#Like a R--------------------------E--------------------------ELY long post

[mageoft4t]

[S] Jade: Wake Up Commentary

The book absolutely does not do justice to [S] Jade: Wake up. It's a much more "experiential" Flash than usual. Though nothing actually really "happens"? We get a glimpse at what it's like to have a Dark Nap, that is, to dream without a living dream self. I.e. the experience that Karkat was so upset about. It's a journey through madness. Kind of an audio-visual nightmare, with an obnoxiously escalating wall of noise. Probably a decent cinematic comparison would be when Willy Wonka took everybody through his weird tunnel of psychotic lunacy for some reason. But as you can see, it all starts out pretty nice.

Jade first imagines she sees a candy-coated version of this disturbing eldritch abyss. Literally: it's a Trickster facade. Squiddles canonically are known to be Trickster Horrorterrors. A perception of the beasts that is friendlier and more comprehensible to mortal minds. The illusion doesn't last long, though. This is probably the first visual indication that the concept of dream bubbles exists. They don't usually look like this one, which is a low-fi pixel bubble in keeping with the fantasy it projects inside for Jade. Horrorterrors blow these bubbles, each of which serves as a little phantasmal oasis floating freely through the infinite, existentially unforgiving desert of the Furthest Ring. They stabilize a temporary realm of illusion for mortals to exist in without having to engage with the eldritch abominations just outside or the bleak expanse in which they live. So this is establishing the foundational basis for the afterlife in Paradox Space—not an eternal continuum like heaven or hell, but a purgatory of a more dubious nature, one that is actively maintained by vast, ancient monsters through a network of trillions of relatively small ephemeral bubbles. They pop, they get blown again, ghosts can drift freely from one to another.

When we understand the broader cosmology of Paradox Space in this way, it starts to seem reasonable to begin thinking in terms of "bubble-based reality structures," which means that Sburb sessions freely floating through the abyss could also be seen as a kind of bubble. But a very special kind, which has the nucleus of Skaia in the middle, and thus is endowed with this all-knowing spark that can beget a stable, physical existence contained within a universe the players create inside of it. Do horrorterrors blow these bubbles too? IT IS UNCLEAR. This animation, aside from accomplishing the worthy goal of totally freaking everyone out, also serves the purpose of acquainting everyone more closely with the existence of horrorterrors and their greater relevance to the cosmos and the story.

Dave was recently urged to take his glasses off, and also to try listening to these beasts and see what they have to say to him. This is the "boon" which Derse dreamers have, and which Prospit dreamers don't. On Prospit, you have access to Skaia and all its cloud visions. On Derse, you have access to the grumblings of these distant monsters. Great consolation prize, huh? Skaia can inform Prospit kids what they need to do, and Jade enthusiastically embraces its counsel. But horrorterrors can somewhat play the same role, and provide mysterious instructions to both Rose and Dave that they have to parse. Their murmurings to Dave here carry a message of urgency, as he'll say later, and this starts laying the intel groundwork for the melodramatic suicide mission hatched later.

Also, this shot confirms Dave's eye color pretty unambiguously, continuing a trend in the story where this very specific piece of info gets confirmed for each character, beginning with that strangely over-detailed portrait of Rose. For whatever odd visual thrashing that style added to the story, one thing it definitely established was the story's ability to focus with much greater granularity on the presentation of characters who for the most part are only "ideas" of people. Their abstracted presentation usually tends to communicate that "This is just an idea of a character, for whom many specific attributes are vague or variable." But by intensifying the presentation, and then highlighting it with one notable point of specificity, we can come away with some confidence that Rose's eyes are literally meant to be purple, rather than it just being another stylistic tick. Having established that, I think we can safely do the same for Dave here, even without the overly intensive rendering style.

It's hard to even really describe what's going on with this page without the weird music that everything plays off of. Nothing is really going on with it? Hey, here's an idea, let's just ignore this page and move on. There's Feferi over there. She's worth talking about, right? Remember that Feferi is presently grimnapping. "Presently" doesn't mean much, because the timelines are out of whack relative to each other, but "presently" from the STORY'S perspective usually does mean something. Remember the conversation Eridan just had with Rose, where she blew up his computer, and I ignored the conversation to talk about something else because he sucks and who cares about him? Well, I still stand by that decision, he sucks and who cares. But there was another purpose served by showing that conversation at that moment. "Eridan's computer explodes" is one of those key moments on the troll timeline we took note of during the recent RPG game. And linked to that moment is Feferi's dark nap. You could see her in the panel there near Eridan, sleeping on the horn pile, with a dark bubble over her. This reminds us that's what she's doing "now," just like Jade, and here they are, rendezvousing in this freaky dream bubble. Which, if there's one really important role Feferi plays, it's this: establishing "first contact" between trolls and humans through the dream realm, a.k.a. the afterlife. Feferi is quite chipper about it all and wants everyone to know there's nothing to worry about.

That's pretty easy for her to say, though, since her mom is one of these monsters. But then, maybe that's how she knows they really aren't as bad as they seem. Okay, see, this thing with THIS page is, um…the really IMPORTANT point to make would be, uhhhhhhhhhhhhh. All right, you got me. There's nothing to say here. The thing about this animation is, for all the story-relevant things I've been saying about it, it's also just kind of a big shitpost. What's really going on is the bubble-based illusion is starting to unravel, and then insanity ensues. Jade is worried, Feferi isn't. She's just completely unflappable when it comes to this eldritch bullshit. There's a moment in the song that makes it clear something is now very, very wrong.

That's where we're at. Probably the best way of looking at this in a non-abstract way is, this is the moment when Jade and Feferi's shared dream bubble pops. The illusion is over, and now their dream ghost projection-forms are hurtling freely through the abyss at great speed, before their phantom bodies (another weird concept in Homestuck that probably bears elaboration on, but much later) start to dissolve outside of the confining environment of the bubble that keeps them stable, causing them to wake up. Then we go nighttime dumpster diving in the alley behind a bargain seafood restaurant. I mean, no we don't, this is all scary and serious and stuff. But there is sort of a running gag later where Dave and maybe some other people keep referring to these things humorously in terms of seafood analogies. But of course you don't eat these things, they eat YOU. Okay, that probably isn't true either. Although they do have huge, nasty mouths, as you can see. Which makes you wonder, what do they eat? What's even out there in the void? Smaller horrorterrors? That's probably it. There's likely just an entire diverse ecology of horrorterrors, with smaller ones very plentiful and larger ones more scarce, to keep the food chain balanced. Other than that, it's a complete free for all.

I'm just literally making all this shit up right now, if it wasn't clear. I said in an earlier book that these eldritch beasts were only imported into Homestuck because of their presence in Problem Sleuth, which used them in a much goofier way. It didn't really take their horrifying nature or the Lovecraftian tradition of them seriously at all. But the way HS starts blending them into its greater cosmology does seem to take them a little more seriously as literary devices from the horror genre. I never read any Lovecraft and don't really care about these creatures in respect to them being specific elements of his work. They were siphoned into the PS/HS lore from the wider pop-culture melange that has elevated the notion of an eldritch abomination into something transcending the original source material to become a more widely recognized fantasy trope.

So this is the nature of their utility here, something touching on a more universal principle of alien horror which says that some alien life is so unfathomable and unsettling to us that even contemplating them is a gateway to madness. Neither good nor evil, their existence utterly eludes definition or judgment on mortal humanoid terms. They rule the infinite expanse of the Furthest Ring, where seemingly no other form of life exists except for them. And corporeal life as we understand it exists within this medium as a tiny subset of its total volume. It's implied, as I mentioned a few notes ago, that all comprehensible realities to us (such as dream bubble illusions, or Sburb sessions containing entire universes) actually are confined by little bubbles that these beasts whimsically blow, probably for no humanly comprehensible reason. This suggests that this godawful abyss and its gruesome inhabitants are the default reality. And the much more stable, relatable realms we enjoy, such as "a universe," are actually the rare exceptions: totally anomalous, dreamlike fields of experience that exist only briefly relative to the lifespan of these monsters, as the confining bubbles swell and pop.

This animation finally crescendos at the moment when you begin to think you can't take another goddamn second on Wonka's shitty boat. And then everything is okay. Except not really, because we float by one more awful monster, which has been wonderfully illustrated to make sure you realize, under particular rendering conditions, that these aren't all just a bunch of cartoon goofballs, but actually super-duper grotesque and scary entities. Good thing Jade's dream ghost projection-whatever is "sleeping" soundly through all this, otherwise she'd probably be really scared if she saw that thing. Except this rendering probably isn't literal? It might be a shot of what she's seeing through her mind's eye as she sleeps. In which case she is really scared right now. But it's fine, Feferi will reassure her and tell her all these space monsters are actually great. Some of her best friends are space monsters. Her MOM was a space monster. Don't be a bigot, Jade.

Jade finally wakes up. She went to sleep at some point in Act 4. It's tricky to pin down exactly when she fell asleep by casually skimming through the archive, but she's been asleep for well over 1,000 site pages. This is the nature of Jade's role in the story. She spends huge amounts of time being asleep, or compromised in some way, like being brainwashed. At one point, she even gets put to sleep while being brainwashed. But for now, she's finally awake and ready to play a more active role in the story. Her relevance starts snowballing from here and peaks during [S] Cascade, i.e. the midpoint of the story. I probably said this before, but the shape of her arc is a huge bell curve, rising slowly from the fog of her sleepy marginalization, peaking right in the middle, then gradually tapering back off as she starts getting compromised in different ways. Everyone's views on this may vary, but I always thought that for a story with a big ensemble cast, it was more interesting to have a wide variety of arcs of different shapes, sizes, focal points, themes, and peak moments, rather than somewhat artificially trying to make sure all the major players' arcs peak right around the same time at the very end. This aspect is a little bit underscored by what Jade does in [S] Collide. Her role there isn't about kicking ass, it's about having fun. And then, finally, about getting punched in the face for One Last Nap.

-Andrew Hussie

[acaplaya-musings]

Voiceplay Visuals: Valhalla Calling

This could be a bit of a long one (though still probably not as long as my post for Hide And Seek/Ding Dong)

Valhalla Calling was released on the 8th of April, 2023, and is kinda-sorta a sister video to My Mother Told Me. But Voiceplay didn't restrict themselves to just standing in front of greenscreen backgrounds this time, no no no! They worked together with some production studios/group called Vū, and usually I give credit shoutouts as I go through the video, but I think it might just be easier this time if I show you the credits in the description instead:

Yeah, this one was massive. (And wow Eli did a lot for this one! Shoutout to Eli!)

Voiceplay didn't see a return of Jose Rosario Jr for this one, but we got J None back for it! Woooo! So anyway, let's get into this!

I will get to everyone individually, but check out the set! I like the shields in the background.

J None! The man, the myth, the legend.

J has got the same kind of rune/symbol on his forehead as he did in My Mother Told Me (I'm using the video thumbnail for MMTM for comparison purposes), but brighter white on his cheeks, and of course a fresh new haircut. His shirt(?)/top is the same as well I believe, but the fur is different to that of his original costume.

Cesar of course didn't join Voiceplay till sometime after My Mother Told Me (fun fact: Valhalla Calling was release just a couple weeks shy of when My Mother Told Me was released, two years' prior), so nothing to compare against, but I love his makeup here!

Appreciation for the visual effects/design!

Geoff has swapped out the grey fur over one shoulder for a brown fur cloak/cape thing, and ditched the purple-ish lipstick he was wearing in My Mother Told Me as well, making him look a bit less terrifying 😝 (also, his hair in this one has a bit more fluff/volume to it (love that for him <3)). He does however have the same/similar tattoo designs on his face that he had in My Mother Told Me.

(Also I know I'm meant to be sticking to just the visuals, but you can't just expect me to talk about Valhalla Calling without talking about the B0 subharmonic that Geoff holds for 15 seconds!!!)

Layne seems to be wearing almost exactly the same (if not the exact same) outfit as he did in My Mother Told Me (see the first screencap above), and the same kind of face designs as well

Eli still has tattoo designs on his head like in My Mother Told Me (though whether they're the same or not I'm not sure), but the makeup around his eyes is darker, and of course, he now has a full beard and mustache! (Very impressive, might I add)

"shields and s p e a r s"

(For someone who is ridiculously modest when talking about himself ("baritone with a bass range" I mean REALLY), Geoff sure knows how to look incredibly smug in videos when he wants to be 😅😂)

Actually scratch what I said about nothing to compare Cesar's outfit against - the cloak he's wearing is the same one (or at least very very similar to) the one that Jose wore in My Mother Told Me!

Also shoutout to Cesar for being able to do literally anything when it comes to characters, acting, and performances! Multifaceted is an understatement honestly (and yes I will be talking about Creep, eventually)

He's coming!!!

He is here!!!

(Love Geoff raising his alehorn(?) to J in greeting here)

Outside group shot! Makes costume comparisons a heck of a ton easier.

Layne is basically the only one that stuck with basically his whole original outfit. J kept parts of his and still stuck close to the original concept (with the fur and stuff), Eli definitely got an outfit upgrade (though his tunic/shirt is a pretty similar green colour to what he was wearing in MMTM, and Geoff just basically went with a brand new look (Good For Him). He's still got one arm uncovered/exposed like in MMTM, but it's the right arm this time, not the left! (And J none has more of his arms exposed than he originally did!)

Very smooth hood flip! (which somehow I never noticed before this)

More appreciation for Cesar's makeup!

Everyone of course gave this performance 110%, and J None absolutely killed it with his original rap solo (hey, it was a visual performance too!), but also look at Geoff, looking like some sort of powerful and intimidating sorcerer while delivering another B0 subharmonic held note!

J None trying to rival Layne in Hoist The Colours with his Fierce/Crazy Eyes look I see!

Also whoops I think I just spotted a minor editing/continuity mistake. See Cesar in the background in the above shot here? With the hood off? Well this is the next frame:

Cesar with the hood still on. I shan't hold it against them (editing this must have been a nightmare, at least partially), but I am here to talk about visuals, and so if I see something of note, then I will mention it!

A very small and very blink-and-you-miss-it eyebrow quirk/raise from Geoff (y'know, just to kill us further 😆)

The original creator of the song, Miracle Of Sound, commented on this video, saying "Well done, lads. Definitely one of the more creative covers I've heard! I rate it ten raised alehorns out of ten." And the video currently sits at 4.2 million views on YouTube, which is pretty dang impressive considering the video isn't even a year old yet (UPDATE: as of the 20th of March, it's now at 4.6 million! Goddamn!)

Incredible video, incredible arrangement, incredible vocals, it's honestly peak Voiceplay (but not Voiceplay at it's peak! They don't have one!). I have a good handful of videos to keep going through, so stay tuned!

[inkovert]

Find the Word tag

Tagged by: @chauceryfairytales. My words were pot, coat, mark and outside. can you believe I prepared a full post searching for the words that you had to use for your own tag

Tagging: @writingbyricochet @junypr-camus @sageswriteblr @kiki-is-writing. Your words are shine, scream, fill and silver (me and my continual alliterations (thank you akindofmagictoo this was the word I was looking for lol))

Gonna do something radical here and share some non-angsty excerpts from MDE for once xD

P O T

“Yo.” Jeremy stepped into the room. “Where’s Mom?” “Upstairs taking a call.” The sound of footsteps pressing into the carpet, and then an outstretched hand in my periphery. “Touch my food and you lose an arm.”  He grunted. “You’re not even eating it.” “Jer, there’s food in the kitchen literally ten steps away from you.” “Yeah, but then I’ve gotta open cabinets and grab a plate and utensils then scoop it out the pot. That’s a lot of work.” I twisted around, pouting at him mockingly. “Oh my god, you’re literally living the hardest life. Would you like me to play you a song on the world’s smallest violin?” A laugh came from behind me. Jeremy threw a glare to his right.  “What? That was funny,” Eli said.

C O A T (from first draft of MDE)

I blinked, momentarily entranced. Something warm expanded inside my chest and pervaded my skin, like being embraced by a snug blanket.  [Spencer's] brows furrowed and I realized I hadn't spoken yet.  "Hi!" The word spilled out so abruptly that I cringed. I cleared my throat. "Hello." My eyes roamed his face. "You cut your hair."  His hand flew up to his head. "Oh. Yeah. Just a trim. Was long overdue." "It looks...sharp."  Sharp? Are you fucking kidding me? He squinted at me, the corners of his mouth quirking with an uncertain smile. "Uh, thanks...?"  I kept my eyes on the floor out of sheer embarrassment. "I can take your coat."  

M A R K

Just as he left, a harsh shove came from behind me. “What were you and Heart Eyes talking about?” My lip curled. “You’re a walking pheromone detector, I swear.”  “So you admit you were releasing pheromones.” Mira raised a brow suggestively.  “Not all pheromones are for mating, smartass. They can be released in response to fear, to mark territory, designate animal trails —“  “How about we skip the National Geographic lesson and you just answer my question.” 

O U T S I D E

I continued working on my calc homework. Several minutes passed with no response and I started rethinking the sincerity of my reply. Why had I been so transparent? And with Spencer of all people? Outside of my family, Mira mattered more to me than anything in this world and bearing those sentiments to anyone left me feeling uncomfortably exposed. Whatever. I’d said what I needed to say. Now I could move on and part ways with Spencer without feeling like I owed him anything.  To my surprise, he passed the paper back.  Saw what you did for your friend. Nice to know that insufferable attitude of yours can be used for good A slow grin spread through my lips.  I scrawled back a reply. Careful. That almost sounded like a compliment  Don’t get used to it

[undercoverhunter-elijah]

Titan's war - Eli

#1 C O R E

Eli had been spoiling for a fight for years. Not the few punches he would throw when bouncing or when prize fighting. War was different. Dirty. All about survival. And when he got a frantic text from the owner of a bar downtown, he hadn’t hesitated. He’d kept the beast inside caged up and only let out very carefully for such a long time. He grabbed a few weapons. Nothing like what he used to own. But the problem now was that he was torn. He knew logically that the Dominion would be sealed shut. Everyone was safe inside. But he still had to go check. Had to be sure that Trevor was safe. Worrying about other people in a war zone could get you killed. He knew that. But he couldn’t help it. He was headed to the Dominion, and he was very happy to kill anyone trying to kill him along the way.

#2 C O N T R O L

Eli carved a bloody path along his journey. Seeing the smoking ruins of the Hospital Eli went about helping any living humans head towards safer havens. He knew most of them. Because once upon a time it had been his job to know where the frightened masses would huddle. He knew how attackers thought. He what he would do if he was in their place. And it made him ruthlessly efficient. He wanted to find Cassidy, Alex the people that meant something to him. The people that he would fight to protect. It was funny. Being in this position now. But killing supernatural’s came easy. What he had expected was to start seeing turned wolves, turned packmates running feral through the streets. He shuddered, hoping that Cassidy had been caught up in whatever magic had made that happen.

#3 S E N S Ǝ S

Eli had posted himself outside of My Laundrette, across the street on the top of a building. Better view. Better hidden. Easier to pick bad guys off. Up on the roof he saw that black ink wash over a part of the Park Downtown. Swallow it up like ink spilled on a painting. He caught the faintest scent of something indescribable. Something that burned his nostrils and eyes just the smallest bit. He frowned. He knew that with any terror attack there would be concerted efforts to take the strong holds soon. Beat the city down with bombs and then attack. He had to get back down onto the streets. The fact that he still hadn’t run into only a few people he knew was beginning to bother him. But he knew where Cass and, if he wasn’t stuck in the Dominion, Trevor, would be… the thick of it.

#4  P O W E R

It was a lot to take in. That Trevor could feel how he felt even when he didn’t speak. But maybe that was why this weird thing they had worked. Because Eli struggled on the best of days to talk about how he felt. He’d promised to keep Trevor’s secret. Eli has a moment where he realizes that leaving with Cassidy to fight hadn’t even crossed his mind. He’d stayed with Trevor without the other man asking. Something that might not seem like much to others but for him spoke volumes. But he couldn’t stay safe and out of it for long. But Trevor seemed to understand that without him saying anything. Of course he would and they left together ready to continue the fight.

.#5 E L E M E N T A L

Eli would have been lying if he said that he wasn’t enjoying himself. There were very few things in the world that he was good at. And this was it. But even he takes a small pause when the pillar of fire erupts from the West Side. But he can tell that it’s far from their house. Weird for him to think of it as ‘their house’ it was Trevor’s house he just lived in it. The fight continues and Eli finds that heart pounding rhythm in the desperation of it all that he can taste and it makes him feel alive to have this with Trevor next to him, holding his own. The attackers throw curses at him but he doesn’t hear them. But he watches Trevor and Eli’s own blood lust continues to grow. A vicious smile on his face as he kills another.

#6 H U N T E D

There had been a scream an invocation to a city that let everyone know that they were about to be caught in a blast zone. If Eli hated Chthonic’s before this would be just another reason to despise the loathsome creatures. He’d seen the grenade coming and torn off the door of a burnt out car to try and dampen some of the explosion. If it had been normal it might have been fine. But Eli hadn’t even stopped to think, landing on the grenade to save Trevor. He’d felt the detonation and suddenly everything had gone black. Waking him he couldn’t feel his arms or legs. But he could see Trevor. And then he’d realized why he couldn’t feel his arms or legs. He’d be ashamed if Cassidy had ever heard what he told Trevor. To kill him. Not to let him live like this. This wasn’t life. Not for him. Not for them. He’d rather be dead than a burden on anyone, unable to care for himself. When Trevor opened his veins for him, he was angry for a moment. But as he felt his limbs painfully growing back he realized what Trevor was doing. But it was too much. Too much. And suddenly with just about all of the blood of an Elyisan running through him. He doesn’t feel that bliss but something else far softer and quieter as he holds Trevor’s unconscious body in his new arms. But he has no words. Just soft thoughts and that nagging belief that he wasn’t worth what Trevor had just given him.

[literarypilgrim]

Read Like a Gilmore

All 339 Books Referenced In “Gilmore Girls” 

Not my original list, but thought it’d be fun to go through and see which one’s I’ve actually read :P If it’s in bold, I’ve got it, and if it’s struck through, I’ve read it. I’ve put a ‘read more’ because it ended up being an insanely long post, and I’m now very sad at how many of these I haven’t read. (I’ve spaced them into groups of ten to make it easier to read)

1. 1984 by George Orwell  2. Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain 3. Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll 4. The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay by Michael Chabon 5. An American Tragedy by Theodore Dreiser 6. Angela’s Ashes by Frank McCourt 7. Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy 8. The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank 9. The Archidamian War by Donald Kagan 10. The Art of Fiction by Henry James 

11. The Art of War by Sun Tzu 12. As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner 13. Atonement by Ian McEwan 14. Autobiography of a Face by Lucy Grealy 15. The Awakening by Kate Chopin 16. Babe by Dick King-Smith 17. Backlash: The Undeclared War Against American Women by Susan Faludi 18. Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress by Dai Sijie 19. Bel Canto by Ann Patchett 20. The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath 21. Beloved by Toni Morrison 22. Beowulf: A New Verse Translation by Seamus Heaney 23. The Bhagava Gita 24. The Bielski Brothers: The True Story of Three Men Who Defied the Nazis, Built a Village in the Forest, and Saved 1,200 Jews by Peter Duffy 25. Bitch in Praise of Difficult Women by Elizabeth Wurtzel 26. A Bolt from the Blue and Other Essays by Mary McCarthy 27. Brave New World by Aldous Huxley 28. Brick Lane by Monica Ali 29. Bridgadoon by Alan Jay Lerner 30. Candide by Voltaire 31. The Canterbury Tales by Chaucer 32. Carrie by Stephen King 33. Catch-22 by Joseph Heller 34. The Catcher in the Rye by J. D. Salinger 35. Charlotte’s Web by E. B. White 36. The Children’s Hour by Lillian Hellman 37. Christine by Stephen King 38. A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens 39. A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess 40. The Code of the Woosters by P.G. Wodehouse    41. The Collected Stories by Eudora Welty 42. A Comedy of Errors by William Shakespeare 43. Complete Novels by Dawn Powell 44. The Complete Poems by Anne Sexton 45. Complete Stories by Dorothy Parker 46. A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole 47. The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas 48. Cousin Bette by Honore de Balzac 49. Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky 50. The Crimson Petal and the White by Michel Faber    51. The Crucible by Arthur Miller 52. Cujo by Stephen King 53. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon 54. Daughter of Fortune by Isabel Allende 55. David and Lisa by Dr Theodore Issac Rubin M.D 56. David Copperfield by Charles Dickens 57. The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown 58. Dead Souls by Nikolai Gogol 59. Demons by Fyodor Dostoyevsky 60. Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller 61. Deenie by Judy Blume 62. The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair that Changed America by Erik Larson 63. The Dirt: Confessions of the World’s Most Notorious Rock Band by Tommy Lee, Vince Neil, Mick Mars and Nikki Sixx 64. The Divine Comedy by Dante 65. The Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood by Rebecca Wells 66. Don Quixote by Cervantes 67. Driving Miss Daisy by Alfred Uhrv 68. Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson 69. Edgar Allan Poe: Complete Tales & Poems by Edgar Allan Poe 70. Eleanor Roosevelt by Blanche Wiesen Cook 71. The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test by Tom Wolfe 72. Ella Minnow Pea: A Novel in Letters by Mark Dunn  73. Eloise by Kay Thompson 74. Emily the Strange by Roger Reger 75. Emma by Jane Austen 76. Empire Falls by Richard Russo 77. Encyclopedia Brown: Boy Detective by Donald J. Sobol 78. Ethan Frome by Edith Wharton 79. Ethics by Spinoza 80. Europe through the Back Door, 2003 by Rick Steves

81. Eva Luna by Isabel Allende 82. Everything Is Illuminated by Jonathan Safran Foer 83. Extravagance by Gary Krist 84. Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury 85. Fahrenheit 9/11 by Michael Moore 86. The Fall of the Athenian Empire by Donald Kagan 87. Fat Land: How Americans Became the Fattest People in the World by Greg Critser 88. Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas by Hunter S. Thompson 89. The Fellowship of the Ring by J. R. R. Tolkien 90. Fiddler on the Roof by Joseph Stein 91. The Five People You Meet in Heaven by Mitch Albom 92. Finnegan’s Wake by James Joyce 93. Fletch by Gregory McDonald 94. Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes 95. The Fortress of Solitude by Jonathan Lethem 96. The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand 97. Frankenstein by Mary Shelley 98. Franny and Zooey by J. D. Salinger 99. Freaky Friday by Mary Rodgers 100. Galapagos by Kurt Vonnegut 101. Gender Trouble by Judith Butler 102. George W. Bushism: The Slate Book of the Accidental Wit and Wisdom of our 43rd President by Jacob Weisberg 103. Gidget by Fredrick Kohner 104. Girl, Interrupted by Susanna Kaysen 105. The Gnostic Gospels by Elaine Pagels 106. The Godfather: Book 1 by Mario Puzo 107. The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy  108. Goldilocks and the Three Bears by Alvin Granowsky  109. Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell  110. The Good Soldier by Ford Maddox Ford 

111. The Gospel According to Judy Bloom 112. The Graduate by Charles Webb 113. The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck 114. The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald 115. Great Expectations by Charles Dickens 116. The Group by Mary McCarthy 117. Hamlet by William Shakespeare 118. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire by J. K. Rowling 119. Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone by J. K. Rowling 120. A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius by Dave Eggers    121. Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad 122. Helter Skelter: The True Story of the Manson Murders by Vincent Bugliosi and Curt Gentry 123. Henry IV, part I by William Shakespeare 124. Henry IV, part II by William Shakespeare 125. Henry V by William Shakespeare 126. High Fidelity by Nick Hornby 127. The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire by Edward Gibbon 128. Holidays on Ice: Stories by David Sedaris 129. The Holy Barbarians by Lawrence Lipton 130. House of Sand and Fog by Andre Dubus III    131. The House of the Spirits by Isabel Allende 132. How to Breathe Underwater by Julie Orringer 133. How the Grinch Stole Christmas by Dr. Seuss  134. How the Light Gets In by M. J. Hyland  135. Howl by Allen Ginsberg  136. The Hunchback of Notre Dame by Victor Hugo  137. The Iliad by Homer 138. I’m With the Band by Pamela des Barres  139. In Cold Blood by Truman Capote  140. Inferno by Dante 

141. Inherit the Wind by Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee 142. Iron Weed by William J. Kennedy 143. It Takes a Village by Hillary Rodham Clinton 144. Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte 145. The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan 146. Julius Caesar by William Shakespeare 147. The Jumping Frog by Mark Twain 148. The Jungle by Upton Sinclair 149. Just a Couple of Days by Tony Vigorito 150. The Kitchen Boy: A Novel of the Last Tsar by Robert Alexander 151. Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly by Anthony Bourdain 152. The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini 153. Lady Chatterleys’ Lover by D. H. Lawrence 154. The Last Empire: Essays 1992-2000 by Gore Vidal 155. Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman 156. The Legend of Bagger Vance by Steven Pressfield 157. Less Than Zero by Bret Easton Ellis 158. Letters to a Young Poet by Rainer Maria Rilke 159. Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them by Al Franken  160. Life of Pi by Yann Martel 

161. Little Dorrit by Charles Dickens 162. The Little Locksmith by Katharine Butler Hathaway 163. The Little Match Girl by Hans Christian Andersen 164. Little Women by Louisa May Alcott 165. Living History by Hillary Rodham Clinton 166. Lord of the Flies by William Golding 167. The Lottery: And Other Stories by Shirley Jackson 168. The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold 169. The Love Story by Erich Segal 170. Macbeth by William Shakespeare 171. Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert 172. The Manticore by Robertson Davies 173. Marathon Man by William Goldman 174. The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov 175. Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter by Simone de Beauvoir 176. Memoirs of General W. T. Sherman by William Tecumseh Sherman 177. Me Talk Pretty One Day by David Sedaris 178. The Meaning of Consuelo by Judith Ortiz Cofer 179. Mencken’s Chrestomathy by H. R. Mencken 180. The Merry Wives of Windsor by William Shakespeare 181. The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka 182. Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides 183. The Miracle Worker by William Gibson 184. Moby Dick by Herman Melville 185. The Mojo Collection: The Ultimate Music Companion by Jim Irvin  186. Moliere: A Biography by Hobart Chatfield Taylor  187. A Monetary History of the United States by Milton Friedman  188. Monsieur Proust by Celeste Albaret  189. A Month Of Sundays: Searching For The Spirit And My Sister by Julie Mars 190. A Moveable Feast by Ernest Hemingway 

191. Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf 192. Mutiny on the Bounty by Charles Nordhoff and James Norman Hall 193. My Lai 4: A Report on the Massacre and It’s Aftermath by Seymour M. Hersh 194. My Life as Author and Editor by H. R. Mencken 195. My Life in Orange: Growing Up with the Guru by Tim Guest 196. Myra Waldo’s Travel and Motoring Guide to Europe, 1978 by Myra Waldo 197. My Sister’s Keeper by Jodi Picoult 198. The Naked and the Dead by Norman Mailer 199. The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco 200. The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri 201. The Nanny Diaries by Emma McLaughlin 202. Nervous System: Or, Losing My Mind in Literature by Jan Lars Jensen 203. New Poems of Emily Dickinson by Emily Dickinson 204. The New Way Things Work by David Macaulay 205. Nickel and Dimed by Barbara Ehrenreich 206. Night by Elie Wiesel 207. Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen 208. The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism by William E. Cain, Laurie A. Finke, Barbara E. Johnson, John P. McGowan 209. Novels 1930-1942: Dance Night/Come Back to Sorrento, Turn, Magic Wheel/Angels on Toast/A Time to be Born by Dawn Powell 210. Notes of a Dirty Old Man by Charles Bukowski

211. Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck (will NEVER read again) 212. Old School by Tobias Wolff 213. On the Road by Jack Kerouac 214. One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest by Ken Kesey 215. One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez 216. The Opposite of Fate: Memories of a Writing Life by Amy Tan 217. Oracle Night by Paul Auster 218. Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood 219. Othello by Shakespeare 220. Our Mutual Friend by Charles Dickens 221. The Outbreak of the Peloponnesian War by Donald Kagan 222. Out of Africa by Isac Dineson 223. The Outsiders by S. E. Hinton 224. A Passage to India by E.M. Forster 225. The Peace of Nicias and the Sicilian Expedition by Donald Kagan 226. The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky 227. Peyton Place by Grace Metalious 228. The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde 229. Pigs at the Trough by Arianna Huffington 230. Pinocchio by Carlo Collodi 231. Please Kill Me: The Uncensored Oral History of Punk Legs McNeil and Gillian McCain 232. The Polysyllabic Spree by Nick Hornby 233. The Portable Dorothy Parker by Dorothy Parker 234. The Portable Nietzche by Fredrich Nietzche 235. The Price of Loyalty: George W. Bush, the White House, and the Education of Paul O’Neill by Ron Suskind 236. Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen 237. Property by Valerie Martin 238. Pushkin: A Biography by T. J. Binyon  239. Pygmalion by George Bernard Shaw  240. Quattrocento by James Mckean 

241. A Quiet Storm by Rachel Howzell Hall 242. Rapunzel by Grimm Brothers 243. The Raven by Edgar Allan Poe 244. The Razor’s Edge by W. Somerset Maugham 245. Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books by Azar Nafisi 246. Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier 247. Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm by Kate Douglas Wiggin 248. The Red Tent by Anita Diamant 249. Rescuing Patty Hearst: Memories From a Decade Gone Mad by Virginia Holman 250. The Return of the King by J. R. R. Tolkien 251. R Is for Ricochet by Sue Grafton 252. Rita Hayworth by Stephen King 253. Robert’s Rules of Order by Henry Robert 254. Roman Holiday by Edith Wharton 255. Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare 256. A Room of One’s Own by Virginia Woolf 257. A Room with a View by E. M. Forster 258. Rosemary’s Baby by Ira Levin 259. The Rough Guide to Europe, 2003 Edition 260. Sacred Time by Ursula Hegi 261. Sanctuary by William Faulkner 262. Savage Beauty: The Life of Edna St. Vincent Millay by Nancy Milford 263. Say Goodbye to Daisy Miller by Henry James 264. The Scarecrow of Oz by Frank L. Baum 265. The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne  266. Seabiscuit: An American Legend by Laura Hillenbrand  267. The Second Sex by Simone de Beauvoir  268. The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd  269. Secrets of the Flesh: A Life of Colette by Judith Thurman  270. Selected Hotels of Europe 

271. Selected Letters of Dawn Powell: 1913-1965 by Dawn Powell 272. Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen 273. A Separate Peace by John Knowles 274. Several Biographies of Winston Churchill 275. Sexus by Henry Miller 276. The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafon 277. Shane by Jack Shaefer 278. The Shining by Stephen King 279. Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse 280. S Is for Silence by Sue Grafton 281. Slaughter-house Five by Kurt Vonnegut 282. Small Island by Andrea Levy 283. Snows of Kilimanjaro by Ernest Hemingway 284. Snow White and Rose Red by Grimm Brothers 285. Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy: Lord and Peasant in the Making of the Modern World by Barrington Moore 286. The Song of Names by Norman Lebrecht 287. Song of the Simple Truth: The Complete Poems of Julia de Burgos by Julia de Burgos 288. The Song Reader by Lisa Tucker 289. Songbook by Nick Hornby 290. The Sonnets by William Shakespeare 291. Sonnets from the Portuegese by Elizabeth Barrett Browning 292. Sophie’s Choice by William Styron  293. The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner  294. Speak, Memory by Vladimir Nabokov 295. Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers by Mary Roach  296. The Story of My Life by Helen Keller  297. A Streetcar Named Desiree by Tennessee Williams  298. Stuart Little by E. B. White  299. Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway  300. Swann’s Way by Marcel Proust 

301. Swimming with Giants: My Encounters with Whales, Dolphins and Seals by Anne Collett 302. Sybil by Flora Rheta Schreiber 303. A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens 304. Tender Is The Night by F. Scott Fitzgerald 305. Term of Endearment by Larry McMurtry 306. Time and Again by Jack Finney 307. The Time Traveler’s Wife by Audrey Niffenegger 308. To Have and Have Not by Ernest Hemingway 309. To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee 310. The Tragedy of Richard III by William Shakespeare    311. A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith 312. The Trial by Franz Kafka 313. The True and Outstanding Adventures of the Hunt Sisters by Elisabeth Robinson 314. Truth & Beauty: A Friendship by Ann Patchett 315. Tuesdays with Morrie by Mitch Albom 316. Ulysses by James Joyce 317. The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath 1950-1962 by Sylvia Plath 318. Uncle Tom’s Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe 319. Unless by Carol Shields  320. Valley of the Dolls by Jacqueline Susann 

321. The Vanishing Newspaper by Philip Meyers 322. Vanity Fair by William Makepeace Thackeray 323. Velvet Underground’s The Velvet Underground and Nico (Thirty Three and a Third series) by Joe Harvard 324. The Virgin Suicides by Jeffrey Eugenides 325. Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett 326. Walden by Henry David Thoreau 327. Walt Disney’s Bambi by Felix Salten 328. War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy 329. We Owe You Nothing – Punk Planet: The Collected Interviews edited by Daniel Sinker 330. What Colour is Your Parachute? 2005 by Richard Nelson Bolles 331. What Happened to Baby Jane by Henry Farrell 332. When the Emperor Was Divine by Julie Otsuka 333. Who Moved My Cheese? by Spencer Johnson 334. Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf by Edward Albee 335. Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West by Gregory Maguire 336. The Wizard of Oz by Frank L. Baum 337. Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte 338. The Yearling by Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings 339. The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion

[shitty17]

ok idk how long ago, but u made a post abt race bending and i was wondering if u could elaborate on that & i just have a few qs abt the topic. what should white ppl do to make our fanart more inclusive? i want to racebend characters bc i hate all of them are white, not bc i want to fetishize poc/do any of that bad stuff that u mentioned. also, what if its a common fandom hc? like, a POC was the person who came up with the hc and u really like it? if these qs were insensitive im so sorry

these questions aren’t insensitive, you’re fine and I’m glad you’re reaching out to get more specific help. Thank you for sending this, I’m always happy to help.

I’m gonna start with, hey, this actually might be taking on too much at once. You should start off with drawing fanart of actual characters of color. Not white characters that are racebent, but doing realistic studies of what people of color actually look like. Draw Alyx and Eli Vance first before you start deciding what white characters should be race bent. Draw Darnold before deciding what race Coomer and Bubby should be. Give attention to actual characters of color, and more importantly, GIVE ATTENTION TO FANARTISTS OF COLOR, FOLLOW THEM AND REBLOG THEIR WORK BEFORE ATTEMPTING TO MAKE YOUR OWN. Even draw fanart of their designs with credit if you want, but before that, PLEASE FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, GATHER SOME REFERENCES AND DRAW R E A L I S T I C  P O R T R A I T S IF YOU DON’T WANT TO FALL TOO HARD INTO CARICATURE TERRITORY. DO SOME ART EXERCISES PLEASE YOU’LL BECOME A BETTER ARTIST IN THE LONG RUN.

Understand that I’m a white person and am in no way the authority on racebending, but you need to put in the work yourself to listen when people of color speak and raise their voices before putting in your own voice. It’s not easy but it’s not supposed to be. Don’t give up because it’s not easy. Work on yourself to recognize patterns of racism, listen when people explain it to you, don’t get defensive! Think about how you might have hurt them and apologize and then listen to find out how you can do better. Come to me if you’re confused on what to do next.

But for now, my advice is this:

Maybe stop trying to racebend white characters and actually draw and give more attention to canonical characters of color. Do some actual realistic portraits of characters using multiple references and study how to diversify faces without being cartoony. And if after all of that you find you’re still at a loss for what to do with the characters you want to racebend, then draw fanart of already existing hc’s made by artists of color. But please for the love of god don’t skip steps one and two before getting to step three. This isn’t a “how can i racebend without being seen as racist” kinda thing, it’s a “what steps can i take to make the fandom space more comfortable and inviting for people of color”. You’re not doing this to avoid responsibility, but doing it so that you can TAKE responsibility.

You can do it! Just put in the work. You think you got it? Please message me or send another ask if you understand or have any other questions. I’d love to clear up any confusion.

[viktuuriangstbang]

Viktuuri Angst Bang 2019 - Masterlist

Here is the extensive list of the incredible and angsty works created for the Viktuuri Angst Bang. Thank you to all our beloved participants for seeing to the success of this event. 

If you participated and you do NOT see your work here or have found an error, please email corrections to yoiangstbang@gmail.com.

Open the ‘Read More’ to check ratings, warnings, tags, and summaries.

The Affair by Clarinda. Art by  DyeingDoll.

Danse Macabre by AurumAuri. Art by Bectara

By Chance One Turns by Louciferish. Art by Izzyisosaki.

Bound by you by KuraiOfAnagura. Art by R-Tengu.

Our Time, Gone Forever by  AJ Wolf. Art (1,2) by Elianthos.

Body of Evidence by Revampired. Art by Eli Grey.

And all pieces fall right into place by cottonee. Art by mferret9.

Faceless by allollipoppins. Art by Heavy Henry. 

embedded in my chest (and it hurts to hold) by Ace of Japan. Art by Baph.

Can You Hear My Heartbeat? by SchalaDresdan. Art by Bectara. 

you're with me (not someone else) by Adrianna99. Art by Kathe.

Conventionally Yours by Songbirdsara.

I See the Light by black_tea_blue_pens. Art by Bectara.

The Cost of Winning by Daffy. Art by Diem.

Find me in me (Act 1) by LenaLawlipop. Art by Clarinda.

When We Collide by topcatnikki. Art by Clarinda.

Under the Midnight by Mazarin221b. Art (1, 2, 3) by Elianthos.

Genie In The Bottle by PaintingWithWords. Art by smolkristen.

All That We Hold of Heaven by Kazul9. Art by Purin.

Appalachian Harmony by Heavy Henry. Art by cupromantic.

over the oaks by owlishann. Art by Hecate Mist.

The Truth About Agape by Kastuuki. Art by Purin.

Red Cuffs of Fate by Gabzjones. Art by Cerisebio.

strange as angels by astudyinrose. Art by Bullsfish.

The Brightness of Gold and Silver by Katineto​. Art by Ace of Japan.

Drag Your Soul to Shore by LinneaKou. Art by Baph.

Trade all my tomorrows for just one yesterday by Briapia @briapia95. Art by DyeingDoll.

To Love And To Honour (Esp version) by Midnight_Luna. Art by Caramel.

When You Really, Really Miss Me by cleverlittleradiator. Art by Caramel.

Sing to me like steel by Ravensmores. Art by Impatvish.

Pleurosis by SnarkyBreeze. Art by rettlecake.

Whiskey Lullaby by Rae. Art by Andi.

*Summaries are trimmed to fit better; please visit fics on AO3 to view full details.  **Chapter counts are as of January 16th.

The Affair by @clarinda0110 . Art by @dyeingdoll

E, 20k, Complete, Series. Canon AU - real world. Yuuri sits down to be interviewed for a retrospect of the career of Viktor Nikiforov. He has quite a story to tell.

Danse Macabre by @aurum-auri​. Art by @bectara​.

E, 110k, Complete. AU - serial killer. Warnings: Violence, Non-con. When Yuuri finds himself in the clutches of an infamous serial killer, everything he thought he knew suddenly is called into question.

By Chance One Turns by @louciferish. Art by izzyisozaki.

M, 90k, Complete, Series. Canon divergence - Kid fic. In 2011, Victor Nikiforov disappeared from the world of figure skating. Desperate to send money home, Yuuri looks for a job in the US. (...)The last thing he expects is for Victor to be the one who opens the door.

Bound by you by  @kuraiofanagura​. Art by @rtengu​.

M, 4/5, WIP. AU - historical arranged marriage, omegaverse. Warnings: Violence. Victor was so much weaker than this omega. Because he was escorting his brother Yuri to marry the love of his life, Yuuri, the alpha prince of the land of the Red Sun.

Our Time, Gone Forever by @ajwolf84​. Art (1,2) by @bowldeepfannish​.

T, 5/6, WIP. AU - Archeology, time travel. It's the archeological find of the century and Viktor still can't quite believe he's a part of it.

Body of Evidence by @revampired. Art by @unicornsovermyrainbow.

E, 44k, Complete. AU - Jack the Ripper, omegaverse. Warnings: Violence. Lost and alone upon arrival in London, omega medical student Yuuri is rescued by and befriends a famous local prostitute, Victor Nikiforov.

And all pieces fall right into place by @v-katsuki​​. Art by @mferret9.

M, 4k, Complete. Canon divergence - after Barcelona. After the Grand Prix Final, Viktor and Yuuri go separate ways for the rest of the season. They try to make their long-distance relationship work while both prepare to win a gold medal.

Faceless by @allollipoppins. Art by @snarkonice​.

T, 1/10, Hiatus. AU - Werewolf, soulmates, dystopia. Warnings: Violence. A beast roamed the streets of Hasetsu come nightfall and preyed on all whose face it looked upon. (...) A new disappearance gives Yuuri an opportunity to get to the heart of the problem, and face his own - not without consequences.

embedded in my chest (and it hurts to hold) by @theliteraryluggage. Art by @anonbaph.

M, 105k, Complete. AU - Artists are millennials, hanahaki disease. In which Yuuri falls in love, then falls apart, one petal at a time.

Can You Hear My Heartbeat? by @schaladresdan. Art by @bectara​.

M, 7k, Complete, Series. AU - Androids, temporary character death. In this world, androids are commonplace. At 18, people of this world can choose whether they want to be ‘transferred’ to an ‘transfer androids’ or not when their human bodies die.

you're with me (not someone else) by @iwritebetterthanispeak​. Art by @mandolinearts.

G, 2k, Complete. Canon divergence - Injury. Yuuri falls on the quad flip. He and Viktor end up kissing anyway 

Conventionally Yours by @songbirdsarawrites.

T, 10/11, WIP. AU - Artists. Yuuri Katsuki is fascinated by charming young artist Victor Nikiforov when he encounters him behind an artist booth at a convention. Nearly two years later, with a table of his own, Yuuri gets the chance to meet his hero.

I See the Light by black_tea_blue_pens. Art by @bectara​.

T, 15k, Complete. AU - The Little Mermaid AU. Warnings: MCD. Victor is the Crown Prince of the abyss merfolk. In order to escape from his work and obligations, he makes trips searching for something. He discovers the surface and a young boy who likes to dance at the beach.

The Cost of Winning by @narcissuspseudonarcissus. Art by Diem.

M, 1/10, WIP.  AU - Fairy tale curses. Warnings: Violence. Everyone on the continent of Bayuria could see the storm clouds on the horizon as they watched the King of Leroy stripping his lands of resources, and his people of their dignity.

Find me in me (Act 1) by LenaLawlipop. Art by @clarinda0110.

M, 5/6, WIP. Canon divergence - suddendly supernatural elements, character study, isolation. I was at the banquet, wasn't I? At Sochi? My head hurts a little bit. I think I need to get up and figure out what's going on. It's... probably for the best.

When We Collide by @topcatnikki​. Art by @clarinda0110 .

M, 24k, Complete. Canon compliant - post series, relationship problems. Days laid in bed with their fingers twined and their lips connecting had turned into hurried kisses to the cheek as Yuuri rushed out of the door. Hours of conversation late into the night had become muttered 'goodnights' and waking up to empty beds.

Under the Midnight by @mazarin221b . Art (1, 2, 3) by @bowldeepfannish.

E, 2/5, WIP. AU - Fortune teller, magical realism. Yuuri Katsuki is a ballet teacher by day and fortune teller by night. Thing is, he is actually a real fortune teller. Into his strange little life he's built for himself walks one drunk figure skater, getting his fortune told on a dare.

Genie In The Bottle by @paintingwithwords. Art by @smolkristen.

E, 5/14, WIP, series (3). AU - Epidemiology. [Zebras among the horses followup] Things are going well for Yuuri Katsuki.  But danger looms on the horizon, as it always does for someone in his line of work.  When people start getting sick, Yuuri must race to find out what has been set loose... and if there's any way of stopping it.

All That We Hold of Heaven by @kazul9. Art by Purin.

T, 20k, Complete. AU - Fallen angel. Falling—the act of it, the emotion of it—means a lot of different things to different people.For Yuuri, it means everything.

Appalachian Harmony by @snarkonice. Art by @cupromantic.

Not rated, 15k, Complete. AU - Apalachian trial. Warnings: MCD. Newly sober and almost forty, Viktor Nikiforov realizes that he has to make a change. Never a fan of half-measures, he quits his job in corporate law, rents his swanky Manhattan condo to his younger cousin and takes off to hike the Appalachian Trail.

over the oaks by @owlishann. Art by @hecate-mist.

T, 27k, Complete. AU - Spacetrip, time travel. Books have always called Yuuri, ever since he was a child. So when he gets the chance to answer the call, he does, even if it implies crossing the milky way in a tiny spaceship with Victor Nikiforov —the man Yuuri has been pining after since they met— by his side.

The Truth About Agape by @kastuuki. Art by Purin.

M, 2/7, WIP. AU - Superhero, temporary charactter dead. Looking at the picture in the newspaper, the superhero is carrying Victor in the most cliché way they could ever find themselves in: a bridal carry. It has become an iconic photo and the city just ran with it. Everyone loves a good love story, even if it’s not entirely true.

Red Cuffs of Fate by @gabzjones. Art by Cerisebio.

E, 38k, Complete. AU - Crime and police, soulmates. It was his first job as detective; hunting down the ever elusive Mercury, a thief who got his kicks from simply getting away with the crime. Yuuri had gotten close. Really close. And then he noticed the mark of the soulmate bond on his hand.

strange as angels by astudyinrose. Art by @bullsfish.

M, 1/?, WIP. AU - Just like Heaven AU, apparent MCD. Yuuri has a traumatic fall, and he's absent from the rest of the series. After Victor's fifth straight title at Worlds he feels strangely despondent, so he decides to leave St. Petersburg. The first night in his new apartment, he's haunted by the ghost of a beautiful Japanese man he's never met before.

The Brightness of Gold and Silver by @katineto​. Art by @theliteraryluggage.

M, 7/16, WIP. AU - Royal, medieval monastery, omegaverse. After the death of his husband the king, Viktor—childless and powerless—finds himself relegated to a small convent far removed from the royal court and its political games. As he struggles to adapt to convent life, he begins to notice how desperately he desires one brother's compabullsny—even to the point of sin.

Drag Your Soul to Shore by LinneaKou. Art by @anonbaph.

M, 36k, Complete. Canon divergence - supernatural, curses. Just before Katsuki Yuuri advances to his first-ever Grand Prix Final, the skating world is sent reeling when a stranger destroys Viktor Nikiforov’s life in more ways than one, resulting in him being banned from competing and gaining the hatred of everyone he knows.

Trade all my tomorrows for just one yesterday by @briapia95. Art by @dyeingdoll.

T, 1/?, WIP. AU - Kyoukai no Kanata AU. The youmu stops and Viktor, vision blurred and confused, notices something he never thought he would see again. A sword, slightly curved to the back, red, and clearly made of blood is emerging from the youmu’s front. He knows who that kind of power belongs to, but he can’t bring himself to believe.

To Love And To Honour (Esp version) by Midnight_Luna. Art by @caramel-draws​.

T, 1/?, WIP. Canon compliant - Disney's Coco AU. Warnings: MCD. On the day of the Obon, Hikari Katsuki'll have to embark on a journey without precedent to the Land of the Dead, uncover the secrets that shattered her little family and find the real reason why her father never let her go near a skating rink.

When You Really, Really Miss Me by @cleverlittleradiator. Art by @caramel-draws​. 

M, 2/4, WIP. Canon compliant. Warnings: MCD. In which Yuuri dies, Viktor lives, and he's not the only one left to deal with the aftermath. 

Sing to me like steel by @ravensmores​. Art by @impatvish​.

E, 2/2, Complete. AU - Hospital.

“I just know I’d hate myself even more if I didn’t tell you.” Victor’s voice is surprisingly hesitant as he wipes his face, hand still resting softly in Yuuri’s. “If- if I didn’t ask if there was still a chance.”

“You killed people Victor.”

Pleurosis by @kingfisherunion. Art by @rettlecake.

T, 1/?, WIP. AU - Hanahaki. 

Viktor doesn't take Yuuri up on his offer at the Sochi banquet, but someone else does. Depersonalized, depressed, and doubting that he'll make it through another season of marketing himself to an uncaring public, Viktor finds himself ill at Worlds, and nothing he does seems to help. When Yakov takes on a new skater, Viktor's health takes a turn for the worse and he's suddenly faced with a dire choice.

Whiskey Lullaby by @justrae2010​. Art by Andi.

E, 8k, Complete. Warnings: MCD.

The divorce papers had come through a month later. Yuuri didn’t come back.

Victor needed a drink.

[bug-ocs]

OC Interview

tagged by @aban-ataashi omg thank you!! i’m gonna post it on this blog bc i’m sure my regular followers don’t give a fuck abt my kids lmao i’m gonna go with danny for this one!! for simplicity’s sake, this is happening post-story

Pick three companions who know your OC/muse well. Answer the questions from at least one of their companions’ points of view.  Name the three companions who will be answering here:

Gen - best friend

Eli - boyfriend

Emory - new friend/instigator/patience-tester

Are they ready to be candid with their responses? Don’t worry, this is totally private. Danny will never read it. (as if Emory wouldn’t screenshot everything and send it to him)

1. First Impressions. What was the first impression you had of Danny?

Gen: Well, I met Danny in early middle school. I remember getting paired with him on a project and immediately, there was this sort of unspoken agreement that we had to stick together. We were both kinda nerdy and reserved, especially at that age. Danny was twice everyone’s height at the time so he came off as unintentionally intimidating, which of course worked in my favor as a nerdy kid. And I think Danny was just really craving any sort of positive-leaning relationship, and I could definitely give that to him! I did initially feel a little sorry for him. He did seem pretty lonely. But he really came out of his shell once we started hanging out more. We just sorta clicked, and it was like... “Did we just become friends?” “Yep!” *chuckles*

Eli: *clearly not wanting to answer the question*

Emory: Well, Eli, if you’re not gonna answer, I’ll go. First time I met Danny was at Molotov and he was a sad, drunk, piece of shit. Snarky and sarcastic as all get out. I wanted to deck him so bad. And I did! Many times!

Gen: *slaps forehead and sighs*

Emory: What? The question was first impressions! It’s not like I still feel that way about him. Mostly. Uh...Eli! Your turn!

Eli: *sighs* Is complicated. Next question?

Emory: *nudging him* Noooo, it’s not! First impression is all you gotta say!

Eli: *with desperation* Next question.

2. Danny walks into a bar. No, it’s not a joke - what does he order? If you give him a credit for the jukebox, what kind of music would he put on?

Gen and Emory: *turn to Eli*

Eli: *sighs* He loves his red wine, the bolder ones, not sweet ones. Cabernet Sauvignon, Syrah, Zinfandel, things like that. If he’s actually the one paying, though, he’ll stick to cheap, watered-down beer to save money. If someone else is paying, he’ll ask for top-shelf tequila. Wine is his favorite, though. He seems to be the most happy when he has a glass of red.

Emory: *hums* That’s cute that you pay that close of attention, Eli.

Eli: Torres, I was his bartender for 4 years.

Emory: What about music then, huh? In those four years did he ever do karaoke?

Eli: Dasha has been drunk many time but never enough to karaoke. I think you both know that. Besides, he likes sad, crybaby music. Doesn’t translate well to karaoke...or bars. I’d slap his hand if he changed the music to Goat Mountain or whatever.

3. How does Danny spend a day off from work?

All, in unison: Cooking shows.

Gen: *laughs* He loves his cooking shows! A perfect day for him, if he doesn’t have to think about anything else, is waking up and spending it all day baking and cooking with his shows on in the background.

Emory: And a bottle of wine in hand!

4. What silly superstitions or funny traditions does he observe?

Gen: Hmmm...I wouldn’t say he has any funny traditions and he’s not terribly superstitious, at least not in the compulsive way, but he’s horrified of ghosts...I keep trying to get him to come on ghost hunts with me but he refuses to engage in that stuff.

Emory: *laughs* He’s scared shitless of ghosts. It’s so funny. Remember that time I made it look like La Llorona was outside his window? *laughs hysterically*

Gen: That was you? He wouldn’t shut up about that for weeks! I had to go get him some holy water and sprinkle it around his window so he would go to sleep.

Eli: *stifles a laugh* I remember that. Good one, Torres.

5. What does Danny wear to bed? And just how do you know that?

Gen: *rolls her eyes* He’s so modest, it’s ridiculous. I’ve very rarely ever seen him in his actual pjs. Loungewear, sure. But pjs? It’s a mystery.

Emory: It’s a tanktop and boxers.

Eli: *shoots her a look*

Emory: What? I can’t tell you how many times I’ve walked in on him. You think he’d learn to lock his door.

Eli: Or you could learn to knock.

Emory: *snorts* Yeah right. Couldn’t tell you specifics tho. He always ends up yelling or throwing something at me before I can get a good look. I’m pretty sure his shirt is white, but...

Eli: Blue and white striped boxers. And I think you know exactly why I know this.

6. Your favorite memory of Danny?

Gen: I can’t really say any one memory in particular. Being friends with him for so long, we’ve had so many good times! I just really enjoy when he’s doing well and we can just hang out and not really think anything of it. Like, I’ll do his makeup while he rants about hot food takes, or I’ll cut his hair while he clips Peaches’ nails. I just enjoy being with him.

Eli: Ah...ya, that’s nice. He’s usually very quiet, but if he likes you, he’ll talk your ear off. It really makes you feel special. I think my favorite moment was when he finally apologized to me after all these years, even though I didn’t need one from him. I loved the way he carried himself in that conversation. Felt like I was seeing him as himself for the first time in years.

Emory: *pauses* Yeah, imma go with when I first met him and punched him and he bled so hard he passed out. *laughs* I still can’t get over it.

Gen: *slaps forehead*

Eli: *stifles a laugh*

7. A time you very nearly almost kissed Danny?

Gen: Danny is...*looks to Eli*...surprisingly affectionate, for someone who comes off as so grumpy. *chuckles* He gives me forehead kisses constantly, b-but it’s all very chaste! P-platonic! I promise!

Eli: *laughs* Yes, Gen, I know. He’s very sweet like that, especially with people he loves. He won’t do it in public much, but in private he can be very...liberal...with his kisses.

Emory: Danny accidentally kissed me on my forehead once when I did something nice for him. I think I broke him and he didn’t know what to do. I thought it was funny, but he promised me not to tell E--oh...shit!

8. Vacation time! Where do you take Danny for some R&R?

Gen: Anywhere in the world? Wow, probably Italy. So he could just sit around and eat pasta and drink wine all day. I think he’d be in heaven.

Emory: Yeah, imma mooch off that answer. It’s perfect.

Eli: You probably just don’t have an answer.

Emory: Okay, well, what’s your answer, then?

Eli: ........Italy.

9. Danny’s sense of humor -is it dry, immature, sarcastic, self-deprecating, physical, witty, dark, or…?

All, in unison: Sarcastic

Emory: *continuing* self-deprecating, witty-but-i-refuse-to-admit-it, dry-as-the-devil’s-asshole humor. He truly gets me.

---

thank you so much for the tag omg!!! this was a ton of fun and exactly what i needed to do since my stupid tablet just died haha!!

[choupichoups]

Northern Lights [ 1/1 ]

On the down side, the boys get snowed in at some isolated cabin in the woods.

On the plus side, there’s a ring hidden somewhere in area.

Or: I saw this post at 1 in the morning and couldn’t sleep until I churned this out I’m sorry I’m rusty and good morning have a good Wednesday bye bye

–

Travel halfway across the world, they say.

It’ll be fun, they say. 

Lucas paces the length of the cabin floor, socked feet pit pattering in dull thuds as the little fireplace crackles in tandem with his movements. Eliott, bless his ever so chill heart, is sprawled all over the couch as if all is right in their world. 

“Eli,” Lucas mumbles, managing to reel in his stress for the entire two seconds it takes for his boyfriend to look up from the Hannah Montana puzzle he’s been poring over for hours. Eliott raises an eyebrow, soft sweater bunching up as he shifts, softer hair tumbling over his forehead when he stands. Lucas blinks away the distraction, frowning with all his might when Eliott has the gall to laugh in the face of his distress, warm arms wrapping around him to appease. 

And don’t get him wrong, Lucas is still annoyed, but it’s so fucking cold he’s convinced he might as well be cyrofrozen if he spends one more minute out of Eliott’s arms. Honestly, fuck Canadian winter. Why did they choose to fly here when everyone else is trying their darned best to run away from it?

“It’ll be fine, Lu. It’s just a little delay.” Eliott rubs his back, soothing hands running up and down the fabric of his sweater. Lucas slumps further into the embrace but refuses to give up his sulky muttering. 

“We’re only here for four days,” he says, muffled into Eliott’s collar. 

“That’s plenty of time.” Eliott laughs into his hair, no hint of concern in his voice. Lucas huffs, unable to believe that his boyfriend is seriously not bothered by any of this.

Must be nice. 

Anyway, he’s still stressed out. 

“We’re snowed in, dude,” he intones with emphasis, digging a cold nose into Eliott’s collarbone until he hears a ticklish squeak. He has to told back a smile as he continues with a deadpan, “And our friends are stranded in some airport in another province.”

“They’ll be here tomorrow,” Eliott mumbles into his hair, arms tightening as he starts walking them back towards the couch. “And then you’ll wish they’re still stranded back at the airport instead.”

And, well, he’s got a point there. 

“But we can’t get out,” he groans stubbornly, flopping down when Eliott drags the both of them down to sit. Lucas hangs onto his waist, refusing to unglue himself from Eliott’s side. Luckily enough, the notion is reciprocated so Eliott merely tucks him in closer and presses a kiss to his forehead. 

“I know,” Eliott says, and Lucas can feel a small huff of air above him as Eliott laughs. “Isn’t it romantic?”

Romantic my ass.

“Have you seen The Strangers?” Lucas retorts, indignant when he feels Eliott start to tremble with laughter below him. He punches Eliott’s chest in retaliation but it only seems to invoke even more laughter. “Eden Lake? Stop— stop laughing Eli— Backcountry? You don’t— hey, I’m serious!” Lucas personally thinks this is no laughing matter.

“Baby, what the fuck?” Eliott wheezes out.

Lucas is increasingly desperate over here. “Cabin in the Woods?!”

Eliott has to physically cover Lucas’ mouth to shut him up. “I think someone’s been watching too many shitty films, hm?”

Lucas licks at the palm obstructing his face, earning himself a squawk from his infuriating boyfriend. “Yeah, you.”

“Ouch.”

Lucas slumps back down with a sigh, looking up at the ceiling. At least the fireplace is working. And the Wifi is spotty but still there. Oh and the lights. Lucas thinks he’d go apeshit if the storm messes with the electricity. 

A hand reaches over and pets at the back of his head, Lucas relaxing into the touch despite the thoughts running rampant in his mind. 

“It’ll be fine,” Eliott repeats, shuffling closer to kiss him lightly, effectively ending his subconscious gnawing at his lips. “Trust me, okay? No serial killer or demon or wild animal will touch you, they’ll have to kill me first to get to you.”

Lucas tears up. Like a moron. “Stop, that doesn’t make me feel better.” 

Eliott smiles, reaching over to wipe at the tears that haven’t even had the chance to fall. “Sorry, but seriously. I already contacted the airbnb host, they’ll arrive with a crew tomorrow when the storm lets up. They’ll dig us out.” 

“Okay,” he mouths inaudibly, eyes honing in on the stupid puzzle Eliott had been working on earlier. He’s only missing a few more pieces. “Have Yann and them responded yet?” 

Eliott feels around for his phone, pulling it out from under one of the couch cushions like he’d seen it fall into the abyss and had simply not done anything about it until now. Lucas can practically taste the warm fondness bubbling up his chest. Like a moron. “Yeah, they’ve been put up in a hotel and they fly here tomorrow morning.” 

“Okay,” he says again, thankful that he’s with Eliott through dealing with this. Had he been alone, he simply would’ve ran around like a chicken with its head cut off, accomplishing absolutely nothing. Like a moron. 

He might be freshly graduated from his master's program by now but you better bet his panic still knows no bounds. Speaking of, the actual ‘Yay! I'm Temporarily Free From Hell!’ celebration trip they’d planned for isn’t until a few days later— they’re supposed to fly down at a ski resort with, you know, civilization around them rather than being isolated in some remote winter wonderland. But Lucas is now questioning whether they’d be able to leave on time, or if they’d lose a whole chunk of money for missing the first few days of their reservation at the resort, assuming this damned storm would cause more delays for their flight.

They’ve only made a detour to Yukon to see the northern lights anyway. This is all Yann’s and Eliott’s fault, they’re the ones so insistent on seeing aurora borealis for the aesthetic—

“The weather should be good for the next couple of days so our flight out of here won’t have any problems,” Eliott says, now a mind reader apparently. Lucas’ shoulders relax further. 

Man, he needs a drink. Too bad their fridge only houses five bottles of sparkling water. Filthy Canadians. 

“What time’s the check in at the resort again?” Lucas asks, eyeing his own phone which he’d left by the kitchen counter. He’s way too cosy to get up and retrieve it. 

“Uh,” Eliott scrolls through his phone, brows furrowing. The pause lasts a little too long and Lucas looks over, watching Eliott’s blank confusion morph slowly into impatience. 

“Should be in the confirmation email, no?”

“Yeah, I’m trying to look for it.”

“Why do you have so many fucking emails?”

“I’m a real adult now, Lucas, all we do is send emails.” 

Lucas cackles, throwing his legs over Eliott’s thigh as he truly relaxes for the first time since landing in the foreign country. He curls over to prop his head atop Eliott’s shoulder as he holds a hand out for the phone. “Here, let me look.” 

He exits out of the folder Eliott has somehow landed himself into to search the entire inbox, typing in ‘confirmation’ into the search box— Eliott isn’t too keen on online shopping so there shouldn’t be much to go through there. 

Idly, Lucas scrolls, careful not to miss anything.

Order #45632 has been placed — Tealyra

Your order has been placed successfully.

Confirmation for Commission — M. Baudelaire

Thank you for the invoice. Looking forward to working with you on…

Contract Confirmation — F.S Studio

Please read over the attached files and sign…

Appointment Confirmation — Galeries du Diamant

See our 3 step process for hand crafted custom engagement rings…

Lucas blinks, thumb stuttering as it hovers over the email. Beside him, Eliott stops breathing. 

He keeps scrolling.

Trip Confirmation — SkiBig3

You’re going on a trip! Please read over the details to… 

“There.” Lucas hands the phone back over, allowing Eliott to read through the email himself. Eliott does so, but not before emitting a gigantic exhale. 

Lucas stretches over his head to grab the Rubik’s cube on the shelf, studiously beginning to solve it. They stew in the satisfying crick cracking of the cube before Eliott breaks the silence. 

“We don’t check in until the afternoon.” He zooms in on the phone screen as if to make doubly sure. “Our plane arrives in the morning so we should have plenty of time.” 

Lucas hums a noncommittal sound, working on shuffling the blue side into place. Eliott opens up his chats and the two of them descend into comfortable silence as they set about conducting their own business. 

He wasn’t going to mention it— he really wasn’t. But it’s Eliott who starts, so Lucas can’t be blamed for finally poking at the pink elephant in the room. 

Eliott’s chest starts shaking at odd intervals, and Lucas can only ignore so much of his strange little wheezing before he’s looking up at his boyfriend, bottom lip trapped in between his teeth, only to see a red-faced Eliott with his lips pressed tight together and his eyes shining with poorly concealed mirth. He’s already staring right at Lucas.

The dam breaks right then and there. 

Lucas lets out the ugliest snort known to mankind and Eliott’s tamed giggling quickly evolves into tear inducing laughter. Eliott has to lean back against the head of the couch to avoid meeting Lucas’ eyes and Lucas shoves his face into Eliott’s shoulder, muffling his own deranged laughter. 

“Why are we laughing?” Eliott struggles in between gasps, barely able to speak past his wide smile. 

“I don’t know!” Lucas manages to stumble out before dissolving into another fit of giggles. 

Eliott sniffs, helplessly wiping at his eyes. “You do know, fuck.” His breathing is laboured, and the way he stares up at the ceiling resembles that of a man who’s questioning his life choices. “Stop laughing.” He pulls at the ends of Lucas’ hair lightly. 

“You stop laughing.” Lucas pinches him on the side and Eliott wiggles away in protest.

They quiet down.

But then their eyes meet and they’re breathless all over again. 

–

Later, Lucas slides down to the floor, legs criss-crossed as he finds himself face to face, yet again, with the jarring colours of the Hannah Montana puzzle on the table. He starts picking at the remaining pieces, laughter tapering off into a grin as Eliott drops down to join him. 

“So… is it here?” Lucas asks, eyes bright, seeing no use in pretending he’s not dying over the fact that an actual engagement ring exists in this universe, just for him. 

Eliott’s smile is soft when he looks up from the puzzle, one hand lifting to brush Lucas’ unruly hair away from his face. 

“Okay,” Lucas continues, teasing. “I’ll take that as a yes.” 

That gets him a blinding grin, Eliott’s eyes scrunching into half moons as he chuckles out a quiet, “Stop.” 

“Why?” Lucas whines out, using his feet to worm closer into Eliott’s space. “Can I see?”

And alright, maybe he deserves that judgemental look. 

He settles down for a blessed moment of silence before his tiny bird brain reminds him that there is, in fact, a ring (a ring!) for him somewhere in the vicinity and he could be wearing it right now but his boyfriend is playing. 

“Can we play that hot or cold game?” He drapes himself over Eliott and digs his chin into Eliott’s shoulder to be extra annoying. 

“Fuck no.” The exasperation rolling off of Eliott is almost tangible. 

“Please.” 

“No.”

“Just three tries per day?”

“No.” 

“Once per day?”

“No."

“That’s a lot of no’s coming from someone who wants me to say yes.”

“Oh my god, Lu, shut up.” 

—

The rest of the boys arrive the next day, and Yann is rightfully confused when he sees Lucas staring down at the pot of boiling spaghetti sauce in the kitchen as he asks Eliott ‘hot or cold?’ in the most pitiful of tones. 

Who the fuck wants cold spaghetti?

Eliott coos at him, leaning down for a kiss, and Yann walks away, not stopping until he reaches the backdoor to stare at the deer sneakily tiptoeing around the backyard.

—

On the third day, Basile almost dies of a heart attack when Lucas pops out from below Basile’s bed and cups a hand around his mouth to project a questioning ‘hot or cold?’ towards Eliott, who’s reading a book on his own bed like a normal human being. 

Eliott answers with a very pointed flip to the next page. 

Basile kicks at Lucas’ leg until he gets rid of the gremlin under his bed.

—

On their last night at the cabin, the boys take the portable heaters outside and lay out mountains of blankets in the backyard to watch the northern lights. 

Arthur bundles tighter into his own pile of blankets as he settles down beside Yann and Basile. Lucas and Eliott are a little farther off, Eliott claiming he needs a better photographic view of the lights and Lucas following after him with one of the mini heaters to protect his art hoe of a boyfriend from hypothermia. 

He keeps one ear on the hushed conversation between Yann and Basile and the other absently open to the curious shenanigans their local lovebirds are up to. 

Dusting off the little bit of the snow that collects over the blankets from all his shifting, Arthur looks up when the sky gradually illuminates, but the lights are not what has him choking on a gasp. Clumsy fingers reach up to straighten the glasses perched on his nose more out of habit than necessity as he gapes at the sight unfurling only a short distance ahead. 

“Holy shit.” He flails out a hand, blindly batting at the general direction of Yann and Basile, unwilling to look away in case he misses the big moment. “Holy shit!” 

–

Eliott is sweating. 

Which is utterly dramatic of him, to be honest. Because he knows, he should know, that there’s only one answer to the question he wants to ask. 

Lucas hadn’t been very subtle the past few days. 

But still, Eliott is sweating. 

Lucas is standing in front of him, ethereal under the aurora, eyes the texture of glass, the colour of the deepest ocean. His lips part soundlessly, long lashes fluttering against the light snow falling from the tree above. There’s a perfectly formed snowball in his gloved hands, clutched tightly against his chest as he admires the view above. 

Preoccupied with the phenomena in the sky, Lucas doesn’t move even after Eliott’s camera clicks once, twice, three times. Eliott would be tempted to raise the lens, look at the sky through the viewfinder, if only the beauty before him wasn’t so all encompassing.

“You haven’t asked yet,” he says, quiet, so as to not startle Lucas. But Lucas startles anyway, as if shaking himself out of a trance. Eliott is endlessly endeared. 

“Huh?” Lucas blinks back at him.

“You haven’t asked today,” he answers vaguely, knowing his boyfriend is too clever to miss the implication.

Sure enough, Lucas rolls his eyes, the blues ever shifting in the moving lights. Eliott wants to capture this sight, wants to capture it all, and he greedily takes it in, every movement and every sound. It plays like a movie in his head, much like a lot of moments in his life, except this one’s something nobody’s ever seen— it’s one he can’t wait to begin. 

Letting go of his camera, Eliott moves to fit his hands inside his jacket pockets. 

“Hot or cold?” Lucas asks, jokingly, giddily, clearly expecting another dismissal.

But Eliott smiles, heart in his throat, and answers, “Warm.”

[magic-multicolored-miracle]

Song Tag Game

So my first thought on getting this tag was “oh god” but as always, I can’t say no to a tag game, especially for music. Hang on to your hats kiddos, this is going to be a long post.

Tagged by @sokkasdarling

Rules: For each letter of your URL, put a song that you like that starts with that letter

M – Manic Monday ~ The Bangles A – All I Ask of You ~ Phantom of the Opera G – Godzilla ~ Blue Oyster Cult I – I Am Stretched on Your Grave ~ Abney Park C – Creature Feature ~ Seanan McGuire M – Man in Black ~ Devil Doll U – Under Pressure ~ David Bowie/Freddie Mercury L – Lady Hands ~ Reesha Dyer T – This House is Not Haunted ~ The Men That Will Not Be Blamed for Nothing I – I’ll Still Be A Geek (Nerd Girl Anthem) ~ Marian Call C – Cabinet Battle #1 ~ Hamilton O – Ode to an Unfetterer’d Fowl ~ Lost Boys L – Lanky Bell Bottoms ~ Frenchy and the Punk O – Over the Hills and Far Away ~ Nightwish R – Ruin’s Road ~ Janissary (Paul Shapera) E – Eight-Legged Blues ~ Vixy and Tony D – Dear Gina ~ Seanan McGuire M – Marbles ~ The Amazing Devil I – I Did Not Leave The Door Ajar ~ Eli August R – Ravenheart ~ Xandria A – Anti-Summersong ~ The Decemberists C – Cut Rate Apocalypse ~ Nathaniel Johnstone L – Lost Boys ~ Dogwood E – Empty Plates ~ Robert Hallow and the Holy Men

Tagging at no obligation (although I highly encourage cus it was a lot of fun): @fleetwood-matt @exlibrisfangirl @hermeowyn @midnightseance @jynandtonics @diegos-butt and anyone else that sees this and wants to play along

[creatorofclay]

2019... What a year right? When I started in this fandom, I honestly didn't know what to expect. I had never RPed on Tumblr much before, except for within a group on ask blogs. I had never felt enough of a connection to a game or universe to really want to take that jump, but Simon was a start for me. I love Detroit and the universe that has been built here. Even if the canon can be a bit ridiculous at times, and blatantly obvious with it's symbolism, it's still one of my favorites that I've played and still love to play. This fandom has just been such an expansion on a world I already love and there's nothing that has compared.

Simon was the first, but really that blog is nothing compare to this one, all I've done and everyone I've met has truly driven me to be the very best I can be. I appreciate everyone here who is on the dash all the time, so crazy and so lovely.

ALL OF YOU LOVELY PEOPLE.

First of all, @an-unlikely-duo and @gracioustwin and two of the greatest people I know. You both have been there basically since the start of this blog and really, I don't think I'd even know who Elijah is without you both. Even though it's a different side to him, it's made it easy to make him more human and realistic. Plus having great muses to interact with helps ;)

I love you both more than anything. Just talking and joking around like we do, gushing over silly things or just Neil's face. I'm truly blessed to know you and I know you guys feel the same. I'm just so incredibly thankful to know you and I hope we will be able to be friends for as long as the internet allows. I could scream my love for you from the mountains and it still wouldn't be enough.

To my lovely platonic spouse and absolute babe gremlin @rk800isalive . Eme, I adore you. You are so honest and so sweet and just completely amazing. I'm proud of you and everything you do because you just deserve it. Just... SCREAMING I LOVE YOU. I don't even know how to form the right words to say how much I just appreciate you and everything about you and all that you do??? You're so creative, most of what I've done just in the past months, I wouldn't have even DREAMED of without you. Connor actually being friends with Elijah? Can't imagine anyone but you. Demon AU and subsequent WAR? If it weren't for that one little "What if we connected it all?" I swear I wouldn't be having as much fun as I am. Such a delight and I just can't wait for M O R E.

AND THE OTHER PLATONIC SPOUSE @ruthlessnessisyourdesire ASH. Ash. Actually talking to you lately and being to really interact has been so great. You are just so wonderful and I am just so happy we are in this giant mess together. Your muses are so great and ?? There's just so much on the horizon, so many possibilities for us and I am so super pumped about them all!! The new year will be amazing for you, I believe it. I wish you nothing but the absolute, very best because you deserve it. You are so sweet and just so cool. BIG PREESH because you seem to juggle so much (even just more than one amazing character is so incredible to me, but the DEPTH in them is amazing on its own). Here's to the future and all the things we will write my friend! 🥂

I'm gonna sound like a broken record because man I'm just big love for everyone but god I'm trying. Just all of you take all of my love.

@theveryfirst Heather , I adore you and I am always so excited to see you pop up again. You know I love you and how happy I am for you. My thoughts are always with you, because you deserve to be able to just do what you love to do here and everywhere. 2019 started with you and me plotting the craziest thread, and still I of my favorites, so here's to all of the insanity 2020 will bring! Don't ever change because you are amazing.

@fearlessandchaotic ELY, I DONT THINK YOU'LL SEE THIS UNTIL YOU COME BACK BUT 😘😘😘. You. Are. Amazing. You've allowed me to really show a darker side to Elijah and even got him to try and be better about it. I feel so blessed to have such amazing people to write with this year. I know there is still so much we can do ans I really can't wait for it. You're so much fun to talk to and just write with. Just.. big love. Big heart eyes. Big appreciation.

And speaking of big heart eyes, @rxseguided another absolutely delightful person to have known and had pop up all year long. Look. You are amazing okay. First of all, Death is an incredible character and I can't believe that was like the second or third big ship on this blog. But, then there's Jesse. Jesse. The one to truly turn this cold man's heart of stone to mush. The best gift you could have given me was this blessed pairing of muses. I'm nervous to talk to people in general most of the time, so I'm just saying it now that it's been one of the most interesting ships to watch develop. And the tastiest slowburn. So thank you. Thank you for coming to me and continuing to come back. You're so much fun and I adore you too. Like I said, big heart eyes.

Also Eli. Eli is so fun. I love the back and forth of like maybe they can actually get along to no they will absolutely never get along. I love it all. AH. Just. That. AH.

@stayhuman-genevieve @musesdivine @diivinerose @perfected-first @dulcis-pythonissam @ninehartx @coffee-and-guns @vexeddetective @dogandroses for fear of becoming too redundant with my love because man this is all wordy enough, you are all absolutely great people who are fun and wonderful to talk to, who I am blessed to know, and who I sincerely look forward to ringing in the new year with. When hard times get you down, just know there's always a light in the dark to shine through uwu I love you guys all ♥️♥️

Slightly secret shout-out to @kingsunfury >w> shhh, it's ok. You know I'll love you until the sun burns out, and even beyond. Dragging you into my appreciation post because no one can stop me.

And to all the others I didn't mention, you guys are all MVPs in my book. Never forget that. Everyone here are great and I'm thankful to see you all on the dash.

@angelrk900 @phcking-prick-dbh @9th-in-a-line @jericholeader @ihavenoside @head-shot-60 @nightofthefall @chendetroit @detrcitmade @amyriadofmuses @overlyanalyticaltrash @that1badassbitch (I hope you are doing well, dear ♥️)

I feel like there's some others, but I promise you guys are great too. It's a struggle to remember everyone I've talked to and everyone who is still here. Thank you all for being here this year ♥️♥️♥️

[kadebronson]

🦉~✌~📚*~*𝓃🔮𝒶𝒽'𝓈 𝒸🍪𝓂𝓂𝒾𝓈𝓈𝒾🍩𝓃𝓈❣  *~*📚~✌~🦉

hello! i’m taking fic commissions again to try and save up some money so i can move out!

PRICES

100-500 words: $5-$10

600-1000: $15

2000-4000: $20

5000-7000: $25

8000-10,000: $35

anything longer and we can discuss!

FANDOMS/SHIPS

IT Chapter 2 (reddie, hanborough, benverly, bitchie, character/oc)

check please (dexnursey, zimbits, holster/ransom, ransom/tater, the ot3 then of holster/ransom/tater, bitty/dex, i mean honestly i will write any pair)

star wars (stormpilot is the current main, but i’ve written pretty much every ship at some point in my life, no r*ylo tho)

pacific rim (newmann and that’s it really)

the raven cycle (phynch, bluesey, also ot3 blue/gansey/cheng, ronan/noah)

voltron (mostly klance but i’m pretty much cool with every ship)

dream daddy (dadsona/dad of your choice, or i’m cool with some other pairings like damien/hugo)

tales of arcadia (eli/steve, eli/krel, all the canon pairings)

teen wolf (honestly i’ve done it all for tw)

the social network (mark/eduardo, but i also wrote some real crazy things for this movie back in the day)

these are the biggies in recent years but you can check out my ao3 page to check it out and also just ask if you want! i’ve been writing fanfic since i was in the third grade i may have written for a fandom and it’s just been so long i haven’t posted any there

RULES

i’m totally fine with nsfw (including most kinks) but for any tales of arcadia obviously it’ll be fluff and fluff only lol

posting is up to you! let me know if you’d want me to put it on ao3 and simply read it there otherwise i would not be posting it and sending it to your e-mail

obviously, then, you must be alright giving me your e-mail and be alright with using paypal

if you wish to share it with others, you have to credit me then! on here with this username or on ao3 with @/agrajag

i mean obviously credit me and maybe link to this and others might commission me too so we all win, right?

you can DM here or e-mail me at kadebronson@gmail.com to discuss your fic!

also, i made a separate post for this earlier, but if you only can throw a few bucks my way, i’d still appreciate that and here’s my ko-fi if you could i would love you forever!

and sorry for clogging your tags people!

[booksandchocolatesmears]

Music Tag Game

Tagged by @beautifulpaxiel, Thank you!!

Rules: Spell out your URL using song titles. Then, tag as many people as there are letters in your URL. (This is going to be a long post.)

b - Believer by Imagine Dragons

o - Oh My Dear by Tenth Avenue North

o - Once in a Lifetime by Landon Austin

k - Kids Again by Artist Vs Poet

s - Spinning Bottles by Carrie Underwood

a - The Anchor by Bastille

n - Next to You by Of Rust & Bone

d - Dying in LA by Panic! at the Disco

c - Chainsaw by The Band Perry

h - Home by Gabrielle Aplin

o - Out of the Woods by Taylor Swift

c - Complicated by Avril Lavigne

o - Ok by The Backstreet Boys

l - Like Real People Do by Hozier

a - Apple Pie by Lizzy McApline

t - TALK ME DOWN by Troye Sivan

e - Eleanor Rigby by The Beatles

s - Shasta’s Complaint by Sarah Sparks

m - Mother by Florence + The Machine

e - Even if it Breaks Your Heart by Eli Young Band

a - Afterglow by Taylor Swift

r - Remedy by Adele

s - Still Learning by Halsey

My url is so long! I did my best to not repeat artists, but ‘o’ and ‘a’ were hard for some reason.

Tag: Everyone that wants to do this!

[comicteaparty]

March 14th-March 20th, 2020 Creator Babble Archive

The archive for the Creator Babble chat that occurred from March 14th, 2020 to March 20th, 2020.  The chat focused on the following question:

How do you react to readers predicting your plot twists?

chalcara [Nyx+Nyssa]

Depends when they do. A page or two before it happens? Both of us get to feel clever. Yay! Months ahead? Well, obviously the thing I thought a a big twist ain't it, so I get to decide what other thing to focus on. I usually don't change the plot on reader predictions, but I can always change how a twist is presented from "Big surprise! Bet you didn't expect that" to "Well, ain't it neat to FINALLY have confirmation about that thing?"

Funnily, the best plottwist I ever wrote was in my now defunct comic. I thought it was obvious, but my few readers went "WOAH, didn't see THAT coming." So these days I try to just write the story and let the twists fall where they may.

Pistashi

ASDFPHIaewpf a friend of mine was reading my comic and he was making a lot of theories, a bunch of them was way off but he managed to be 100% accurate about one of his theories and I just started laughing nervously when he talked to me about it before it happened in the comic. This was years ago and the thing already happened and it's not a big deal anymore, but at the time I felt proud to write something that was obscure enough to not be on the reader's face but at the same time having someone figure it out after connecting the dots

I have little twists that happen in a more funny way, and it's usually used for comedy, and my readers seem to like it

but that's probably because of the expectations in humor coming from my writing style

which is usually bad puns and character reactions to absurd situations

and I agree witch chalcara, sometimes we can feel like we failed a plot twist when people see it from miles away

which is true, but sometimes even when they figure it out it's best to leave it as it is

I've seen a lot of writers fucking up their stories by changing plot twists that were stablished just because "people found out too early", and retconing a lot of the story in result

like, making a plot twist consists in creating some kind of foreshadowing

to make the twist not seem too forced and taken from nowhere

also to make it rewarding for those who searched deep for those clues

idk I love these little foreshadowing/clues we can leave for our readers

to make the twists even more powerful and meaningful

RebelVampire

I want to second a lot of the above. A plot twist should not be completely unguessable. Because if nobody guesses it, it means to most readers it's gonna feel like it makes no sense and came out of nowhere. The goal of a true twist is to have as few people as possible guess it but then when it's revealed, the reader smacks their head going "how could I miss all these clues."

Pistashi

exactly

Deo101 [Millennium]

Readers predicting things usually makes me lead with "oh no, I'm predictable!!!" And then makes me thing "wait, no, it means they're picking up on the hints I've left behind." Though sometimes it's predictable, like if someone guesses the actions of the next few pages, that's less of the readers picking up on hints and more just guessing right. But guessing big plot things, j think, is a reflection that I'm making things as clear as I need to, and I'm rather fond of it

Tantz Aerine (Without Moonlight)

99% of the times I am delighted if they guess the plot twist. I like it when I feel like my readers are on the same page as me (pun ...maybe not intended?) and see where things are going. Since my stuff is character driven, it tells me they can read the characters and their personalities well enough. However there was this one time when I had intentionally depicted something that was not going to be the historical norm (namely the p-51 mustangs' coats of paint on a cruiser in the opening scene of my WWII webcomic Brave Resistance). A war history buff called me out on it IMMEDIATELY saying "wait, these aren't how they're supposed to be!" and nearly spoiled the entire plot on page 2! I had to DM him to tell him to tone it down, and explain to him why the planes where the way they were. He apologized and stopped, but I'd wanted to throttle him for a while there

keii’ii (Heart of Keol)

I agree with Rebel re: the purpose of a plot twist. In that sense, though, I don't think my story even has plot twists. There is no moment anywhere in the story where I want the readers to go "how could I have missed all the clues!!!" ... On the spectrum of brainy vs hearty, my story is very close to the extreme end of hearty. Like, think of stories like The Little Prince or My Sweet Orange Tree. Even when unexpected things happen, it's never about the brilliant reveal. The most shocking thing in My Sweet Orange Tree comes out of nowhere, and it works for that book. Heart of Keol is a lot like those two in this regard. Not exactly the same, but pretty dang similar!

So back to the question, honestly? I want people to be able to guess. The usual bane of my existence is the opposite problem: people not knowing wtf is going on. My story isn't supposed to draw its strength from its surprises, so guess away (edited)

eli [a winged tale]

I love it when the reader guesses the gist of the plot twist a few pages just before the reveal. I sort of follow the novel structure idea that the reader should see what’s coming next right before it hits them, hence rewarding their investment in the story. Wild speculations without the clues I’ve planted are interesting. It does make me wonder if I relied too much on tropes or left too big of the crumbs. That being said, I’m not too fussed by readers predicting the general directions of the plot because it’s all about the character reactions. Could they predict that too? Maybe, to a degree. But there are a lot of subtext I try to write in my characters that give some nuances that I feel may entertain even those who guess correctly how the story would go. TL;DR: guess away. Love reading theories. The story is set so I won’t be changing anything big but perhaps layer the reveal with subtleties.

Cronaj (Whispers of the Past)

I've actually never had readers guess what's coming next. I mean, unless you count obvious, broad stuff (such as "the MCs get together"). I mean, it IS a romance. But in regards to big plot events, no one has gotten remotely close with their predictions (which kind of surprises me, because I drop clues everywhere). To be fair, I'm only a chapter in, so I guess it makes sense. But I am excited for the day when people finally guess

eli [a winged tale]

Same Cronaj! The predictions I’m speaking of are from my betas reading the entire script I love it when then go—- “omg this [plot point] must mean [reveal!]” .... right before the reveal

Feather J. Fern

If anyone does pick out certian plot twists I will be like "Yesssss people do think like me, I am not crazy" XD because most of my twists are all shown from the start through hidden background things so if people found them I am excited they took time and effort to figure out twists

LadyLazuli (Phantomarine)

I love it. I haven’t been disappointed about it yet, and I don’t think I will be. It doesn’t make me change the twists at all - in fact, I’ve even shifted some story elements around to give the readers even more confirmation that they’re right, earlier on in the plot. I want to reward them with a treat, and now they can revel in their cleverness a bit longer Hee hee.

Eightfish (Puppeteer)

I love it too, but I don't change things to make readers more right like LadyLazuli does. Sometimes I'm tempted to, though! My readers have good ideas!

Tuyetnhi (Only In Your Dreams!)

I like plot twists so I like to set a hint of them off early tbh (edited)

but I try not to make it too obivous :3c

tho for those who like to guess, I welcome it. I like hearing folks and their interpretations even if it's not what I'm going for too lol

LadyLazuli (Phantomarine)

Admittedly, a lot of it is due to the nature of the medium. I know that webcomics take ages to get to major reveals or spoilers - I can wait to totally-confirm things, but I can't wait to... almost-confirm things? I don't want people to get tired or frustrated. I know I've gotten angry at anime shows that take 20 episodes to confirm something we guessed at episode 1, so I like when these things are all but confirmed early on. It can be really fun to know a secret that, maybe, the heroes don't know. It gives an extra layer of STOP, NO, DON'T GO IN THERE! in times of danger

But given my propensity to practically s c r e a m my spoilers to people who I can trust with the plot... a lot of it is just me bursting at the seams wanting to say YES YOU'RE CORRECT.

Patience and restraint. Essential things in webcomics

eli [a winged tale]

Indeed! So much patience needed I do love some excellent plot twists executed just chefs kiss

Eightfish (Puppeteer)

Yes! I just want to tell readers, "Oh God, you're right! Good job!" But instead I usually respond with a ":)" or "I like this analysis!" Which I think is basically just confirming it. But if it's a real life friend? I cannot resist from telling them everything. I've even spilled spoilers in this chat before, trusting that most people here haven't read my comic. Kind of backfired when I reached a major plot point and someone commented, "She's been waiting to bust out this plot point for so long." Oops, guess someone did read my forum posts. But even if I did spoil things in the comments, is it really that big of a deal? I'm the kind of person where spoilers don't detract from my experience of things and sometimes even adds to it. But some people care about spoilers, so.(edited)

eli [a winged tale]

Haha yeah it’s honestly so freeing to just tell someone about the spoilers

Here’s what I have planned that will wreak the readers muahaha

keii’ii (Heart of Keol)

Past me could super relate to that! But these days I don't really want to TELL people? I'm not sure if that's because I've changed as a person, or if it's because this story is different from my previous ones. That being said, my patience is not infinite. I am itching to SHOW people. Can't wait to get to those Big Scenes

"Big" is a weird adjective here because they're very small scenes in some ways. Very intimate/personal

But... you guys know what I mean. The scenes that every longform webcomicker is dying to get to

Mei

Oh gosh, I agree that plot twists shouldn't be entirely out of the blue, since it's nice to have the hints that give people the crumbs to follow a trail. But like, since I write a lot of these chapters way in advance, and if I had the chance I'd love for them to be readable in one go as opposed to a page per week, I fear that I'm boring people with a predictable punchline? That being said, I get so many comments that predict the end of the chapter or the punchline or the joke. And I'm always like "haha maybe????" but inside i'm like "oh my god, they got me, THEY GOT ME"

Ohh yeah keii I get what you mean

the scenes you're like, checking your watch, checking your current pagecount, and thinking "soon I'll get to draw it, and it will be marvellous"

eli [a winged tale]

Oh gosh those scenes for me are at the finale

keii’ii (Heart of Keol)

TBH last time I got to one of those scenes (which was very recent), my anxiety skyrocketed because I was expecting someone to say something harsh. Because it happened in all of the previous ones. But this time it went well, so hopefully the future ones will, too?

eli [a winged tale]

Yay!

Deo101 [Millennium]

I think for me, I worry more than anything that it will ruin things for other readers, rather than me worrying so much about someone guessing right or me sharing spoilers.

keii’ii (Heart of Keol)

Someone DID say something harsh, but it was right before the actual scene and not about the scene and a lot of people got fed up with their attitude so I felt like it wasn't my fault, lol

eli [a winged tale]

Ruin things for other readers? Oh like someone predicting correctly in the comments?

Deo101 [Millennium]

Also yay! I always get anxiety about those kinds of scenes

Yes, someone predicting Something

keii’ii (Heart of Keol)

Well thought-out predictions are a lot of fun to read though, as a reader going through the comment section

eli [a winged tale]

I guess I stopped minding it and now embrace it they could be wrong or right and who knows until we get there~

Oh totally!

Deo101 [Millennium]

Oh I don't mind so much, but that doesn't mean I don't worry a bit too!

J like reading them for me, but I still think "I wonder if this will ruin it for someone else"

keii’ii (Heart of Keol)

Occasionally there are problems with Korean webcomics that were originally webnovels? Because people who've read the novel version sometimes spoil things in the comic comment section, and that's not cool. They're not even theorizing, they're straight up spoiling.

Deo101 [Millennium]

:(

eli [a winged tale]

Oh no that’s bad

keii’ii (Heart of Keol)

But if people are theorizing, and the theories turn out to be right, that's all very fun IMO!

Mei

ugh when people spoil things it irritates me to no end. Let people enjooy it for what it is!

and yes!! that's one of my fave things too

Deo101 [Millennium]

Yeah, every reader is different though. I have some people who explicitly have asked me not to share spoilers, and others who kinda beg for them! So I worry if some people don't like to see predictions (I know my dad doesn't like when I guess things in a movie)

Mei

theorising, discussing with other fans, just chatting about what you think may or may not happen

keii’ii (Heart of Keol)

Sometimes you even see comments like "Hurry up, Konans! I'm too tired to think, so post some good interpretations/theories!" lol (Konan as in the detective... in Korea, it's a term for hardcore theorizers in webcomic comment sections)

Oh, I think movies are different

I don't want any form of verbal remarks while I'm watching a movie

Or like, if I'm marathonning a show with my bro, we're entirely silent except between episodes.

But comment section is like, you have to actually go there.

Deo101 [Millennium]

Some people might be like that for comics, too. Idk. I'm not trying to say i don't like to see theories I'm just trying to think of everything that makes me worry about them is all.

And for me, the biggest worry would be that someone seeing a prediction would make them enjoy my comic less. It doesn't mean I necessarily think it's all that common, but I refuse to say it won't happen I think

snuffysam (Super Galaxy Knights)

Personally, I think that's not an issue unless you confirm the commenter's theories

like I've seen theories for things online where my first reaction is "that's dumb, that would never happen" and then it happens

some people will latch onto another person's theory, others will reject it, but i don't think people will take it as a spoiler in advance

Cronaj (Whispers of the Past)

Yeah, theories are just theories

keii’ii (Heart of Keol)

I mean I know some people don't even want to hear other readers' theories, but if they are that extreme, they need to avoid the comment section on their own IMO?

Cronaj (Whispers of the Past)

^^

keii’ii (Heart of Keol)

like... cool, I respect your preferences, but you can't hold me responsible, pal!

Deo101 [Millennium]

Again I'm not trying to say I don't like theories or I don't want them I'm just trying to think of all potential issues with them

Cronaj (Whispers of the Past)

Granted, I'm one of those people who will scroll through the comments and read theories because I like to see all the smart people reveal the clues to dumb people like me

keii’ii (Heart of Keol)

I can relate to that

@Deo101 [Millennium] Understandable! Just don't be too hard on yourself for things that you can't control

Cronaj (Whispers of the Past)

Those geniuses that remember details from 30 chapters ago and somehow manage to connect the dots

Mei

Exactly! The comment section is there, but it's their choice to read it, and also like it's not your fault either? like they're not YOUR comments

haha in our RPG games sometimes people drop character plot hints way at the start of the campaign, and my friend will turn up, 7 months later, " remember when Character A said this? I remember"

and everyone's like "what the heck?!" some people are just detectives

they can see it, they see the matrix

snuffysam (Super Galaxy Knights)

Anyway, I love when my readers theorize! I don't believe any reader has guessed any of the major plot twists in the first two books, despite there being enough evidence beforehand to make a guess (closest was "whatever zebugu's doing, it's not evil this time" but not the specifics of what he was doing). Though, if they had, I wouldn't mind, since that's max two years they gotta wait before the reveal (and that's assuming they guess it on the cover page lol). Book 3 is a different beast - strictly speaking, there's enough evidence for someone to predict both twists at the end of the book, right now. And... that may be an issue, given that this book will take over three years to reach those twists. So... we'll see if anyone guesses them. What's weirdest is when people guess things almost correctly with absolutely NO hints. And it's some super specific and minor thing like "Mizuki is secretly the reincarnation of a thousand-year-old dragon". Like... there haven't even been dragons mentioned in the comic up to this point. Nor any events from a thousand years ago. And like, that's not exactly the truth, but how do you get THAT close???(edited)

Cronaj (Whispers of the Past)

They see E V E R Y T H I N G

eli [a winged tale]

Sometimes it’s a trope thing? But yeah wild speculations can be so wild but so spot on

snuffysam (Super Galaxy Knights)

but there aren't any fantasy creatures in the comic, at all!

except a squid with feet!

eli [a winged tale]

Lol whaaaat then yea not sure where the dragon part came from then

Cronaj (Whispers of the Past)

Sherlock Holmes readers lol

eli [a winged tale]

Yeah detective Conan lol

Deo101 [Millennium]

Joke gone awry

snuffysam (Super Galaxy Knights)

basically

Feather J. Fern

Well I mean I have crack theories about random people being random things too so...

I can see where they come from XD

sagaholmgaard

tbh I think my comic is fairly easy to predict as it has a pretty straightforward narrative xD but I don't have that many readers yet so maybe in the future! I would have fun reading people's guesses and predictions :D

Eightfish (Puppeteer)

AAA my readers right now are so accurate. They're so smart. They make me want to post my entire buffer right now and prove them right.

sssfrs (JOE IS DEAD)

I wonder if anyone would be able to predict the next things happening in joe is dead

Eightfish (Puppeteer)

I at least have no idea what's going to happen next but am looking forward to it anyways(edited)

🌈ERROR404 🌈

i know that it's only because TH is still quite new, and I haven't gotten to the meat of the story yet, but i like reading some of the really out there predictions and worries i get in some of the comments lol

AntiBunny

I will never tell someone if their guess is right or wrong, but if they do guess it, it probably means I'm foreshadowing well.

Then again I also find myself writing by the seat of my pants, so plans are subject to change.

kayotics

The original question mentions “plot twists” but I’m never trying to make a plot twist personally. I may intentionally obfuscate things, but I don’t ever try to do wild twists and turns. So when a reader predicts what will happen, I actually don’t mind, and I’m pretty happy that it’s following a logical chain of events. On the other hand, when readers are totally off base, I think that’s REALLY fun.

Cap’n Lee (Flowerlark Studios)

Most of my readers feel that my comics are twisty and surprising, but I often get at least one reader who correctly guesses what will happen, even if sometimes they’re joking or think their theory is wild and out there. Honestly it feels pretty awesome to have a reader shrewd enough to puzzle out the clues, because that means they’re really paying attention. I don’t have a very big audience and most of the time they’re silent, so anytime someone leaves a comment that is carefully thought out, it makes me really happy. As for the times readers joke or wildly speculate but inadvertently hit the nail right on the head, I find those very amusing. I really love stories with well done twists and turns, and so I try very hard to execute good plot twists that have enough foreshadowing to be ‘Aha!’ moments rather than ‘Where did that even come from?’ moments. So I love when readers are both properly misdirected AND when they pick up on the clues and deduce the twist.(edited)

DanitheCarutor

Does my comic have plot twists? I don't really think about it. People have correctly guessed things that will happen in a chapter, someone even guessed correctly on the climax when a character named Daniel was introduced... well, it was more like "I hope things don't turn out like -blank-!". I don't mind, just because they guessed something correctly doesn't mean they know how the story will go for sure, it just means that they're theorizing and that is something I always encourage. I don't think that means the story is boring or predictable either, some people are just really good at that stuff. Even though I don't think my comic is very mysterious/unpredictable it's still impressive when someone pays attention to all the little visual and dialogue details, then guessing correctly about a future event based on them. Nothing more flattering than someone enjoying your comic enough to analyze it.

Lmao! I can't tell you how many movies I've ruined for people because I guessed a plot twist correctly.

Cap’n Lee (Flowerlark Studios)

Haha, honestly same. I’m not allowed to make predictions during movies or TV shows anymore bc I almost always get it right. XD Webcomics I find a bit more unpredictable, though, because most of them aren’t nearly as formulaic as mainstream film.

DanitheCarutor

Yeah! Even if it's not obvious most of the time movies go by a pattern or set of traits, once you learn how they go a film or TV show becomes a lot more easy to figure out right away. The only time I'm stumped is when the movie is really surreal or absolutely awful. That's the nice thing about webcomics in a way. I assume a lot of creators haven't had professional training, and we want to tell a story more than be entertaining to the masses, so stories are less predictable. They don't always go by a formula, which can be refreshing.

Capitania do Azar

Aw man I would love to have some theories, but for the time unfortunately I don't I'm always super curious about how readers interpret things given they don't have an inside view of things

[gt-adventures]

Movie Night at a Giant Wizard’s Tower

A (mini) Tale of the Mystic Woods

A short story featuring the Half-Giant Wizard Yonah, his student the Princess Sophia, and a bunch of his wizard friends! Based on the one word prompt “MIRROR”

Content Warnings: NONE!

This story is purely GT! Short and sweet and comedic! ---

“T MINUS 10 MINUTES PEOPLE!” Sophia called. “Loud much? My ear is right there!” The moment Yonah stepped through the doorframe had projected her voice across the massive kitchen as she stood on Yonah’s shoulder. And she didn’t need magic to do it. Thank you princess training. She got an affirmative response from the stove where Avshi Mersberg and Elisheva Tor were making batches of popcorn. “You’re just sensitive!” she chided, patting his forehead as he walked over. “It’s almost as if being a half-giant means I have better hearing than a human” he mused, “Amazing how that works” “And worse eyesight?”  “No comment” he adjusted his thick rectangular glasses. 

The popcorn was just about done. Several large bowls full. They had the classic cheese, garlic and butter, sea salt and sugar, and a few more interesting flavors. A smorgasbord of puffed kernels in a rainbow of labeled bowls!

While it was an impressive amount, but at over 23 feet tall it was barely a mouthful for Yonah. They hadn’t bothered to make it in that kind of quantity. The towering jar of kernels rested on the counter and Yonah stopped to take a small handful. Cupped his hands together His eyes flared up with fire. Power surged through his hands. It was… less of a pop and more of a firework crackle as smoke escaped through his fingertips. When he opened his palms he had a large handful of popped corn. Several bits fell to the floor, in his hands it looked like odd pebbles. “Show off!” Eli said, pouring the final batch into a wooden bowl stained a deep purple. But if she was half-firewitch she would have done the same.  Yonah just smiled as he brought the still burning hot corn to his face. It didn’t smell particularly appetizing, it was unseasoned. There was a reason they were making it by stovetop. Yonah didn’t exactly want to cover his own hands in oil and salt, and his friends didn’t want to eat popcorn that had so much contact with his bare hands. Still he munched on it quite happily. In that moment he was both the tween girl offering sugar cubes to a barely broken stallion and the stallion itself eating out of the girl’s hands. “Want some?” he paused to hold up what was left to Sophia. “Ugh no way! These are covered in your slobber!” She pushed the hand away He shrugged and she was unbalanced for a moment. “I’ll take some!” said a voice from the space above Yonah’s head. A mass of dirty blond curls fell across his face. A human reached down from his head to snatch at the slightly slobbery pile as he brought it back to his mouth. He hadn’t even noticed they were there!  “GAH!”  Yonah nearly dropped the popcorn, which have been a bitch to clean up. Would have, if he didn’t have magic.  But he didn’t drop any as Noam Berkowitz was pulled back onto his head by her brother Noah. “How many times have I told you two not to do that?” he reached up and playfully fought the pair with his fingers. “Do what? Sneak up on you? We figured you could smell us!” with his keen hearing he knew that was Noam. “You know it doesn’t count when I already know you’re here!” Normally he COULD smell their presence. Giants have an unnaturally acute sense of smell. Even as a half giant, Yonah’s olfactory awareness made their hard learned thief skills useless around him. But that was when they hadn’t been hanging around for the past hour, their scent blending into the rest of the smells of the tower, the rest of the humans, and now the overpowering garlic. Sophia rolled her eyes. Despite being a half a decade to a decade older than her (and she being 21), these wizards were rather childish. The bowls of flavored popcorn were loaded onto a plate. Avshi and Eli scrambled up Yonah’s arm to sit on his other shoulder and he picked up the plate, carrying it and his friends to the living room where everything else was set up. Sitting on the couch were the rest of the humans. The rest of the usual Crew: Mica Cohen, Shoshana Jaffe, and Zohar Levine , and also Sam Kahnt. They set up an array of cushions and bean bag chairs. As the ones who were there first, they chose the best spots. Well, nearly. The best spot couldn’t be set up ahead of time. “So, bring us up to speed!” Sam asked of Sophia before she had even disembarked from the giant wizard. “There’s a recap! And you missed a lot of episodes!” she retorted. Yonah released his riders and pulled up the ottoman to press against the couch. Propped up on a giant pillow was a very plain mirror. Plain for a magic mirror that is. It was still finely made and framed with a twisting pattern of silver. Yonah gently touched the frame, not wanting to get fingerprints on the polished surface. “Mirror Mirror with silver border reveal to us the Silken Breath Order” The mirror went foggy, the loading buffer processing the request and verifying their subscription. It wasn’t inexpensive, but having the subscription cast on such a large mirror had increased the price. The first notes to the theme song for Ice Princess started to play. The title card held in front of a mirror a thousand miles away and then removed to show a this days performers dancing to the familiar choreography that Sophia had long ago memorized, and instinctively got up to dance in time to. As the theme ended and the stage fell to shadow another card fell across the view. “Ice Princess, A Silken Breath Production, Is Brought To You By The Slayers Cake! Makers Of Fine Pastries And Swords For Hire. Whether You Need Scores of Crullers For That Last Minute Wedding For Your Recently Rescued Darling Or An Experienced Fighter To Rid Your Town Of A Rabid Eldritch Monster, The Slayers Cake Can Do It All!” The card changed. “Previously On Ice Princess” A series of beautiful paintings accompanied by narration were shown, recapping the last episode before. It was a lot. Sam looked a bit lost. “And Now Without Further Ado, The Order of the Silken Breath give you Episode 103 of Ice Princess” During the advertisements Yonah placed a large pillow behind everyone to lean on, took a pinch of the powder at his belt and shrunk down to join his friends. It was mostly to watch the show on a giant mirror. But also...  Once situated on his favorite cushion Sophia took the bowl of garlic popcorn and her place in his lap. She leaned back into his soft chest and he leaned forward, squishing her a bit more. 

Best seat in the house. — Everyone was silent as a inoffensively dark red colored card was lowered into view. They blinked for the first time in several minutes. Intermission. Sophia had to shake her head to bring herself back to reality. “What the FUCK!” She turned to her left to see a stunned Shoshana, who had frozen with a handful of popcorn, most of it fallen into her lap. Her frizzy light brown hair had seemed to puff up even more over the course of the last two hours. “Did, did Freddy fucking DIE?” was the first thing out of her mouth. “And they LEFT THE BODY!” Sophia pointed out as Yonah lifted her out of his lap. He stood up and stretched and hopped off the couch, returning to his normal size. Then offered his hand for anyone who needed to use the toilet to climb up and headed off to the restroom. They had thirty minutes before the second half of the episode. Before heading back they stopped by the kitchen to refresh the snacks. This time in quantities that Yonah could eat at his normal size without consuming it all in one bite. Just last night he and Sophia had made a batch of GAZ. A sort of lightly sweet nougat full of nuts! Now it was set and ready to be enjoyed. When he returned, friends on head and shoulders, snacks in hand, it was clear the three left behind had barely noticed they were gone. “Bit shitty of the writers!! They just got to the lab! I thought we’d get at LEAST a few episodes exploring it! There were so many things there worth investigating and now! FUck! It’s all gone!” “How are they gonna get back to it? They didn’t find the Princess! She’s there right? Right?” “Get Back? That explosion caused it to cave in, There isn’t anything to fucking go back to!” “No way it’s actually destroyed, but that jungle guardian isn’t going to be easily to get past. Shit that thing was scary!” “The puppetry was amazing. Holy crap if I didn’t know better I’d have thought it was an illusion!” It didn’t really matter who was talking, they stopped when Yonah put down the food and friends. “Last call to use the restroom!” He announced as took away the cushions. No one had to go, but they all scrambled away as he lay down on his side.

Now he took up the entire couch. But that didn’t mean there was nowhere to sit! Once comfortable everyone climbed onto him. Zohar nestled into the crook of his arm. Avshi perched on his shoulder. Noah and Noam sat between his arm and the right side of his face. Not having been fast enough, Mica, Shoshana, and Sam sat up against his arm. Sophia lay on his head, making a nest in his thick black hair. In Yonah’s opinion (and objective truth): Watching a Fantasy Soap Opera while eating sweets and adorned in friends was the best way to spend an evening.

[Thanks for reading if you liked this PLEASE REBLOG and/or tell me what you think in an ask/message!]

Liked this Mystic Woods story? I have more! [but be warned, many stories contain/mention safe/soft non-sexual v/o/r/e lucky for you! i have filed them them separately! and (when needed) Every story comes with detailed content warnings!]

For GT ONLY stories: gt-adventures.tumblr.com/tagged/mystic+woods+story

For ALL mystic woods stories: vo/re-scientist/tumblr.com/tagged/mystic+woods+story (take out the “/” in vo/re) 

[a few of my GT-ONLY stories are on my not so secret vo/re blog but from now on I’m posting the GT-ONLY ones here! hurray!]

[debtstrokes-blog]

WHAT IF

                   t  u  m  b  l  r    r  p            aesthetic

                        BUT

                                                        too

              much

Hi. My name is Eli, and I’m here to make a rant about accessibility & tumblr rp trends.

I have been role playing on tumblr since 2010. Almost a 10 years. And I’ve watched many trends in role playing come and go. There was a time when all threads had titles, and tag tracking was simplistic and single worded. When everyone used missing e instead of X-Kit, and gif dumps were all the rage. 

There was a time when the ideal profile theme was easy to read, easy to navigate, and focused on making sure everyone and anyone who came to your profile would have no trouble viewing your content. 

As we’ve grown as a community, I’ve watched the need for us to be hyper accessible to attract other role players decline steadily. The switch from gifs to 100x100 icons was definitely a welcome change, as was the common trend of shrinking text. It made dashboards tidier, easier to scroll through, and load times for those of us with slow internet was better. 

But the trends didn’t stop there. 

I’m going to preface what comes next with I am not telling you how to run your blog. I am not saying you’re an inherently bad person for doing any of the things I’m about to talk about. I’m not saying you should change your style because anyone tells you too. 

This is me ranting about my experience as a person with visual processing issues, and how the changes in tumblr rp from accessibility to aesthetic have made role playing on tumblr difficult. 

1. Minimalism

The first major trend in aesthetic that started showing up after I took a six month hiatus a few years ago, was the minimalist profile. Spartan profiles with exceptionally tiny text with incredibly low contrast. I was looking for blogs to follow, and found that I had to highlight, copy, and paste profile information into a google doc or text file just to be able to read them. It became taxing and tiring, and I felt like the odd man out for maintaining my large, well contrasted profiles. I was still trying to rock a 14pt font and colors that didn’t induce eye strain, both for myself and anyone else who was coming to view my blog, but I noticed that people were less and less willing to interact with me. So I changed things up and adopted that minimalist style for my profiles and lo and behold... People started talking to me. I had to give up my ability to easily navigate my own rp blog in order to legitimize myself among the new playing field. I tried to maintain this for a long time, but after a while I had to stop giving a shit just so I could enjoy myself again. 

Even still, it’s hard not to feel slightly ostracized because I don’t have a tiny container profile with itty bitty text. I don’t understand why style over accessibility became such a trend. Why not both? Both used to be the norm. 

2. Hyper-Stylized Posts

FUCK. I can’t. I caaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaan’t. With the varying text sizes from ultra tiny to full blown header sized in bold, with the ridiculous spacing between every single letter. This E.E. Cummings style, everything is varying sizes of text with no capitalization and insane amounts of purple prose feels like it’s just hiding a lack of goddamn substance. It makes me so frustrated because I will read a post. Then I’ll re-read that same post. And then re-read it again and I feel like a fucking walnut because I cannot for the life of me decipher what the hell is going on. I can’t comprehend these posts. And I know that I have visual processing issues, but my reading comprehension isn’t THIS BAD.

I want to play with people, and yanno, there are amounts of post stylizing that are still readable, like, bolding the first few words, doing a smaller text size but not the ultra tiny text sizes, using special quotations for your speech. Hell, I don’t even mind if you don’t capitalize anything. That’s all still readable, but this shit has gone way too far with some people. People who stylize so heavily that there are spaces between every single letter of your post, the text is so itty bitty I have to page zoom (which by the way makes the spaces between your letters even farther apart) to read it. I just want an UNFUCK button for these posts. 

Why? Why is the way something looks more important to you than the ability to read it for your partner? You spend all this time, meticulously formatting a post and make your writing entirely inaccessible to people with any kind of visual processing issues. 

3. Requiring post formatting of your partners 

Honestly? HONESTLY??? 

Fuck you.

I have read more than one profile (after having to zoom forever or copy and paste elsewhere just to read it) only to have to click away in disgust when I see “If you don’t do some kind of post formatting I probably won’t play with you because it screws up the uniformity of my blog” and I’ve even seen people go so far as to claim “I have OCD so I can’t handle it”. 

I have been living with OCD for 15 years, and boy lemme tell ya. Shilling your aesthetic on the backs of those with crippling mental illness is disgusting. I’m tired of it. I know there really are people on this site with OCD who do struggle with visual processing in different ways than I do, but I am pressing X to doubt everyone claiming it to justify their exclusion of anyone who doesn’t aesthetic post format actually has OCD.

Final Thoughts:

I just hate that we’ve reached a point where the look of our posts and our profiles matters more than the content and the accessibility of that content. At the end of the day, this fleeting moment of intense rage at the steady decline of accessibility in role playing on tumblr and the increase of stylized elitism will be behind me not long after I post this. Sometimes, I just need to get thoughts out of my system.

Ultimately, this rant may lose me followers, it may even lose me partners. If I’m following you, and you do aesthetic blogging, it’s likely because it’s not so extreme that I can’t read it. This post is not about you.

This post is addressing what if tumblr rp aesthetic BUT TOO MUCH.

Expending all this effort to make things “look pretty” only to alienate people, and make people with visual processing issues, or reading comprehension issues feel frustrated, is just harmful to the community. This culture has driven away some of my favorite writing partners over the years. They don’t want to be on tumblr anymore because the aesthetic over accessibility, style over substance rp culture has made this place completely unusable to them. 

So yeah. What if tumblr rp aesthetic, but too much?