#I've definitely posted that top one on my old blog before

[vim-flam]

these are the loveliest cels in spongebob's whole production

[1800-fight-me]

Dark Devotion

Vampire!Aemond Targaryen x Female!Reader

Rating: E (Explicit) MINORS DO NOT INTERACT

Warnings: Once again, gothic horror romance vibes. The monster gets the girl. Fear, horror, and explicit PiV sex. Slightly non-con as Aemond compels reader, but reader definitely consents (you'll understand when you read it).

Word count: About 5.2k

Synopsis: Running from your old life somehow leads you directly into the arms of a monster, one that shows you pleasures you never could've dreamed of.

Author’s note: I know I have been completely MIA and inconsistent but tbh my life has been incredibly stresseful and I lost all motivation to write for a while. This is the first thing I've written in months that I am genuinely proud of. I even made a whole ass moodboard for it! I truly hope y'all enjoy. Happy Halloween! P.S. Comments will make my entire day and earn you a kiss on the forehead!

I am no longer using a taglist! Instead if you would like to be notified when I post new fics follow my side blog @jo-writes-fanfic and turn your post notifications on!

Aemond Masterlist

There was a phrase you heard quite a few times in your village as a little girl, ‘the night is dark and full of terrors’. Your mum would always roll her eyes and mumble something about ‘religious fanatics’. You were always inclined to agree with her, that is until this night. 

This night truly was dark and full of terrors. 

Thunder cracked loud enough that your ears rang as rain poured something awful. The harsh droplets pelted at your skin and the sky split in half as a lightning bolt landed merely a stone’s throw before you. 

Your horse neighed in panic loud enough that you could hear him over the bellowing wind as he reared back on his hind legs, causing you to slip and fall off and land directly on your backside in the mud. 

You gasped in shock and did not even have time to call out before your horse bolted away, leaving you drenched and muddy on the forest floor. 

Instead of crying you merely turned your head up towards the sky, embraced the pain of the harsh rain against your cheeks, and screamed at the heavens in frustration. 

You managed to pull yourself up before the mud sucked you in below the surface of the world, adjusted the hood of your cloak once again over your head, and trudged forward. 

Your boots sloshed through the dampened forest floor and you thought that perhaps the naysayers in your village were right. Maybe the gods were punishing you for your promiscuity. 

When you laid with the soldier passing through your village and allowed him to take your maidenhood, you were convinced there would be no consequences. 

You were no one, nothing, and not having your maidenhood intact changed nothing other than the subject the gossipers in town clucked about. 

It seemed it also changed the gods’ vengeance towards you. 

This night was dark and full of terrors, that much you could sense as fear shot down your spine. 

You increased your pace, fearing the creatures that could be lurking in the woods, desperate for some sort of shelter. The feeling of eyes watching you from time to time during your journey became steady and unceasing. You felt uneasy, the hair on the back of your neck stood straight up, and you knew it had nothing to do with the cold in the air. 

Eventually you had no other choice but to ignore the feeling, having looked behind and around you dozens of times in search of your stalker to no avail.

You trudged along for what felt like hours, not once finding anything that could serve as a temporary shelter. That was, until you somehow stumbled upon a near debilitated castle. 

As it came into view, you shuddered at the feeling the crumbling building invoked in you, but any shelter was better than none at this point. 

Stone walls with vines nearly overtaking them towered over you as you rushed forward towards the large wooden doors. You looked up and thought you saw a pair of gemstone blue eyes glowing in the dark from a window at the top of the tower, but you blinked and they were gone. 

You shook your head, sure your tired eyes were playing tricks on you, and reached for the handle of the door. 

You took a shuddering breath and pulled the heavy door open. Shock filled your very being as you were overcome with warmth and light. 

While the outside of the building was shabby, the inside was magnificent. It was well kept and well lit. A home fit for a king, with a grand staircase was directly in front of you and an elderly man in a servant’s outfit was walking down it.

“Young lady! Who are you and how dare you come into this home uninvited?” the man chided as he descended the last of the steps and stood before you. 

“I-I’m so sorry, sir. I didn’t know anyone lived here, I was merely searching for shelter from the awful storm,” you said, eyes wide- portraying how stunned you felt. 

The man’s stern facade crumbled and he smiled warmly at you, you let go of your held breath and managed a small smile back at him. 

“Ah, yes, I tend to forget the master’s illusion on the outside of the building. He does it to keep the unwanted away,” he said. 

“Illusion? Like magic?” you asked. 

“Well, yes, of course. Come in, let’s get you out of the cold. You must be miserable,” the man said as he ushered you inside and closed the door behind you. 

“Alfred,” you heard the voice of a man call out from another room. His voice caused a shiver to go down your spine. 

“Yes, sire,” Alfred, the man before you replied, and the man with the shiver-inducing voice came into view as he rounded the corner and came into the entryway where you stood. 

Your breath caught once again as you saw the most striking and beautiful man you’d ever seen in your life. 

He was tall, nearly impossibly so, with long silver hair that fell nearly to his waist. He moved with the grace and control of a lethal killer. His facial features were sharp, as if he was cut from marble. His skin of pale white only emphasized his most distinct feature, an eye of sapphire that covered part of a scar that cut across his forehead and cheek. His remaining true eye was also a distinct blue color, nearly matching the sapphire one perfectly.  

Ethereal was the word that arose in your mind as he strode towards you, amusement twinkling in his eye as he took you in. 

“And who might you be, lovely?” he asked. 

After entirely too long of a pause, in which his amusement appeared to only grow as his beautiful lips curved into a smirk, you managed to stutter out your name. 

He repeated it back to you, leaning closer towards you, and your heartbeat sped into a gallop. He titled his head, almost as if he could hear it. You dismissed the thought, deeming it absurd. 

“My name is Aemond. Welcome to my home. Tell me, how exactly did you manage to find your way here?” he asked curiously. 

You leaned in closer with him, not realizing that your face was merely inches from his at this point, utterly drawn in and intoxicated by his presence. 

You were filled with a desire to please him and as a result you began rambling. “I was attempting to move away from my village. Take off and find a new life, but then there was a series of unfortunate events including running for my life, becoming irretrievably lost, and then becoming something I’m certain looks similar to a drowned rat after my horse was startled by the storm and I stumbled around for hours attempting to find shelter.” 

“Oh you poor sweet thing. Let us take care of you,” he purred and rather than set you at ease, something in the words made you feel as if your misadventures were far from over. And yet, you were entranced by his gaze and could not so much as force yourself to look away or take a step back. 

His smile grew wider as you nodded meekly. 

Finally, Aemond released you from his gaze as he turned to Alfred and asked him to fetch the maid Portia to assist you in cleaning yourself up. 

Before you knew it, you were being ushered up the stairs and into a room you could only assume was a guest room by an elderly woman with a sweet round face. 

She helped you to remove your muddy sodden clothes and you groaned in relief as you slid into a warm bath. You smiled warmly at her as you scrubbed your body and she cleaned your hair, all the while chattering to you about her love for her husband Alfred and their happiness working for Master Aemond. 

“Can you tell me about him?” you asked curiously as she helped you to dress. 

The dress she helped you into was of crushed velvet, sapphire blue like the gemstone in Aemond’s eye that had so caught your attention. The dress had a corset and plunging neckline that emphasized your curves. 

Portia hummed as she led you to sit down and began working on your hair. 

“He is a bit odd, yes. Intimidating and perhaps even scary to some, but he has a good heart. And is loyal and protective to those he cares for. He has treated my husband and I very kindly,” she said with a caring smile. 

Her words put your heart more at ease, still slightly worried about the new surprising circumstances you had found yourself in. 

“Does he typically extend that same kindness to visitors?” you asked, nervousness coloring your tone a bit. 

“It depends on the intentions of the visitor. A sweet thing like you? You’ll be well taken care of,” she said. 

“Does he often have ill-intentioned visitors?” you asked curiously. 

“It does happen from time to time, those in the nearest village hold hate for him in their hearts. Old prejudices I suppose, but no matter!” she said, changing the subject and her tone as she turned you around to view yourself in the floor length mirror. 

“Take a look at yourself, my dear. You look stunning, see? All the horror of the day washed completely away,” she said soothingly as she ran her hands up and down your upper arms. 

Your breath caught in your throat as you saw yourself. She was right, you’d never seen yourself look so beautiful before. You actually looked fit to reside in such a lovely home, unlike before, unlike any other time in your life. You’d never worn such a beautiful and expensive dress. You ran your hands across the soft fabric, up your torso and thought that it was the perfect inviting dress for someone else to touch you in. 

Images flashed in your head of the soldier you allowed to touch you, never while you wore something so pretty, but pleasurable nonetheless. Romps in the hay, literally as the two of you would often meet in your father’s barn and he taught you the art of a pleasure you’d never known before. 

You were not disillusioned about it, you knew there was no love between the two of you. You knew he would one day have to move on without you, but when he left town just as others found out about your affair, you were frustrated at being left alone with the consequences of a choice the both of you made. 

The townspeople, the people you grew up with, turned on you and called you a whore. Even your own father fell victim to their hateful whispers about you and kicked you out of his home. Only your mother helped you, sneaking you out in the dead of night and gifting you her horse to aid you on your journey into another life. 

You shook your head slightly in an attempt to clear those thoughts, the memories of both pleasure and pain, and smiled at your reflection. 

“Thank you, Portia, your efforts are greatly appreciated,” you said as you turned and embraced her in a warm hug. 

She squeezed you before releasing you and leading you out of the guest room and back down the grand staircase. 

You followed her into an elegant dining room, a fireplace lit - the fire crackling and warming the spacious room. The table was large enough to seat ten people, but only two place settings were set next to one another, somehow creating an intimate dinner even in such a large room. 

Aemond sat at the end of the table, and stood as he saw you. 

“Good evening, you look magnificent,” he said, voice as velvety as your dress. 

You did your best to hide how his words flustered you as you smiled softly and curtseyed. 

“Thank you, sire. But, this is too much. I did not mean to interrupt your your evening so and I-I’ll never be able to repay you-” 

He reached a hand out and you placed your hand in his. At the brush of your skin against his, your words fell off. 

His hands were cold, and yet- the mere brush of his fingers against yours filled your body with heat. 

“There is no repayment necessary, the pleasure of your company will be more than enough if you would please dine with me,” he said. 

“Of course,” you breathed out as you allowed him to guide you to your seat. 

Your nose was filled with the aroma of a hearty stew in a bowl before you and your stomach growled in anticipation. 

You gave Aemond a sheepish look even as he chuckled. 

“Eat, of course. You must be near ravenous. I’m familiar with the feeling,” he said, and his voice dipped lower. His eyes appeared to flash at his words, causing your heartbeat to jump, but you were far too hungry to think about it and played it off as a trick of the light, a reflection of the fire in his gemstone eye. 

You tucked in and struggled to hold in your groan of satisfaction at the taste of the soup. 

Aemond poured you both glasses of red wine and you thanked him as he handed you yours. 

“Are you not going to eat?” you asked him, suddenly feeling self conscious that you were shoveling mouthfuls of stew and bread into your mouth while he merely sipped on his wine and watched you. 

“Oh I intend to. Just not right now, I had what you might call a late afternoon snack,” he said and something about his words had a chill run up your spine, despite the warmth of both the room and the soup in your belly. 

“You told me of your journey here, but tell me about yourself. I find myself fascinated by the entirety of you,” he practically purred, and you immediately forgot your apprehension at his previous words. 

“I feel the same way about you,” you replied breathily. 

He smiled, a full glorious smile that made you feel as if the storm had ended and the sun had come out. But there was a glint, a sharpness, and with a start you realized his canine teeth were elongated. 

He must have seen the fear in your eyes as he reached over and grasped your hand gently. You felt that on fire feeling in your skin once again, but also felt all the fear wash out of your body. 

“Tell me about you,” he requested again, voice soft and low, a tone that caused you to wonder if that was how he spoke to his lovers late at night. 

You were filled with compliance, with a desire to please him, and so you did as you were asked, and told him everything about yourself. You told him of your childhood, your parents, your likes and interests, your dreams for a better life. 

He watched you with rapt attention, murmuring questions to prompt you to further share with him about yourself. And, oh gods, when he looked at you that way, his sapphire gaze so intense, you wanted to share yourself completely. 

“What had you so desperately searching for a new life?” he finally asked. 

So you explained, shamefully, how you laid with a man and became the village whore for merely choosing your own pleasure over mediocrity for once in your life. 

You looked down at your empty bowl, toying with the spoon, while you waited for his reaction, for his disgust and dismissal of you. 

Long cold fingers gently grasped your chin and lifted your head up to meet his gaze. 

You were enraptured by his undivided attention. 

“There’s no need to listen to the opinions of small minded individuals. Pleasure is nothing to feel guilty about. Especially when there are so, so many pleasures in life to discover,” he said and the soft lilt of his voice along with the dark tone made your toes curl. 

You wanted to experience unknown pleasures, you wanted him to teach you, to explore with you. 

You bit your lip, nodding slightly in agreement, and his hand slid up from your chin to curl around your jaw. His thumb stroked the apple of your cheek and you shivered. 

He pulled your bottom lip from between your teeth and you waited, nearly shaking with anticipation, for him to press his lips against your own, to replace the pressure with some of his own, and he smirked as if he knew what you were thinking, but pulled back. 

He sat back in his chair, far enough from you that you no longer felt intoxicated by his scent and presence, and you let out a soft breath of disappointment. 

Amusement and desire both seemed to dance in his gaze. You took a sip of wine, looking away from him to clear your head, and took a breath to steady yourself. 

“Will you tell me about yourself as well, sire?” you asked. 

“Aemond,” he corrected. “Please call me Aemond, sweet one.” 

“Aemond, I’d love to hear about you,” you requested once more. 

It seemed he had the same response to hearing his name drip from your lips as you had when he said yours, for his eyelid fluttered closed and his hand clenched into a fist, but the next breath he had composed himself once more and nodded. 

“My life… it feels as if it has been an eternity. A lonely one at that,” he said and this time you reached over and took his hand, holding it in support. 

“I was treated as if I were unwanted from the moment I was born, my eye taken hatefully when I was merely a boy, and then as a man I was deemed a monster. I was driven out of my home, my family did naught to protect me, and it took me far too long to find a place to call my own. Still, others that encounter me call me a monster and I find myself alone most of the time,” he explained and your heart hurt for him. 

“Why do others call you a monster? Your gemstone eye?” you asked as you leaned closer to him once again. 

This time you leaned in and placed your hand on his face, tracing the length of his scar with your thumb as you gently held his cheek. 

“Hmmm,” he hummed in a noncommittal sort of agreement. 

“I think it’s beautiful,” you said, your voice so soft it was practically a whisper. 

It was evident he heard you as he practically nuzzled his face into your hand. He gripped your wrist and ran his nose from the palm of your hand to the inside of your wrist, breathing in deeply. 

His actions, though gentle and loving, caused an inexplicable feeling of fear to drip down your spine, particularly when his lips pressed against your skin. You’d never realized what a vulnerable place in the body the wrist was, a bundle of veins, until Aemond pressed his perfectly curved lips against it. 

But as soon as it came, the fear was gone as Aemond looked up at you and you met his gaze once more. 

You reached out and pushed his silver hair out of his face where it had fallen and tucked it behind his ear. 

His long gorgeous hair was so soft you yearned to run your fingers through it and learn of his response, learn of the noises he would make when in pleasure. 

“You are so beautiful,” he murmured, appearing as entranced by you as you were by him. 

You could do nothing to hide the way his words flustered you, as the weight of his attention had you pinned down and unable to move. 

He caught your hand and held it in place against his hair. 

As he leaned closer to you, his movements were slow and deliberate, like a predator trying not to spook his prey. 

Your heart began to sprint and you were certain you would never be able to slow it again. 

His sharp nose brushed against yours, and the anticipation was so strong you forgot how to breathe. 

Aemond hummed softly before he finally, finally pressed his lips to yours. 

As his lips moved against yours you felt inherently changed, different. It felt as if a shadowed hand with sharp talons dripping with blood had reached through your chest and gripped your heart and claimed it. 

You were his, his, and you were prepared to swear to him your utter devotion, your life. You didn’t quite understand what you were experiencing, but you didn’t care as he deepened the kiss. As he claimed your mouth you gasped, letting out a small whimper. This gave him the in he needed to slide his tongue against yours. 

You shuddered, gripping his hair tighter as he lifted you with an ease that should not be possible and sat you atop his lap. 

Your dress prevented you from straddling him like you wished, but you could not complain as he gripped your waist tightly. You ran your hands from his face and his hair to his shoulders, down to his arms, gripping him tightly and kissing him deeply, with everything you had, with utter devotion. 

You let out a small yelp of surprise as your tongue explored his mouth and brushed against something entirely too sharp. 

He tore his lips from yours and met your gaze. Your chest brushed against his as it heaved while you attempted to catch your breath. 

Fangs, you recognized. Those were fangs in his mouth, made for sinking his teeth in. 

You could not discern how you felt, what you thought, for the utter fire for him burned through you. 

He traced your jaw, then the line of your neck down to your collarbone, slowly, achingly slowly as you wanted nothing more than for him to kiss you again. Then, his lips followed the same journey his fingers had just taken. You shivered, your head falling back as your eyes fluttered shut. 

“Tell me you are mine,” Aemond ordered, and his breath against the sensitive skin of your neck made you shiver. 

“I’m yours,” you replied breathily and you could feel his smile against your throat. 

“Tell me you want me,” he ordered. 

“I want you,” you whined, and his grip on you tightened nearly to the point of pain, but you could not focus on that. No, not when you felt those fangs graze against that most sensitive spot on your neck. 

The night is dark and full of terrors, the words rang through your head once more and your breath stopped as you realized you had fallen into this beautiful monster’s trap. Fear shot down your spine and made your body tense and freeze. 

“Hmm,” he hummed in reassurance as he pressed a kiss against your vulnerability. 

Your body responded immediately, you relaxed completely, becoming nearly ragdoll like in his arms. He lifted you, holding you as he stood, and walked into the next room, a sitting room of sorts, and laid you on a chaise. 

“Aemond,” you breathed out. 

He kneeled next to where you laid. 

“I care for you,” he said as he brushed a hand across your cheek, “I don’t wish to compel you.” 

He kissed you once more. At the feeling of his lips against yours, you were reborn. You had control over your body once again and you yanked him atop of you, deepening the kiss. 

He groaned into your mouth, and pulled back slightly, causing you to whine in protest. 

“You truly want me?” he asked, his tone sounding surprised. 

Your survival instinct had long since gone quiet as a result of you continuously ignoring its protests. 

“Yes,” you said and pulled his lips to yours again. 

“Perhaps we can make a deal then,” he said, trailing his lips down once more to his favorite spot on your neck, where your veins were most vulnerable.

“If you give me what I want, I will reward you with everything you desire and more,” he said and you again felt the sharpness of those fangs. 

You let out a shuddering breath. 

“Yes,” you agreed, all logic disappearing as desire overtook your very being. 

And you knew. You knew and he knew, that his compelling magic was gone, the desire you felt for him this entire time was real and true, not due to compelling whatsoever. There was something more, something deeper at play here, and your choice was your own as you chose him, completely. 

And with that, he groaned lowly and sank his fangs into your neck.  

Sharp indescribable pain is what you expected but instead it was like a dull buzz of pain nearly overwhelmed by pleasure. 

He ran his hands down your body, ensuring he paid special attention to your breasts and you gasped his name. 

Aemond’s hand slipped up your dress, inching up your burning hot skin, and finding the wetness between your legs that awaited him. 

You whimpered softly as he brushed your panties aside and finally touched you where you wanted him the most. 

His nimble fingers spread your slick and quickly found a rhythm circling your bundle of nerves as he continued to drink your blood. 

As the heat inside you built, he pulled his teeth from your neck and slowly dragged his tongue up your neck, licking up every last drop of blood from your skin. His fingers moved in perfect time with his tongue, and with no notice your release hit you, overwhelming you completely as you moaned loud enough to echo through the room. 

“Absolutely exquisite,” he said as he pulled back from your neck and looked deep into your eyes. 

He ran his thumb over your bottom lip, and you stared at him as your chest heaved, absolutely entranced. He then replaced his thumb with his bloodsoaked lips. 

He groaned as you kissed him eagerly, your blood in his mouth not causing any hesitation whatsoever. 

“I need you,” you gasped. 

“I have needed you for an eternity,” he replied as he began untying the corset of your dress. 

You moaned as the cool air hit your skin and he slowly and gently removed the beautiful dress from your body, leaving you completely bare. You turned and looked at the pile of sapphire velvet on the floor. 

He gripped your chin, turning your head to look at him once more. You helped him to remove his shirt, and then watched eagerly as he unbuckled his belt, beginning to make himself just as bare as you. 

“I must admit something to you,” he said and your mouth ran dry as the hard length of him sprung free. 

“Yes,” you asked breathlessly as you reached and wrapped your hand around him. 

He let out a sound low in his throat, something similar to a growl, as you began to move your hand up and down his length. 

“It is not happenstance that you found yourself in my home. I must confess that I have been watching you for a while now. I needed you. I needed to taste you, to make you mine. I influenced your journey here, guided you, so I could finally show you my devotion,” he said. 

“Then make me yours, completely,” you pleaded and guided his length to line up with your wet heat. 

With a groan he nodded his head and pushed himself inside you. 

He filled you, inch by glorious inch, and you could do nothing but gasp for air as you felt fuller than you’d ever felt in your life. 

You reveled in the press of your naked chest against his, as you pulled him close enough that you couldn’t tell where your body ended and where his began.

You were one with the vampire atop you, and you’d never felt more intense pleasure in your life. 

When he was certain you were ready, he kissed you, surprisingly tenderly, before he pulled out nearly all the way, and pushed back inside you, sinking to the hilt. 

His tempo was slow and deep, as he gazed deep in your eyes and told you how beautiful he found you. 

“Perfect, so perfect,” he praised as you mewled for him when he tilted your hips up and hit a spot of pleasure inside you that had never been found before. 

Aemond continued his pace, holding you tight, as your nails dug into his back. 

“Come for me, darling, I can feel how close you are,” he purred in your ear. 

He slipped his hand between your bodies and found your bundle of nerves once more, stroking it and you nearly screamed as your release wracked through you. 

You felt you had reached heaven, somehow, in the arms of your ethereally beautiful monster lover and it took you several moments to come back down. 

So lost in your pleasure, you had not even felt a sting of pain as he sunk his teeth into your wrist. He gulped your blood, moaning in pleasure, as he continued to pump himself in and out of your tight wet heat, chasing his own release. 

You tangled your other hand in his hair, and gripped tighter around his cock, urging him on, encouraging both his release and for him to continue to drink from you. 

He groaned as his release found him, sinking deep inside you, bringing ecstasy to you both. 

You shuddered a breath as his movements slowed and stopped. He pulled his teeth from your wrist, and murmured your name, like a praise- like a prayer, with utter devotion. 

As he looked at you, you reached up and wiped your blood from where it had dripped down his chin. 

He brought your wrist to his lips once more, and before you could protest that you were beginning to feel lightheaded, he surprised you by licking the wound clean instead of sinking his teeth back in, just as he had with the wound on your neck. 

You watched in fascination, as his saliva magically closed your wound, leaving only a small scar. 

He looked up and grinned at you, your blood coating his teeth, and you whimpered and pulled him into another kiss. 

He kissed you languidly, tongue moving against yours, as if he had all of eternity with you. 

“I have never tasted anything so divine,” he purred against your lips. 

“I have never felt so wonderful in all my life,” you said back as you pulled back enough to look upon him once again. 

“I can feel it. Can you feel it? You are to be my eternity, my everlasting, my one true mate. I give you my utter devotion. You said you wanted to start a new life. Start it with me. Let me turn you and we can be together forever. Stay with me,” he pleaded. 

And so you did. 

Yes, this night was dark and full of terrors, but this terror had wrapped himself around you, sunk deep inside you, and devoted his entire being to you, offering you pleasure and love unlike any you’d ever experienced before. 

And so, later, when Aemond fed you his blood and turned you and you opened your eyes into this new life, becoming a terror yourself, you grinned and kissed your vampire mate, prepared to spend forever by his side. 

[dervampireprince]

ASMR | Castlevania - Alucard x Listener SFW Comforting Alucard After A Nightmare

[M4A] [Set soon after the finale of Castlevania Season 4 (there are no Nocturne spoilers here)] [Established romantic relationship] [Reverse nightmare comfort] [TW mentions of death, murder, very brief mention of Alucard's sexual assault that happens in season 3, death of parents and grieving]

Didn't realise season 2 of Nocturne was releasing so soon and I wasn't sure if I'd get around to watching it, saw one picture of Olrox, and whoops watched the entire season in one evening. This audio was requested before season 2 came out and was scheduled for later but I brought it forwards since hopefully there will be some want for Alucard right now. I got too inot this one and how much I need Vlad and Lisa to have told Adrian that they're still alive that while pretending to cry in this audio I actually started crying oops. It's a shame the Castlevania shows aren't more popular. I always see such a lack of fanworks compared to other shows like Arcane. I know there is more horror and violence in Castlevania than Arcane, but Castlevania and Nocturne are such wonderful shows, well-written, beautifully animated, and nice representation on top of all of that.

A non-spoilery thing that got me with season 2 is how often Mizrak was allowed to cry, not just a little welling of tears in his eyes, this big stereotypically macho masculine man was allowed to just sob over and over, in front of other men, and he was never shamed for it, never embarrassed by doing it. And that shouldn't be so groundbreaking to me in 2024, but sadly I think there still isn't enough of male characters being allowed to show intense emotions that aren't anger. I've also loved in the Castlevania shows how gay/queer relationships are normalised. Striga and Morana, Alucard being bisexual, Olrox and Mizrak... there's never any homophobia thrown at them by other characters. Mizrak might have internalise-homophobia, but his inner conflict seems to more be because Olrox is a vampire not that he's a man. And I don't care whether that's historically accurate, I personally like seeing historical and fantasy settings where they just decide homophobia/transphobia don't exist. I don't think that's erasure, I think it can be an enjoyable fantasy for queer people to enjoy a period drama where queer people can exist in the open with the understanding that this is a fantasy piece and not a historical documentary. I don't know, maybe that's just me who loves historical settings who would love to see and read stories about gay and trans characters being able to be out in the 1800s and what that would look like, what a 1700s binder could have looked like, what 1920s advertisements for shaving razors aimed at trans fems could have looked like, things like that. I don't know, maybe that's just me, I just think it's fun to think about. Sorry that this ramble ended up in an audio description.

Anyway I'm glad I got an Alucard request, I love him very much. And I love his Nocturne design. I've seen some complain about it but they frankly sound like borderline transphobia when they're complaining that he 'looks to feminine'. I think he looks beautiful, and it's definitely giving the same aesthetics as Ayami Kojima's original illustrations and concept for Castlevania where frankly most of the men she draws look more androgynous than typically 'masculine'.

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Old public spicy audios on sound gasm (link in pinned post). 2 Exclusive spicy audios on Patreon every month. I also stream on Twitch every week @ dervampireprince . [minors + ageless blogs dni. this blog is for 18+ only.] [do not repost/reupload/edit any of my content]

[aroaceleovaldez]

the show chb logo was also ripped from fandom, like in the past decade all the official chb shirt had the logo without the circle and then the fandom started doing and the show went for it, sorry your tags reminded me of that

[Link to post/tags in question]

Yeah, I know Delphi Strawberry Service has done more circular-based CHB shirt designs for ages, and I've seen the more circular-based designs floating around for awhile. I think Magicbysab's circular-based CHB shirt designs also predate the show design? Those are just the ones I can think of off the top of my head. I understand on a level that if they did base it off fandom designs, particularly if they're basing anything on widespread fanon or fandom-based concepts, it can be difficult to pin down credit or may even seen unnecessary. But if they're going to be doing that I feel like at least they could hire like, a fandom consultant of sorts? Instead of just ripping off from the fandom, hire someone from the community who produces that already so at least there's some recognition and acknowledgement of where it originated.

Heck, in some instances if you ask around in the fandom it's not hard to pinpoint who specifically popularized certain concepts! I could talk for ages about Cherryandsisters being a driving force behind photokinesis!Will, or Saberghatz with plague!Will (tbh between the two they spearheaded a ton of early Will/Solangelo fanon), and I swear Drksanctuary alone is behind like 50% of Alabaster fanon, etc etc etc. People in the fandom know these things! Heck, we know ReadRiordan company knows how to do that kind of thing! They commissioned Viria for the official art, and the UK Riordan newsletter reaches out to fans all the time to feature their work (with credit, they're one of the better ones)! Though in Rick's book tours he did showcase Viria's art (at least with credit) without asking before she got commissioned, and during the Tower of Nero book tours they actually straight up stole a solangelo edit from Pervysloth with completely zero credit (link is to my canon url readriordan parody blog).

I think it doesn't help as well that Rick and his editor allegedly use the fandom wiki in place of a series bible. The PJO wiki is notorious for putting inaccurate information or fanon onto pages at random and having no sources. (What I wouldn't give for the PJO wiki to have frequent book/page sources a la Warrior Cats wiki...) There are what, now almost 18 books in the main series alone? Of an extremely renowned best-selling series that's 20 years old and now being adapted for TV? And they STILL don't have a series bible? That's like, step 1 of writing a series. This kind of reliance of the fandom for resources and concepts definitely isn't new for them.

It just feels so bizarre as to what it says about how the ReadRiordan company views the fandom and the creatives within it. I understand that trying to figure out how to give credit to the concept of "CHB shirt design, but circular!" is difficult, if you even can find out who did that first or popularized it. But if you're going to rip things from fandom, at least find somebody to try and credit? Show that you put in even the tiniest amount of effort? And if you get it wrong and people know, they'll correct you and that's that! But ReadRiordan just keeps trying to actively obscure these kinds of things, even with their own media, not ripped from the fandom, which makes it feel all the worse when it gets pointed out. And a lot of the time the whole reason those concepts get popular is because they're filtered through big names in the fandom! The fandom is a community! We know these people! We can point to them and explain exactly what they popularized! Remember how Velinxi popularized long haired Piper with the heart-shaped flyaways? Goodness only knows how many fandom designs are heavily influenced by Viria and Minuiko and Burdge (and Indigonite and Fuocogo and Ikimaru and Thecottonproject and Joker-ace and Sixofclovers and Vikingmera and Saber and Cherry and and and-). If you are in the community this stuff is easy to find. But Rick and the ReadRiordan company clearly being ~5 years behind with fanon pretty obviously tells me that they're not in the community at all, and aren't bothering trying.

[laurentidal]

Ice Core Report ❄️ August 2024

Decided to do a little editorial check in at the end of each month. Most of you probably don't know that, while Lauren is my real first name, that my blog is actually named for a massive ice sheet that once lay over the place where I live (the Laurentide Ice Sheet). Thus, this is a report from my ice core.

#1 Story: Suggestion Box

This one was a huge surprise for me. It took off immediately, and I had not seen that coming. I'd had this image saved in my "had potential" folder for probably three weeks before I decided on how to tell the story. It went through an iteration where this was an ice skating rink, then it was a sandwich shop. I think one draft had a "five dollar footlong" joke in it. But ultimately I liked "arcade" the best.

#2 Story: Enjoy Your Stay

This was based on fun joking conversation I had with @hypno-potion and as the scaffolding we were joking about kept getting more elaborate I was like "No there is definitely something here." I'm glad you all agreed.

#3 Story: Kitty Pet Saga

I saw this picture and immediately knew what the story was going to be. Sometimes I see an image and think "There's something here if I look hard enough" and sometimes I see an image and a fully formed idea just jumps right out of it.

#4 Story: Oh My

This is a story I actually wrote quite some time ago for an old defunct website that never really got any foot traffic. I'm glad I brought it over, because it's one of my personal favorites. The only fauxcest story in the top five this month. That's one of those kinks I think I'm just going to have to accept that you guys aren't as into as I am (and I have the data to validate that claim).

#5 Story: Daughters and Suns

The only true repost from my old blog and the only part of a series in the top five this month. This series is my favorite thing I'm writing right now (though this entry isn't my favorite in the series). There's a lot more coming so I hope you're enjoying as much as I am.

Sunda Systems

We're half way through Season 1 of my Sunda Systems investigative mind control conspiracy story. Our investigator has made several contacts and visited the campus first-hand. She also might be starting to feel some effects from her various encounters, and her keen eye for detail is missing a few clues that are staring her right in the face. But I'm sure the date she's got lined up will give her some much needed relaxation.

Please please please share this story and feel free to get interactive with it! I've put some real effort into it and I've never written such a slow burn before. I'm enjoying the ride, and I've got some GOOD (I think) twists and turns coming. I think this format could be fun to play around with as an audience. Post your theories! I love seeing that folks are engaging with more than just the like button.

Update of Magics & Mesmerism

Some of you are aware that I'm working on an erotic mind control TTRPG called Magics & Mesmerism. I'm still plugging away. As we speak, I'm writing skills for the Innovator character class. As a treat, I'd like to share with you an except from the page on Hypnotic Foci:

General Thoughts

Every story in the top five this month is a FEMALE SUB story. Noted. I tend to favor that in my writing, too, which is interesting because I think Female Over Male stories are hotter, probably because of the subversion of expectations. I'm a slut for subversion of expectations.

I think that's everything. Love you all and I'm very excited for you to see what's coming in September. One of my favorites that I wrote comes out tomorrow, and on the 13th you'll be introduced to your first Force of Nature.

Till then, keep reading, keep messaging, keep asking, and if you're feeling generous, keep donating.

[sazzujazzu]

One more quick and silly drawing for this year!

I have no explanation or excuse for this other than I had to draw one more Tech ❤️✨

I know Tech would definitely make sure the safety distance is cleared, but I guess he was just fascinated.

(the volcano firework says 'mustafar' on the side because of course it does 😎)

Happy New Year, everyone! 🥳

Personal yapping beyond the cut

Wow, the end of the year! In January, I would've never guessed I'd be posting my art anywhere, much less tagging it so it would actually be seen by people. And much less be posting more than maybe two pieces, and not even thinking about posting OCs!

When I'd post my drawings on Facebook or DeviantArt, I'd only get maybe four likes/favorites, seven tops. So the first time a post of mine here broke one hundred notes, I was actually crying and hyperventilating at the sight. (still am tbh, but I'm also smiling like an idiot 😊)

I must say, the best thing that happened to me this year was starting to actively use Tumblr (apparently my account/this blog turned seven years old on December 21st?! Why did this exist? I didn't even use it at all before the end of last year! A will of the Force, perhaps.) This lovely hellsite has been everything to me. It's given me a bit more confidence, people to interact with (although I know I could do more, reblog more, but I'll take one small step at a time), I found a community of lovely clone enjoyers, and I might even dare say I've gotten friends here. At least I want to believe you peeps are my friends 🥹

So without more yapping, I want to thank every one of you for an amazing year, and here's to a wonderful 2025! Let it be filled with clone goodness! 🥂

[mecachrome]

probably very out of context, but how do you get into the nhl fandom? before i got interested in f1 i was looking for what sport to watch (other than football) and i wanted to go there because a few years ago it became a popular topic in m/m romance books (which i read a lot at the time, now i mostly read fics xd) and i found… nothing, i mean, on twt there didn't seem to be a community, i didn't see people interacting about the players, and there weren't high numbers in the posts either, i found a bit of the same thing here on tumblr and other apps, probably it's more popular on tiktok which is what is used the most? the thing is, in the end i couldn't get interested because i didn't understand anything and i ended up watching formula 1 thanks to the noise made by the stans of other fandoms that migrated there lmao

LOL anon a lot of the things you mention here that you considered to be barriers of entry are honestly a great overview of why user-restriction is more commonly practiced in the hockey archives...!

anyway i actually did some sports fandom analysis last year and i really think a large part of it is >nhl fandom is much more accessible to people in na and >football fandom is a lot more accessible to people in europe... for me personally, i've spent Most of my life in places with local hockey teams + part of my family is from a classic market so getting into hockey as a sport was like a pretty natural thing, and i loooveee going to hockey games and actually watching the sport—plus it's way cheaper, if you're in a shitty market with a shitty team you can go to one game and see the players all up close during warmies for like $20 vs. $1283749492347 to go to an f1 race. that being said though, there are definitely people from all over the world who are into the nhl and i do think it's really easy to get into! i've actually seen a lot of f1 fans migrate to hockey recently and i'd argue that it's a lot more public/mimics f1 fandom culture on twitter now (for better or worse haha) if you ever want to get back into it... i'd also say that there's lots of fic to read as well, but admittedly if you were only trying to consume hockey during the height of its like booktok surge, it probably wasn't the same landscape i was working with when i first started reading hockey fic 11 years ago. the thing is that BACK_IN_THE_DAY, hockey WAS the top-producing sports fandom on ao3, so it was super easy to invest in current narratives without feeling like you were part of some tiny grassroots community (ok exaggerated on my part but i'll get to this in a bit lol)... honestly if you just sort by kudos on ao3 while logged in there's plenty of old classics that are fun to read even if you don't understand everything! see an old graph i made below:

anyway 1) i truly think hockey is the best sport ever like as an actual sport in terms of Sportish Entertainment (forgetting the rpf for a second) and you can learn it pretty easily just by watching with a good commentator! hockey isn't like f1 where you watch a race with everyone on the grid, so that's why as an overall fandom it's more quiet and it helps to pick One (1) team you're interested in getting into and just watching their games and not worrying about the rest of the league for the moment.

for ex i'm primarily a dallas stars fan, and my main hockey blog 39oa is entirely meant for them, and they're the only team i watch All 82 Games For. i also have montembeault for other teams i like (mainly habs/nux) but i don't really update it that much anymore...

2) hockey rpf has definitely had phases with strong formative ships and the problem with it currently is that there's kind of a dearth of like active, marketable material to work with... at its peak and during the early ao3 days there was sidgeno, ship i won't name, bennguin (in some ways we still have 2 of these but it's not like at the same level of course), nickovi, i mean i could go on... tragic kings yaoi... and then the 2015 draft class revitalized things majorly (this is when i got into hockey rpf properly lol i peddled mcstromarner when they were still in juniors so hard... not many people know this) and a lot of rpf for the following years depended on them, and then of course we had the Summer of tknp which is what REALLY got things going again..... but that ship is functionally over and there's also a really prominent rivalry ship that has much less pull now that they're not actually on rival teams lol and then another ship that had rookie and_they_were_roommates narratives got separated so now it's like WHAT IS THERE TO SHIP!!! and i mean hockey is SO spread out truly, i actually have another old stats post about degrees of separation in hockey shipping but anyway... nowadays there is actually a Hawt New yaoi ship that kind of models jdtz (rookie rommates) that many people are into! so that's a fun place to start if you want to try somewhere trendy. i'm 100% sure if you sought out sharks fans on twitter in like a fandomy environment you could do so pretty easily...

3) i think part of it as you said is that hockey is a much smaller community, especially when you're interacting in the subfandoms for each individual team. some teams have HUGE markets on an IRL fandom level (canadian teams like toronto and montreal for example), but my team's being from dallas where the primary sport is american football means it has an absolutely tragic amount of news coverage and no one really cares about them much. the #southernbias in hockey is so strong 💔 and then on top of that even teams with big irl fandoms might not really have the equivalent attention on tumblr because it also depends on whether they have compelling yaoi to keep the fujos interested......... but to ME that's also beautiful because even if your team's fandom is just 10 people liveblogging and making gifsets with 40 notes, it's a special sense of community and the wank/drama levels are like insanely lower, and there's more of a sense of We're in this watching sports together than like We're all going to be really mad at everything and argue about team orders all day even though the race ended 5 months ago 🥲 yes the fic outputs will be much slower than you might like but that's what i mean by the grassroots feel haha like there's really a sense of support for the fandom creativity!!! f1 can kind of feel lonely sometimes because there's so many people but they're all silent lurkers/likers :'(

also playoffs hockey will change your life. so you gotta stick around until april!!!!!!!! that's all i've got...

[acaplaya-musings]

VoicePlay 'Zat You, Santa Claus? - thoughts/commentary

Oh I loved this so much! Over on my "main" blog, BismuthBookshelf, I made a post like a week ago (about my favourite non-VP/Geoff Christmas music videos) where I mentioned how I was wanting more jazzy Christmas music, and this might not be the same sort of vibe as Man With The Bag or I've Got My Love To Keep Me Warm, but it's still great! And of course it's wonderful to see J with the group yet again!

Okay so starting off with the set design: Filmed at Pattycake, duh, and the brickwork kinda looks like a set that VoicePlay and/or Geoff have used before (like Geoff's Shenandoah video kinda?), except for the windows and the vertical wood planks. Idk, I'm writing this before the BTS video is out but I'll update it if I figure anything out (EDIT: yeah the woodplanks were added in for this shoot, and maybe the windows too, as the "bricks" aren't actually bricks)

Love all the Christmas decor, like the carousel and the felt/fabric Christmas calendar(?) thing hanging up, and the tree! (How long did that take to set up and decorate? EDIT: actually Layne's wife Cyndi helped a lot with set design!)) And of course the Voiceplay logo symbol on top of the tree is brilliant. At least a few Patrons have already been wishing for that to be an item in VP's merch store. Also the five stockings hanging up have each of the guys' first initials on them! <3 (From closest to camera to furthest away, it's G, C, J, E, & L).

The guys are all looking very snazzy in this video. Love Cesar's scarf, love Layne's red sweater(?) (the most colour that any of them are wearing in the video), and honestly Geoff is really working that long-sleeve black turtleneck, man! 👀 (And obligatory shoutout to Geoff's hair, of course, *chefs kiss*)

I'm of course just typing this all from the Patreon early access thing, but fun fact: this is both the second Christmas video and the second consecutive video of this year to be filmed without an actual cameraman! But unlike using an iPhone like in the previous cases, this was filmed using a robotic camera arm, fully programmed to the music, able to repeat precise movements with each take! I highly doubt Voiceplay are gonna give up on using human camera operators completely, but this is still a cool thing to have as a potential option for video shoots! (EDIT: it's called "Cinebot", and a guy called Ben Meyers helped out with programming/operating it!)

Right, now time to talk more about the vocals and the song arrangement itself!

As per with previous thoughts/commentary posts, most of these notes are after a second watch, with a few extra thoughts mixed in from additional watches, because as I've said before, the first-time watch is just for the vibes

Y'know when I listened to the cover of Zat You Santa Claus on the Peppermint Winter album, I was like "eh it doesn't really have much of a Christmassy vibe imo, gives me more spy movie vibes?" but like with this version I don't even care (the video makes up for it, it's fine), and by the the time you're reading this post, this song will have replaced the old version in my Christmas Spotify playlist!

On my second watch-through, I had the song lyrics up on my phone (while the video played on my laptop), and that made me realize that a few lines got slightly reworded, and then there's a whole section that's not in the original! The bit where they're singing "he's coming for you/hope you've not been bad" or something like that is definitely new, but not new for VoicePlay, because I went back and relistened to the 2012 Peppermint Winter cover and that section is in there as well.

Doing a relisten of their previous cover also made me realise that this arrangement really is different to the older one, even genre-wise, and I like this one more!

Okay I'm gonna do a third watch-through, pausing to take notes as I go, just to make sure I don't miss anything or forget to mention anything here!

A nice bit of whistling from Cesar at the start! (Seriously can everyone whistle except me? 😅)

"Is that you, Santa Claus?" pfft I love the little bit of dramatic flair Geoff put on the delivery of that line 😁

"Are you bringing a present for me?" ooh that harmony at the start of that line! I don't wanna say it's dissonant, because I'm not a music expert and I really don't know, but it sounded "different" and I liked it!

"Something pleasant that you can present; a present for me" this is one of the main line changes, because in the original (and in their 2012 cover as well, in fact), it's "something pleasantly pleasant for me". But sure, why not change it up a bit?

Eli killing it as always!

Oh man I'm almost tempted to make a screenshot compilation just for the "he's coming to get ya" section alone ngl. All their facial expressions are just so great! I feel like I gotta watch this video five times and just focus on a different person each time!

I'm assuming the YouTube description will confirm it (and/or the BTS video), but Patrons are guessing that "Santa" (the one handing over the present) is Tony, which'd make sense (though I'm also guessing that the voice of Santa would be Eli, since he did the same thing in Mission Jingle Bells and Oogie Boogie's Song, and was "Sandy Claws" in Jingle Bell Rock last year.

UPDATE TO THE ABOVE: Nope, that was actually Bucky as Santa Claus! Or as the YouTube description puts it: "Zat Ur Hands? - Bucky Claus" 😂

Omg now I'm just thinking that it would've been really funny if Geoff had subtly sang "Is that you, Sandy Claws", as a fun little double throwback, lol.

Not sure what I love more - Eli killing it on lead vocals yet again, or Geoff just fully grinning as Eli does so 😄

"Who's there, who is it? Are you - stopping for a -" Layne!!! I love him honestly, and it's always great when he gets a little bit of lead vocals.

J's Louis Armstrong impression was freaking amazing, and so was the scatting!

Yeah I love this song and video so much - it's so fun, they all look like they had a great time filming it, and it's such a freaking vibe!

And that's VoicePlay's final song of 2024 (SIKE! We still got Party Of Your Lifetime to come, but hey, I didn't know that when I was first writing up this post!) other than some VoicePlay Minis and stuff (and Party Of Your Lifetime!). I of course have not a single clue what VP has in store for 2025, but that's just part of the greatness of VoicePlay! You never know what you're gonna get next, but it's always gonna be amazing in its own way.

Happy Holidays, and see you soon for both some 2024 roundup posts from me, as well as whatever Voiceplay has been cooking up next! ;)

[compacflt]

Hi, big fan of your fics. I've just found your Tumblr and binged everything Icemav-related. When reading about Icemav's political beliefs, I've gotten curious. Does Bradley share the same political beliefs as Ice (and Mav)? Does being raised by them or them pulling his papers influence how he votes? Or there are other factors in the play (e.g. generations, social media)? How about Jake and the other Daggers? How does this young generation of the Navy perceive politics (elections, gender, etc.)? My apologies for bombarding you with questions. But as a non-American, American politics have always been something we must pay attention to. I've seen many interesting interpretations on Tumblr but it feels more or less wistful than realistic, but I might be wrong (again not an American) so I would love to see your perspective on this. Thank you.

a good politics roundup post before i leave this blog

icemav & their conservatism: here, here, here

ice’s NECESSARY conservatism as commander of the pacific fleet (i.e. officers who are most likely to get promoted to the highest ranks do NOT break the service line when it comes to domestic politics, so by necessity ice would’ve had to keep his mouth shut, he Cannot be both a four-star and a revolutionary, like he just can’t; and being a revolutionary is otherwise antithetical to his character anyway): here, here.

and the original “ice & mav politics post” which is being updated here: here

I’ve gone back and forth on everyones politics over the last year of me being involved with these characters, but let me just tell you where I’ve ended up headcanoning them politically, if ur interested

ice: reagan democrat. “educated moderate” who was more right-leaning pre-9/11. now just a regular ol liberal (did you SEE those gay little round glasses in tgm? no way this guy isn’t a straight-up lib) with absolutely no strong feelings about most domestic politics besides “fascism bad”. Has some foreign policy opinions that areeeee questionable at best, like all members of the military elite (hangman voice: DO NOT ASK ICEMAN ABOUT CHINA. WORST MISTAKE OF MY LIFE). foreign policy neoliberal favoring the dovish side of the spectrum. A force conservator (“let’s save our military assets [read: my boyfriend maverick 🥺] for when we really need them, not for any old conflict. the deterring specter of the American war machine should outweigh the risk of underperforming”). He’s in favor of marriage equality of course, but treats it like a privilege and not a right. would be sad/upset if it got repealed but wouldn’t necessarily fight for it. “well at least my marriage will always be legal in california so i just won’t leave, problem solved.” Normie median Biden voter.

mav: political wildcard tbh. original 1986 mav is DEFINITELY right-leaning (i think i’ve written elsewhere, “he fully believes bill clinton is an affront to god”). i get young republican vibes from him. Full on patriotic (but dispassionate) 1980s reaganite anti-commie neoconservative. but after the 2010s i am very confused tbh. Tom cruise’s political aura is an insanely confusing one. idk. No matter what, Mav has some Hot Takes that a.) can immediately be shot down by ice using Facts and Logic at any time and b.) are not strictly partisan. He’s registered democrat just to support marriage equality (his marriage is his top priority but he doesn’t care about Other gays’ marriages, only his own), doesn’t care about any of the party’s other lines. Votes however ice tells him to. I get real “kind clueless libertarian” vibes from 2022 maverick tbh. Especially with the “isolating himself in a hangar in the middle of the mojave desert.” that has a political connotation to it for sure. bro just does whatever he wants out there

also, ice & mav live in San Diego, which… while in blue/democrat leaning California…is famously a bastion of right-wingers & has a hitler particle level off the charts… (sorry its not my favorite place in the world). That’s why they’re both continually so disgusted by San Francisco (a metonym for effete liberal homosexuality). Theyre from San Diego, hatred of SF & liberal SF politics is kinda par for the course down there.

Bradley: as u will see in the extras i definitely hc Bradley as an activist, but because he’s… in the navy and also like in his 30s… It’s not college campus activism, it’s just “things all of us in the left wing can agree upon” activism. so, like, BLM or pride, etc. He’s an “in this house we believe” yard sign liberal. He is 38 years old. hes a solid millennial so not politically hip with the kids (me)

Bradley & ice/mav disagree on the VISIBILITY of politics. Ice & mav, who did live through the vietnam era draft/near-dissolution of American society in the 60s and 70s, are not in favor of possibly losing their job/honor they have fought and killed for, for the sake of a political statement. And they believe their relationship IS a political statement, whereas Bradley would rather encourage them to treat their relationship like, I don’t know, a relationship that has a right to exist independent of politics!

Jake and the other daggers: idk. i don’t really give a shit about the daggers sorry. They r blank slates 2 me. jake especially is canonically frat-boy sexist in a way that gives me the heebs, much like original 1986 maverick and ice. But the navy tends to be the most left-wing (or thought of as left wing in common thought) service of the military, if that helps. But it is also the most traditional service of the military, and by traditional I mean BRITISH!!!! 🇬🇧💂there’s so much pomp and circumstance and hoity-toitiness that comes from the navy’s origins in the Royal Navy. A lot of sticking to outdated tradition in the very fabric of the navy itself, while the navy’s enlisted demographics shift younger and more left-wing/“revolutionary…” some interesting conflicts there. Like that one sailor who got blasted by multiple congressmen on social media for (with permission!) reading a poem about their queer identity on the USS Gerald ford’s intercom a few months back, if I remember correctly. Hoo boy the Takes that day were wild. Younger Americans tend to be more liberal but YMMV with officers, who are by nature trying to uphold outdated traditions of the navy for the sake of keeping the navy a unified service

i am of course writing carole as a christian republican who has gay friends and a gay kid not by choice but by the Grace of God

[historicallyaccuratecheese]

So uh...that thing I said about my tma hyperfixation slipping recently? Well, I wasn't lying, but...holy shit, if it didn't come back quicker than I expected! As I'm sure many of you are aware, they recently announced a live performance happening in London surrounding Hill Top Road, and...I am so ridiculously excited for it. Now that I've booked my tickets, I am wholeheartedly back on the listening train and set on finishing it before October 30th next year.

As I have said in current my pinned post, I don't think I'll be continuing to write down all of my thoughts for every episode, both because I don't have the time or energy, and because I want to start using this blog for pleasure more and just post about whatever thing's on my mind. That being said, I finally got back into the podcast with MAG 87 (a bit of a weird new start, I know, but...whatever), and...I definitely have some things to say about it! So uh...yeah, read beneath the cut if you want to hear a bit of that! :)

But first, I'd just like to give some brief thoughts on MAG 85 and 86. Unfortunately it's been quite a while since I last listened to them, and I don't really have much motivation to go back and re-listen, since I'd like to keep things moving forward, so...a lot of my hyper-specific thoughts have evaded me. That being said...I thoroughly enjoyed both of them!

MAG 85...despite being extremely frustrating to form any coherent thoughts about, was an absolutely stellar episode! And I mean...being confusing is kind of the point so I can't complain that much. Like, it is entirely impossible for me to decipher this one, I can't tell if it means fuck all or is the most important thing ever, but...whatever, it was good! It's no secret at this point that I really like all of the stuff surrounding The Spiral (particularly a certain distorted door man...), so this was obviously a great time for me and was stellarly written. I did find quite a bit of intrigue in the post-statement though, namely Georgie....I mean, bless her heart, but holy shit she needs to re-think her dating life, and also what is seemingly the reveal of the name of one of Gertrude's late assistants. ...Eric Delano. At first I didn't think much of this name reveal, I mean, I assumed we'd learn more about him later, but the intial reveal doesn't tell us much. However...for reasons I'll explain later, I recently reffered back to the transcript for MAG 62, and...wouldn't you know it, Mary mentioned an Eric back there, one that both she and Gertrude are familiar with. I have no idea what his connection to the former could be if there really was one at all, but uh...based on the context he's brought up in, I'm guessing that his death had something to do with whichever one of ✨the horrors✨ he was devoted to (likely The Eye if he was indeed an archival assistant, but...then again Gertrude's alliegance to it as The Archivist can still be questioned so I'm not saying anything conclusive for the time being), and the "what's left of him" remark means his death was...probably a bit of a slow build. Anyways...all very interesting.

Now, as for MAG 86...holy fucking shit. As far as I can tell this one if quite infamous among the fandom, and...yeah, I can certainly sympathize! I really don't think I have much more to say about the statement that hasn't already been said, but just...wow. It's another example of a statement that doesn't really seem connected to the overarching plot, (I mean...there are some similarities between the monster in this episode and Maxwell Rayner, but I feel like I'm supposed to read into that more than the two almost certainly being extensions/servants of the same darkness power, plus if we assume that the Rayner body swapping theory is true, and that he only does so when the current one is starting to get really old, and specifically targets children for hosts, then like...why is he possessing an adult? Why was he outside of a body for so long? This is a really long section inside parentheses holy shit.) but it is just...so incredibly memorable and terrifying. The way that throughout the entire episode, it builds up its concept of a monster that is one with the darkness of night itself and only encroaches towards when you aren't conciously hiding from it underneath a blanket, but then at the very last minute completely subverts this idea by revealing that its patterns were just a farce meant to lure Benjamin into a false sense of security...it's genuinely haunting. And of course "The blanket never did anything" is a quote for the ages, like...just wow. (Also the way it left a noticeable stain on him reminded me of Void from Hollow Knight but that's off-topic).

Otherwise though, this episode had a lot of great non-statement content! While I am...still absolutely terrified by the prospect of Melanie working at the institute now, along with her blatant naivete and denial (although granted I'm thankful that she's much more open to investigating what the hell is happening than Season 1 Jon was), I really liked her reading the statement here. Lydia Nicholas does a great job making her read sound different from the statements Melanie gave herself, I mean...she genuinely sounds horrified by the end which like...same girl. I also love how she says "marker" at the beginning and end, it's such a small but charming detail that highlights how she's still used to her old way of looking into and documenting the paranormal really well. Also, somewhat off-topic but...WHY THE HELL DOES ROBIN PATTON SOUND SO MUCH LIKE GEORGIE'S SHITTY DATE?! Like...I was so prepared to learn that Georgie got mauled by a shadow monster upon listening to MAG 87 but...nope! Genuinely...what was up with that? Uh...regardless, we also have Tim who...I found to be VERY interesting in this episode. Firstly...the line "Who am I even sad for?" was just...an absolute gut punch. It's no secret that anything regarding the inherent tragedy of Sasha's character is enough to make me cry, but like...despite my occasional frustrations with him, it's stuff like this that makes me feel like...just, Tim Stoker, they could never make me hate you. But outside of that...something is absolutely up with him.

I just...find it so weird that he seems to almost instantly recognize what happened when Melanie starts talking about the two Sashas, like...how is it that HE seems so understanding of what's going on when she, the only person other than Elias who was able to see through the facade, really isn't? I mean, sure, there have been a few statements about The NotThem before, but only one of them actually had the archival assistants involved in any follow-up, and I mean...Tim is like the office diva who's just here for shits and giggles! ...That's an overexxageration, I'm sure he had his reasons for joining the institute that'll be revealed in the future, I'm just saying he's absolutely the most lax person here, albeit the way in which he's lax has changed over time. But like, why does he, of all people, remember this singular statement that he looked into over a year ago at this point in the timeline? I mean, I guess he did take a bit of an interest in the table when it was delivered to the institute, and was also the one to tell Jon about the delivery, but...Jon himself didn't even clock that the table and The NotThem were inherently connected to one another until after reading Lawrence Moore's statement and hearing about how Adelard Dekker bound the thing, so why should I expect Tim to be any better? Just...what is the deal here? On top of that, I found it really interesting how he just...stopped reading the statement and went on a rant at the beginning. As far as we can tell, statements seem to...draw people into them in a less than normal way, likely explaining why they portray the person who gave it while reading out loud, and why they seem so shocked and breathless when they stop (except for Jon but granted he's been doing this for a while whereas Martin and Melanie are new to this). The only other exceptions to this are Elias, who's method of reading "Alice Tonner's Statement" were...unique to say the least (and is also a practically confirmed to be claimed by The Eye like Jon while the archival assistants might just be touched so...there's also that), and Gertrude, who is...admittedly a bit of a mystery, but if we go with the assumption that as The Archivist she was also claimed by The Eye like Jon and probably all before her, and take some of her, um...fiery machinations into account, then...yeah, I feel confident in saying there was probably a bit of resistance to all of this spooky archive shit on her part.

So then, what's the deal with Tim? I mean, I once proposed the idea that "statement begins" is a sort of paranormal trigger phrase that draws people into the statements as an explanation for why Gertrude, a character who doesn't say that, seems so unfazed while and after reading a statement, but...this episode actually deconfirms that notion, because Melanie doesn't say it and still comes out uneasy. So...Tim not saying "statement begins" probably means very little. I mean...I guess it also felt like Melanie was getting drawn in over time so...maybe the fact that Tim didn't even start the actual story has something to do with it? Well like...my point is, this and the instant understanding of what happened to Sasha is enough to make me feel mighty suspicious of Tim. Like, I don't think he's some evil villain or anything but...I mean to say that he's shifted from "just some guy who got stuck in this whole mess" to "someone who might very well have a much bigger stake in the lore and narrative than I initially thought". And like...I know Season 2 Jon was an insane bastard who was not to be trusted but honestly...I also kind of think it's weird Tim came to the institute despite there being no history in paranormal studies on his record. So...what do I think's going on with him? Well...I think he very well might have some sort of connection to The Stranger. I don't get the sense that he's actually working for it or is in on The Unknowing or something, because even thought deceit and false appearances is kind of The Stranger's thing from what I can garner...Tim seems pretty genuine in his confusion. If not, then "Who am I even sad for?" would have significantly less weight to it. But...I just wonder if maybe he's been touched by it beyond just being decieved by The NotThem, and...maybe that has something to do with his past. It would explain why he recognized what was going on with Sasha after hearing Melanie's account (I am...very tempted to say that he lost someone to The NotThem before, but...I don't know how you'd expand on that given that the thing is currently rotting in an underground ditch. Sure, it's not actually dead and could theoretically bust out at any moment, but...eh...we'll see), and mabe also why he was able to seemingly tear himself away from the statement, since The Eye and The Stranger seem to be VERY naturally opposed, maybe more than they are to any other one of ✨the horrors✨, except for MAYBE the darkness because The Divine Host's insignia is literally a closed eye. Ultimately...these are just two relatively small details and I'm making a lot of assumptions based on them, but...I really feel like something interesting is about to happen with Tim. I mean, I really hope so, I've said before that I badly want to see more about his character get revealed so that I can form a more clear opinion on him, but...I'll just have to wait and see.

And then finally, something that really surprised me...Melanie and Jon meeting up! This was a delighful surprise, not only because I love their interactions with one another, but also because...it's really interesting plot-wise. Firstly, we got some more information on Melanie getting "sort of shot" (it's been months and I still have not stopped thinking about that). Apparently she was shot in the leg...by a ghost. Oh...homegirl is so haunted by one of ✨the horrors✨ and it is not even funny anymore. I don't really have much to say about this reveal, other than that...I'm very intrigued by it and hope she makes another statement of her own soon. Because uh...that sounds important. Anyways, I think the most interesting thing here is the deal made between the two of them. Melanie helping Jon out with gathering additional resources is very intriguing...kind of, I mean, I'm writing this post-MAG 87 so I already have a decent idea of what her doing this for him might do...and given the context I kind of hope she doesn't help him with what he's trying to do because I prefer my archivist raw and not cooked but...we'll get to that. But uh...otherwise, I am EXTREMELY interested by the fact that Jon has...supposedly told Melanie everything. Like...I desperately need to listen to MAG 88 right after I post this just so that I can hopefully see the fallout of that conversation at the institute. Like...will they learn about Sasha, Leitner, Elias, Gertrude, ✨THE FUCKING HORRORS✨?! Just...how do you reveal all of that to the new girl at the institue when meeting up at a café, and better yet, how do you expect her to share all of that information with her new coworkers she barely knows at a place where they are constantly being watched by a guy who probably doesn't want them knowing that?! And like...how the hell do you "start with Sasha?" Like, I have genuinely tried imagining that conversation between Jon and Melanie in my head multiple times (i swear I am a normal person), and...I just cannot make that work. Like Melanie, I'm sorry, but Magnus Institute Lore 101 requires that you start with the worm lady, okay? Just...wow...how is that going to go down? Anyways...those are my main thoughts on MAG 86! ....Yeah, the disparity in stuff to say between this and MAG 85 is kind of laughable. I swear I like it, I just...cannot write anything coherent about it. Regardless...onto the main event!

But before that....just one little thing I recently realized regarding the episode "Hide and Seek" namely its title. Not only does it refer to The NotThem chasing Jon, but...I just realized that The Stranger "hides" and The Eye "seeks", but in this episode, the seeker is a manifestation of The Stranger and the hider is a man claimed by The Eye. ...God damn that is really clever.

So...MAG 87. ...I would say I was surprised that definitely not Elias Bouchard managed to find out where Jon was hiding Gertrude's tapes but...I'm not. Because. Come on. Man...I just realized how unfortunate it is that right after Basira gave him that gold mine of information, he was forced to leave all of that knowledge behind. ...Yikes. Anyways, uh...I guess I should start with the statement here! Let's get the obvious out of the way. Sebastian Skinner you will always be famous. Put this man right next to Joshua Gillespie and Karolina Górka and let them form the most powerful polycule in human history because OH MY GOD I LOVE HIM. King and patron saint to all neurodivergents across the globe, he deserves all the riches he could ever desire. Yeah...despite all of the genuinely unnerving imagery and lore revelations in this episode, I have to say that Sebastian alone makes this one of the funniest episodes in the show by far. The man is LITERALLY asked to unclog human flesh from a sewage pipe in a creepy building in the woods by a very creepy woman who offers to FLENSE him...and he is just completely unfazed by and oblivious to the whole situation. I just...I can't get over that. In fact, he is so unbothered by it that Megan is GENUINELY APPALLED by it, but also so ammused that she calls over a servant of a completely different member of ✨the horrors✨ to LAUGH ABOUT IT, and then calls him back, not even to neccessarily kill him, but just to rub it in his face how actually scary things are. Just...absolute comedy gold, I love it. I will remember this man always, and it is actually kind of heartbreaking that he did not survive in the end if Gertrude's comments are anything to go off of (also yes hi Gertrude I missed you :D).

Outside of that though...yikes was this a freaky one. I mean, really only the second half if I'm being honest, the first part was still hilarious. Just like...so much disturbing imagery. The way he describes "Megan" burying her plastic hands into his skin, how Jude Perry just cruelly laughs as he cries out for help, and then a workshop filled with a bunch more of the sentient mannequins from MAG 83 skinning a bunch of severed heads, it's just...ugh! Same goes for Megan's face slipping away and Jude burning his shoulder right as it seemed like she was going to let him get away, just...yeah, very disturbing statement. Overall I really liked it, good mix of comedy and horror that builds the plot surrounding The Stranger, The Unknowing, and...surprisingly The Lightless Flame up really well. And speaking of which...

The best part of this episode for me is definitely all of the new information it gives us and the way it pushes the plot forward, both in the statement and the comments made by Gertrude and Jon. In general, I feel like Season 3 has done a great job at pushing the plot forward so far, even if it's felt a bit slow for me due to my hiatus. Firstly, I'd like to discuss what we learned about The Unknowing, because...wow. Now, Jon says that he believes The Unknowing is a "ritual" and...yeah, there probably is some truth to that. Now, I do still think that the destruction of The Magnus Institute probably plays into The Unknowing, both for reasons that I've discussed before, none of which have been debunked here as far as I'm concerned, but also because this episode confirms that while The Stranger is definitely the one leading the operation, other members of ✨the horrors✨ have the potential to get involved as well, namely what we now know is called "The Devastation". Amazing name by the way, I especially appreciate its existence because it was getting annoying having to differentiate between "Lightless Flame" as in the power and "Lightless Flame" as in the cult. Now, I know that Gertrude kind of suggests it is possible that Jude Perry (who uh...yeah! Really cool to get a new named freaky person here!) was just here for shits and giggles, and I mean...to an extent she probably was given Sebastian being a guy that exists, but let's assume that she actually is working with agents of The Stranger on The Unknowing. Now, as far as I can discern, there...really doesn't seem to be much that would make The Stranger and The Devastation natural allies when you look at things through a thematic lense. Like, compare this to The Vast, the isolation power and the darkness power, all of whom are allied via Daedalus, and you have clear thematic correlation. The Lukases, Fairchilds and Divine Host are working together because of the loneliness, size and darkness of space. Meanwhile, The Stranger and The Devastation don't have much in common...except for a common enemy. ...Or rather, seperate enemies that are allied with one another. Yeah so...The Stranger hates The Eye and The Devastation hates The Spider, and it does seem like The Eye and The Spider are allied in a number of places. Now, according to Gertrude, The Lightless Flame had...plans of their own that recently "went up in flames" (she actually said that by the way, I never thought I would hear her tell a joke), likely due to the loss of Agnes as we can tell she was definitely important to her given all of her "destiny" talk. Er, on that note, I guess I should mention that it's entirey possible that Jude Perry is the only member of The Lightless Flame allied with The Stranger, since all of the other named ones (Agnes, Diego and Arthur) are....very very dead, while she is implied to still be out there. Regardless, this makes me think that her and/or The Lightless Flame's involvement with The Unknowing could be a sort of...next best option. Like, maybe their plans involved getting rid of The Spider, but since Agnes' death has left them in disarray, their siding with the member of ✨the horrors✨ who seeks to take down The Spider's bestie. And...the best way to do that is probably through wrecking the institute. So uh...yeah, I definitely think that The Unknowing will involve destroying the institute, but...I have reason to suspect there's more too it than just that.

My reason is...well, Gertrude was actively trying to stop it. We know that she and Leitner tried to burn down the institute, or at least the archives, right before her death, so if The Unknowing only sought to do the same thing as her...why would she try to stop it? There has to be something else it seeks to achieve, and we have...at least an inkling of an idea of what that might be now. But um...on the note of Gertrude wanting to stop it, there's that! We now know for certain that Gertrude was not just fighting against The Eye from within the institute, but also The Stranger as well...which makes me think she was probably fighting against all of ✨the horrors✨, if the fact she was against two immortal enemies is anything to go off of. I also think this episode debunks the idea that she was secretly a servant of The Devastation due to her tendency to burn and explode, both because of what I just said but also because she talks about Jude Perry and The Lightless Flame in a way that makes her seem...on a different side from them. But like....that doesn't make her whole character any less bewildering to me! Hell, I think this makes her MORE bewildering! Not only do I not understand how she was able to even attempt doing so much damage to The Eye when she, as The Archivist, was presumably claimed by it, but like...how the hell was she going agaisnt EVEN MORE?! How is she just..able to fight against every side in this war between eldritch abominations, especially when her only known allies were three assistants who all died horribly, and an old librarian who while definitely powerful, is implied to have met her relatively late into her life? Even Michael, a character whose only discernable goals are to cause chaos, look hot while doing it and sit back and watch the world burn is at least aligned with The Spiral (albeit seemingly more by nature than by choice or experience). And like...better yet, WHY?! What motivated her to join The Magnus Institute and start fighting all of these things? My best guess is that she, like Jon, was motivated to join due to prior interest in the paranormal, and only learned that the institute was just as paranormal as everything it's been studying later on. The only discernable difference is that while Jon came in search of knowledge, I think she might have come in search of blood, but like...that's not a lot! Just...god. "Interesting" does not do this character justice. I love this arsonist grandma so dearly but like...I need her secrets now. And the funny thing is, I'm not even done talking about her yet! But...for now, back to The Unknowing.

So there's a few more details regarding it I want to point out. Firstly, it seems almost confirmed that while The Anglerfish and its minions, Breekon and Hope, Jude Perry and at least for a time, The NotThem, are all actively involved in The Unknowing, The Other Circus is the main organizer of the event, which makes sense as it does seem to be The Stranger's equivalent to the groups like The Lightless Flame and The Divine Host. (Mentioning that, I...kind of wonder if The Divine Host is involved here as well? I mean, not only are they seemingly aligned against The Eye, not only do they share some thematic similarities with agents of The Stranger, but...they've also been planning something for a while. There's Natalie Ennis' mention of a plan "three-hundred years in the making", which just so happened to have a part of it enacted...presumably not long before Gertrude's death. ...We'll get to the timeline shenanigans in a second. But uh...they also recently had their plans sold out to Section 31 by...who is most likely Elias, a guy who has expressed his desire to stop The Unkowing, albeit somewhat nonchalantly. Regardless, uh...we know that The Other Circus is in charge of this whole thing, but namely...somewhat by the name of "Orsinov". But...seemingly not Gregor Orsinov, the ringmaster from MAG 44, as Gertrude refers to this Orsinov with a "her" pronoun. Assuming that this is not a continuity error, then this likely means whoever is running The Other Circus is not the same person as Gregor, but rather a relative, spouse or even child. ...Preferabbly not that last one as I do not like the image of someone who is unlikely to be a normal earthling procreating. Alternatively, uh...congrats on the transition I guess? I know that sounds like a joke, but...it is worth noting that considering The Stranger is like...the shapeshifting one, a change in gender is not impossible here. Ultimately I'm fine if they go down that route, I just...don't hope they would frame that change in gender as an inherently scary thing? But...eh, I have faith in Jonny not to do that. Either way, there's some interesting directions they could take this in. Gertrude also mentions that Orsinov has...a world they wish to bring about. ...THAT doesn't sound good at all. I think this is pretty definitive proof that there's more to The Unknowing than I initially thought, and that it has much larger implications than just the destruction of the institute. I also assume this would be where the "ritual" aspect Jon alludes to would come into play, although I don't really know how to interpret that dialogue at the moment. Other than that...well, we know that all of that skin will somehow play into The Unknowing, and that there will also be "dancers" there who are wearing that skin. I assume these dancers are probably the various sentient(?) mannequins that agents of The Stranger have been producing, as "Megan" does seem to be wearing skin herself. This...also might explain what the deal with Sarah Baldwin and Daniel Rawlings is. I've thought since MAG 54 that the original humans who stumbled into Old Fishmarket Close were skinned by The Anglerfish, and that skin was given to monsters who serve it. Now it seems very likely that The Anglerfish's victims are actually "dancers" in their own right, so that's cool! I mean, it's terrifying, but it's cool! Uh...The Unknowing is seemingly fast approaching, which...yeah, definitely makes sense, I would be surprised if it didn't at least attempt to succeed this season honestly. And finally...this isn't from Gertrude's comments, but I didn't know where else to put it, but uh...we know that The Stranger also goes by the name "I Do Not Know You". ...I just thought that was neat.

Now, there's one last aspect of Gertrude's presence in this episode that I would like to discuss, that being...the timeline of her death. Unfortunately, my only real flaw with this episode is that it has quite a few, not plot-collapsing at all, but still pretty frustrating continuity errors that muddle the timeline a bit. ...Or does it? Because upon further thinking, I actually realized, what might seem like an impossible timeline...could actually be a clue. ...Yes, I am fully aware I probably sound a little crazy just by saying that. But first of all...well yeah I am crazy, we've established this before. But secondly, if it does turn out that these are just continuity errors...honestly like...whatever. I would prefer it if they weren't but I won't be super upset if Jonny made some minor mistakes, especially since he otherwise does a remarkably good job at keeping track of a timeline that is often not delivered to us in a chronological order. Now, there is one detail that I really can't rationalize being anything other than a mistake, and that is Jon saying that this tape was recorded a year or so before Gertrude's death. That is just...blatantly not true, as this statement was recorded in April of 2015, and Jon had been The Archivist for a quite a while by that point. Ultimately though, this doesn't really matter, especially since MAG 33 kind of established than any continuity error said by Jon regarding a statement can be explained by him being a little bit dumb on occasion. And by a little bit dumb I mean he smashed the table I'M STILL NOT OVER IT I KNOW YOU HAVE CHILDHOOD TRAUMA ABOUT SPIDERS BUT SERIOUSLY WHAT THE FUCK?! But otherwise...well, it's a bit complicated. This isn't the first time that we've gotten conflicting statements regarding Gertrude's death. In MAG 25, we're told that she died in May 2015 on the same day screams were heard from Hither Green Chapel, but in MAG 40, Elias tells her she died, or...at least went missing, in March. This means that this statement could either take place a month before...or a month after she died, and...I actually think either one could work. Stay with me. Let's start with the easiest assumption, that being that she died in May.

If this is the case...well, there's really not much to say. This statement was recorded a month before she died, end of story. As for Elias, well...he was the man who killed her, and we can say without a shadow of a doubt that he lied in the statement he gave after the Prentiss incident. The only problem is...I don't know why he would lie about the date of her death specifically as that seems kind of disadvantageous, but...I can just chock that up to him being a silly guy who does what he wants. Alternatively, you could assume that Gertrude went MISSING in March, but actually died in May, but...that wouldn't really explain the blood in the archives (although it's entirely possible that detail was another lie), and on top of that, wouldn't explain why Jon had her date of death recorded as being in May when she was only confirmed dead when Martin found her body in the tunnels in July of 2016. So...yeah, it's not perfect, but there are workarounds to this line of thinking. But...what if we take an alternative line of thinking, one that is less likely but a bit more fun? What if we assume that this statement was recorded a month...BEFORE she died?

You see, I've just been thinking...there has to be...SOMETHING more to Gertrude's death, right? Like, sure, it made sense for the whodunnit mystery to be concluded in Season 2, but like...her death is such an important catalyst in the story, and I find it way too hard to believe that it's as simple as "Elias shot her because she was trying to burn down the archives". (Oh uh...and this doesn't really connect to what I about to put forward, but I have to wonder...why did it take Elias so long to kill her? Like, she was working against The Eye at least since the late nineties, and he should've known about this because...well, you know. Unless gaining all-knowing powers from his patron took over 20 years, but like...I find that unlikely. ...Why did he wait?) I just...feel like there's more too it. And uh...you know how I mentioned I went back to the transcript for MAG 62? Yeah...you might see where I'm going with this. I went back there because in this episode, Jon mentions the page of the skin book that Gertrude got from Mary. Now, he very quickly disregards this as being at all connected to The Stranger (while also commenting on how confusing this all is, which....you and me both buddy), and I have to agree with this. While I am implored to raise an eyebrow at how all of the human heads that were being harvested for skin in the workshop here were hung on the same stuff used for Mary's book, we know that the book connects to a seperate member of ✨the horrors✨ called "The End", and while ✨the horrors✨ do collaborate with one another, we've never seen a Leitner that's connected to more than one of them, the same principle applying to artifacts and claimed people. But...I don't think the book being mentioned here has to be a throwaway line. If you recall MAG 62, Mary gave Gertrude a page of her book. Now, the page already had writing on it, seemingly implying that someone's spirit had already been bound to it. But...then I remembered that Mary seemingly bound herself to the book...and that's when I had an idea. For a long time, I've wondered how Mary could've possibly done what she did, but then I realized...is it possible that she removed chunks of her skin before dying, did all the spooky writing and incantations, and THEN overdosed on painkillers, which ultimately resulted in her being bound to the book? Because if that's the case...what if the same happened with Gertrude? Because like...Gertrude is shown to be familiar with the smell of burning skin in MAG 62, so like...what if she had pieces of her skin removed at some point, and then Mary used those pieces to create the page that she would then give her later on? Then, if we assume Elias killed her in March, this resulted in Gertrude being bound to the page as a ghost, therefore explaining how this statement was recorded after her death? This would also explain her mysterious remarks about needing to recover and being unable to stand, because she would be adjusting to a new state of being! (Side note, can I just say that I thought Gertrude sounded like...noticeably more aged here? I don't know if that's just a result of me not having tuned in for a while but if it isn't...great job Sue Sims, you really sold it well :). ) Now...all of that said, how likely is this?

Honestly not very, this is kind of crack. Plus, there are a number of very easy alternate explanations to these mysteries. The remark about burning skin could come from an earlier encounter with The Stranger or The Devestation, and honestly...it is entirely possible that Mary got help from Gerard when being bound to the book, because not only was he suspected of killing her, indicating he might have been at the scene, but all of the statements where he seems to be on bad terms with her take place after her death in 2008, so...yeah. It's very likely that the death in May thing is the case, or that...all of this is just one big jumble of continuity errors, which is honestly fine! But...eh, I like this idea quite a lot. Alternatively, I could argue that she's a ghost similar to the Archivist seen in MAG 53 but...that's pure speculation. Well, whatever the case, I just hope that there's a bit more to Gertrude's death and the circumstances surrounding it then what we've been given so far, because...I think there's a lot of untapped potential there.

Well...to wrap all of this up, I'd like to discuss some of the stuff Jon said. Firstly, he mentioned how weird it is that Gertrude was recording tapes all the way up until she died, along with how strange it is that only a small handful of statements were actually transferred, at least...as far as we're aware. I...honestly have to agree with this, but I think I have a decent enough idea as to what the deal is here, but it's not perfect. For a good while now, I've assumed that Gertrude intentionally kept the statements "disorganized", so that her successor would get all of the information they need as quickly as possible, and I think a similar thing might be going on with the tapes. All of them cover pretty important stuff, MAG 53 giving insight into The Eye and the institute, MAG 62 showing us some pretty important events, MAG 44 and 87 both tie back to The Stranger and The Unknowing, and MAG 77...uh...well look, there's probably no way she could've known that The NotThem would infiltrate the institute, especially all those years ago, but the tape does give us a clue to the existence of a statement from the ever-mysterious Adelard Dekker, and given how that statement has gone missing for unknown reasons...I think it's probably pretty important? Granted this theory isn't perfect, I mean, why would she be recording a statement that gives information regarding The Other Circus when she says in this very episode that she's surprised The Unknowing is something...like...actually worth worrying about in the present? And why would all of these tapes be buried alongside her in the tunnels...unless Elias put them there...which...ok that actually checks out. Anyways, this line of thinking isn't perfect but...I think something along these lines makes sense. The second point of intrigue to me is uh...Jon's plans. Which...oh boy.

*DRUMROLL PLEASE*....

LADIES AND GENTLEMEN, BOYS AND GIRLS, HORRORS AND MICHAELS, GIVE IT UP FOR ANOTHER ROUND OF "NEW PLOT POINTS IN THE MAGNUS ARCHIVES THAT ARE REALLY EXCITING FROM A STORY PERSEPCTIVE BUT TERRIFYING WHEN YOU CONSIDER HOW MUCH IT'S GOING TO SUCK FOR ONE OR MORE OF THE CHARACTERS!!!" 🎉 🎉 🎉 🎉 🎉 🎉 🎉

So...Jon...ever-knowledgable and sane...has decided that it's a great idea to try and track down Jude Perry. You know, that lady who sets people on fire? I just...look, Melanie, if you know what's good for you, which I know yo-...actually nevermind you went to India fully aware that you might get murdered by ghosts, which you almost did, so...no. But if you have gained the ability to know what's good for you, which I hope you do, then you will NOT help the smelly man track down the professional arsonist. Like...dude?! Hello?! Like, I know the situation is dire, I know The Unknowing is a rapidly approaching threat, and I know that after BPM and the flashbacks to your childhood trauma you've accepted that there's really no way out of this mess, but like...damn, this is not a good idea! Not even Season 2 Jon would do this! Don't get me wrong...I think this is super exciting, not only because I have a particular bias towards the stuff involving The Lightless Flame (...mostly Agnes but shhhhhh), but because...this is EXACTLY what I wanted Season 3 to do. Finally getting out there in the world and actively trying to find all of the shit from the statements. It is...extremely dangerous and terrifying, but...also very exciting. I don't want to get my hopes up too high, after all it is entirely possible that Jude Perry has moved far out of Havering, or has even died at this point, but...man, if we could actually HEAR a member of The Lightless Flame speak...I might actually lose my god damn mind. Well...I'll just have to wait and see.

And finally, the ending of this episode. ...Yeah, that's genuinely terrifying! Hearing the calliope music slowly creep in, and then getting Jon's genuinely horrified reaction...it's so unlike what I'm used to so far, it comes at such an unexpected moment...and my jaw was genuinely left wide-open at it. That's uh...that's not good. Jon...I think you have a bit more to worry about than just police now. Oh, and just because I haven't really mentioned it, um...yeah I absolutely adore Georgie! She kind of has a very similar appeal to that of Basira for me, being a really down to earth and real-feeling character in a world filled with people who, while I absolutely adore them, are objectively freaks of nature. And while I do still think I like Basira a tad bit more, if only because I just feel like I know her better, I actually think Georgie is a better example of this trait! She's just a really friendly and supportive friend to Jon who has...unfortunately gotten a bit wrapped up in this mess, and...yeah, what can I say, I find her very endearing and hope to learn more about her and her past with Jon. I will say, I do find it a tad bit frustrating that Jon is pushing her away and refusing to get help from her, especially when he kind of resolved to stop doing that at the beginning of the season, and ESPECIALLY because she is the exact kind of person he needs at the moment, but granted, I get the sense he's doing this more out of care for her than suspiscion or malice, and I mean...yeah, I'd also be hesitant to tell her...all of that. And also...holy shit the statements really ARE an addiction allegory! Jesus Christ...Jon, what the hell is going on with you right now?

Well uh...yeah, that's all I really have to say! I was definitely surprised by how much I managed to write here, and I'm very happy that my tma fixation has seemingly circled back around earlier than I expected! I hope you enjoyed reading this and that this new kind of format worked well, this was certainly much less of an investment of time and energy for me at least, and I had a good time with it! Like I said, I'm not going to be dead set on writing about every detail of every statement anymore, and lengths of posts I do write will probably vary either do to time or how much I even have to say, but...this should be a decent example of the kind of format I'm going for! Anyways, I'm...probably not going to listen to MAG 88 just yet because it's late, so I'll save that for tomorrow morning! Anyways, it's nice to be back on tma, and thank you very much for reading all this! :)

[emoxxzombie]

Winx Club Character Essays: Musa

Quick disclaimer: this is basically me just rambling (so be warned.) While I will present already known canon information, I will also be sharing my own hcs. So pretty much how I see Musa based on canon. Please keep that in mind as you read through, as I'm sure many of your guys' views on Musa are different from mine. Another thing that I'd like to add is that this "essay" specifically discusses Musa in the earlier seasons of Winx, since the writers did change her personality up a lot in the later seasons. Anyways, with that out of the way, let's get into the actual "essay"

So, let's start off with what we already know about Musa, shall we?

Musa is the fairy of music, and was born on the planet Melody. Her birthday is May 30th, and she is 16 years old during the first season of Winx. She is the daughter of Matlin and Ho-Boe, and her on-and off boyfriend being Riven. She is an aspiring singer and musician. Among her friends, Musa scores the best grades in her schoolwork. She's a bit of a loner and is one of the most tomboyish among the other Winx. Musa is very emotionally vulnerable, and offsets this by appearing strong and resilient, often times putting up a strong front.

Now, let's look a bit more into her personality. At times Musa can be quite a snide, as seen with Stella and even Flora in the earlier seasons. She is also short tempered and moody. We see her get quite defensive over herself (as well as her friends.) She's not afraid to get in people's faces if it comes down to it. Musa is a good listener too though. For instance, in s2 when Aisha/Layla had just transferred to Alphea, and felt like she didn't fit in, Musa was right there for her and comforted her when she needed it most.

I want to go over Musa's appearance now. She has a light skin complexion (close to pale), dark blue hair, and dark blue eyes. Clothing wise, in s1 her main civilian outfit consists of a single strapped red tank top, a purple bicep bracelet (that usually appears on her right bicep but you'll sometimes see it on the left), sagged baggy blue jeans that expose her pink underwear slightly, and red sneakers with white soles. I personally, think that Musa likes to dress for herself and doesn't give a shit about what others think of the way she dresses. She dresses for herself, not for the approval of others. Her clothing is another way she expresses herself freely, besides music. Non canonically, I think that Musa also likes to wear a lot of alternative leaning clothes. She mixes components of mall goth, punk, and skater into a sort of streetwear look. She's not that into makeup, and when she does decide to wear some it'll usually just be basic black eyeliner.

For interests, we obviously know that she loves to sing and play instruments, her favorite being a concert flute. She also likes to dance and party. But, let's look into some of my personal interest hcs for her. She likes to skateboard and can do numerous tricks. She may not be as good as Layla might be, but she's definitely good. She loves to watch horror and romance movies. Psychological horror is her favorite but she'll watch almost anything horror. She isn't much into reading and prefers to avoid it (unless it's for studying purposes.) But, she does enjoy graphic novels and comics. She likes to go on late night walks, which help her clear her head and think clearly. When she's not able to go out at night for a walk (for whatever reason), she'll usually stay up until 3 AM playing videogames with Tecna. I have more interest/hobby hcs but I'll stop there.

Now let's talk relationships. We already know who Musa's father and mother are. Her mother, Matlin, died when Musa was a very young child. I've already talked about her relationship with Riven before and have shared a brief bit of my thoughts and views on that so I'm not going to delve into that here (but I'd love to make a separate blog post about it sometime!) When she first met Bloom, she didn't really like her, but not too long after, she started to be able to tolerate her, and then they became friends. In s2, she grew very close to Layla, and they quickly befriended each other. They're best friends (and I will forever be mad about the writers deciding to randomly cut off their friendship in the later seasons.. but I'm going to completely ignore that rn.) Musa is also close to Tecna, but not as much as she is to Layla. She doesn't have many friends outside of the Winx, but that doesn't bother her, she's very happy with the friend group she has.

I could write so much more about Musa, but I think that this post is already long enough as is. To anyone and everyone who actually read all way the way up to this point I literally love you sm omg 😭. Winx is something that I'm really passionate about and it's been one of my biggest hyperfixtations for as long as I can remember.

I plan to write more character essays on some of the other characters from Winx, not sure when, but I'll get to it eventually :).

[anzyll]

For my next post, I thought I'd ramble about something random and uninteresting; so there's not particularly anything new going on. The second area of my game is an underground city inside of a Labyrinth, heavily inspired by Greek mythology. While it's inspired by Greece, it's also heavily inspired by typical nightlife shenanigans, shady dealings -- an entire city of back alleys. I've drawn inspiration from a lot of things for this area, and it's definitely the most dense thing I've ever made, not just with content, but also with characters I love and really want to be able to show other people. So for this little spotlight blog, I decided to choose the two I was working on right now: Lazlo and Brock.

Now, Brock and Lazlo aren't anything particularly standout, as far as characters go, but that makes me feel like they exemplify the standard. They're not mindblowers, they just dudes. I made them in around 2019-ish. It was notably before the Techbro boom in popularity, which I will try to avoid naming for fear of bots and blocked words. I thought it would be really funny to have two guys in a basement somewhere, mining some coins, just totally lame dudes. Brock, the orange-haired one, was originally called Bob Musk, which in the current day and age would be just the corniest overused joke ever. The name Bob came from YouTuber Muyskerm, who I felt he somewhat resembled. His surname, Fuller, is a parody of Ferris Bueller, and his titular Day Off. Brock Fuller is sort of a corruption + jumble of Ferris Bueller, who kind of exemplifies the devil-may-care attitude of the residents of the city of Labyrinth that Brock lives in. I wanted to make a character who would attack you with a calculator; doubling and subtracting stats and HP, adding buffs, dividing damage, etc. When I was a kid I imagined having "calculator powers" once or twice in math class -- my fault for reading so much Rick Riordan. Percy Jackson's weird pen sword probably rubbed off a lot on me, gave me a great appreciation of both Greek culture AND urban fantasy, both of which play in heavily to this area. For Brock's clothes, I wanted to do a sort of "business casual" look, like someone who doesn't know how to dress but is trying to look professional. For colours, the orange hair came naturally, but I just knew I had to give him Joker colours for his shirt and tie.

Good old purple and green. The Joker (2019) movie was still rather new at the time, and all of the memes had me thinking about it. 'Course, I've never actually WATCHED Joker (2019), but I don't think he wears purple in the film, so my brain kinda autocorrected to Heath Ledger's. Better design either way, if you ask me. Techbros and Joker go together like arson and kerosene. Lazlo is comparatively more simple. I really wanted to give him one of those "not really a tuxedo" t-shirts. They're so incredibly lame, but also so incredibly charming at the same time, it really screams "nerdy 20-something" to me.

His face was on a whim, I can't recall exactly what inspired me for that sort of "teeth hanging off the bottom of a top lip" overbite sort of look, but if I had to guess it was probably at least partially Futurama.

My art was subconsciously influenced by the stupid mouth shape that Matt Groening makes an unfortunate amount around the time, it always pissed me off because I don't ACTUALLY like how it looks. It took a lot of restraint to sort of pull back my art style from this big-lip sorta overbite exaggeration that was really common in my circles at the time, and Laz is a product of that, but one of the few that I think I actually nailed in regards to it. That said, it's very possible that I just accidentally and unintentionally ripped it from something I can't name at the moment. His name however, was directly inspired by Camp Lazlo; wow, we're 3 for 3 on references to things I've never watched. I think all I know about Camp Lazlo is that at the end they reveal that one of the main characters was a fraud from an insane asylum the whole time, which is definitely the kind of energy I vibe with for gags. With his face, I felt like he'd fit in on that show... and also maybe if he was an animal of some kind. His surname, Doherty, was just the surname of someone I used to know IRL as a kid. He looks kinda similar to my old friend in some ways, though thankfully not due to his ungodly overbite. For Lazlo's power, I believe I was heavily inspired by Shin from Dorohedoro, due to this panel where Shin cuts off his arms to find the "magical smoke veins" inside of them.

(Smoke in Dorohedoro, for those uninitiated, allows the user to perform magic.) I thought it was interesting that Shin could just do this and get away with it. It occurs in a flashback, in a world with magic, so it's clear when he cuts his arms off that they'll come back, but it's still quite an impressive stunt to perform surgery on yourself like this. How the fuck did he even cut off the second arm? Isn't one arm enough? I couldn't tell you, but it leaves quite the impression. Back on topic though, I thought it was quite interesting to have a character based on this and "phantom pain", where you can still feel the limb as if it's still there, despite it not being. So, Lazlo can emit smoke from where his arm was severed, and use it to create a new giant arm made entirely of smoke. I assume if he were to lose a second arm or leg or such, it would also be replaced with smoke. Maybe if he was decapitated, he'd survive with a smoke head, sort of like an Elsen from OFF.

It is the most important element, after all. I do enjoy portraying people with disabilities rather normally, and Lazlo is a nice usage of that. I really enjoy having him wave with his missing arm, for example. Makes the world feel a bit more real to me.

That's right fuckos, I lured you in with 5 consecutive smaller posts about women, and then sucker punched you with a literal essay about my WEIRD LITTLE MEN. ...Sorry.

[writing-intheundercroft]

Interview with a Writer

Thank you for the tag @kaidynsarell!!

Answers and tags below the cut :)

WHEN DID YOU START WRITING

I started writing fics when I was thirteen (RIP Mibba) and probably stopped around sixteen when I got into RP. I definitely stopped in my later years of high school, and rediscovered my love for fanfic around 2021. I had a few drafts running, but never felt the inspiration or bravery to post until HL came out.

ARE THERE DIFFERENT THEMES OR GENRES YOU ENJOY READING THAN WHAT YOU WRITE

I find it really hard to write dark! versions of characters, so I really enjoy getting into a good fic featuring darker takes. I am also terrible at writing action, but have enjoyed every fic I've read that has action sequences.

IS THERE A WRITER YOU WANT TO EMULATE OR GET COMPARED TO OFTEN.

As far as published authors, I think I based my early writing technique on Emily Henry. I've yet to get any comparisons though!

CAN YOU TELL ME A LITTLE ABOUT YOUR WRITING SPACE

I wish I could write on my phone, but I get far too distracted! Most of my writing is done curled up on the couch with my cats after everyone else has gone to bed. I consider it my enrichment time and try to write for at least 30 minutes a day.

WHATS YOUR MOST EFFECTIVE WAY TO MUSTER UP A MUSE

I make a pinterest board for every fic I write, and a spotify playlist! Currently, my most active playlist is the one for my modern au dad!Seb fic.

ARE THERE ANY RECURRING THEMES IN YOUR WRITING? DO THEY SURPRISE YOU.

Making Sebastian Sallow miserable? In a serious way, the transition from youth to adulthood. Or writing realistic relationships.

WHAT IS YOUR REASON FOR WRITING

My therapist once said to remember what made you happy before life got in the way. So writing silly love stories, no matter how many people read them, has brought a ton of joy and meaning to my life in the last year. And on top of that, all the lovely online friends I've made as well!

IS THERE ANY SPECIFIC COMMENT OR TYPE OF COMMENT YOU FIND PARTICULARLY MOTIVATING

I love when people pick up on little details I've put in the chapter from previous chapters. I spend a lot of time pouring through old chapters trying to link up everything, so that makes me feel like the effort was worthwhile.

HOW DO YOU WANT TO BE THOUGHT OF BY YOUR READERS

I hope my readers find me relatable and approachable, because I love nothing more than talking to readers!

WHAT DO YOU FEEL LIKE IS YOUR GREATEST STRENGTH AS A WRITER

Call me back for the answer to this when I finish my long fic LOL. But otherwise I'd say its coming up with AU situations and linking them up to the characters in a way that makes sense.

HOW DO YOU FEEL ABOUT YOUR OWN WRITING

Writing is such a fun release for me. There's something to be said about rediscovering a love you once had after spending years away from it. I love everything I've written and I hope you guys do as well.

No pressure tags💕💕

@myokk @pluviowriting @kaviary-blog @applinsandoranges @cuffmeinblack

[geebeewrites]

Pinned Post - 2024 Update

★ Hello, I’m Gee and I’m currently looking for new roleplay partners. I’m 28 years old, I reside in Australia, and I’ve been roleplaying in various forms for over a decade now. I’m searching for new partners and plots at the moment so if you are interested in plotting, please feel free to either like this post or send me a direct message.

If you are interested in writing together and you don't already have a guidelines/rules post on your page (which is totally fine as I know that not everyone has a dedicated roleplay page), please send me some information about yourself as a roleplayer as well, so that we can see if we're compatible (e.g. your activity levels, any kinks/limits/triggers, average reply lengths, whether you use celeb fcs or a different type of fc etc.)

Before reaching out, please read the below to make sure that we’re compatible: 

♥ 21 + please! Even if we aren’t writing smut, most plots will involve mature themes so please, no minors.

♥ I write exclusively on Discord these days, however use Tumblr for initially finding a partner and making sure we’re compatible before moving things across to Discord.

♥ I’m currently only doing original character roleplaying as opposed to writing within any specific fandoms. I’m flexible in terms of pairings (mxm, mxf, nonbinary pairings), although mxm ships will always have a special place in my heart! I am happy to play any gender but that said, I don’t enjoy being used just to play male characters in mxf ships so please keep that in mind before reaching out.  

♥ I’m currently only looking for partners for the wanted plots on my page, however I’m super flexible in terms of plotting out the specific details and making sure that it’s something we’re both passionate about as this definitely isn’t a dictatorship. I particularly love slice of life, angst, and celebrity plots. I enjoy writing smut and mature themes but I love to make sure that each roleplay is also quite plot heavy and that we’re all getting the opportunity to develop our characters! I also love talking ooc, ploting, sharing headcanons and muse posts so that we can build an ooc friendship as well.

♥ I have a face claim directory on my blog so if there’s a particular face claim that really jumps out at you, please let me know! Each of the face claims on that directory have original characters that I've developed and pre-existing bios so some face claims are better suited to particular plots but that said, I am flexible in terms of changing the characteristics of my original characters to better suit plots if needed.

♥ Communication is key! I know that real life can get hectic sometimes. I personally work full-time and study part-time, however do consider myself a relatively active partner and I'm looking for active partners. Whilst I'm not expecting daily replies, I am definitely looking for partners that can manage a few replies per week (and although there is no pressure to match the length of my replies, I do please request a minimum of one paragraph with each reply; otherwise I can struggle to keep my muse). That said, it you aren't feeling a particular plot anymore or if things are happening in your real life that will delay replies, please just flick me a message - I promise that I'm not going to be upset! If I haven't received any in character or ooc for extended periods of time, that does impact my muse and it can come across as a lack of commitment/interest on the other person's part. I reserve the right to leave and/or delete servers if that is the case.

♥ Here are some links on my page that you might find helpful! Top 10 Most Wanted Plots | Other Wanted Plots | FC Directory 

If you’ve read through all of this and you think that we’re compatible, please like this post or send me a message so that we can get the ball rolling! 

[fluxweeed]

Twenty Questions for Fic Writers

i've had so much fun reading other answers to these questions over the last few weeks!! thank you @nv-md and @sweet-s0rr0w for mentioning me in your posts!! i fear my answers drifted much too far into self-indulgence, but what's new for this blog eh??

1. How many works do you have on AO3?

22, but one of them is 11 separate drabbles/microfics in a 2k-word jacket

2. What’s your total AO3 word count?

293,865

3. What fandoms do you write for?

i'll only ever write hp on this username!

4. What are your top 5 fics by kudos?

all drarry:

the four doors (legilimency healer draco + memory loss)

adventures in truth and texting (advent texting fic)

all i have to do (draco thinks harry is a magical fantasy but whoops he's real)

eight o'clock, tomorrow evening (four doors sequel)

two to lie and one to listen (8th year fake dating, sort of)

5. Do you respond to comments? Why or why not?

i respond to everything on the final chapter of a fic! sometimes very kind commenters will say something at the end of every single chapter, which is SUCH a joy to receive, but i haven't yet figured out a way of saying "thank you!" 26 times over without sounding insincere

(i also don't usually respond to comments on fics i've co-written bc i don't feel like i have? the right? feels like i'm taking credit for something i did not really do!)

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

also drarry: for lack of wanting, wherein harry thinks it's sexy when draco acts like an evil dick again, and draco is too in love with harry to tell him that makes him feel weird

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

man i think all the rest are pretty happy, all things considered? tho i guess two to lie and wrapped are the only ones that end with explicit i-love-yous?

8. Do you get hate on fics?

i've been quite lucky, actually! i've had the occasional demand to change an angsty ending, or comments that have been quite mean about a character who isn't supportive of drarry. oh and i've had a couple of people get suuuper mad when draco malfoy, death eater and snotty spoilt brat, makes mildly immoral decisions. i've found all of those quite funny tho, which i'm sure i wouldn't if they were legitimate hate, so i don't think they count!

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

yep! the vibe of two characters wanting to fuck but knowing they shouldn't for some reason (uneven dynamic, magic stuff, they simply haven't had a fucking conversation about it) is my absolute favourite. will read it every time, will write it pretty much every time too 😅

10. Do you write crossovers? What’s the craziest one you’ve written?

the closest i've come to writing a crossover is say no to this, a fic vaguely based off the storyline of the song from hamilton. it was the first drarry fic i'd written in about 10 years!

11. Have you ever had a fic stolen?

yep! not any under this username (that i know of), but someone re-uploaded an old drarry fic of mine to wattpad – and honestly, i don't mind at all. i don't think the fic is very good lmao, if someone else wants to take the blame for it, that's totally fine by me

(the wildest thing about it is the combined ff.net + wattpad views of that fic now top 2 million i think?! but despite that u have almost definitely not heard of it!! i've only seen it mentioned, like, maybe 3 times since i properly re-joined fandom spaces in 2020)

12. Have you ever had a fic translated?

yes!!!! it's SUCH an honour!!! the four doors is in german, chinese, russian and spanish; thirst (drarry vampire fic) is in chinese; and all i have to do (the not-fantasy-harry fic) is in russian 🥰

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

yes!!! well, sort of – officially, i co-wrote per my last letter (i hope you choke on it) with @lastontheboat, but i really do think i was more like an alpha reader with knobs on. the workload split was at least 25/75, with j shouldering a great deal of the burden (and all of the brilliance)!

14. What’s your all-time favourite ship?

this is going to sound silly given that i'm definitely a drarry writer and only really hang out in the drarry sphere – but i don't have one! for hp, i gravitate towards ships with harry in them, but even that isn't a hard and fast rule for me

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

nothing that i've posted! but i have tons that are never going to see the light of day. three recent-ish hp ones i've written the most for:

a fic i call The Opus, which is a drarry auror partners fic – i have 16k words written; it was going to end up a solid 100k. i love the concept i have for this fic so, so dearly, but a 100k casefic is not happening.

a harry/ginny established relationship smutty oneshot that is really nothing more than ginny being fun and sexy and harry being horny but, like, self-deprecating about it.

a drarry little mermaid au that i wrote for nanowrimo in 2019. like i MIGHT come back to this one day? but it's unlikely. pros: i do have 50k of it written already and the first draft isn't too far off being complete. cons: i have almost exactly 50k words of it written bc i hit the nano goal and stopped in the middle of a sentence bc writing it was SO stressful (that november i had two jobs + one volunteering role, and also i was moving house, so. a lot going on.)

16. What are your writing strengths?

god knows. dialogue and characters come easiest to me, ig? and i tend to cut a lot in editing, so i don't think my stuff is? overly wordy? so it doesn't require much brainpower to read? that could be a positive or a negative, depending on how you look at it!

17. What are your writing weaknesses?

i suck at caring about anything other than character dynamics, so my fics never have plot outside of something vague to put the main pairing in the same room

similarly, i'm not very good at describing locations – describing anything, really

bc i tend to focus on the "oh we want to but we shouldn't!" moment, i'm pretty bad at actually developing feelings in longer fics – that part always feels too rushed to me, but fuck if i know a way of fixing it that isn't just, like, write another 20k

i think my endings usually feel like a bit of an afterthought and often quite forced

the more i write, the more i realise i know, like, 5 ways of phrasing anything, and i just repeat the same things over and over

i'm trying to fix my lack of skills with plotting + pacing by planning extensively before i start drafting, but i think that takes a bit of the spark out of the final version? it becomes a bit predictable and samey?

em dashes every tenth word

i'm convinced ppl i respect are in group chats talking abt how annoying and bad at writing i am, and also lowkey (…highkey) i agree with them – so actually getting myself to write anything is super hard!!

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

yeah man! i mean, i personally am not sufficiently confident in my skills in any other language to do it without help (and i'm not sufficiently confident in my skills in asking for help to do that), but it's fun to read imo

19. First fandom you wrote for?

i've dabbled in a few over the years, but the first was hp – it was a marauders era snape/lily/james love triangle fic that i posted on a forum on a hp roleplaying site – this was before deathly hallows came out, so i was very smug when my pairing theory (that i undoubtedly stole from someone cleverer than me, because i was 13 years old) turned out to be true

20. Favourite fic you’ve written?

god. @decaflondonfog recently told me that drabbles don't really count, so i? don't know? perhaps still the pine-woods scent the moon (guilty remus/harry) or taste of țuică (established drarry bringing ron in as a third) are the ones i like best, but i don't love either of them enough to be able to confidently declare them my favourite!

u know the drill: i got too sad and anxious and unfollowed everyone so i have no idea who to tag. if u made it this far please know i do love you very much, i want to kiss u on the cheek at LEAST, and would love to know any thoughts u have about the things u make ❤️

[coffeefrenchandhistory]

About Me

I figured I should do this. No idea why. Anyway, it'll get updated... whenever I feel like it should get updated.

Tumblr bio (because it's somehow getting cut off and I don't like that): I'm Josh. 32. Unapologetically Jewish & Zionist. History geek, nerd, and Francophone. I write fanfics on AO3. Slytherin ambition with Gryffindor nerve. Blank/empty/anti-Zionist and antisemitic blogs will be blocked. This blog stands with Ukraine and Israel.

What's your name?

Sir Lancelot of Camelot (and my quest is to seek the Holy Grail) It's Josh [surname redacted]. Pronouns are he/him.

You're on AO3?

I am! I'm currently writing a Wrong-Boy-Who-Lived fanfic (yes, yes, I know, WBWL stories have a... reputation...).

What fandoms do/will you write?

Predominantly Harry Potter if only because that series was my first love and still has a place in my heart. I'm also planning a few fanfics in the Mass Effect, DC, Star Trek, Game of Thrones, original fiction, and Fallout fandoms.

Why?

Well it all started when I was born...

Who are your fanfic idols/inspirations?

@artemisia-black, hands down. She is one of the finest writers I've ever seen, ever had the privilege of interacting with, and I genuinely adore her as a person.

But I'm also a big fan of Frickles, TheSinister_Man, Dorothea Greengrass, and TheEndless7.

What kind of fanfics do you write?

If it's Harry Potter, it's either a Wrong Boy-Who-Lived (WBWL) fic — either with Harry's brother as the believed to be Boy-Who-Lived or Neville as the believed to be Boy-Who-Lived. Or it'll be "action-adventure" where canon diverts this way instead of that way.

Ships?

I mean the USS Massachusetts is pretty neat, but that's also because I was able to visit it when I was a kid.

No, I mean, who do you ship?

Ohhhh!

I'm not a fan of Harry/Ginny, nor Ron/Hermione. Actually, the only canon pairings I like are James/Lily and Ted/Andromeda... that's pretty much it.

For Harry: Lavender (she'd be great for him ngl), Hermione (eh, sometimes), Pansy (enemies to lovers is top tier), Daphne (Haphne is a top tier ship and everyone should know it), Susan, Fleur (I just think she's neat), Tonks (post-war), Andromeda (post-war), Parvati, Padma, and Bellatrix (when it involves time travel).

Most out-there ship you've got?

Ron/Pansy, Hermione/Cormac or Anthony Goldstein/Hermione, Draco/Ginny. Also Kingsley/Bellatrix, Sirius/Aurora Sinistra, and Snape/getting his ass handed to him.

Most cursed ship you've seen?

[trauma intensifies] We don't go there. But I've seen some shit.

What character(s) do you hate the most?

Snape. I despise Severus Snape with every fiber of my being. The fact that Harry names his son after that child-abusing terror supporting racist wank-stain who simped hard for his mother after calling her a bigoted slur is a stain (and wanted her as a prize after he sold Lily, James, and baby Harry out to Voldemort) is the reason I throw the epilogue into the trash where it belongs.

Also Dumbledore, while I do think he's (for the most part) well-meaning, is very much the chess master who got far too up his own ass with how important he is. Also he facilitated child abuse, so I don't like him.

And Molly Weasley, who is an overbearing harpy of a mother who gleefully and maliciously went out of her way to bully a 15 year old girl because she read some bullshit in the Daily Prophet — when a few chapters before she had dismissed the author (Rita Skeeter) as a hack.

What do you do?

I work for a medical provider's office. Specifically, an ophthalmologist's office. Oh, go get your eyes checked!

Do you like it?

So then what do you want to do?

I'm actually getting myself out there to be an actor! And a writer of works that aren't fanfics.

Are you Zionist?

Yes.

What does that — ?

It means I believe Jews have the right to national self-determination in our ancestral homeland.

But what about — ?

That's literally the definition of Zionism. And yes, I do believe that anti-Zionism is antisemitism.

What if I'm an anti-Zionist?

Get off my blog then. I don’t want you here.