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xanthippe74 · 1 year ago

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The mood this year, as this header photo demonstrates, was Le Tired. Just physically and emotionally slogging along. Brain stuck on perpetual static. A pull-the-covers-over-my-head sort of year. I read a few books, watched a lot of shows, found new songs to listen to on repeat, and spent way too much time futzing around on Tumblr.

But that's not what this post is about! This is to remind myself that I did accomplish writer-ly things this year, even if it didn't feel like it sometimes. So here's my 2023 Fandom Year in Review:

Drarry

🐈 A Dreadful Invasion (of the Feline Persuasion) rated G | 6K words

Most of the time, it’s easy for Harry to forget that Draco Malfoy is his next-door neighbour—until the night Malfoy seemingly goes round the twist in his back garden. Of course Harry has to investigate. A birthday gift for @caroll-in.

🍷 Under the Table rated T, 4K words

A string of nearly-insufferable dinner parties has made Draco acquainted with Harry Potter’s completely insufferable, social-climbing boyfriend. But tonight it seems like Potter’s finally had enough, and Draco’s more than happy to watch it all play out from across the table.

WIP progress: I added about 25K to my Drarry retelling of Howl's Moving Castle. The working title is "Skybound" and it will be about 55 to 60K words when complete (by spring 2024, god help me!). Featuring: lots of banter, secret identities, adventures and misadventures in a floating house, a plucky house-elf, and (of course) a fire demon who wants to make a bargain.

9-1-1 fics, HP recs, and 2023 highlights under the cut!

9-1-1/Buddie

🌧️ It pours, man it pours rated T | 11K words

An endless rainstorm. A head-on collision on a dark canyon road. Eddie and Buck find themselves stranded with a woman in labor after they’re cut off from the rest of the 118 by a flash flood. With the fate of their team unknown, can they weather the night ahead—and mend the rift Buck caused by trying to kiss his best friend?

💣 A Few Good Pranks rated T | 4K words

The firefighters of the 118 decide to give Bobby a turn at pranking them after seeing how disappointed he was to be left out. And since two heads are better than one, why not three? Or four? If only they could figure out who's pranking and who isn't, and who the intended victim is. It's all in good fun, though—as long as everyone is too distracted to notice that Buck and Eddie keep sneaking off alone.

❤️‍🩹Let It Be Me rated T | 1.8K words

After another Buckley Family reunion-turned-disaster, Buck makes a decision about his parents. Of course the 118 has his back. Or, Bobby employs some LAFD equipment to help Buck out—and tell him something he needs to hear.

Episode codas/fix-it ficlets: 1x01 | 1x03 | 2x01 | 2x03 | 6x10 | 6x11 | 6x12 | 6x13 | 6x15

WIP progress: First chapter of a season 3/canon divergence Buddie fic. Featuring: angst with a happy ending, a secret marriage of convenience, and pandemic bed sharing.

HP Rec List

I was inspired by this post to rec twelve favorite fan works from 2023 in twelve days in December. It actually took fourteen days, but I did it!

💖 12 Favorites from 2023 💖

(after posting those twelve, of course I thought of a few more faves that I missed. I'll try to share them soon!)

2023 Highlights

I'm so very grateful for the wonderful, funny, imaginative people here who shared their creative works, the memes that made them laugh, photos of their pets, gif sets of shows I didn't know I needed to watch, and insights into the characters we love. You all got me through the year, honestly.

I had a good time doodling some Halloween treats for Inbox Trick-or-Treating. I hope it will become an annual Tumblr event! Thanks to the folks who rang my doorbell that night and the other blogs who gave out treats.

I truly treasured every kudos, comment, and rec I received this year. I was also very fortunate to receive a few special gifts:

🎙️ EllaMcSmellBella recorded a Podfic of "Spooked in Salem," my Drarry 'Round the World fic.

🎙️ Spades/bumblingbees recorded a Podfic of "Crimson Neon."

📕 @cheriecherishchen wrote a lovely rec for "Vortex" and designed gorgeous book covers for that fic and its sequel, "Riptide."

✏️ @saijordison drew this incredible piece of art for "Riptide."

And finally, if you read all the way to the end of this post, I'm grateful for YOU. 😁

Wishing everyone a very Happy New Year and an excellent 2024!

#2023 year in review #my writing #drarry #buddie

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valentinoappreciator · 1 year ago

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saw your post about people who like Alastor but not Valentino and I hope you don’t mind me responding here instead of the post itself!

For me it’s because not only have we actually seen him+his personality (the only times I know of when Valentino has actually talked in-universe is Dirty Healings and maybe his Instagram, but I don’t have Instagram) and Alastor has like funny lines and a song in the pilot. I could probably defend every single bad thing he ever did if I wanted to but I don’t think anybody cares and my apologizing for him would be hollow anyway but as far as I know we’ve seen him kill/try to kill twice and one of those times was Sir Pentious, who attacked the hotel, and the butcher shop owner in A Day in the After Life, who was attacking a customer. Although Alastor did kill many other demons, we only know what happened from Vaggie’s possibly biased and overdramatized retelling of events, and since they are demons in hell it’s possible he was only killing bad people like a really horrible superhero. We also know he was a serial killer in life, but again, we don’t know the context, and he could’ve fancied himself a vigilante or something(which still doesn’t mean he’s innocent, because it’s still murder and very unlikely, but hey! Hasn’t been disproven). Also, as an asexual, I’m probably projecting a lot onto him and it’s way easier for me to like his character than Valentino.

Sorry this is so long, and I’d like to make it clear that I didn’t intend for this to be any kind of anon hate or something; I bear no ill will towards you. I just saw your post and couldn’t resist answering your question, I suppose. Again, I’m really sorry if this comes off as rude, I don’t mean for it to be! We just have different problematic faves I guess, and that’s fine! To each their own or however it goes

TL;DR: I find Alastor to be very entertaining and a fun villain, while nothing really stands out for me with Valentino

thank you for clarifying that you didn't mean this ask as hate. i didn't read it as such, but its still nice of you!

i dont know how to answer this without sounding like an asshole though. but, all im hearing in this is still "defending" / "reasoning" why a serial killer (and potential (?) cannibal) is better than a sexual predator. which, that's fair, that's fine, we're all different after all! and Alastor and Val are both evil, so like we're both on the wrong side of the fence, but y'know

#asks #my post #oh boy do i tag this?#yeah sure why ntot #hazbin hotel #alastor hazbin hotel #valentino hazbin hotel #hazbin critical #i guess????#either way #i didnt mean to be rude to you anon! i hope it didnt come across as such #no hard feelings

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a-devout-shannonite · 2 years ago

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So I got to go to the event in Nashville last night with Samantha Shannon like I said and it was amazing I still can’t believe it happened and I’ll never forget it. And I put together some notes today from her discussion and Q&A about her writing methods and the world of The Roots of Chaos. I couldn’t remember everything, but I put together a lot of interesting/funny things she said last night that I could remember so I could share them with you all. And if you’re worried about spoilers, I will say that she didn’t share any spoilers last night that wouldn’t already be known to people who have read The Priory, though she did discuss the characters a little and a few themes of the book. So for anyone interested, here’s the notes I’ve put together!

- Shared a long discussion on drawing inspiration from St. George and the Dragon and its several retellings and the changes the Anglican faith made to enforce their colonialism and crusades (the story itself is incredibly fascinating and I don’t remember the title of the specific retelling she said she drew from in particular, but it was really cool to see just how much inspiration she drew from it)

- Many fun remarks on how St. George was awful and England sucks

- Direct quote from Samantha, talking about St. George: “Men” (derogatory)

- On creating this popular fantasy and her thoughts on the typical cishet white male dominated world of fantasy: she wasn’t creating it to challenge them exactly, but to offer something for the people who are often underrepresented in fantasy, to give them a book where they are the prominent features rather than the typical white male hero, wanted to create something where she felt she represented herself

- On giving multiple examples of motherhood in A Day of Fallen Night: she said that she thought she had given motherhood a small place in The Priory, but she wanted to really create a large space for it within ADOFN, said that growing up she always felt pressured by society that her role as a woman was to have children, and that she was never interested even when she was young, said she kept waiting for the switch to activate where she’d want to get married and be a mother but it never did (cue fun anecdote on how now she knows she’s gay so that explained quite a lot), wanted to show multiple different perspectives of motherhood within ADOFN and different methods of raising a child

- On writing ADOFN and getting the chance to work with this cast of characters: said that getting to write Glorian was her way of reconnecting with her childhood self, Dumai was also exciting for her as Dumai is the same age at the start of the book as she was when she first started writing it, Tunuva in particular was very interesting to her to represent a middle-aged woman in a long established relationship to present a counterpoint to the typical idea in fantasy where the story ends for the protagonist when they are young, she wanted to show with Tunuva that it does continue past that, and also that she wanted to make a character at this age in part for her mother, who said she felt as though she was seeing herself disappear in movies and stories as she grew older and the characters all stayed young, also mentioned that initially Esbar was planned to be a primary narrator instead of Tunuva, but Samantha felt that Tunuva would be more fresh as a character given she’s more the quiet introvert whereas Esbar is a sort of typical protagonist style, bold, outspoken, and a leader (and no spoilers, but an additional note on a character in the book; said she enjoyed writing this character realize they were gay as it felt similar to her experience; called herself as well as the character in question both “useless gays”)

- When asked about how she keeps/organizes her notes on worldbuilding, she responded that she in fact very rarely takes notes and just knows her world by memory (much to the shock of the entire audience)

- On what first inspired her love of dragons: the movie Dragonheart in the 90s, which she watched so many times as a child she could recite it word for word and once brought a tape recorder to the theater to record the audio for when she couldn’t watch it, went to see it for her 6th birthday

- Said that one of her weaknesses is numbers, she cannot keep track of the logistics in her books, (for example, if you asked how big the Abyss was, she wouldn’t know), and she mentioned that Isalarico IV Vetalda, mentioned in ADOFN, should actually be Isalarico II Vetalda

- Said she really enjoys writing books with loose ends, cliffhangers, or bittersweet endings (she apologized for this), shared anecdote of a US editor calling her a day before it went to print completely confused about Tané’s last chapter and very concerned she was actually dead at the end

- Told her editor initially The Priory would be a standalone and she wouldn’t write any more stories in the universe, editor didn’t believe her, he was right

- Her schedule of books to write at the moment is to finish the Bone Season 5 draft, research and start her Greek mythology retelling of the goddess Isis, begin work on Bone Season 6, and then start another Roots of Chaos book which she’s already sold to her publisher

- Next Roots of Chaos book hasn’t been decided yet, will either cover the events following ADOFN, in which the sterren becomes chaotic after the siden withdraws and creates a sort of ice age, or she will write the story of Kalyba, Cleolind, and Neporo (she says she’s aware that the latter is the more popular choice among her readers)

#samantha shannon #the priory of the orange tree #tpotot

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viktoria-policorn · 1 year ago

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Severus Snake AU (Harry Potter x MLP crossover, Creepypasta)

For Cringetober days 24 and 13

If not cringetober, I would have never told this shit I fear myself to anybody. invented this when I was 12. started considering it as cringe at 15 years old.

Notes:

HP x MLP crossover. In this AU wizarding world and Equestria are parallel universes, and their inhabitants can move between worlds through portals (but nearly anybody doesn’t know about another world existence). All characters are ponies!!! (Harry Potter characters are ponified)

Major events happen after the last Harry Potter book “The deathly hallows” and after last season of MLP gen 4, but just right after the “Rainbow road trip” before the main 6 aged up too much.

Warnings: violence, graphic blood, extreme cringe.

Cringefic, trollfic

*I barely remember the scenario of this mess, some plot points have different variations and when I stopped working on this, the story was unfinished and still has plot holes.

Messy brief retelling of the whole story:

After the battle of Hogwarts, when he have already mourned and burried perished friends, Harry Potter sleeps. When he wakes up, he remembers that he have forgotten about a very important person. He informs his friends but wants to go on his own. Harry enters the Shrieking Shack and…Snape’s body is not here. “WTF?!” — Harry thinks. HP thinks kinda “Nevermind” and walks to Hogwarts.

The next day there is news that one Hogsmeade pony-farmer has disappeared without a trace. Ron and Hermione say: “Nevermind!” But Harry is worried, because he remembers Snape’s body disappearance. On the next day, the magazine reports about new missed Hogsmeade ponies. And next days — the same. And some ponies told they saw a sinister beast on the villageside. Harry and friends decide to go there and figure out WTF is going on (they couldn’t miss such fun).

Eventually they went to the Shrieking Shack and… the cellar hatch opens and… “ — Surprise!” The trio sees white pony with short black mane with snake teeth, smiling and staring at them. Stallions mouth and teeth were covered with blood and…he had bloody wound on the left side of his neck. His Eyes had red snake-like pupils. It looked like too positive and snake-like Severus Snape.

— Severus Snape? — Harry mumbled.

— Severus Snake! — the freak answered. — Happy to see you kids, come in!

Everybody went to the cellar. It looked like torture room. There was a lot of knifes, poisons, torture tools and even the wall to fix ponies in there (like in Cupcakes)

Snake joyfully tells them how he came to life after death, how he thinks that his ‘old’ behavior was dumb and how he would treat Harry and other good guys that he knows well, how he is positive and funny now.

Harry carefully asks him about the torture room and briefly hints, that he wants explanation why Snake’s mouth are in blood.

Snake at ease tells them that now he has a snake-like stomach and has to eat meat. Also he explained, that he tortures only evil-bad ponies, in general former death eaters. After the battle of Hogwarts a lot of death eaters went hiding in Hogsmeade and nowadays pretending to be usual local folks. And Snake fixes this issue by torturing them, in this way he implements their karma.

The trio even don’t know what to say, so they quietly say “Bye” to Severus Snake and go out to digest all what just happened. Snake joyfully says, that he is always happy to see them.

Harry, Ron and Hermione decided not to tell anyone about Snake and just wait and see what Snake really is, because they know nothing about his nature and reason why he is so visually alike to mutated Severus Snape. Next few days they regularly visited him and tried to convince him not to kill ponies and not to torture death eaters, but Snake said that it’s his kredo and he won’t change. Besides everything, Snake treated the trio as dear guests and friends and never got mad at them, always smiled and ignored the fact that kids obviously don’t enjoy his company and consider him as evil force. Severus Snake was nearly emotionless — his only emotions were smiling and laughing. It seemed like he considered world as one big joke for him.

*Note: from this moment I can’t really remember the order of scenes and the plot has many variations and in most of the parts I interpret.)

One day trio came to Snake but he wasn’t home and left note on the cellar hatch: “Went to teach Malfoys how to live properly, see you soon!”.

— Oh no! — Harry said. “Malfoys have got enough, we mustn’t let this freak torture them! ” Harry remembered how Narcissa Malfoy saved him and what Draco went through under Voldemort’s leadership.

Trio goes to Malfoy Manor.

As it turned out when they arrived, Harry and friends were late but not too late. Snake has already intimidated the whole Malfoy family. Now Snake was standing with Draco, forcibly holding him with magic, in front of them Lucius and Narcissa standing terrified and begging Snake to stop. Snake said that he is gonna take Draco with him and educate him properly (he wasn’t going to torture him, no, just wanted to teach him how to be a “good guy” which Snake now in his own eyes was).

Harry interrupted and with all the courage told Snake, that if he doesn’t stop, Harry will stop being his friend and be telling all wizards about his crimes. He also plainly told Snake what trio thinks about his behavior and how he is disappointed in Snake. Snake listened to him calmly. In the end of his speech Harry tried to manipulate Snake by telling that Snake’s threats were the best lesson for Malfoys and he better let them go because if he takes Malfoy with him and teaches him, his arrogant parents will perceive it as your service. Moreover, they will be proud of it: such person treats their son as a student.

Harry’s words had affection on Snake. He didn’t take the last part seriously, but he stopped smiling. It was the first time he looked sad and serious. Pony was upset about Harry’s real attitude towards him and such furious threats. Snake exempted Draco. He said to trio:“I thought you are my friends. I thought you understand me.” He turned away from them and apparitioned (teleported back to the Shrieking Shack).

Harry and trio talked to Malfoys a bit, and then went back to Hogwarts. They wanted but were afraid to visit Snake. But after all ventured to do it and…heard Snake talking to someone, someone they didn’t know. They sat calmly for awhile, eavesdropping. Another voice said something about another world, portals. Then everything stirred up, strange noise, wind and light arised. Then everything began to spin around, trio were moving somewhere in mess… Then they have fallen on the ground. They were in some sunny place…

End of the first part

On this point I will explain some lore things regarding Snake, retell the prequel of all events — give you author statements to explain everything unknown.

Lore / Backstory

The voice trio heard belongs to pony named Tiatara. This mare is the real main antagonist and culprit of the whole Severus Snake situation.

Tiatara:

Appearance: black coat, fuchsia colored mane. Sized like princess Luna, unicorn. Magenta colored eyes. Wears necklace same to nightmare Rarity’s.

Backstory: Tiatara is from Equestria, she dreamed to be a princess. She studied in Canterlot school even before Twilight, she was a bit older than her. Tiatara tried to be politician, but career failed. Then some bad things happen (I didn’t come up with it) and she is forced to leave Canterlot. She was angry with ponies. Tiatara accidentally met witch pony who lived in the forest (don’t know her name). Tiatara lived with her and that mare teached her another type of magic, especially dark magic, potions and something else. Witch told her about another world with another laws and politics. Tiatara liked it more than Equestria, forming her opinion based on tales. Also witch sometimes used portal to that world but forbade Tiatara to doing it.

Tiatara was jealous of Twilight when she became princess and for a long time just watched the world change. After Chrysalis, Tirek and Cozy Glow were defeated, Tiatara thought that it’s good chance for her to become important for Equestria. She killed old witch pony, now she can use portal she made to move to the another world. That world was wizarding world.

Tiatara started spending more time in another world. But one day, while walking in the Forbidden Forest, she found beautiful red stone… She took it to her shelter to discover and keep it. That stone had special affection on Tiatara. She became obsessed with it. Pony admired it, slept and ate with it and took the stone everywhere with her.

One night Tiatara had a dream. She was in a dark black and red forest with bloody moon and dried trees. She walked there and soon met spooky creatures. They all had injuries which make usual ponies dead, but the creatures were alive. They scared her on purpose and acted like crazy. Tiatara woke up.

On the next few days she had common dreams. But she soon stopped being afraid of that forest and walked calmly there. One day she met the ruler of that place. His name is Aburzuy.

Aburzuy is something like satan or aid. He is the higher creature, rules hell (that forest in Tiatara’s dreams is actually hell). Hell has two sections. One for dead sinners, second for halfdemons.

Halfdemons are creatures made by Aburzuy based on dead persons. Halfdemons are like zombies but they are consious and have personality. Their personality is combination of dead person’s traits and new traits added by Aburzuy to make them creepy and ‘evil’.

The stone that Tiatara found is called “demonic stone” and it’s used to create halfdemons. Halfdemons use dead body of the person they are based on. Aburzuy modificates the body too to make it creepy.

Severus Snake is alive halfdemon. He is based on Severus Snape, but he is not Snape.

Aburzuy told Tiatara about the use of her stone. One day she found Snape’s body and decided to turn him into halfdemon. She wanted him to be her tool for usurpation of Equestria ponies. She observed him for weeks, and after he returned from Malfoys, Tiatara saw strange changes in him. Snake was sad. So she decided to manipulate him.

Tiatara started talking with him. He said that he is upset about Harry not liking him. So Tiatara began to manipulate him by pretending to be his real friend and saying that she loves and needs him. She also told Snake that she brought him back to life and told his that he is halfdemon. Snake agreed to go to another world and kill, torture and eat lots of stranger ponies there.

P.S. I never tortured myself that much while writing something

@icryink Thanks for making this challenge, it brought me nostalgia and helped to overcome my fear to tell this story to anybody!

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brandonjohnbarnard · 1 month ago

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Production history around: Broodiest Flunkey

Finally, I am getting to what I consider the ‘first’ film in my journey as an experimental filmmaker: ‘Broodiest Flunkey’.

This film is a bit rough — it was made as a university project, with a deadline and 3 minute time limit. It was also the first time I had played with many visual effects, and the first time I had shown my work to a live audience.

A lot of what I will be saying in this article will be recycled from my university essay, as my memory on a lot of the details has started to fade.

I created a timeline for this production, so I will try my best to be chronological in the retelling of the film’s creation. Some of the elements may seem tangential, though that is a lot of my practice in general.

I really like the above, because it shows that learning and developing a project (or even personal development), takes a mix of both consumption (books, media) and action (events, trial runs). It also shows how unexpectedly events morph into one another.

In addition to this timeline, I had also created a dated excel timeline of when each event happened (yes, I am thorough). While it shows how ‘Change Spaces’ and ‘Gacha’nce’ fit into the timeline, those won’t be covered here. Noteworthy is how many events overlap with one another, as opposed to being linear.

iDAT XXX

On the 18th of November 2024, I attended an event by Mike Philips, celebrating 30 years since the creation of their institution ‘iDAT’. As part of this event, they ran a ‘telematic performance’ — pretty much information is passed from one system to another, leading to a series of interesting corruptions. This, is then dressed up in a fun avant-garde coat of paint.

It would take a lot later for me to realise that this is a great use of chance as a form of creation. Collaboration, corruptions, improv, a digital exquisite corpse, etc.

MA Experience Design — Design Lab 2

In Design Lab 1, I made a short animation going over the concepts of DADA. Therefore, making video work was heavily on my mind.

The Design Lab 2 brief made me think about what I could do to help the local community. When looking at ‘don’t assume you know your audience’, ‘experiment with materials’, ’leave something beautiful behind’, and ‘make a difference’, it led me down the path of considering making a documentary where I interview people with autism to allow them to be heard and understood.

Autism Documentary

So, I started to plan a documentary about autism, taking the brief into mind. There were lots of worries about it, and I could lie and say they were mostly about GDPR, but it was more so social anxiety of needing to work with so many people!

The in-class activity about making iterative comics was really interesting to me. I wanted to take this idea but apply it to a documentary format. I wanted something similar to the longitudinal study method that ‘Seven Up!’ (1964) engaged in, but also have myself and my beliefs examined as well. This would potentially happen by having a new director for the second film, where they critically look at the first film, and this process is continued indefinitely.

[Accidentally making an exquisite corpse before knowing what that really was!]

Allister Gall Email

The module brief included: ‘collaboration with multidisciplinary partners’. As I was working with film as a medium, I decided to reach out to Allister Gall, the BA Filmmaking programme leader at the University of Plymouth on the 23rd of January 2024. I asked if he was able to send me down the right path, or potentially let me attend a filmmaking lesson.

He let me know about Imperfect Cinema, and that an event was coming up called Cinaesthesia 1. I was very lucky with the timing, as the event was only four days after I sent my email.

[It is funny, I consider this single email an extremely important pivot in my life. If I had not written this email, I likely would not be doing my current PhD, and would not be making experimental art videos. I wouldn’t have heard of Cinaesthesia, and Allister wouldn’t have become one of my PhD supervisors… This email took a minute or two to write, all it takes sometimes.]

The Reason I Jump

During my initial look into autism for the documentary, I read ‘The Reason I Jump’ (2007). The book was written by a 13-year-old mute autistic child living in Japan, and each chapter is them explaining why they do certain actions.

When reading, I realised that there were many areas in which I related to this child, especially thinking back to when I was the same age. While I did not relate to everything, I did more than I normally would with someone. With each example, I started to feel less embarrassed about some moments from my childhood. Moments that I used to fixate on, thinking ‘why did I do that?’ suddenly had an answer that didn’t make me feel as alone or weird.

This feeling of seeing yourself in a book, and this resulting in you being less critical of yourself, I decided to be the message I wanted from my film.

Cinaesthesia 1

This event was run by Patrycja Loranc in collaboration with Imperfect Cinema, and took place at Café Momus on Stonehouse. Patrycja is a PhD student focussing on psychepoetic filmmaking, and the event shared some of this energy.

(Jess Scott, Dutch Loveridge, and Patrycja Loranc at Cinaesthesia 1’s Q&A)

Imperfect Cinema is a Plymouth-based film project created by Allister Gall and Dan Paolantonio, which has the goal of encouraging local artists to create films, as well as to help facilitate events these artists can participate in.

[Side tangent — At this point (8 months since hearing about them), I have heard the two of them go over their intro so many times. It makes me think about what it means to be an academic at university — the need to tear up old ground constantly to explain who you are and what you do. It sounds kind of hellish. I’d struggle to not just make an intro video lol]

As a note for this event, and the ones I talk about later, the networking elements of these screenings are incredible. You get to ask questions directly, sample a lot of local talent, and see the effort of people coming forward. It takes bravery to put yourself out there, and most people there seem to appreciate that.

I was worried that the event would be too ‘heavy’, but it was very casual.

An element of the screening that really resonated with me was the diverse ‘quality’ and styles of work present. There were films presented that I thought ‘I could do that’, and that made me feel like less of an outsider at the event.

At this event, I learnt that a Cinaesthesia 2 and 3 were going to happen in the future, and that they had an open reel for submissions. I pivoted from ‘documentary about autism’ to ‘experimental art film that looked into my own personal experiences reading into autism’.

Getting into Cinaesthesia 2

In order to get a film accepted into Cinaesthesia there were guidelines that needed to be adhered to.

The brief was: “How can the sensory perception/subjective experience be communicated and challenged by filmmaking? How does film allow us to connect to others and the world by exchanging subjective realities?”

It also included that the film must be 3 minutes or less, and submitted by 9pm 21/03/2024.

Experimental Film Production Start

I started my pivot by looking into what made someone’s perception ’unique’, thought about there being so many variables with each person, that everyone’s perception was unique.

In addition to this, I started to consider that my own perception was likely the perception I could best put across to an audience.

I wanted to, somehow, make the audience experience a sense of uneasiness by seeing the world through someone who processes stimuli differently.

Rosemary’s Baby

On the 26th of January 2024, my wife and I watched Rosemary’s Baby (1968) for the first time. It is a great film. In it there is a scene where the main character is trying to work out an anagram by moving around scrabble pieces. I had no plans with this at all. It was just a theme dancing around in my head.

Experience Design’s Telematic Performance

For one of the Design Lab 2 session, Mike Philips wanted us to do a ‘telematic performance’. Since I had seen one prior via his iDAT XXX event, I feel that I had a step ahead of others in the class. This was due to me already knowing what it was meant to look like, and understanding that anything could be used as a step (as long as it caused transformation down the line).

As such, I pushed forward with using Scrabble pieces early on in the sequence, and planned out what the rest of the performance would be.

I would take scrabble pieces out of a bag randomly. Person 2 would make words out of these random letters. Person 3 would then do charades of Person 2’s word. Person 4, who was wearing headphones, had to guess what Person 3 was miming, Person 5, then drew this answer on a post-it note, and added it to a scene on the board.

This whole process was fun, and made me really like the idea of using Scrabble pieces to tell a story.

Scrabble Pieces

Mixing the themes of anagrams and chance, I decided to have one phrase dictate different elements of my film’s story.

I wanted the overall message of the film to be in-line with my takeaway from ‘The Reason I Jump’, so I chose the phrase ‘Be Kind to Yourself’.

Using an online anagram maker, I went through the list of 10,000 combinations, and picked phrases that I thought I could use to string together a narrative that told a story I was happy with.

I wanted to use stop-motion as the technique for these scenes, as it added an eerie feeling that the pieces had a mind of their own, especially since they were what decided the course of the story. Originally, I wanted to film the pieces, and cut out appropriate frames. This did not work due to the camera changing focus, as such I landed on taking still photos after each movement instead.

As stop-motion is a time-intensive process, there were moments where I lost track of what pieces should go where. A colour coded guide was made to make the movement and locations easier to follow.

Pre-Storyboard

Before storyboarding, I thought about elements I wanted to film and why.

I felt that if I went into storyboarding, some fun techniques may have been squeezed out of the production for the sake of narrative.

So instead, I thought about these elements first and how I could use them in the narrative.

Storyboard

Storyboarding your film is useful, however, I did not want to limit myself by structure. For example, knowing how much time was left, or being fixated on scene order. The scenes were drawn in ‘chunks’ and then moved around in order to fit the narrative.

After doing my rough outline of the story, I wanted to make sure I could include the entire narrative in the 3-minute window required by the submission guidelines. As such, I experimented with scene intervals.

‘Yolk Unfit Bedsore’, I thought it was perfect as an opening introduction for a character. ‘Bedsore’ and ‘Yolk’ can both be seen as elements attached to starting the day. Additionally, ‘Unfit’ matched the negative self-image I wanted the main character to have, so the ‘Be Kind to Yourself’ later in the film made sense. Embarrassment seems to be a common issue for some autistic people, so I felt building this into the character was important.

Using this way of thinking, I was able to pace out the Scrabble pieces in a way that completed a cohesive narrative.

With the phrase ‘Befriend — Too Sulky’, I thought I could illustrate that autistic people often want to make social-emotional connections with people, but are unsure how to do so, and the pain this can cause.

I decided on having three second intervals for the storyboard, as I felt this fit best. Any shorter would have been too jarring. Originally, I inserted the Hero’s Journey as a vague guideline for pacing. While this was useful as a rough guide, I did not adhere to it much, as I felt it got in the way of what I believed was a better narrative; perhaps because it made the pacing feel like it was made on a production line.

Once I had my storyboard fully created additional details such as sound effects present, whether it needed chromakeying, and what editing decisions I thought would be needed were added.

In retrospect, I feel that I over-relied on the storyboard. I feel the piece could have been transformed into something more artful by applying wardrobe, doing more area scouting, reframing, and creating some concept art.

Prop Creation

After drawing up the storyboard, I realised that I did not know how I was going to have the other characters in the film be acted. This caused stress as the deadline loomed closer, and I wondered how I would fill these roles.

In order to solve this issue, I decided to use cardboard painted with acrylic for the additional characters instead. I felt that having the main character be the only real-life human added a sense of surrealism, as well as the idea that the plot is ‘from their point of view’. In addition to this, people with autism often feel ‘disconnected’ from other people, and I feel this separate ‘plane of existence’ with 2D vs 3D illustrates this idea in an interesting way.

The character at 0:47 having a sudden expression change was important as it shows the main character trying to grabble with a complex emotional encounter, which is considered a struggle for some with autism.

With the characters being made out of cardboard, I had the worry that this would come across as too jarring to the viewer. To solve this, and to make the overall film feel like it had a cohesive style, I decided to make more elements out of cardboard.

Items like the phone, egg, toothbrush, etc. were made out of cardboard as well. I believed it would be funny to have these mundane elements, that would be way easier to have the real-world items, be recreated. The prop creation was the most time intensive part of the project, but I think it was worth it. When the screening of the film happened, the props were the most complimented aspect by the audience in attendance.

In the film, early on, I have a moment where I flip an egg, purposely showing the cardboard underside. This is to reveal to the audience that I am not hiding the fact that these elements are cardboard — this works as a way to let them in on the silliness.

To help with cohesion for scenes where no props were present, the backgrounds are also acrylic on cardboard. These were added by using chromakeying. The painted areas are purposely small and zoomed in, to make the fact that they have texture and are cardboard more apparent.

Book

The book in the film had two versions, one which was a ‘prop book’, and one that I bound.

The prop book was a cover and back, with painted cardboard sides to resemble paper, and three DVD cases in the middle.

Because the bound book contains pages that were filmed, including the book, this needed to be created after the prop book scenes took place.

In order to match the Scrabble description of the book being ‘finely rusted’, I followed a tutorial by Treasure Books (2023) using cinnamon to create faux rust. This, on top of the book also being obviously cardboard I believed was a fine compromise.

My Wedding

In the middle of this production, with a deadline looming over, was my wedding. I am so happy that the whole process was easy.

[Only while writing this piece had it dawned on me that my filmmaking and married life have been so overlapped.]

Filming

The film was shot on a Sony Alpha 6400 with a SELP1650 lens, and a fisheye shot was done with a 7 Artisans 7.5mm 1:2:8 ED lens. A Sony GP-VPT2BT grip was also used in many scenes to allow for filming while a light was being held.

Two ‘EMART 60 LED’ lights were used to light up the scenes, and a ‘Neewer 5’x7' Greenscreen’ was used for chromakeying.

Some elements of the storyboard needed to be adapted to make the filming process easier. Firstly, a printed breakdown was made of each scene with what happens in terms of editing, effects, sounds, and props present, etc.

For the scenes that were included within the book, a chronological edit of the storyboard was made.

There were moments when parts of the production didn’t go to plan, and as such improvisation had to happen. For example, When the book was put into shrubbery at 2:20 in the film, originally it was meant to be pulled out by string. However, during filming, the string kept snapping. As such, we made the book float behind the main character instead.

Editing

The editing process was turbulent for a few reasons. Primarily, due to Vegas Pro 18 crashing every few hours, however this is unfortunately an aspect to be expected.

The editing process was useful, because it really allowed me to consider which moments were important to the narrative, which I don’t think I would have realised if I handed the work off to another person to edit.

The original cut of ‘Broodiest Flunkey’ was 4 minutes long, and as such 25% of the footage needed to be trimmed down in order to be within the 3-minute window required for submission.

The music at the start of the film is ‘Toc de matinades’ by Rafael Caro (2016), and is Catalonian folk music which is played in the streets early in the morning to wake up people so they can get ready for celebrations. Since this was the day that the main character learnt to be kind to themselves, and that it starts with them waking up, I thought it was appropriate. Also, the tone shift from positive music to more eerie and atmospheric music I felt made the transition feel more contrasted, and as such have more impact.

The sounds of the Scrabble pieces moving was made by moving a container filled with Lego.

With this, the film was finished and rendered. I decided to keep the film internal until Cinaesthesia 2, as associating its premier with the event felt special. This process of keeping videos unavailable until an in-person premier is a practice I feel makes attending an event feel more worthwhile.

Behind the Scenes

Due to the large amount of footage available, I decided to make a behind the scenes video to both commemorate the experience, and as an excuse to remove all the footage from my PC without feeling too bad about it being harder to access.

Cinaesthesia 2

Cinaesthesia 2 took place on 23rd March 2024, and was a lot of fun. Members of my cohort attended which was greatly appreciated.

I would say that the reaction to the screening was extremely positive.

I worried that the subject of autism may have been a bit out of place, or that I would have felt ‘othered’, but then again punk environments have always embraced those that were seen as on the ‘rim’ of society.

Q&A

I was part of a Q&A after the screening, and this was my first time I would talk about my work in a public forum like this. There was something really special about this I felt, and it made me want to talk about my work with others more in the future.

Meeting cool people

It overall was a great night, which made me excited for the future. I met so many cool and talented people, who have stuck around in the peripheries of my life for several months now.

Also, Abi Ali, one of the filmmakers present, stopped me after the show to say my work was her favourite, and guess what, her work was my favourite too.

SO YEAH! This is where it all began. Or rather, where I arbitrarily decided it began. Has it even started yet? Find out next time, on Dragon Ball Z!!

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discotenny · 1 year ago

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DW DWWWW TAKE YOUR TIMEEEEE

Right like I feel so petty for being so mad abt it but the amount of people who get into hypmic strictly through the anime. and don't enjoy manga/want to listen to the drama tracks drive me insane because so many of them are ramuda stans who don't know half of who he IS AND LIKE WHY HE EXISTSSSS GRRRRRRRRR WOOF IT SCRATCHES MY BRAIN WRONG TO KNOW THIXSSSSSS

no hate btw to anyone who does just enjoy hpmi through the anime!!! I see you and it's all good!!! but the concept had me seething sometimes LOL

I think this is so much beyyer if they really can't make rhyme anima a retelling os canon, do something else fun haha

um. there are also like a huge group of people that think the events of arb are canon like the meeting dinosaurs and the bodyswap events and that is different than the anime situation but also funny

hope you have a good day and drink water and gets lots of rest! 💗 don't stress too hard on requests because you are very kind to do them and owe nothing to nobody 💗

AGAIN ITS JAKURAI ANON NAFKNWKFFJRKRR I HOPE THAT SENT ANON BECAUSE I THINK I CLICKRD ANON OFF BY MISTAKE AGH

NO NO ITS OK UR ON ANON FOR BOTH AKWBEKSHDKFNFMFKFJ DW DW LOL

People who r Rhyme Anima only and actually stuck around for the next season sometimes confuse me (no offense to those who do enjoy it) just because looking at the anime away from the source material- it really doesn’t make sense ?? Or at least it’s not properly structured, paced, etc etc.

It still has enjoyable moments but I just didn’t like how they butchered the plot w the drb by trying to fit so much. It’s like they didn’t know whether to leave it open ended or conclude the whole chuoke rebellion stuff so they just… tried to do both. Like it was in question whether they would get a season 2 or not &-&

Like the manga is legit SO GOOD !!! And it’s kind of sucky we won’t ever see those really amazing heartfelt moments, silly interactions, angst, and plot animated in a proper way.

The entire Dawn of Divisions manga is my favorite piece of hypmic material ever. And sure some of it can fit inside some spin off episodes maybe or whatever but that can’t be said for most of the manga content :((

I am disappointed Rhyme Anima doesn’t follow the main plot just cause Hypmic is so inaccessible to a wider audience. But, I much prefer the way they’re handling the second season as opposedthe way they handled the first. Like, instead of a silly mess mushing og content with canon compliance I muuuuch prefer them doing a strong og story. Ynno ynno?

I enjoyed some parts of s1 and I’m glad anime onlys enjoyed it enough to stick around to s2 tbh tbh. Hypmic needs more eyes on it esp from outside jp so as long as they’re staying lolol.

Also I think it’s hilarious how they’re seeming to pretend the events of s1 never happened LOL. Like where is Tom Whisper Weathercock and his epic return smh smh smh

ALSO THATS SO FUNNY TO ME KDBDKEHEKDBKEHEJDJ. People legit thinking the arb events canon omg XDDD

My personal interpretation is that ARB as a whole is a fanfic written by Gentaro and I will not take questions on that lolol

#jakurai anon :3 #asks are fun uwu #I could talk for ages abt my issues with the first rhyme anima season ngl ngl #but it is still related to hypmic so I must defend it with all of my being alas 🤧#the crunchyroll comments of rhyme anima announcements r full of people complaining it’s not a new shounen or that it’s “trash for women #it pisses me off sm and I’d get into soooo many internet fights if I replied #but I AM glad that anime onlys do enjoy it and I’m glad this second season is turning so good so far #rise from dead my beloved <33333

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oviids · 4 years ago

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pls share some of your spn fic recs 🥺🥺

ok, a few things first:

followers and mutuals who do not have supernatural brainworms, kindly avert your eyes

i don’t normally rec or even read much fanfic any more but this is a CRISIS ok (cont.)

there is so. much. content for deancas out there and i have incredibly high standards, several ancient ao3 bookmarks, can speedread, and want to spare you guys the experience of wading through it all.

i also have a section for spn femslash since I was pretty into that back in the day (sadly a lot less fan content for this :/)

I don’t really like au’s or pure smut (I honestly usually just skim or skip those scenes) so if you’re mainly looking for that kind of thing this probably won’t be very helpful to you. jsyk.

i’m not great at describing stuff but i’ll do my best, i’ll also try and add tw’s when neccesary.

i wil try and keep updating this with any other decent fics i find, feel free to rec stuff too since i’m like 7 years behind.(edit 1/25/21) this is getting looooong so i’m going to start making another list on my spn blog rather than update this one

(edit 1/3/21) since this has gotten pretty long i’ve added rating/approximate word counts and marked my particular favorites with an asterisk.

Dean/Cas fic:

So Says The Sword*** - explicit/85k. FUCK its good...au/time travel where dean is not pulled out of hell by cas and says yes to becoming the michael sword. honestly could serve as an alternative to actually watching the show, if you want to get into dean/cas without actually doing that to yourself.

Fata morgana.* - teen/6k, pst s9 finale. very bela centric and i love it, she finds cas looking for dean in hell.

Redemption Road -misc/600+k. an incredibly long fic from a collaborative writing group back in the day. canon divergent from the end of s6 on, has a cool take on godstiel and the leviathans, as well as the lovecratian mythos connection. ngl when i reread it i only made it about 28% in but imo the casual reader can actually stop around there, the rest concerns a lovecraftian apocalypse that is still good (i think i don’t remember it very well) but not required to enjoy the first half. if you prefer i have an ebook version i can send you on gdrive.

Someone Who's Feeling For Me* - mature/45k, s12. they run into lisa braeden and dean thinks cas is into her while cas thinks dean still likes her. treats lisa way better than the show ever did and the miscommunication is pretty funny rather than annoying.

a turn of the earth - mature/95k. time travel fic where cas from s10 keeps showing up in deans life from a few years before s1 to right before the hellhounds take his soul. slow burn, good character study, and at one point cas punches the dad in the face and it rules.

On the Wings of War - teen/85k, canon divergent s5. dean accidentally becomes the Horseman of War. plays fun, fast and loose with biblical lore, michael has some rights.

Named - mature/95k, alternate s5. EXTREMELY blasphemous in a fun sexy way. manages to predict metatron almost to a T. there’s one major character death and its literally jesus christ, everyone is very sad about it and it sets the rest of the story rolling. an alternate interpretation of cas’ mission to raise dean from hell which had me on the floor. ngl its kind of misogynistic at points, but its from 2010 and tracks with late oughts-2010 spn (sorry anna the author did you dirty here:/).

The Girlfriend Experience - explicit/15k. uhhh i don’t normally rec or even read smutty stuff unless someone i know is specifically asking for it but this has stuff like sam trying to be a good ally and dean thinking holding hands with cas is ‘kinda gay :/’ minutes after having gay sex with him.

i crippled your heart a hundred times - explicit/19k, s8. cas confesses his feelings and dean spends a long time getting his head out of his ass about it. truly hits different after the actual confession, despite being written six years early it feels like its actually what could have gone down more or less if the writers weren’t talentless demons who hate us.

My Roots Take Flight** - mature/125k. reverse au where cas is a hunter and dean’s an angel...OR IS IT???? an alternate retelling of s4. tw for briefly being set in a psychiatric hospital/the hospital being mentioned somewhat frequently throughout the fic, plus more references to torture in hell and heaven than usual.

The One Thing You Can't Lose* - teen/4k.you know those posts about how cas is a super-strong super-tough ancient warrior but he just lets dean tug him around because he likes it? thats it thats the fic.

Hands, From Which All Things Are Built - teen/14k, post s8′s ‘goodbye stranger.’ cas is on the run with the angel tablet but keeps in touch with sam and dean by text, he and dean still manage to be terrible at Actual communication.

Autrement, Danger - or, The Account of an Exceedingly Long Day - mature/30k, post s11. a monster that takes the appearance of your soulmate leads to some wild miscommunications and dealing with years of repression, also dean gets to see cas’ true form which is always cool. tw for non-graphic mentions of underage sexual assault/sex work.

Down to Agincourt - mature/explicit/900++++k, endverse continuation. endverse!cas survives his encounter with lucifer and discovers another time-displaced dean from s7. i’ve only read the two of four parts but its really good, veeeeery slow burn, has a lot of fun oc’s and takes a rather surprising but (imo) entertaining and intriguing turn into Hellenic history and mythology. usual tw’s for endverse/endverse!cas but nothing graphic, it’s actually pretty light-hearted (relatively speaking of course).

Nothing Equals the Splendor** - explicit/8k, THEE finale fix it fic you’ve been waiting for! posits that the entire final episode was just a (very bad and lame) djinn’s vision.

like moses and batman and james dean - explicit/31k, post s8. explores dean’s trauma and internalized homophoba from his technically canon experience with sex work and its impact on his relationship with cas. the sex work itself isn’t really shown in any detail but it’s still a relatively heavy fic.

Crazy Diamonds - explicit/25k, s4/alternate s14. fresh-out-of-hell dean and dean from 10 years in the future are displaced from time and sent to each other’s present.

where the weeds take root - explicit/30k. au where the men of letters kick them out of the bunker and they accidentally move out into the country, get over their codependence and semi retire. featuring chicken coop building, sam volunteering at a dog shelter, gardening, and blissfully mundane domesticity.

No Resting Place - teen/6k. djinn dream fic, switches back and forth between cas’ dream of being married to dean and retired from hunting to the aftermath when he wakes up. tw for brief mention of suicide since, y’know, djinn dream.

any port in a storm - mature/52k. post s8 finale. cas and dean have to pose as a couple going through a rough patch for a case and actually deal with their emotional baggage, cas struggles with being human and metatron is up to stuff.

all this and heaven too* - explicit/7k. in the author’s own words ‘...a love letter to every trans person who ever projected onto Dean Winchester.’ absolutely unzipped me emotionally and theologically, its just. so good. tw for very brief mentions of internalized transphobia/dysphoria.

Because it is* - mature/6k, finale fix it. killing chuck does not bring back anyone back and the winchesters spend a very long time dealing with what they’ve lost, cas and dean SOMEHOW still manage to have signifigant communication issues even after the confession. tw for suicidal thoughts/brief attempt.

Vena Amoris and Other Old-Fashioned Bullshit* - teen/4k, s6. when cas fell for dean it automatically soulbonded/angel married them, shenanigans ensue when dean finds out during the angel’s civil war. funny and actually written back when s6 was airing so cas is still (or at least pretending to be) kind of an OP asshole which is fun.

Rinse, Repeat - teen/3k, s8. angsty character study of cas as he’s reprogrammed and trained to kill dean. not really dean/cas since its just cas’ pov of canon events but its beautifully written and ends with him snapping out of it through the power of love (also now a canon event!).

Emergence - explicit/59k, canon divergent after s11. dean meets a hunter he only recognizes as their friend claire novak’s missing father, but soon realizes he might be the answer behind the mysterious void in his memories and feelings (aka everyone’s memories of cas are completely wiped away for three years).

Cuckoo And Nest - explicit/10k, early established relationship/character study, cas tries to figure out how he fits into dean’s life and space in the bunker.

Build a Home* - teen/20k, canon divergent s12. sam and eileen are cute and turn the bunker into men of letters/hunters hq and everyone but cas moves in, mutual miscommunication issues and pining ensues.

Down in the River - teen/5k, early s8, cas prays to dean in purgatory while sam and dean try to figure out a way to get him out.

Teaching Poetry to Fish* - mature/52k, ?? BC through the entire series/canon divergent s14 and 15. retelling of crucial scenes throughout the shows timeline from cas’ pov, feat. actual fish and poetry.

the minor fall, the major lift - gen/4k, post confession/finale fixit. dean goes into the empty to save cas and runs into several old friends (and enemies).

With the Kisses of His Mouth* - teen/3k, gen later seasons. dean and cas keep kissing by accident.

Remaining Grace - explicit/109k, alternate s6. au where cas asks dean for help with raphael and dean, of course, does. tw for temporary major character death/semi-graphic depictions of alcohol withdrawal.

The face of heaven.* - teen/10k, au, dean is a regular guy and cas is a fallen star (think ‘stardust’, kinda).

Stories Are Made of Mistakes* - teen/5k. newly human cas has trouble getting used to a human body and humanity in general, but still figures out that he and dean are A Thing before dean does.

Hurry Up And Wait - mature/21k, canon divergent s12. a fairyland and quite possibly LOTR related case comes up and dean goes full fanboy, mary is introduced to the wonders of the peter jackson adaptions, many references and comparisons (including between cas and dean’s ‘friendship’ and arwen/aragon). also charle is still alive and has just been doing fairy stuff this whole time.

There Are Many Things - explicit/28k, s9. cas is extremely lonely/touch-starved and trying to figure out this whole human thing, as well as where he and dean stand after being kicked out of the bunker.

It's A Long Life to Always Be Longing - teen/40k, post s11 finale. amara helps dean by putting him in a magical coma so he can finally get some much needed rest and show him possible futures for him, sam and cas. meanwhile sam and cas go on a roadtrip (or several) to find componets for a spell to wake dean up. really good sam and cas friendship, they actually talk about their shared lucifer trauma and stuff.

Non-Photo Blue - gen/2k, s4/5/alternate s5. fifty moments from cas’ memories of dean.

Tall Grass - explicit/57k, canon divergent post series. cas becomes the ultimate plant dad. feat the wayward sisters gang, cathartic character growth, fun oc’s, domesticity, and lots of actual botanical info-dumping.

on vessels - no rating/gen/2k. established dean/cas, cas tells dean about how he used to imagine what it would be like to have him as his vessel.

search for tomorrow on every shore* - teen/11k, post-finale (extremely derogatory). some angels in jack’s new heaven act out and dean gets temporarily resurrected in 2003 and runs into his younger self.

Architecture of the Minotaur’s Heart - explicit/45k, very canon divergent post s1. dean’s new house seems to have a life and mind of its own, while in his dreams he sees glimpses of a world and apocalypse that never came to be and an angel that looks strangely like his mysterious neighbor, cas. loosely inspired by the book house of leaves (which i highly recommend for fans of weird horror).

The Distance Of The Setting Sun - explicit/17k, post s5. established dean/cas relationship, team free will finally takes advantage of cas’ abilities to go on vacation around the world.

diamond star halo - teen/5k, s11. dean lets cas use him as a temporary vessel while he recovers from rowena’s spell, sam is a long-suffering third-wheel.

Make Known** - teen/16k, s6/7. dean struggles to understand how cas could have become his enemy and whether he ever truly knew him in the first place.

blunt little instrument* - mature/1.4k, post finale. dean finally confronts his father in heaven, very cathartic.

my heart a compass*** - teen/10k, post confession. the empty forces cas to re-experience his most regretted moments while dean tries to snap him out of it and bring him home.

A Crash Course in Someone Else's History - teen/11k, s6. cas from the very start of s4 is brought forward in time by s6!cas to distract the brothers from his and crowley’s plans.

The Cuckoo Father - mature/8k, s7 au. the woman who found cas in the river post-leviathans does not marry him bc he was sent to her by god or whatever, but actually identifies him as jimmy novak and sends him back to claire and amelia.

The Dead Dean Clause* - teen/5k, post alt s5 ending. team free will celebrates surviving taking down lucifer by getting blitzed, cas lies to a cop and gets an impromptu driving lesson. title/description sound dark i know but it’s actually very funny and light.

Suck It, Judy Garland - mature/20k, s12 (after the ‘i love you...i love all of you’ episode). cas and sam have to pretend to be a couple for a case and dean is NOT happy about it.

By Daylight and In Dream - teen/16k, s5. pre-dean/cas, dean invites cas to use his dreams to hide from the other angels. tw for very brief mention of a memory/dream of alastair sexually assaulting dean.

The Five People You Meet in Heaven - mature/22k, post-canon. an actually happy (if sometimes bittersweet) heaven endgame written several years ago, though some details are rather eerily similar to the show’s ending.

heaven is a place on earth* - teen/2k. dean’s pov of some of the times cas left him behind throughout the show, and one alternate ending where he finally gets to stay.

I Cleanse The Mirror - teen/20k, alternate s6. dean’s body is stolen by an ancient elemental and his soul has to hitch a ride in cas’ vessel.

an exploration of gender; angelic*** - mature/4k. *oscar isaac voice* lets get into angel gender politics!! aka cas is trans.

Zenith - explicit/33k, s9. after 9x06 an angry witch curses cas with the ability to see supernatural beings and human souls.

La cucina. - gen/3k, alt s9. dean goes wild helping a newly-human cas find out what kinds of food he likes, or the early s9 domesticity we deserved!

Dean Winchester, Cocksucker at Rest***** - teen/7k, post-finale. john and mary finally come over for dinner and john reacts to dean/cas in a rather predictable fashion. SOOOOOOOOO good omg, its so funny and a little sad and very very cathartic. part of a series that has a few other really good short fics.

The Way You Didn't Go - teen/5k, s15. coda to 15.09, dean has nightmares about the moc!cas timeline.

On Drowning - teen/28k. dean saves cas after he nearly drowns, they both try and deal with the physical/mental fallout (aka the fic where thee iconic “you only touch me when you think I’m dead or dying” originates). tw for realistic depictions of drowning/triage/misc medical information.

The Thirty-Six Questions That Lead to Love* - mature/13k. claire has dean and cas pretend to be her gay dads for a case and they play the titular 36 question game, get mistaken for swingers, and birdwatch, among other things.

Assorted F/F stuff:

Deep Breaths* - mary/ellen, au where mary said no to azazel’s deal and let john stay dead, still becomes a milf.

Like Rebel Diamonds - krissy/claire, they become hunter gf’s on the hunt for cas to kick his ass for taking jimmy. not-so-stealth dean/cas as well.

To Ash and Bone - anna/ruby, same author as the previous fic (p much all of her stuff is good from what i recall). au where ruby is a witch and helps anna when she’s cursed.

Holy Clockwork Angels - jo/ruby, STEAMPUNK au with very cool worldbuiilding.

At Day's End - jo/anna (my fucking KINGDOM for more jo/anna content, the dean/cas parallels are allllll there), au where they are both at the camp in the endverse and gfs.

these posts - ok so not actually a fic but i’m now obsessed with this hannah/meg dynamic.

Tagelied - mary/ellen, the true story of how ellen got into hunting before angels interfered.

Hell's Bells** - meg/abaddon, alternate s8/9 where meg survives crowley’s attack with sam’s help and teams up with abaddon (who she has a sk year old crush on) to take back hell.

The Ecstasy of the Rose - anna/ruby, anna travels back in time to escape heaven and becomes a signifigant part of ruby’s old human life.

Angel Underground - anna/jo, kind of an urban fantasy au with a very intriguing premise (sadly its very short, i’d love to see more if this ‘verse).

Clover, Flame - billie/mary, billie was always the reaper that showed up to take mary after her death(s) over the years.

Drag Me To Heaven - anna/ruby, a variant on the ‘last night on earth’ thing with dean.

Come Home* - jo/anna, canon-divergent au where anna is the new waitress at the roadhouse and helps jo set up a (probably not really) haunted house for halloween.

#if you told me i'd be doing this in 2020 three weeks ago i'd have laughed in your face :/#deancas #supernatural #fic recs #spn femslash #destiel #fic #the alie tag #spn posting

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thefanficmonster · 4 years ago

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Just Two Sad Roommates

Corpse Husband x Reader(Female)

Warnings: Swearing (maybe)

Genre: Angst, Fluff

Summary: The power of medieval tavern music gets put to the test when Corpse’s roommate is having a rough day. SPOILER ALERT: it’s more powerful than anyone could assume.

Requested by Anon. You know who you are 😊😋 Wish I could tag you, I loved this idea so much and had such a fun time writing it. Hope you enjoy it just as much 🥰

The last twenty four hours haven’t been so great.

Last night I had a huge fight with my boyfriend over his flirty messages with several girls. It was not just witty banter, it was way more and way more hurtful to me. He obviously denied it and defended himself, at least in the beginning of the argument. Then he took on the accusatory stance, pointing fingers at me for living with another guy. That had me absolutely fuming. Not only was his statement fabricated and literally made up on the spot, but he also used some seriously horrible insults for him. I was having non of it. Corpse is a really great roommate, sweet guy and overall amazing person. I haven’t once argued with him since we’ve started living together. We’re actually quite good friends. So hearing my asshole boyfriend call him all those names was more than enough to chase him out of the apartment. Thankfully, Corpse wasn’t home to hear all that. He rarely leaves the apartment but by some miracle this was the time he was absent.

Then this morning my mom called me to have a chat. It started off decently enough but it only remained that way for so long. It didn’t take her long to start criticizing each and every element of my existence. From my job, my boyfriend, my living arrangement, the career I’ve decided to pursue, the fact I moved to a different state, my paycheck that’s lower than her friend’s daughter’s...…..You get the point.

Now I’m sitting here, contemplating what the two years I’ve been in a relationship with Marcus mean to me. I guess it is just like a phone call from my mother - starts off nice but slowly deteriorates. All things follow this pattern in my life, apparently. And just like the phone calls, I’ve considered ending things between me and him many times but never actually decided on it. Until now. The last part of this decision is executing it, which doesn’t look very promising. My thumbs are frozen, hovering over the keyboard.

I take a second to take a look at my life from a third person point of view, like an out of body experience. I am wrapped in a blanket, huddled on the couch like a burrito with a face. A really sad burrito with a face. I have a job where I work as much as three highly ranked workers and get paid a little over a secretary’s paycheck. I’m in a constant state of exhaustion and disinterest. I often forget I’m human and just assume I can live like a cactus - no food, no water. I have a boyfriend that’s cheating on me and most likely has been for quite some time now. And we’ve been dating for two fucking years. Man, that must be the longest cheat streak in history. Who knows with how many girls as well. And I still have trouble deciding weather to break up with him or not. Actually no, scratch that, I have already decided, but it feel so unnatural and so out of character that my body refuses to complete the task of delivering the final blow to the structure of this relationship which was already weak to begin with.

And it only got weaker when I started catching feelings for another guy. I know, I know, I’m a bad person for that, but I was never planning to act on those feelings. They have always just...lingered, loomed over me. They got stronger and stronger every time Marcus and I would fight, as though they were laughing at my mock of a relationship.

Speaking of laughter, I hear my roommate laughing in his recording room. I gave him the spare room for his recording equipment for a cheap add to his rent fee and it’s probably the second best decision I’ve ever made - first being picking him to be my roommate. He was among the first to reply to my online add and appeared the least sketchy over the phone. More hypnotizing if I’m honest. He could’ve told me he was a hitman and I wouldn’t have batted an eye, handing the keys to his room and the apartment without a second thought. All he had to do was keep talking. Again, SUE ME.

“Fuck, I’m so fucking pathetic!“ I drop my phone when all the strings inside me snap, releasing the sobs and tears I’ve been holding back for so long.

I bring my knees up to my chest, hiding my head in between them, desperately trying to shield myself from the plane crash that is my life at the moment. Crying makes me feel even sadder and more miserable but I have nothing left to do to get all the crap that’s piled up inside me out.

I’m on the verge of falling asleep, the tears have dried and the sobs have died somewhere in my chest, when I hear what sounds like music straight from Robin Hood’s time.

Holy shit, I’ve lost it

I lift my head from in-between my knees, looking around the living room for the source of the jolly, lighthearted tune which despite all the heaviness of my self-loathing makes me feel like the main character in an medieval adventure. Wait...Holy crap, it’s that medieval adventure, Robin Hood-ass music I hear from Corpse’s room!

I whip around to face the entrance from to the hallway where I see an arm sticking out, holding a phone which is where the music is coming from.

“Corpse?“ I call out to him in a questioning manner, shifting to a sitting position with my blanket kicked off of me and bunched up next to me.

“I can’t tell if you’re angry or sad...or both. Didn’t want to get attacked upon entering the room.“ I see the right side of his face peek out as well.

I break out into laughter, covering my mouth with one hand, “You’re such a dork.”

He takes this as a sign to come in, pausing the music as he does so. “What’s wrong?”

My laugh stops but a smile remains on my face as I look at him. He just has that effect on me. “A lot. What’s going on with you?”

He shrugs his shoulders, plopping down on the couch, “The usual, streaming Among Us. You should play with me and my friends some time.”

I scoff, “I can pull of a lie no problem. Maybe I really should.” I don’t actually consider it, it’s just funny to think about.

I have never watched any of Corpse’s content. Not his scary story videos, not his streams, not his animated compilations. Just his songs. And let me tell you...they are hella good. One song and I was hooked.

“Hey, I have a question.“ I tilt my head to look at him, “What’s with you and your love for medieval adventure music?“

“Medieval tavern music, and it’s not really love.“ He shakes his head with this dopey grin that is just. so. adorable. “More like a coping mechanism. Tell me, did you feel less sad I played it for you?“

I stop and think for a second. “Yeah, I think so.”

“Point made.“ He declares, leaving me to nod in amusement. “Now, tell me what that ‘a lot’ is.“

So, I do. I tell him everything, from how my boyfriend is cheating on me to how my mother thinks I’m a complete failure. He listens carefully, paying close attention to everything I’m saying. I catch myself laughing a few times while I retell the recent upsetting events.

Must be that music.

“So, you broke up?“ He asks once I end my monologue with a sigh

I shake my head disappointedly, “Not yet. I still haven’t pulled the plug. I don’t know what to say.”

He holds out his hand to me, “May I be of assistance?”

I look at his hand then at him and contemplate for only a second before deciding ‘what the hell’ and handing over my phone after unlocking it. The screen displays my boyfriend’s chat so Corpse just types away what he has in mind. Before pressing ‘send’, he hands the phone back to me. “Proofread it.”

‘Dear Marcus, this is one of your girlfriends speaking. Yes, one of them. You think I’m not onto what you’re doing, you little shit? Well, to your dismay, I am. And so, I discontinue this relation between us. That word might have been too long for your IQ so let me rephrase: We are over. Finished. Hope your other girlfriends wake up too, unless they are already in the know, of course. Love, but really hate, Y/N‘

I was never aware this level of sass even existed.

I add a smiling emoji and send the message, sighing in relief. “I can check that off my to-do list now.”

We both lean back on the couch, looking up at the ceiling. A moment of comfortable silence takes over, leaving us both wandering in our own heads.

“Hey, um, I wanted to do this when I first moved in, but then I met your boyfriend and I took the hint. Now that you’re single, would you want to...“ he sounds a bit uncertain but continues regardless, “It’s ridiculous cause I don’t really like the idea of going out, but maybe we could order take-out...“

“Are you circling around asking me on an at-home date?“ I am surprised by how unbothered I manage to sound while I’m squealing on the inside. It’s fascinating how quickly a person can flip someone’s day around. Turns out it wasn’t the music at all. It was him that had the positive effect on mine.

Out of the corner of my eye I catch his face turn red and have to contain my laughter. The grin can’t be tamed though, especially not when he says, “Yes.”

Internally squealing, I launch myself from the couch, standing up straight in front of him. “Thai. My usual order is on the sticky note on the fridge. But first,” I offer him my hand, “I need to find out if a person can even dance to that ridiculous music.” At his amusement, my grin widens, “May I have this dance?”

He laughs that adorable laugh of his I’ve only heard through the layer of a wooden door. It’s even cuter when there’s nothing between me and its source. The source is cute too, not gonna lie.

With a shake of his head which is most likely disbelief, he takes the hand I’ve offered him, saying: “And you call me a dork.”

@susceptible-but-siriusexual @simonsbluee @save-the-sky @hacker-ghost @itsminniekat @bi-andready-tocry @imtiredaffff @jazzkaurtheglorious @hereforbeebo @fandomgirl17 @chrysanthykios @maehemscorpyus @loraleiix @letsloveimagines @annshit @i-cant-choose-a-username-help @enigmaticmaze

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out-of-this-dimension · 3 years ago

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Hypothetically Rewriting Assault’s Story + Some General Assault Opinions

There’s a game my husband and I like to play when we watch a movie, play a game, or read a book that has a story that we don’t really enjoy or we enjoy certain parts of but not others. We look at things we’d keep and things we’d change and we build a story from there-- sort of like an AU but we don’t really go into the writing part, we just stick to theorizing and mapping a general story.

I decided to play that game with Star Fox. Not because I think Star Fox has a bad story but because sometimes I think the stories could have been handled better. Note: for the rewrite game, I only really look at story, even for video games, I don’t really look at gameplay mechanics, but I do understand those have a lot to do with story potential so I do take it in as a factor... I just don’t bother to “rewrite” the mechanics, if that makes any sense at all. Some of my list today will include boss encounters but I wouldn’t necessarily say those are mechanic-related... more like “event-related”.

I’ve mused a bit in the past about rewriting Adventures and Command and I do have plans to do a mock up of an Adventures remake eventually. However, today I was thinking about how I would go about handling an Assault re-write in particular. Much like Command and Adventures, I don’t have any beef with the core story but I do think there’s a few things that could’ve been better about Assault’s storyline-- like they had good ideas rolling but they didn’t quite refine them.

Under the cut because SUPER long.

My basic feelings on Assault are pretty positive. I think the game is generally just fun and I like that it feels like the natural progression from SF64. I liked getting to see planets we haven’t seen since the N64 era in better graphics and I liked seeing Star Wolf return. I also just thought the aparoids were neat enemies.

Generally speaking, though, when it comes to Assault, I think it suffers from the thing it tries to push the most-- the story. I think a lot of people get caught up in thinking the story is better than it is because it’s the first game since SF64 that really follows the same Star Fox vibe without retelling the Lylat Wars. Don’t get me wrong, the overall plot is great but the execution and pacing are... wonky. Certain characterizations also take a hit in some regards but no one really talks about that when Command exists. That’s something we’ll talk about later on with this post.

That being said, Assault really does have a lot good going for it. An absolute banger of a soundtrack, some great dialogue, a neat story synopsis, the introduction of cool characters like Panther and Beltino (who existed but was always off-screen), and just good levels.

So, here’s what I would add, I suppose, if I were to somehow have the ability to rewrite Assault. Originally I had this in paragraph form, but I’ve made it into more of a list under topic segments with main points bolded for your viewing pleasure. Some of these points might be considered nitpicky and while I do understand that yes, this is a game about space animals, I do hold the developers in high enough regard to make a game with a continuity that makes sense.

The Story Changes

- Reduce Pigma’s storyline in Assault. This is the biggest one for me because a bulk of the plotline feels like a giant chase to just get at Pigma and it feels like it derails from the actual plot with the aparoids. We only go to Sargasso because of Pigma. We only go to Fichina and then back to Meteo again, because of Pigma. That’s 3 levels in a 10 level game devoted to just tracking down Pigma and chasing him. While it makes the build up to fighting Pigma kind of nice, I personally feel like the plot could be reduced to 2 levels. If Assault overall was a longer game, I could see them making it 3 levels. Overall, though, in its current state, I feel like the side plot overstays its welcome and the aparoids promptly get shoved to the side in favor of “Oh no, we gotta get to Pigma!” And I get the main motive here is to show how the aparoids affect people and because of the build up, it does a good job at showing how utterly terrifying the aparoids are. But it’s still too long given the length of Assault’s story. The only alternative to this is make Assault longer, which... honestly, it should be.

- Revise the scene with Tricky. I’m obviously not well-versed in dinosaur biology but I’m pretty sure dinos didn’t grow that fast from what studying I HAVE done. And why is he suddenly king now? Did his parents die? He seems not affected by this at all? Like it’s a funny scene with him, Fox, and Krystal, but it’s odd if you really look at it. Give us, as players, more context because I’m still not even sure what happened to make Tricky suddenly the leader and... big. As a note, you’re gonna hear me gripe a lot about the Sauria level in this post.

- The Star Wolf + Peppy sacrifice is a low effort way to raise tension/stakes and then cop out. Oldest trick in the book, imo, is to act like you’re going to kill off important characters only for them to be alive miraculously. And let’s face it, as an audience we all know they aren’t going to kill those characters because it’s Nintendo and those characters are too beloved. I would’ve forgiven them for only doing this with Peppy or Star Wolf, but when you tack them both together and throw in the fact they make it seem like you’re going to have to kill General Pepper too... yeah, it’s just a bit much of the same trope over and over again. I wanted to put a note in here about how I’m fine with the Great Fox being “sacrificed” but overall, it needed to return to the series because of it’s icon status, but I think that’s more of a gripe at Command instead of Assault.

- Keep Pigma alive. This will conflict with a point I have later on about the game consistently having characters cheat death for easy drama points but with Pigma, I would’ve kept him fully alive... but maybe with some physical damage from the aparoids. I understand he’s semi-alive in Command and tbh I don’t know where I stand on that. Why keep Pigma alive, you might ask? I feel like his character has a lot more potential than being “just the greedy guy”. Like he’s got good potential future villain material for future games and... if I’m honest? I just don’t see Nintendo wanting to keep Pigma dead so why even bother killing him off? They couldn’t even commit to him being dead in Command anyways so it seems very moot.

- Bring Bill and Katt back. Assault is acts a bit like a big reunion of all of our SF64 favorites but our two favorite side characters are suspiciously missing. Wouldn’t Bill be out on the front lines fighting against Andrew in the beginning? Or maybe back in Katina? And wouldn’t Katt inevitably show up in the midst of the invasion, maybe to pointedly check in on Falco?

- Bring Andrew back for the final fight. I think Andrew being defeated early into the game is fine overall but I think bringing him back in for a reunion final fight against the aparoids would serve to really solidify that it’s really everyone vs the invading aparoid force. It would show that not only is Star Wolf willing to put aside their differences but so is basically everyone in the Lylat System in the name of survival. Imagine the Venomians and Cornerians working together against an aparoid fleet, giving Star Fox and Star Wolf time to attack the queen? I just think it’d be neat and it’d open up the potential for some fun banter mid-mission. I do understand that quite a few people consider Andrew canonically dead after Assault but personally, I feel that his defeat left his fate questionable (I’m a staunch believer that unless there’s a body, they’re probably alive, especially for Nintendo games because, again, they never like to kill people off) so him returning in Command never really bothered me.

- In general, reconsider some of the character portrayals. Unfortunately, when a series has a different studio for each game, character portrayals will inevitably have inconsistencies. While I give Namco a lot of credit for putting in oodles and oodles of detail into the game (particularly the levels), I think they failed in their portrayal of Fox, at the least, and Wolf is a considerable offender as well. While it’s obvious that Fox in Adventures was effectively modeled off of Sabre even in terms of personality, Rareware was at least able to justify Fox’s newfound jaded attitude with the passing of many years and a distinct lack of steady income, resulting in the team being in disarray. Assault’s Fox is a stark contrast to his cynical interpretation with seemingly no explanation other than maybe “Oh, I have more money and a gf, maybe I should behave myself”. As if the sudden change in personality wasn’t random, Fox also just seems very blah, like a blank slate stereotypical shooter game protagonist dude with little to no emotion. Wolf is less obvious but gets slated into a mentor-like role midway through the game and ends up in a respectful rivalry with Fox... which there’s nothing inherently wrong with that except for it happening abruptly (and, I mean, Peppy is right there). But I take less issue with this and more of an issue with the fact that there’s an entire level establishing that Wolf now runs a crime den with effectively what seems to be an army and no one bats an eye at this. He doesn’t even call on them to help with the aparoids. Did they all die when the aparoids attacked Meteo? Are they safe somewhere else? Where do they go? How was Sargasso able to operate without the CDF being on their doorstep with warrants for arrests?

- Don’t kill all the dinosaurs. A bit of a dramatic statement but the ending screen that showed all the damage to Sauria really bothered me. While I understand that the dinosaurs had less of a chance against the aparoids than a more technology-focused society like Corneria, I was a bit disappointed that the decision was made to just state that a lot of tribes had been wiped out. I know this could easily be retconned in a future game and I feel like it should be. “But why, Amalia? Why are you disappointed by that?” 1) It’s a little too grimdark for my tastes. 2) The fact it all happened off-screen felt very hand-wavy. And 3) It brings into question the entire point of Adventures. Why did we bother to save this planet if it was going to be reduced to rubble and ash 1 year later? Where were the Krazoa in all of this? Why did they not make an appearance at all to try to stop the invasion with their alleged powers? It just raises too many weird questions and I feel like Namco didn’t think it through too much. Which I mean, sure. Family, kiddo game. I’m not asking for bigbrain plot and lore but I’m squinting at this bit because it does feel very contrary to the lore from the previous game.

- Make the aparoids more relevant. As nice as it is to have a random bad guy from another galaxy, I feel like there was more that could be done with the aparoids in terms of their origins. Tiny things, mind you, not huge revelations. Off the top of my head, they could have been tied into Krystal’s backstory to help alleviate some of the complaints that she was too random to be added to the series’ main cast. Alternatively, they could have been a product of Andross or even a weapon prototype from Corneria that fled the lab (I actually thought the game was leaning in that direction for a bit then just Nothing Happened). I get that the vagueness of their origins leaves room for people to speculate and speculation is nice but... when you leave too many things unknown, it starts to feel less like giving fans room to interpret and more like just doing random things for the sake of it. I think a lore tidbit here or there would work wonders for the aparoids instead of leaving them as just borg/zerg clones.

Level-Based Changes

- Add either Aparoid RedEye or Aparoid General Scales as a boss to Sauria. Given that this level mysteriously lacks a boss, which is just weird compared to the other levels, I think that they had the opportunity to add something cool to go along with the cinematic feel they were going for with Assault. Assault’s cutscenes do play in a movie-like fashion and it’s clear they’re trying to make the game as epic as possible. It’s a shame they had so much fodder for a great boss here but they failed to go through with it. Alternatively: Add a Krazoa-Aparoid fusion. Why? Because Star Fox is about cool epic sci-fi and that would be cool epic sci-fi incarnate.

- Add a boss to the Aparoid Homeworld Level, aka the penultimate level. Another one I felt was personally weird that there was no “final defense system” to challenge the team. Would be cool to do an aerial battle over the aparoid planet with some giant flying aparoid.

- Be kinder to Sauria. The level had some good homages but overall was incredibly small and incredibly short. It felt like a bone tossed to Adventures fans but was not entirely true to the setting built by Rareware. I’m... not even sure where the Sauria level is supposed to take place? I presume it’s Walled City but it doesn’t really have the same color scheme or aesthetic? Also where is my revised Adventures music? Why do all the other levels get it but Sauria doesn’t?

- Put some of those funky items from the multiplayer into the main campaign. I don’t know why some of these things, items especially, were omitted unless it was purely due to time constraints. I remember having missile launchers and jetpacks in the multiplayer and was a bit sad that they were not in the main campaign. Retuning the levels and adding those in would be a nice breath of fresh air for the more tedious on-foot missions.

- More levels. Self-explanatory. Still sad we didn’t get the Zoness or Titania levels in the single-player mode.

I think all of the above changes would improve the game, though I recognize all of this is being said 16 years later after lots of time to contemplate Assault’s weaker points. I’m not entirely certain how long Star Fox Assault took to develop but given that there’s obviously quite a bit scrapped from the game (an entire arcade mode was scrapped as well), I’m going to assume that the studio felt pressured to shove the game out the door and into the hands of customers. It’s a shame, really, because I think a little bit longer in the oven would have done a lot of good. Still, the product we got was good in its own right and a game that many people look back on fondly. I haven’t gotten to replay it in years but I hope to quite soon.

You might wonder why I bothered typing this all out and I guess my point was this-- Assault was great but it wasn’t perfect, and while a lot of other games fall under a crushing amount of scrutiny, Assault seems to dodge it. And don’t get me wrong-- I adore Assault. But given that not many takes exist out there about rewriting it, I decided to give it a shot. For variety’s sake.

I do want to a mock up of a revised Assault story, which I think I will get to work on after completing this while all my ideas are still fresh in mind. So stay tuned for that sometime in the near future. I will also be doing my Adventures mock up at some point but probably not for a little bit as I do wanna focus some of my free time on actual fic-writing.

Anyways, if you stuck around this long, thank you for reading! Have any changes you’d like to see to Assault if you could time machine your way back to the early 2000s? Feel free to post in the comments, I’d love to read your ideas!

#star fox assault #starfox assault #super long #queue'd

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kingandfireheart · 4 years ago

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What is it that you want, Elain?

Summary: This story is about Elain and Azriel talking about the events of the bonus scene and Elain processing her progress in the Night Court. There isn't much resolution, but it was fun to get into Elain's head for a little.

Words: 2,500ish

My money would be on you happens before this - if you're interested in seeing Azriel processing.

Elain walked on to the verdana of the House of Wind. Nesta and Cassian had insisted on hosting their weekly “family dinner” after returning from their honeymoon. She enjoyed the dinner and conversation, relaxed to see her sisters together and safe. For a long time, Elain had mourned her loss of home, her humanness, but in the last year, she had begun to embrace the fact that her sisters were happy.

Feyre had found her place in the Night Court before Elain had even become High Fae. She had Rhysand, she had Mor’s friendship, and she had her role as High Lady. Nesta took considerably longer to warm up to their new home, but she too had a place - she had friends now - the Illyrian female, and one of the priestesses, a role in the court as a Valkyrie and emissary, and love with Cassian. Elain felt a small pang of envy for what her sisters had. She had befriended Nuala and Cerrdiwen, she passed her time gardening throughout Velaris, and she enjoyed being with the odd family that was the Night Court’s inner circle. Still, Elain felt that something was missing, which had brought her onto the verdana, away from the loud conversations in the family room.

She always loved this view of Velaris. So far up from the city, she felt like her problems may just disappear. Elain also enjoyed the cool breeze of a spring night - she hadn’t brought a coat after spending the day in the sun, but the way the wind bit into her was freeing and calming. She sat down on a bench that Nesta must have added recently, and as if the house had anticipated her needs, a cup of tea had appeared next to her. “Thank you,” she said to the House. Nesta had explained that the house is somewhat responsive to commands, and she didn't want to be rude.

When she had excused herself from the dining room, dinner had devolved into discussing the Autumn Court. Cassian had said “Compared to Eris, Lucien is a saint, loveable even.” Adding, “If you’re into courtiers with a stick up their ass, that is” he said. Nesta had elbowed him for that, clearly knowing that Elain was trying to not look uncomfortable.

Feyre was retelling stories about the Spring Court, which strongly featured her mate who wasn’t her mate, Lucien. Elain had slipped out of the room when Feyre started telling the story about how Tamlin had pushed him into a reflecting pool after Lucien had convinced her to eat some berries that caused hallucinations. She'd heard Lucien and Feyre laughing about it one too many times in the year she had spent in Velaris.

Elain heard steps approaching her, bringing her back to the present. Deliberate steps, since everyone had mastered moving silently, without detection. A deep breath in revealed it was Azriel. Night chilled mist and cedar. That too was deliberate - so as not to startle her of his approach. She turned to find Azriel, predictably clad in his leathers with some shadows swirling around him.

While most family dinners were casual in the state of dress, she rarely saw Azriel or Cassian in anything but their leathers. All three of the brothers had a preference for wearing black at all times - and she couldn’t really fault them. While black seemed to drown out Elain’s features, the Illyrians looked exquisite in black, it brought our their coloring, their ridiculously beautiful features, and their hazel (and in Rhys case, violet) eyes.

That being said, she couldn’t remember the last time she saw any of them wearing a different color, aside from Cassian and Azirel’s siphons. Crimson and Cobalt respectively. She had seen a painting in Feyre’s studio of Azriel’s cobalt siphons against his scarred hands. She always thought they were beautiful, told him as much when she first arrived in Velaris. When she was human, she thought they were ornamental - like jewelry, but then she saw them in use. Azriel had explained that they were ways to channel their otherwise lethal power. That Cobalt power had saved her life from kidnapping, had shielded her from the wind while flying, and patched up a very injured Cassian during the war.

The cold of the wind calmed as she saw Azriel’s blue shields pop up around them. “It’s cold out here”, he stated in his midnight voice that was enough to make strangers swoon. She had seen it in action when she gone to watch Nesta, Feyre, and the priestesses train. The priestesses sighed when he had demonstrated how to shoot an Illyrian bow. Even after all of these months, the effect was not lost on her.

She hadn’t been alone with Azriel since Solstice - they had been keeping their distance for months now. There was something there - some kind of tension, or a pull, but Elain couldn’t quite explain it. She thought she understood on Solstice when he nearly kissed her, but then he pulled away, claiming it was a mistake before disappearing into the shadows. Ever since, their friendship had become polite and cordial, but never more than exchanging pleasantries.

She had learned from watching Azriel that every movement was intentional, and fluid, and graceful. He was predictable and consistent, but still she couldn’t keep herself from watching as he closed the distance between them.

“Are you alright? ”, Azriel asked.

She moved to make room for Azriel on the bench. “I just needed some fresh air to clear my head.” she explained.

“Ah. They can be a lot on a good day, much worse when Cassian breaks out the good wine.” He said, sitting as far away as he possibly could, while folding in his wings. A cup had popped between them, but this one was half full. He picked up the cup and chuckled after taking a sip. She was willing to bet that the contents of the cup was a hell of a lot stronger than her tea.

“It’s not that. I just...” She hesitated, not sure if she was willing to change their current no-depth-relationship. “I haven’t seen Nesta this happy in my whole life. I’m happy for them, It’s just strange.” She half- lied, she knew his shadows would pick up on it, as they likely picked up on the exact moment she had left the room. It was strange, watching Nesta brush Cassian’s hair out of his face, or the way that she laughed at his jokes, or leaned into his chest when they sat next to each other. It was strange to see her sister so unguarded, so comfortable in this new life.

“I could say the same for my brothers.” He said before taking a sip from the cup in his hand. Azriel was usually aloof and distant, rarely letting his emotions show. But something shifted in that cool, beautiful mask of his. “That doesn’t explain why you’re out here on a cold night. Cassian would say to leave the lonely brooding bullshit to me, Elain” He chuckled softly. She loved that sound. His laugh, her name on his lips. She felt her cheeks warm, just slightly and she looked away.

Elain took a deep breath, and an ever deeper sip of her tea. She was nervous. She was nervous about how she felt. She was nervous about letting Azriel in, after she had felt so hurt by his rejection on Solstice. Still, she said what she had been refusing to admit to herself for months now. “I know it sounds petty, but I’m a little jealous.”

“Of Cassian?” He asked incredulously. Again that mask slipped, just slightly as a shadow curled around his shoulders.

“Of their… happiness. I guess. Nesta has Cassian, and Feyre has Rhysand, and I’m just…” She stopped herself. She couldn’t say alone, even though she had probably said too much already. “I know, it’s petty.” Azriel leaned just slightly closer, but wouldn’t meet her eyes.

"I don’t think it’s petty. I understand.” He said softly. He did understand, because he had lived with Rhys and Feyre and Cassian and Nesta after they had accepted their bonds. Part of her hoped it was jealousy - that he hadn’t meant what he had said on Solstice night, that him avoiding her wasn’t personal, that the reason he hadn’t met her gaze when flying her to the House, or the fact that he could not get away fast enough the second he had set her down, meant something. Part of her hoped that he was as jealous of his brothers as she was of her sisters. How funny the six of them would be - three Illyrian warriors, and three Made high fae.

“But, you do have a mate.” he added tightly, as if he was forcing the words out. His wings flared just slightly. A sign of unchecked emotion, if her year of observation was right. She just couldn’t decipher which emotion. Azriel's demeanor was a puzzle she hadn't quite figured out, but she did love trying. Azriel had never mentioned Lucien outside of his role in the courts, he had never pushed her to talk about the bond, had never insinuated she was Lucien's in any way.

She couldn’t stop herself. “That’s not - I don’t want that.” Leaving the rest unsaid, I don’t want Lucien. It was instinct now, to fight the bond. She hadn’t outright rejected it because of the look on Feyre’s face whenever Lucien was in the room, hope. The fact that the mating bond had chosen so well for her sisters.

She could feel Azriel’s gaze on her, could feel his wings, just inches from her shoulder. She knew he wouldn’t touch her - knew that Illyrian wings were sacred and intimate, and that even an intentional brush would mean much more than holding hands, or even a kiss on the cheek. Still, she leaned a little closer to him.

“What is it that you want, Elain?” Her heart jumped at that tone, the softness there, the mention of her name. He set down his now empty cup, and looked at her. The shadows had deepened around him, swirling off of his legs and by her skirts. She looked out onto the view of the city to keep herself from saying the first thing that came to mind: You. She took a breath and made herself look into his hazel eyes - the emeralds standing out in the moonlight.

“Love.” she said quietly enough that he may not have heard her if he hadn’t shielded out the wind. He kept looking at her with that intent but soft gaze she had rarely seen before and had come to savor. Her throat bobbed, but she forced out the words, "I want to be able to choose love." As soon as she said it, she expected him to slip into the shadows, or jump of the verdana. It had happened before - Azriel had a habit of slipping away when things got uncomfortable, but he stayed there, staring at her after she had made such a big confession.

Dangerous. This was dangerous, she reminded herself. Still, she couldn't help but embrace a little bit of danger. “What do you want, Azriel?” She heard herself say. It felt odd to say his name. Not Az, or shadowsinger, as the Amren often called him. There was weight in these words - Azriel was the most aloof member of the Inner Circle, and the least likely to open up, but since he hadn't slipped away just yet...

Azriel tensed only slightly. If she hadn't made a habit of watching him so closely, she wouldn't have noticed. A shadow curled around his ear, as if whispering something. She watched him, knowing full well Azriel was capable of not answering, or holding out for much longer than she was.

“The same thing as you.” He finally confessed, or at least it sounded like a confession - like something else was in those words - longing, pain, desire, guilt?

They stared at each other a long moment - it may have been the first time Azriel’s eye’s were completely unguarded. What she saw there - she wasn’t ready for, it was dangerous, and reckless, and tens kinds of stupid to act on. She did have a mate, who was a perfectly fine male - and they had implicitly decided to take time before dealing with whatever the bond meant. Elain straightened her back, trying to put some distance between them, without closing off this conversation, this connection.

Where did you run off too, Feyre said in her head. I’m sorry I brought up Lucien. Azriel seemed to shift too, as if he too was having a mental conversation with one of the daemati.

Coming she said in her head.

"We should head back in.” She said. They both stood, and Azriel’s icy mask returnEd as if he had just remarked on the weather.

“Thank you.” Elain said, allowing her hand to brush against his, just slightly. “For checking in on me. For being my friend.” She wanted the last word here. She needed to define what this was in un-dangerous terms, to keep him from avoiding her next time, from reading into her why she had pulled away, and to keep herself from kissing his cheek, from wanting more than she ever had a right to ask of him.

He gave her a polite but bland smile that did not reach his eyes. “Don't thank me. That’s what friends are for, right?” He raised his hand as if to cup her cheek, but seemed to reconsider, driving his hands into his pockets.

He dropped his shield of blue and walked back toward the house, as silent and graceful as ever. She was stunned, completely stunned. Azriel had always had that effect on her - taking away her capacity for speech and rational thought.

She gathered the tea cups, using the excuse to take a minute to collect herself before returning to the family room. She sniffed at Azriel’s cup - it most certainly wasn’t tea. Laughing to herself, she walked back into the family room, settling on a sofa between Mor and Rhys . Azriel had already joined Nesta and Feyre on the sofa across from them, holding Nyx as he stretched his tiny wings. Elain's heart fluttered at the sight.

Rhys’s gaze seemed to dart between her and Azriel, but before he could say anything, Mor looked at her, with a conspirators smile. “Next time you want to escape the couples, take me with you instead. I’m way more fun! ” Elain just laughed, nudging Mor with her shoulder.

Azriel chuckled softly from his corner and gave her another smile. This time, Elain returned one of her own.

#elriel #elain x azriel #elain archeron #azriel #post acosf #elain archeron week #kp writes #elriel fanfic #elriel fic #elriel angst #elriel writers #acotar series #mtp

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everythingsinred · 3 years ago

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Let's Talk About NatsuMikan: Natsume (pt. 5)

I'm back on my bullshit. I decided I'd post these, once a day, four days a week. Then I'll go on breaks for the weekend to let interested readers catch up while also further writing more entries. At the time I'm posting this, for example, I'm in the process of analyzing Chapter 39. That way, it's easier for everyone to enjoy this essay. Which I hope people do.

Anyway, this can finally truly be called a ship essay, because one of our key players has FINALLY developed feelings! Going forward, Natsume's behavior will heavily feature his growing affections for Mikan. We'll be analyzing Natsume's self-preserving hesitation as well as his immediate instinct to give up any chance he has from the get-go.

Chapter Seventeen

Natsume next shows up to walk into Class B during a commotion of Mikan’s retelling of the Reo incident. The kids all gather around him now too to ask questions and press about his condition. One kid even asks if he should teach Mikan a lesson for bragging about his rescue. Mikan smiles at him, under the assumption that their shared trauma has brought them closer and maybe even made them friends, but Natsume’s response is to simply turn away and ignore her.

He’s still Natsume after all. This is the first girl he’s ever liked, and she used to be somebody he despised, so the change in feelings is probably very strange to him. He’s confused and possibly embarrassed. He doesn’t know what to say or how to act.

Can't have her getting any ideas that he's completely changed his mind about her or anything.

Most of the people that Natsume likes at the school (although that is just Ruka and Youichi… so… you know) know that he likes them. He spends time with them, is gentle with them, does things for them, and can openly say kind things to and about them. Mikan is different. He used to be her number one enemy, so all of a sudden switching gears and becoming her friend would be quite odd.

Over time, Natsume will find ways to be gentle and sweet to Mikan, but for now his crush is brand new and he doesn’t know how to act quite yet. He’d rather avoid her entirely, or pretend like nothing happened, than openly approach his new feelings.

Furthermore his behavior is always and under all circumstances inseparable from his status as Persona’s favorite and as the Black Cat. He may have some loved ones, but he keeps the number low and tries to avoid getting close to people for a reason. Naturally, nobody could ever really understand his experiences so there will always be a divide between him and the rest of his peers, but even more than that is that considering people precious turns them into targets.

Natsume has probably learned the hard way that displaying closeness and affection for his friends can have dangerous effects, so he might now think of showing that kind of affection as selfish or even cruel. Why subject somebody to something like that, merely because he has feelings for them? It’s not fair.

In either case, it’s really not that Natsume is naturally mean and cold. He just doesn’t trust his situation enough to properly act. It’s safer in every way to just pretend like nothing changed. It’s too much to deal with otherwise. But sooner rather than later, the hard thing will be staying away. Eventually, maintaining coldness with her will be almost impossible.

Chapter Eighteen

This chapter further touches on Natsume’s new-found crush and its consequences.

Class B is used to being in an environment where Natsume hates Mikan and is bothered by everything she does. He gives in to her slightly, in small ways, and it shocks his classmates. Now, it’s understandable that, even if he hadn’t developed a crush on her, he might still be softer to a girl who risked her life to save him, but it’s still odd.

Mikan recalls asking Natsume for help training her alice. She needs an offensive alice to nullify, so Iinchou or Hotaru’s would be ineffectual in training. Natsume is really the best person to ask, and, to everyone’s surprise, he actually agrees to help.

Natsume doesn't need any convincing to help her, but what did she think practicing with a fire alice would entail?

And yes it does seem like he’s only doing it to torture her, because his alice is capable of genuine bodily harm and his admirers snicker with amusement at his antics, but I can’t help but assume there’s more to it.

He doesn’t really hesitate to help. He doesn’t need convincing at all. In some ways I think he did genuinely want to help. Her alice helped save his life, after all. Why not repay the favor by using his alice to help her train? To him, there's a lot of value in her alice, so training it is beneficial in his perspective as well.

And later still, Mikan spots Natsume sitting amongst the principal students. He stands out, as an elementary student next to upperclassmen. This moment is a good introduction to the arc. His crush on Mikan only grows stronger as the festival goes on, but there’s something looming over him too--he’s different from the rest of them. He stands out so much during the festival. He’s a dangerous ability type who’s not allowed to participate while also being a principal who has to sit on the stage for the opening ceremony. That's horribly ironic, but also shows just how singled out and under the spotlight he is. It’s a huge part of why he acts the way he does, so cold and mean and distant despite his growing affections. It’s all he can do.

He may see potential for a future, but he’d be foolish to think he should be able to acquire it, because his current circumstances have not changed at all.

The chapter ends with Natsume being asked by Koko if he wants to try out the special ability class event. He’s looking towards the special ability area, and we can tell the next chapter will be fun.

Chapter Nineteen

And how!

Natsume is here to see Ruka, his best friend, but he’s also here to catch a glimpse of the girl he has a crush on.

Sumire is also there, and it’s interesting to see that Natsume hasn’t changed in his attitude around her either, even though she also helped save him. She tries to embrace him and he dodges her.

This catches some people’s attention and they start to whisper about his presence.

In the anime, this moment is a bit more potent, hearing the murmurs and seeing a darkness over the gossiping kids, but the manga still establishes that the people waiting in line are by-and-large unhappy to see him. They whisper amongst themselves, rudely asking why he’d bother to come here, but that gloom only lasts for a moment (one singular panel and then Natsume’s responding bitterness) before Mikan appears jumping over the wall, calling his name and even smiling.

It’s almost like she was waiting for him to show up, running off from her post the second she heard Natsume was there. The dark looming screentones are replaced with flowery ones, and it’s hard not to think of this as his perspective: all is gloomy and then there is Mikan. All of a sudden, after hating her for so long, he thinks of her as bright sunshine, and he must have showed up just to see her and feel nice for a change.

It's Natsume seeing Mikan through floral-filter lenses for me...

Of course, he ruins the mood. It feels almost as if he does it solely because he knows it will upset her. She was so excited to see him, and he manages to completely turn her mood from eager to angry, just the opposite of how she was able to unwittingly turn his mood from gloomy to... as close to content as he can get.

He’s okay now. He doesn’t want her getting any ideas.

Now, in my opinion, his method of bothering her could be anything and the plot would remain the same. What matters is that he wants to piss her off, and this just so happens to be the way he does it, partially because it’s intended to be funny. Mikan has to get angry at him for this chapter to progress the way it does, but his actions could have been replaced by any other irritating action and it could’ve gone the same way.

Tsubasa then appears, drawn to the sound of a loud commotion. He sees Natsume and vaguely wonders why he’s there. Everyone knows Natsume, at all grade levels, because he’s famous. For Tsubasa, whose only real knowledge of Mikan’s relationship with the kid is that he causes trouble in Class B, it would be strange to see him at the RPG.

Natsume, meanwhile, has no idea who Tsubasa is. Seeing Mikan crawl all over her senpai, seeing him easily comfort her, is something that bugs Natsume. He glares at Tsubasa, somebody whose name he doesn’t even know, and then starts leaving with Ruka.

At first, Tsubasa is confused to be treated like this, until he hugs Mikan tighter and sees both Natsume and Ruka turn in jealousy. Tsubasa gets it immediately. Thus begins a strange and tumultuous frenemy relationship between Tsubasa and Natsume, where they both begrudgingly understand each other while also irritating each other beyond belief.

Natsume is not interested in playing the game, insulting it and wondering how anyone could get hooked on it. Ultimately, it’s not even Mikan who convinces him to give it a shot; it’s Tsubasa taunting him, “then you should be able to win, no problem, right?”

Tsubasa will come to regret saying this, because the answer is yes.

The RPG is designed to be tough. Nobody has won the whole game yet. Beating one or two students is one thing, but being able to outsmart or outmaneuver the entire special ability class is a difficult feat.

Natsume agrees to play, and gets a robot cockroach as a weapon.

Tsubasa is hugging Mikan as Natsume is about to enter, and that pisses him off even more. He decides that Tsubasa will be his slave, his motive being get your hands off her. This is silly considering that just a short time ago, Natsume hated Mikan. His feelings really did a 180.

The challenges pick up in difficulty as he goes on. The first one is effortless. He doesn’t even move from where he’s standing. The mirror-alice girl just freaks out about the cockroach and sends him on his way after two seconds.

The next one is trickier, and Natsume will need to put in more effort than just standing and waiting for the cockroach to do its job. But not that much effort. He sits next to Megane, lights a fire, and waits. It’s a scorching flame, and although Megane tries to tough it out, he gives in with two seconds to spare. Natsume, a smartass, quips sarcastically that he’s sorry--he really can’t tell how hot it is. (This is not actually important or anything, it’s just interesting that Natsume is not affected by his own flames and can’t feel the heat of them. I might end up referring to this a couple times.)

With the exception of the first and last challenges, Natsume uses his alice to beat the maze; either by heating Megane up so his soul goes back into his body, or by writing with fire instead of chalk. The next challenge is the one Natsume has been waiting for and he’ll use his alice here too.

Tsubasa is shocked to find Natsume has progressed so quickly, but he proceeds with the challenge: Natsume has to touch him in thirty seconds, but it’ll be tricky ‘cause he’s held in place by his shadows. He toys with Natsume’s shadows a bit, which really pisses Natsume off. Tsubasa even apologizes nervously, even though he’s the one in control. Or he is, until Natsume uses his alice again and gets rid of the shadows.

Natsume’s anger towards Tsubasa all stems from jealousy. It’s not just that Tsubasa was hugging and comforting Mikan, it’s that he can. Natsume needs to distance himself from Mikan in order to keep her safe, and he’s aware of that right from the start, but there’s more to it. He’s busy establishing himself as an enemy to Mikan, doing things to bother her to make her angry with him, but nobody rushes to their bully for comfort, and Natsume knows this. It’s not just that Tsubasa was hugging Mikan; it’s that he feels like he will never get the chance.

And so the next and final challenge is where he gets to be selfish.

Mikan is aggravated to see him, obviously not thrilled that he was able to make it in such a short time. Her task is that he has to get her off the carpet in thirty seconds. He can’t hurt her or force her off the carpet, and because of their alice training together, he can’t use his alice on her either. (They’d apparently practiced so much that she was able to sharpen her skills significantly. Before, her alice was a wildcard and she struggled with using it, but now she’s able to use it with relative ease. That’s a lot of training in a short time, and I’m sure Natsume wasn’t upset at all the time they had to spend together as a result.)

Natsume must feel relief regarding Mikan's nullification alice. She's nullified his alice in pretty big ways already, one time to save his life. The girl he's crushing on is capable of turning off the thing that decreases his lifespan. She really is a breath of fresh air, in more ways than one, and his appreciation for her alice, even if he doesn't voice it, will only grow. This is important, but I'll talk way more about this in the other POV.

He tries the cockroach, but she’s a country girl and unaffected.

Natsume is genuinely stumped by her challenge, admitting to himself that it’s a tough one. He then comes up with a risky idea, no doubt influenced by her rescue of him when they were kidnapped by Reo. He plays sick. This act only works if Mikan falls for it and is concerned enough to jump off the carpet, but he’s a good actor on account of all the sick experience he has and she does fall for it in no time. Her being concerned was a given.

She jumps off, meaning he’s won the game, but that’s not enough of a victory for him. He acts sick until she’s closer, so he can grab her and put his arm around her. Yes, he calls her an idiot, but this is the closest he can get to a hug… for now. It doesn’t matter that she’s annoyed and dismayed that he won. All he cares about is that he got to touch her.

She jumped down. He won already, but it's not enough! (Also sorry about two pictures. If it ruins the format, oh well.)

Natsume was jealous that Tsubasa got to do something he thinks he'll never be able to, and so he got a taste of what he wanted some other, convoluted way. He gets angry that Tsubasa is so touchy, but that's only because he wishes he could be touchy too. Natsume will get bolder and bolder with his physical affection, because he will want more and more to show it. When he starts being honest about this affection, she will be more eager to return it.

Natsume is the first winner, and Tsubasa admits it was never expected for somebody to be able to pass all the challenges. Part of the appeal is that it’s an unbeatable game, but Natsume’s feelings of jealousy and spite were enough to get him over the finish line. Though perhaps knowing it's beatable but only one person could is also appealing. It's possible to pass, but very rare for somebody to be able to, so they can draw in crowds by capitalizing on kids who want to the next person to beat the game.

He gets to choose a lamp, but he has no idea which one is whose. He cheats by asking Koko to tell him which one is the right one, but he ends up picking Mikan’s, because Koko assumed that’s the one he wanted. After all--Natsume was thinking about her. Natsume is lucky that Mikan was too anguished at being a slave to care about Natsume thinking about her, but it’s interesting to know that even when he’s supposed to be angry at Tsubasa, he was only thinking of Mikan.

Chapter Twenty

This chapter’s premise is pretty simple and light: Natsume can’t think of any use for Mikan other than to follow him and Ruka around the festival and carry their stuff. They navigate the technical ability class area and even encounter Hotaru, though only for a short time because she’s quite busy.

Most importantly, their time in the technical area makes Mikan insecure. Everyone in the tech class seems to know what they want to do with their lives, with their alices being perfect for research or creation. I’ll go into more detail with this during Mikan’s essay, but it’s important to note that Mikan asks the people around her if they’re prepared for their future only to see that they all are. Hotaru, Sumire, and even Ruka all have dreams for the future, even if Ruka won’t share his. Natsume has decided to leave the conversation and we don’t hear what his dream is, which makes sense because he doesn’t have one. Natsume doesn’t think he’ll live long enough to graduate, so why even bother wasting his own time and getting his hopes up for something unattainable?

It’s then revealed that Ruka is also a triple, and Mikan can’t tell, but the mood has been soured for Ruka. His triple-star status is a touchy subject that he’s unhappy with. His star rank is representative of Natsume’s suffering and he doesn’t like talking about it. He only says that he didn’t mention it because he didn’t get it on his own talent or effort before Natsume forces Mikan to walk in another direction, claiming to be hungry.

This is literally just a scan of the TokyoPop version, which is better than the other version I see floating around.

He can tell Ruka is uncomfortable and is ready to step in so that his friend can feel better.

As a result, they end up at the cafe where Anna is working (after all, Mikan has been perfecting her puppy-dog eyes routine and I think both Ruka and Natsume are affected, even if the latter would never admit it).

Natsume takes the first bite of Anna’s hell pie, just to see a rot demon (or whatever that thing is) taunt him about the trouble his stomach will be in soon. He really doesn’t have a choice but to throw the tea over the pie. Ruka is grateful, but Mikan is outraged at how rude Natsume is acting, and even angrier when Natsume explains that the pie was horrible. She demands he apologize but Natsume simply walks away, content to be the bad guy because he saved his friends from getting food poisoning while also sparing Anna’s feelings and reputation at her cafe.

"Your stomach will writhe" is such a potent threat. I feel sick just looking at that demon/scoundrel/rot thing.

This scene has more substance than in the anime. In the episode, Natsume sees the rotten scoundrel (or WHATEVER IT IS) before he can take a bite. He tosses the tea for all their sakes and ultimately nobody is hurt. But here, in the manga, Natsume has already taken a bite. We see the missing part of the pie, the residue on the fork. Natsume is already screwed. He's going to have food poisoning from Anna's pie, and he still puts her feelings before his own. He'd rather say that the pie is terrible according to his own tastes than to let everyone around know that she made such a health-risking mistake. He drenches the pie so that Mikan and Ruka don't get food poisoning, even if it's too late for him. Natsume leaves, knowing he will look like an asshole, AND with stomach problems on top of that, but at least he's the only one who will be seriously hurt.

This is a pretty insignificant example of a trait that we have seen before with Natsume but haven't really fully explored. It's going to play a major role for the rest of the manga, because Natsume has something of a martyr complex, where he is quick to sacrifice himself because he sees little to no value in his own happiness. This is a small example, and I'm not saying it's not kind of him, but there are consequences with his line of thinking. He's fine with looking like an asshole to protect people, or giving up things he wants so someone else can have it, or blowing himself up so two girls can escape safely. Whenever there's a chance to sacrifice himself, Natsume will take it every single time.

This may seem noble or romantic or admirable but it's not healthy at all. The way he was raised (no shade to Papa Hyuuga and Kaoru but also.... tentatively side-eyeing them for putting so much responsibility on him) and the way he is now tortured by the school has put him in a position where his self esteem is horribly low. This complex of his results in suicidal tendencies, even after he falls in love with Mikan (and even exacerbated by that love). For Natsume, love is sacrifice. He simply cannot love without feeling like he has to give something up. Ideally, he would grow out of this and maybe start seriously choosing himself sometimes. It's not evil to want yourself to be happy and to choose your own well-being, even if it occasionally makes others sad or upset.

In the context of the actual story though, we have yet another glimpse of a complex that will cause a LOT of trouble down the road for Natsume and Mikan.

Conclusion

Natsume has new feelings for Mikan and is having trouble navigating them. They will cause even more trouble in the next essay. We also touched more on Natsume's self-sacrificing tendencies and how devastating they will turn out to be. These tendencies will be consistent and persistent throughout the manga in regards to NatsuMikan's relationship, and cause more problems. These problems will pop up a bit in the next part, so stay tuned!

Also, small note: I call him Ruka and not Luca because I got used to it after watching the anime and through scans and fanfics. I heard his name pronounced that way and at first thought it was a Japanese name so I simply copied the pronunciation. When I found out it was supposed to be Luca, I'd already been using Ruka for a while. I don't really want to switch to using Luca most of the time because I know people in real life named Luca/Luka and I talk enough about GA on the daily where it might feel strange to me. I use Luca sometimes when I'm talking to others who prefer it, but Ruka is what I'm used to. I hope this isn't frustrating, but understand that I pronounce Killua's name (from HxH) like "Ki-ru-a" as well and in my head "Gakuen Alice" is pronounced "Gakuen Arisu" because I pronounce things based on what I hear when watching the anime ;-; These are things I have no real desire to change because they sound right to me. I'm sorry. (Nobody has said anything or complained, and this is not a vague or anything like that! I just wanted to say that I know it's supposed to be Luca and it's not my intention to be disrespectful when I pronounce/spell it Ruka. I am fucking crazy, but I am free.)

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#gakuen alice #alice academy #hyuuga natsume #natsume hyuuga #natsumikan #sakura mikan #mikan sakura #my meta #ga #mine #ga meta #ga meta: nm #ga meta: manga #ga meta: manga nm #let's talk about natsumikan #let's talk about natsumikan: natsume #because of how jam-packed the alice festival is with nm content this might take two more parts to complete #stay patient with me please i am trying my best ;-;#i couldnt go into the haunted house knowing id only have two pics to work with. it would kill me.#theres just too much #the ten image limit is genuinely such an obstacle so if u wish there was more then blame tumblr and maybe theyll raise the limit to fifteen #they wont. tumblr is a disgusting landfill of a website.#edit for song: stupid by brendan maclean #theres some jealousy and tsundere behavior. love that for early love natsume

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gellavonhamster · 4 years ago

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some dracula-inspired books that i’ve read

The Deathless Girls by Kiran Millwood Hargrave

A young adult take on the backstory of the Brides of Dracula - just two out of three, mind you. I was convinced that it was about all three of them as I started reading, remained convinced almost until the very end (because there were, in fact, three girls at the centre of the story, but I won’t spoil how and why), and was a bit disappointed with the ending as a result, even though it was rather my own fault than that of the book. It does not have much connection (apart from some foreshadowing) to Dracula until several last chapters, as it mostly deals with the lives of the girls (the future dark-haired Brides, who in this version are sisters) before they become vampires. Unfortunately, I have no idea how correct the portrayal of Romanian and Traveller cultures is in this novel, but I found the writing beautiful, and overall enjoyed the book.

A Dowry of Blood by S.T. Gibson

Another novel about the Brides of Dracula. This one a reimagining, not a prequel - although there's a mention of the "dreadful Victorians" Harkers, it is mostly not compliant with Stoker’s novel in terms of events, and besides, one of the “Brides” in this version is actually a young man. The story is told in the form of letters that the oldest of the Brides addresses to Dracula. In its essence, this book is about learning to recognize a toxic relationship - the kind in which one of the partners tries to limit all interactions of their partner(s) with other people and the outside world and generally completely bends them to their will, all while claiming that they’re only doing what’s best for everyone - and then finding strength and courage to get out of that relationship. Also, there’s passion, polyamory, purple prose (in the best of ways), and Sapphic Longing at the Opera™. Delicious.

Ex-Wives of Dracula by Georgette Kaplan

This is basically a huge “fuck you” to the Mina-the-reincarnated-wife-of-Dracula trope (we love to see it!): in a 21st century American small town, Dracula tries to get his hands on the reincarnated Mina, except the reincarnated Lucy is also there, the girls fall in love, and work together to defeat him. I’d say it feels more like Jennifer’s Body than Dracula, and the main characters, regardless of reincarnation, do not resemble Mina and Lucy from the original novel much (at best from the 1992 Coppola movie). The book is extremely funny (sometimes crudely so, but then high schoolers are crude), while also dealing rather seriously with the topic of internalized homophobia. There’s a lot of references to Dracula and even Carmilla: from the story being set in Carfax, Texas, and the girls going to a school called Millarca High to Dracula’s speech about his ancestors and past conquests in a hilarious context I won’t reveal because spoilers. It was a lot of fun to read, but also made me wish for a modern retelling in which the characters actually resemble their book counterparts, you know? (Yes, I know about Murray Mysteries, but I’m talking literary retellings specifically). Also, I’m going to be forever mad about Lucia's (reincarnated Lucy's) shitty cheating boyfriend being named after Quincey (Quentin Morse)... the disrespect... if you can't make lumina happen without turning the men of the Crew of Light into jerks, you're not trying hard enough.

The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova

This one is different from the others, as it is inspired rather by the legend surrounding the real Vlad the Impaler than by Stoker's novel, though some aspects of the ending reminded me of the latter a lot (also, in my opinion, Professor Turgut Bora has Big Van Helsing Energy). There are two main plots: one is a story told by a father to his daughter, about his journey in the 1950s to find his mentor who mysteriously disappears after revealing that he has researched Vlad Dracula in the past and experienced strange events that made him believe Dracula is still alive, and another told from the point of view of that daughter in the 1970s, when her father, in turn, also disappears under strange circumstances, and now she has to find him. It’s first and foremost a book about scholars (even Dracula himself is a kind of a scholar in it) so if you enjoy academic settings but not the standard dark academia tropes, check this one out - no pretentious kids murdering each other, just a lot of actual research (and some vampires). I found it a bit dragged-out at times, but in general it’s really gripping and well-researched, and I loved it a lot.

(to be continued?..)

#the deathless girls #kiran millwood hargrave #a dowry of blood #s. t. gibson #ex wives of dracula #georgette kaplan #the historian #elizabeth kostova #talk talk talk #gella talks dracula #dracula #bram stoker #i promised someone on tumblr to write about ex-wives of dracula and then decided that i might as well write about other related books too

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heniareth · 3 years ago

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I was tagged by @scribbledquillz for this ao3/fanfic author meme. Thanks so much for tagging me! Now, there’s only one thing (I’ll explain as soon as I answer the first question). But first, tags. I’m gonna tag @yukichouji and @the-iron-lion because I know you write and post, but I also know you’re busy, so please, only do it if you want to and have time ^^ Apart from that, if anybody who sees this wants to give it a go, consider yourself tagged! I’d love to read your answers, so feel free to tag me back

How many works do you have on AO3?

So, here’s the thing: I’ve never posted anything I have written XD One day, I will, but until then, I’ll answer the questions I can answer to the best of my ability ^^ I’ll modify some questions and keep the original ones for anybody who wants to answer those.

What’s your total AO3 fanfic words count?

123.211 words total (not counting one absolutely massive collaborative fanfic that I’m not gonna count rn)

More under the cut!

What are your top 5 fics by kudos?

Funny thing: thanks to this question I’ve rediscovered like ten folders with the beginnings of different fanfics I’d not opened in years. Thank you, @scribbledquillz for making me find my old writings! My main work rn is a Dragon Age Origins retelling (featuring Astala Tabris of course, though I have decided that the other origins--Surana, Amell, Brosca, Mahariel, the whole gang--also survive because yes.) I also have two separate unfinished pieces on Caduceus and Caleb of the Mighty Nein (Critical Role) respectively. Equally unfinished are one fanfic with Loki and his Jotunn heritage, and another about the extermination of mutants in the X-Men universe prior to X-Men: Days of Future Past. Both projects were ambitious, but exist mainly as ideas now. The longest (and oldest) fanfic I’ve ever written is a collaborative super self-indulgent self-insert fix-it fic for The Hobbit. I am quite proud of my younger self for pulling through with this one and sticking to it over such a long time. It is, sadly, also unfinished.

Do you Would you respond to comments? Why or why not?

I would definitely respond to comments. It’s polite. I’d also want to mirror back the joy a comment has inspired in me.

What’s the fic you’ve written with the angstiest ending?

The X-Men fanfic ends with the events of X-Men: Days of Future Past, which (spoiler?) means all the characters were going to die. But it’s okay because the movie fixes that ^^ But generally speaking, I’m not big on angsty endings. Angst is fine anywhere else.

What’s the fic you’ve written with the happiest ending?

I think it has to be either the The Hobbit fanfic or the Dragon Age Origins retelling. Characters I strongly identify with tend to get the happiest endings. Oh do I ever wonder why that is so

Do you write crossovers? If so, what is the craziest one you’ve ever written?

I’ve never written a crossover, but I’ve read some really cool ones. There was one featuring the Mighty Nein in the Undeadwood setting (both by Critical Role) that I wished had gone on longer bc it was so cool.

Have you ever recieved hate on a fic?

One of the good things about not posting anything: you don’t subject it to judgement ;D

Do you write smut? If so, what kind?

I have... never finished writing a smutty scene.

One day. One day. Zevran might be the push I need, who knows

Have you ever had a fic stolen?

Another one of the good things about not posting anything.

Have you ever had a fic translated?

I started translating several of them myself! :D

Have you ever co-written a fic before?

Oh yes! It’s an amazing experience. The creativity is squared. It is important though that all collaborators are on the same page about where the story goes, how the characters will be portrayed, etc. Especially if you give somebody your own OC or self-insert to write about.

What’s your all-time favourite ship?

There are a few that have a special place in my heart. Shadogast comes to mind, or Percy/Vex (from Critical Role). I love the Zevwarden ship because it’s a story about allowing feelings and romance and being stronger because of them (at least in my mind). I’m scared of what Fenris/Hawke might do to me when I get around to play DA2 XD

What’s a WIP that you want to finish but don’t think you ever will?

Definitely the The Hobbit fanfic. It is a glorious mess, and from time to time I go through the documents again... but it’s just a really big project and my collaborators are busy

What are your writing strengths?

Dialogue! Banter! I love it. I absolutely adore it. I make it way too long but it’s so much fun. I’m very much character driven I think, which is also why fanfic is so appealing to me. Actions speak louder than words, but characters shout through a megaphone. I also like pairing dialogue with very day-to-day, down-to-earth actions (like folding laundry). I feel like it allows me to convey so much more about the caracters than only through the words they say and the dialogue tags of “he said, she whispered”. Another thing I consider myself strong at is worldbuilding and generally keeping the practical things in mind. If it’s autumn, it’s probably gonna rain, the ground will be wet, they’ll sleep poorly and that’ll be reflected in heightened tempers and therefore more drama in the next scene. The fact that in canon a town has a harbor will have impacted this character who was born there. I like the details and puzzling the pieces together to make a world really come to life XD And, last, I have also recently learned that I write best non-chronologically, and to just write it all out and edit later. It does wonders to advance a project

What are your writing weaknesses?

Descriptions. I hardly write any at first. I normally see scenes very clearly in my head, but I... don’t communicate it XD I’m so character-driven that I kinda forget about the rest. I also tend to get too bogged down by the mundane? The fact that I like to play around with details of the worldbuilding and have it all make sense means I’ll write that scene where they break up camp even though it... doesn’t really add anything to the story apart from the fact that it happens and they indeed do break up camp. Things that I should tell, I show. It reflects in my wordcount.

What are your thoughts on writing dialogue in other languages in a fic?

I like it! I find it really interesting. I might even listen to the spoken dialogue via Google trnaslate XD The only reason it might bother me is that there’s just no elegant way to integrate the translation into the text on AO3. In a normal book, I’d go for a footnote, but in AO3 and with my chapter length, I won’t make anybody scroll down, read the translation, and scroll up again.

What was the first fandom you wrote for?

My first ever fanfic before I knew what fanfic was were things I wrote age 11 with a friend about the cowboy stories this German late 19th century writer Karl May wrote. We were obsessed with those novels

What’s your favourite fic you’ve written?

I gotta say the Hobbit fanfic. It was melodramatic, it was self-indulgent, it had everything. I remember staying up with my friends way into the wee hours of the morning discussing how we’d save Thorin and his nephews from certain death and why Kili was so obsessed with Tauriel after talking to her once XD

And here we go! Thank you so much again for tagging me, this was a lot of fun (and it makes me want to post something. Maybe the Dragon Age Origins retelling will make the cut? I do hope I finish it in the next months)

#me #writing #astala tabris #for fun

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shirlleycoyle · 3 years ago

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How 9/11 Became Fan Fiction Canon

Every fictional character you can think of has experienced 9/11 in fanfiction.

A Clone Wars veteran with two lightsabers is on United Airlines Flight 93 and prevents it from crashing. Ron and Hermione get caught up in the chaos as the towers fall. Buffy the Vampire Slayer and her friends watch the attacks unfold on TV from Sunnydale. We have spent 20 years trying to process what happened on 9/11 and its fallout, and that messy process can be tracked through the countless, sad, disturbing, and sometimes very funny fanfiction left across the internet.

Many of the fanfics written in the weeks and months following the 9/11 attacks seemed to directly respond to the news as it happened, processing the tragedy in real-time through the eyes of characters they loved. In the absence of a canon episode where Daria Morgendorffer paid respects to those lost, writing fanfic about these characters also experiencing trauma helped fans cope.

One YuGiOh fanfic published on fanfiction.net in May 2002 could have been ripped exactly from what this writer experienced that Tuesday morning. “It started as a normal day,” user Gijinka Renamon wrote. Yugi and his friends were in school, where their teacher informed them of the attacks and sent everyone home from school.

“After reading people’s 9/11 fics, I decided to write my own, and put a certain character in it. And Yugi and his pals were my first choice,” the author's note reads, explaining the connection they felt to United flight 93 and the World Trade Center attacks. Given that they lived in Pennsylvania, and “it’s close to New York, I felt really sad about it.”

Stitch, a fandom journalist for Teen Vogue, told Motherboard that this reaction to 9/11 is not at all uncommon in fandom.

"Fandom has always been a place that positions nothing as 'off limits,'" she said. "Historical tragedies like the Titanic sinking and atrocities like… all of World War 2 show up regularly across the past 30 years of people creating stories and art about the characters they love. So, on some level, it makes sense that 9/11 and the following 20-year military installation in the Middle East has joined the ranks of things people in different fandoms turn into settings for their fan fiction."

Reactions depicted in a handful of Buffy the Vampire Slayer fanfics published in the weeks after the attacks ring a little truer to the characters. “Tuesday, 11th September 2001,” written by Anna K, almost echoes the lyrics from “I’ve Got a Theory,” one of the songs in the musical episode that aired in November 2001. “We have seen the apocalypse. We have prevented it. Actually, we’ve prevented quite a few. So we know what they look like,” they write, before taking a darker turn. “They look a lot like…New York today.”

Killing demons and vampires doesn’t phase the Scooby Gang, but when preventable human death is brought into the picture, it’s gut wrenching.

“What am I supposed to do…When I can’t do anything to save the world?” Buffy cries into Spike’s chest, watching the attacks unfold on TV in a fanfic the author described as being “about feeling numb and helpless.”

In “Blood Drive,” Kirayoshi writes about Buffy and her friends saving a van full of donated blood meant for victims of the attacks from a group of thirsty vampires. One Buffy the Vampire Slayer fic even takes a blindly patriotic turn, where noted lesbian witch Tara McClay helps Xander hang an American flag from the window of the magic shop to make Anya feel better.

Experiencing 9/11 as a young teenager was overwhelming not just because of the loss of life. Almost immediately after the event itself, it was as if the entirety of American culture re-oriented itself towards an overtly jingoistic stance. As we get distance from the attacks, seeing the tone of television and movies from the early 2000s is jarring, and some have gone viral on Twitter. In the world of pop music, mainstream musicians like the Chicks, formerly known as the Dixie Chicks, were blacklisted from the radio while Toby Keith sang about putting a boot up the ass of terrorists. On the Disney Channel, a young Shia Labeouf reading a poem he supposedly wrote about the events. The poem concludes with the line, "it's awesome to be an American citizen."

In a world so completely saturated with this messaging, it is not surprising that fanfic authors started including 9/11 in their work so soon after the event. Even The West Wing had a strange, out of continuity, fanfic-esque episode where the characters reacted to 9/11. In some cases, it made sense that the characters in the stories would be close to or a part of the events themselves.

"For characters like John Watson or Captain America, the idea works to an extent," Stitch told Motherboard. "In the original Sherlock Holmes works and the 2011 BBC series, Watson had just returned from Afghanistan. For Captain America and other Marvel heroes, 9/11 was something that was addressed in-universe in The Amazing Spider-Man volume 2 #36. Technically, 9/11 is 'canon' to the Marvel universe."

In “Early Warning: Terrorism,” a fanfiction for the TV show Early Edition in which a man who mysteriously receives tomorrow's newspaper, predicting the future, avoids jingoism, but tries to precent 9/11 from happening. This fanfic remains unfinished; it’s unclear if the characters successfully prevent 9/11 in this retelling.

Largely in fanfic from the era just after 9/11, when many young authors were trying to emotionally grapple with it, the characters don't re-write or undo the events themselves. It's this emphasis on the reaction to tragedy that colors the fanfiction that features 9/11 going forward.

Although fanfiction authors have been writing about 9/11 consistently since soon after the event, whenever that fanfiction reaches outside of its intended audience, it looks bizarre.

A screenshot of a Naruto 9/11 fanfic on the Tumblr subreddit comes without any context, or even more than two lines and an author's note. It’s impossible to suss out if this falls into the category of sincere fanfic without the rest of the piece or a publication date, but modern-day commenters on the Reddit thread see it as classic Tumblr trash.

Screenshot from r/Tumblr

“Bin Laden/Dick Cheney, enemies to lovers, 10k words, slow burn,” one user joked in the replies, underscoring the weirdness of Naruto being in the Twin Towers by comparing it to a What If story about Cheney and Bin Laden slowly falling deeply in love.

It’s hard to tell how much of the 9/11 fanfic and fanart starting a few years after the attacks is sincere, and how much of it is ironic, and trying to make fun of the very concept of writing fanfiction about 9/11.

A 2007 anime music video (in which various clips, usually from anime, are cut together to music) that combines scenes from The Lion King with Linkin Park’s “Crawling” and clips from George Bush’s speeches immediately after the attacks feels like the perfect example of this. Even the commenters can’t seem to suss out if this person is a troll or not.

There’s no way that My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic 9/11 fanart could be serious, right? Especially if the description pays tribute to “some of the nation's most memorable buildings,” and features five of the main characters as child versions of themselves. The comments again are split between users thanking the artist for a thoughtful remembrance post, and people making their own headcanon for why Twilight Sparkle is surreptitiously absent from the scene.

Screengrab via DeviantArt

There’s Phineas and Ferb fanfic that combines a 9/11 tribute concert with flashbacks to Ferb being rescued from the towers as a baby, written on the 10th anniversary of the attacks. It jumps from introspection to lines like, “‘Quiet Perry the Platypus. I’m trying to listen to these kids singing a 9/11 tribute.’”

The author's notes make it more likely that they meant for this to be a tribute piece, but it doesn’t quite make sense until watching a YouTube dramatic reading of it from 2020, fully embracing the absurdity of it all.

“For me, 9/11 is synonymous with war. It completely changed the course of my life," Dreadnought, the author of a Captain America fanfic Baghdad Waltz that sees Steve Rogers and Bucky Barnes fall in love over the course of the war on terror, told Motherboard. "It’s the reason I joined the military, and I developed deep connections with people who would go on to deploy to Afghanistan and Iraq. These very much felt like my generation’s wars, perhaps because people I graduated high school with were the youngest folks eligible to serve at the time.”

Dreadnought told Motherboard that although they didn't deploy, their career has kept 9/11 and the trauma from it in their mind. After seeing that people who fantasize about Steve and Bucky getting together seemed particularly interested in reading fanfiction that related to 9/11, they decided to try their hand at it.

"I had to do something with all of that emotionally, and I’m admittedly a bit emotionally avoidant. So I learned through fic that it’s easier for me to process those feelings and the knowledge of all the awful stuff that can happen in war if I can turn it into something creative," Dreadnought said. "Give the feelings to fake people and then have those fake people give the feelings to readers!"

To Dreadnought, who is a queer man, the experience of researching and writing this was more cathartic than they first expected, especially as a way to navigate feelings about masculinity, military culture, and queer identity. But they said the research they did, which included watching footage of first responders at ground zero, was what helped them finally process the event itself.

"It was like a delayed horror, and it was more powerful than I expected it would be." Dreadnought said. "When I was eighteen, I was pretty emotionally divorced from 9/11; I just knew I wanted to do something about it. So coming back to it in my 30s while writing this fic, it was a very different experience. Even the research for this story ended up being an extraordinarily valuable exercise in cognitively and emotionally processing 9/11 and all of its second and third order effects."

Fanfiction that features 9/11 provides an outlet for people who still grapple with the trauma from that day. But Stitch warns that the dynamics of fandom and how it relates to politics can also create fiction that's less respectful and more grotesque.

"With years of distance between the stories written and the original events of 9/11, there seems to be some sort of cushion for fans who choose to use those events as a catalyst for relationships—and Iraq and Afghanistan for settings," Stitch said. "The cushion allows them room to fictionalize real world events that changed the shape of the world as we know it, but it also insulates them from having to think about what they may be putting into the world."

The tendency of turning these events into settings or backgrounds for mostly white, male characters to fall in love has the unintended effect of displacing the effects that the war on terror has had on the world over. Steve and Bucky might fall in love during the war on terror, but they would also be acting as a part of the American military in a war that has been criticized since it started. Fanfic writers in other fandoms have come under fire for using real world tragedy as settings for fic before. In the aftermath of the 2010 Haiti earthquake Supernatural fanfiction about the actors Jensen Ackles and Jared Padalecki going to the island to do aid became controversial within the fandom. There have also been fics where characters grapple with the death of George Floyd that is written in a way that displaces the event from the broader cultural context of race in America.

"A Captain America story where Steve Rogers is a 'regular' man who joins the US Army and 'fights for our freedom' post-9/11 is unlikely to deal with the war’s effect on locals who are subject to US military intervention," Stitch said. "It’s unlikely to sit with what Captain America has always meant and what a writer is doing by dropping Steve Rogers into a then-ongoing conflict in any capacity."

After enough time, “never forget” can even morph into “but what if it never happened?” A 19k+ word Star Wars alternate universe fanfic asks this question, wondering what would have unfolded if someone with two lightsabers was on United Flight 93. This fic, part of a larger fanfic series with its own Wikia, considers what would have happened if Earth was a military front in the Clone Wars.

In this version of events, a decorated general who served in the Clone Wars is able to take back control of Flight 93 before it crashes, landing safely and preventing even more tragedy from happening that day. In the end, all of the passengers who made harrowing last calls to their loved ones before perishing in a Pennsylvania field survive thanks to the power of the Force, and are awarded medals of honor by President Bush.

Twenty years after the attacks, it’s painful to think about what would have happened if people got to work 15 minutes later, or missed their trains that morning. There weren’t Jedi masters deployed to save people in real life, but for some of the fanfic writers working today, the world of Star Wars might feel just as removed as the world before September 11, 2001.

Fiction serves as a powerful playground for processing cultural events, especially generational trauma. The act isn't neutral though; a decade's worth of fanfiction that takes place on or around 9/11 shows how our own understanding of a traumatic event can shift with time.

How 9/11 Became Fan Fiction Canon syndicated from https://triviaqaweb.wordpress.com/feed/

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