#ann is Like That bc the writers wrote her Like that

[jazbell]

started watching the 12 hour ann analysis vid and i just HAD to stop bc 1- i have to wake up at 6 tomorrow and its already way too late + im running on like 6 hours of sleep from last night and 2- got genuinely mad that the dude said criticism of her writing is unwarranted bc. no its not lmao.

[nightcolorz]

Can you talk a little more about how you view gender roles in the vampire chronicles vs amc iwtv bc I feel like sth is missing from amc compared to tvc that i can't place

I would love to !! (Explodes) I have so many tvc gender thoughts. So so many. 

I believe the major disconnect between the show vs the books and gender is the place and perspective the writer’s are coming from. Something I really love about Anne Rice’s writing (and really hate sometimes lol) is that she didn’t think about themes or implications at all when she wrote. She just purged her story onto the page and themes and patterns just end up there. This means that every bit of consistency and meaning in tvc comes from something Anne Rice had fixed into her subconscious that she without realizing is putting into her work. So when it comes to gender, in tvc it’s all personal feelings of Anne rice’s. This differs in the show that obviously has a team of writers who put a lot of thought in about public reception and meaning and all. So these perspectives color how gender (and everything basically) is presented.

Anne Rice had some complicated feelings about gender. I’m not going to go too deep into that bcus that’s not what I want this post to be about, but in summarization she had a combination of problematic biases and internalizations that came from a Catholic upbringing in the 40s-50s and some apparent gender dysphoria or at least disconnect with womanhood and gender/gender roles in general. She’s spoken about not understanding gender or feeling like a woman. This comes off very strongly in how she presents her vampires as androgynous, almost genderless beings. It’s a reoccurring theme in tvc that vampirism takes away the burdens of gendered expectations and gives vampires the freedom of self expression and androgyny. It makes sense why a concept like this would speak to a trans person like me, so it’s a big part of why I prefer the book’s handling of gender. Of course Anne Rice also has problematic gender biases, so her presentation of being an androgynous being free of gender roles is flawed, since gender roles are very ingrained in her mindset, which adds to my dissatisfaction with the show’s handling, which could’ve been so good if they took what Anne Rice tried to do and enhanced it.

Anyways, when it comes to tvc there’s also Anne Rice’s subconscious projection of her irl struggles onto her characters. A handful of Anne Rice’s insecurities and struggles came from, well, being a woman, and since her characters r so much of the time vessels to vent her problems through, a strange occurrence happens where her vastly male cast is struggling in ways that would be relatable to women and people who face misogyny and/or internalized misogyny. (Cough cough this is especially apparent with Louis and Armand cough cough).All of this wasn’t conscious on Anne Rice’s part, it’s just a natural consequence of how personal her writing was. An outlier to the “cis men experiencing misogyny” phenomenon is Gabrielle, who I could write a whole essay on, one of the few afab characters who also has projected gender problems by Anne Rice syndrome, but since she is afab she just ends up coming off as a gnc/transmasc/ftm person dealing with gender dysphoria. 

Then there’s the show, which disclaimer I like the show a lot, but boy do I have Issues with it. I could be wrong, we only have one season, but it doesn’t seem like the show is attempting to tackle the “vampires are genderless” concept. They definitely do things with androgyny and gender roles, but not in the context of “messing around with/being free of these things is amazing”. Vampirism in iwtv seems to only enforce gender, weirdly enough. Let me explain!

Ok, so what the show seems to be doing with gender roles is using the concept of a “nuclear family” and our expectations of what that entails to assert the dynamic of Louis, Lestat, and Claudia’s familial relationship. Through utilizing tropes and imagery associated with a nuclear family the viewers are easily able to pick up on the subtext and conflicts that the show is presenting us with, bcus we all know the nuclear family. I think comparing the rue royal family to a nuclear family is interesting in concept, but in execution, I’m not a fan. I think if the show went a different route, and had Louis frame the story in a way that compares his life to familiar hetero, mortal family conventions for the sake of being sympathetic and understandable to Daniel and readers, without that being the literal dynamic of the characters, that could’ve been interesting. Also, I like the concept of oppressive systems like gender roles becoming oppressive in different ways for vampires, since “vampirism isn’t freeing it just gives u different problems” is a theme of the show that I rlly like, esp bcus Anne rice was rarely able to decide if vampirism was super fun or tortuous. But that doesn’t seem to be what the show is doing. Lestat, Louis, and Claudia literally just fit into your stereotypical abusive nuclear family tropes. Sometimes things are switched around and subverted, but for the most part it’s pretty consistent. Anne Rice’s personal projections onto the characters is nearly nonexistent, most glaringly for Lestat. I don’t like this, it doesn’t make sense for the characters, and it also simplifies their dynamic and conflict in the book to be much less interesting in my opinion. 

Sometimes the show will show us characters breaking gender expectations, Lestat occasionally or Antoinette cross dressing (speaking of Antoinette I’ll get to her), but none of these moments seem to mean anything adjacent to “vampires are genderless or gender-fluid and this is freeing for them. These moments seem to align more closely with imagery associated with queer coded villains during the Hayes code era. Both Lestat and Antoinette are being particularly grotesque and villainous during their gnc moments, which aligns with the old hollywood vibe that the show seems to be going for, which is mildly cool, but not particularly compelling or relatable to me beyond that. And it definitely doesn’t have the type of resonance that the books do when it comes to gender nonconformity. 

So, I think Antoinette is the prime example of this. Antoine in the books was a young man, 19 years old, who Lestat used in a way that was reminiscent of how a cheating husband would use a mistress. He fooled around sexually with this younger man and also confided to him in ways he didn’t his “husband” (Louis), escaping to him when he was fed up with his family at home to blow off steam and vent his struggles, the way he does with Antoinette in the show. But Antoine himself did not have the stereotypical personality of a “mistress”, he was naive and well intentioned, didn’t realize he was being used and that Louis was being hurt in the process. When Lestat tells him that he needs his help fighting back against his family he’s horrified and confused. Antoinette in the show is not this, she’s very much a “mistress”, and the sex change from book to show makes this even more annoying to me. It just seems like the show writers wanted to make the subtextual coding of Antonine’s character in the books annoyingly unsubtle text, by making Antonine the stereotypical evil and seductive female mistress, which I rlly hate. And also they removed any and all sympathy attached to Antoine’s  character in the process. (Side note ik ppl are gonna come at me with “oh but it’s from Louis’s perspective! That’s why Antoinette is treated that way, he hates her! And to that I say there is no evidence to support that, it hasn’t happened in the show, you made it up. And if it’s true and done well I’ll eat my words, but for now my opinion is based on what is in the show, and it prob won’t change until we get new content.)

There’s more, like how Louis fulfills the traditionally female roles in marriage (cleaning, taking care of the kids, etc) which is kind of gnc, but only so that the show can frame him as more of a stereotypical abuse victim, and not to say anything interesting about how vampirism gives people more opportunities to explore gender fluidity in ways they find freeing. The show uses gender roles to non subtly code the characters in ways that are easily digestible and relatable to a cis audience. That’s my main gripe, gender in AMC’s iwtv is very cis. 

What I love about the books is how fluid gender is with the characters. Lestat is very feminine and very masculine, so is Louis, these traits can co exist without ever contradicting each other. But ig that was too complicated and varied for the show to want to tackle, just like the complex mutual toxicity of loustat’s relationship, which was dumbed down so much also. I feel like the show writers didn’t know what to do with a gay relationship where both men are feminine and masculine and also both men have complex trauma and traits that make their relationship unhealthy + a hot mess, and instead just reframed loustat to be traditional abusive relationship we’ve seen a billon times in media.

In conclusion, the show could very well change my mind and portray gender/gender roles in a way that I enjoy, but for now I’m unsatisfied. I want to be wrong ultimately. If you like how gender is handled in the show feel free to disagree, but plz don’t come at me with anger. I’m happy to have a discussion, I’m very interested in this topic, but I don’t want to humor you if you’re rude. And if you want to talk more about the books and gender I’d be more then happy, feel free to dm me or send me an ask or reply to this post, I love the androgyny of the books sm and love talking about it. Thank you anon sm for sending the ask <3 I’ve been wanting to talk about this.

[pynkhues]

this will probably be a complicated ask so sorry in advance!

i stumbled upon some tweets about Gabrielle that really got me questioning my view of her character. they argued that people give her labels of trans/trans masc only because she, after gaining freedom, decided to stop conforming to standards of feminity/womanhood. and i kind of see where they are coming from even though I think she might at least be gnc. because really after enduring a life of constant oppression bc of your gender, having kids you didn't disaire, probably being viewed as weak, it makes total sense for her to want to break traditional expectations. vampires don't have to follow those rules society created to keep women submissive so why should she continue to look like the version of herself that went through traumas?

it's an interesting point ig and it honestly hurts my head to think about because of how complex the subject is. also the fact that Gabrielle is so disconnected from humans kind of makes me feel like she realized that no matter what she wore/did to look less feminine, society would always put that same cage on her. and that problem of outside perception which claudia and louis both go through as well, but that lestat doesn't seem to expirience, could explain most of their conflicts imo.

sorry again if I didn't make any sense but I really wanted to hear your opinion on this!

It's definitely a complicated area to talk about, anon, in no small part because I think the nature of Gabrielle's character is that she (and I'll use she/her pronouns here just because Anne does in the books - I'll very happily change that depending on what the show does with the character) has a degree of unknowability that a lot of the other characters simply don't have. In fact, one of the things that's interesting about her I think is that so much of the series is about these characters wanting to be known, and Gabrielle withholds that not just from the other charcters in the books, including her son, but us as an audience too. She's never a POV character, and any insight we get to her is filtered through Lestat who readily admits to not understanding her.

She's clearly depicted as having a complex relationship with both her body and her gender though. From the hair cutting scene to dressing in masculine clothes after her turning to living vicariously through Lestat, that's all pretty explicit in the text itself. There's also a lot that can be inferred too - enduring seven pregnancies only to have three survive infancy is traumatic, regardless of whether or not you wanted those children, and involves major body transformation and trauma as a medical event. Given her relationship to the Marquis, I think we can probably infer at least some of those pregnancies were the product of marital rape, to say nothing of the life Gabrielle was made to give up to marry him in the first place.

How that has interacted with her understanding of her own gender - - I don't know, and Lestat not knowing either I think is actually a vital part of their relationship dynamic. What's exciting about the show though is that by having less of a closed-POV than the books really gives the writers the space to explore all of this outside of him.

After all, I do think it's worth mentioning that our understanding of gender and trans identities as a society has evolved a lot in the years since Anne wrote TVL and originated this character. It'll be 40 years between the novel's publication in 1985 and the first actual adaptation of it next year, and I'd expect that these sorts of conversations have probably been happening in the writer's room with all the nuance that that evolution of understanding now allows.

This is a very roundabout way of saying that I think any and all reads of Gabrielle's gender identity in the books are pretty valid at this stage, honestly. Anne never offers clarity really, and I don't know if that was a deliberate choice on Anne's part, or if it was because she herself was unsure, or if it was even that she was just interested in exploring gender identity with Gabrielle, but I do suspect that it's going to be something Rolin, Hannah and the other writers explore, and I'm really excited to see how they do that.

That said, just in my personal reading of the books, I agree with you that Gabrielle's at the very least gender nonconforming, but would probably add to that that I tend to think she's gender fluid, and lives more commonly as trans masc overall.

[ca-suffit]

for some thoughts on the Louis "pushing" Lestat + Armand. Should go without saying that Louis did not deserve either (though unclear if Louis or Lestat started the fight that lead to dropping like if it's true Lestat wasn't fighting back. I blame writers and confusing unreliable narrations however I digress) being dropped by Lestat or left in pain by Armand (or screwed over several times by Armand).

So anyways I want to look at the *why* Louis has this pattern that isn't because he's the abuser or bad guy or the one in the wrong. As cheesy as it is, we accept the love we think we deserve, right? Louis has always had lower self worth and has struggled with his image, who he is, especially as a vampire. he dealt with all the complex + intersections problems of being a black semi closeted gay man in the timeframe of America it was set in (20's¿) socioeconomic status, the family problems. I mean even to book!Louis he was always like straight up depressed dude. And it's the whole like people search for red flags for the thrill bc they're used to the chaos hurt and pain? I view Louis very similar. Idk you see this self sabatoging behavior with a lot of trauma+ abuse victims, and it doesn't mean they're a bad guy but often I think Fandom is the place for nuance to die lol.

But I hope they carry on and have more of Louis on the show than the books did, and I hope they continue the character growth where we can see him actually heal and like gain a sense of worth. S1 he appeared to but in reality it was mostly fabricated lies. I hope they don't waste Jacob like that. But yeah I think just on a side note of psychiatric people like are so wrapped up in why mental illness and trauma effects lestat and Armands actions but do seem to demonize and ignore how the same shit effects Louis.

"people like are so wrapped up in why mental illness and trauma effects lestat and Armands actions but do seem to demonize and ignore how the same shit effects Louis."

this is exactly the problem and then it's usually followed by ppl's antiblackness jumping out. then if anyone points that out to them, they usually double down bcuz they don't want to feel like they're racist. the thing is tho, if u always double down when things are pointed out to u, who are u ever gonna be but that person? it's uncomfortable to face ur own biases but it's the only way to overcome them. we're all raised in societies that fill our heads with all kinds of crap we have to unlearn. u *have* to unlearn it tho or else ur just replicating it forever.

stuff dies in fandom bcuz environments are created on purpose for it to be like this. look how impossible it is to even talk about race or racism here (or any fandom). this account has to be anon and rely mostly on other anon asks in order to talk about anything. the fandom stays ignorant bcuz ppl fight hard to keep it that way.

the fandom used to be all about louis and coddling louis when he was white. it's only dropped off since the show started. lestat, armand, and louis have always been the three main characters in this fandom that ppl relate to the most. suddenly louis is the only black character and usually has a lot of black fans posting meta about him aaaand....here comes the lestat and armand ppl reframing it all as "actually if u look at *their* trauma......"

and, I mean, it's *not* technically wrong. like u wrote and like the show is saying too, these cycles *are* cycles. this is real life! nobody was talking like this before tho. character's trauma histories were not dragged up as much as they are now. anne rice didn't write her stories like the show is doing so ppl are not used to critically analyzing anyone's behavior. she glossed over a lot of conflict as the books went on. taking into account most ppl read these as kids too, a lot of fans coming from the books just don't know anything but their own connection (thru trauma too, usually) to these characters, who they have seen forever as "not doing any wrong" (or doing wrong but it feels "justified" somehow or they said they did wrong so it's "fine"). then the show is saying they do a *lot* of wrong and now here we are.

for brief comments on the fight again....arguments happen and shit gets out of control v easily. no fight is a play by play of which side did what thing and who "deserved" what. there won't be a real answer to most fights like this. but for 1x5 the show has already said lestat is the one who crossed the line. that's all that matters. it's also not damning for life, especially an immortal life. ppl have a hard time understanding any of this bcuz the society's we live in don't allow for anything but punishment forever when we break social rules. that's kind of all anne rice put into her vampire society too, so again....if u come from the books, it's not gonna prep u for the show.

I also don't think S1 was mostly "fabricated lies." I don't think the IWTV book was either, the way most book ppl weirdly believe. I think that's the other part of what makes ppl uncomfortable. ur version of who u think u are is not gonna be what others always see, especially ex partners. it's just something u have to accept. ppl aren't gonna have the same perception of the same events, even for stuff u would think would be the exact same story no matter what. louis and claudia are black and lived with a white man who was family but also literally controlled everything, intentionally or by default of being a white man. everything in S1 is accurate to that relationship in that way and tbh the only reason most ppl want it to be a lie is bcuz most ppl aren't used to seeing whiteness portrayed like that. they want the black man's perspective to be revoked somehow in whatever way so they can stop feeling like they have to take it seriously. it should still be taken seriously, it was saying a lot of real shit. I also believe emphasis was prbly added but as an overall commentary on a lot of things otherwise? S1 does *not* need to be forgotten or written off for *any* reason.

idk if I covered everything I was gonna say but this is already long. ur going in the right direction tho. a lot of ppl aren't asking these questions bcuz they don't want to see louis as a person, then white fandom intentionally makes it feel like u will be attacked if u say anything "racist," so ppl are afraid to say anything, look for attacks or attack otherwise themselves first when nothing is even there. even if there's stuff here I disagree with, it's still fine to have a conversation about it and look at our different perspectives. fandom has ppl in this mindset that it's all who is right or wrong instantly, but that's not....real. this show isn't telling a story of who is right or wrong anyway but ppl's racist's perspectives def hold a different weight that needs to be examined. most ppl just don't want to.

[freyafrida]

20 Questions for Writers

tagged by @librarylexicon!! ty ty ❤️

1. How many works do you have on AO3?

nineteen

2. What's your total AO3 word count?

154,262

3. What fandoms do you write for?

Currently Anne of Green Gables and Midnighters. i've also dabbled in some other fandoms but haven't written for them in a while, or i feel like i've written all i want to for them, so i don't count them.

4. What are your top 5 fics by kudos?

Come Back Home, by faaaar (252). following that, How Certain the Journey (160), Arco Iris (144), but i don't know who you are (105), there's another, not a sister (73). all aogg fics!

just for fun, top non-aogg fic by kudos is you're my unforeseen, a kenzi/hale fic from back when i watched lost girl. (also canadian content......sensing a theme here.)

5. Do you respond to comments?

i try to! i always really appreciate them and ofc if there's a thoughtful comment i do want to respond in kind. (kind of funny, i think i'm better at replying to comments than i used to be solely bc i have an email job now so i'm always like "ah yes gotta turn around a reply to this in 24-48 business hours.")

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

hmm...i don't usually end on an angsty note! i like to leave things hopeful or peaceful, at the very least, if not outright happy. i guess it would be leave me the way i was before, which ends on an ambiguous note -- even though the characters come to an understanding and no longer hate/blame each other, they know they can't stay together and help each other heal.

(oh yeah i just re-scrolled through my fics and i guess but i don't know who you are is kind of a downer, bc walter realizes he loves una but he's already in the trenches and the ending implies it's too late oops. i was counting it as a happy one since hey, at least he realized it! lmao)

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

Come Back Home, pretty obviously -- canon ends with walter dead and una forever alone, so having walter live and return her feelings and both of them finding some peace/their place in the world after WWI is pretty happy i think!

8. Do you get hate on fics?

never gotten full-on hate, fortunately! wayyy back in the day on FFN, when i wrote a rarepair or unpopular character, i'd often get 1-2 passive-aggressive comments like "uhhh your writing is ok i guess but i don't think you understand canon because OBVIOUSLY you wouldn't have written this if you did", but those seem less common/acceptable now thankfully.

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

occasionally, yeah. i've never written anything super explicit, but there's a...middling amount of detail? lol. i like writing romance and intimacy and vulnerability and simping and i've gotten more comfortable with portraying/exploring those themes via sex scenes.

10. Do you write crossovers?

no, never have -- "characters from X and Y fandoms meet" isn't my cup of tea, although i do like "AU of characters from X fandom in Y fandom's plot/setting", provided, you know, i find the latter interesting haha.

11. Have you ever had a fic stolen?

uhhhh...🫣 not outright stolen, but i did once stumble upon a fic that seemed to have lifted a scene from one of mine. the fic was already abandoned by the time i read it and the author seemed pretty young, so i didn't want to like call them out, but...welp. hopefully they quietly learned their lesson. also yeah pretty much all my fic has been scraped and reposted to random knockoff sites.

12. Have you ever had a fic translated?

yeah!! my rebelde way fic, Comfort Zones, was very kindly translated into russian by Alice_Bolognini.

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

nope! i don't think i ever will; seemingly like a lot of my mutuals, i am kind of a control freak over my fics lol. i also am a super-slow writer so i imagine a co-writer would get really fed up with me after a while!

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

i...guess walter/una? haha that's really hard to pick, i love romance and have a ton of fave ships and i like them all in their own special ways! but walter/una has had me in a chokehold for almost the longest* and i think maybe has the most ~scope for imagination~ for me -- i still get ideas for what i want to write for them and bits of their characters that i think are interesting and how it would affect the dynamic between them. (tangent, i think the fact that anne's kids have several gaps in the narration of their lives is what makes me so interested in them, versus anne herself? like i never feel the need to write anne/gilbert fic, and i very rarely get the urge to read it, because their canon story is so complete and perfect to me. anyway.)

*honestly, in terms of pure "years i have spent thinking about them" numbers, it would probably be...david/shay from uglies. or james/sarah from liberty's kids lmao lmao /o\

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

no such thing, i am determined to finish everything i post! (see also: coming back to How Certain the Journey after 9 years). the WIP that will probably take me the longest is the clocks are black, a Midnighters fix-it fic that i ran out of steam for a few years ago. i still tinker with it and plan to finish it, but it's unfortunately slow coming.

16. What are your writing strengths?

i think characterization and language (word choice, sentence flow) in general -- at least, those are the things people point out the most, so i'm rolling with it! the latter is probably what i pay attention to most while writing.

17. What are your writing weaknesses?

i am not great at writing action scenes for sure. also i'm not great at coming up with zingers, so writing witty/snappy dialogue is rough for me (not that i write very many snappy characters...i probably am subconsciously avoiding them for this reason lmao).

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

full on lines of dialogue, no -- it feels unnecessary; at that point i'd rather write it in english and indicate elsewhere in the text that they're speaking another language (or write "so-and-so said something in [language]", if the POV character wouldn't understand it.) i don't mind using an occasional word/phrase when necessary, though.

19. First fandom you wrote for?

a series of unfortunate events! in the dark depths of fanfiction.net, under a different username, you can find a ton of my klaus/isadora fics with evanescence lyrics for titles. good times.

20. Favourite fic you've written?

Come Back Home is the fic i'm proudest of. it's the fullest and most complete thing i've ever written, in terms of being the longest and having the most plot (not that it has a lot, still) and actually being completed. that does make it my favorite in some ways -- it's still the only longfic i've ever finished and i'm still just like. eternally pleased that i managed to write all my wish-fulfilly walter/una thoughts into something coherent and give myself something to reread when i want to ignore canon. buuut it's also 11(!!!) years old and there are parts i think i could write better now (although i wouldn't touch it either, too many war flashbacks to authors taking down completed fic to rewrite it, and then never completing the new version ;_;)

my actual favorite fic at the moment is the more that you say, the less i know, which is a david/shay fic i wrote a few years ago! i just always had a lot of feelings about shay's story arc in uglies and how she was treated by the narration/other characters, and i feel pretty happy with how it was all distilled and portrayed in the fic. it's also recent enough that i'm not embarrassed by the writing yet. also i wanted to keep it fairly concise and not write 20+ chapters for it, so i'm happy i managed to keep it to 4 haha. it still took me a whole year to edit chapter 3 tho

tagging @jomiddlemarch @gogandmagog @noneedtoamputate! ofc feel free to not do it, and anyone else who wants to do it can consider themselves tagged :D

[maythedreadwolftakeyou]

Fic authors self rec! When you get this, reply with your favorite five fics that you've written, then pass on to at least five other writers. Spread the self-love ❤️

<3 Ooohhh ok hm... honestly i do not post much fic (checked AO3 and only 18), for the amount that i start writing and then leave in various stages of completion in drafts on my computer, oops. Unfortunately at least 1 favorite is in that category, but here we go!

Fallout from the Fade (Dragon Age: Inquisition): Hawke is left in the fade during the events of DAI's Here Lies The Abyss, but manages to fight her way back out. However she's left to recover from the severe side effects and trauma that come along. Ok my confession here is while i have not updated this fic since 2020, i have in fact written more of it. But since i kept going so long (months... and then years...) between chapters I decided it'd be better if i just finish writing the rest myself (at least roughly) so i know how much more there is to go and can update it on a more regular schedule in the future when i start posting again. Alas i am very slow at this bc of grad school and also bc i get distracted easily and... have less motivation to work on it when not actually getting feedback as i go. So i may change my mind about this approach eventually but it's where the fic stands now.

Like Teeth Against His Heart (Dragon Age: Inquisition): After Solas wakes up from uthenera, he has many conversations with a variety of spirits over the course of DAI. Sometimes they tell him what he wants to hear, and sometimes they don't. I typically like the recent things I've written the most and this is that. It's a prose-poem style that plays with formatting, aka its kind of Weird, and weird is my favorite. I wrote it for a charity zine which also meant i had to have a Final Version rather than endlessly tweak it forever which was irritating at the time but also good for me.

Unposted, No-Finalized-Title fic, with the file jokingly named 'Sam I Am' (Mass Effect: Andromeda): pre-Andromeda and game timeline but from the perspective of your ship's AI, who also lives inside your character's brain, and in the game admits to altering your brain/body, and hello??? the game did NOT let me respond to that to the degree I desired? One of my literary obsessions is the combination of AI (the sci fi kind not... generative art etc) plus human augmentation... what that does to both parties sense of self, their relationships, how they view and function in the world, etc. In the vein of Silently And Very Fast by Cat Valente, Imperial Radch by Ann Lecke, Murderbot by Martha Wells... and I spent soooo much time wishing Andromeda had gone deeper into that angle/thinking about it myself I wrote. Quite a long fic about it. But i only played the game once and there wasn't much fan love/fanworks for it so I never posted it or any other Andromeda stuff I wrote, it was more just for myself. I'd like to go back and finish this fic but I estimate it'd be in the 40-70k word range and i'd need to replay the game to refresh my memory so it's like, a project for when i have a bunch of free time at some point in the future, since it's mostly just for Me.

the people you love become ghosts inside of you, and like this, you keep them alive (Mass Effect trilogy): Snippets of a variety of Garrus' thoughts and memories of Shepard, and a growing realization about the nature of love like theirs. I don't expect anyone to love this one but me, because it's just a self-indulgent thing I wrote specifically to figure out the flavor of grief involved in the relationship between my personal Shepard and Garrus. It's not as poem-formatted as my Solavellan one but the prose leans hard in that direction, and they came from the same place for me. I wrote it after finishing the trilogy because I (unlike a lot of fans, i know) felt very adamant that the correct ending for my Shepard is that she is dead now, and not coming back, and needed to cry some more about that.

like the leaves after a long winter (Dragon Age II): It's the first Christmas/Satinalia since Leandra's death, and Hawke is not in the mood for festivities -- until she realizes that everyone else will be spending it alone and finds herself hosting a party without even meaning to. I'll be honest #5 spot was kind of a toss up between this one, Less A Man Than A Wild Cat, and Grief. But I've decided on this one because 1. it covers my favorite thing to write about aka grief, but is actually written as a story/proper narrative unlike others i've already put on this list. With fanfic the most important thing to me before anything else is self-indulgence. While I love writing for prompts (like this one was!), my specific joy in that is taking an idea from someone else and figuring out how to cram all the things I care about into someone else's plot summary. Fanfic for me is like... it feels weird to call it 'writing exercises' because that implies i don't care about the final project when i very much do. Writing challenges? Maybe? Idk i just really enjoy having limitations to work within. Having NO boundaries is where I do my original content writing, so writing within the bounds of an existing franchise already means there's some limits (like keeping to characterizations, plot, etc) and then adding more on top makes it a fun experience and keeps me engaged.

While these are my top 5, I definitely don't think most of them are what other people would pick as a favorite from my (admittedly very limited) amount of posted writing, Fallout from the Fade being the exception. I think my friends probably like the one where I turned Fenris into a cat best (and that was VERY fun it's just also more lighthearted which i struggle to write sooooo bad), and then every one else is in my inbox about the single Solas x F!Travelyan fic I wrote largely as an experiment in writing sex scenes. sorry to everyone who read that and then tried to read my other fics and discovered its mostly blood and loss and Yearning...

[horsetailcurlers2]

YET ANOTHER long and obnoxious stream of my thoughts while watching greys anatomy for the first time (SEASON 16 bc i decided i will try to catch up to you guys who are awaiting S20)

-tom koracick, despite all outward appearances, is far too nice

-bailey pisses me off sometimes bc she usually isn’t wrong, but within the parameters of how everyone behaves on the show, her decisions feel wrong, yk? like irl absolutely she should have fired them without a doubt. but in this soapy medical show in which everyone commits malpractice five times a week, it feels like she’s overreacting lmao. does that make any sense?

-meredith in her community service outfit is kind doing something to me

-a man on a scooter just ran into maggie and amelia’s car and it startled me so bad i drew blood with my cross-stitching needle!

-lisa ann walter!! and charmed cast in the same ep!

-bailey and i are beefing actually

-do NOT have another affair, richard webber

-“how come my mom hasn’t called from sleepover community service?” sleepover community service PLS

-a lumineers song in the background!!! the music is good again

-why is owen pulling this bullshit again!!!!!!!!!!

-bailey is making me so fucking mad right now. she has no room to act morally superior considering some of the shit she’s pulled. she also continues to have this attitude that meredith should owe her something for being her teacher…. which is sort of valid but let’s not pretend that bailey doesn’t owe meredith quite a bit too. idk again it’s one of those things again where in real life, she’s be perfectly justified but within the fictional guidelines set up by the show, she’s being a vindictive asshole.

-patricia!!!!!

-“she is the sun and she is unstoppable” !!!!!

-addison wrote one too!!!!

-this episode is potentially a little too sentimental and overly emotional but i really really like it. the nostalgia bait made me like it even more actually

-more lumineers!!!! i really like this episode. (i’ll stop now but it’s the first episode in a really long time that i’ve really enjoyed the entire thing)

-everyone is being really dramatic about koracick he really isn’t that bad

-i want to like schmitt it just feels like we were sort of thrown into deep emotional story lines for him without getting to know him beyond surface level. maybe it’s just me it just feels like the show wants me to have a certain level of emotional investment in him that i don’t have (yet?)

-beanie feldstein!

-teddy’s sparkly little winter hat is so cute

-TEDDY NO. i don’t mind if you cheat on owen tbh but plz don’t play with tom’s feelings instead of facing your problems.

-i’ll not comment a lot on the alex thing bc i had spoilers for it and honestly it’s just so ridiculous. it’s one of those things that i don’t blame the character for bc i know it was the writers and other irl circumstances. i imagine from izzies perspective this is the culmination of a beautiful crazy love story akin to the notebook. but from our perspective this sounds like the lie you tell your kids when the family dog dies- “oh he went to live on a farm”

-does richard have another brain tumor??? this doesn’t seem like a relapse but…

-i know it’s wrong but i wouldn’t mind this affair if i thought the show was treating teddy/tom as a serious option. as it stands, i just think teddy is being selfish

-i knew the baby wasn’t gonna be owens

-i KNEW this would be a boy who cried wolf situation with deluca. unfortunately, he also is struggling mentally i think but i don’t know if he’s manic or suffering from a break. they had me convinced i was wrong for a minute, but i knew it would turn out that he was right about the girl being trafficked. but i definitely think that he was nowhere near ready to come back to work and that the psychologist should not have cleared him. i hope he gets the help he needs soon bc i really like deluca :(

-the conference in LA would’ve been the perfect opportunity for an addison cameo

-OOH A TWIST IN TEDDY’S BACKSTORY. this explains a lot

-OOH SO MANY TWISTS THIS EPISODE.

-i am fighting for my life trying to defend teddy in my head. i hate owen as much as the next guy but this whole thing is brutal to watch.

[dwreader]

Anne rice based lestat on her husband. I'm sorry but she always had louis stuck on that man even in the first book already its not like she changed her mind later on. Lestat was the looming husband figure. It's just so sad to see yall turn on the writers when the thing is yall have been chronically online + nursing resentment toward lestat&his fanbase and are now mad he doesn't get his comeuppance by louis having a much more passionate relationship w/ armand.

anon pls tell me when i have ever said loumand would ever take precedence over loustat on this show alsjsjajkas lmao like the ppl behind the show have announced multiple times that it’s about loustat and like primarily lestat i would argue based on rolin’s comments. literally the ONLY part of the book that i had any expectation wouldn’t be completely turned into a lestat extravaganza is the loumand courtship in paris where there is no indication that his ghost/memory stands in the way of louis accepting armand’s advances. he may feel guilt and worry over the consequences of what they did but if anything the fact that lestat was such an awful husband/mentor is what drives louis to be MORE receptive of armand and hopeful for their relationship. it makes him easier prey for armand because he wasn’t given any proper mentorship from lestat so unless you wanna enter into “louis just lied about everything” territory TO ME that’s an aspect of their relationship that should be preserved in order to have any impact (and i don’t see why louis would be lying when he’s very honest about lestat haunting him in the prior segment).

and not only is this louis’s only other substantial romantic relationship outside of lestat but this is also the last part of the entire series in which there’s any substantial writing of louis AT ALL… to dramatically increase the presence of lestat when the rest of the book series is already 99% his story just rubs me the wrong way. like we’re always talking about how this show is possibly going to work around the fact that anne never wrote about louis again after this but not even allowing what little independent story he does have in the books to be told w/o shoehorning lestat is again why this question keeps coming up.

yes lestat was always based on her husband but she wrote iwtv when she had a much more pessimistic view of their marriage and it wasnt necessarily a given that loustat were meant to be together in the long term (she literally tried to get rid of louis a million times in the subsequent books anyways) so this idea that they were always meant to be OTP4ever is just silly. the ending of iwtv works bc neither armand nor lestat could bring any passion back to him. it’s not a romance novel and even in the end, while he feels sad seeing lestat in such a rotten state and when armand leaves, he is too hollowed out to do anything about it and doesn’t stay with either of them. of course the entire series isn’t going to take that view but this season is not the entire series it’s just one part of the book that IMO is incredibly effective as it’s written without the overarching loustat otp narrative in its way.

also that woman tried to find a louis replacement in every single book she wrote and only gave up when her fans hated it and complained enough i guess. but even disregarding all her bad writing, everyone involved in the show has talked about how it was a challenge to account for the massive retcon she did after tvl. these are all choices that were made on what to prioritize and to deal with the fact that the books aren’t consistent about the characterizations or relationships. and they’re going to have to make even more decisions going forward when louis completely ghosts off the page in anne’s writing and all im saying is what im seeing so far makes me wary of those future decisions they’ll have to make s3 and beyond. (not even getting into the fact they’re shoving dm/lesmand/nickistat/etc into this season too like that’s just compounding the same issue)

[azrantimes]

I don't know if I'm making things up but the way the characters dress determines Shakespeare's influence.

So let's start with the ensemble. The players are clearly dressed like they're going to rehearse the play at the start of the musical. All very modern outfits but there are small hints of 17th century fashion, but when they're IN the play, they're dressed in 17th century attire but with some modern hints, although the silhouettes are still something you'd see if you were going to a dance class nowadays

Shakespeare himself has one outfit and the jacket is the money piece. The weaponshield (that he actually commissioned bc his family didn't have one) on the back and the fit are really time appropriate, but he's wearing ripped jeans and sneakers. He's both a 17th century bard and a 21st century popstar. His outfit doesn't change, excluding his boi band stint, making it a stable element we can use as reference.

Anne's first costume is arguably the most historically accurate outfit. Her hair is in an updo and her entire body is covered. She's a traditional housewife and lives for William but this changes as soon as she has the quill.

Now let's talk about Juliet and Co.

The first time we see Juliet is her waking up after Romeo's death (don't quote me on this I don't know exactly what it was supposed to represent) and she's wearing headphones. This is also after Anne took control of the story. She takes her headphones off signaling that she's no longer listening to someone else but we're going to be listening to her. Her outfit is pretty time accurate and doesn't stray too much away, untill Domino. Her long dress with the long sleeved gown over it gets exchanged for a short dress with removable puff sleeves. The two dresses are very similar but her new dress is much more her, and less traditional. This scene is also the scene where we meet Angelique, May and April. Angelique works for her parents, she serves them and her outfit is much more traditional than May's. May helps Juliet move on, and their jumpsuit isn't something you'd see in the 17th century but the details give it that feel. May is May, and they're their own person. Finally April. Continuing where I left off, on first sight April's green dress fits the time period but as you keep looking it doesn't make sense. Anne is rebelling. We obviously see her tattoo now, the one to spite her husband, and her sleeveless jean jacket gives her a rougher look. She literally shakes her updo away to let her hair fall down. She's in charge now, but William's her co-Writer.

I'm now just going to be primarily focusing on Juliet and Anne because this post would be very long otherwise!!

Juliet wears her dress untill the end of act 1, Romeo's return. Her freedom is gone, the man she thought died is back, what can she do? Changing her outfit apparently. The beginning of act 2 is the one and only time she's wearing blue. The silhouette is something you'd find in the H&M but the pattern gives it that old feel. She's in blue, rejecting everything, rejecting Romeo, rejecting Shakespeare. It's the last time he (or Anne) can control her as Anne breaks the quill. Start of the free will, but the wedding still has to happen. She's back in pink, but much lighter. She's herself but has to dim herself. Then Roar happens. The hot pink is back, combined with a color that's very similar to William's jacket (this is probably not intentional I just need a reason for everything) with a massive quill on it and puff pants, something a bard would wear. It's mocking Shakespeare. He doesn't have the quill anymore, she does, and she'll be as loud as she wants to be.

Dont want to make this any longer so I'm gonna go over Anne quickly. The two other green/blue outfits she wears are even less traditional. The first one is dark. It can still be something a villager would wear but it has a darker palette. William ruins everything she wrote, so she ruins his quill. Her end dress resembles a wedding dress. She forgives William, she wants to give their relationship a second chance, but this time she'll be in charge (thus the blue/green, "Maybe we'll rewrite all of your plays")

End.

This was another yap from the yapking thank you and I hope this makes sense

[1eos]

becus im a hater: top 5 WORST books u've ever read (if u explain why theyre the worst thats even better)

THANK YOU FOR BEING A HATERRRRRRRRR I LOVE IT. my least favorite books...let's go

interview with a vampire. awful boring awful boring if it werent for fans reading into the gayness it would be nothing. weird shit going on with the vampire baby anne rice just pulled out a thesaurus to make the prettiest most boring sentences she could put on paper. that book made me HATE HER

heart of darkness by joseph conrad. i hate that this book is caught as a book abt colonialism bc its not a book abt anything. i wouldnt wipe my ass w this book in fear that my ass got bored and detached from my body. a lot of words to say nothing like just rambling on abt how wild and exotic lands that don't belong to white ppl are as they try to own it. a MESS

the scarlet letter. brooooooooooo brooooooooooooooooooooo this man wrote like 5000000 words of pure ROT over some ppl all up in a woman's business. i think reading this book tipped me off to protestants just hating pleasure bc the torture of reading this? its a miracle i did not jump my english teacher over this

a tale of two cities. if dickens is not in hell i will drag him there. i think someone told me once he got paid per word AND IF TRUE I CAN FUCKING TELL. the way i was fucking fightinggggggggg bc i had beef w the fucking inflated, bland, wordy, exhausting prose style of prominent english writers like there is a reason everyone hates english and its bullshit like this

hooked the dark disney retelling. im not done with it but i already know its gonna be one of the worst books i ever read. the 'grind that sweet pussy on me' line. the fact that its disney dark erotica. hook being triggered by literally everything. everyone getting off on thoughts of peter pan. the way they modernized everything ITS BAD

[mell0bee]

YESSSSSSSSS WRITING TAG TIMEEEEE EHEHHEHEHEHHEHEEEE

1, 5, 12, 16, 19, and 20

P.S: check more of your asks!!!! >:3

YIPEEE thanks kiki sorry it took me a bit to do this

1- the last sentence you wrote

“Oh my god, her voice must have risen like, three octaves when you smiled at her. “

some luz dialogue from luz & hunter’s guide, talking about willow to hunter, lmao

5- first sentence of the fifth paragraph of an unfinished wip

“The gods of the pantheon seem to have their doubts, not seeing the greatness his uncle does in him.”

wow i had to pull this one from the VAULTS. i don’t actually have any current wip drafts (just a ton of loosely planned ideas) so this one is from like 2022. it’s an owl house mythology au loosely based off of hades (the video game) in which the golden guard gets reincarnated over and over and tries to escape. i like the concept but have no idea what the plot would be so on the shelf it will sit until i figure that out

12- a trope you’re really into right now

hmmmm not really a fanfic trope but ive been thinking a lot about crouching moron, hidden badass. specifically the variant where a character is deliberately hiding how badass they actually are by acting like a moron, at least partially. invoking this trope is like, how to make that character my favorite character 101.

as for fanfic tropes. uh. a favorite of mine that never gets old is childhood friends to enemies to friends to lovers. so many of the ships that have been giving me brain worms throughout the last 5 or so years fall in this category. *cough* sashanne *cough* narumitsu *cough COUGH* catradora. it’s the layer of being previously childhood friends and having that past pure and unconditional friendship. and then having that all torn apart and then rebuilt again. S-tier drama.

16- favorite place to write

99% of my writing is done in my bed bc im paranoid that if i wrote at my desk my parents would be able to see because they tend to randomly barge into my room. when im at college i tend to write a lot less but at least i can do it at my desk lmao

19- the most interesting topic you’ve researched for a fic

for ‘the girl, the cat, and the black hole calamity’ i went down quite the rabbit hole of archaic and modern physics concepts like entropy, black holes & atomic decay. it was very fun and absolutely none of it ended up in the fic because i was like. why would 13yo anne care about this nerdy physics stuff lmao

i also have researched a lot (A LOT) of archetypal literature, historical figures, jungian psych, & various myths (specifically irish myth) which is on paper for the persona 5 swap au fic that im never gonna write buuuuut mostly was out of my own curiosity. when i was first learning how to write i read up on archetypical literature and campbell and stuff quite a bit so it was very fun to revisit. also this swap au lives in my brain rent-free. it would theoretically be a longfic covering the events of the entire game but i can’t do that. but im gonna have to do SOMETHING with it considering the sheer amount of effort ive put into the planning and reworking all of the main cast’s personas to the point where im pretty sure ive put more thought into my picks than the original p5 writers lmao

20- in what year did you publish your first fic?

cannot be bothered to find the exact year but i know i was 13 so probably 2016 or 2017. yknow what’s funny is i spent most of middle and high school thinking that when i got to college i’d stop writing fic and doing fandom stuff in general and yet here i am, going into my senior year of college, still on the same fandom clownery that i was 8 years ago. lmao.

[all-seeing-ifer]

Wait I really like ats s5 it has some banger episodes, why don’t you like it?

oh man. season 5.

so, in theory, there's a lot about season 5 that I should like. I think it reinvents the show in an interesting way and I love the themes of never stopping fighting even in the face of the knowledge that the good guys are never going to truly win and that the deck is always going to be stacked against them. the fucking dialogue between gunn and anne in the finale? "I'd get this truck packed before the new stuff gets here"? holy SHIT it is so good!!!

I totally get why people like season 5 I do think it genuinely has a lot going for it BUT you DID ask so I will now be presenting Isabel's List of Varyingly Serious/Petty Beefs With Angel Season Five. In No Particular Order:

Spike's a good addition to the show and god knows angel season 5 does more interesting stuff with him than buffy season 7 ever did but it is fucking insane to me how much focus and development he gets while gunn fred and lorne, who have been mainstays of the show since like season 2, continue to get absolute jack shit to do

just generally let's be honest. anyone who isn't a white guy this season is fucked. harmony gets no development despite being granted main cast status illyria gets nothing to do despite being set up as a super duper important addition to the cast I don't even know what they were fucking thinking with eve. etc.

THEY FRIDGED CORDY AND FRED WITHIN THREE EPISODES OF EACH OTHER. AND AT NO POINT DID ANYONE IN THE WRITERS' ROOM THINK THAT MAYBE THE FACT THAT THEY WERE WERE STARTING TO RUN OUT OF WOMEN WAS PERHAPS A PROBLEM

speaking of cordy my best girl of all time, I know people love you're welcome but i'm sorry i remain deeply ambivalent about that fucking thing. like yes it's nice that the cordy we know and love gets to come back for one last hurrah but also the episode basically never treats her like a person with feelings of her own and instead she's just there to motivate angel and then die so he can be sad about it. i can't believe it only took 40 minutes to set feminism back 4000 years

also sorry but did they really think you're welcome was going to be enough to make up for what they did to her in season 4? have you seen season 4? one episode where cordy looks hot and has her tits out and swordfights will NOT undo the damage that has been done

and then they proceed to set feminism back even further by just refusing to acknowledge the existence of their show's secondary protagonist for the basically the rest of the season and also fridging fred in an arguably even more horrific way three episodes later so wesley can be sad and so they can introduce a new character who does nothing

like seriously nothing makes me more rabid in season 5 than the scene in power play where the characters all vote on if they're gonna go through with their suicide mission against the circle of the black thorn and it's just all the men voting on it bc illyria's been incapictated bc I guess in angel season 5 women don't get to have agency even when they're literal godlike demon lords

on the subject of the illyria plotline i fucking hate how gunn gets treated. like sorry all the men on this show (sans lorne. unproblematic king) have done awful shit why does gunn get singled out as having done something uniquely horrible just for a shady business deal he couldn't possibly have known the consequences of. like we know why but still

and on the subject of gunn.... the fact that they wrote a storyline implying that the only way for the only black main character in the show to become smart and capable is for him to have his brain magically altered and NO ONE in the writers room was like HM MAYBE THIS IS A BAD LOOK ACTUALLY. christ i would feel way better about the whole "gunn feels like he's just the muscle" conflict if the show more consistently came down on the side that players does where gunn does actually have way more to offer than being the muscle but has just come to see himself as just The Guy Who Fights. but unfortunately they spend at least as much time writing gunn as Actually Just The Muscle. usually to make wesley look better (i promise i'm not bitter about it)

and perhaps i'd be less annoyed about all this if gunn also got literally anything else to do this season but this is truly all he gets until not fade away

which i guess is still better than fred? like fred just dies. that's it

guys i don't think we shit on the girl in question enough. like it's bad. it's really bad. i'm so glad we're currently in the shit talking lies my parents told me renaissance but can we also start bringing that same energy for this piece of shit

nina's an art student so i hate her by default (<- guy who went to art school <- i am allowed to say this)

despite spike being intended to serve as a replacement for cordy they just straight up don't give him relationships with any of the characters other than angel (and fred for like. one episode) and it results in him just feeling incredibly out of place

just in general actually it feels like the writers kind of stopped caring about any of the character relationships aside from angel and spike and fred/wesley (which they only care about bc it's a reason for wesley to be sad anyway)

the pacing is a nightmare and i do not give a shit about the circle of the black thorn. sorry

and just as a disclaimer i would like to acknowledge that like. ats was always fairly shitty about race and gender this isn't unique to s5 but MAN does it feel like season 5 in particular is just. saying the quiet part out loud constantly every episode

anyway thank you for giving me free rein to just bitch about angel season 5 for an extended period of time this was fun. still i'm honestly glad that you enjoy it like really truly I wish that were me

[thelaurenshippen]

You mentioned that you got excited to write the shopping montage when you "realized a certain character would be sticking around." Was the initial uncertainty around that because you weren't sure how the story was going to unfold, or because of some of the real life complications around availability and casting? Stories definitely have a life of their own, but do you feel like you've got a fairly firm plan in mind with "Bridgewater?"

bridgewater spoilers below the cut!

a little bit of both! there's always some uncertainty around what's actually going to be possible production-wise and, of course, we did end up getting alan tudyk in as thomas bradshaw because nathan fillion couldn't come back. and we all couldn't be happier about that! nathan and alan are close friends and alan is doing such a wonderful job that it all really worked out well - but there was definitely a little bit of discussion around "well, do we want to recast or do we want to write thomas off" and ultimately decided that thomas was in so little of season 1 that recasting wouldn't be super disruptive.

I tend to only very broadly plan past a first season when I'm building a show, and usually I'm only focused on, like....the themes and vibes and character growth I want. so in bridgewater's case, I didn't have a S2 plan when writing S1 beyond "here's what I want for jeremy and anne to experience", which could manifest in a whole LOT of ways (this is extremely vague I know, but obviously I can't talk about it until the whole season is out). there was a moment where I thought about jeremy and anne hearing thomas' voice at the end being a fakeout and it actually turns out to be some kind of hallucination or weird paranormal trick, but aaron and I, like, BARELY entertained that. we really wanted jeremy to have the chance to get to know his dad and I love "man out of time" stories.

anyway, long story long, I didn't necessarily even have the arc of the plot and lore of S2 mapped out when we figured out how we wanted the season to end, if that makes sense. I had really clear goals in mind for the emotional journeys that each of the characters would go on, and toyed around with a few ways of getting there before I landed on the one I ended up writing. part of why I don't plot out the specific story beats beyond a first season is because a) I'm a very character-forward writer, so whatever is going to enable the characters to have the emotional arcs I want is what I follow and b) when actors are involved you just truly never know how that's going to transform things.

for instance, I've talked about this before, but jeremy didn't swear all that much on the page in S1, but misha threw in so many swears when we were recording that the S2 scripts had way more cursing for Jeremy from the start. I loved it, I loved how misha's perspective on the character and sensibility altered the way jeremy speaks - he's funnier in S2, with a drier wit, because misha is very funny with a dry wit. it's the same thing with anne - melissa plays her hard-nosed nature so well, but she also has this absolutely incredible softness to her, that I actually wrote her calling jeremy "sweetie" or "honey" in S2 a few times (which I have a lot of squishy feelings about, I just have a lot of squishy feelings about them in general bc of the chemistry that misha and melissa have). same thing with misha and karan - they had such a playful chemistry that it was really easy and nice to lean into the real genuine love and care that vipin and jeremy have for each other (this is, like, SUCH a minor spoiler for what's coming up next, but I was just listening to this episode today, and in future episodes people refer to vipin explicitly as jeremy's best friend because like....yeah, he totally is. jeremy is a pretty loner-ish guy and even though vipin is his TA there is a genuine closeness there).

so there's that kind of stuff that can shape the emotional journeys the characters go on which of course can shake up your plot completely (if anyone listened to The Bright Sessions and has heard me talk about this specific thing before, this is exactly what happened with mark/damien - that relationship was not supposed to result in one of them falling in love and the other one, like, kind of falling back a little against his better judgment (I mean, christ, damien was like the one character that when I started writing I was like 'yeah this guy is straight' turns out VERY much no) but it turned into that because the first time andrew and charlie sat down to record together as those characters it was INSTANT sparks. some of the wildest organic chemistry I've ever experienced as a director lol).

but then there's also the fact that sometimes your actors are your direct collaborators on building the story! of course aaron is my partner in crime in building the world of bridgewater, but for S2, because misha was on board before I even started writing it, the two of us had several conversations both as I was outlining and then after all the scripts were written about who jeremy was and what we wanted for him. so I tend to keep all my plans fairly loose because I love the spontaneous collaboration that comes out of working with other people.

YEESH that was such a long winded answer, but thank you for asking!

[mzannthropy]

Tell me why you dislike the Emily trilogy please because I'm rereading it!!

It's more of a difficult relationship, rather than disliking it; there are many parts that I like about Emily. Like, the majority of it is good. But it drives me CRAZY! It's the way LMM wrote, and the choices she made in the Emily series.

(Sorry if it's ranty and incoherent, it's the first time I've properly wrote down all my thoughts & feelings on Emily.)

So first of all, what the hell is it with all the preachy, patronising BS? This is not LMM's usual style, which is why it's so bewildering. The narrator frequently breaks the fourth wall to tell us how she's not there to defend Emily, but to merely chronicle her life and I want to say, I don't need you to defend Emily, Lucy Maud, I can make my own mind for myself, thank you! She doesn't do it in Anne (also a story of an orphan being taken in), and as far I can remember, she doesn't do it in any of her other writing. It reminds me of Little Women a lot. And from me that's not a compliment.

Then, I say it outright as it is: I loathe Aunt Elizabeth and Aunt Ruth and I think they're both child abusers. Aunt Ruth, especially, is a tyrant. She's a dictator. Her constantly calling Emily "sly" with no evidence and then after that incident with Perry and the kiss, when they hold a family court, she says "I would have believed you if you had told the truth", can you get any more textbook abuser? I have this thing when I cannot handle someone not being believed (also due to something that I went through), it triggers me, and a person (esp of authority) determined to disbelieve you and think the worst of you when it's just not true sends me to a rage. Aunt Elizabeth is a vile, cruel, narrow-minded woman, who should not be allowed near children. If the narrative ever condemned these women, it would be a much better reading experience. But it doesn't. Right to the very end, the last page, the second to last paragraph, when Emily and Teddy finally, FINALLY, find each other, Ruth still calls Emily sly. Worst of it is that Emily really doesn't do anything remotely wicked. She's essentially a good kid. What would these hags do if they saw today's teenagers?

"You are always writing yards of trash that nobody wants." Quote from Aunt Elizabeth. What a nice, loving aunt! Then they call Emily a Murray when it suits them--when she does something they disapprove of, it's "that Starr coming out in her". Or they say she's "half a Murray" and I'm like, everyone is unless both your parents were Murrays?

Abusive caregivers are no strangers to LMM works, ofc, but they're usually presented as villains and are not the "endgame" caregivers. (Take as an example, little Elizabeth from Windy Poplars.) That's why I like Jane of Lantern Hill, bc here LMM finally admits that an abusive narcissist is an abusive narcissist (the grandmother). And that was 1937, so you know, it took her time to realise that.

So, most of what I'm saying here relates to the second book. Emily of New Moon is not as infuriating and Quest I actually like, despite how it drags, bc it so perfectly depicts the consequences of Emily's choice at the end of Emily Climbs. And here I get to the crux of the matter--the ending of Emily Climbs.

So, Emily has graduated school, has some success with her writing, has had short stories published and at last meets someone who believes in her, who sees her talent as a writer. Janet Royal offers her a job and a place to stay in New York. An opportunity people would sell their literal souls for. And what does Emily do?

She refuses it bc she doesn't want to leave New Moon.

Once again, I repeat. Emily gets offered a job and free accommodation in fucking NEW YORK and she refuses it bc she doesn't want to leave New Moon, that fucking backwards, progress-denying, candle-burning, abuse-filled place in godsforsaken village on PEI.

How is this supposed to be a good storytelling choice??? And this is why I don't think the series will get adapted again. Not without some major changes. Bc I can't imagine how modern audience would react to a heroine rejecting an opportunity of a lifetime, an opportunity many young people today would commit literal CRIMES for--and for what? It's not even that she is doing it to get married and have kids (stupid choice still, but at least more understandable). The end of Climbs makes me so fucking mad, that story with the dog is so stupid and painful to read (YMMV). I want to cry, why, Lucy Maud, whyyyyyyyyyyy *cries unconsolably*

I think it's bc LMM wouldn't have been able to write--or at least she thought she wouldn't have been able to write--a story of a young upcoming female writer in NYC, bc that wasn't her type of story. But in that case, she should not have included that golden opportunity in Climbs at all. Bc why is it there? Emily could have just returned to New Moon after she finished her schooling.

The tragic, Watsonian interpretation is that Emily is merely experiencing effects of her childhood trauma. (If you want to look at it as a tragedy, then it makes it sort of more bearable, if only it was less patronising...)

When she informs Aunt Elizabeth of her decision, the woman's response is: "I thought a Murray would." I thought a Murray would. Not, I'm happy you're staying with us. That tells you everything you need to know.

And this is what's good about Emily's Quest. Bc here, Emily suffers the consequences of her moronic choice. Ilse, Teddy and Perry all leave to chase their fortunes. Imagine Emily left too. The NYC offer was a tad unrealistic, but, had LMM had better ideas, she could have made it a Toronto job instead. Or Halifax. Or just Charlottetown, ffs. Imagine her getting out of the New Moon environment, getting brand new experiences, seeing people not give a slightest fuck that she was a Murray of New Moon. Seeing how, out in the real world, little their majestic family clan matters. But she didn't. And that's why she had to go through what she went through in the last book. Bc she never meets any book/literary people, she puts so much stock in Dean and she believes everything he tells her. She believes him when he tells her that her book is no good, burns her manuscript and in anguish runs out of her room, trips over the sewing basket and----

So ummm, Dean. Of course he's a creep. But it makes sense to me that she's friends with him. She's a vulnerable child, he preys on her. I don't buy that he'd so happily to give her the deeds of the house as a wedding gift, but LMM wanted her happy ending and she never actually wrote Dean as the dangerous predator that he is.

When I read LMM biography The Gift of Wings by Mary Henley Rubio, I hoped I would find some answers to things that bother me about Emily--but there weren't any. So, *shrugs* I guess I never will know.

[cosmicangst]

jay what did you think about ppp? i'm dying to know

as a purely vibes and dynamics watcher i wrote this pretty lengthy breakdown/interpretation shortly after my second attempt of watching this movie (the first time amc canceled my showing when i got there which was soooo dumb)

and it was basically me trying to give the writers the benefit of the doubt of what they were trying to do w kou in this movie and the State of the Akane and Kou Dynamic as a whole but the more i read it the more i think im just reaching for the sake of seeing my boy totally not get shafted into irrelevance here bc im sorry but he really felt extraneous like it just seemed like he was written there like logistically bc we gotta go from A to B and they had to fill the Action Punch Scene and Fan Favorite Showcase quota but like conceptually? holistically? thematically? spiritually? at the beating emotional burning heart of this series? for the amount of screentime you got what are you still doing here kou? what are you serving? really giving major how ya doin fellow kids energy and it HURTS 😩

long story short i think this is a culmination of the writers flailing on what to do w him after s1 and on a more generous reading, what happens when a person outlives their purpose. i wrote a season one kou-centric fic for the 10th anniversary zine (which i still need to post lol) with an epigraph by anne carson: "to live past the end of your myth is a perilous thing." that was all i could think about.

anyway other thots

this was akane's movie through and through. she has always felt to me the most complex and most complete character of this entire series and this movie proved that and then some. girl did that shit. makishima WISHES

saiga's ending? mixed. still marinating on it

i did overall enjoy the movie in the wider context of the series as it did make me appreciate season 3 more for making it more cohesive in retrospect

gino ponytail/manbun apologist 4evs. love my boy wish he got like some real meat to chew on but at least they gave him emotions and shit

akira "nooo don't you're too sexy to die"

mika tsun to her senpai. CUTE 😍 if i didn't also feel so conflicted on the general writings treatment of mika i would have enjoyed this without qualms

idk i think reading the spoilers beforehand from my mutuals already tempered my expectations so my general vibe of the whole thing was just like "yeah that tracks". i do have to watch it again for me to feel like ive properly judged it

[lilolilyr]

Tagged by @lesbianlotties a while back, thanks :) I know you just tagged me in a similar one more recently but this one I can do more with atm xD also maybe it'll make me actually finish a fic, who knows! After not posting anything for nearly a month I just wrote what might be half of a ficlet last night at 2am and another bit at 7 so I'm naturally completely sleep deprived but ecstatic about the sudden bout of creativity!

Rules:

Post up to five (5) filenames of your WIPs; not titles, file names. Post a snippet from one of them (Snippet must be words you wrote in the last 7 days. We’re posting progress here. If you haven’t made any, go make some and come back to post.)

After you’ve posted, people can send you an ask with one of your file names. You must then write 3 sentences in that file. That’s it! You can invite others to join in or just post.

Ok so I don't usually have file names bc titles are hard and come last so everything is '[Fandom] [ship] [oneworddescription] wip' to me xD but I'll still tell you about five of my recent drafts

a fluffy Berena continuation to my 'Why'd it take so long to see the light' series

a blind!Andy Mirandy AU with them meeting on a plane just before the canon timeline would happen

this one's just an idea so far but I'd love to write a songfic to the storyline in 'He Set Her Off', either Berena or Avorah, definitely send me an ask if you want me to write one of them!

4. Milippa fluff, a morning of a camping trip

5. also just an idea so far: I'd love to write an And They Were Neighbors type situation but I can't even seem to decide which ship to write it for (Avorah? Milippa/Milippakat? Mirandy??) So atm it's just a file full of throwaway lines and some inspo fics... Might ask the author of one of them whether they'd be okay with me rewriting it for a different ship bc one of the fics really fits well especially to Avorah tho with a bit of a role reversal on the younger & older characters? Idk

Feel free to send me an ask with the wip number & what you want to know about it/prompt me to continue it! :)

And here's the snipped, from the Berena WIP on •1:

Smiling gratefully, Bernie sits down at the edge of the tub, leaning forward with her arms on her knees for a moment, feeling quite content. She's barely in any pain at all now, and the sound of the water falling from the showerhead is soothing.

"Close your eyes," Serena murmurs, and when Bernie complies, she washes her hair for her, then rinses it out before quickly finishing her own clean-up, turning off the water and stepping out behind the shower curtain.

Tagging some Berena bloggers who might like to see this, plus some writers who might want to do this!

@sapphicdbc @akaanonymouth @starfleetwitch @shippingsincebeforeyouwereborn @purlturtle @lonely-night @batnbreakfast @pers-books @squishmittenficfan @guardianrock @jennamacaroni @cryhardanddanceharder @onaperduamedee @eyeh0rr0r @danisnotmyname

Also feel tagged to do any of the other tagging memes I'll be doing today! Or also the ones in the tagging meme may tag (just click on the tag below... Or if tumblr is bugging and it leads you to the general tag search, click back until you can't see this part below the readmore anymore, Then click the tag on this post and you should see all the other posts I've tagged with it), bc this is I think the first one I made in June? So that'd be a bit sad of a selection xD