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frankendykes-monster · 12 days ago

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Countdown to Halloween 2024 ranked

54. The Willies (1990)

53. Hell High (1987)

52. Face of The Screaming Werewolf (1964)

51. Terrifier (2016)

50. The Last Halloween (1991)

49. Cathy's Curse (1977)

48. The Last Shark (1981)

47. Godzilla × Kong: The New Empire (2024)

46. Creepozoids (1987)

45. The Horror of Frankenstein (1970)

44. Frankenstein's Castle of Freaks (1974)

43. Man Beast (1956)

42. Tourist Trap (1979)

41. Daughter of Dr. Jekyll (1957)

40. Fiend (1980)

39. Vampyros Lesbos (1971)

38. Devil Girl From Mars (1954)

37. Halloween Hall o' Fame (1977)

36. Nightmare (1981)

35. The Lost Skeleton of Cadavra (2001)

34. Peeping Tom (1960)

33. Violent Shit (1989)

32. Invaders From Mars (1986)

31. Eggshells (1969)

30. Night of The Ghouls (1959)

29. Scream, Blacula, Scream (1973)

28. The Strange World of Planet X (1958)

27. The Colossus of New York (1958)

26. The Scooby-Doo Project (1999)

25. Night of The Living Doo (2001)

24. Scooby-Doo! and The Reluctant Werewolf (1988)

23. The Great Bear Scare (1983)

22. The Wasp Woman (1995)

21. The Cyclops (1957)

20. Frankenstein and The Monster from Hell (1974)

19. The Tingler (1959)

18. The Boogey Man (1980)

17. The Dragon Lives Again (1977)

16. Quatermass and The Pit (1967)

15. The Brain That Wouldn't Die (1962)

14. Mad Love (1935)

13. The Alien Factor (1978)

12. The Walking Dead (1935)

11. Dr. Caligari (1989)

10. The Deadly Spawn (1983)

9. Invaders From Mars (1953)

8. Alucarda (1977)

7. Uzumaki (2024)

6. Sole Survivor (1984)

5. Nosferatu the Vampyre (1979)

4. Shock Waves (1977)

3. Frankenhooker (1990)

2. Invasion of The Body Snatchers (1978)

1. Godzilla vs. Mechagodzilla (1974)

What a productive year. October lasts all of 30 seconds which is why I have to start watching these in July if I want to make any decent headway (31 films is not enough). I desperately tried to make this a year of "have not seens" after last year's top spots being flooded with films I already loved; we mostly did it, mostly. Another top heavy year with relatively few abysmal entries, let's get started.

The Willies is the grand shitshow for this year. It feels like it's an evolutionary precursor to something like Goosebumps or Are You Afraid of The Dark?, but it mostly plays to gross out rather than scares. I don't normally care for anthology horror films to begin so to start off a film with brief segments like a woman eating a deep fried rat or a little white dog being microwave exploded and then doing extended stories on monsters hiding in the school bathroom does not do it for me. The most minimal points possible for some decent lighting and special effects but they are not enough by any means to make this worth watching. Stay away.

Onto the 1980's horror: Hell High is what happens when a film crew asks "what if we put a woman into a situation and didn't stop". I want to call it misogynistic torture porn, but I don't want to devalue that phrase for when I use it for a film later on here, but suffice to say a woman is tortured. Emotionally. For very little reason. Universal was right to block The Last Shark from US theatrical distribution. Not because it's a very blatant Jaws ripoff and they wanted to protect their copyright, but because it's abysmal and nobody should have to pay money to see this. I think the stock footage of sharks juxtaposed with the unmoving props between shots is funny, and some of the soundtrack elevates the experience, like the high shrill drones when the shark attacks a helicopter. Creepozoids is an odd one because 1987 was a bit late for a Mad Max/Escape from New York/Alien knockoff but also too early for some Full Moon tier/softcore porn adjacent 1990's production, so it loses out on both fronts. Fiend I'm struggling to even recall, I feel like Don Dohler had one movie in him (see: his plethora of alien invasion films) and him trying to branch out did him no favors. Nightmare is one I want to enjoy because it's beautifully shot but I feel like I've seen one too many slasher adjacent films at this point that include plot points like the killer having a troubled relationship with his mother or him moonlighting as a regular guy (still better than Pieces mind you). Same with Violent Shit. I feel like my tastes are pretty attuned to films that are just gore effects showcases but this one doesn't have any zany concepts to justify or compliment it, so it just falls flat.

The Boogey Man belongs to that tirade of Halloween knockoffs that flooded theaters up till about 1984 or so, but it puts in some extra effort like having a ghost be the main antagonist and a symbolic interest in mirrors, which is much more than could be asked of films like Terror Train which came out the same year. Dr. Caligari is the obligatory "this is what Tim Burton thinks he's doing" film of this year; its sets and its performances are perfectly otherworldly to a humorous degree. It's something of a quasi-sequel to the 1920 film but its relationship with logic is attuned to such a frequency that it's not a hindrance. Very hard to objectively quantify, you're either in the target audience or you aren't, so of all films here take its tier placement the least seriously. The Deadly Spawn is such a gloriously gross film. The house it's shot in isn't supposed to be disgusting on purpose, it's just one of those century's old buildings where I feel like I'd revulse if I had to touch any surface, and that's before fleshy alien monsters break in and start shredding people to bits. Sole Survivor is one of those magical "missing link" horror films, we've finally found what comes between Carnival of Souls and Final Destination. The actual scares in this film are incredibly minimal as it prioritizes atmosphere that balances between comfort and unease, something incredibly rare for films of virtually any genre. Don't go in expecting ghosts and you'll be pleasantly surprised.

Taking a brief-ish detour to the 1960's, Face of The Screaming Werewolf is one of those films I'm more angry at than anything because it's one of those films that's just the combined stray footage of multiple previous films. Rare for these to be produced in the western market (most of the examples I think of are from (south)east Asia) but it's infuriating nonetheless to see something only to discover it's a worse version of multiple better things you could be seeing. Peeping Tom is our "most overrated" entry winner, I don't know why so many people applaud this one, I feel like barely anything of substance happens to such a degree that any ounce of suspense you could draw from this just disappears, and what a shame with the concept at play here that feels as if it would take another decade for everyone else to catch up. Eggshells is the directorial debut of Tobe Hooper and while cohesive narrative is virtually nonexistent here, the amount of experimental editing keeps this going throughout the entire runtime, you can definitely see where The Texas Chainsaw Massacre came from down the line. I feel like I'm somewhat disappointed with Quatermass and The Pit (not sure what "The Pit" refers to now that I think of it) mostly becasue the first two Quatermass films are among the best 1950's science fiction films. All three are theatrical remakes of television mini-series and that's most felt here with how so much of the film takes place in the single location of an unearthed Martian ship in the heart of London. I do love that we have a science fiction film positing that humans are partly the genetic ancestors of aliens prior to people taking that seriously with books like Chariot of The Gods. The Brain That Wouldn't Die is magical, sometimes those oft hated 1950's/1960's science fiction films have something to give back to the rest of us. Here it's a man so obsessed with his own work that he sees his wife's death as an opportunity to try and kill other women so that he can use their bodies as grounds to bring her back. Which sounds like something else I watched...

...said film being Frankenhooker, which has largely the same plot but now functions as a dark comedy. God. I hate so much that the capitalist enclosure on the production and distribution of film prevented us from getting so much more from Frank Henenlotter. The man is one of the best to ever direct horror, and anyone who thinks this film or any of his other work are "bad movies" just flat out do not know what they're talking about. I think compared to Basket Case and Brain Damage however, Frankenhooker is the one that "keeps giving". You think you've seen everything the film has to offer and then something like a hotel room full of women combusts as they succumb to the effects of exploding crack or Elizabeth (the titular character) has her head punched back and starts spewing smoke and electricity everywhere. Film is a magical medium of art.

Terrifier is what I held onto "misogynistic torture porn" for. No narrative, no character work, just opportunities to show Art the Clown dismember and murder women in revolting ways. It's one of those films that vindicates everyone that doesn't like this genre and makes me wonder what I'm doing sitting side by side with people that like this shit. I think Art cutting off a woman's breasts and scalp and attaching them to his nude body to disguise himself as another prior female victim of his is when my mouth went agape and audibly asked what the fuck am I watching, cannot stress enough how much it takes to get that reaction out of me. There's an upfront showcase that Terrifier knows that it's trash and revels in it, I mean there's an early scene where we see Art has spelled out his name in his own shit, and I'm not sure how to interpret that other than I feel like I might be landing in a Duchamp's Urinal trap. For reasons that allude even me I am still eyeing the prospect of watching both sequels.

I think my overall reaction to Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire is one of "whatever". A passably bad film is a definite improvement from the abomination that was Godzilla vs. Kong but it's admittedly easy to rise up when you start from the bottom. Adam Wingard more or less sucked all the joy I could muster out of the Monsterverse, I truly do not care anymore. If anything can be gleaned from this film it's that this is a film made to reconfirm people's existing biases of "I hate the boring human scenes, I'm only watching this for the monsters." Kong is the best actor in this film because the special effects team have to have him actually emote in response to a given situation, which is more than could be asked of anyone actually on the set, apparently. It's a miracle that this came out in the shadow of Godzilla Minus One than on its own terms.

The glut of 1950's science fiction films are a perennial staple of the Halloween countdown but they don't have a huge showing this year. Man Beast is one I'm going to confuse with all the other yeti movies of the decade though having a main antagonist that's actually a human hybrid gets it some points for originality. Daughter of Dr. Jekyll infuriates me because women who become monsters in film never get to be "hideous" and "scary" like their male counterparts, I'm throwing tomatoes at this one. Devil Girl From Mars is mostly memorable for having a giant clunky robot a la Gort, but the actual titular antagonist doesn't "serve cunt" enough to warrant interest, she should have taken notes from The Astounding She-Monster. The Lost Skeleton of Cadavra is an honorable mention because it's a feature-length pastiche of the z-grade films of this era. I don't think it's particularly funny and I kind of wish they lampooned a "good" film of this type rather than make something that fits in line with the middling genre efforts. Night of The Ghouls is the last horror film directed by Ed Wood and I feel like I enjoy it slightly more than Plan 9 From Outer Space. It's far more competent in producing that lulling insomniac reaction than Wood's prior efforts but I still don't "get" the attention his work consistently gets. The Strange World of Planet X gets a special pass from me just because the finale has a bunch of giant bugs attacking stuff. Moving on.

The Colossus of New York is an oddball modern Frankenstein of sorts with a guy being transformed into a giant robot and struggling to maintain some attachment to his former life. It doesn't always work but once again giant clunky robots are giant clunky robots. I'm something of a Bert I. Gordon apologist so something like The Cyclops is going to hit harder for me than it does for most people. I just like people wandering around Bronson Cave and poor matte shots of giant animals moving in and out of frame, okay? The Tingler was the oddest revisit I've had in a while. I don't think I fully "get" William Castle's approach to film but what stuck out to me is how this one takes place in largely two locations and how Vincent Price's character is kind of the antagonist, experimenting on animals, himself, and other people (resulting in a murder) to get at the Tingler. Much like in House on Haunted Hill I'm not wholly sure how some of the spooky things in this film actually work and I don't think I'm meant to, adding to the bizarre nature of the entire series of affairs here.

Invaders From Mars...oh yes. One of the absolute best 1950's science fiction films is also the most lyrical and dreamlike. It reads at times like a Soviet parody of an American child's story would be like; a boy sees every institution designed to protect him as a child and as an American turn against him on account of some nefarious foreign invader, so his only course of action is to get the US military involved. It plays out so well because it's a POV piece from a young boy, which eases over any leaps in logic both in terms of form and content of this film. Which is more than can be said of the remake, part of the diminishing returns of Tobe Hooper's then contract with Cannon. The film largely follows the same plot structure but decenters the frame through which we see it unfold giving it a "the military is legit" vibe. It also is just a bit more mean-spirited in ways that are designed to taunt the audience versus the original film's more hardened edge to it. I think a great summation of the difference between the two is that the 1953 film had Martian bodyguards that are clearly guys in fuzzy green pajama suits, but they're more threatening than the ones in the 1986 film which are giant quadruped Stan Winston monsters. I digress. Had this come out 20 years later it would be classified as part of the wave of "why are they remaking everything?"

Speaking of remakes, briefly want to mention the 1995 Wasp Woman. It's The Wasp Woman for the 1990's, now with explosions and softcore sex scenes. I can't wholly defend the original 1959 film despite my affinity for it, so let's just say this one is of comparable quality.

The 1930's are a delightful treasure trove for horror but sadly we only have two up for offer. Mad Love makes me curious as to how other adaptations of The Hands of Orlac handle the material; I was convinced a guy got his head surgically reattached and with artificial hands to boot. Always good to see Colin Clive and Peter Lorre. The Walking Dead feels like a dry run for what Boris Karloff would do later that decade in the much better The Man They Could Not Hang, just with him as the victim here and not the mastermind. Truly some of his best work as an actor as he has to float through the world not being allowed to live or die, that shit sticks with you.

We watched a scant few Halloween specials proper, I always feel like I want to watch every Halloween special possible but sometimes the enthusiasm leaves me. The Last Halloween is trash, but that's on me for thinking something made for very small children would appeal to me as an adult. It crams far too much into its brief 22 minute runtime, so the only thing that manages to escape into the zone of interest is that the CGI aliens are actually very well done for a 1991 television production, had this been all about them (voiced by Hanna Barbara stalwarts such as Frank Welker and Don Messick, along with Paul Williams), this would have been far more tolerable. Halloween Hall o' Fame is the first of apparently several Disney television specials that repackaged their theatrical shorts inside a live-action framing device. It's quaint but this format would live and die by the quality of the shorts included; I'm not intimately familiar with Disney's back catalogue solely because they've barely released anything on home media but I absolutely adore the one where Pluto goes to Hell and is put in a kangaroo court with cats on the jury. I feel like the novelty of The Scooby-Doo Project and Night of The Living Doo have carried them along further than their actual quality have, stray artifacts from when Warner Bros was briefly testing to see if Scooby could be an adult property now, doomed to the same fate as Harvey Birdman: Attorney at Law. The latter of these two specials made me come to terms with the fact that David Cross was "a big deal" at some point. The Great Bear Scare is the winner here. How could you not like an animated special where bears have to stand up and be brave against an oncoming horde of Halloween monsters? What makes this an oddity (sort of an obligation for me and Halloween specials) is that this is animated 100% without in-betweens, so every character in every scene cross-dissolves in real time between their keyframes. Depending on who you are it could be ridiculously distracting or make you step back and appreciate how hard animation is.

Clearing out our remaining animated showings, I felt like I would really get back into Scooby-Doo and The Reluctant Werewolf. In the mid-late 2000's when Cartoon Network was desperately trying to excise showing anything from their backlogs, this is one of those films that was on repeat constantly as midday viewings especially over summer. It's just so far removed from what Scooby-Doo "proper" is that it's an enigma, I go to bat to defend each of the "red shirt Shaggy" movies but this is brain melting at times, there is no mystery to solve, monsters are real, Fred/Daphne/Velma are completely absent, half the film is dedicated to a drag race, it goes on and on and on that I feel numb after a bit. Uzumaki...it's good. I feel like the fact that this was in production hell for five years following the first trailer release made me stop caring so all the shenanigans regarding the reaction to the animation dropping off (the production team got screwed over, how the fuck do studios not have the money for FOUR EPISODES, David Zlasv strikes again) brushed off of me. Regardless of that I think the actual pacing would have restricted this given how much sequential material from the manga now has to occur concurrently. It gets by solely because it's Uzumaki and as such it channels such a foreboding sense of dread and despair that is unreal. This more than anything is the true epitome of cosmic horror because there is no "source" or "identity" behind the threat that is warping reality around you, there is nothing to oppose and be defiant against, which was true of the manga and it remains true here. Bravo.

The 1970's prove to be another sporadic decade for horror. Cathy's Curse proves that no matter how good technical effects are, do not watch any Carrie knockoffs. Blah. Frankenstein's Castle of Freaks...you took a movie where a Frankenstein monster fights a caveman and made it boring, congratulations. In the interim between 2021's viewing of Curse of Frankenstein and now, I've made the effort to watch the entirety of the Hammer Frankenstein series. They make for a brilliant reinterpretation of the source material with Frankenstein effectively being antagonist: he kills consistently for his experiments, which often time warp and alter people's identities along with their bodies. The "holy triumvirate" of the series as referred to by me would be The Revenge of Frankenstein, Frankenstein Created Woman, and Frankenstein Must Be Destroyed, all for showcasing new stuff that can be done with the character and any prior influences such as the Universal films being absent. Then comes The Horror of Frankenstein, a soft remake of Curse of Frankenstein, with Terence Fischer and Peter Cushing both absent. It's a dry and tedious affair that just rehashes what Curse already did, just now with a black comedic angle and no real consequences for Frankenstein himself. It's easily the worst of the series and why I'm glad Hammer backtracked for Frankenstein and The Monster From Hell. This is probably the first instance in film history where a sequel has consciously ignored a preceding remake, and while it's not wholly original either, it's comfort food for fans of this series, and now employs a darker more claustrophobic setting in an ~insane asylum~. Not the best ending for the series, but Hammer, along with Toho and Ray Harryhausen's efforts with Columbia, sort of represented the "old" styles of horror that were pretty quickly being replaced as the decade went on. This film specifically came out the same year as the likes of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, it was a transitional period where what horror once was was cast away. Still not sure why the monster in this film looks like a Neanderthal man but that's just me.

Tourist Trap desperately tries to be one part Psycho and one part Texas Chainsaw, and it admittedly starts off with a nice hook of animatronic puppets being the main focus of the film, but it falls through the cracks and just becomes another random 1970's horror film. Vampyros Lesbos makes me realize that my infatuation with Zombi 3 last year did not mean I'm suddenly infatuated with Lucio Fulci's overall filmography, exceptions are not the rule. Come to think I don't think I've seen a single lesbian vampire film that I'm smitten with, how do you make this boring and not sexy at all, fuck you. Scream, Blacula, Scream is the obligatory Blacula cash-in sequel, nothing worthwhile to see here and none of the charm and significance of the first film is carried forward here, sigh. "DEDICATED TO THE MILLIONS THAT LOVE BRUCE LEE," The Dragon Lives Again is one of the plethora of films featuring Lee impersonators following his death, showing Lee in Hell as he has to find a way back to Earth while also fighting off The Godfather, Dracula, The Man with No Name, Emanuele, Zatoichi, and James Bond while allying himself with Popeye and Dr. Who. No I am not making any of this up, yes, this film was made with very little money so it sounds far more interesting than it actually ends up being, but it's a cute film, I can't be mad at a film made for me, nor can a movie showing Popeye eat spinach to fight mummies or Bruce Lee knocking out Dracula with his "third leg" be something you don't go out of your way to watch.

The Alien Factor is Don Dohler's first and best film. I love the fact that a dozen people made a small scale alien invasion/slasher film in their backyards with actually solid special effects for something that was probably made on the weekends. You can't hate this film, it's made from pure love for what was already decades old genre material. Had some of the script and acting been tightened up this could have become one of the more widely recognized independent films of the decade. Oh...Alucarda. I hate when they make a lesbian devil worshiper film between girls coming to terms with theirs sexual orientation and then they aren't the heroes of the story. We've come a long way since then.

Given that the Eggers film is still a few months out, I'd say Nosferatu the Vampyre is my preferred interpretation of the story (not my favorite Dracula adaptation overall mind you). Let me say that I think remaking Nosferatu is ridiculous solely because you're just doing Dracula, again, just with some stylistic details brought on from a specific prior Dracula. But this film goes all out. It's one of those times where I'm reminded of why slowly paced films with shots that last minutes at a time are so great. It relies very little on narrative (the extent/nature of Dracula's power of the geographic barriers between Wismar and Transylvania go unexplained) but you get so thoroughly sucked into the setting and the characters that you can't complain. This has undeniably the best portrayal of Mina in any Dracula film, she's effectively the protagonist by the second half and each of her encounters with Dracula are on her terms, he's effectively powerless against her even if she ensures they both die in the end. Also, rats. So many rats. Everywhere. The plague is in town.

Shock Waves is just great 1970's horror. Shoot on location, hold the camera in hand the entire time, do it cheap, have a dreamy distant narrator, and make it grisly. I do find the concept of Nazis engineering platoons of super soldiers and we only seeing just the one in this film is probably the scariest thing about it, it invites you to think about what else is happening out of sight. My favorite first watch of the year.

1978's Invasion of The Body Snatchers is also a phenomenal remake. This one is difficult for me to talk about because it just pushes all my buttons, I felt like I wanted to cry throughout the duration of this viewing, it is an incredibly mean film. Someone you know just one day turns on you, and then everyone else follows suit. You think you know your surroundings and your city but everything is flipped upside down and you can't even describe why. From the very start when you see the premature pods land on Earth it's made immediately clear that no one is making it out of here, it was too late as soon as it started.

But there can only be one #1, and this year it's Godzilla vs. Mechagodzilla. Another instance of "nothing is going to beat this" as soon as I rewatched it. I feel like I'm alone in considering this one of the absolute best in the series, I feel like between the espionage and exploration and blood and laser fights that this is just one of the films that reminds you of why we make and why we watch movies, you get to have some semblance of every possible human emotion watching this. There's not much more you can ask for.

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#long post #flashing lights #blood tw #Youtube

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feminist-cult-following · 5 months ago

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ranking each song on ttpd: the anthology by how lesbian I interpret them as

1. guilty as sin — literally so lesbian. the yearning, the fantasizing, the pining, the insane amount of religious imagery? “what if the way you hold me is actually what’s holy?” “I choose you and me religiously?” I SAW GAY SO I SAID GAY !!

2. but daddy I love him — the word “him” in the title be damned this is one of the most lesbian songs her in whole discography. the romance being forbidden by the whole town is enough for me. I’m just picturing two women in the south who are deeply in love but stuck in a small, conservative town. so so good and so so lesbian

3. fresh out the slammer — I always listen to this from the perspective of a woman who once struggled with internalized homophobia and forced herself into a relationship with a man. once she’s able to accept herself she goes back to her true love. I like to think to it as a sort of sequel to the way I loved you

4. the tortured poets department — I’m not even a gaylor but this song will always be about phoebe bridgers in my mind (just jokes people). but seriously this song is so gay. the title of tortured poets is reserved for lesbians

5. the bolter — for the girlies who dated men before realizing they were a lesbian and always found themselves sabotaging the relationship without knowing why

6. down bad — this is about your first lesbian heartbreak. the one that feels shifted your entire world off its axis and changed you forever. the heartbreak is one you never get over.

7. the prophecy — whatever you do, don’t think about this from the perspective of either a young girl or an older woman who’s too afraid to come out and fears she’ll never find love. it’ll shatter your heart into a million tiny pieces

8. who’s afraid of little old me? — I love to think of this song from the perspective of a deeply repressed woman with religious trauma that just came out. she grew up being taught who she was was a sin and all of these feelings of rage and resentment have been bubbling up in her for years. it makes for a very cathartic listening experience

9. the alchemy — okay okay hear me out. I will defend this placement with my life! is it about a man who plays football, arguably the most heterosexual sport there is? yes. but you have to get creative with it. think cheerleader and basketball player who aren’t supposed to be together but can’t fight their feelings! “who are we to fight the alchemy?” is one of the gayest lines she’s ever written and I will die on this hill!

10. peter — the fact that it’s named after a dude doesn’t change the fact that this always makes me think of a girl singing to her closeted ex lover. the yearning, the pining, it’s very lesbian

11. I hate it here — really gay if you interpret the secret gardens, lunar valleys, and inner romanticism through a lesbian lens

12. look in people’s windows — another one that’s really only just because I played it on repeat in my breakup era

13. imgonnagetyouback — this is so that one ex you can’t stay away from because she changed your whole life. it’s about that girl who’s like a drug (and it’s how I manifested my ex back)

14. thanK you aIMee — potentially controversial spot in the ranking but if you think about it as a woman singing to her ex homoerotic friendship it makes sense

15. florida!!! — any collab taylor does with a woman automatically earns lesbians points idc what it’s about

16 the black dog — not overtly gay but this one was on repeat during my breakup era so it will always be gay to me

17. the albatross — this one vaguely gives me lesbian vibes if you interpret it as the narrator speaking to her closeted lover

18. chloe or sam or sophia or marcus— this one is more of a treat for our bisexuals!! lesbians love you mwah !

19. cassandra — the vibes are there but not enough for me to justify putting it above any of the other songs

20. fortnight — as much as I would love to defend this as a lesbian song the lyric “my husband is cheating” and the post malone feature make that hard to do

21. loml — a heartbreakingly beautiful song but not very lesbian

22. the smallest man who ever lived — even though I think of my ex when I listen to this it still has the word man in the title which knocks it down by many lesbian points

23. my boy only breaks his favorite toys — “boy” in the title unfortunately makes this drop a lot of spots

24. so high school — absolute banger but very straight

25. how did it end? — beautiful song but there’s definitely gayer stuff on this album

26. so long, london — all I can think about is joebless when I hear this so no lesbian points for yogurt boy

27. I can do it with a broken heart — this is more girlhood than lesbianism

28. the manuscript — great but very heterosexual I fear

29. I can fix him (no really I can) — this is practically the straight woman’s national anthem

30. clara bow — also not lesbian, but definitely the album’s most underrated song

31. robin — not lesbian at all, but cute song!

#taylor swift #the tortured poets department the anthology #the tortured poets department #ttpd #taylor #swift #swifties #eras tour #ranking #lyric analysis #lyric interpretation #lesbian #lesbian pride #lesbian visibility #live love lesbians

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algoreithms · 4 months ago

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A little question for you, if you had to rank the alien movies from best to least favourite? ALSO I LOVE YOUR ART, always happy to see your post

hehehe first off THANK YOUUU I appreciate it so much <3 secondly, my ranking is gonna get me creme brulee'd, flamebroiled if you will, past the first one, but its below the cut lol

1) alien

it's literally a classic and made me develop a love for sci-fi horror that has been going strong for most of my life lol. i feel it's a given it has to be my number 1

2) alien: resurrection

i know it sucks so bad and makes no damn sense canonically sometimes but... it's campy and it has wormed its way into my heart over the years. i could genuinely watch it 7 times in a day and not get bored. i also love how queer it is. ripley 8 and call should've kissed and johner and vriess DID kiss. as a bi trans dude, i definitely love those aspects bc they feel special to me. no matter how much it sucks as an actual entry in the alien anthology, i love it like an ugly christmas sweater

3) prometheus

even though it's more its own thing than a true alien movie, I adore the religious themes, scenery, and I wish there had been more exploration with shaw's character before she got dissected like a high-school science lab frog. but alas.

4) aliens

aka the second one that's named in a very confusing way. I loooove the ambiguity of how sapient the xenomorphs are in this movie. "what do you mean, they cut the power?" is still so fucking scary to this day and it's my favorite movie depiction of the xenos. it's also the first use of the term xenomorph in the franchise I think. dope ass movie, I also love ripleys funky haircut and the theme of the struggles of motherhood

5) alien: covenant

it's not my favorite because when I first watched it the pacing was very jarring compared to other slower alien movies, but I've grown quite fond of it and it's honestly iconic. I find myself thinking about specifically Covenant David's weird ass soooooo often he's such a disconcerting character.

6) alien³ or alien 3 or alien cubed or whatever

not super fond of alien 3. it's the weakest to me and the one i always forget about personally. ripleys character arc confused me and continues to confuse me even after multiple rewatches, but I will say that her look in the film is iconic and I love the buzzcut. sigourney weaver the woman that you are. not much else to say about it as once again to me it's entirely forgettable

tl;dr I live laugh love the alien anthology even if my movie preferences are deranged. ty for asking <3

#alien resurrection they could never make me hate you...#but ty ty ty for the ask i love answering things like this <3 even if im gonna get flamed #ask #annaglitchlol

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hotpinkrathian · 7 months ago

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TPD and LoK headcannons?

HELLO ANON I LOVE YOU THANK YOU FOR FILLING MY INBOX

Okay but I have been thinking about the practical uses of TPD for LoK since its release (I've listened to the entire anthology like 5 times now) and some of my *thoughts* are a little disorganized but here they are as they come.

Kya watching Lin and Tenzin grow together and become a couple has her DOWN BAD and I would like to write something in the future, maybe a one shot drawing inspiration from this.

Fresh Out the Slammer is so Suyin/Kuvira coded, whether it's platonically or romantic idc but to me it is THEM. Specifically after the show when Kuvira is feeling empty and alone and trying to get back into her old life but she has to accept that it's not going to work and she has to start all over again.

I Can Do it With A Broken Heart- immediately thought of Asami. Not because of her relationship with Mako or Korra but because of the relationship with her dad. That was such a painful moment for her in the series and sometimes I feel like it wasn't shown enough, her grief was never really processed and maybe she struggles a bit in the beginning. Of course Korra helps her through it : )

Kyalin The Alchemy need I say more.

I feel like there's big potential for an angsty Lin-centered one shot inspired by Cassandra. I haven't fully developed this yet but it's brewing.

thanK you aIMee is another one I feel like would work well with Kuvira. I could see an angsty piece about her slowly building up to the events of season 4. I feel like maybe she has some growing resentment over her childhood and maybe that gets taken out on Suyin or just the Beifongs in general.

For shits and giggles Korra sing smallest man who ever lived to Zaheer because my guy short as fuck

And for non shits and giggles "Who's Afraid of Little old Me" this is AVATAR KORRA. This song I see in the moment before she takes down Kuvira. Like Kuvira is cocky and is convinced she's already won because she's bested korra multiple times now. And Korra is a force of nature. There's room for a powerful dissonance there between season 3 where she as the Avatar is a target. Zaheer wants to get rid of the avatar to restore chaos because the Avatar is too powerful. Korra doesn't understand this, she would never use her powers for evil, she would never use them to hurt people... until she has to. She IS the Avatar, she is the strongest being in the world, and part of her healing process is claiming that power. I can see a conversation going something like this:.

Korra: I don't get it, Asami. It's like no matter what I do, how many times I show these people I'm on their side... someone is always out to get me. It's like they're afraid of me or something.

Asami: Korra, you are the Avatar. The only thing standing between them and their fucked-up ideal "world", is you.

Korra: I don't want people to be scared of me, I want them to feel safe. To feel like I'm an ally.

Asami: and you are, but... I don't know, Korra. Maybe it's not all bad if some people fear you. If Kuvira, or Zaheer had been more afraid maybe... maybe things would've turned out differently.

And then the bad guy is all "you think you scare me?" And Korra is all

"No, but I should."

(I could also see this trope working well with Rangshi but you requested LOK )

Annyywwwaaaayyyyyyy

I hope I delivered

#legend of korra #kyalin #lin beifong #korrasami #avatar the last airbender #kuvira #suyin #suvira #the tortured poets department #tpd #lok #team avatar #A united front may or may not have a super angsty battle scene inspired by the aforementioned WAoLOM #rangshi

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the-wip-project · 1 year ago

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SloMo WriNo: Q & A

A few questions about how the SloMo WriNo challenge have come in, so here's the answers to a few of the easy ones. (Don't worry, more complicated questions will be getting their own posts!)

When does it start? The official start date is November 1st.

However this challenge is about you finding your own long term writing rhythm. So if there’s some reason why you can’t begin for a week, a month, or even until next year, that’s fine. Feel free to jump in at any time, and even if you feel like you can’t ‘officially’ start your novel just yet, perhaps you can still begin trying out writing in a SloMo way. You may find yourself easing into things anyway!

Is this plan/event supposed to be just for novels?

Definitely not! I’ve had one person express their intention to write a series of novellas, another to do a second draft, and others plan on writing fanfiction. It’s for whatever you want to write but have been struggling with.

Do those min/max brackets apply for everything one would write in the year? Ideally yes! At least when it comes to writing you’re doing for your own self. (Writing for work and school obviously need to get done at whatever pace you’re required to do them!) The goal here is to establish writing as a long term sustainable habit. Now as time goes on you will probably want to tweak your minimum and maximum word counts, as you get more familiar with your own process. Please go ahead and do that, and then keep on writing within that adjusted ideal zone.

I’m kinda burned out. Should I even try to attempt this? That’s a tough one, and really something you need to answer for yourself based on your current situation and emotional state. If you do decide to attempt the challenge, I recommend keeping your goal word counts (at least initally) at a level that feels ‘too easy’ and taking at least two days each week off writing. If it starts feeling like too much, dial it back even further, or take some time off. This challenge will be going on all year, so you can hop in and out whenever you need to. No guilt needed!

Who are you and why are you claiming to be an expert on this stuff anyway? Actually no one has been so mean as to say that, but there’s been a little confusion about who I am and why I’m posting here. My name is Maree, and Barbex (the one who actually runs this blog) was kind enough to help me out with this challenge and let me post on the WIP blog and the WIP discord. (you can find my own blog at mareebrittenford.)

I completed my first novel in 2015, and since then I’ve written 8 novels, as well as assorted shorter stories and a few (okay maybe more than a few) fanfics. I have managed to publish 4 of the novels and a few short stories have made their way into magazines and anthologies. Now I don’t claim to be a great writer, but the one thing I’m confident of is that I’ve become very good at is Finishing My Stuff. (And finishing stuff with ADHD is a very special skill!)

I created this challenge to share all my tips and tricks, and hopefully help other people also Finish Their Stuff.

If you have any other questions about the challenge (or for me personally) you can reblog with comments, send an ask, or hop onto the WIP discord

#slomowrino #questions about the challenge #writing

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mr-easybake · 29 days ago

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Reading check in

We are halfway through October and I have finished 5 books!

Before the Coffee Gets Cold - a cute semi-anthology that follows the personal stories of four people and why they choose to go back in time to visit someone they know, but they must come back to the present before the coffee gets cold. The stories were cute and I liked the concept - 7/10

An Enchantment of Ravens - a perfectly fall romance between a human girl and the fairy prince of fall. When our human girls gets swept into the fairy land to go to trial, the long journey there brings her and the fall prince dangerously close, for it is forbid for a human and a fairy to love each other. I WAS HOOKED, the romance was so sweet and I was invested, I finished it in 2 days! - 9/10

The Shining - a family of 3 have fallen on hard times, a father who is a recovering alcoholic with a bad temper, a distraught mother struggling to to what's best for her son, and a 5 year old boy with a gift: the shining. They move to a hotel for the winter for the father's new job, as they slowly become isolated and the hotel gets stranger, they descend into madness. I did not like this book very much, I don't understand why Stephen King puts so much unnecessary racism and sexual content into his books. I didn't like the pacing of the story and was not very interested in what would happen next. - 4/10

Fantastic Land - when hurricane Sadie hits an amusement part with employees still sheltering on location, the situation quickly becomes a lord of the flies tribal war as they are trapped in Fantastic land. Teenagers start killing each other from day one and continue to have full blown battles between the 5 tribes. I really liked this book, the concept was right up my alley and the way that the story was told through "interviews" was cool. - 7/10

In the Company of Witches - When a guest and our main characters inn mysteriously dies, she must find out who did it in order to clear her aunts name. Throughout her investigations she slowly works though her loss of her husband and regains her magical powers. The town gets more suspicious of her aunt with no other person to accuse and the town starts to suspect the family of being witches. This book was a cozy mystery taking place in fall and while you can mostly guess who the killer truly was, the ending was a worthwhile wait and the character development is so meaningful. 8/10

#autumn #fall #long reads #reading #books #books and reading #bookblr

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otaku-tyriq · 8 months ago

Note

Because someone already asked those questions about your fav anime/manga, can I ask your top 5 favorite western animations (can be movies or series)? Why love them?

Certainly you can dear anon ^7^

So some of my favourite western animations of all time include

1) Tangled

Why do I love it so much? Well it has been my absolute comfort movie since I was like 10 years old and watched this movie in theatres with my older sister. I also highly relate to Rapunzel, both due to her personality and her experiences with Mother Gothel. Also to this day I fully stand by the believe that Flynn/Eugene and Rapunzel’s relationship is the single most romantic and beautifully written Disney couple in this studio’s entire history. Lastly: THE ANIMATION IS GORGEOUS! And I think few people understand just how ground breaking this movie was in terms if 3D animation as back then animating hair, and most importantly that amount of hair that Rapunzel has, was a nightmare to animate in 3D, so the Studio had to essentially come up with an entirely new animation program specifically for the protagonist’s hair to move around in a natural way.

2) Lego Monkie Kid

Created by the Australian Studio Flying Bark Productions, the same Studio behind Rise of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, this show means EVERYTHING to me. Because one thing rarely talk about on Tumblr: I am OBSESSED with Mythology. Greek Mythology, Roman, Mythology, Yoruba Mythology, Chinese Mythology, Norse Mythology etc. you name it. Like my bookshelf is nothing but Manga, history books and an astronomical amount of mythology and fairytale books. The show follows MK a hyper and optimistic boy as he is chosen to be the Monkey King Sun Wukong’s successor and learning to be a hero. So as you may have gathered this show is not only inspired by chinese mythology but essentially it’s equivalent of what Percy Jackson is to Greek Mythology. What I adore the most about this show are its characters and the GORGEOUS ANIMATION! I swear the fighting animation especially in this cartoon is smoother than butter!

3) The Owl House

Aka "What if Harry Potter was not written by a biggot”. If you’ve seen the pinned post on my blog, you know that Lumity is one of my absolute favourite sapphic ships. But honestly this ship is only the peak of the iceberg for why i adore this show. The beautiful artstyle, Luz’s character arc over the course of the show, EDA SIMPLY EXISTING AND BEING FANTASTIC, the beautiful world building and magic system, Emperor Beloz being an absolute irredeemable asshole in the most entertaining and bone chilling way. Srsly if you can dear Anon, give this show a watch.

4) Infinity Train

An Anthology Series who up until recently you could watch on Max HBO. This show is both delightfully funny and absolutely gut-wrenching and dark. The show essentially follows on a new set of characters each season who all end up getting trapped on a train with an infinite number of cars and they cannot leave the train until they essentially come to terms with and/or face some sort of trauma or other psychological issue they may be struggling with.

And as you may have guessed those themes of working through psychological issues is something that my mentally ill ass highly relates to. Not to mention these are some of the most well handled depictions of mental illnesses in animation i have seen in years. Especially given the show was originally targeted towards children and teenagers. I cannot recommend this show enough.

5) Nimona & Over the Garden Wall

I know you asked for only Top 5 Favourite western Animations but I seriously could not decide which one I prefered so they gotta share the spot. Hope you don’t mind 😊.

Starting with Nimona: I mean what else is there to say about Nimona that has not been said before? Fantastic and unique world building? Check. Absolute comedy gold? Check. Openly Queer characters? Check. Said characters also being absolutely loveable? Check. A heartfelt message for both adults and children? CHECK. Seriously this movie is just gorgeous and on Youtube FOR FREE! Like there is nothing stopping you from watching it right this instant.

Now onto Over the Garden Wall: I come from a country where we don’t typically celebrate Halloween. So due to a lack of direct cultural ties to Halloween I never truly had any super strong interest in Halloween movies and never had the urge around October to bundle up in a blanket and watch those classic Halloween movies and shows, like some of my friends do. The most I did was carve pumpkins with my sister and drink hot cocoa cuz it’s genuinly fun. Until this Mini Series came along. The atmosphere just absolutely perfectly manages to capsulate the feeling of autumn and the eeriness of that season. Far more than any other Halloween Classic in my humble opinion. Also again I’m a huge mythology Nerd and this show is basically Dante’s Inferno for children in very weird way. But yes ever since this show had come out I instantly rewatch it the second the leaves start to fall outside.

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bergeronprocess · 2 months ago

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9/24/24

Today I just want to write my impressions after finishing the anime Narenare -Cheer for You-.

I started watching the summer 2024 new anime season with 4 shows. Then the Olympics happened and it took up literally all of my Watchin’ TV Time. The state of my Youtube watch later playlist at the end of the Games was a mess lol. That Olympics watching also caused me to decide to drop 2 of the shows I was following - Shy season 2 (it just didn’t really seem to grab me; I bounced off it right as they were starting to assemble their team for rescuing Tokyo) and Twilight Out of Focus (apparently I bounced right as they concluded their focus on the first couple and it was actually an anthology show focusing on different people throughout; it was fine but I just wasn’t loving it).

I kept on with the long-ass-named magical girl and evil lieutenant show (I haven’t watched its finale yet) as well as Narenare. I’ve just finished watching the finale of Narenare and overall I enjoyed it! The guy assigned to review it at Anime News Network hated it, to the point that he literally named it the worst anime of the summer season, which I think is a bit harsh. To be clear, he’s welcome to his opinion, and I’m welcome to disagree. Also, the reviewer of this series was not Nicholas Dupree, who died suddenly and tragically at the way-too-damn-young age of 31. The reviewer was Jairus Taylor.

I do think Narenare had a LOT of ideas and not a lot of real estate to put them into, but that’s basically an endemic issue in new seasonal anime these days, unfortunately. Only having 12 or MAYBE 13 twenty-three-minute episodes to work with is just not ideal for any story. I think Narenare would have been better served by having 24 or 25 episodes. This standard yet shortened episode run leads to compression. For example, the plot of Mari-senpai developing her own bout of the twisties, driving a wedge into Pompoms out of spite and then overcoming the twisties it felt a little rushed, but was still nice to see. She took responsibility for her mean comment (I truly thought it was Megumi who posted the comment at first, upset with being physically unable to do cheerleading stunts. I was wrong!) and worked to make amends for it.

It was good to see characters not only mention the yips but to see Kanata going to a therapist about it. Destigmatization of mental health issues and seeking help for them is huge and Japan is lagging behind the US when it comes to that, so any efforts made towards it are welcomed by me. The story emphasizes the importance of trust and care among cheerleading team members, which is crucial when you have someone else’s life in your hands as you do when you’re about to toss them in the air!

I also liked noticing the small touches that were made to facilitate accessibility for Megumi, like how a wheelchair ramp and a handrail was built on an exterior staircase of the beautiful old temple house she lives in. The fact that she came to every single Pompoms event, in full cheer attire and in her chair, was something I liked to see too. I at first thought that she was going to be permanently using a chair based on the promo images, but she was just temporarily needing it while recovering from the effects of a surgery, and she’s using crutches in the very last scene. At some point, she’ll probably be able to fully participate in cheer with Kanata again!

Jairus took issue with an earlier episode showing Kanata suddenly being able to fly again at the end of a montage, as if somehow her yips magically got cured by the power of friendship or whatnot, but then later episodes showed her continuing to struggle and he didn’t seem to take note of that. (To be fair…I never read his reviews of episodes 11 or 12 lol. I just know they’re probably overly negative.) I think that’s more realistic, especially with mental health struggles. Sometimes you get better, sometimes you backslide. I’ve found that to be the case in my own life with my anxiety. I backslid a little bit a few months ago and it was not fun.

He also took issue with the Anna and Stout Records plot line, saying oh wow how convenient is it that this record store guy happens to know a Grammy winner who can just come help. Well! Maybe he was so stuck in his “this shop is going to close and I am giving away my records” way of thinking that he couldn’t see any other way out, but Anna and the gang provided a fresh perspective. Sometimes in our lives, we need that. We just need someone else to help us think differently, try something new, and achieve our dreams. That’s another running theme of Narenare.

I do think Nodoka and Suzuha’s development suffered a little bit, which can be an issue with ensemble casts. I like Nodoka, I see some of myself in her with her desire to just be chill lol, and I LOVE that Suzuha decided to go be an idol in Tokyo. (I just hope she doesn’t end up like Ai in Kageki Shoujo, excommunicated from the idol world for having a flat affect and telling a weird fan that he was being weird. Although she’s found a second life in the world of Kouka. Anyway please go watch Kageki Shoujo, I hope they make a season 2 of the anime eventually, and read the manga too…which I am still waiting for volume 10 of - it’s been delayed since, like, April and now has an October ETA.)

Narenare also kind of wanted to be an idol anime too, I think. The music is good, and I especially enjoyed the song from when they performed at the neighborhood festival to help save Stout Records. It also made sense in-universe because of Shion and Anna both being into the art of making music. I feel like the music/idol aspect was executed better here than in Pride of Orange, where they just really wanted to make a straight-up idol anime but decided to also put in ice hockey elements too. I never got past episode 1 of that show - being asked to believe the Japan national team could beat Canada in any international competition (and then immediately change out from sweaty hockey jerseys and pads into sparkly idol outfits and sing a song at center ice) is just stretching the suspension of disbelief a liiiiittle too far for me as a hockey fan.

I also like Love Live, so I’m primed to enjoy idol elements when they come lol.

The Day-Glo funky color palette of Narenare was an interesting visual choice, but I actually enjoyed it. There were some great examples of photorealistic animation as well, like a closeup of Suzuha’s pompoms as she finishes her idol application form or the countryside when Mari runs back home. It was fun to watch such candy-colored joy during a hot hot summer.

In short, I enjoyed watching Narenare and I found it to be harshly criticized by its Anime News Network reviewer. Is it my anime of the year? Probably not, though at this point I don’t know if I necessarily have a single standout anime of the year. We’ve still got another 2024 season yet to go, after all. But I had fun!

#narenare cheer for you #na nare hana nare #daily writing practice

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uovoc · 11 months ago

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2023 Media consumption

God tier: media that invoked blorbo-induced euphoria, mini-obsession, or just haunt me

White Cat Legend (大理寺日志, Dali Court Journal) - donghua, seasons 1 and 2. The new vice minister of the imperial court of criminal justice is, unfortunately, a cat demon. Tang Dynasty workplace comedy/political intrigue. Lovely animation, sick fight scenes, and catboys.

Scissor Seven (刺客伍六七) - donghua, seasons 2-3. Netflix summary: "Seeking to recover his memory, a scissor-wielding, hairdressing, bungling quasi-assassin stumbles into a struggle for power among feuding factions." Season 1 was just ok at best, season 2 was great, season 3 was phenomenal, season 4 was meh.

Derkholm duology by Diana Wynne Jones (reread)

God Troubles Me / Hanhua Riji (汉化日记) - donghua. Cringefail loser girl Su Moting, her cringefail smartphone god, and her cringefail cat (demon) have to save the world. But first she has to go to work. And get takeout. And watch dramas. The premise sounds SO cringe but it's well-executed and hilarious. And actually a pretty sharp but good-humored window into the delights and horrors of modern everyday life in china.

The Sisters Brothers by Patrick DeWitt (reread). At the peak of the California gold rush, hitmen Charlie and Eli Sisters are hired for a job that Eli is liking less and less. 1st-person perspective of a stone-cold killer, where it turns out the killer is just Some Guy. Who is kind of awkward. And pathetic. And maybe not very bright.

Gobelins graduation animated shorts: "Chroniques de l'Eau Salée" (2021), "Last Summer" (2022), and "Go Fishboy" (2022). Available to watch on YouTube. Got caught up on 2021 and 2022 and these are the ones that will haunt me.

Ranma 1/2 by Rumiko Takahashi - manga (reread). Teenage martial artist is cursed to transform into a hot girl whenever he's splashed with cold water. Still some of the funniest and most deranged comedy I've ever read.

"Golden Age" - short story by Naomi Novik set in the Temeraire universe. Hilarious and delightful Feral Temeraire AU.

Just ok: media that I didn't hate, and maybe even enjoyed

A Dirty Job by Christopher Moore

Coyote Blue by Christopher Moore

Fluke: Or, I Know Why the Winged Whale Sings by Christopher Moore

Glass Onion (2022) dir. Rian Johnson

Puss in Boots: the Last Wish (2022) dir. Joel Crawford

Liar & Spy by Rebecca Stead

Witch's Business by Diana Wynne Jones (reread)

Chrestomanci series by Diana Wynne Jones (reread) - Charmed Life, The Lives of Christopher Chant, Mixed Magics, The Pinhoe Egg

Firebirds: An Anthology of Original Fantasy and Science Fiction, ed. Sharyn November. Faves: "Beauty" by Sherwood Smith, "Little Dot" by Diana Wynne Jones, and "Remember Me" by Nancy Farmer.

All Systems Red (异星危机) by Martha Wells, Simplified tr. by 黎思敏

All Saints Street (万圣街) - donghua, seasons 1-3

Moira's Pen by Megan Whalen Turner

Enchanted Glass by Diana Wynne Jones (reread)

The Game by Diana Wynne Jones (reread)

Deep Secret by Diana Wynne Jones (reread)

Selected Discworlds: Thief of Time, Unseen Academicals (reread)

The Confessions of Max Tivoli by Andrew Sean Greer (reread)

The Impossible Lives of Greta Wells by Andrew Sean Greer

"Louise", Gobelins 2021 graduation animated short. Pretty good, but not god tier.

The Time of the Ghost by Diana Wynne Jones (reread)

Less by Andrew Sean Greer. Most of it was a slog, but the ending was wonderfully tender.

The Merlin Conspiracy by Diana Wynne Jones (reread)

Secondhand Souls by Christopher Moore

The Ladies of Grace Adieu and Other Stories by Susanna Clarke

Are You Listening? by Tillie Walden

Esperanza Rising by Pam Munoz Ryan

Spinning by Tillie Walden

Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides (reread)

The Mermaid (美人鱼) - movie (2016)

Exhalation by Ted Chiang. Fave: Exhalation

Stories of Your Life and Others by Ted Chiang

Motorcity - cartoon (rewatch)

Sing 2 - movie

Dungeons and Dragons: Honor Among Thieves - movie

White Cat Legend (大理寺日志) manhua through chapter 186

A Monster in Paris - movie (rewatch)

Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse - movie

Lionboy trilogy by Zizou Corder: Lionboy, The Chase, and The Truth (reread)

The Moorchild by Eloise McGraw

Creation of the Gods I: Kingdom of Storms (封神第一部：朝歌风云) - movie

Our Flag Means Death - season 2

Skellig by David Almond (reread). Even more unsettling and magical than I remembered.

The Scum Villain's Self-Saving System (人渣反派自救系统) by Mo Xiang Tong Xiu

Savvy by Ingrid Law (reread)

The Silent Boy by Lois Lowry

Golden Age and Other Stories by Naomi Novik. "Golden Age" alone was amazing. Every thing else: meh.

Wonder by RJ Palacio except that the ending sucked

蓝溪镇 (Lanxi Zhen/Blue Creek Town) - manhua (reread), through chapter 112

Translation State by Ann Leckie

Disliked and often DNF'd

House of Suns by Alastair Reynolds

A Pale View of Hills by Kazuo Ishiguro

Wait Till Helen Comes by Mary Downing Hahn

The Stars are Legion by Kameron Hurley

Phoenix Rising by Karen Hesse

Palimpsest by Catherine Valente

Knives Out (2019) dir. Rian Johnson

The Chosen and the Beautiful by Nhi Vgo

Hench by Natalie Zina Walschots. Genuinely creative concept, enjoyable characters, and horrifying (affectionate) ending! Writing was just very, very bad.

The Lust Lizard of Melancholy Cove by Christopher Moore

Stowaway by Karen Hesse

Nirvana in Fire (狼牙榜) - ok objectively it was fine. It was just SO long that I started losing patience at multiple points.

Marcel the Shell with Shoes on (2021) dir. Dean Fleischer Camp

Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry by Mildred Taylor

Suzume - anime movie

Fairies Albums (百妖谱) - donghua

Link Click （时光代理人）- donghua

The Strange Tales of Oscar Zahn by Tri Vuong - webcomic

Into the Riverlands by Nghi Vo

Journey to the West: Demons Strike Back (西游伏妖篇) - movie

Labyrinths: Selected Stories and Others Writings by Jorge Luis Borges

The Buried Giant by Kazuo Ishiguro

Frozen 2 - movie

Logan - movie

The Three Sisters of Tenmasou - movie

The Water Dancer by Ta-Nehisi Coates. Nothing new.

Bewilderment by Richard Powers

Nimona (2023) - movie

Prophet by Helen MacDonald and Sin Blache

One Piece - the live action Netflix series

Good Omens season 2

Birdwing by Rafe Martin

Blue Eye Samurai - netflix cartoon

Haven't You Heard I'm Sakamoto - anime

System Collapse by Martha Wells

The Cay by Theodore Taylor (reread)

The Chocolate War by Robert Cormier

Bottoms (2023) - movie

Daily Life of the Immortal King (仙王的日常生活) - donghua

Witch King by Martha Wells. Actually I enjoyed the Kai/Bashasa storyline a lot. The present-day storyline I found extremely boring. Which was unfortunate because it was more than half the book.

The King's Avatar (全职高手) - donghua

The Apothecary Diaries - anime

Assorted nonfiction

The Electricity of Every Living Thing by Katherine May. Bored. DNF

Alone in the Wilderness (2004) - dir. Dick Proenneke. Documentary of Proenneke's year spent living alone in the Alaskan wilderness. Neat look at one dude building a cabin, furniture, and all his accompanying household implements by hand.

A River Lost: The Life and Death of the Columbia by Blaine Harden. The human and environmental significance of the Columbia dam system.

Gifted Earth: The Ethnobotany of the Quinault and Neighboring Tribes by Douglas Deur. Guide to key native species and their traditional uses.

A Swim in a Pond in the Rain: Four Russians Give a Master Class on Writing, Reading, and Life by George Saunders. Four classic Russian short stories with accompanying technical analysis of their narrative construction. Great look at the process of writing and analyzing stories.

Animals Make Us Human by Temple Grandin - animal behavioral psychology

Animals in Translation by Temple Grandin - more animal behavioral psychology

Crying in HMart by Michelle Zauner. DNF. Felt like the book could have been 1/4 of its length. Mostly nothing new.

Wood in American Life: 1776-2076 by WG Youngquist and HO Fleischer. Wood use in America. Really makes you realize just how many things are now made out of plastic but used to be wood. And how much more difficult and expensive it was to make and replace objects.

Authentic Diversity: How to change the workplace for good by Michelle Silverthorn. Concise and nicely concrete. Would be a good starting place for an executive.

Weapons of Math Destruction by Cathy O'Neil - how some big data algorithms reinforce preexisting inequality, and how to improve them.

The Relationship Cure by Joan Declaire and John M. Gottman. The classic originator of the "bids for attention" approach. Pretty good, most helpful was the part where it identifies the styles of responses.

Essential Retirement Planning for Solo Agers: A Retirement and Aging Roadmap for Single and Childless Adults by Sara Zeff Geber

A Wolf at the Table by Augusten Burroughs

the excellent hyperlocal nature guidebook I bought after encountering the author at the mall

Your Money or Your Life: 9 Steps to Transforming Your Relationship with Money and Achieving Financial Independence, by Vicki Robin and Joe Dominguez. 2018 ed.

#Media consumption #Patter

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sergeantnarwhalwrites · 9 months ago

Note

Happy STS! (Shh, I'm a day behind.) And because of that, today's a free space! Use it to ramble as you please! ♥️

Happy belated STS! 💙💙

Guess I'll just ramble about some ideas I had but I am just too busy or brain dead to write/draw right now.

1. Saz shaves off her facial hair for a mission. Everyone looks at her in fucking confusion. I feel like someone would probably start crying. XD I want to write this so bad. Saz hates the naked face but their reactions to it almost make it worth it.

2. Peace and Green get into an argument. Lol not out of the usual. But I wanted this one to sting a bit. They both get hella heated. Don't know who starts it but one of them ends up on the floor. And shit just gets worse. Oh it gets so much worse. They'll make up. But they'll remember the fuck out of this.

3. Green says something. Probably being a smart ass or arguably a rash dumb ass. Hollis or Digits responds back with one of the insults I thought up that they'd throw at Green awhile ago. Insult: " You sound like you gargle rocks." (Because Green's got a very gruff kind of gravelly voice) Green silently fumes probably growls beneath her breath. Glares at all of them literally laughing their asses off.

4. I go into a possible backstory thing of how Julie lost her eye. I'm thinking it was an undercover mission. She gets a lot of those cause she doesn't have any very obvious morpher traits. She doesn't have to kill but she is there to intimidate and kind of seduce. The person fights back, struggles. Julie loses her eye (maybe from a glass maybe her victim had clawed at it enough to cause irreversible damage) and they end up dead. The morphers are pissed. Julie's angrier.

5. BLOODY, GORY, SUPER VIOLENT, kinda ragey, kinda depressy piece where Saz goes absolutely rabid in her morpher form. Like these are some brutal deaths her victims go through. I don't know if she'd freak the fuck out, completely dissociate from reality, puke her guts up, or kinda enjoy it. I'm thinking a mixture. Someone helps her wipe the blood off of her face when she returns to her human form. I need it so fucking bad. I just don't know how to write it.

6. An expansion on a blurb I wrote for a tag game. I don't know if I want to keep it exactly the same. Or have it more as Donnie comes in while another person is there. Is kinda in shock that the person is also a cyborg. Hollis and Donnie crack the fuck up hearing how this cyborg got injured. Or Donnie is the one that got injured and Hollis tries not to laugh cause it's a goofy ass injury.

7. I want to work on my fanfics so bad too. But I have no fucking brain cells. The softball one calls to me. But I also kinda wanna make a side off anthology kinda thing based off of my competitive eating one.

8. I love the schematics I made for Digits' prosthetics so much. Kinda want to do Donnie's. But technically he's a cyborg. So he's mostly prosthetics and mechanics. So that would take me a century and a half.

#writeblr #ask games #a lot of things on my brain #No fucking time #Kinda got long there 😅

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chungledown-bimothy · 1 year ago

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My hottest D20 takes:

I am fine not getting anymore Fantasy High. It’s up to the cast if they want to keep doing it, but we shouldn’t be mad if it doesn’t happen.

I think that all D20 seasons should be 20 episodes or less.

Some D20 fans are too obsessed with getting sequels to seasons they like, and they aren’t ready for what that might entail in terms of the characters they are attached to. Not everything needs a season 3 or 4, or even a spin-off.

I want Gabe Hicks to DM another season. I thought he was really good in Shriek Week but the season itself was convoluted.

-Love that that's a take I've more or less gotten multiple times. Because I wholeheartedly agree.

I think it was Brennan, but it might have been Sam, who talked once about how when they started Dimension 20, the plan was an anthology series, setting it apart from Critical Role and other actual play shows that dive deep into one setting and spend a ton of time in it.

There are SO many cool stories to tell and settings to create and explore, and I'm totally happy with not going back to Spyre ever again.

And that ties into your third take, which I also obviously am with you on.

Did we learn nothing from Supernatural? Let stories end. Love them, remember them, rewatch them. Don't beat a dead horse.

-Absolutely yes. Especially the "or less" tbh. Do not get me wrong. I've watched over 1000 hours of d20 in the last year, I want all of the content.

But, again, it goes back to not making stories too long for the sake of more content. I think Neverafter should have been shorter, for example.

And in general a 20 ep cap makes for much more digestible and accessible seasons. I, like many others, struggle getting into other actual play shows because they seem insurmountable. Like you'll never really be able to catch up, ya know?

-I've not watched Shriek Week yet, but I'm totally with you on more guest GMs, and one of these days I'll get to Shriek Week, I promise lol

#dimension 20

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hoochy-coo · 7 months ago

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Let us know what you think !!

Very early takes, just off the cuff:

- The album is confused about what it wants to be because she herself is confused. However, this is some of the most honest writing she’s ever done - like ICDIWABH is fucking unhinged but she is being HONEST about it

- Down Bad is a bop but the first 4 songs are Bleachers, Midnights, 1989 vault rejects

- Some of her career highs are on here (BDILH, Clara Bow, TSMWEL) but TTPD (the song) is a career low and should have never seen the light of day

- This is the closest she’s ever gotten to sequencing a track list that tells a linear story

- I do like So Long London and her feelings are hers and hers alone. However, is Joe’s MH struggle known information? I know she’s hinted at him being “blue” multiple times and over multiple body of works, but she seems to be very loud about it on SLL and how it contributed to their breakup

- Confused as to why a lot of the marketing/PR suggested most of this would be about the breakdown of her 6 year relationship only for a lot of it to be about the 6 month fling and how messy it was

- LOML made me cry

- Don’t love Florida!!! But love Florence’s feature on it

- She needs to break up with Jack. They keep doing the same thing as collaborators and it’s stunting both of them

- I will get dragged for this but she’s trying very hard to do what Lana does on a lot of this album???

- I’m like half shook and half laughing at how Taylor is basically telling us that she did not give a f about Matt’s ignorant behaviour and that she was ready to “die for [his] sins” but he ghosted her cause there was too much heat from all the media attention and fan fare

- In terms of bonus track, I’ve only heard Black Dog - which I love and think should have been track 5

Nvm she just dropped the anthology. BRB - more thoughts to come

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marlowe1-blog · 9 months ago

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Book Review: Lost Souls by Poppy Z Brite

Still the most disturbing vampire novel

Recently Billy Martin, aka Poppy Z Brite, announced that he was back to writing. He sold a short story to a friend's anthology and he was writing another one. This was met with a great deal of excitement. For Generation X, Billy was the greatest. Then a few days later, dispirited and depressed, Billy wrote on his Patreon that he was no longer writing. He wrote a story for another editor and that editor rejected the story.

On Facebook, the outpouring of love and support for Billy was amazing. Billy has been through a lot and around Hurricane Katrina, he gave up on writing. HIs restaurant books were not selling and his publisher was demanding more horror. He was depressed from a great deal including gender dysmorphia (he still presented as female at the time) and eating disorders.

The support was either "We REALLY want to see you writing again, because you inspired us" or "take care of your mental health first".

Writing is a tough gig. It's hard to make money at it. It's hard to believe in yourself. It's almost impossible to sustain that belief over the years. The doubts set in. The rejections pile up. The occasional acceptance can feel false. Like ok, this editor is saying that my story is great and wants to pay me money. What's wrong with them? Most writers build up calluses, stop putting their self-worth in the next acceptance, struggle with the feelings that they suck. We read old stories that we thought brilliant and wince with embarrassment, but also take pride in how far we've come.

Billy didn't benefit from these experiences. He was an overnight sensation. Yes, he wrote a lot of garbage as a teenager like we all do and he had some disappointments and rejections, but he sold his stories to a zine when he was young and then when there were enough stories, got a collection published. Harlan Ellison read those stories and got very excited. So did Dan Simmons.

Then came Lost Souls. Billy was in his early 20s when he wrote this book. Most writers are writing trunk stories and embarrassing manuscripts at that time. Billy wrote the nastiest vampire book of its time, inspiring horror writers - especially splatterpunk and extreme horror writers - ever since.

Unfortunately for modern readers who might love to see anything new from Billy, Billy had to deal with all the self-doubt and struggles afterwards. On Livejournal, I criticized a media tie-in book he wrote for the Crow series and he was pissed. We both apologized for the incident (or at very least the nasty feelings from the incident) years later and we're friends now - well online friends - but it was very confusing at the time.

I was a nobody. I mean I'm still a nobody with a few books published through Dybbuk Press and some stories in anthologies. But back then I was even more of a nobody. I had maybe Teddy Bear Cannibal Massacre published and as far as my stories were concerned, I had sold a few of them and made maybe $20 total. That's $20 spread out over 4-5 markets.

So why was anything I said getting under the skin of the guy who wrote Lost Souls?

T-Nightingale at Devientart

When I revise this for Substack, the above is going to be seriously edited down.

Anyhow, Lost Souls came at a strange time. Anne Rice had written two amazing vampire books, one pretty good vampire book that got real dumb in the last third (Seriously Queen of the Damned has a woman thousands of years old deciding to create world peace by killing all the men? REALLY? That bullshit wouldn't fly in an Introduction to Women's Studies class). Francis Ford Coppola turned Dracula into a comedy. Vampires were more popular than ever, but defanged.

When Molochi, Twig and Zillah come to the French Quarter looking for absinthe and fucks they are fucking intense. Christian, the bartender and the one vampire that might walk through an Anne Rice novel, doesn't like these vampires, but they are fellow vampires. What are you going to do.

Within a few pages, the vampires are revealing their identity to a vampire groupy and Zillah is fucking her in the backroom. Mardis Gras is over and that girl is doomed.

Because in the world of Poppy Z Brite, vampires aren't made by other vampires. You don't become a vampire by drinking vampire blood. You don't kiss your new master and then sink your teeth into his new cut. No. Vampires are born.

Vampires are born by eating their way out of their mothers.

Later on Christian fucks a goth boy who wants to become a vampire. Christian drains him and feels bad about it, but it's not Christian's fault if the normies don't understand vampires.

This scene sets the tone for a book that has zero chill. Nothing, the sad goth boy (and vampire who doesn't realize that he's a vampire) would be a parody of teen angst in another book. Then there's Steve and Ghost, semi-adult band members who have a tangled history and a lot of heartbreak between them. They run the band that gives the book its name but they are also messy characters. Steve is borderline abusive to his girlfriend while Ghost protects Steve.

They are the nicest characters

Nothing is a big fan.

An aside: the writing style is fucking poetry. Seriously check this out

The, last dying days of summer, fall coming on fast. A cold night, the first of the season, a change from the usual bland Maryland climate. COLD, thought the boy; his mind felt numb. The trees he could see through his bedroom window were tall charcoal sticks, shivering, afraid of the wind or only trying to stand against it. Every tree was alone out there. The animals were alone, each in its hole, its thin fur, and anything that got hit on the road tonight would die alone. Before morning, he thought, its blood would freeze in the cracks of the asphalt.

That was later an issue with Billy's writing as Billy did not like editors telling him to change his sentences.

Ok. More tomorrow. I need to actually talk about the book itself past the prologue, but I also have a paper to finish (800 more words to go) and I need to wake up early tomorrow for jury duty.

Fuck Jury Duty.

#lost souls #vampires #vampire sex #incest vampires #anne rice #billy martin #poppy z brite #drunks #absinthe #vampirefucking #fucking the vampire #pregnant vampire #poetry

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ryqoshay · 1 year ago

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20 Fanfic Questions

Tagged by @therev28

Tagging @lonelypond who is one of the few remaining active LL authors I follow here on tumblr

How many works do you have on AO3?

"Only" 21, but I tend to focus on multi-chapter works and collections

2. What's your total AO3 words count?

685,120

However, I must point out that at least a dozen k or so are duplicated, as I slowly fit my event entry chapters into their parent fics. I am tracking my actual word count in an Excel document, but I am a bit behind there as I have not tracked said event entries, just the ones that have been copied into their parent fics.

3. What fandoms do you write for?

Primarily the first four generations of the Love Live franchise. I have done a little with Star Trek: Deep Space 9 and Dungeons and Dragons, but both portrayed as TTRPGs being played by the Love Live characters.

At least that is what I have posted on tumblr and AO3.

4. What are your top 5 fics by kudos?

How to Handle a Nico: A collection of stories that take place at various points in the lives of Maki and Nico from the School Idol Project generation. There are a few recurring themes that run through things to connect them, but I do try to keep them somewhat able to stand on their own as one-shots or short arcs. It is mostly canon compliant. Other ships in my LL fleet show up from time to time.

Happy Life: Like HtHaN, it is a collection of stories that take place over the course of the focal characters' lives, but this time the main couple is Riko and Yoshiko Yohane from the Sunshine generation. I label this work as an Angelic AU, but I have challenged myself to do so in such a way that it remains canon compliant.

Tri-Arame: Like HtHaN and HL before it, it is a collection of loosely related chapters. This work is also my first foray into writing an OT3 as my flagship for an LL generation, as I was indecisive about which ship to sail as said flagship, so I just put them all together. Thus, Yuu, Ayumu and Setsuna from the Nijigasaki generation are a trio here.

How to Handle a Maki: An RPG styled AU with NicoMaki as the primary pairing. This one was inspired by some wonderful fan art by one of my favorite artists. There's only one chapter so far... one really long chapter... and I've written a few extra things as event entries that I've yet to integrate into the parent fic. But I definitely need to get back to this one soon'ish. I really like the idea.

Promptober-2021: My first time participating in an event in the Idol Fanfic Heaven Discord channel. This collection started my habit of worldbuilding my monster theater AU, Putting on Hairs, in event collections. The AU really lends itself easily to many prompts.

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

I love responding to comments, and even feel bad if it feels like too much time has passed before I do so. As for why I love responding, it is because it is a way for me to interact with my readers. I also know how much courage it takes to leave a comment, as it is something I myself struggle with, so I want to show my appreciation with a response.

6. What's the fic you wrote with the angstiest ending?

That really depends on how one defines "ending"...

Taken as a one-shot, The Incident in HtHaN would be pretty angsty. The play, Detective Otosu (name may yet change), in PoH, has an angsty/depressing/downer ending; I wrote other scenes from the play for the same event collection. And many of the characters in my unposted D&D story have pretty angsty endings to their arcs; e.g. one has their spirit/soul trapped in a gem where they remain in a state of semi-consciousness but unable to communicate with the world around them.

That all said, I don't really do much angst. I prefer happy fluff.

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

Again, this depends on how one defines ending. I focus on collections or anthologies that will likely be added to as long as I retain interest in doing so. As such, were I to choose specific entries in these collections, I would say that the chapters where the primary pairing or trio finally gets together would be the happiest. These chapters are Morning in HtHaN, the Revelations arc of HL, and Change Overnight in TA.

8. Do you get hate on fics?

While I would hesitate to outright call it hate, I definitely reached a point of utter frustration with a thread of comments that I decided it best to delete them. A graveyard of (Previous comment deleted) tombstones remains on a chapter of HtHaN, forever reminding me of the fated exchange, and that I apparently deleted them in the wrong order, according to the FAQ of AO3.

That said I have received more hate via direct message on various social media platforms for having the audacity to ship NicoMaki and YohaRiko, than for any fic chapters I have posted to tumblr or AO3.

However, I have mentioned a time or two that I deleted my first fanfic.net account due to hate/harassment. But I've done my best to move on from that.

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

I have written some smut prior to getting into Love Live, but I have never posted it online for others to see. And I likely never will. And the longer I go without writing it, the less interest I have in doing so again.

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

Sorta. As mentioned above, I have written DS9 and D&D stuff, but as TTRPGs played by the LL girls. This isn't to say I won't write some crossover AU in the future.

11. Have you ever had a fic stolen?

Not to my knowledge.

12. Have you ever had a fic translated?

Again, not to my knowledge.

13. Have you ever cowritten a fic before?

I suppose it depends on how one defines cowrite. My D&D story takes place in a world that was already established by my DM. I take pride in expanding their world with my stories and happily brainstorm with them even to this day, despite not having written much in the last decade or so.

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

NicoMaki has been established in my eternal flagship, and I do not see that changing anytime soon. And YohaRiko and YuuAyuSetsu are fighting for second place.

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

I honestly hope I can get around to all of them. But with how things are going, what little I've started writing for my Phatom of the Opera crossover of HtHaN, HL and TA, and my Broken Mirror crossover of every iteration of Yohane across my works.

16. What are your writing strengths?

Finding creative ways of saying things; thesaurus.com is one of my favorite sites.

17. What are your writing weaknesses?

Probably exposition. I'm constantly second guessing myself about whether I'm writing enough or too much. Occasionally rereading my posted works, I will wonder what I was thinking dumping so much as to risk distracting the reader, or hoping my readers know what is going on.

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

I mean I happily use Japanese honorifics in all of my posted works, so that may count. I also occasionally use words that I feel translate awkwardly. However, when someone talks a lot in a language other than the primary one of the scene, and the focus character of the scene understands it, I will simply enclose the dialogue in brackets and mention the language used.

19. First fandom you wrote for?

Technically, Star Trek, but that was years before I posted anything online. I may still have the wide ruled notebooks with those handwritten stories.

Lucky Star was the first fandom for which I posted fics. But the account associated with those works has since been deleted, and I'm also fairly certain my copies were lost in a harddrive crash.

20. Favourite fic you've ever written?

Honestly, How to Handle a Nico (1), will forever hold a special place in my heart as it rekindled my desire to write, having not done so for years. When I first posted that short exchange between adult aged Nico and Maki, mostly as a joke, on School Idol Tomodachi, I never expected that it would turn into the 124 chapter, 224k word collection. Nor that I would follow it up with over 400k words spread across multiple other works. Nor that I would retain the desire to continue writing for the LL franchise over half a decade later.

#fic stuff

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