#I'm better at starting out strong

[total-serene560]

Writing Patterns

thanks for the tag me @longtallglasses and @magentamee!

rules: list the first line(s) of your last 10 8 5 posted fics (and 6 wips) and see if there's a pattern.

(these are not in chronological order of when I wrote them, but man I feel like it's super obvious which ones I wrote more recently)

POSTED:

What's On Your Mind (Pure Energy)

This summer, Mike decides, has been complete and utter bullshit. 

I Dare You

It was 3am at that point. The party they left had ended hours ago- one of those end of the year events hosted by their high school that had way too much adult supervision for any of the teenage antics that usually went on at all the parties they never got invited to over the past three years.

The Truth Runs Wild Inside of Me

Mike closes his eyes, El right across from him one second and swallowed up by darkness the next. She had a makeshift blindfold pulled taught over her eyes, making her quick-growing curly hair splay out in all directions when she asked him to sit down in front of her and close his eyes.  

Below The Fold

 It took until Piper was standing in Oberland Station, talking to a confused couple that was really just minding their own business in the biting morning of the autumn wasteland, for her to realize that whoever told her that they had some juicy story for her was a big fat liar. 

Source Decay (first thing I posted after a 5 year gap in writing lol)

Piper stood in front of the massive gate of Diamond City, her face pinched in frustration, “Seriously?” She muttered under her breath, rubbing her temples with her hands as she paced back and forth in front of the gate, “What the hell!”

UNPOSTED WIPS:

A Papercut For Two (Part 1 of A Strange Education)

The morning before his life is set on an unavoidable trajectory for disaster, Mike almost gets his foot run over by Nancy’s stupid car.

Violent Angles (So Tangled Up)

Warm wind blew against his face, picking the loose curly strands of his hair off his forehead and neck as he stepped out of the car and onto the gravel of the parking lot. The papers in his hand fluttered as he turned and closed the car door.

Go West, Young Man

Young boys were not supposed to roam the foothills without supervision. They were full of bears and cougars and abandoned mineshafts that burrowed into the land like goring wounds in the abdomen of a dying cattle driver. The people before had come for copper and gold, and left behind yawning pits that could crush a body as well as a bear’s teeth. And the people before that, he did not know. 

The Way

His mouth tasted like copper and white liquor when he finally came to, body heavy on scratchy carpet that scraped against the right side of his face. His arm was numb beneath him, and he squeezed his fist a few times until the nerves screamed back to life and made his hand feel warm and tingly. He rolled on his back, the popcorn ceiling swimming above him as he fought to keep his eyes open despite the pain piercing through his skull. 

Cyclebreaker

Hopper remembers bringing his fists down into Will's ribs, over and over until he gasped his way back to life. He remembers the phonecalls and the endless appointments with Sam, the odd shiver he’d get realizing that Sam thought Will was his. His and Joyce’s, a miserable little family that tragedy would follow around like the grim reaper, reminding him that he’s not only cursed, but a curse. He remembers how Jonathan told him they’d be okay, how okay never quite turned out to be what any of them expected, once all the dust settled and they tried to piece back together normal. He’d been piecing back together normal since Sarah, though, and he’s convinced it’s made up. A lie meant to comfort those that couldn’t handle the truth; life is going to destroy you, and there’s no way back to normal. 

Unison

“-And that’s the traffic. Now to-”

Nate turned the volume down, one hand on the wheel. Silence filled the void between them.

tagging: @oldfashionedmorphine @fireflywitch @pearlypairings @wendydarlingfics @id-rather-be-home @parkitaco @foodiewithdahoodie and all my other mutuals who write! (sorry if I double tagged you)

[manderleyfire]

I will do all this, I will get all this blood on my hands, and you are able to plead naivety.

[prolibytherium]

I never touched it but I feel like i only ever hear positive things said about song of achilles.. in (rough strokes at least) what makes it dogshit to you?

Okay it's been a while since I actually read it so some of this might not be spot on accurate. Sorry if at any point I say 'the book never does xyz' and it actually does once or twice but I think my underlying criticisms are accurate

-Patroclus is made into like this soft gentle tender quivering little yaoi boy. In the source text, he's shown as compassionate and moved by the suffering of his own men (and apparently having some medical skill, tending to the wounded in the camp), but very much invested n combat and very, very good at it (pages worth of descriptions of the guys he's killing left and right). In this, the arguably more complex character from this 8th century BC text is flattened into Being A Healer, he doesn't want to go to war he just wants to help people, he only goes because Achilles has to but he doesn't want to fight he's a HEALER he's a gentle lover NOT A FIGHTER who just wants to help he just wants to help everyone around him he HEALS while Achilles is a doomed warrior who is so good at fighting and KILLING its a DICHOTOMY GUYS!!!LIKE THE BEAUTIFUL SUN AND MOON DOOMED LOVERS SO SAD patocluse HEALER . (I Think he's specifically characterized as being BAD at fighting but might be misremembering)

-I don't remember much about Achilles' characterization I think it just makes him less of a jackass while not adding anything of interest and levels out into being mad boring.

-Not getting into the literal millenias old debate whether the mythological characters Achilles and Patroclus were being characterized as some type of lover by the original oral sources of the Iliad or its Homeric writers. We will never know. We don't even know what (if any) culturally accepted conventions of male homosexuality existed in bronze age Greece (we know much more about their descendants). But there are some interesting elements of their characterization in this direction, with how unconventional their relationship is WITHIN the text itself- Patroclus is described as cooking for Achilles and his guests (very specifically a woman/wife's job), Achilles chides Patroclus like a father, but there's also scene where Achilles' mourning of him directly echoes a passage of Hector's wife mourning her husband, Patroclus is explicitly stated to Achilles' elder, and is overall treated as his equal or near-equal, closest confidant and most beloved friend (to the point that pederastic classical Greeks would debate over who was erastes (older authority figure lover) and who was eromenos (adolescent 'beloved')- many took it as a given that this text depicted their present-day cultural norms of homosexual behavior but it existed so Outside of these norms that it had to be debated who was who). Their relationship is non-standard both within the text and to the descendants of the civilization that wrote them.

Basically what I'm saying is this book had opportunities to like, explore the unconventionality of the relationship (being presented here as explicitly lovers), explore the dynamics of why Patroclus wants to do 'women's work' (besides being a tenderhearted softboy), the weird dynamics where they take on paternal roles to each other but also roles of wives, how they feel about being this way, and just kind of Doesn't. Which I guess isn't an intrinsic fault (because it omits much of what I just talked about to begin with). it's just like.... Lame. This book takes jsut abandons everything interesting about the source text in favor of flattening it into bland Doomed Yaoi.

-The conflict that sets off the core story of the Iliad is Achilles and Agamemnon fighting over Briseis, an enslaved Trojan woman taken by Achilles as a war-trophy, Achilles spends most of the story moping because he was dishonored by his 'trophy' being taken. Achilles and Patroclus and everyone else are raping their captives, all the women in the story are either captured Trojans (or in the case of the free women within the walls of Troy, soon to be enslaved, and are slave owners themselves). Slavery as an institution and extreme patriarchal conventions are innate to the text and reflective of the context in which it was developed. You cannot avoid it.

But obviously you can't have your soft yaoi boys doing this, so the author has them capturing women to Protect Them from the other men. Their slaves are UNDER THEIR PROTECTION and VERY SAFE (and they might even Like And Befriend Them but I might be misremembering that. Briseis does though). Our heroes have apparently absorbed none of the ideals of the culture they exist in and the author seems to think "they're gay and aren't sexually attracted to their captives" would translate to them being outright benevolent (also as if wartime sexual violence is just about attraction and not part of a wider spectrum of violent acts to dehumanize and brutalize an accepted 'enemy')

In the source text, Briseis mourns Patroclus as being the kindest to her of her captors, who tried to get her a slightly better outcome by getting her married to Achilles (which probably would be the Least Bad of all possible outcomes for a woman in that situation, becoming a legal wife instead of a slave), and wonders what will happen to her now that he's gone. This is a really really sad, horrible, and compelling dynamic which could be fleshed out in very interesting ways but is instead is tossed entirely aside in favor of them being Besties. Like brother and sister.

All of the above pisses me off so much. If you don't want to engage in the icky parts of ancient/bronze age Greece then don't write a retelling of a story taking place in bronze age Greece. I'm not gonna get mad at children's adaptations of Greek myths or silly fun stories loosely based on them for omitting the rape and slavery but it is SO fundamental to the Iliad. If you're not willing to handle it, either fully omit it or better yet set your Iliad inspired yaoi in an invented swords-and-sandals setting where you can have all your heartbreaking tragic doomed lovers plot beats and not have to clumsily write around the women they're brutalizing.

-The author didn't seem to know what to do with Thetis and she made her just like, Achilles bitch mother who spends most of the story trying to separate our Yaoi Boys (iirc her disguising Achilles as a girl and hiding him on Scyros is made to be more about getting him away from Patroclus than trying to save her son from his prophesied doom in the Trojan War) until she sees how much they loooove each other and I think helps Patroclus' spirit get to the afterlife or something in the end?

-This is more of a personal taste gripe but it has that writing style I loathe where the prose feels less like a story and more like an attempt to string together Deep Beautiful Hard Hitting Poetic Lines that will look great as excerpts on booktok (might predate booktok but same vibe). It's all very Pretty and Haunting and Deep but feels devoid of real substance.

I really like The Iliad and The Odyssey in of themselves. They're fascinating historical texts that give a window into how 8th century BC Greeks told their stories, saw their world, interpreted their ancestors, etc. And genuinely I think these texts have 'good' characters, there's a lot of complexity and humanity to it.

WRT the Iliad- all of the main Achaeans are pretty fascinating, the one singular part where Briseis Gets To Talk and laments her situation is great, Achilles fantasizing that all of the Trojans AND the Achaeans die so he and Patroclus alone can have the glory of conquering Troy (wild), Achilles asking to embrace Patroclus' shade and reaching out for him but it's immaterial (and the shade being sucked back underground with a 'squeak' (the squeak kinda gets me it's disturbing and sad)), Hecuba talking about wanting to tear out Achilles' liver and eat it in a (taboo, exceptioally pointed) expression of rage and grief for his mutilation of her son's corpse, just one tiny line where the enslaved women performing ritual wailing for their dead captors are described as using it as an outlet to 'grieve for their own troubles' is heartrending, etc. A lot of grappling with anger and grief and the inevitability of death, a lot of groundwork laid for characters that could be very interesting when expanded upon in the framework of a conventional novel.

And Song Of Achilles really doesn't do much with all that. I know a lot of my gripes here are kind of just "It's different from the Iliad", I would have thought of it as mostly mediocre and forgettable rather than infuriating if it wasn't a retelling (and I DEFINITELY have strong biases here). But I think the ways in which it is different are less just a product of a retelling (of course there's going to be omissions and differences) and more a complete and utter disinterest in vast majority of its own subject matter, to the book's detriment. I think a retelling has a point when it EXPANDS on the source, or provides a NEW ANGLE to the source. This book doesn't Really do either, it just shaves off the complexity of its source material, renders the characters into a really boring archetype of a gay relationship, and gives very little else. Its content boils down to a middling tragic romance that has been inserted into the hollowed out defleshed skeleton of the Iliad.

Bottom line: I definitely would not be as mad about it if I wasn't familiar with the source material but I think it's fair to expect a retelling to Engage with/expand on its source, and I also think it's weak purely on its own merits. This book was set up to disappoint Me specifically.

[icewindandboringhorror]

Some (late) holiday photos of the boye~!

[iwritenarrativesandstuff]

on my quest to find more books to read this year, there's been something kind of heartwarming to see that of the books on hold at my local library, or on the weekly bestseller's list at my local bookstores, there's always at least one book up there that's about Palestine. It's at least nice to see that some people in my area want to learn about the historical context of what's happening now, and learn far more than what a few posts on their feed can tell them. It makes me hope that public perception will continue to change for the better - and that the kind of support I've seen in my area won't die down immediately after a ceasefire is called

[dawdlecentric]

Man, this doujin isn't fucking around

Meanwhile, Seikuri in the background...

Doujin: Flashbackers by Totobe

[magnifiico]

@howthesleeplesswander || are we ready to die? i think we're ready to die 8'D

He had no concept of time down here. Only that enough time had passed for his mind to clear, reality to assert itself, and King Magnifico to find—

Well, a dungeon cell was no more befitting a king than the mirror just as abhorrently containing him. So, what was he? After all he had done for Rosas, the sacrifices he’d made, the protection he’d offered them for years beyond count, they would treat their king like some common criminal? His queen would dare to turn her back on…

His queen. Amaya. Amaya.

Magnifico had run his muddled mind through the events of that day on a near tireless loop: picking at bits and pieces of his memory, recollecting flashes here, a foggy and distorted mess there. And despite all that he had gathered—a puzzle he’d had plenty of time to build—he’d yet to trace back to what had offended her so. What had antagonized her, driven her to stand against him as if he were the villain betraying the very kingdom he had built?

I built this. We built this.

And he’d promised from the beginning he’d do anything and everything it took to protect it. No questions asked. No holds barred. Magnifico used that book because he had to. The people hadn’t given him a choice; if he had let them—

No. No, no no. We said we’d never let that happen again.

But nevertheless, here he was. Dethroned. Defamed. He’d almost convinced himself his queen planned on letting him rot eternally, but when he heard the creak of a door on that fateful day—could’ve been morning, afternoon… or perhaps his darling had decided to pay an evening visit when all had quieted down—Magnifico hadn’t needed to see her to know. Her footsteps were a recognizable rhythm, soft and elegant, down the steps. Somehow, the echo seemed to penetrate his magical prison just as well, and in some way, each beat trembled down to his core.

When she stood outside the bars, however, peered in at that loathsome little mirror on the wall, he was ready to face her. That is, he’d convinced the faint flutter in his chest that he was.

“You’ve placed a magical mirror in which I am already very securely contained—trust me, I’ve had plenty of time to determine that’s the case—within a literal prison cell,” he observed blandly, head cocking while a bitter smile tugged on his lips. “Is that not just a touch excessive, my dear?”

[blackjackkent]

Me> Yeah, no, the leadup to the move has actually been pretty stress free and I'm pretty pleased that I haven't had to deal with--

The Move, today all of a sudden for no reason>

[despairforme]

National holiday for FOOLS?? Him.

[friendofthecrows]

they gotta make nap-length sleep mediations. Also ones where the speaker doesn't sound like the world's most annoying yoga intructer or perhaps therapist.

[kneelb4kesha]

Some of y'all have such tv show privilege, imagine being a sci-fi fan and knowing the most sophisticated and intelligent sci-fi show of the last decade was created by seth mcfuckinfarlane? Imagine recommending a show to someone because of its deft hand at exploring transgender and intersex issues, and having to codify it with "so, it's created by the guy who sang that horrible boobs song at the oscars, but-" Y'all out here recommending Yellowjackets and Succession and I'm in my clown makeup talking up The Orville

[opossumanon]

Not me wondering if I'm actually aromantic or if I'm just so mentally fucked up from years of being excluded, made fun of, called ugly, asked out as a joke, etc. that my brain just turned off the ability to feel romantic attraction for anybody?

[theflyingfeeling]

...😫

[savage-rhi]

💀

[magentagalaxies]

going to a comedy open mic tomorrow mostly to watch my friends (it's at a cool venue that my improv troupe performs at once a month and a few improv troupe friends are doing standup there) but when these friends were asking if i'd be interested in coming they were like "btw there's usually a ton of open spots on show days if YOU want to do something... and they're not strict about it only being standup either, people have done character pieces and sketches etc like they embrace the weirdness... and they're not strict about time limits you could probably do anything between three and eight minutes... sometimes if there's not enough people signed up they'll even let you go twice..." and i'm like god damn it i thought i was gonna take a break from aubrey but this setup is like tailor made for an aubrey appearance lmao

[mariyekos]

One day I'm going to finish my FFXVI mega essay, but for now I think my thoughts on the game can be summarized like this:

When making FFXVI, the developers sure knew what they wanted to do, and by god were they going to do it.

Were they also going to do other things that would make those first thing better? Were they going to do other things that make a good game overall? Ehhhhh...they were going to do what they wanted to do, and invest all their time and effort into that, so surely that would be enough! Surely!