#I'm a serious author who writes serious things and takes my art very seriously

[kaylapocalypse]

Hello!! This may be a bit of a long-shot, but you're a published and fairly successful author that I know how to contact, and I love The Wicker King..

You can respond to this via this ask or direct messages (or not at all!) Whatever you're comfortable with.

I'm in a position where I really need to start seriously thinking about my future career, and the one I'm leaning towards the most at the moment is a creative writer. I love it, and it's one of my strong suits... but the field is not known for being easy to navigate.

You clearly have experience, so I was wondering if you could shed some light on what I would need to do if I decide to be serious about pursuing this?

What does the publication process look like, how do you support yourself financially (is it substantial?), what courses did you take in college (if at all), and how did you get your name out there?

Being an author is a plan/dream I had years ago and had since given up on, but after two years of chasing a different passion, I'm starting to waver again on what I should do...

So, I was wondering if you could tell me about your experience in the writing/book industry; if you're comfortable of course!

Thank you for your time and I hope you have a nice day!

My apologies for taking so long to answer this, I had to think very hard about what I wanted to say.

I think the most important thing for you to know is that it takes about 10 years before most creative writers--novelists especially--are able to live off their craft. And that's not even factoring in the metrics of chance.

I don't mean this as a dissuasion of any kind. Its just very important to me that you enter this field with this understanding. Most authors have a second job, in particular, most authors are either teachers or attorneys for some reason (especially romance novelists, chock full of attorneys) quite a few authors also work at call centers (low effort job that allows for tons of energy for personal time) and another subset are just RICH PEOPLE.

I myself started out as a call center author and then I married someone kind of Well Off. Without them I might not be able to do nearly as much writing as I do.

The biggest thing I want you to be doing right now is picking a secondary "job" that will allow you to write for long enough that you are able to get to that 10 year time when you can retire your first job and get into your writing career. I know 10 years sounds like a long time, but I graduated at 22 and only now as a 32 year old are things starting to fall into place. Think of it like becoming a doctor. Those 10 years are med school and residency.

The next thing that I think is important is that you develop a strong relationship with constructive criticism and stamina.

Here are the three things that kill potential authors early and stop their potential careers on the spot

Being too scared to share their work with as many people as possible. Especially people they do not know. Getting opinions on your work (notably bad ones) lets you learn much quicker how to fix issues. You'll grow much faster as a writer if you're open to harsh opinions and open to sharing your work.

Thinking that because someone doesn't like your book, they don't like YOU. Art is so personal and its really difficult for a huge amount of people to jump this emotional hurdle. What helps is thinking about your favorite artists and authors and whether you like every single thing they ever created. Chances are, you just like /most/ of it. What you really like is THEM. I know of at least 4 people I'm online friends with on twitter who have hated every single book I ever wrote but think my twitter is absolutely hilarious. And people who love my books to pieces but think I'm so extremely annoying and have me blocked on twitter lmao. Its just product, its just a macaroni necklace. Its ok.

Thinking because they aren't having a Wunderkind Experience that they're a failure and give up too early. I recently met a guy who sent out 20 query letters and didn't hear back from all of them and got so bitter he threw an online tantrum (that likely got him blacklisted) and swore not to try trad publishing ever again. 20 queries is nothing. I personally sent out 80 and queried for about 7 months and I absolutely had what people describe as "a Cinderella experience." A lot of other people are like...., 27 and are like "ohhh im too old to be an author... there are so many young authors" meanwhile, if you go to any major conference, all the authors there are like 45-65 years old and there's like 10 people in their 20s-early 30s and everyone treats you like an interesting baby. Getting bitter and insecure about this is the quickest way to lose hope and squash your OWN dreams for literally no reason.

As for the publication process, I have a few links for you:

This last link will be very important to you later, so please save it to your computer. The first two are just informative stuff about the process.

If you have any more questions or want me to talk more about anything I've mentioned here, feel free to send them my way!

[aristotels]

Thinking about art and fiction and concepts of ownership and honestly it's kinda fucked that collaborative and transformative storytelling is literally as old as time and one of the most basic human instincts that exists, but the only good word it we have right now is "fanfiction"

and when you tell people you write fanfiction they think you're some kind of cringe weirdo and possibly pervert and then the whole thing gets derailed by this bizarre side discussion into how "No it's not all porn, it's absolutely everything and anything imaginable, duh, but like, even if it were all porn, that would also be okay". Like I'm all for pointing out the double standards about how published authors who put sex into their stories don't lose any respectability (especially if they're men, and especially if the sex is cishet), but the second I, a fanfiction person, add a romantic arc into my plotty casefic suddenly I'm a fujoshi with shipper brainrot etc etc-

But it's tiring that this is even a focal point

My favourite funny and sad thing is watching people (usually dudes) who clearly either view themselves as above fanfiction or have simply never ever thought of themselves as "the type" to do creative writing discover The Fanfiction Urge, because the way they express it is like. An increasingly passionate and detailed video essay about how Movie should have gone instead, or, my favourite, a story about something cool that happened to them in XCOM or Darkest Dungeon or some other Difficult Game For Serious Gamers and by the end of the post they're legitimately just writing prose. Like look at this! LOOK! Damn if this person didn't speedrun the gamerbro-to-AO3 pipeline just for a sec. And not that there's anything wrong with those formats but it makes you wonder if that's something they'd be interested in exploring more if their wings got unclipped

Or DnD. Small wonder that TTRPGs are becoming so popular when they're one of the few increasingly non-cringe ways to do the extremely basic human urge of Tell Story Collaboratively

A friend of mine had this to say recently about his own struggles with this kind of internal bias:

i'd like to try out Thousand-Year-Old Vampire (a solo role-playing game with minimal rules to make you write your own narrative) and my toxic masculinity is getting in the way. discouraging thoughts include: i'm not creative enough; creative writing is for Floofy Humanities types and i am a Cold STEM type; it's not a real game unless it has Systems that you can Study and Master. would anyone like to say something encouraging?

and honestly that's incredibly illuminating innit isn't it. The splitting off of creative activity (not just fanfiction, either) into something only for Floofy Humanities Types but not Serious People and the way it's linked to whether or not you can make money off it... oof.

This became a long post thank you for your patience

ngl i just dont rly care that much for fandoms... i like fanfic, i read it and write it, but i dont rly see fandom as my identity or smth i particularly care about, to me all of it is just the same as me playing with barbie dolls.

i dont think its something special that can be compared to actual literature and i think there are certain problems w booktok people relying on tropes that come from fanfic mentality. its just not the same, and i do wish people who like fanfic would sometimes also read.......some actual books sometimes

i just generally dont see what youre describing as some huge thing or problem, i think anti-kink ppl doxxing artists is the major worrisome thing when it comes to fandoms, but i think the doxxers also take the whole fandom experience too seriously

and i say this as someone who also writes fanfic, so like, it rly isnt me going "fanfic authors/readers are stupid", i find fanfic super cool to explore yourself, fanart taught me sooo much as an artist, i even enjoy roleplaying; all of this serves a very real purpose of exploring things as a human in realms of fiction, and pre-existing characters make that easier. i think that can be very useful, we learn about ourselves through books and stories. i just think fandom should be treated the way it is - playtime with toys ✌️

[cruelsister-moved2]

Im the hater anon omg i didnt mean to lead u astray but i haven't finished it i'm just over half done. i probably will finish just so i can coherently say why i don't like it bc rn my thoughts are all over the place but  u hit all the major points im like nodding and taking notes rn.  Its very shallow lore wise like its all overly complex exposition that barely effects the plot. I could write about this for 100 years but basically it was boring and i just feel like it has nothing to say like theres no purpose or message and i think speculative stuff should have SOME weight behind it idk.  That paired w how the writing itself is like..not pretty or artful or anything………………….

And on top of that its not even actually funny. Instead of real jokes its just 100 million mcu quips awkwardly inserted so that no situation is ever treated genuinely or seriously or with depth. For example. My personal least favorite part beyond general quality so far is how often they bring up gideon being inappropriately horny… idk how else to word it.. Its one of her 3 personality traits. they mention her porn collection i swear every couple of pages. its played 4 jokes but like the rest of it its literally unfunny and feels so out of place. Like this is right when they just discovered an incinerated body → ”she looked troubled, which made Gideon sad, but she was also soaked right through to the skin, which made Gideon need a lie-down.” Its like if someone whose only point of reference was tiktok during that era where every vaguely masc woman got made fun of for being a quote hey mamas lesbian unquote tried to write a masc woman.  Reading it as a masc lesbian myself is just sort of embarrassing idk if other ppl feel differently but it just feels overplayed and goofy. 

Anyways… this is all very long and incoherent but thank u for complaining and vindicating me… i started reading it a couple days ago on a whim bc ive been seeing ppl talk abt it a lot lately and i was instantly SOOOOO disappointed. Part of it was definitely that i was expecting something very different because of how people talk about it but also its just like bad. Its insane. I also had no idea abt the roachpatrol thing so ummmmmm :(

hiiiiiiiiii omg so your suffering isn't even over yet my condolences.

the worldbuilding exposition industrial complex needs to end im so serious. I just had such a nice conversation with some writer friends about soft vs hard magic systems and world-building and how frustratingly common the assumption that more complex lore you dump the more sophisticated your story is at the moment. in reality many more sophisticated stories deliberately utilise abstraction and whimsy for thematic statements. v happy for brandon sanderson fans but again, a lot of those stories are basically like mystery novels except the magic is the mystery, whereas the speculative fiction authors who... actually speculate...are often using it as a tool to speculate about our own existence.

and the writing is so ugly like I've read a couple of chapters and I feel like i could get through a mid story if it's at least well written but it wasn't even inoffensive it was actively offputting like that prose was stinkyyyyyyyyy..... and the quips exactlyyy like who is laughing at none pizza with left beef anymore and the fact a lot of it isn't even the author being witty but just like. a reference to a meme? it's literally supposed to be like gritty but then everyone is memeing and quipping all the time how are you meant to take that seriously?

and okay the like sexualisation of Gideon had kind of been my suspicion but I hadn't read enough to make that claim for certain so. that's disappointing to have it confirmed. given that the author is a fem woman who calls herself a lesbian whilst being homestuck married to a guy, it really brings up some kind of discomfort in me to be using masc women that way and making a joke out of them and their sexuality and calling them himbos and shit like. it really doesn't seem like she actually knows any masc women??? and when that was a huge part of the marketing for the book it comes to feel exploitative.

one thing to be aware is that tor like. pushed it really hard marketing-wise for whatever reason. I guess they feel it symbolises a new era of sci-fi and like were using it as an outreach effort to engage the generation that mostly only reads fan fiction or whatever which I guess cheers if it achieves that. but the majority of negative reviews are specifically that it was nothing like what they expected it to be, because of the.... super gimmicky marketing.

the tagline being sword necromancer lesbians in space or something so lame 😭 and it really seems like the elements came first and the justification came second so it's never really explained why they use swords instead of more technologically advanced weapons (bc the answer is 'it sounds cool') or really why it needs to be in space at all (because the answer is 'it sounds cool'). even the necromancy is supposedly fairly tangential and ive seen people be underwhelmed how much actual lesbianism is involved too 💀

9mbut yeah the r0ach patr0l thing I wish people were more aware of because honestly above anything else, I've seen people who were fans and then found this out and felt super uncomfortable so I think people deserve to know what kind of background she has, and this is literally where she developed her writing and her name as a BNF so it's directly connected to her current career not just like a celebrity who tweeted something dumb when they were 14. like I think it's fair to take that into account + idk it's INTERESTING to me that she went from that to debuting with a masc lesbian whom she projects like comic hypersexuality onto it really is all much to think about truly

[transmansplainer]

Yeah, so, PhD in English Literature chiming in here.

I wrote my dissertation on Victorian literature and the birth of science fiction. I have a pedigree, credentials, 24 conferences, and over 20 classes taught under my belt.

So when I tell you that fanfic is real art and absolutely fucking based, I know exactly what the fuck I am talking about.

First, fanfic is old... like, stupid old. We can talk about derivative literature, or get into all the stories which are just reframing mythological narratives. We could talk about how Frankenstein is Paradise Lost but better, or how much "art" is derived from popular narrative. But pretty much as long as we've been telling stories, we've been listening to them and thinking, "huh... I wonder what would happen if...?" And boom! Fanworks.

Second, if you wanna be a real asshole, we could get into what "art" is and how it isn't real at all but is rather a concept that we share among us like a kind of collective fever dream, and that it is, therefore, a constantly moving signifier for which there is no signified... but I would also like to keep this thing short so I'll just say that my bibliography is bigger than yours and leave it at that.

Third, and most importantly, ALL ART IS REAL ART and fanfic, fanart, and adaptation have been around since AT LEAST the birth of the novel.

What makes fanwork unique (and I'll limit myself here to fic bc it's what I know best) is that it an inherently communal and anticapitalist form of creation, which bars it from more traditional markers of legitimacy. It cannot be credited to a single person, so cannot contribute to the cult of the "author" or buy into our dumb creationist mythology of how all great things must derive from a single mind. It also cannot be sold, and therefore lacks both the "aura"* of more traditional forms and the acrural of capital that we use as benchmarks of "success".**

This doesn't mean it isn't "real art"-- only that it openly and purposefully defies the markers of that category. It is an exploration of a shared imaginative space which allows individuals to dream as a collective. It is rhizomatic, with new tropes and head-canons emerging organically among a disjointed, non-hierarchical, polythestic community. It is an inherently blasphemous space which can only be so by both taking the source material very seriously while denying the authority of the Author-God and daring to rewrite it.***

How many times do fic writers take a source text so much more seriously that the showrunners or networks, or actors? How much more do we know about these characters as characters than the people who own them?

This is serious work. It is real art. Even when it is bad, or silly, or stupid, or yes-- racist and bigoted and gross. It is still art.

Unpublished writing is art. Scribbles on paper are art. A drawing o lr a digital sketch or a poem are art.

Because what makes art real isn't some external validation of value and existence by the Other, it is an experience which we go through in its creation, and it is the experience which we have when we encounter it.****

In short-- gatekeeping is fucking stupid, and it sucks hard-core when it comes to the subject of art. How many of us have killed our own dreams because they weren't "good enough"? How many of us have thrown aside our paints because we're not "real artists"?

And how many of us have had to fight our way back to a place of healing where we can be brave and write the damn thing? Or paint the damn thing? Or just put the fear of God into some oil pastels?

So yeah, that's my story and I'm sticking to it. If you want good theory, hmu, otherwise, it is late and god speed and good luck.

*see Benjamin, "A work of art in the age of mechanical reproduction"

**yes, I know that fanfic has been repackaged and sold, but this Tumblr and not my dissertation defense so you get what you get.

***there is a ton of theory behind all this, but Jenkins and whoever wrote "Cyborg Manifesto" are probably the most blatantly ripped off.

****I'm gesturing vaguely to Foucault here from History of Sexuality, Part 1-- specifically in how in a post-Freudian world the subject must "confess" to the Other and have their confession heard and validated to have access to subjectivity and exist under the Law, but christ it is late and I am not pulling quotes.

I am aware I have died on this hill before but people who really strenuously argue that fanfic isn't "real writing" drive me insane. what do you meeeaaaaannn. besides the fact that any attempt to define "real art" vs "fake art" is inherently reactionary, it just doesn't make any sense. it's Writing. people Write it. what the fuck are you talking about.

[rsnauthor]

This book title caused me headaches

When I published my first novel, I made the cover myself. But even back in 2013 designing your own covers was frowned upon in the indie author community. A self-made cover signposted that you weren't taking your work seriously, you were a chancer, an amateur. But, first book, nerves, imposter syndrome—all fed into my reasons for finding a copyright free image, slapping it into GIMP, and making a fairly artful cover.

Did it suit the genre?

No. Not at all. But I was kidding myself that readers would see past that and adore the story within.

I've progressed, with my imposter syndrome, but not enough. I still don't quite see the value in paying for a custom cover design. What I do instead, is look at pre-made cover sites, and find interesting covers in my genre, and purchase those. I've been pleased with the covers I've got this way for my horror series.

But this does come with some serious limitations.

A creepy cover, no matter how good it is, still needs to fit the story you're writing. It's not an exact science. It doesn't have to fit precisely, but take my cover for Go Back to Sleep. The house is fairly ramshackle. If a ramshackle house doesn't feature in the story, then an invisible contract with the reader has been broken. Do that enough times, and the readers will start to notice, turn away, find the authors who deliver on their promises.

The same promise is made with the title of the book. Titles are tricky things. My approach has been fairly literal. All three of my Dark Corners full novels have titles that feature a thing or piece of dialog from the book. With book 4, I was a little more marketing focused.

My first attempt was to call it The Eastlands Exorcist. The 'Eastlands' referred to the road the protagonist lived on, the 'Exorcist' referring to a fairly tertiary character that would ultimately drive the protagonist onto the main part of the story.

I was delighted with my cleverness with this book title. Besides the very emotiveness, it also served a secondary purpose. Mainly that it would likely show up in search results on Amazon when people used the search term 'exorcist'. Wouldn't it be great if people searching for a book called 'The Exorcist' also found my book to consider?

Well yes, that would be nice but as I was still in the process of writing the thing, I began to realise I'd trapped myself into a corner. There is a promise in this title. A reader is going to expect an exorcism to feature strongly. They might even expect it to have a prolonged explanation of the exorcism process. And yeah, somebody is going to have to get possessed.

This was never part of the plot. The story was actually about a haunting that continued from one house to another that was meant to be a safe haven. I could have written an exorcism in, and actually have half a scene written where that takes place, but that scene required other supporting scenes. And there were severe consequences for the characters. You don't just have a possessed member of the family and have them recover. This is a life-changing event.

And I came to realise that this writing problem was actually a title problem. The title was forcing me to write a story I hadn't planned on writing.

So, I changed the title.

I like this title. It's not very clever. But it is still very marketable. There is a contract with the reader about expectations, and I'm comfortable that the story absolutely fulfils that contract.

Ostfield House is the setting for the 'present' of the book, and this is very definitely a book about a haunting, and not about demons. My exorcist character still exists. He still directs the characters to the terrors of Ostfield House, but he no longer has to hold an exorcism (and to be fair, there's no chance I'd write one anywhere as near as good as Blatty, so I figure I've saved myself some embarrassment there).

The book is a while from being finished. Maybe about 40,000 words away. No doubt I'll have more to say on my progress over the coming posts.

[feathers-and-fisticuffs]

Making Amends...

[chapter list here]

You stubborn idiot...”  Nanu covered his mouth, tears on his cheeks, not sure whether to laugh or cry now.  “Why did you do it?”

Kabu groaned, still coughing up water.  “You’re the stubborn idiot...”

“Don’t make this about me!”  He smacked Kabu’s arm.  “You could have died!  If I hadn’t been able to get to you in time I-- You--!”

“It doesn’t matter.”  He shrugged.  “‘Least I wouldn’t have to go home...”

Nanu slapped his arm again.  “Idiot!”  He sighed when Kabu gave him a weak smile.  “Don’t talk like that.”

Kabu couldn’t help but laugh weakly, and held out one fist straight up, a set of dog tags dangling from them.  “I saved them...”

Nanu rubbed his eyes and shook his head.  “Keep ‘em.  For Arceus sake...”  He laid down next to Kabu, and stared up at the darkening sky.  “We could run away.  Forget about all this, find our own lives our own way.”

Kabu smiled sadly and let his arm fall on top of Nanu’s chest, dog tags jingling.  “You wish, lover boy.”

Basil cheered loudly, watching as Kabu defeated his opponent.  He had seen a lot of Pokemon battles, but this one, by far, had been the most exciting.  He waved when Kabu looked his way, wondering if he could even be seen in the excitement of the crowd, secretly hoping that thumbs up was all for him.

“And the winner is -- Kabu!  The Fire Type Master brings home another victory!”

Kabu held up a fist, smiling wide for the audience, putting on a show before shaking his opponents hand and clearing the field for the next two challengers.  Bede, who had been knocked out of the match early on by Piers, sat beside him.

“He’s not even that great.”  He muttered, arms crossed and a sour look plastered upon his face.

“Don’t be like that!  That was an amazing match!  Aren’t you happy for him?  He’s doing a good job!”  Basil sat back down and shoved his shoulder playfully.  “You were great too you big jerk.”

“Hmph.”  Bede wrinkled his nose at that.  “I was distracted.  I should have won.  The... sun was in my eyes.”

“Yeah yeah, whatever you say mate.”  Basil giggled.  “Is Leon going to be battling today?”

“Probably not.  He’s got too much on his hands already dealing with Rose’s company, and the Battle Tower.  You’ll get to see the new Champion in action though.  So that will be boring.”  He huffed.

“Be nice!  Didn’t you say you two were getting along now?”

“I don’t get along with anyone.”

Basil laughed.  “You get along with meeee~”

“You keep shoving me that’s gonna change!”  He threatened, but couldn’t hide his smile as he shoved back.

“Bede!”  Basil was thankful to see him relax a little bit.  He knew how hard Bede could be on himself, and sometimes he couldn’t see through all the negative to realize just how strong he could be.

One day, he knew, Bede would become Champion all by himself.

************

Kabu sat alone in the locker rooms, hair still wet and slicked back from the showers, towel around his waist, holding the dog tags around his neck in a tight fist close to his chest, eyes closed and breathing evenly.  It was his post-battle meditation, but he couldn’t manage to quiet his mind.

“You’re kidding, you still have that stupid necklace?”

The break in the silence startled him and Kabu leapt to his feet, almost losing his towel in the process.  “Nanu?!”  He could feel his cheeks growing hot with embarrassment at being caught in such a venerable way.  He hadn’t let go of the dog tags, still clutching them to his chest.

“You stubborn idiot...”  Nanu smiled, arms crossed tightly in front of him, nervously hovering.  “Why’d you do it?”

“You’re the stubborn idiot.”  Kabu smiled too.

“I’m sorry.  I said a lot of things that I shouldn’t have said.”  He started, watching Kabu drop the necklace to put his hand on his hip. 

“You think?”

“Let. Me. Finish.”  He took a step forward, punctuating each word with a poke to the chest.  “Ass.”

Kabu raised his eyebrows and made a lock and key motion over his mouth, pretending to toss it behind him.

“I know it’s a touchy subject.  And I was out of line.  I think. Maybe... I was feeling... Jealous.”  He admit, as if he had a gun to his head.  “And I lashed out.”

“Jealous?!”  Kabu couldn’t contain the laugh that escaped him, feeling guilty when he saw Nanu react.  “No, no come on I’m sorry, keep going.  I’m sorry.”  He grabbed Nanu by the wrist.  “Please.  Continue.”

“Keep it up and I’m not gonna be sorry anymore.”  Nanu growled.  “I don’t really have anything else to say.  But I’m sorry.  And I won’t do it again.  I’ll try to keep a filter on it.”  He muttered, and looked away.

Kabu laughed quietly, tugging on his wrist.  “Nanu~”

“What?”  He stepped closer, they were almost chest to chest, but he looked over his shoulder still, unable to look Kabu in the eye.

“Nanu.”  His voice grew more urgent, and it finally drew back the gaze of his old friend.  

“Wha--” 

Kabu lifted himself up on his tiptoes, still tugging Nanu’s wrist, and captured his lips in a sweet, delicate kiss.  “I forgive you.”

Nanu grinned then, looking starstruck and euphoric, as if he’d just found the most amazing drug, and cupped Kabu’s cheeks in his hands, pulling him back for another, rougher kiss, thankful that this time, Kabu didn’t pull away.

“Am I still in the doghouse?”  He asked when they finally separated, both of them left breathless and gasping for air.

Kabu grinned at that and draped his free arm over Nanu’s shoulder.  “Oh, big time.”

The clearing of a throat made both men jump, and Kabu instinctively hid behind the taller man, still clinging to his towel.

“Are we interrupting?”  Bede looked less than impressed, hands on his hips and tapping his foot impatiently with Basil standing next to him, covering his eyes and leaning against Bede for support.

“S-sorry... I just wanted to come find you after your match...”  

Kabu blushed even more and scrambled to find clothes.  “Oh Arceus, Basil go wait outside!  I mean we weren’t doing anything!  I mean... Bede please take your brother outside!”

Nanu laughed as he watched Kabu flounder around the locker room, searching desperately for his common decency.

Bede rolled his eyes, putting a hand on Basil’s back and leading him back out to the hall.  He couldn’t help but smirk at Kabu as he did, feeling like whatever battle they were fighting, he had won this round.

Kabu quickly tossed on his clothes, cursing and threatening Nanu with bodily harm at each little quip he made.

“Guess you’re gonna have to give him the talk now, huh?”  Nanu snickered when Kabu’s ears went red.

“Nanu I’m going to kill you and they’ll never find your body, I swear!”  He was embarrassed down to his core.  This was no way to conduct himself.  He had a responsibility! To... to not do whatever that just was!

“Relax, Kabu.  He’s not five.  You don’t have to pretend like you’ve never thought about kissing someone in your life ever.  I’d be willing to put money on the fact that he’s kissed more girls than you have.”  He winked.

Kabu slicked his hair back, before smacking Nanu’s arm.  “You are NOT helping!”  Hearing Nanu laugh calmed him though.  This wasn’t the end of the world.  This wasn’t even a bad thing.  He was just panicking over nothing.  Probably.

“Ow!  Hey, save it for the bedroom!”  Nanu chuckled, drawing his shoulders up at the glare he received.  “Okay!  Okay I’m done I’m putting the filter on now!”  He promised, and covered his mouth.  “Filter’s on I won’t say anything stupid anymore.”

“I highly doubt that.”  Kabu quipped quickly before rushing out the door and giving Nanu a chance to fire back.

Basil and Bede were both sitting on a bench just outside the locker room, Bede was giggling and Basil was shoving him.  “Shut up you’re so embarrassing oh my God!” 

“Basil?”  Kabu straightened his slightly wrinkled uniform, and Bede burst out laughing again.

“Bede shut UP!”  Basil whined and covered his face.  “You’re so weird!  Stop making fun of me!”

“Bede be nice to your brother.”  Kabu scolded, still feeling the embarrassment radiating off of him in waves.

“You’re not my dad.”  He shot back, glaring suddenly.  He didn’t like being told what to do.  Especially not by Kabu.”

“And thank goodness for that.  Everyone’s happy.”  He held out his hand for Basil to take, helping him to his feet.  He regretted it, but if Bede was going to be a troublemaker, he’d learn what it feels like to throw stones.

Basil held Kabu’s arm to steady himself, looking exhausted from all of the excitement.  “Bede?  Aren’t you coming?”

Bede glanced down at his rotom phone.  “Yeah I’ll... catch up.”  His voice was suddenly very sober.  “See you in a bit, I’ve got some... stuff to do.”

“Oh... Okay...”  He let Kabu walk him out of the stadium, Nanu following quietly behind.

Kabu made it to the lobby before stopping suddenly, his guilt getting the better of him.  “Hey, I forgot something.  Sit here with Nanu I’ll be right back.  And you?  Don’t say a word.”  He pointed a finger at Nanu who raised his hands in surrender.  “I’m Serious.”

He turned and hurried back to the locker rooms.   He turned the corner, and found Bede still on the bench where they had left him, knees pulled to his chest with his face hidden.  Kabu grit his teeth, he had done this now he had to undo it. 

“Bede...”

He fought the urge to rush over to comfort the startled boy, watching him almost fall flat on his face as he rushed to his feet.  “Stay away from me, stay away!  What do you want?  Don’t touch me!”

Kabu’s heart ached, in that moment he looked so much like Basil it hurt.  “It’s okay.  It’s okay, I’m gonna stay right here.  I just wanted to apologize.  I was rude, and I didn’t mean to say that.”

Bede rubbed his eyes and took another step back, falling back onto the bench.  “Well I’m not sorry!  And you’re right!  I’m glad you’re not my dad!”  He snapped, wrapping his arms around himself.  “I hate you!”

Kabu nodded.  “I know.  You can hate me all you want.  I don’t blame you.  But I am sorry.  I let my temper get the better of me again.”  He admit.  “You’re a good kid, Bede.  I’d be proud to call you my son.  I know Rose was too.”

That didn’t seem to be the right thing to say, as Bede burst into tears, covering his face in the collar of his coat. 

“Bede?  What’s wrong?  I’m sorry, I know that might still be a sore spot, I...”

He muttered something, and it made Kabu stop talking.

“What?”

It took a moment for him to lift his head and speak clearly again.  “I hate that Basil is happy with you!”  He said, finally.  “I hate it it isn’t fair!  You aren’t his dad!”

He was startled, but not surprised.  “Oh, Bede... may I sit?”  He asked, waiting for a response before moving closer and scaring him more.  Bede just covered his face, making a frustrated noise.  Kabu cautiously took this as a yes, and sat down next to him.

“Rose liked him better too... everyone likes him better than me and it’s not fair..!”

Kabu gently put an arm around his shoulders, not wanting to do anything to scare him off or make him think he was in danger.  “That isn’t true.  Rose loved you both very much.”  He said softly.  “He wanted to do right by you two, I know he did.  He’s just an idiot.”

“You don’t know that!  You don’t know anything!”

“I know he came to have a not so friendly chat with me, after we met.”  He chose his words carefully.  Truth be told, Rose had beaten the shit out of him.  But he decided not to go into too much detail.  It was a humiliating night he did not want to relive.

“Why do you hate me?”  Bede sniffled and rubbed his eyes.  “What did I do to make you hate me?”

“I don’t hate you kid.  I promise.  You’d know it if I hated you.  I wouldn’t be here right now.”

Bede was slowly starting to get comfortable, and had turned toward Kabu, pressing his face into his shoulder as he tried to stop crying.  “You’re so nice to Basil...  Even when he messes up you’re nice to him.”

“And I should be nicer to you, too.”  Kabu admit.  “I’m sorry.  Why don’t you come home with us?  Stay one more night?  It’s late, Opal would strangle me if I let you go home in the dark.”

Bede laughed a little at that.  “Then maybe I should go home now.”

Kabu smiled.  “Oh yeah, real funny kid.”  He started to stand, but Bede grabbed onto his shirt suddenly, as if he was afraid Kabu would leave him.  He scooted back onto the bench and put his arms around the boy, hugging him tight.  “Hey, what’s up?  It’s going to be alright...”

Bede pulled the letter out of his pocket, not wanting Kabu to let go.

“Hm?  What is it?”  He took the letter and read it over Bede’s head as he clung to him, squeezing a little tighter as he glanced through it.

“Did you tell Basil?”

“No...”

Kabu nodded and ruffled his curly white hair.  “Good.  It’s better that way, for now.  He needs to get his confidence up before Rose tried wedging his way back into your lives.”  

“I can’t bring myself to be mad...”  He admit.  “I want to be mad, I want to hate him like Basil does, but I... can’t.”

Kabu held out his arm to Bede, to help him stand.  “It’s alright.  I understand.  You don’t have to hate him if you don’t want to hate him.  But it doesn’t mean you have to forgive him.  If he really wants to reconnect with you, he’s just going to have to go at your pace, not the other way around.”

Bede nodded at that, thankful that finally, someone was making sense of the chaos in his head.  “Okay.  Uh.”  He pulled his arm away once they were both standing and retreated back into his cold, emotionless old self.  “I’ll meet up with you and Basil in a while.  I really do have a few things to take care of.”

Kabu didn’t push things further.  “Of course.  I’ll leave the door open.”

He turned to leave, pausing as Bede grabbed onto him quickly again, looking for one last comforting hug, before silently stalking off as if he hadn’t just broken down in front of Kabu.

Kabu was pretty surprised it had happened too, if he was being honest.  Somehow, he always forgot that beneath that rude attitude of a brick wall, there was a kid inside who was just as hurt by what Rose had done as Basil.  He would be more careful next time.

************

Nanu sat with Basil in the lobby, bouncing one leg nervously as he glanced around.  “So uh.  Those matches sure were something...”

Basil glared at him, trying to channel Bede in his stare.  “Kabu told you not to talk.”  He tried to make himself sound intimidating.

He laughed nervously.  “Chill, kid.  Just being polite.”

“He is way out of your league you know.  He deserves someone with respect.  Who is kind.  And nice.  And not a big jerk.”

Nanu grimaced then.  “Yikes.  Okay then.”  He bit his tongue before he let slip an insult and stared at the wall to his left.

“You ready to go, Basil?”  Nanu appeared again from within the gym.

“Please.”  He stood, nose raised haughtily.

Kabu smiled.  “Alright.  Nanu, behave.”

“What?  I didn’t even do anything!”

“He tried to talk to me.”  Basil tattled.

“I was making small talk!”

Kabu kissed Nanu’s cheek.  “Goodnight, Nanu.”  He handed Basil his cane and walked him out the door, looking once over his shoulder and giving his old friend a shy smile.

Nanu sighed.  This was an obstacle he had not been prepared for.

************

Bede crawled back into bed next to Basil when he got in, much calmer now and looking more exhausted than anything.  He wrapped around Basil in a hug, staying quiet.  Basil just smiled and yawned.

Kabu brought Basil a glass of water, smiling when he saw the two of them looking happy.  “Goodnight Basil.”  He kissed his forehead and made sure he was tucked in, then moved to the other side of the bed.  “Goodnight Bede.”

Bede turned away, he didn’t want to look at Kabu.  This felt like being made fun of and he didn’t like it.

Kabu just leaned over and kissed the top of his head, draping a blanket over him.  “Sleep well boys.” 

He left the door open just a crack as he left.

Bede watched him leave the room, feeling tears well in his eyes.  What kind of game did he think he was trying to play?

“Told you he didn’t hate you.”  Basil muttered sleepily.  “He thinks you’re a jerk, probably.  But he doesn’t hate you.”

Bede sunk down into the other pillow.  “I am a jerk.  Maybe he should hate me.”

“You are a jerk.”  Basil yawned.

“And?”

“No and.”  He giggled when Bede tried to push him out of bed.

“Goodnight Basil.”  He huffed.

Basil fell asleep before he could respond.

[onewomancitadel]

Character sacrifice in RWBY

Because I was writing about the direction of Cinder's story, the redemption-by-death question came up in my head and I knew I needed to address that again. I have written about Hazel's parental sacrifice - which I think I still mostly agree with and said everything I needed to say - and I think the point of that parental sacrifice is that it rights the relationship of parent-child - and is essentially a 'good example' to both Salem and Ozma, one who murdered her four daughters and the other responsible for, you know, the Huntsman academies which so wounded Hazel and his sister. You can see this played out with Raven-Yang most prominently, but it still comes up with other parent-child relationships or parent-child relationship analogues.

So it doesn't make sense to me to read Cinder as a parent who would sacrifice herself for the world. There's no relationship coded that way, except the stretch that Emerald perhaps wants to see her that way - but then that's truly Hazel (and once Hazel frees Emerald, she grows beyond that symbolic childhood).

'But Pyrrha didn't sacrifice herself that way': I'm discussing sacrifices which are not condemned by the narrative. I'm not sure why we would get a reprisal of a Pyrrha-style death, because that's the conflict of the early story. This is true for Penny too, and I really don't think the climax of the story is going to end that way - or if it does it's one of those sacrifices that because you chose to do it, you get what you wanted anyway. (This might happen with Oscar). If the story does just affirm the same thing they've been telling and not reprise anything in a new/positive way that they seem to keep implying will happen (as things do sort of progressively improve), I obviously can't help that and I think some of their narrative decisions will be more unjustified in retrospect (see my previous post yesterday about it).

I also think this is even more thematic evidence Summer made a very serious sacrifice, or a serious bargain, which given the fact our other Grimm-cursed character (Cinder) esssentially has a bargain with Salem as well, seems more and more likely the case. I can't say what the ultimate resolution of that is going to be, but we don't have all the answers yet.

Also, for me, the fact that Cinder's enslavement in Atlas is like that of the scapegoat child in The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas - one suffering child who is sacrificed for the prosperity of the utopian city

makes me seriously question people who think that an eventual redemption for her would be her sacrificing herself and killing herself. Certainly, remixing and reusing stories is necessary... but I don't know why they would take something already heartwrenching and then make it worse, as that doesn't really feel like R/WBY.

I made a post a while ago about The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas and Cinder, but I still get a hoot out of the fact Omelas is Salem, O. backwards, seen through a rearview mirror by the author (Ursula K. Le Guin) hence its name. The Ones Who Walk Away From Salem. As I mentioned in the reblog of that post, it's interesting that the volume which makes Cinder's background explicit (when it was previously implicit, what with the Cinderella business) is also the one where we directly get the ones who walk away from Salem - Emerald and Hazel.

It is interesting that Atlas has that literary inspiration of Omelas and then you've also got The Glass Unicorn's art nouveau art direction might be inspired by Atlas Shrugged, and overall Atlas Shrugged seems relevant in the context of the moral struggles in Atlas.

Of course, I imagine the refutation might be that because Pyrrha sacrificed herself, the only way Cinder could possibly redeem herself would be to experience the same fate. I think this is both a narrow perspective of redemption - whilst I agree a symbolic gesture which answers the evil committed by a character in a story is interesting and makes sense, I equally don't think you can reduce moral acts to tit-for-tat - and I think really misunderstands the preventable tragedy of Pyrrha's death. It shouldn't happen again. I don't think Cinder's worldview should be validated. If it's either kill or be killed, be sacrificed as a child by Atlas and Rhodes or be sacrificed as an adult for the 'greater good', there's no reason to redeem herself. It's the same pain.

If anything, I think Cinder's grand symbolic gesture, if she helps the heroes, should be greater than anything she's done for the side of evil, and should continue to be greater. I suppose this is my taste, but I like the idea that whatever it's possible for her to do as a villain (and so many call her a useless villain), she can do even more heroically.

I swear I'm not on copium, I just think RWBY isn't wholly approving of heedless sacrifice, though there is some intentional parental sacrifice which revisits the true point of something like Vader's death for Luke (peaceful true death/seeing his son with his own eyes), not because he was too evil to live which is the poor takeaway from that redemption. The character I genuinely do fear for is Raven, given that she is a mother, but given that she's a Mother of the Mother-Maiden-Crone variety, I'm not as concerned as I otherwise would be. (We ideally want her to complete the full life cycle lol). Especially so given Summer. Add in the fact resolution with Qrow is necessary in addition to Yang (even Tai), her whole character story is not only about motherhood.

As Adam has come up before, he's not a villain redeeming himself and I believe his death is framed as regrettable and tragic - Blake doesn't want to kill him. He is a symbolic bull sacrifice though and there's some greater mythic stuff going on with his character (especially as he's the wilting rose curse). However with him there is that thing which is that he's a secondary antagonist for Blake's story, and given the fact - as I discuss in that Hazel post - that he's meant there as contrast to a villain that redeems himself like Hazel, I really think his character served a purpose. Here is my post about Cinder and Adam for further reading.

In the case of a character like Penny, her sacrifice is arguably in a more 'positive' context than Pyrrha. She gets to make her death meaningful in a way she couldn't before, and it's a choice she gets to make when her life had otherwise been controlled by everybody else - including her very resurrection. Penny's not Ozma's first death revisited, it's his final death, and something to me indicates the direction of his and Salem's arcs. There's also the fact that as the Winter Maiden and an ostensible robot girl, she affirms her life by death, she helps Winter on her redemption and makes her a Real Girl (Winter Maiden)... her character arc is complete. What's really troubling by the notion of death-by-redemption is that the character arc is incomplete, and otherwise it has troubling statements about how you grapple with bad things you've done.

I also think there's the uncomfortable truth that Penny's death, whilst moving to a lot of us, is a death of someone who's not a main character. So whilst there is character loss, they're trying to be really nice about it. Lol. I also like that neat touch of the Snow Maiden with Penny, who melts the first time she loves someone.

Anyway, I don't think RWBY has an overly simplistic opinion on sacrifice. It's not 'sacrifice bad' but it's also not 'sacrifice good', and that's interesting to me. The middleground is rather refreshing. It's much easier to do if you've got an ensemble cast as they do, as well.

[butwhatifidothis]

It's not serious because it ISN'T played in a serious manner. One look through Dorothea and Edelgard's support makes it pretty obvious.

"Dorothea: Edie. I'm telling you I'm fine. If you push me any further, I'll write an opera about you. I'll do it right here and now. And then I'll sing it in your face!

Edelgard: Settle down, Dorothea, I can take a hint! If you insist, I'll drop the subject. Whatever you do, don't write more opera lines about me. My cheeks are probably still red from your last performance."

So yeah, it's not some deep "Edelgard is censoring operas for giving info about the war" so much as it is "Edelgard's bans her friends play where she's the main character because she's embarrassed by the way she'll be depicted."

Hell, you can't even go "she's censoring it because she doesnt want to be potrayed negatively" because she's potrayed positively in said play. It's not serious because it isn't POTRAYED seriously.

My guy I don’t know how to tell ya this but censorship is literally always serious. There’s no “haha this person of high authority disallowed the public from producing [x piece of art here] because they’re just a silly goose” there is almost only ever “this person of high authority disallowed the public from producing [x piece of art here] because they are abusing their power over the people.” Edelgard literally passed a law saying the company couldn’t make the play before she even saw it. I cannot stress this enough: that is serious, because that is censorship, and censorship is bad 99.99% of the time because it holds back the arts and disincentives people from engaging in artistic drives lest their works be deemed illegal and they as artists put in danger of being arrested for breaking the law of “don’t make art this one person who’s in charge doesn’t like.” 

Like!! “you can't even go "she's censoring it because she doesnt want to be potrayed negatively" because she's potrayed positively in said play” except she banned it before she saw it, so she can’t even know for a fact that she was portrayed either positively, negatively, in a serious light or a light-hearted one, in an action piece or a political drama, whether there’s romance in the forefront or as a central focus or even present at all - she knows zero, zilch, nada about this play except for it was made by the Mittelfrank Opera Company and so maybe Dorothea had a direct hand in actually writing it, and that was enough for her to make an official decree that banned the company from performing this play. 

I’m going to be serious and transparent here, I am not understanding how “no, she didn’t ban the play for political reasons, or because it shows her in a bad light, but because - despite it (in all likelihoods) being something that shows her in a good light - it was about her at all, and so she banned it and made a decree saying this company isn’t allowed to make or perform this play in front of the public, and is only convinced otherwise because of favoritism” is any better at all. You said in the previous ask that this never said that all plays about the war are banned, “just” this one, but be honest with me! How on earth is this not indicative of something larger when any and all plays about the war must have Edelgard as the main character nearly without exception? When she’s already shown a penchant of censoring things she doesn’t want others knowing during the war? Edelgard is the face of the war, by her own want, so unless you are specifically detailing the life of one specific person that isn’t Edelgard (or Byleth or Hubert, because they are attached to Edelgard’s hips and thus must also heavily feature her) you just can’t make a play about the war, you can’t make one of her at all, whether or not it’s positive or negative, unless you’re a very close friend of hers that can convince her otherwise. 

Edelgard getting flustered about Dorothea writing a play about her is all cute and funny and okay and something I literally have zero problems with up until she spreads and forces the people to comply to not do that with a decree that actively disallows them from doing so. At that point it is no longer just her getting haha embarrassed about her friend writing something about her. That is her, as an authority figure responsible for thousands of people, showing that she is willing to throw around her power to stop people from making, apparently, literally harmless art about her, all because she’s too childish and insecure and she’s letting her emotions heavily influence her decisions that affect thousands of people, not just her personal circle of friends.

Because that is what their supports are referring to. Edelgard asking one friend to not write anything about her (or at least not saying what they wrote to her face). You’ll notice a distinct lack of any mention of “I will actively legally ban plays where I am the main character” in their supports, because their supports are not in reference to Edelgard actively legally banning plays where she is the main character. That that is what ends up happening in their ending despite its light-hearted tone should be very worrying.

[insomniac-ships]

Hi there- I’m someone who wants to be pro-ship, but I’m kind of struggling about it. I SINCERELY believe that thought crimes are NOT a thing. But I also believe that a person interacting with certain ideas a lot, like very intense things so much it’s casual, can become numb and insensitive to it (as an example not related to pro-ship topics, I think it’s uncool when people joke about suicide a lot to the point where it feels like they don’t take it seriously despite it being a serious thing)

Can you offer any thoughts on the predicament? Were you ever kind of at war with yourself about it?

Like, as a broader picture, how can a person align themselves with any particular idea any more when so many people are chomping at the bit to misinterpret or pull out the worst possible thing attached to that idea?

I’m not necessarily asking you to answer all that, just the initial two if you have time and are willing. I wanted to get these thoughts out there to someone who wouldn’t harshly judge and your blog seems like a safe place to do do

Hey Anon! I'm honestly really glad that you felt safe enough here to ask questions like this.

(This got awfully long, so the rest will be under the cut!)

I totally understand where you're coming from, and to a point, I agree. Thought crimes are absolutely not a thing, and no one should be punished for thoughts that they don't act on. The idea that thinking something is the same as doing that thing can be very, very dangerous. I also completely understand your concerns about desensitization to some absolutely horrific stuff. I think it's important to be able to take a few steps back and really get a good look at the bigger picture every now and again. That might mean having to stop and sit with yourself in order to kinda... recalibrate. That's probably not the right word, but oh well. Sometimes it's necessary to give your head a good etch-a-sketch shake and remind yourself that fiction is fiction and reality is reality. I hope I didn't get too far off track, there.

[I, personally, sometimes get so involved in a hyperfixation that it tends to bleed into other aspects of my life. That's usually when I know I need to give the gerbils on hamster wheels my brain a bit of a shake and step back for a minute. Does that make sense?]

I can't say I've ever necessarily been at war with myself over this stuff, to be honest. When I was a preteen/teenager and first really started using sites like deviantArt, Quizilla, FF.net, and roleplay forums, it was never a question in my mind whether or not the (admittedly problematic) stuff I wrote or liked reading about would have been bad in real life. I knew it was. But I was also very aware that what I was reading and writing was fiction. It was pretend. No real people were being hurt. Even when I was all of 11 years old, I knew that the art I was seeing of fictional characters was, well, fictional. Running into KakaSaku art at 12 never made me think it was totally a-okay to date a 26 year old at that age.

I grew up in the era of "ship and let ship", "don't like, don't read", and having full conversations with fictional characters in the author's notes of fanfics. I've always been proship, even long before it ever had a name. That was just... normal back then.

That's kinda why I'm not against using the proship label, even with its awful reputation. I know myself, I know my values and beliefs better than anyone else does (despite what some antiship folks like to think), and at the end of the day, I know I'm a good person. I don't send hate, I don't start petty arguments or drama, I do my best to respect boundaries, and I try to mind my business. If people want to spread misinformation and make up lies about what being proship is about, fine. I know my truth, and the truths of many others. If people have questions, I'm happy to answer. ♡

I, uh... didn't mean to get so ramble-y there. QuQ I really hope I answered everything in a satisfactory manner. Like I said above, if you have any other questions, I'll do my best to answer! ♡

[lovee-infected]

I'm about to start my own (twst) writing blog and I'm going around writers that I follow for some advice q*q could you give me any wisdom on what I should do when starting a writing blog? thank you!! I love your works and you're one of the writers that inspire me

Aa thank you baby I'm so happy to hear that I inspire you!! First off, good luck with the new writing blog! I'm glad that more authors are joining the fandom and wish you all the best with your works! 💞💖💞 Other than trying to keep your blog organized by creating a proper masterlist, choosing a suitable aesthetic, having a set of rules and making sure to tag all of the warnings and necessary mentions (gender of reader, n/sfw or trigger warning), I tried to come up with some useful advises that might help!

1) Keep up the great confidence!

First and the most important thing about a writing blog, is to be confident and strong. Look, you shouldn't be afraid of posting your works and sharing with the redt of the fandom, even as they're not as perfect as you want them to be. The more you write, the more you learn! And you'd grow to be better and better as you continue to share your works! Not even the greatest authors had been any perfect on their first days!

2) If you're accepting requests, try to set a limit

Being overwhelmed with asks is never pleasant, if you just open your inbox to face 500 requests you'd be to be terrified and confused and even lose your passion to work on any of them because of the stress and not knowing where to begin from. Try to set a limit based on your personal limits, how many requests do you think you can have at the time without stressing out because of how much they are? 10? 20? 50? 100? 200? Doesn't matter! If you feel like you're fine with huge numbers like 200 and 150, it's totally fine! If not, remember that setting a character limit would not only reduce the possible chance of stressing out and overwhelming anxiety but it'll also help you manage your inbox better and easier! You can start taking requests again just as soon as your inbox in cleared!

3) Try to treat yourself every once in a while!

Working on requests can be tiring and sometimes, boring. It's great if you enjoy working on requests no matter what they are but remember to write for your own pleasure every once in a while too!

Even if you have like 100 requests laying in your inbox, feel free to write self indulgent fics or something that you'd like to write even if it's super odd an irrelevant to your normal writings! Remember that you deserve to read something you enjoy just as much as the others do, so don't forget to bless yourself with that beautiful writing of yours ;) Remember that it's your blog, you are free to do everything that makes you happy or anything that you simply enjoy doing ^^

4) Remember that no matter what, toxicity always exists and it's not your fault

Look toxicity is very common to be found social medias, especially platforms like tumblr in which anonymous function exists. Even celebrities and world-famous artists might get attacked over pretty silly stuff every once in a while so it's something usual to happen! I wish you never receive any potentially harmful or rude asks or messages but if you ever do, best would be to block or simply ignore them! People in this platform can be ridiculous sometimes lol, there are people who DM creators just to spam hate and block the creator whom they spammed after wards lol, so don't even bother t waste your time with such people!

If anyone comes to your inbox/DMs/comments to say something harsh or leave a sharp critique, best would be to ignore them. Even if you like to answer or respond to reply to them tey to be chill and not take them seriously. Remember, even if they didn't like your content they could've just scrolled down without bothering to read your work, so if they had the guts to come and spam you with nonsense just because they didn't like your work, it's their fault! They didn't have to read, and it doesn't even matter if they liked your work or not! It's their problem and all, so remember not to let these kind of people get to you at all!

5) Take it easy with writing

Don't push yourself too hard, remember that not everything you write is supposed to be *perfect. This is even more serious when it comes to requests, thousands of unexpected ideas might pop up in your inbox and it makes it quite confusing to choose what to write or do!

First off, don't be any shy or anxious about rejecting the requests which don't follow your rules or come when you aren't accepting requests. Those who violate your rules aren't worthy of your time and work!

Secondly, keep this is mind that you aren't expected to be able to write everything! Sometimes the requests are hard to write, the idea seems odd or hard to understand, or sometimes you just don't feel comfortable or don't want to write it all, which is okay!

You always have the right to take/drop whichever of your requests and you don't owe anyone anything for this, it's your own blog, your work, and your content. Don't ever force yourself to write something which you don't like to write!

6) Your health is always the top priority

Remember that no matter how popular you are, how many followers you have, how many requests are left in your inbox or how much people are wishing to get more of your content, you're free to stop writing and put this wrong at a temporarily (or even permanent) hiatus.

Sometimes you just don't feel like writing, then don't write. If you feel like you're being too busy with work/family/school and anything please don't force yourself to write! Remember that your real life matters always come first!

Also, you might even need a break from writing without necessarily being really busy or sad, sometimes you just need to take a break from everything, and it's totally fine to do! Take as much time as you need and stay healthy during your breaks. It'd be even better if you don't even think of any new ideas/Aus while you're taking a break from writing so you can fully set your mind off stuff! Doesn't even matter if followers/readers are going to appreciate this or not, it's not about them, it's about you. Remember that your good readers/follwers who understand that authors are normal humans and not writing machines would surely understand if you need to take a break too!

7)Keep yourself motivated!

There might be days when you can and have the time to write, but something's holding you back. You feel like procrastinating over and over at some point lose the motivation to write. First off, that's a really normal matter to see as many of us have to struggle with laziness sometimes lol, but there are some useful tips to keep yourself Motamedi and hyped while you're planning to write! A bit of challenge would not only make it a lot more fun, but is also a good way to keep yourself motivated and inspired!

First, try prompt lists! They've always got plenty of useful ideas and inspirational quotes to use and are absolutely amazing to give you new ideas for a writing!

Second, try to challenge yourself by simple stuff like setting yourself word limits, trying to see how much you can write in an hour, use some suggested words in your stories (ex: Banana, train, knife, turkey) as a small challenge! You can also try small events (like milestone or holiday events) to celebrate on your blog with stuff like: Prompt list requests, CYOAs, character interaction and other new stuff that gives you a better motivation tp write instead of just having to work on the same, usual writing requests over and over.

Also, I suggest putting an specific hour for writing/ checking on your blog in your daily schedule as this is also a way of avoiding procrastination, instead of writing 10 requests a day and not writing anything for two weeks, try to set an schedule like writing 1-2 writings everyday! Remember to put your real life activities in the schedule too so you won't have to go through any trouble to find a balance between your real life and running a writing blog!

8) Remember the crediting/copyrights

I'm just adding this here because I can see quite a few of writers using uncredited art for their stories and it's been much and less of an issue lately ^^;

First off, the arts/headers used in your writing. Make sure not to use any uncredited card or anyone else's edit without their permission, otherwise it's nothing different from stealing the work from the original artst!

If you're going to leave a link to the artist, make sure to check on them and check if they allow reposts with credit or not. If they don't, don't use their art. If they do, make sure to give them a proper credit with a link to them! (:

Editors too on the other hand spend a very long time making their edits and and aesthetics, so not copying their work is just as important as not stealing art from the artsits!

Pinterest is filled with uncredited art and if there's a pinterest art who is not linked to the original artist, putting the empty pinterest pin link would be useless and steal counted as stealing art.

9) Stick with your own writing style!

Writing style is like signature, everyone's got their very own and unique writing style. From the way you portray characters to what elements you use as the story develops, you're totally different from each and every of other authors in this fandom!

You may sometimes wonder if your writing style is any good at all while you look at other creators writings and feel the difference, and I gotta say: It doesn't even matter what others are doing! All that is important, is you.

Don't try to change your style to become close another writer's style, your own style is great as it already is! Even if you aren't yet that experienced with writing and feel like your writing could be better, remember that your writing skills will indeed improve as you continue to write and read newer and newer stuff, so don't worry about it!

Each and every writing style has got its own beauty, not everyone may totally enjoy your style at first but and as you continue to write, you'd get to learn what makes people enjoy your writing even more or how you can attract new readers with your writings, your style will change for the better as you write!

Though it's totally fine if you feel like there are writers who inspire and motivate you, remember that you won't have to be them in order to improve! You don't need to be just like them to be great! Even if you do have some issues like being a non-native speaker which can make it quite hard for you to write, you'd automatically learn and have most of your errors fixed as the time passes. I made LOTS of mistakes in my first writings but I hardly ever make any mistakes now because I'm used to it! Though it was a bit late I finally recognized my mistakes and corrected them! And I'd continue to correct more of my mistakes as I continue to write!

10) It's very good to have different writer mutuals

This one is rather optional, just a small recommendation! Though there are many writers who might recommend this as a rather important factor for running a writing blog, I'd say that this isn't necessary as there are still well-known tumblr authors and even twst authors who gained attention to themselves on their own and not with the help and support of any mutuals or writer friends, so it isn't impossible to be successful even without having any mutuals!

The thing with having mutuals is that it makes everything easier. A totally new twst blog can gain around 100 followers on its first without even posting anything more than a writing and a list of rules only because of being supported and boosted by well-known blogs while a for normal blog without any support or boosting, it may take up to 2-3 weeks or even an entire month to gain that 100!

Also, getting to talk with different authors (especially those who are more experienced than you) is motivational and heartwarming, you can feel like you have a team to belong to. You can discuss different writing ideas/issues/blog chores with them and see what they may think. You can even have their support with new ideas if you feel stuck/unmotivated while writing a piece!

I didn't have any mutuals on my first days either and I admit that this made things a bit hard, but it didn't hold me back from continuing to write! Yet I admit that it's surely very useful to have a couple of writer friends around you whom you can share your ideas with! Mutuals support each other, reblog each other's works and give each other a better chance of having their works read by more users, which is quite amazing and helpful!

11) Go for it and don't give up!

Remember that no one, not even the greatest writing blogs have been perfect on their first days. They weren't well-known back then either! And they wouldn't have been any successful today without being hard-working and strong. Leaving up to the previous 10 rules is the hardest part of having a blog, and it's all about not giving up!

Do not try to judge your writing and talents based on the amount of notes your posts get or how many followers you have, because these aren't ever going to show your true worth and talents! But I assure you, if you continue to write even through your hard days, your unmotivated days and your sad days no matter how hard it's supposed to be, everything will change. The more you write, the higher the chance of having new people find and read your works would be! Keeping up the hard work and believing in yourself is the key to achieving anything you may wish for, even having a successful writing blog!

As you continue to write, you'll get more readers, more notes on your posts, more followers and more people who enjoy your content!

Hope that these are helpful, wish you all the greatest and good luck with your writing blog!!💞💕💞💕💞💕💞💕💞💕💞💕💞💕💞💕💞💕💞💕💞

[julies-butterflies]

I must admit, sometimes I do feel like a ye olden solider, sending letters to my beloved across the waves during wartime. Oh my dearest Lydia, I hope the kudos and comments crops have been plentiful this season. Your last letter left me weeping. Why must you put poor Reginald through such pain?

(I gotta admit, I still can't believe that I'm talking to you. I've been looking up to your work for so long...it just feels a bit surreal, even now! Glad you like hearing my ramblings! And that you liked my vampire prompt! Did not realize you'd write back when I sent that in. Look at us now, huh?)

(Speaking of prompts, I sent those jukebox and willex ones too. And I loved them both so so much, I shall scream about them more when it is not 2 am because I need sleep)

(Oh and the update of If I Was You!!! Amazing, Stellar, Incredible, Reggie, Carrie, Julie shenanigans is my new favorite thing, DID YOU JUST DOUBLE THE CHAPTER COUNT, and I'm like 90% sure Trevor is in deep trouble with a certain angry jazz ghost. Seriously loving it)

I actually do not remember what it was like to send in 1/5 asks, because I did not get a Tumblr until very reccently! I've always been a nerdy person, but Jatp is my first time being really in a fandom. You gotta do something new in quarantine, right?

Ah yes. Luke and Emily. To me, it just seems obvious that there's so much love between them. Even with all the pain. You get it. You put it down so eloquently.

As for what kind of stories I like to read...it seriously depends on my mood.

I like niche aus, passion projects. Stories where you can just feel the author's love for the world they're inventing. But I tend to lean towards cannonverse. I like ghost stories, it's what drew me to this show in the first place. And I love exploring that concept. (Being forever gone, and always the same...it's just fascinating to me)

Platonic goodness is just WONDERFUL for this show. I will read anything with cuddles. I am touched starved and these kiddos are too, and I will cry about them puppy piling every damn day. Plus there's just some much POTENTIAL for future friendships! I love ones where Flynn and Carrie get to interact with the boys as well. And 90s content, from before and after the orpheum, just hits hard.

I really wasn't expecting to get invested in the couples on this show, but something about them is moving to me. So I do love to read about them. Watching two queer kids who lived during incredibly important areas of queer history find love together after death really hit hard for me, and there's just something so bittersweet about a girl and ghost deciding to love each other for the little time they're given.

I love family dynamics too. Anything with Ray and his seven disaster children, the band and Trevor.... I think Julie and Emily is one of my favorite dynamics to explore. A girl who lost her mother and a mother who lost her son, both grieving but with one able to speak to the dead...it's just very powerful to me.

(And of course, Luke and Emily, but I figured you already knew that)

Mostly...I like seeing the messy stuff. The unexpected consequences, the baggage. I want to see the messy emotions, the grief and anger, the jealously, the disorientation. I look for those glass shards, that might be too sharp to ever be addressed on the show. Not even the big, monumental plot lines just... the harder pieces of life, the little moments that don't fit neatly into a nine episode arc.

I just want to see them live you know? Love, laughter and loss all mixed together.

(One of my all time favorite tropes is "found family gets broken apart by trauma, only to find each other again and come back stronger than ever." I feel like this explains a lot of my taste in fiction)

Thank you for the writing advice. Your words were very motivating. I am trying to begin! I got up the nerve to start working on a little piece. Who knows if it will go anywhere. But it's been nice, to finally put some words on the page.

The POTC au is so freaking good man. The character dynamics are just on FIRE. Everything is broken and messy and the relationships genuinely tug at my heartstrings. It's such a fascinating story. Highly recommend, even with the cliff hangers.

OH HOW COULD I FORGET PAWPRINTER? Man oh man I love all her work. The wheelies art and steals universe is freaking amazing, not an avacado had me in tears (of laughter, till things got surprisingly sad). And All that Remains...slow burn Willex perfection. Jedi Alex and Pilot Willie have my HEART.

I don't think I've read firefall and weneedglitter (or if I have, I'm just not connecting the names to their pieces. I don't always remember author names. it's a problem). I will go look for them though! Cannot wait!

For more recs, I recently binge read We Found Wonderland. I was not mentally prepared for the sheer amount of feelings that gave me. Highly recommend, if you ever want an emotional rollercoaster with an incredibly satisfying end.

Going on to more serious subjects...I'm sorry your family doesn't see your grief for what it is: honest. Better to feel everything quietly, than make it an easily understadnable performance. Fake grief is so easy to spot.

I think of that scene from "Forever," when Buffy breaks down and tells Dawn that she has to keep busy, because if she stops, it means Joyce is really gone. There's a lot of truth there.

On a tangent here but.. there was a very long period in my life when I was told the ways I expressed my emotions were "incorrect". And I found that sometimes, no matter how you show your emotions, you'll always be criticized. Numbness can be called disinterest, but sobbing can be called attention-seeking too. Too big, too small: that jury was impossible to please This may not apply in your situation but...it's okay to feel however you can. It's the only think you can do, really.

As I've said before, Grief is such an odd trickster.

Don't you ever get tired of missing people... This past year, I've been so weary of grief. Sometimes it can be so sharp, but it's that dull ache. That ball and chain, no longer cutting through your skin, but rubbing it raw, weighing you down.

And people don't like to talk about that part, because it's long and tiresome, but oh, is it there. I find it hard to talk about my grief, because sometimes there's just so much of it. I could drown in it, and that fear keeps me from looking to close. To incorrectly quote Jane Austin: "If I missed you a little less, I might be able to talk about it more."

(Sometimes it's faceable. But sometimes you just can't bear it. And that's okay.)

But what you wrote in that eulogy...the love is there. It's in every word you write. I cried reading that section. I feel honored once again to see some of your jagged pieces. You're sharing your heart, and there's just so much love.

In the wise words of an author I know, "Love is like the snow Reggie. It never goes away."

And don't worry, I'm always with you.

Sending Love,

-LydiaStan7845 (aka Vampire Anon)

So...that Reggie and Nicky prompt

my god

my GOD

OH MY GOD OH MY GOD OH MY GOD OH MY GOD

I think it's safe to say congrats, you've officially destroyed me! I was not prepared for that at ALL. I should know better by now I guess.

I can't get over that even though they all take place in very different universe, all your stories just feel so connected! The way this talked about those headphones, which you mentioned in the first chapter of Kill Your Heroes...it's just so cool. All the characterization and backstory is just so well thought out, and it genuinely blows my mind.

I didn't think I could love Nicky Peters more. I was wrong. The way you write about him...even though you never go into exactly what happened to him after Reggie's death, you can just feel how much it's shapped him as a person. And the trauma around his father, and how he fears becoming like that, was just so beautifully written. He's just so lovable and flawed and trying so damn hard and you made my heart ache for him. Again.

You always take these genuinely crazy situations and...you just make them feel so real. I love you explore the strains such a revelation would put on Nicky's own life, it just makes everything so compellingly messy. It seriously feel like I was watching a real-life account of a family trying to deal with such a massive complication.

That porch scene had me in tears both times I read it. Reggie's just always a big brother, even though Nicky is more than twice his age now. My heart was shattered, and then you slowly mended it, piece by piece. And for absolutely no reason at all, you wouldn't happen to have a reference for the porch, would you?

Just wow. Hope you're doing well. Sending love and applause

-Vampire Anon

i’m not even gonna reply, but i want these documented... on my blog... for posterity.  ( for any curious onlookers, i’m dating this anon now!! )

[act-addict-actors-matchups]

@otomeramblings said,

I'm a girl, 23 years old, around 162 cm, with medium length dark brown hair (almost black) and brown eyes. I'm one of those people who are often asked "are you okay? Are you mad?" and no, more often than not that's just how my resting face looks lol

I'm a Scorpio and an INFP. According to my friends, I'm usually very sweet but no one likes to be around me when I get seriously angry ^^; I guess it's because i'm generally very soft spoken and I try to avoid conflict as much as I can, and when I'm upset is one of the times when I actually raise my voice. I have people tell me that I'm smart, but I just consider myself to be an overall average person. It usually takes me a while to fully trust someone but once they've earned my trust, I cherish their friendship for life.

I can fluently speak English and Spanish, and I recently got my English Translation degree. I love to read (both novels and manga) and to discover new music, I also really like dancing (I did ten years of ballet) and I recently rediscovered my love for drawing and writing.

Qualities I would like in a s/o:

-passionate, about anything, really. I'm usually very reserved unless I have something I really want to talk about and I appreciate when others listen, and for that reason I love to listen to people talk about things they're passionate about

-mature, not in relation to his hobbies bit more so in the sense that he can have a serious conversation when needed and take responsibility for his actions.

-patient. Being introverted and kinda awkward, I usually need time to recharge after being social and even while spending time together there will probably be silences when I think of what to say or even times when I'd just rather we spent it doing our own thing while being together.

Qualities I don't like:

-shouting. I hate it when people shout at me when they're mad because it makes me tear up immediately, I would much rather you tell why you're mad in a calm tone so we can work things out.

✧ The way I scREAMED when I saw your url 🤭 I love your writing so much skdhksdhksjd thank you for requesting a matchup. 😳💞 Stay safe! I hope all goes well for you!

I’d match you with: . . .

➜ HOW YOU TWO FIRST MET ; The blue sky was dotted with fluffy white clouds that drifted lazily in the gentle breeze while you were on your way to buy new drawing pencils. Your current ones were not exactly in the best condition after being used too many times. A sigh escaped from you as you fastened your pace. In all honesty, you would rather stay at home and maybe watch one of your shows but you knew if you didn’t go out to buy those now, you never would. As one particular building came to your sight, you suddenly stopped in your tracks. It was a flower shop. The vibrant display of flowers covered the table outside. Bold purple, soft pink and light lavender flowers sat right in front of you as well as some others you didn’t know the names of. The sweet smell of blossomed flowers filled your nose as you inhaled and exhaled. They were so beautiful that you couldn’t help but to reach at a lavender, the purple petals felt like soft velvet against your skin. The chime of the door opening ringed into your ears, drawing your attention away from the flowers in front of you. A man with a blue striped T-shirt, a pair of black pants and black leather shoes came out of the building with a bag you thought had flower seeds in it. A brown trench coat with a blue inner lining slung over his shoulder, beautiful, dark blue hair rustling as he gave his thanks to the employee before closing the door. The man turned around and you swear you stop breathing for a moment, because oh my god how dare someone this handsome come in to your field of view without a warning. After realizing that you’ve been staring at a stranger for a good seconds, you hesitantly looked away. But just your luck, while you decided that it was the time to carry on with your mission, you dropped your purse to the ground. You groaned before bending over to pick it up but to your surprise, you see another hand reaching over it? And most importantly, you saw that it was that handsome stranger when you looked up??? He gave you a kind but awkward smile as he hold out your bag to you. You muttered a “thank you” before grabbing it. After that cliche moment, there was an awkward silence between you and the man, but he decided to speak up to start a conversation by asking if you liked flowers. The conversation smoothly flowed from there. He just had that aura of gentleness radiating that you couldn’t help but warm up to the stranger, who you later learned the name of, quickly. He even offered to accompany you to the shop you were going, which you agreed if he didn’t mind. Your relationship steadily developed from there. To be honest, it wouldn't be obvious at all that Tsumugi has a crush on you. He's friendly and sweet to everyone he meets most of the time so nobody thinks twice whenever he's with you, except maybe Tasuku. His underlying feelings for you would show in the little things he does, the way his eyes shine whenever you laugh, how his ears perk up whenever he hears your name, how he somehow memorized all your favorite foods after you offhandedly mentioned it once before. For someone who majored in psychology, it’s kind of hilarious how dense he is regarding his own feelings. He would mistake those feelings of his as a weirdly strong platonic attraction for you and continue spending time with you in hopes to appease the feeling but be confused as to why he always felt unsatisfied. He finally realizes how smitten he is for you after a long internal monologue he had after he almost had a heart attack when you hugged him once for whatever reason.

➜ PERSONALITY COMPATIBILITY ; Tsumugi is the walking epitome of every single thing you’re looking in a S/O. You want someone passionate about something? This man literally couldn’t give up on his dream and love for the performance art. He’d be more than willing to talk about how acting involved a broad range of skills, including a well-developed imagination, emotional facility, physical expressivity, vocal projection, clarity of speech, the ability to interpret drama etc. He’d try bunch of different gestures in front of you and ask you which one you liked the best. He also absolutely loves it when you are the one who does the talking. His strength is CANONLY listening to others after all. He just gives off this aura that compels you to think that you can talk about anything and everything with him. Just like you, Tsumugi has a great need for harmony and dislikes any conflict so if there were to be any fights, they would be resolved in a day or two with the two of you talking it out. He majored in Psychology in university, and is very good at reading people so if you’re both in a social gathering and he senses you need to take a break, he will hold your hand and walk you somewhere with less crowd and noise. When you want to be alone, he’d give you the space you need and if you want to spend time he would be there. He is a pretty clueless baby at the start and would try to ask people for help on dating advice. He will however remember every single memory you two will and have made. You’ll never see him forgetting any milestones in your guys’ relationship. His way of saying “I love you” is through the flowers he picks and grows. As someone who can be shy to vocally express his love for you, he handpicks each flower based on their meanings with the hope that they could accurately convey the emotions he holds for you. The very sight of your smile as you watch each tiny plant grow kindles a budding warmth inside him, as if he’s a bee intoxicated by the nectar of your happiness. And to him, the vision of you happy is prettier than any flower in his garden, pushing him to always keep you bright and blooming.

➜ SHARED ACTIVITIES ; Tsumugi canonly moon/stargazes with Misumi so why wouldn’t he do the same with his S/O? It’s a cool, romantic and surprisingly unique activity to do together. There aren’t many activities one can plan for a date that are sweeter or more intimate than a night spent together under a beautiful, sparkling sky. You would ask each other questions about one another, without being afraid of letting the conversation slow down. This is a date to relax and linger over. If not that, I can totally see him taking you to a botanical garden. These places are beautiful and not too busy in general. Bonus points if you bring a camera and get some nice photos together as a couple. i’m so soft rn 🥺 But I feel like your most common date would be either tending the garden in the mankai dorm or just doing your own little things while being together. You might be writing on the table while he’s going over his script for the winter troupe’s newest play one more time or he might be grading his student’s test, since he’s a tutor and all, while you’re drawing. I see Tsumugi as someone who reads a lot so maybe both of you can read the same book together and discuss it afterwards. These types of dates are great for discovering how the other person views the world. One might learn that their significant other is passionate about a social justice cause, their favorite author, or their philosophy of beauty. These dates are great for sparking good conversations and they are introvert friendly. Or something even better: reading aloud. Reading out loud to each other can be incredibly sweet. And, as spiritual counselor Davida Rappaport says, "just the fact that you are both close and sharing space is ... a nice way to spend an evening."

➜ ZODIAC COMPATIBILITY ; Tsumugi is a Capricorn, his birthday being December 28th. When Scorpio and Capricorn make a love match, they get an opportunity to not only enjoy a loving relationship and learn the value of being a pair, but also to grow and mature as individuals. These two may be wary about sharing themselves with one another at first, and this emotional caution may dampen the initial impact of this relationship. These two tend to be a bit cautious (Capricorn) and pensive (Scorpio), and it takes a while for them to feel comfortable with a significant other. Though they may be shy of getting involved and not the quickest to trust and share, these two Signs will discover that they can have quite a profound connection — one of friendship and deep loyalty. What’s the best thing about the Scorpio-Capricorn love match? Their determination toward shared ideas and their strong devotion to one another. They can open doors to one another’s souls and show one another new ways of perceiving and feeling.

[elencelebrindal]

Favourite colour, music, film, anime? I'm curious

Uuhhh, sorry for the wait, this ask has been waiting in my inbox for a lot by now, but let me answer you. Some of these answers are really long, so I marked them with a title in case people are not interested in everything. Though, I don’t think many people would be interested at all, my life is not that eventful. 

Favorite Color

My favorite color is black (even though black is not technically a color, damn you art school why did you have to teach me that), closely followed by blood red and silver. 

Favorite Music

My favorite music... I don’t really understand if you’re asking me what genre I prefer, or who do I prefer listening to, so I’ll just go the safe route and answer everything at once.  I love metal (especially power metal, epic metal and folk metal, with a significance preference for its viking sub-genre), and I am in love with Blind Guardian, the first ever band I listened to. I still remember the first song I’ve ever listened, which is “Noldor (Dead Winter Reigns)”. Being a Tolkien fan led me to discover them, and subsequently to fall in love with the genre. Among my favorites there’s also Nightwish, Epica, Alestorm, and I’m baffled by Sabaton and Korpiklaani. I do listen to a bunch more bands, but not as much and I don’t know as many songs. 

But it’s not my one and only love. Aside from metal music, I also love classic music (I am deeply in love with a ton of Italian composers alongside the others), dark cabaret music (most notably Aurelio Voltaire, Dresden Dolls and Emilie Autumn, though her style doesn’t really fall into one single category), and I go crazy with anime music and openings.  I appreciate the music of anime so much, even though a lot of people don’t think highly of it, and since childhood I’ve always listened to our “opening singers” (the most important I grew up listening to are Cristina d’Avena and Giorgio Vanni), so I simply cannot stop loving them.  On a similar note, I cannot have enough of movie soundtracks. Composers like Howard Shore, Ennio Morricone, Hans Zimmer... the list could go on forever. I never get tired of their music. Again, videogame soundtracks are on the list of my beloved music as well, especially the music from Skyrim (Jeremy Soule) and Assassin’s Creed (Jesper Kyd). 

Favorite film/movie

I don’t really have one favorite. I do have a list of movies that I could watch over and over again, though, and others I just have fun watching even though they’re not my favorites.  The Lord of the Rings trilogy and The Hobbit trilogy are absolutely on the top of my list. As I said, I’m a huge fan of Tolkien, and I’m also a huge fan of Peter Jackson. Add them together and BOOM! I am a tiny bit bitter about the Hobbit movies, but seriously? I still loved it.  Right after them there’s ALL the movies by Tim Burton, Alice in Wonderland and its sequel on top. I love Tim Burton, so much I cannot even explain it. And Alice in Wonderland has a very special place in my heart. 

[story time, you can skip if you want]

Not just because I love the story and the craziness of everything, but because back in high school (my last year) we decided to do Alice in Wonderland with a twist for our theater lab, and I not only got to write the entire script, but also to play the Cheshire Cat alongside all of my friends. My best friend was Alice, my other best friend was the costume designer, a lot of other people I knew and loved were the other characters. It’s such a delightful memory for me that I never stopped enjoying Alice in Wonderland from that day onward.  I got so involved with my part that I ended up making an entire steampunk-ish cosplay of the Cheshire Cat from scratch, a cosplay I brought two times to a convention and I’m currently renovating after taking it apart. This is how much I grew attached to that play and to that character.  Some years ago, before this, we had a director guiding us for two years of theater lab. A delightful man that looked at me and decided I needed to be addressed as “Alice” because of how much I reminded him of her.  It’s just good memories. 

[end of the story time]

I also have the “classics”, like Harry Potter, Star Wars, and the like. If it’s fantasy/sci-fi/something along those lines, I probably love it. Regardless of who made it, being it the writer or the director.  One particular movie that holds a special place in my heart is “The Fall”, and I cannot really pinpoint a reason why I love it so much. I just do.  There’s many titles I can tell you, even more serious ones like “The Imitation Game”, “The Danish Girl”, or “Dallas Buyers Club” and “Fight Club”.  Even though I prefer fantasy themes, there’s significant exceptions.  Old Italian movies are among my favorites too, but they’re just a drop in the ocean.  To close this, I’m going to bring you my love for the entire “Night at the Museum” ordeal and the entire “Jumanji” series (as of now, but I will never love anything more than the original).  I get really excited when I get to talk about this kind of interests, sorry T_T

Favorite Anime

Oh boy.  This sounds like it might be an easy one, given the nature of this blog, but it’s actually not.  In fact, I forgot Saint Seiya was my favorite anime.  You see, I originally watched it when I was nothing but a child, with a memory that obviously wasn’t so good at the time. This eventually led me to forget about how much I loved Saint Seiya, even though its characters never left my mind, and I started gravitating more towards Yu-Gi-Oh!, especially 5D’s. For the longest time I was convinced my absolute favorite was Yu-Gi-Oh!, until I finally started re-watching Saint Seiya and got hit by the memory train. 

But let’s not wander too far away from the question. What’s my favorite anime? Of all time is Saint Seiya, hands down. It has so much to offer, so much diversity, so much story and so many characters. Here in Italy, it has one of the most unique dubs of all time, with dialogues that are aulic (for the Italian fans who are curious --> l’origine del registro aulico dei Cavalieri dello Zodiaco è stato deciso da Enrico Carabelli e  Stefano Cerioni ed è spiegato in questo video, ed è poi stato mantenuto da Ivo de Palma nella serie di Hades) and filled with quotes from authors like Dante Alighieri, Ugo Foscolo and more, an “oddity” that made me fall in love again and again. 

Aside from this, I have another list, because I honestly cannot bring myself to choose only one.  Above all are Yu-Gi-Oh! (in order from best to worst for me --> 5D’s, Duel Monsters, GX, ZeXal, Vrains, Arc-V), My Hero Academia, and Sailor Moon.  Honorable mentions are Attack on Titan, Black Butler, Another, Pretty Cure ( spent basically my entire childhood/teenage years watching them, my favorites are the first two series), One Piece, Dragon Ball, Naruto, Beyblade, Tokyo Mew Mew... this could go on forever.  I’m a sucker for “old” anime as well, so a lot of them are mostly from the 70′s, 80′s, 90′s. Some of them I was so little when I watched it, like for example Card Captor Sakura (I was like three years old and I dressed up as her for Carnival), that I don’t remember them but they still have a place in my heart.  I wasn’t even fixated on one genre and that was it, I watched the hell out of anime and I still do (when I have time). 

I do also watch yaoi (shame on me, I know), and since I’m here telling you about my favorites: I love Dramatical Murder, especially (and you might not believe me) for how creative the story and the worldbuilding are. I’m also shameless enough to have watched the entire game in all its incarnations, so there’s that.  Not only that, I’m shameless enough to have watched more explicit ones, but I’m not telling you ;) I have a reputation here, after all. 

This took a long time for me to answer, and I’m sorry. I legit looked at this in my inbox, tried to conjure up some will to write, failed and went back to bed or to my books. Rinse and repeat for an entire week.  And to all of you who actually made it through this entire thing without getting annoyed/bored, damn you’re determined. 

[randomfanfix]

Can I have a romantic bnha student matchup plz? I’m 5’4, bi, she/her, light-skinned with shoulder length curly hair left half red right half black and my eyebrows are dyed too but opposite, dark brown eyes w/ dark circles, and kinda chunky w/ a big bust.

Personality: I'm anxious, quiet, and reserved at first but once I’m comfortable I’m open up more. I’m bad at expressing emotions so I’m super straight faced and lowkey emotionless unless I’m alone or with someone/people I really trust. I hate being emotionally vulnerable and have commitment and abandonment issues and don’t trust people easily. I also lack empathy so I’m kinda rude sometimes but other times I can be really nice. I also like to think I’m kinda funny sometimes, and I’m very loyal. This is gonna sound super weird but I’m usually good at being serious but when I get really sad or uncomfortable I smile(like a really big kinda creepy one) or laugh(I’m pretty sure this is like trauma related) I wish I was joking like I’ve tried to stop but I can’t. Also even though I lack empathy in pretty good at comforting people

Likes: listening to music, sleep, winning, scented candles, cuddles. Dislikes: going to sleep, talking to people i don’t know, being emotionally vulnerable/opening up, losing, crying, getting pictures taken of me. Hobbies: I really like art. I draw and paint a lot. I also like sports. I play softball and I wrestle. I also like baking and cooking a lot. My favorite thing to make is cookies. Besides me doing sports I’m pretty lazy lol and if I’m not drawing I’m usually just listening to music, reading fanfics and stuff, or just on tiktok lmao. I really like Indie music and modern rock.

My MBTI is ISTP, Zodiac is virgo sun, taurus rising, libra moon.I have anxiety, depression, c-ptsd, possibly adhd. Some Random facts: I have tics, it's usually just the same 3, I barely ever sleep(I think it’s a waste of time), I could barely smell ever since I was born so I really like scented candles cause they’re like the only thing I can smell.(sorry for writing sm thank you!)

I match you with...

💖BAKUGOU KATSUKI!💖

Katsuki smiles eerily when in the middle of a battle. He is incredibly focused on achieving his own authentic victories and has learned to never underestimate his opponents. He is not only very athletic and talented at fighting, but also very intelligent and extremely perceptive, capable of strategic planning and quick improvising. He also possesses surprising talent in other areas, such as cooking and music, even though he doesn't show a particular interest in them.

He is not particularly nice or open with people who are on his side, or anyone else for that matter, but will act less unfriendly and sometimes even kind to those that manage to earn his respect.

Due to the constant praise of his abilities and powerful Quirk, Katsuki has developed a superiority complex, and because of that, he desires to be the first and best at everything. As pointed out by many people, Katsuki loves to win above all else and cannot stand it when he doesn't, leading him to lose his already short temper or, less often, sulk. He is fiercely competitive and will never settle for less than the number one spot. However, Katsuki also values hard work and fair play, to the point of refusing to acknowledge a winning result if he feels that his victory was not earned by actual merit. Along with that, he detests being pitied or looked down by others, and will hold contempt towards those that don't take him seriously, while recognizing the effort of those that manage to put up a challenge against him, like, for example, Ochaco Uraraka and Eijiro Kirishima.

Katsuki often has difficulty accepting his mistakes and shortcomings, and will fiercely deny them whenever they are pointed out by others, regardless of who they are. That doesn't mean, however, that Katsuki doesn't listen to advice, having come to realize his faults and how to somewhat improve on them thanks to the words and actions of other people like All Might and Best Jeanist, but because of his pride, Katsuki never outright admits it. He prefers to self-reflect alone and in silence, becoming a bit more brooding during those periods. Katsuki's unchecked pride has cost him victories on numerous occasions, like the Battle Trial or the Provisional Hero License Exam.

While his inspiration for becoming a hero was the same as Izuku's, the Symbol of Peace, All Might, their beliefs differ: Katsuki feels a hero should never stop fighting or give up, regardless of the threat they face, and that always winning is the mark of a true hero. Furthermore, due to his arrogant and conceited behavior, various heroes, civilians, and even villains have commented on it. However, Katsuki is unwavering in his aspirations of heroism, having outright refused Tomura Shigaraki's proposal for him to join the League of Villains, even after being offered the power and ability to "win."

Or, if he isn’t a preference of yours

I match you with...

💖Tsuyu Asui!💖

Tsuyu is a straightforward and aloof individual who always speaks bluntly from her mind and what she thinks about others. Tsuyu prefers to be called "Tsu", but only by people she views as friends. She commonly refers to everyone with the honorific "-chan", save for teachers and other authority figures.

Tsuyu grew into a highly mature and responsible individual who could divide her attention between school and home duties without letting one intervene with the other. This also means that Tsuyu knows how to lead and look after people, keeping them safe and at ease if they don't feel so. She has strong morals, goals, and principles and is willing to oppose her friends to defend them from decisions she considers rash.

Tsuyu is noticeably calm and collected, being able to stay levelheaded and focused even during the most stressful situations. An honor student since middle school, Tsuyu has great judgment, can communicate her intentions easily, and is rarely moved by emotion, making her an incredibly dependable ally who's capable of covering for a partner's weaknesses. For those reasons, Recovery Girl describes her as a "perfect pillar of emotional support". However, even Tsuyu has limits when it comes to staying composed, having broken down in despair or heartbreak a few times. Her words may also come off as unintentionally harsh thanks to her blunt honesty, resulting in her feeling guilty and regretful when she speaks out against her friends.

Sorry this took so long, and I hope you like your match(es) :)

[rainydawgradioblog]

a covidsation with august

Max Moore is a Vashon Island based artist, who just released stunningly ethereal album called Trust under the moniker August. Check it out-- ya won’t regret it! Thank you so much to Max for taking time to answer these questions and providing wonderful insight on this crisis and how we can all support each other!

Lola Gil: Tell me about your project. How long have you been making music (as August, or otherwise)? Which artists are you most inspired by? How would you describe your sound?

Max Moore: i started making music under the name august only this year ! for a long time i have been searching for a project and creative space that felt both personal and truthful, it just happened to all come together with the release of my ep, trust, in february ! i have released music under many other names over the years as i experimented and dipped my toes into different sounds and styles, my first releases on the internet were from when i was like, 12 !!! as far as musical heroes, the list is long but at the top would be arthur russell, bjork, brian wilson, arca, nick drake, sophie, elliott smith, autechre, harry nilsson, burial ... i really could go on forever. i think a lot of people try to hide their true influences but i feel there is something sexy about putting it all out there and referencing them as would an author, filmmaker, painter etc. my "sound" these days seems to be quite amorphous, it really is shifting from minute to minute. i would like to think it would sound like some amalgamation of the artists i listed earlier but it's hard for me to tell. 

LG: How long was the process of making and producing your most recent album, Trust? How do you feel now that it’s out? Are you planning on releasing any new music soon?

MM: the process was looooong, like really long. i didn't release any music "seriously" for 3 or 4 years ! trust came out of a sudden, brief moment of clarity and surrender, as cheesy as that sounds. i was able to overcome a lot of the blockages i face in my creative process and just assemble this thing, and it just fell together ! i had all of these bits and pieces and sketches and ideas that never fully developed into anything, so i decided to compile them into one continuous piece of music. i was really into this idea of sonic miniatures or vignettes, short and sweet but with a depth that's only barely touched upon before moving on to the next. it was so incredibly therapeutic and wonderful to put it out into the world, so much support from friends and peers all around me. for now i'm still incubating but am hoping to see new music taking form this year :)

LG: As an artist, how have you been affected by COVID-19? You mentioned you had a handful of shows cancelled-- what has your experience been/what are your thoughts towards live streaming?

MM: like many artists in the community, i had a good handful of shows, contracted work, etc. canceled as a result of the virus. i am lucky enough to be in a position currently where i did not have to take a significant financial hit due to this (i work a day job at a record store & cafe) but i know many artists who now are struggling to make rent and stay safe through this pandemic. i think live streaming is a beautiful and special way for artists to connect with fans, especially in a time like this ! but there are so many aspects to a real, alive, performance that just can't exist in that digital space. for example, making friends and connections, selling merch, interacting face to face with fans, etc. though there is something beautiful about people from around the world being able to tune in to a livestream and make song requests, leave a nice comment, confess their love lol

LG: Apart from August, have you been involved in any other creative projects recently?

MM: recently i have been moving into more sound design work ! i was recording and mixing sounds for a play that was to run in june i believe, which just today was postponed until next year. that was my first *official* sound design job, i was really looking forward to it :(

LG: How have you been personally affected by COVID? What has your quarantine experience been like so far? 

MM: aside from being out of work, and not being able to connect with friends, i feel very privileged as i am with my family, in my home. i have had a lot of time to do things that normally i am barely able to squeeze into my day like journaling, going for walks, extensive music writing sessions, playing video games. i think a lot of us are facing serious anxiety and depression right now, so i am really prioritizing my mental health, and making sure my friends and family are well. also, this new animal crossing game really could not have come at a better time, i don't know where i would be right now without it to be honest. 

LG: What music have you been listening to recently? What has been your go-to quarantine album/song?

MM: in any times of crisis, confusion, sadness, happiness, really in any time at all i always turn to the same album: arthur russell's 'world of echo'. to me it is the perfect record, i aspire to make music that makes me feel the way that album does. it is a great listen if you need some time to reflect, or need something reflected back at you ! another favorite right now is bo en, he's done some incredible video game soundtracks (i'm playing through one right now called 'pikuniku', soooo sweet) and just has the most brilliant ideas. ooo and alice coltrane !!! special music only right now.

LG: Were there any spring shows that you were particularly looking forward to that got cancelled?

MM: i have been waiting to see arca in seattle since i was a sophomore in high school, and she announced a tour only a few weeks before all of this went down ! hopefully there will be a rescheduled date that i will be able to attend ... fingers crossed

LG: How do you think the Seattle/greater Seattle area music scene is going to shift post-COVID?

MM: i think coming out of this time we will see an enormous influx of events as we all recognize how special and necessary these sorts of things are. i know i will be so grateful to be able to run around and dance and meet up with friends, all of that good stuff. i am hoping that we will not forget these times though and can sustain that excitement, we really will need it moving forward. there will be many more bumps in the road and we need to be prepared (as a community) to address them together !!!

LG: In this era of social distancing, how do you think artists can support each other during these weird and difficult times? How do you think social media is facilitating and/or inhibiting connection within Seattle’s creative community?

MM: luckily thanks to the internet there are SO many ways to support our artist friends, if anybody is unsure of how to do so please reach out to me or any other artist, they will be so happy you asked ! whenever i can i try to purchase merch, support on websites like bandcamp where money goes (for the most part) directly to artists, and promote + support bipoc, trans, & queer artists. it never hurts to reach out, connection is so important to sustain any way possible right now. i think social media can be dangerous as far as connection goes, but right now i am seeing a lot of openness and offering of resources as we all wake up every day into the reality that there is this crazy virus taking over !!!!!! the internet and technology are completely shifting the direction of art and community, in some good ways and in some bad ways. we need to remember that social media is a tool and a resource firstly, and also that the people who designed these apps we use purposefully made them addicting, mostly through analyzing our own data and habits ! my hope is that as our brains gradually begin to adjust to these new devices and systems, we can let go of some of the isolation and anxiety that they bring up in us.

-Lola Gil

[batmansymbol]

I'm here to second what anon said!! And to say that some of the best and most culturally shaping novels ARE YA! My world was recently rocked by a YA novel, my life was built on Harry Potter and the Warriors series. What ever you're writing, it's something you wish you could have been able to read and I guarantee there's an adult or a ya out there who is grateful to have grown up with your work. I also firmly believe that you don't need to one of the "classics" to change someone's life.

yes, i definitely agree about the Classics designation! some of my favorite books throughout my life have been obscure, and might not even hold up in my own opinion if i reread them, but were vital to me at the time i read them.

i don’t know. it’s also … as a person (as a slytherin, tbh) i’m so obsessed with Importance and Gravitas and sometimes i just really really really need to take myself less seriously, hahah. lauren groff, one of my very favorite Serious Literary Authors, has said “not all books aspire to art,” and she wasn’t speaking critically, and sometimes that’s the most freeing thing to remember. not every book has to stretch the boundaries of what a novel can accomplish. that doesn’t have to be my job, lol. i can tell a fun story and that can be the point, damn it