#c-is-for-circinate

[mzminola]

Image: blue poster with a flying dragon silhouette with white text reading “you can’t put the BLORBO on a BLUE”. /end ID

C’s commentary on Impression wankery in Pern crossovers.

[stuckstucktrolls]

🌅💅🍳🎭 for Circin and (I forgot his name but he was new and evil ;-;)

Do you have a certain routine for starting your night?

P: Of course I have a routine. My genes might be exceptional, but the thousands of sweeps I might end up living is a long time to go without a good skin and hair care. I'd get into more detail, but it's my own secret and pretty intensive. Then I take breakfast at 6 pm whether the sun is down or not, then do some light yoga to get the aquatic based vascular system moving. After that I get to work for the night.

C: ^o I'm pretty flexible but I always have my uniform set out from the night before, whether I'm working in the lab or the field. ^o I'm also usually the one who makes breakfast but sometimes Cherry comes over with something. ^o I love when my moirail and mate are both around to chat before if have to leave. ^o And with Fergus around more I get to have that more often. ^o And soon I might have a spade to come visit too.

(He seems to have lost his train of thoughts.)

^o What were we talking about?

Do you have time or resources for self care or small luxuries?

P: Not much point in being a violet if you don't have the money and prestige, is there?

C: ^o I do but I prefer simple pleasures. ^o Getting my hair redone, spending time with quads or friends, studying the minds of particularly interesting aliens. ^o You know. ^o The usual.

What sort of cuisine do you normally eat? Are you openly okay with items labelled only as grubsauce or grubloaf?

P: As if I'd even touch that pre-processed grub mush. Do you know the kinds of chemicals they put in that stuff? I do, because on top of being the CEO of my own drug company, I'm also a chemist. That stuff might be fine for lowbloods to gorge on, but not me. I have a personal chef, a nutritionist and only go to the most highly rated dining establishments when I do go out.

C: ^o I'm actually not that picky as long as everyone else is happy. ^o That said, lately it's been a lot of Spanish and Italian with Cherry, generalized Alternian with Fergus, drinks with one or both of them, and the occasional protein bar.

How do you access entertainment? What is available to you to do for fun?

P: There's a highbloods club I go to now and then to play pool at. Nice place, everybody knows everybody, and our ancestors knew each other too. And what seadweller doesn't like going for a swim? Got an infinity pool for me and my moirail. Poor thing, he can barely come out of the water for more than a few hours. Just one of us who can't really adapt to land life well, but he can't stay in the sea anymore either. But it's nice we can spend time together that way. I guess there's always the news on busy nights. I still have to keep up with that anyway.

C: ^o I like to go for walks and hang out with my quads. ^o As long as they're happy I'm happy.

[darkfeanix]

In Which I Read Dragonflight

So after observing references to this "Dragonriders of Pern" series passively for several years, I recently decided to see if it was worth a look. To my immense gratitude, @c-is-for-circinate​ wrote out a very nice explanation and recommendation here. Having now finished the first book they suggested, Dragonflight, I wanted to share my thoughts.

(Also, I've just realised the second book they recommended was Dragonsdawn, not Dragonquest, which is the one I thoughtlessly jumped into after finishing Dragonflight. Oh well, I guess I'll be checking out Dragsondawn next.)

Thoughts under the cut. Spoilers for Dragonflight, and to a lesser degree Dragonquest, naturally.

So all things considered, I did end up enjoying Dragonflight. I really liked Lessa as a protagonist, and F'lar as the handsome man who sweeps in to sweep the protagonist off their feet, even if I did get frustrated with him from time to time.

I loved the dragons. After 10+ years of Game of Thrones and House of the Dragon, where dragons are intelligent but still largely bestial in nature, it was a thrill to read about dragons communicating directly with their riders. I also found it interesting that McCaffrey includes an introduction (prologue? I was listening to the audiobook and don't remember how it was titled) that explicitly goes into the history of Pern as a science fiction setting rather than fantasy. I know that it had that backstory, but I had assumed it was something that would come out over time, not be made plain before the story even started.

To be clear, I'm a huge fan of the worldbuilding. I'm a sucker for stories where society has forgotten its scientific origins and so marvellous achievements of times past come to be regards as magic.

Speaking of times past: was not expecting time travel in this story! Somehow managed to avoid spoiling myself about that until I reached it in the story. I thought it was quite cleverly woven, with serious enough consequences that overuse of it could end up being disastrous. Unfortunately, I did spoil myself regarding its use in the story's climax, but even then, I thought it was set up so well that if I hadn't known ahead of time I think it would have been really satisfied with it.

Other random things of note:

When the story first introduced Fax, and as we learn more about what an awful person he is, I initially found it hard to take it seriously. "What a cartoonish villain," I thought to myself. And then I thought a bit harder and realised we have people like that in the real world; people with that same sense of entitlement, who think they can do and say and take anything with no consequences. After that he felt a lot less cartoonish, and a lot more satisfying when he met his end.

I really empathised with Lessa when she became Weyrwoman and basically got reduced to… well, "woman do what man say, man fight, woman stay behind to look after home". I despised R'gul, and when it was time for Ramoth's first mating flight, I became genuinely worried and half-convinced that he was going to solidify his power by keeping F'lar out of the picture until it was over. I cannot overstate my relief when he was unseated, nor my satisfaction as he was repeatedly proven wrong about his beliefs over the course of the rest of the story.

Speaking of F'lar, by the way, I got really frustrated with him at multiple points. It seemed like all the things about Lessa that made him want her to become Weyrwoman suddenly become a problem for him once she actually was Weyrwoman. Not to mention that it really felt at times like he was blaming her for not knowing enough, when he should have been well aware that R'gull kept her education very limited. It felt a bit like making someone wear a blindfold to your home and then getting angry when they can't name the colour of the carpet.

As stated above, I have started reading Dragonquest, and I appreciate that the time travel solution, though it solved their problems in the short term, doesn't end up being a perfect deus ex machina; there are consequences being felt even seven years later.

All in all, I’m glad I read it, and once I’ve finished Dragonquest, I will almost certainly check out Dragonsdawn.

[book--wyrm]

@c-is-for-circinate

#Does nobody else find new fic from the 'recent bookmarks' tab in the fandom tag? the what tab?????

Okay I have a follow up question from a poll I started today, which is tied into the concept of fic discoverability.

I would be fascinated to know how you normally find fics to read, and your reasoning about it, if any. Has your behaviour changed over time? What fandom are you in?

[autumnrory]

fic rec

title: A Myriad of Misdecisions author: Darksknight pairing: steve/bucky words: 21392 summary: c-is-for-circinate’s AU: “My parents thought I was working for an insurance company in New York when really I was joining the CIA so I just sort of never mentioned when I met you on an assassination-gone-wrong and now we’ve been married for five years and they still don’t know you exist, this has gotten wildly out of hand and you won’t stop laughing about it” ao3

[spooky-owl-necromancer]

@c-is-for-circinate said pokemon AU and my brain went YES PLEASE.

The Smeargle definitely came with the magical paints

[sun-critrole]

@c-is-for-circinate posted a lovely little happy-place ficlet (which you can read here) so I thought I’d do the same.

Imagine the waves of the Lucidian Ocean crashing softly like kisses upon the moon-soaked sands of Nicodranas. The beach is sighing in time with the city, and if you look closely the lights flare in time with the tide. There is laughter, maybe, distant enough that it could also be seagulls. There is a rock, still almost warm from a day under vibrant sun. There is a white hand set casually against it, an offering so tempting Beau cannot refuse.

She was never good at impulse control, anyway.

“Hmm?” Yasha hums, her attention to the horizon broken as she turns back, meeting Beau’s eyes unflinchingly. She’s grown into herself, these last months. She seems unshakeable now.

Beau shrugs. She’s still shakeable. She’s hoping Yasha can look past that.

Fortunately, Yasha only smiles, a gift. She turns back to watch the growing storm in the west, her hair blowing in the night air so it brushes Beau’s cheek. They sit, hands clasped together, and watch the moon finish rising, hoping against hope that this - the ocean, the moon, the promise of a warm bed and good friends, the promise of something more - will survive whatever tests they find themselves facing.

[anakinskywalkerisfave]

#oh god Scott is just SO DONE WITH VAULTS #NO MORE VAULTS #HE CANNOT BELIEVE THIS FAMILY (tags via c-is-for-circinate)

[penroseparticle]

c-is-for-circinate replied to your post : Is… is Fjord my favorite character?

1. Fjord is absolutely awesome and very much deserving of being a fave. 2. Caduceus is great, but lots of the stuff that really gets him won’t come for AGES. You’ve got time. 3. You have a type, my friend, and maybe I couldn’t pick it out of a lineup most of the time, but ninety-five percent of the CR posts you’ve made that I’ve seen, ever, have at least obliquely involved Travis Willingham. Sorry to be the one to break it to you.

1. Ok I assumed it was my love of Travis bleeding but I really dig the whole “Our fearless leader/party face” the secret disaster as a vibe so def enjoying this.

2. I am excited because Caduceus is probably the character I would roll out of all of these characters so I want to like him real bad

3. LOOK, I KNOW, OK, I’M A SIMPLE MAN, I DON’T OWE YOU AN EXPLANATION but also like, Nott was my fave for the early game (like, first 20ish episodes now that I am looking back), and Sam is very much not my type, so I think this is independant

BUT YES I HAVE A TYPE, SUE ME

[luckthebard]

c-is-for-circinate replied to your post: that's a super interesting observation about what...

Oh man–I missed the Deadlands finale (hopefully I’ll find time soon!), but I finally finished TAZ Amnesty this week, so I’ve actually been thinking about this ALL DAY re: different DM'ing styles. I think you’re 100% right about the grief reaction. I also think it might actually be WORSE when a death is fully unscripted–surprise roll-of-the-dice deaths feel shocking, confusing, incomplete, “wrong”, because they’re not tidy, not how it’s “supposed to go” in fiction.

This is a really good point! Something I read a lot with these sudden, unscripted and unlucky deaths is “it’s not fair.” And...that’s kind of right. 

The fact that sudden TTRPG deaths don’t follow understood narrative conventions around character death makes them very jarring. And if you don’t go into watching streamed TTRPG content kind of braced for that, I imagine it would be incredibly shocking.

[treeofcups]

c-is-for-circinate replied to your post “Sam’s saying that he never watched or read any Harry Potter and the...”

Please note that they were also playing as characters from the Breakfast Club, which Sam has ALSO never seen. It was glorious.

I’ve also never seen the Breakfast Club, so that’s something Sam and I have in common. That’s going to be a very interesting watch for me.

[harleythealter]

I agree with both @snarkythewoecrow (I’ll nickname you crow for this) and @c-is-for-circinate (I’ll nickname you C for this).

I believe C is mostly right that a deeper story can be found in explaining what is there. ::Going into great detail about the nightmares instead of just mentioning the fear of sleep in passing. Or show in length the ways this character directly avoids sleep-late night movies or reading. Writing, fantasizing, daydreaming, abusing substances, staying up late, caffine and snacks, brain stimulation—you get the gist. Great depth can be found in writing about what is there. It’s also beneficial to show how characters fill the absences that they do feel. I can appreciate that you( @c-is-for-circinate) for voicing a more accurate way to represent abuse situations and victims. We don’t want people who digest the media to believe a false representation of this situation. I also acknowledge that I appreciate reading works that have an in-depth description of what is there-the nightmares, fears, lingering pain, etc.

But I can agree with Crow because who are we to say 1) what is real/accurate -by this I mean that we don’t know everybody’s experiences. Nor 2) that it is the writers job to make sure the readers know. That’s unfair to the writers/producers-it makes it a task to write. Yay for those who like writing as a task, but it’s unfair for those who don’t don’t like making writing a task.

I hold an appreciation for the exaggeration of how I feel/trauma in my writing because it’s how I express my emotions and what I experienced. Part of why I do it is to prove to myself that my emotions are valid, because I love my characters and it’s valid for them to feel that way. Writing is also my way to identify those emotions, they can be tricky to find unless I exaggerate them through the writing. I also identified a lot of my problems(that were caused by my experienced)through the exaggerated problems my characters went through… my characters often had fathers who abused substances… much like myself. Another example is noting that many of my characters displaying wild actions that were very ambivalent led me on the journey of learning I have an ambivalent attachment style. There are other examples too private to share.

I also recall Crow mentioning that they appreciated works where a character was able to speak out against the wrongs being done to them. This often is ‘unrealistic’ but it is a goal for some people. It was for me-still is actually. I consistently have to remind myself to advocate for my boundaries and needs. I did speak out once in the heat of a moment, and it backlashed, but it was a great stepping stone for the future. I gathered the courage to do so from reading ‘unrealistic’ works where the character broke free. It gave me something to long for and even informed me that my situation wasn’t how it should be. I was rather unaware well into my teens that my life wasn’t how it should be.

I say all this because I agree with crow that we shouldn’t gatekeep-I don’t believe we should be allowed to dictate how others write. It’s not our right to limit others, even when we don’t think they’re being accurate. I recognize that exaggeration can cause beliefs in false representations. But I question if exaggerating is always misrepresentation-in my case exaggeration isn’t representing what happened to me, but it is representing how I feel. Even the extreme pain and angst in my writings is true to me. I give space for it to mean just as much to other people who read my works as it does to me while I write them.

I like to consider what C said as a really passionate suggestion for how to write trauma/recovery/abuse situations, it’s really helpful for people who aren’t writing from experience-even for me and I do write from experience to have advice on how to write deeply. But I believe that we can write deeply other ways too.

Oh, I can’t forget to mention I agree with crow when they said that people cope with trauma in different ways and will write that way, which might work for them and not for everybody else. It’s really accurate and is displayed between Crow’s preferences and C’s preferences-which are different ways of writing about the trauma/recovery experience.

<3

Overall point: writing more about what is there, rather than what isn’t, is a great way to write, but don’t discredit exaggeration or unrealistic representations because they can still hold layers of accuracy within. And remember, what works for you isn’t always what works for others.

There are a lot of abuse and recovery stories out there in fandom.  A lot of them are written by people who’ve never been in an abusive relationship.  That’s fine, that certainly doesn’t mean you can't write it, especially when it’s present in canon.  Unfortunately, it does mean that a lot of people get it wrong.

The usual abuse narrative you see in fandom is a story about absence.  The lack of safety.  The lack of freedom.  The lack of love, or of hope, or of trust.  They try to characterize the life of an abused kid, or an abused partner, based on what’s missing.  They characterize recovery based on getting things back: finding safety, discovering freedom, and slowly regaining the ability to trust–other people, the security of the world, themselves.

That doesn’t work.  That is not how it works.

Lives cannot be characterized by negative space.  This is a statement about writing.  It’s also a statement about life.

You can’t write about somebody by describing what isn’t there.  Or you can, but you’ll get a strange, inverted, abstracted picture of a life, with none of the right detail.  A silhouette.  The gaps are real but they're not the point.

If you’re writing a story, you need to make it about the things that are there.  Don’t try to tell me about the absence of safety.  Safety is relative.  There are moments of more or less safety all throughout your character’s day.  Absolute safety doesn’t exist in anyone’s life, abusive situation or not.

If you are trying to tell me a story about not feeling safe, then the question you need to be thinking about is, when safety is gone, what grows in the space it left behind?

Don’t try to tell me a story about a life characterized by the lack of safety.  Tell me a story about a life defined by the presence of fear.

What's there in somebody’s life when their safety, their freedom, their hope and trust are all gone?  It’s not just gaps waiting to be filled when everything comes out right in the end.  It’s not just a void.

The absence of safety is the presence of fear.  The absence of freedom is the presence of rules, the constant litany of must do this and don’t do that and a very very complicated kind of math beneath every single decision.  The lack of love feels like self-loathing.  The lack of trust translates as learning skills and strategies and skepticism, how to get what you need because you can’t be sure it’ll be there otherwise.

You don’t draw the lack of hope by telling me how your character rarely dares to dream about having better.  You draw it by telling me all the ways your character is up to their neck in what it takes to survive this life, this now, by telling me all the plans they do have and never once in any of them mentioning the idea of getting out.

This is of major importance when it comes to aftermath stories, too.  Your character isn’t a hollow shell to be filled with trust and affection and security.  Your character is full.  They are brimming over with coping mechanisms and certainties about the world.  They are packed with strategies and quickfire risk-reward assessments, and depending on the person it may look more calculated or more instinctual, but it’s there.  It’s always there.  You’re not filling holes or teaching your teenage/adult character basic facts of life like they’re a child.  You’re taking a human being out of one culture and trying to immerse them in another. People who are abused make choices.  In a world where the ‘wrong’ choice means pain and injury, they make a damn career out of figuring out and trying to make the right choice, again and again and again.  People who are abused have a framework for the world, they are not utterly baffled by everyone else, they make assumptions and fit observations together in a way that corresponds with the world they know.

They’re not little lost children.  They’re not empty.  They’re human beings trying to live in a way that’s as natural for them as life is for anybody, and if you’re going to write abuse/recovery, you need to know that in your bones.

Don’t tell me about gaps.  Tell me about what’s there instead.

[dontgofarfromme]

Hey! Been noticing lately that sometimes you tag your Magnus Archives posts, and sometimes you don't. Any chance you might be willing/able to tag them more? I know sometimes it's hard to remember or tumblr's generally tumblr and terrible, but TMA was not a good time for my brain and I appreciate being able to blacklist the tag so I can stick around for your other posts!

Oh I'm sorry! I try to be really consistant with my tagging but sometimes I forget, I'll be more careful!

[audible-smiles]

c-is-for-circinate replied to your post:

“what do you want me to say here?” is such a Fjord...

that ENTIRE FUCKING CONVERSATION, though. Fjord just literally has no idea how to open up, to anyone, about anything, ever, goddddddddd

that desperate, self-loathing fueled desire to completely reinvent oneself is just far too relatable :( :( :(

[mzminola]

Meme time! The challenge states: "When you get this you have to answer with 5 things you like about yourself, publicly. Then, send this ask to 10 of your favorite followers (non-negotiable)! hee hee (it's actually negotiable, you don't have to do this)" Totally optional, of course, but go forth if you like!

Okay we’re taking the negotiation because sending this along sounds mentally exhausting today. /cracks knuckles/ okay here we go:

1. Freckles.

2. I had the self-control to grow my hair long enough that it’s kinda rock star.

3. I’m pretty good at making people laugh, to the point I sometimes surprise myself because I didn’t realize how well a joke was gonna land.

4. I’m not comfortable sharing any yet, but I did decide a few years ago that I’d branch my writing out into explicit sex scenes, and I’ve very much succeeded.

5. I’m more persistent than I usually give myself credit for. It takes me a long time to finish creative projects and achieve long-term life goals, and I get very frustrated and mad at myself along the way. I watch other people who started later than I did hit the goals I want to, and fill with self-loathing, and the burning shame that people who know any of my goals and dreams are judging me for being all talk. But I’ve been strengthening my writing skills with NaNo every year, and I hit a decent completion point on Serpensortia and The Moon Doth Shake even if they both feel like they could have a lot more, and my original fiction is still active, and I dragged myself from couch-surfing to an apartment to a decent rental house, and I paid off my fucking student loans-

So I can probably get my original fiction to at least one whole story arc too.

[fieldbears]

The "bites from baby snakes can be more dangerous" thing is under a lot of examination right now - it is a common belief, but I don't believe it's holding up to new examination.

That said, I agree with c-for-circinate on most other points, especially on venom production but also:

The pinprick/horseshoe distinction is a complete fiction. (I even have two personal data points! Both my snake bites were by a completely non-venomous snake who left pinpricks.)

Many varieties of snake are technically venomous, but would have a hell of a time causing any problems for any human that wasn't newborn, ancient, or severely ill. A person is so much bigger than intended prey that of most snakes, after all. And as for dangerous snakes' appearances, it's extremely region-specific and you need to know if your area has dangerous noodles that look like leaf litter or more like a float in a pride parade.

And on to my final soapbox: Most people bitten by snakes were trying to kill the snake. Leave the noodle to its business whenever possible.

hey can any snake special interest havers on this website tell me why all snakes dont have venom? is there some sort of hidden evolutionary cost to producing a magic liquid that does the work of killing stuff for you? because much like carnivorous plants that sounds pretty awesome and suspiciously devoid of possible drawbacks for the creature on paper.

this question comes courtesy of my emt textbook saying that all (wild) venomous snakes in the US will produce a bite that looks like two pinpricks, as opposed to nonvenomous snakes that will produce a horseshoe shaped bite. it says you can tell by looking at the bite if it might be dangerous or not using this distinction. is this true? and if so, are more teeth part of the price you pay for magic liquid that kills stuff for you?