airman and oh so many tumbling stars…. And he felt a part of all of these things.” There are other heart stopping moments in this book that make me wish it was available on audio.  Another winner! FUN MENTION/Target Novelization of…. “The Day of the Doctor” by Moffat Since we are talking Ten, I am adding this for one reason and one reason only: The Tenth Doctor kicks the Eleventh Doctors ass.  After releasing the initial script for the ‘movie,’ the Moff rewrote it to help clarify some things and give each Doctor a bit more back story.  It explains how Ten had been put in that very same cell during his Zygon investigation that all three of them got thrown in together.  Elizabeth tosses him in there because she believes him to be a spy and yet visits him often because he makes her laugh…. even during his torture on ‘the rack.’  Pre-picnic shows how he came within seconds of being beheaded (he wonders if both his head and body would regenerate if separated) and how he wanted his final thoughts to matter…. “Realizing he was now, beyond all doubt about to die, the Doctor rose up inside himself, steadied his hearts and chose his final thought with care. The children. The children of Gallifrey.” This I think, more than any other reason explains why he was so angry when 11 didn’t remember how many children died.  In the book version he becomes so angry that he gets in his face, screams at him about not remembering then grabs his shirt and throws him across the room into the opposite wall, knocking him out.  11 wakes up to seeing 10 pacing and mumbling about how he doesn’t hit people but then says, “But 2.47 billion children!” before launching himself once more at 11 but this time gets him in a headlock shouting “How could you forget?!  HOW COULD YOU FORGET?!” I would have paid good money to have seen this instead of merely reading it.   It is for everyone who sobbed their eyes out when 10 regenerated and still to this day have a hard time revisiting it.  This is all of us saying to 11, ‘Yeah, take THAT bowtie boy!’ even though we ended up liking him eventually. 3 - Peacemaker by James Swallow Quote: “A weapon is only a tool. I’ve heard a lot of people say that over the years. But so is a hammer, and if that’s the only tool you have, pretty soon everything starts to look like a nail.” Oh, I love that!   Peacemaker is a scifi western.  No, really it is and guess what…Swallow pulls it off!   The official summary is: “The peace and quiet of a remote homestead in the 1880s American West is shattered by the arrival of two shadowy outriders searching for 'the healer'. When the farmer refuses to help them, they burn the house and the owners to the ground, using guns that shoot bolts of energy instead of bullets... In the town of Redwater, the Doctor and Martha learn of a snake-oil salesman whose patent medicines actually cure his patient. But when the Doctor and Martha investigate, they discover the truth is stranger, and far more dangerous. Caught between the law of the gun and the deadly plans of intergalactic mercenaries, the Doctor and Martha are about to discover just how wild the West can become...” Whew, a lot to take in I know but very worth it.  The badie is a good one called the Clade which exist for one thing: war, death and destruction.  They are on earth to get back a gun that belongs to them and they will stop at NOTHING to retrieve it.   Problem is one man found it and the gun did what it is meant to do which is attach itself to its host and take it over completely.  It has the ability to heal but that is not its main purpose.  The Clade are simply machines that were made on a planet which was at war and let the Clade do the battles for them.  But then there was peace and the Clade had no purpose anymore so they waited and waited and finally decided to destroy the civilization that made them and then go out into the universe to fight battles wherever they could.   I can picture the Doctor donning a cowboy hat and riding a horse.  One of the many scenes I really like is when 3 gunslingers come out of a bar and challenge the Doctor to a duel.  It goes like this…. “The Lyle Brothers were quick on the draw, and they put a fan of bullets into the air before them; but they could only be as fast as human beings.  The Doctor was a Time Lord, and he moved between the ticks of the clock.  His hand blurred towards the holster on his hip, grabbing the slender wand there and thumbing the activation switch.  The sonic screwdriver droned loudly, and the air between the gunslingers and the Doctor shimmered like heat-haze off the desert.  Three speeding dots of lead stopped dead and flattened against an invisible wall of sound, before falling harmlessly to the dirt.” The end of the book was shocking when the Doctor makes the ultimate sacrifice by allowing the gun to take him over so that he can use it to save Martha’s life.  After that it was an internal battle between the Clade gun that was trying to possess him, and the Doctors own inner struggle which was a fascinating fight.   2 – The Eyeless by Lance Parkin Quote:  “Do you know what?  In the end their sacrifice made no difference.  Because THEY survived.  Thousands of them, millions.  Just one.  It doesn’t matter.  It’s the same thing. And…do you know what?... life is always better than death. Always.  Yet I want all of THEM dead.  Every single last one of them.  When did I become someone who wanted to exterminate?  When was that? When did they win?’   Take one brilliant hero, put him in a position where he must find and remove such a incredibly lethal weapon that it can destroy whole planets, then put it at the heart of a HUGE pyramid shaped fortress whose defense systems both inside and out are pin-point accurate to protect the weapon and you would have an good story.  THEN throw in an alien species called the Eyeless who are made of a glass like material and who also want the weapon and will kill the Doctor to keep him from getting it and you are probably reading a great story! THEN add in thousands of ‘ghosts’ that also inhabit the fortress and whose touch turns their victims into a ghost as well.  Even though they mean no harm, they do not understand their effect on those they touch which makes them yet another barrier for him to get by.  This up’s the entertainment factor, making it a fantastic story!  Finally throw into the mix one bully teenager who HATES the Doctor and also wants him dead, make the Doctor companionless, lonely and very introspective, have it all put together by an exceptional writer…. mix well and you have something that you lose sleep over and will reread multiple times.   The Doctor is up against an almost insurmountable goal that very nearly breaks him.  It is a breathless page-turner that is not for the faint of heart.  Parkin wrote this for a Doctor who is quick on his feet, a blazingly fast thinker who can stay one step ahead of multiple traps and enemies, one who is physically strong and extremely cunning.  In other words, Ten.  I can’t see any of the others having all those qualities in one dynamic package that Parkin could have placed center stage except him. For instance... “The Doctor had broken free of the Eyeless, but it still had a six-fingered handful of his coat and jacket lapel.  The Doctor was closed in, his arm under the Eyeless’ so that he had it in what he rather hoped was a wrestling hold…. The glass man shoved the Doctor against the back wall.  It wasn’t any stronger than a human being, although that was strong enough to push the air out of his lungs.  He recovered, twisted, managed to trip the Eyeless over and now he had it pinned, his knee in its back, although it was hard to keep hold….” And this was just one Eyeless.  At one point during the above scene Parkin describes it as almost like a waltz as the two vie for dominance over the other.  There is a lot of physical jousting and plain old hand to (glass) hand combat that I don’t think any of the others could have pulled off as well as Ten.   Where the ghosts are concerned there’s a part where he is surrounded by them as they advance. He is trying to get through to them that if they touch him, he will not become a ghost, he will just disappear.  But there is a part of him that is just so tired and feels so alone that he actually wonders if that would be a bad thing.   As they come closer you can tell that he is almost yelling at himself when he loses it, saying to them… “I’m the last one,” the Doctor said. ‘I’m it.  My people died.  All of them.  And Time Lords don’t die just the once, you know.  You have to kill us a lot more than once to make it stick.’   Still the ghosts pressed at him, some holding out their hands like beggars after a scrap of food, some shouldering towards him like they were after a fight, some apparently just wanting him to see them cry.  They kept coming, like waves to a beach.   ‘Do you know what?  In the end their sacrifice made no difference.  Because THEY survived.  Thousands of them, millions.  Just one.  It doesn’t matter.  It’s the same thing.  And…do you know what?... life is always better than death.  Always.  Yet I want all of THEM dead.  Every single last one of them.  When did I become someone who wanted to exterminate?  When was that?  When did they win?’   The ghosts weren’t listening.” At times it feels like you are eavesdropping on a therapy session because we get to hear the inner workings of his mind.  It is a fascinating way to understand this Doctor’s motivations and feel his loneliness.  This story is like one big ‘Escape Room’ where you either solve it or die trying.  As the Doctor would say, ‘no second chances.’  It’s that kind of story.   1 – Prisoner of the Daleks by Trevor Baxendale Scene: “The execution squad was already moving back towards Jennifer and Kuli, taking up extermination positions again. The Doctor ran over and placed himself between the Daleks, the little girl and her mother. “If you really want to kill them then you’ll have to go through me first.” “You can be disabled" warned Dalek X "Try It” The Dalek guns twitched impatiently in their sockets.  All eyes were on the Doctor, but he met the pitiless blue stares unflinchingly. “Harm them in any way and I will not cooperate. You can disable me and torture me again or even kill me, but you will NEVER get the TARDIS!” ― Trevor Baxendale, Prisoner of the Daleks Fellow Whovians please bow down and give thanks to the man who wrote possibly the greatest DW novel of all time, certainly of the reboot…. Trevor Baxendale.  Ok, ok so I haven’t read EVERY DW book so the ‘all time’ comment can be almost ignored.  I say almost because I have read reviews by those who have been fans from Hartnell to now who have also said that this is the absolute best ever written.  Don’t believe me?  Check out YouTube where there have been a couple of attempts at recreating scenes, or the video reading of the first chapter with intro and backdrop, whole pages filled with fan art of this very book on DeviantArt etc. etc.  Hell, just look at the ratings on Amazon for it.  Even Barnes and Noble along with the BBC thought it worthy of putting it, along with “Remembrance of the Daleks” from the Classic era into their ‘bonded-leather binding, with distinctive gilt edging and an attractive silk-ribbon bookmark’.  One thing I do take issue with is where it says that on Amazon that it offers…. “…hours of pleasure to readers young and old…” Ahhh, no.  “Prisoner…” is most definitely NOT for the young reader.  It is one of the most, if not THE most adult DW book I have ever read and I have read 95% of the reboots novels.  At times it is downright brutal.  There is no other book where a scene like this is featured…. (He is dragged into a room and forced to stand against a metal wall where he is bound to it via tight clamps around his ankles and wrists.  Then something is clamped to his head with hundreds of fine needles pricked his scalp.) “I AM DALEK X’ ‘Can’t say I’m pleased to meet you, sorry’ ‘YOU ARE ATTACHED TO A DALEK MIND PROBE.  IT HAS BEEN CALIBRATED TO YOUR SPECIFIC BRAINWAVE FREQUENCY.’ ‘You won’t get anything out of me’ the Doctor blurted. ‘THAT IS NOT THE INTENTION’ replied Dalek X. ‘YET.’ ‘I INTEND TO MEASURE YOUR CAPACITY FOR PHYSICAL PAIN’ said Dalek X ‘Oh.  Why?’ ‘BECAUSE I WISH TO.’ Suffice it to say that what they do to him is written pretty graphically and is even hard to re-type.  There is one part, however, I do like which comes after the second time (in a row, btw) they torture him that I think sums up 10 pretty well, “His brain felt like it was about to burst, but when the torment ended the Doctor found himself laughing.  “That’s it, isn’t it?” he panted, his breath ragged and thin.  “Your losing!” It’s the laughter that makes the scene so surprising and makes it uniquely Ten.   There they are, my least favorite and my best.  What do you think?  Which are yours?

[lands-of-fantasy]

My problems with Elseworlds

- SPOILERS everywhere -

Look, I had a LOT of fun with this crossover (I sure laughed!! Also epic stuff!!!) but at the same time, there were a lot of things bothering me throughout the whole thing, and I think even more in part 3. Looong rant so first a

SHORT VERSION: 

They spent a good portion of the whole thing shitting on Oliver (I’m not talking about the friendly teasing, those were cool). And a lot of the plot focused on Barry and Oliver, even though they said the crossover would focus on the Trinity - like, Kara’s part was kinda separate from theirs? And I was like, ok, but I thought part 3 would give her more spotlight but it did NOT do her justice.

And now I’m afraid of the outcome of next year’s crossover.

LONG VERSION:

Idk man the writing on this crossover seemed kinda all over the place sometimes. Just to be clear right away: I like all 3 shows and their 3 leads.

You know, as much as I always look forward to the Crossovers and enjoy them, I think I’m always a bit disappointed because their storylines are just SO weird and out of nowhere and everybody seems to be written slightly(?) out of character. Like, one thing they do a lot is get each character trait and AMPLIFY them, as if they are trying to show us “oh look how different they are from one another!!!” - i mean, yes, we know, you don’t need to exaggerate them to show that.

But like, ok, the crossovers are about having fun seeing the heroes teaming up, so I just go with it. 

So when this crossover was announced it seemed to have some epic concepts (Batwoman, Superman and Lois, focus on the Trinity), but also the body swap thing seemed...too weird. But again, this is just how things are, it can be fun! An you know what? It was!!!! I had fun with it - I laughed a LOT. And there were important things coming out of it - introspection from Oliver’s part and the boys understanding each other better. 

Things were pretty good in the first 2 episodes, but sometimes there were some scenes that really took me out of it like what the hell??? 

ABOUT OLIVER (and other stuff):

Who apparently is basically the leader in the crossovers (cause he usually calls the shots) but also some sort of edgy bad person/monster or some shit (stop.pushing.both. Like, it’s cool that he leads sometimes but, other times, it feels forced to me. Balance, people)

Like, as a whole, the Event seemed to want to both elevate and shit on Oliver? at one scene they were propping him up as this Big Hero while in another they are making him look like a Big Jerk/Bad Person? Both in unnecessary/uncalled ways? Look, I know Oliver can be difficult and, sometimes, a bit of a jerk but like...??? Not that much??? And not at this point in life?? 

I usually brush the exaggerations off but sometimes it’s a bit TOO much. And why do we have to make one hero stand above/beneath others? That’s not the point. They are supposed to focus on everybody’s strengths equally!! I was a bit relieved when, after showing as if Oliver would be the one doing the biggest move in the saving, alone, he actually did it by trusting/relying/betting on Kara and Barry “they are our biggest chance to win this” (or something like that) - and convincing the monitor of that. Then probably exchanging his life for theirs because he had to make his heroic move too. (Like, I know without the duo slowing down the rewrite of reality none of this would have been possible but seeing them “just” running while Oliver goes solve the problem is not the same). And speaking of exchange, I am Really scared about them actually killing him next year? Because Arrow started first so one could expect it to end first - that thought has haunted the back of my mind for a while now. I really wish they would end the 3 shows at the same time, because they are connected, even if not all the time. And it’s not like Arrow started THAT much earlier. 

By the way I’m not sure I like that they had both Kara and Barry risking their lives in a move that wasn’t going to save the world directly, just giving time for the others to MAYBE save it (they didn’t even had a proper plan on how to do it). Not to mention that, as far as we know, they were not going to die if Deegan rewrote reality again? They would just need to try AGAIN. Unless I’m forgetting something. 

Again, I usually brush it off, but it does bother me. Plus, crossovers were always  side stories, a fun way of seeing everyone together, a pause from the main storylines. But suddenly it seems it got serious?? Like, serious, ok, but out of nowhere it seems deadly???? I really hope things are not gonna get that serious on Crisis but how can I not fear it, after how this one ended and by the nature of the comics story?? I know they don’t really follow the comics plotlines, but still. Cause really, I don’t think Kara and Barry are in danger, but what about Oliver??

[ Just a separate note here: I WAS surprised last year with Stein’s death cause, again, I never expected people to die in crossovers - I actually cried in that scene, whoa - but while Stein was an og Legend and a main, he was not THE main character of the show and they were already building up to his exit of the show beforehand, so this time, with the perspective of maybe killing one of the leads I feel like it’s really bizarre and out of place. Really hoping I’m worried for nothing ] 

They always want to sell the storylines as serious threats, which I get on some level - it needs to be something big to require the team up or whatever. But they frequently make some scenes that feel a bit...forced to me? Like back when Vandal Savage first appeared and suddenly they were all dying and Barry had to go tot he past and change things? Like, what? But sure, ok. But this time there was part 1 - with people being overly dramatic about Barry “giving in to darkness” or whatever while trying to emulate Oliver?? Like, tone it down, it’s not that serious - and if it was, it surely didn’t feel like it was to me. It just felt like an exaggeration. I completely understand they don’t want Barry to be like Oliver but again, Oliver is not a monster and Barry was only acting as Green Arrow for a few days, what’s the drama??? To be honest the way they were both trying to emulate one another felt forced to me at times - the script asked for Drama around this, but it all happened in a few days, they can’t actually change who they are like that, stop pretending so (I GUESS it’s perhaps a leftover from having living each other’s lives in this reality, even though they don’t remember it??? Only half logical explanation, even though this was never addressed). Maybe it’s only me, Idk. 

And when Oliver was a jerk to Barry in that talk in Smallville - he later admitted he was just upset with how Barry seemed to be doing things well as GA without having to go through things he did, and later we see him praising Barry (twice(!), I think?) for who he is which was Genuinely Great (the fear gas thing was good, wow) , but honestly, that little fight on the farm was TOO much and did require he actually saying “sorry”. I mean, he shouldn’t even have said that to begin with. I really think he wouldn’t say those things about Barry (Barry himself pointed out some of his arguments were pure bullshit). Idk what was up with that. 

Also as we saw Oliver not believing in Batman’s existence, saying it was a myth created by the GCPD or whatever - sure, ok, but he goes like “I was the original vigilante” I just...... It was just to make us laugh but at the same time, it seems so petty? Which I get is the point, but.... You know, I was almost giving them a pass for some of these cause I feel past crossovers (and even this one at times) want to push Oliver as the main here, so they wanted to show his is not above the others, but whoa, they were actually dragging him?? To see Barry, and even Kara, teasing him doesn’t bother me, I like it, but to see people continuously talking about him as if he is straight up horrible? too much. It all piles up and upsets me. The “cheating with the sister” thing? That was a REALLY shitty thing Oliver did, yes, but that Oliver is from like, over 10 years ago? Barry didn’t even know him back then. WE only saw him through flashbacks. Why do that. Specially IF they are planning on finishing Arrow, why shit on him that much, specially for ooold past deeds, when we are nearing the end? That comparison between the couples also didn’t even make sense, I don’t care what couple you prefer or think it’s best, you do you, but the way they did it was not even fair.

ok this one might be dramatic on my part XD but I want to talk about the lack of a hug: I get that it’s kind of a joke and a way of breaking the pattern, but also....really? I’ve felt like this thing has been a bit forced for years too cause Oliver never had a problem with hugging people he is actually close to, even if he doesn’t do it often depending on the person. And honestly I think at this point we can agree Barry is close enough. And if Oliver did exchange his life for theirs...and he even went with a toast about “appreciating what we have as long as we have it”!!! And then he denies the hug? I feel like they are saving that for next year, but Idk man, we could have both and make them different too. Oliver better initiate that hug at some point, tbh. 

By the way, sometimes they make Oliver seem way too lighthearted too, in what feels like a forced way to me as well. 

ABOUT KARA (and co.):

Who is frequently sidelined

Seriously, when will they let Team Supergirl be an actual part of a crossover, for at least one episode as themselves?? I say that cause alternate versions of them don’t count. It’s been 3 years, seriously. We already lost the opportunity to use Winn, when will J’onn be included?? That was just a nod to him. Like, Brainy barely got here and his part was actually better than J’onn’s. 

Not to mention Kara should have been more active in part 3 - that really bugged me! The Oliver and Barry bromance is one of my favorite things in these shows and I always love to see Clark but I feel the writers did Kara dirty on part 3. She should have fought with Deegan Superman. Twice I thought she was going to, and twice they didn’t deliver (particularly when she finally got her suit back). And while the Clois proposal was very cute (listen, I love Clark), I just....why put it in the end of the episode? It felt weird to me, this is Kara’s show, not Clark’s. And we had the baby’s announcement already. Maybe it wouldn’t bother me as much if they had given Kara more things to do, Idk. 

And I actually got upset with that talk about Clark leaving Earth for an indeterminate time - He usually doesn’t show up anyway, why add that? Weird. Maybe worrisome. 

Finally, when they said they wanted to focus on the Trinity I thought they meant it as a team. Not Barry and Oliver + Kara and Clark (with bonus Kate and alternate Alex). They did have time together and all, but sometimes...eeh. Tbh alternate Alex seemed to have been shoved in just to make the episode feel a little more like Supergirl, but the good thing about it is that with Alex there Kara actually escaped her cell without the need of the guys coming in - but then they didn’t follow it through by giving the fight to Superman. 

Also in my opinion there was too little of Batwoman - I’m not personally upset about it, I wanted them to focus on the trio anyway. Besides I only know the character from like, 2 batman animated movies or whatever. But judging by the promos I thought she would be more in it. I knew having the 3 main plus Clark and Clois plus Kate was a lot... 

[kallypsowrites]

I really want to hear the answers for 20-30, of it's not too much trouble. And definitely take your time! It is a lot.

*cracks knuckles* well no one ever sends me asks so HERE WE GO!

20) Are there any stories that you wished you’d ended differently?

No. Even when I rewrote my most major fanfic (An FMA fanfic) it wasn’t the ending that bothered me as much as the execution. For all of my many faults as a writer, endings are one of my strengths and I’m generally confident with my final chapters

21) Tell me about another writer(s) who you admire? What is it about them that you admire?

I don’t know if this question is asking for fanfic writers or not, and to be honest, it’s been a long time since I regularly red fanfiction. There was one fanfic author who’s FMA fanfiction always stuck with me as being so WILDLY different from the source material and yet so damn engaging at the same time. They proved that you could make any scenario work with a deft hand.

If we’re talking none fanfic writers, I’m obsessed with Brandon Sanderson for his world building and VE Schwab for her characterization

22) Do you have a story that you look back on and cringe when you reread it?

Hahahahahahahahaha. Oh DO I! I wrote fanfiction avidly from middle school onward. Anything written in that time period makes me cringe and I removed it all from fanfiction.net. Really most things more than a few years old make me cringe, but I take that as a sign that I am getting better.

My most cringe worthy stories were written in the Cats fandom. Yes, Cats the musical. Yes, that was my first fanfiction writing experience. Cause of course.

23) Do you prefer listening to music when you’re writing or do you need silence?

I am a MUSIC person. I make character playlists, book playlists, emotion playlists. Playlists for everything. And I organize them so that they have the perfect emotional arc too. I LOVE music

24) How do you feel about writing smutty scenes?

TBH I love writing smut and I almost never share it with any living soul. I think only my close friends have gotten to see my smut when I do requests for them. In normal fanfic I tend to fade to black though.

25) Have you ever cried whilst writing a story?

Hehehehehehehe. Yes. Lots of times. All the time. I am known to dabble in the angst and break my characters whenever possible. I’m always torn between the writer part of me, who cackles, and the parental part of me who just wants to hug my babies close. So it’s usually like...cry laughing.

26) Which part of your xxx fic was the hardest to write?

I think this is where you’re supposed to ask for a specific fanfic BUT I’ll just pick one moment and go with that.

In One Last Spark, the third book in my FMA series, there is a several chapter long final fight scene that I think contains about...oh...seven seperate battles, all going one right after the other and several at the same time, because I did NOT space out killing my villains like I should have. I had to find dramatic ways to kill five villains + two heroes and I had to keep all of the characters engaged throughout. I HATE writing fight scenes. i hate them. They are hard. And writing several is hard to balance without letting some characters fall by the wayside. Those chapters took me forever and I suffered for them. If I ever get around to rewriting One Last Spark I will probably smooth it out.

27) Do you make a general outline for your stories or do you just go with the flow?

Outline. Outline. Outline. I am a religious outliner. I love playing with story structure and parallels and thinking about a character’s arc before I write it really helps me. Outlining is nearly as fun as the actual writing. Now, with that in mind, I still discover stuff during the writing process such as character relationships or little pieces of backstory. But I like to have a general shape

28) What is something you wished you’d known before you started posting fanfiction?

That I don’t have to be so ragingly hateful against other female characters as a result of some sort of weird internalized misoginy and desire to be not like “other girls”. That was exhausting.

29) Do you have a story that you feel doesn’t get as much love as you’d like?

My original fiction, lol. I gotta book. It’s called Hour of Mischief. It’s pretty fun and has gotten way more editing than my fanfiction.

No but really, my favorite fanfics have gotten a lot of love. I think that Double Edged Blades (my lesser known FMA fic) was technically speaking better quality than Lightning Strike. But I do love Lightning Strike the most now that I’ve rewritte it.

I actually had a rad Hunger Games fic that I really enjoyed writing but it didn’t get a whole lot of hits. It’s called Hidden Bitter Darkness. It’s not perfect but meh, what is?

30) In contrast to 29 is there a story which gets lots of love which you kinda eye roll at?

Dude the fact that people stuck around after the first version of Lightning Strike is AMAZING to me because that shit is unreadable. The rewrite ups the quality a lot but I wrote the first Lightning Strike in the middle of my overly sarcastic, sassy, edgelord phase and Liz was obnoxious as hell. Thanks to everyone who actually stuck around though, cause I’m so fond of the rewrite.

[orwellsunderpants]

How to publish in academe:

1. look at a bunch of academic journals in your field. get a feel for what kinds of things they publish.

2. find one that you think best fits what you have written.

3. go to the website for the journal you want to submit to.

4. find their submission rules. these will be called things like “submissions” or “submission guide” or “submit” or “for authors.”

5. submit your paper according to those rules. follow those rules exactly; they always get more papers than they can handle, so they’ll take any excuse to roundfile yours. don’t give them that excuse.

6. wait with bated breath to hear whether your paper has been accepted or not. you may get reviewers’ notes even if it has been rejected. use these to your advantage to make revisions to the paper to improve it for the next submission.

7. repeat steps 1 through 6 until your paper gets accepted somewhere. NB: some journals frown upon resubmissions after rejection; it may be better to try a different journal for the next submission attempt.

8. after it’s accepted, they’ll probably send you the comments from reviewers. you will have to respond to those comments and maybe do a little bit of rewriting.

9. once you have a final version, it will go to the relevant folks to be typeset and copyedited, and it will be assigned to an issue of the journal. this process can take several months, so don’t despair!

10. once everything is done your article is going to be in print! yay! you did it!

If you have repeated rejections, you might want to ask some colleagues in your field to give you feedback, especially if you don’t get the reviewers’ notes from the rejections. It’s possible that there are things that could be improved that you can’t see because you’re too close to it. Then submit the revised paper. (I had one where I literally thanked the editor of the journal that rejected it, because after I got feedback and rewrote it it was so much better, and it got accepted by another journal at that point.)

You may also wish to talk to your adviser/other profs in your department/other scholars you know about where they think you might have the best chance of getting accepted.

Also, when you get the typeset version back from the editor for final checks, read the thing very, very carefully. I had a situation where the copyeditor rewrote some of my stuff that changed the meaning and undermined my argument, but I caught it before it went to press.

Good luck!

girl help. i am a PhD student but it is still SO IMPOSSIBLE to publish no one has ever explained the literal basics to me. like HOW do you choose which journal to submit to. HOW do you talk to editors. i've cried at my supervisors to publish with me so i can get a sense of the process MULTIPLE TIMES this year and have literally written entire articles and been like OK, NOW WE CAN JUST SLAP BOTH OUR NAMES ON THIS AND YOU CAN SHOW ME HOW TO PUBLISH IT but they ignore me. how!!!! do i do this!!!!!

uhhhh ive never been published so i cant really help you BUT im sure someone who follows me can point you the right way!!

[thehalfworld]

Fanfic MST: Forbiden Fruit: The Tempation of Edward Cullen, a Twilight fanfic

I was talking to an online friend on Twitter not too long ago, and the subject of bad fanfiction came up. My friend had been reading “My Immortal” and losing his shit over it. I asked if he’d read “Forbiden Fruit: The Tempation of Edward Cullen” and it turned out he had not. He’d never even heard of it.

Indeed, while this story is one of the best-known badfics out there, it’s still considerably less popular than “My Immortal” is, and I think that’s a damn shame. This may be my personal favorite work of bad fanfiction; it’s a fantastic example of the “so bad it’s good” genre. Author BeckyMac666 writes like no other English-language writer has ever written, and this is both a good and a bad thing. She’s almost certainly a troll, given the blatant use of established badfic tropes and several parallels with “My Immortal,” but when you’re this good at being terrible it really doesn’t matter how serious you are about it.

For the record, there are folks who believe that this fic and “My Immortal” share an author, due to the aforementioned parallels. I personally don’t think that’s true, since the prose is very different, but if it amuses you to imagine that they’re written by the same person, be my guest.

Like virtually all Twilight badfic, this story is about a mysterious new girl arriving in Forks and shaking up Bella and Edward’s relationship by creating a love triangle. As usual, Bella is made out to be completely awful in the process, Jacob is largely forgotten about, and the protagonist may not be entirely human herself. This is far weirder, and more entertaining, than your average shitty Twilight fanfiction, though. Mark my words.

I first MSTed this fanfiction back on the old WordPress version of this blog, but, as that was a long time ago and I like to think I’m funnier nowadays, I rewrote most of my comments. It’s not wildly different, but hopefully it is an improvement over the old version.

AN hey guys this is the new improved verson of my story, hope its better this time!

I have no idea what the unedited version of this thing looked like, but I honestly can’t imagine it being any more ridiculous than the final story.

btw i am young and have dyslexia i find spellin hard but its meant2 be unformal ok !

Use spellcheck, you fool! Or get a proofreader!

no critisism pls!

Oops.

tis story goes out 2 my bf zac(kisses!) amd my besfreind Tiffi LOVE YA GRRRL!

The Tara parallel here is probably intentional. Zac never gets mentioned again, much like Tara’s boyfriend, but Tiffi isn’t Becky’s beta reader and they don’t have a spat partway through or anything of that sort.

EDWARD IS OUR GODD!(we wanna SEX him gud!)

Honestly, I think this is how all fanfiction should open. Just tell me straight-up what character you wanna bang before the story’s even started. Save us all some time.

love &blood becky mac! xxx x x xx

Aww. That’s kinda cute.

UPDATE: I have a proofreader and I have cleaned up the spelling and grammer on this chaptor a hell of a lot as you will see (thank u vickie!)

Yeah, Vickie, thank you. Looks like you’re doing a great job and you’ve got everything under control here.

i will be imrpoving the next chaptors soon.

Since this fic got “abandoned,” subsequent chapters have not actually been improved. Not that one can tell, anyway.

Altantiana

Yes, that is a typo of her OC’s name. Off to a great start.

Hey, my names Atlantiana Rebekah Loren (but everyone calls me Tiana or just plain Tiaa).

Virtually no one calls her Tiana during the course of the story. Just so you know. “Tiaa” isn’t a typo, either, though I have no idea why the author felt the need to add an extra A.

Notice the middle name? Subtle.

I am a 16 year old girl and I live in Forks, Washington!

This actually makes her a year younger than Bella, for the record.

My hair is long and pale like spun gold and skims to my waist like a pale shimmering amber mist.

It’s pale and it’s pale? Also, gold and amber are not the same color.

My eyes are deep forgetminot blue and my delicate fentures are lilly white and pure as the winter snow in moonlight.

I’ve been complimented on my fentures before too, but it’s nothing worth bragging about.

I've been told by loads of sleazy, ugly, HORNY guys that I'm real pretty and look like a model or a bunny girl (some of the guys who like me are really old and try to make opt with me its disgusting and weird!) but basically a lot of the girls I meet tell a different story.

Well, gee, after that modest description of yourself I’m shocked that boys think you’re attractive, Tiaa. You sounded so plain and ordinary.

Am guessing that the girls who don’t tell a different story are gay.

They say I'm too ivory white and ethereal and too skinny and that I look anorexic which i don't care about, but I think its seriously disrespectful to people with REAL eating disorders (btw i'm so totally not anorexic! I eat loads I just never gain weight and I'm not thin enough to be anorexic anyways, I think they were just being BIATCHES especially this one ratty brain called Ellie Mayfair who I hope freaking DIES in PAIN with SHIT ON HER FACE! Sorry, I'm not really such a batch but she is SO horrible if you met her you'd think the same!)

I hate when girls pick on me for being too ethereal.

Even though we’re using the “attractive character looks anorexic but isn’t” trope, and that’s obviously not so great, I guess it’s nice that Tiaa/Becky took the time to point out that the comparison is disrespectful to people who actually have anorexia or another eating disorder.

The bit about Ellie Mayfair is one of the best things I’ve ever read. I hope you guys all understand why I had to run this fic now.

Anyways I am quite tall and slim and but with really big boobs that I used to HATE because they look noticeable on my slender body and draw to much attention but now i like them and don't care who stares at me!

Ah, the “skinny yet improbably busty” body type. Strangely more common in fiction than in real life.

Tiaa totally does care who stares at her, by the way. As we’ll see shortly.

I have a lip ring and recently put black and indigo and magenta streaks in my long pale blond hair. I smell like mint and cinnamon.

I have no idea why we’re supposed to care about any of this, but I’m particularly unclear about why we should care what she smells like.

I wear mostly black and hot pink, deep purple and neon blue and listen to COOL music!

Tiaa’s specific music taste never comes up, to my recollection, but I’m betting My Chemical Romance is involved.

It is my first day at school in forks as I just moved here to live with new foster parents Dave and Marie. They are nice and all very hole some sweet people but it is not like having a real family.

Yeah, Tiaa is adopted. This is sort of plot-important later on, but we never get to learn much about her life prior to Dave and Marie.

I've been hurt to many times to let people close to me and I don't talk to them very much.

I mean… you just moved in with them.

My real mom died when I was born and I never knew my real dad. I sometimes wonder what he is like and if I will ever get to met him.

Foreshadowing!

Dave gave me a ride to school and I smiled faintly as he wished me good luck and I got out of the car and went into the school. Loads of people freaking stared at me as I walked down the hall.

Presumably because she’s too ethereal.

I was wearing tight black leather pants with silver chains at the waste and a red fishnet-like top and you could see my black lacy bra through it.

That could have something to do with why they’re staring.

I ignored whispers and the big pink cheerleader imbosils pointing at me. I was used to it and I paid no at-tension to the guys asking desperately for my number(like hell I'd even LOOK at the horny little donkeys!) and told a ditsy blond cheerleader called Jessica to STFU(!) when she called me a freak!

God I love this author’s writing style. Truly, no one has ever written like this, before or since. BeckyMac666 is one of the unsung geniuses of our time.

Next time she tries anything I'll hit her in the eye cause NO ONE messes with me nemore!

Most of the rest of the story is about various people messing with Tiaa. For the record.

My first day I was relay board, I sat gazing out of the window into the gray cloud-embittered sky for most of the morning, My teachers all looked at me disprovable but said nothing cause they probably new I was a foster kid and a Gothic and didn't want to upset me in case I cut them up as they slept,.

I’m a pretty big fan of the phrase “cloud-embittered,” although it is of course completely meaningless.

Hey, uh… why the hell hasn’t she gotten dress coded? I went to a private school and I guess our dress code was a bit stricter than most, but most high schools will get upset at teenage girls for not covering their knees and shoulders, let alone having any undergarments visible. Tiaa’s entire bra is showing through her fishnet top. This is a situation in which I think it’d be reasonable to ask her to change.

My ears are pierced four times, I have a tattoo of a scorpion(like S my birth-sign!) on my ankle and a Gothic cross on my shoulder, and on my hand i have a weird birthmark in the shape of a seven-pointed star that I've had all my life.

I don’t know why we’ve gone right back to (over)describing Tiaa, but I do think I should delete my entire OkCupid bio and replace it with this opening chapter.

Your probably wandering why I'm bothering to tell you this, well I tell you now I am no ordinary sixteen year old girl.

Could’ve fooled me!

I have a secret, a dark and forbidden secret witch I am only just beginning to understand. When I sleep I hear whispers in another language and even though I understand them at the time, when I wake up i can't remember it!

That’s nothing. I had a dream once where I explained the meaning of Nirvana lyrics to somebody (obviously not possible in real life), and I couldn’t remember my explanation when I woke up either.

I also see weird faces in my dreams that fade to nothingness when I open my eyes and I swear out the corner of my eye my birthmark glows shocking bright gold and gets relay hot sometimes but when I look properly it is back to normal boarding scar-color!

I’d like to remind you that this is set in the Twilight universe. It’s already got magical creatures, and there are rules established about their abilities, appearances, and behavior. Tiaa is clearly not quite human, but she doesn’t seem to be a vampire, a half-vampire, or a werewolf. She’s completely unique within her universe, for no defined reason, and the rules governing other nonhumans don’t apply to her.

Like, the physical description and the obvious homage to “My Immortal” already made it clear that this girl is a Mary Sue, but this author clearly gets that Sue status isn’t just about looking unreasonably pretty. It’s about defying the rules of canon. Tiaa’s outstanding at that, as you’ll see later on.

I am really gracefull like the running anti-lopes when I run very fast and am stronger and faster than most people.

God, what a sentence.

I used to just think i was relay athletic but now I'm not so sure, I think there might be something else at work, something so much more mysterious and eeire.

Something like… bad writing?

The truth hovers so softly on the brink of my memory sometimes but if only i could remember the weird things that clung to the edge of my mind as I slept!

There are so many bad fanfics where the prose is bare-bones, with few or no adjectives/adverbs and simple sentence structure. BeckyMac666 tends in the opposite direction, and it’s awesome. Everything is phrased as though it’s super dramatic, nonsense metaphors abound, and our author has clearly never met an adjective she didn’t like. Hey @ aspiring trollfic authors: take note. This is how you write an entertaining badfic.

At lunch I sat alone in the corner and scanned the cafeteria quietly with my eyes smoldering dark blue beheath my long black lashes and my slim thighs curled under me.

Also a big fan of how Tiaa always talks about herself as though she’s checking herself out.

It was the n I noticed an unbelievably jaw-droopingly hawt HAWT HAAAAAAAAWT dude with tusseted blondey-brown hair, golden yellow eyes like wells of hot caramel and pale sexy features. He was tall and mussel and looked like he was wearing eyeliner and my body got hot and cold all at once as I looked at him.

Kind of like an erection only she’s a girl so she didn’t get one you sicko.

I'd never felt this way about anyone before and I'd totally never felt this weird feeling that I'd met someone before but I had no idea where and i knew it was impassible because I'd freaking remember someone THAT hawt!

Foreshadowing! Again!

A girl sat next to him with long brown hair with her arms dripped over him like a freaking flesh-eating plant so i thought well whatevah, hes taken.

Straight-up one of the greatest similes I’ve ever seen. Like, I study English literature and I don’t think I’ve ever read a metaphor better than that one. I’m not joking, it’s brilliant.

She wasn't nearly as hawt as he was, she wasn't ugly though. I figured I was maybe prettier then her. I never really saw myself as beautiful but i'd guessed from thinks others had said, plus this girl wasn't great looking but anyways I'd never try to pilch with another girls' BF cause thats just low.

The modesty act might be a little more convincing if we hadn’t just read several paragraphs of Tiaa talking about how hot she is.

So I got up to leave the hall thinking I'd go and smoke some bald drugs in the locker room while no one was there.

Hey, what’s a “bald drug”? I go to a liberal arts college and I’ve watched the entirety of Breaking Bad multiple times, so you think I’d have heard of it.

As I waked over to he exit I couldn't help but notice the hawt pale guys musky eyes as they met mine.

Musk is a substance some male animals secrete for scent-marking purposes. The word comes from the Sanskrit for “scrotum.” Thought you all should know.

I locked away hurriedly. I smocked dope in the locker room for a bit then I wondered to my next class.

This bitch just hotboxed a locker room on her first day of school. 

I bumped into someone in the corridor and my bocks fell everywhere! FRICK! FRICK! FRIIIICKK!

Remember that this is the beta-read version of the chapter.

"WTF!" I screamed loudly, "watch where your FREAKING going you asshole!" (i have anger problems)

So you know how self-insert characters, particularly Sues, often have self-proclaimed “anger issues”? I wanna talk about that, actually, because it’s a trope I see not only in fanfiction but in published fiction, and it honestly bugs me.

In real life, anger issues are a totally legitimate character flaw, and one that can have serious negative consequences in-universe. A character with a bad temper may make rash decisions, screw up their relationships with others, have trouble holding down a job, get in trouble with the law, and so on; people who have anger problems are often mentally ill and/or traumatized, too, and the anger may be just the tip of the iceberg. Many morally ambiguous characters, well-written ones, have trouble with anger. There’s nothing wrong with this trope when it’s executed correctly.

In the hands of a less-than-competent writer, however, anger issues are the opposite of a problem, because the character’s show of anger will invariably cause others to back down or apologize and there will be no negative consequences. Writing a character who’s so sweet and charming that they always get their way has exactly the same effect, but as that trope falls out of style “anger issues” has taken its place and the authors who write these characters have no idea that they’re doing the same thing as the trope they thought they were avoiding.

Of course, this is the work of a troll, and the use of this trope is almost certainly intentional, but there are way too many authors who employ it unironically as a way to give a “flaw” to a character that even they realize is bordering on unrealistic.

"I'm so so sorry" he said in a voice like wet heaven "please forgive me my lady”

Author��s so fond of weird phrases that I have no idea whether or not “wet heaven” is intended as innuendo.

It was the hawt pale guy!

Dun dun dunnnn!

Next chapter

[authorstalker]

The Author Stalker Interview with Julie Buntin

Marlena is a crazy compelling, beautifully written novel about addictive friendship and addiction problems. After her parents separate, 15-year-old Cat is forced to move to a remote Michigan town with her mother, leaving her elite private high school behind. She thinks her future is over, but when she meets the girl next door, her life feels exciting for the first time ever. Marlena is everything Cat is not: pretty, gifted, charming, experienced. While Cat is exhilarated by the ways her new friendship lets her play at adulthood, she ignores the real, serious burdens that are destroying Marlena. In this interview, author Julie Buntin talks about addiction and self-destruction, the writers who have influenced her career, and the backlash that accompanies books about female friendship. 

Marlena is getting a lot of positive attention, but my one tiny concern is that it will be marketed exclusively as a coming-of-age story about female friendship. While that’s accurate, your novel is also about addiction and is the first work of fiction I’ve read about America’s opioid problem. It’s a full-blown crisis, particularly in Ohio (where I’m from) and Michigan (where you’re from). 

Post-election, the opioid epidemic is getting more media coverage, in part because many of the people affected voted for Trump. If I was a publicist, I would tap into this news trend and promote Marlena as a portrait of working class America and how it reached this point — the teenage sections of the book are set in the early 2000s during the rise of Oxycontin. 

Do you share my concern that Marlena will be pigeonholed as “women’s fiction,” or am I totally off base? Was it difficult to write about an issue that hits so close to home, and did you worry about your family and friends’ reactions to the subject matter? 

Yes and no. I wrote a novel about female friendship that mostly takes place when the two main characters are teenage girls, and if talking about it in those terms pigeonholes it, I think that has something do with a marketplace that’s still sort of uneasy with stories about girlhood being classified as literary or important. Thanks to Ferrante, in part, it feels like there’s been a shift in that thinking lately, but at the same time, even as space is being made to take these stories seriously, there’s a corresponding backlash – I’ve heard people say that now we have too many books about female friendship. That makes me feel a little crazy. Too many? Because The Girls and Girls on Fire and The Mothers and The Girls from Corona del Mar and Friendship and Animals and Swing Time and The Neapolitan Trilogy all came out within the last few years? 

How many novels have been written about infidelity? About boyhood and manhood and sports and war? And besides, all the books I listed are about so much more than the friendship that drives the plot. In marketing and descriptive copy, they often get boiled down to female friendship story, and thereby shuffled into a less literary category. Very rarely are they looked at in their larger context. A few writers get that treatment, Elena Ferrante, Zadie Smith, but you’re lucky and probably famous if you do. I guess what I’m saying is that I wish Marlena could be called women’s literature, a female friendship story, and have that be synonymous with the understanding that there’s more to the book.

For me, that “more” is addiction. It’s the thing that defines the characters, that sets the tone for the friendship, that changes the course of Marlena and Cat’s lives. I’m grateful and glad you read it that way too, and I’ll admit that I did point that out to my publicist more than once. When I started the novel, I didn’t set out to tackle the opioid crisis in the Midwest, but I did want to write about self-destruction, the thrill and attraction of drugs as an adolescent, and what might happen to the girls who go a step too far. How do we reconcile the people we are as teenagers, the things we did, with the adults we become? I wanted, even needed, to ask that question for many personal reasons and because of a few people in my life, but it was also, for fear of sounding pretentious and for lack of a better word, a literary question. What does that story look like? What shape does it take? We hear stories of recovery, but so rarely do we hear the story of muddling through a problem, of wondering whether you have one, of getting stuck and maybe not ever getting out. The arc is less clear. But it’s still a story that’s important – or I think so, obviously.  Because of my connection to some of these themes – my sister is an addict, and I lost a friend in my early twenties – I was definitely a little nervous about people mistaking this fiction for my life. So far people from my hometown have been overwhelmingly supportive, but I think it was difficult for my mom, especially, to accept that I chose to write a book about these upsetting subjects. 

This is your debut novel, and it was published to wide acclaim (A starred review comparing you to Ferrante! Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers pick! A Lorrie Moore blurb smack dab on the cover!). Can you describe Marlena’s path to publication – how long did it take to write and then to sell? As a first-time author, which moments have been the most thrilling?

I started the book on the cusp of 2011. I was in grad school, and took a stab at a novella with these characters, though none of the pages I wrote back then made it into the version of Marlena on bookstore shelves. I was working on another novel at the time, it was very autobiographical and written as like, a collage of titled prose poems. It wasn’t good. I worked on it very earnestly and very hard for years, cheating on it with the characters in Marlena, but didn’t abandon it fully until 2013, when Lorrie Moore, my thesis advisor at the time, encouraged me to pursue Marlena instead. I sold it two years later. I guess the short answer is it took me about four years to write, but then I completely rewrote the book after it sold. I sat down with a blank word document and the novel printed out, and started rewriting it, using the old pages as reference. When that process was done, Marlena was 40k words or thereabouts shorter than the book Henry Holt bought, with way more detail in the narrative present and one character gone entirely. 

The rewriting process was the most thrilling part of this so far – I’ve never written like that before or since, and for some reason, I think I needed the security of knowing my book had a home, the presence of my editor cheering me on (not to mention her brilliant notes), in order to get to that place. Is that a boring most thrilling moment? My book launch at powerHouse Arena—where I used to work as the events coordinator, the job that got me started in publishing—was very very thrilling. It was this beautiful full circle moment, to come back to a place where I’d spent so much time when I was first sketching out the novel, but as an author. I will never forget that night – a top ten life moment for sure. Honestly, it’s all thrilling and overwhelming, even a little scary. Seeing the book in the world, hearing from readers, getting positive reviews, getting star reviews – it’s a dream I’ve had for a long time, and I never really believed it would it happen.  

I do think that Elena Ferrante fans will fall in love with Marlena, not just because you write with a similarly vivid, page-turner quality, but because in many ways, Cat and Marlena’s friendship echoes Lenu and Lila’s friendship in the Neapolitan series. Reading your book, I couldn’t stop thinking about fate and the families we’re born into, that the girl who was born with more potential wasn’t also born with the luck to fulfill it. In Marlena’s words, her life “felt like a sentence, that it had been barreling down on her since she could first speak, that it really wasn’t much of a life at all.” And then I read this part of a great interview in The Millions with Dan Chaon, which reminded me of your protagonist:

I threw away everyone I grew up with, gladly. I left for college and never went back, and I pretended to be my own creation, no nature or nurture either, just a self-invented person. My life is so different from some of my cousins’ lives that we may as well live in different universes, but I achieved that by chopping off big parts of myself. I think those severed limbs are the ghosts that haunt my writing.

In an essay in The Atlantic, you wrote about your high school years in northern Michigan, so it’s no secret that where you grew up closely mirrors Marlena’s setting. I’m wondering: 1) What roles privilege and guilt play in your novel, particularly as they relate to Cat’s character, and 2) Did you, like Dan Chaon, have to chop off parts of yourself to become a writer, and did you ever come close to taking a different, non-writerly path in life?

Thank you for this question – it’s wonderful to be read with so much attention. (Is this my most thrilling moment? It is up there.) I really identify with that Dan Chaon quote, the last sentence especially. It articulates something about my experience that I hadn’t found the words for.

To answer the first part of your question, I think that as an adult, Cat is more aware than ever of how much better off she was than Marlena and what a difference that made. She’s frustrated about not having had more clarity back then, not doing something to change what happened – even as she recognizes the futility of that kind of thinking. Or that’s an awareness she comes to as she sifts through this story and some of her feelings of displacement in the life she’s found herself in, which is so different from the one she knew as a kid. So I guess the roles guilt and privilege play have a bearing on the plot, in the sense that Cat’s kind of asking herself this very question, exploring it, via her memory of her fifteenth year.

Now for the second part, the chopping off pieces of yourself part. I guess my answer is, kind of? I was a pretty wild teenager. On the Marlena and Cat spectrum, I was probably closer to Marlena. A pretty generous scholarship to an arts boarding school my junior year rescued me. It was a miracle – my grades were terrible. They let me in on the basis of a creative writing portfolio—a portfolio I’d compiled almost as a joke, thinking if I could get in for writing and then prove myself in choir, I could switch to a vocal performance track. I had no formal training and no illusions about my chances of getting in as a singer – but I loved to sing and my voice was good enough for solos in my hometown choir, which made me think with practice I might be able to locate some special talent. But once I started there, even though it took me until my twenties to fully reform some of my bad behavior, I fell in love with writing. I’d always been a really voracious reader, but the more I wrote, the more friends I made who took writing seriously, the more I began to see literature as a path I could follow right out of Michigan and into a better life. 

So I think by age 17 or so, I knew writing was my thing, and thankfully, I was in an educational environment that encouraged it. By the time I graduated, it was either become a writer or, I don’t know, become a professional alcoholic. Is this too heavy? I think writing saved my life, and my life was maybe in need of saving pretty young. And moving to New York after high school helped solidify that – I had to make enough money to stay, I didn’t have time to fuck around. Every choice I made, I picked the thing that would bring me closer to books, to writing and writers. Despite my two years at private school, books were the only subject I was fluent in. I knew nothing about the world, let alone pop culture (that was particularly embarrassing as a twenty-something in New York), but I’d read a ton and could hold my own in those conversations.

I think I had to chop off the part of myself that trends toward self-destruction. That sounds and is healthy, but it makes for a weird dissonance in my life – a sense that the good things that happen to me are not quite real, are constantly at risk of sabotage by some dormant aspect of myself. In following this route with so much focus, I also lost a certain closeness with my family, with my home, with the girl I’d been up until I moved to the city. My life is very different from my siblings’ lives, for example. Sometimes I feel breathtakingly lucky – whether or not this is an accurate interpretation of the years leading up to this one, I see where I am now as a result of a few surprising turns in my life that almost didn’t happen.

In Marlena, every character is in the middle of a life-changing event. My favorite character was Cat’s mom – even when Cat is unable to recognize it, her mom is always trying to improve and never forgets that she’s a parent – and as much as I loved Sal, I was grateful the book wasn’t told from his perspective because I would have cried the entire time. Which character was the most fun for you to write? Which was the most difficult?

Marlena and Marlena. She was fun to write for the same reason that she was difficult to write – I could never quite pin her down, writing as I was, from Cat’s perspective. Marlena is this shifting figure. She’s herself, but she’s also whoever Cat makes her out to be – a fact Cat is ever aware of in the book, but that I had to constantly try and balance. How do you write a character who can only be captured in memory? Writing Marlena was like chasing someone who runs faster than you ever will. You know you’ll never catch up, but you really really want to—you want to see her face.

You are so good at describing the bullshit girls and women experience on a daily basis. As I was reading, I wrote ugh in my notes probably 20 times. Two of Cat’s observations jumped out at me: 1) That “in high school, girls did the liking; boys got to pick” and 2) Society’s high premium on women’s looks makes being “beautiful forever…the ultimate feminine achievement.” You’re also so good at writing about…masturbation! Can you talk about masturbation as a running thread throughout the book and as a source of Cat’s agency?

This is going to be a roundabout answer – forgive me. One thing that’s been interesting, in talking about the book, is that now and then someone will ask me about the tropes of female friendship stories. One girl is beautiful, one less so – one girl is wild, one is more careful. As if these are literary tropes only. When actually, these tropes – whether they come from books or movies or culture at large, are the categories many teenage girls feel that they have to slot themselves into. Try asking an adult woman if she was the pretty friend or the smart one in high school – most women will have an answer. This kind of goes back to what I was saying before about female friendship novels – it’s like American culture doesn’t want women, and women’s literature, to be more than one thing.

I wanted the book to push against those modes of thinking, to interact with, as you put it, the bullshit girls and women experience on a daily basis. Marlena is wild, Marlena is beautiful, Marlena is the leader – except she’s not, not really, or not always. Marlena’s the one with a problem; Marlena’s the one that needs help. Cat’s maybe just as pretty – only, she can’t see herself that way, because she’s given Marlena that role in their friendship. Cat’s bolder, braver, more powerful than she thinks, especially to Marlena. How do both girls step in and out of the definitions that they think fit them best, according to the world and each other? Who are they in these contexts, and what parts of them can’t be defined or categorized at all? How aware are they of the ways stereotypes about girls determine what they do or don’t do, the women they become? In the present and in retrospect?

It feels a little weird to analyze my own book, but I guess I’ll say that Cat’s sexuality, and masturbation as a motif in the story, has to do with her own awareness of her power. Cat’s growing ability to take ownership over her own pleasure, to claim what she wants or doesn’t want as preferences that are hers alone, always felt to me like a very central part of the coming-of-age aspects of this novel, and were there from the very beginning.  

In addition to being a writer, you’re the director of writing programs at Catapult. Talk a bit about your work there – how do you balance having a day job and writing novels?

Not very well, in case it’s not obvious from how long it took me to answer these questions. I love my job at Catapult – my colleagues are universally brilliant. There isn’t a day that goes by that I’m not stunned to have the good fortune of working with people so smart, so talented, so dedicated to books. Because everyone is so great, it’s an intense environment. You kind of always have to bring 100% of yourself to the table. That’s the most difficult part, especially lately with the pressures of putting a book out into the world – it’s hard to juggle both aspects of my life at once. Writing gets pushed to the fringes of my life – early mornings, late evenings before bed, weekends. Or Catapult does, and then I’m terribly behind and I get an anxious stomachache. 

Who are your favorite authors? What’s the best book you’ve read recently?

I love love loved Kayla Rae Whitaker’s The Animators. You could call it a female friendship story, and the jacket copy does, but more broadly, it’s an incredibly wise and warm-hearted investigation of what an artist’s responsibility is to her material, and what it means to tell someone else’s story. It follows Sharon Kisses and Mel Vaught, creative partners (animators) and longtime friends, through the success and failure and incomprehensible loss. It’s a remarkable book, and I just loved it – so immersive, so unforgettable, it blows my mind and makes me a little jealous that it’s Kayla’s first novel. 

An incomplete list of favorite writers: Rita Dove, Elena Ferrante, Tana French, Grace Paley, Toni Morrison, Jo Ann Beard, Chang-Rae Lee, Maile Meloy, Roberto Bolano, Marilynne Robinson, Claire Messud, Lorrie Moore, Margaret Atwood, Morgan Parker, Saul Bellow, Ursula K. Le Guin, Ada Limon, Elizabeth Bishop, Banana Yoshimoto, Maggie Nelson, Jim Harrison, oh I don’t know, this is a list I could write for days.

I can’t help it, I love learning about how writers write. Do you write in a specific place or can you write wherever? Do you create a detailed outline or go with the flow? Music while you write: yes or no? Tell me everything.

No music, not ever, too distracting and music is for singing. I don’t really make outlines, but when I was rewriting Marlena I did a lot of weird sketching and list-making on index cards that I almost always lost immediately after writing on them. I mostly write at the dining table near the window, in a computer chair that looks really strange in the dining room. When I get cold there with the window open I put on this ugly robe printed with sheep that leaves fuzz all over the place. It’s really really hard for me to concentrate, to get to a place where I can focus enough to write. But once I do get there, it’s just as hard to stop writing. So writing for me is mostly a process of trying to shut out all distractions enough to work. That’s like 90% of it – getting started.  

Last question! What advice do you have for all the aspiring writers out there?

I still feel like an aspiring writer. I’m slowly working on another book, but it’s such a different process that it feels in many ways like starting from scratch. My advice, I guess, is that you can do it? You can do it. Oh, and maybe – write what you think is important. I would have saved myself a couple years if I had just accepted that this was the story that mattered to me, and thrown my shitty novel away sooner.

You can find Julie Buntin online at her website or on Twitter @juliebuntin​.  

[pixelsandpins]

Ollie and Molly Post Mortem

Now that the last episode has aired, I wanted to share some thoughts from the production. Under the cut because it gets long. Contains spoilers. 

The concept:

Interestingly, as a concept, Ollie and Molly as an idea began as a voice acting vehicle for myself. Olivia and Molly were the same characters (in that they were half-sisters who didn't know about each other), but Molly was quite a bit younger, a little girl. Initially they were going to be comedic shorts featuring just the two girls in a generally more comedic fashion. I was going to voice both of them.

Then, I thought, "well, maybe I'll throw in Olivia's fiance in after a couple of episodes" because there were some male voice actors I wanted to work with. I figured at least one of them would be on board.

I was a little bit stuck, though, on what exactly the story would be, so I just started writing clips of dialogue. I think the overall tone started shifting once I wrote what would be the first draft of the opening monologue. It came out just so much darker than I intended and a new story started developing.

Then I just went from there.

On the developing the characters:

Olivia-Olivia didn’t change much from her initial inception. She was always the sort of straight man to Molly, this girl who suddenly had a sister and didn’t know what to do about it. I think her arc was the one I planned out the least, and it just sort of unfolded.

Molly-I feel, looking back, that Molly got the shallowest overall arc. Conceptually, she began as a little girl as I said above, and it was in later iterations of the concept that I made her a teenager. She was a vampire from the very start, but there were other things that I wish I had talked about more with her. Something that only got hinted at was that she’s on the ace spectrum. I wish I had made a more overt nod to it if only to make the sudden engagement to Carter just a little more troublesome. I just couldn’t quite get there without it feeling ham-fisted, though. It’s something I’ll need to work on for future endeavors.

Ferris and David-Ferris came into my head fully formed. A slightly sassy half-elf that was fed up with the noble life felt like the perfect character to help act as a bridge between Olivia and Molly if they ever needed it. David came about in relation to him. I knew, from the start, that Ferris and David were going to know each other. It was meant to show the smallness of the non human and preternatural communites. At the time, David was a blank slate, no gender, no personality. That’s when I flipped a coin, and it was like “okay, he’s a dude, what now?” Then I had to figure out how they knew each other and the most effortless way to explain that relationship. Once I had the thought that they could just be a couple and cut out all the middle, I realized I had the perfect foil to Olivia and Nate’s relationship. Then it was easy from there to make this nice, very gentle vampire mentor.

Nate-I didn’t know, at the beginning, how active Nate would be in the progression of the final conflict. I knew I wanted him to be guilty by complacency, but I didn’t really start figuring out the scope of his  involvement until I was writing his and Olivia’s scene in episode 3. In the first draft I realized that the best way to really amp up the conflict for Olivia was to make him an active conspirator in the engagement annulment. Knowing that, I went back and did passes earlier in the script to congenial him up a bit (but to also make him have little flashes of insecurity), so that the final turn would be that much worse.

Carter-Carter wasn’t initially going to actually show up, just be mentioned. As I was working out the last half of the series, though, I realized the opportunity to create more sympathy for some of the people caught up in this nonsense. Where Olivia was Nate’s counter, Carter could act as Molly’s, showing another corner in this rhombus of madness. He definitely could have used more development, but I think the flashes that we got were adequate.

Chuck Brunkus-CHUUUUCKKK! Chuck was specifically written for his actor. I needed a catalyst character that was just going to show up in episode 4 to give an introduction to the vampire super-structure. Dan was doing music for me but is also a VA, so I just knew I had the perfect guy to give me a nice, salt-of-the-earth performance. He was named by Liam (Ferris). I was looking at very gruff names like Hank, Chuck, and Bill. Liam just sort of came up with Brunkus while I was talking to him about what to name the character. Then Chuck Brunkus stuck. I love Chuck. He’s coming back in the future.

Lord Beryl and Serena-I conceived Beryl and Serena as the sort of anti-Father and Mother for better or worse. Serena didn’t keep Molly  despite being the next best thing to her real mom, Beryl was the fatherly authority figure she actually respected. They were also meant to be more functional characters in that they’d provide information on Molly’s past and the bureaucracy of vampirism. I think they filled their roles well.

On writing:

Episode 1

This was the episode that had the most dramatic rewrites from draft to final episode. Obviously, this was because I was trying to find the pace of the story over all and get in character development. It was also my first shot at world building. I had to establish that it was semi-fantasy without exposition dumping, always tricky. I wrote the opening monologue, the dinner scene, and Ferris introduction in that order, and filled in the gaps between them. The sequence with the students talking behind Molly’s back is probably still my favorite in the whole series. 

Episode 2

The “hey, guess what, there are vampires” episode. At first, I had no idea how I was going to play this. I really wanted to establish that we were dealing in a “vampires are normal” kind of thing, that in this world there weren’t some scary boogeyman, just humans with a weird genetic condition. I think David being as mild-mannered as he is, Olivia’s almost immediate acceptance, and Molly’s sort of vague apathy about the whole thing really helped with that. This was also a good time to set up Father and Mother as belligerent figures for later. 

Episode 3

This was a tricky episode to write, and it ended up being the shortest for it. I didn’t really want to linger too long in Molly’s old life, but I really felt like I had to show the mental toll she was going through. This needed to be the turning point episode, where she started getting some closure to be able to sort of narratively move on into the last half of the series.

Episode 4

I was already in the process of casting when I actually started writing this one out (not just outlines), and that made it all the more fun to write. I sort of already knew who my Ferris and David would be and ended up writing to their voices more than in previous episodes (which I would later go back and adjust). It remains my favorite episode for how it came together and everyone’s performances. I really wanted to work in more Ferris and David growth, and having there be a vampire-based conflict allowed me to setup what would end up being the central conflict of episode 6. It’s one of the few times in writing where I was actually trying to do some foreshadowing. Most of the time stuff just kind of….happened.

Episode 5 & 6

Ah the finales. I probably rewrote these a dozen times trying to first, suss out the appropriate conflict and, second, find the right balance between ridiculous and serious. I wanted the audience to feel the pressure that the girls were feeling, but also be able to step back, see the whole picture, and realize how not that big a deal the problem really was in the grand scheme of things. I wanted the girls to be able to do that, too, to start opening up their worlds. The mention of Olivia traveling at the end was my way of showing how much bigger she had made her own world.

On Casting:

This was my first time casting for voice and let me tell ya...it was pretty fun, but also exhausting. I really have to thank the existence of the Let’s Dub Project for putting me in touch with so many great actors who I was able to pass the casting call along to. Funnily enough, Dijit, who played Father, didn’t even realize that I was  the Ashe that was in LDP. He just auditioned for the heck of it. That made me feel really great, actually, that someone who I find really talented saw enough potential in my project to audition without knowing who I was.

Overall, I was astounded by the amount of talent that showed interest, which made casting the best hardest decision. I was so honored and humbled by all of it. I could probably go on for a bagillion pages about the actors.

What I’ve learned:

I didn’t have all the episodes written before opening casting. So when I had to add characters all of a sudden, I found myself having to reach out to a few extra actors. I was lucky in that they were available, but I know that’s not something I can always rely on.

Doing the full version of episode 1 with art was definitely a lesson in knowing when to scale back. When it was taking me months just to get it ready, I knew I was in trouble. Cutting out the art was a good move.

Good SFX, Foley, and audio mixing are underrated skills. If I hadn’t cut my teeth on comic dubs and smaller audio skits before heading into O and M, I would have been in a world of hurt. I honed that skill so much over the course of Ollie and Molly I can really feel the difference.

For future projects, I’m going to actually direct. I had initially planned to do directing via skype for this project, but the more people I brought on cast, the more I realized how hard that was going to be to organize. I went with a leap of faith, put direction in the script, then just....sent them off hoping for the best. I was lucky everything came back amazing, but I can’t trust that to happen again.

The month to month schedule saved me. There was slight variation when the episodes came out. There were some 4 week gaps and some 6 week gaps, but making sure an episode came out each month made this whole thing possible. It made me finish and not get distracted. And now! It’s DONE!

[hydrus]

Version 358

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I had a great week doing duplicates work and fixing bugs.

duplicates

I split this big duplicates storage overhaul into three jobs, and this week marks the third and final job done. Like alternates and duplicates information, potential pairs are now stored in a unified and more efficient way.

On the front end, you may notice your potential pairs queue shorten again on week. It will also shrink faster as you process in the duplicate filter, which will present more 'useful' duplicate pairs first and apply your decisions more intelligently at the db level.

All the code is simpler except for one key area. If you notice certain the 'show some random potentials', duplicate filter or potential counts load time take way too long, please let me know about your situation. It is possible I will have to revisit this complicated 'join', although in my tests it is performing well.

Also, I have written the new record to stop alternate pairs coming up in the duplicate filter repeatedly, as some users have experienced. These relationships are now more concrete, and this concreteness is plugged into duplicate merge operations and so on. You may see one more round of alternates appearing, and then they will be saved properly.

Now everything is stored on the new system, there are two main jobs remaining: re-adding various administrative commands like remove/dissolve to properly undo relationships, and adding some options and improvements to the duplicate filter workflow.

the rest

Pixiv changed their format recently, so hydrus's default parser broke. This should be automatically fixed this week. Thanks to a user who sent in this fix.

The issue where mouse scroll events were not being caught when a media viewer did not have focus is also fixed.

The 'watcher' page now reports file and check status in the 'status' column! I missed this somehow when I added it for the gallery downloader. This makes it just a little easier to see what a list of threads is currently doing.

I may have fixed the problem where exiting manage tags from a media viewer sometimes falls focus back to the main gui. Please let me know if you still get this (and if so, if you know a way you can reliably repeat this behaviour).

I improved some of the network engine's 'this connection ended early' checks. This may have fixed some issues users had downloading images and page data from some unreliable servers, but if it does not, please send me any incomplete jpegs and the URLs they came from so I can check further on my end. Also, the whole system is more strict about response lengths now, so if you discover false-positive network failures here, please report them.

Also some server issues related to last week's client api authentication improvements (such as file repository file upload sometimes breaking) should be fixed.

new client api library

If you would like to work on the Client API using Node.js, check out the new module a user wrote here:

https://github.com/cravxx/hydrus.js

This is now in the help along with the rest of the API here:

https://hydrusnetwork.github.io/hydrus/help/client_api.html

full list

duplicates:

the final large data storage overhaul work of the duplicates work big job is done--potential duplicate information is now stored more sensibly and efficiently. potential pair information is now stored between duplicate file groups, rather than files themselves. when duplicate file groups are merged, or alternate or false positive relationships set, potentials are merged and culled appropriately

your existing potential data will be updated. the current potential pairs queue size will shrink as duplicate potential relationships are merged

the duplicate filter now presents file kings as comparison files when possible, increasing pair difference and decision value

potential pair information is now stored with the 'distance' between the two files as found by the similar-files search system. the duplicate filter will serve files with closer distance first, which increases decision value by front-loading likely duplicates instead of alts. distance values for existing potential pair info is estimated on update, so if you have done search distance 2 or greater and would like to fill in this data accurately to get closer potentials first, you might like to reset your potential duplicates under the cog icon (bear in mind this reset will schedule a decent whack of CPU for your idle maintenance time)

setting alternate relationship on a pair is now fixed more concretely, ensuring that in various search expansions or resets that the same pair will not come up again. this solves some related problems users have had trying to 'fix' larger alternate groups in place--you may see your alternates compared one last time, but that should be the final go. these fixed relationships are merged as intra-alternate group members merge due to duplicate-setting events

a variety of potential duplicates code has been streamlined based on the new duplicate group relationship

improved how a second-best king representative of a group is selected in various file relationship fetching jobs when the true king is not permitted by search domain

one critical part of the new potential duplicates system is more complicated. if you experience much slower searches or count retrievals IRL, please let me know your details

expanded duplicates unit tests to test potential counts for all tested situations

fixed a bug where alternate group merging would not cull now-invalid false-positive potential pairs

the rest:

updated the default pixiv parser to work with their new format--thank you to a user for providing this fix

fixed the issue where mouse scroll events were not being processed by the main viewer canvas when it did not have focus

file page parsers that produce multiple urls through subsidiary page parsers now correctly pass down associated urls and tags to their child file import items

updated to wx 4.0.6 on all built platforms--looks like a bunch of bug fixes, so fingers-crossed this improves some stability and jank

updated the recent server access-key-arg-parsing routine to check access from the header before parsing args, which fixes an issue with testing decompression bomb permission on file POST requests on the file repository. generally improved code here to deal more gracefully with failures

the repositories now max out at 1000 count when fetching pending petition counts (speeding up access when there are large queues)

the repositories now fetch petitions much faster when there are large queues

frames and dialogs will be slightly more aggressive about ensuring their parents now get focus back when they are closed (rather than the top level main gui, which sometimes happens due to window manager weirdness)

rewrote a bad old legacy method of refocusing the manage tags panel that kicks in when the 'open manage tags' action is processed by the media viewer canvas but the panel is already open

hitting 'refresh account' on a paused service now gives a better immediate message rather than failing after delay on a confusing 'bad login' error

improved login errors' text to specify the exact problem raised by the login manager

fixed a problem in the duplicates page when a status update is called before the initial db status fetch is complete

the manage tag siblings panel now detects if the pair you wish to add connects to a loop already in the database (which is a rare but possible case). previously it would hang indefinitely! it now cancels the add, communicates the tags in the loop, and recommends you break it manually

added a link to https://github.com/cravxx/hydrus.js , a node.js module that plugs into the client api, to the help

a variety of user-started network jobs such as refreshing account and testing a server connection under manage services now only attempt connection once (to fail faster as the user waits)

the 'test address' job under manage services is now asynchronous and will not hang the ui while it waits for a response

fixed some unstable thread-to-wx code under the 'test access key' job under manage services

improved some file handling to ensure open files are closed more promptly in certain circumstances

fixed some unstable thread-to-wx communication in the ipfs review services panel

improved the accuracy of the network engine's 'incomplete download' test and bandwidth reporting to work with exact byte counts when available, regardless of content encoding. downloads that provide too few bytes in ways that were previously not caught will be reattempted according to the normal connection reattempt rules. these network fixes may solve some broken jpegs and json some users have seen from unreliable servers

fixed watcher entries in the watcher page list not reporting their file and check download status as they work (as the gallery downloader does)

the client api will now deliver cleaner 400 errors when a given url argument is empty or otherwise fails to normalise (previously it was giving 500s)

misc cleanup

next week

I had hoped to do some IPFS work this week, but I ran out of time to do it properly. This is now the main job for next week. Otherwise, I will do some of this final duplicates work and some misc small jobs.