#i do have more serious thoughts about themes in fiction and how the best things ive consumed have extremely tight themes

[yellowocaballero]

i very much enjoy the extremely scientific analysis of the naruto verse in which there are three genders, aka naruto, sasuke, and Woman.

AM I WRONG? AM I WRONG? pulls down projection screen and plays powerpoint

Obviously let's give room for nuance. A ton of Naruto characters don't fall into these gender norms. This does predominantly apply to the rampant proliferation of the three-person dynamics that were assigned by the government and dictate your entire life. And, like, society. It does not end. Gender isn't a biological factor in Naruto, it's a social dynamic constructed entirely by your homoerotic tension with other men. And there are so many.

Madara (S), Hashirama (N), Mito (W). Izuna (N) and Tobirama (S) - tragically, Izuna died before women could be invented. Sarutobi (N), Danzo (S, horrifically) - see above about women not being invented yet. Jiraiya (N), Orochimaru (S), Tsunade (W). Yahiko (N), Nagato (S), Konan (W). Obito (N), Kakashi (S), Rin (W). Shisui (N), Itachi (S), that little deeply unimportant girlfriend (W). Um, fucking, Naruto (N), Sasuke (S), Sakura (W). Even - even, fuckin, Rock Lee (N), Neiji (S), Tenten (W).

And what do they all have in common????

(OT3. They're all OT3s. Is what I'm saying).

There is some room for alternative gender expressions here, like being butch or femme. Naruto gender expressions: teacher, otouto, woman who you can't even tell is woman gendered because she has no backstory but you just have to kinda assume that she has a polycule-based backstory where she was Woman Gender. I feel almost as if 2/3rds of the Rookie 9 are liberated from this. InoShikaCho just doesn't fit (their chaotic cousin energy is just too strong and Ino's too much of a lesbian). Hinata's too busy being defined entirely by a different throuple's N to have codependent dynamics with her own N and S (and I'm hesitant to even say that, since I actually don't know if Kiba and Shino have a codependent rivalry - do they?).

I get, like, the reason for all of this. Curse of Hatred. Cycles. N and S Genders being sourced from demigods or something. Narrative parallelism. Sympathy points. It's not the bad guy's fault he's evil, his N and W gendered counterparts died :(. But an extremely strange side-effect of this is that all of the male characters are, like, Just Naruto or Just Sasuke. But the vast majority of the female characters are - like, completely defined by the men in their lives - but also they are more likely to be a unique person. Mito, Sakura, and Rin have actually nothing in common. Writing so sexist it creates more interesting characters?!?!

Unironically, this is why I'm always saying that Sasunaru is the ship of all time, nothing will ever top it, you will NEVER do it like Sasunaru, etc. Every important relationship in the series is meant to evoke Sasunaru. (Notably, none of the explicitly romantic ones. But we're beyond such paltry understandings of the most iconic pairing of all time as fundamentally based in romance. We're operating on a higher level than that). This unbroken chain of toxic yaoi has culminated at the end point of Sasunaru, and it exists to parallel Sasunaru and define their relationship by the dysfunction of generations of tragedy. That's why Naruto has to consciously break the cycle and free them from the generational hate - it was the only way to save Sasuke. This is also why I'm always saying that Sasunaru is the point of Naruto, and that the entirety of Naruto is about Sasunaru. Come back to me when your work has invented new genders in the all-encompassing pursuit of toxic yaoi.

This also means that the only truly gender non-conforming individuals in Naruto are its mightiest heterosexuals: Minato (W) and Kushina (N). Truly insane. The N/S/W configuration is the societal norm, it's bonkers to make a major good-aligned male character a wifeguy. By Naruto standards Minato and Kushina are the only queer couple.

[jinxquickfoot]

So I finished my Age of Ultron rewatch. It's been a couple of years since I last saw it, and here are some random thoughts I had on it:

Things I will maintain I like about this movie:

It has some of my favorite jokes in the MCU, and they're usually the little moments. The little nod of validation Rhodey makes after getting a laugh at his "Boom! You looking for this?" story. Clint telling Steve he's no match for Ultron and Steve replying with, "Thanks, Barton". Clint's "Yeah, you better run" after Pietro has long since disappeared with Wanda, there are loads of them.

I like Vision, Wanda and Pietro. Despite being secondary characters with not a huge amount of screen time, Wanda and Pietro feel like real people with real backstories, and Paul Bettany is wonderful the first time we see him as Vis.

It's the only movie we get to see the Original 6 hang out as friends.

I love that Fury randomly shows up in the middle and is like "let me make a sandwich while we discuss how not to let the world end also by the way hi Tony I really care about you"

Other casual appearances of other MCU characters, something that is so lacking Phase 4 onwards. Sam being at the party and Thor going to Selvig for help makes the world feel lived in.

RDJ's never dropped the ball as Tony but his performance really stuck out to me here, god he's good

Steve and Thor have multiple moments of teaming up and working together, what an underrated duo

Hulk vs Iron Man suit inside an Iron Man Suit fight

The Avengers do their best to evacuate Sokovia before Ultron attacks, which does not excuse the amount of damage caused there, but I do think is a plot point everyone forgets about (myself included)

And things that annoy me (skipping over the stuff everyone talks about like the Natasha/Bruce plot):

I hate how Joss Whedon writes Steve, both here and in Avengers. He only feels like Steve when he's being given jokes, otherwise he is so self-serious and stiff, the core of Steve is his heart and it is nowhere to be found in this movie

The movie spends so long setting up character arcs that feel promising and have no payoff. What is the point of Laura telling Clint the Avengers need him if he's going to retire at the end of the movie. Steve has several references to finding home in a way that doesn't go anywhere (Until Endgame, I guess). Don't get me started on Natasha.

It's trying so hard to have a theme but it never says anything unique. Bruce, Tony, Natasha and Vision all refer to themselves as monsters. Ultron decides that the Avengers are the bad guys. Steve has a speech all about proving they're not the monsters Ultron says they are. Based on WHAT? What is the message of this movie?? That the Avengers are better than the evil AI who wants to kill everyone?

(I half-feel there was a previous draft where Clint was their heart, or something, or he died and they were like whelp Phil Coulson 2.0 let's go avenge him, and the random pieces of that are still floating around the script with nowhere to go)

NO ONE is remotely concerned enough when their friends are getting hurt (maybe just the hurt/comfort lover in me, but still.) Natasha comes across as the only person who cares when Clint sustains a life-threatening injury. No one seems to be bothered that Natasha is being held captive by a psychotic supervillain. Tony shows more emotion over a fictional future where they die than when someone is actually in danger.

They really could have had a premise where they weren't allowed to access technology at all and could have gone retro with everything and they didn't and that just feels like a wasted opportunity. Clint and Natasha digging out old spy tech. Steve being like "Yes! This is familiar! I got this!" Tony making genius inventions out of tech from fifty years ago. Come on, it was right there.

[cyberbun]

An anon asked me what my top 10 favorite anime are and I agonized over this question for months but I think I have an answer. Then I accidentally published this without finishing it so I have to write it again

In no particular order:

Gatchaman Crowds (2013) and it's second season Insight (2015):

Hands down, my favorite anime of all time. As a fan of the superhero genre this has to be the best deconstruction/reconstruction of it I've seen in terms of how it reevaluates the concept of heroism in a digital society and how well it handles its themes of futurism along with personal identity and construction of the self in virtual environments. It is a series with a central thesis about the inherent goodness of humanity expressed through the language of superheroes and social media, and it's one of those stories that really gets the way people engage with the internet in a way that other similar sci-fi stories about fully online societies fail to do even to this day.

The first season's almost naive optimism is then thoroughly torn apart by the second's darker, more introspective tone, which makes the entire show play out like a series of political essays arguing back and forth with the backdrop of colorful superhero action. What makes it particularly good, though, is how it handles this darkening of the narrative, as it asks tough, incisive questions of its own story and still comes out parading genuine optimism about the future of its world and ours.

Because, at its core, it's a superhero story about how everyone has the capacity to be a hero and better themselves and each other. It's a truly transformative experience and, while a lot of its themes can seem... tragically over-optimistic, its datedness almost makes it feel like a time capsule of a time where we were at the cusp of using mass internet penetration to better ourselves as a society, and perhaps remains a reminder of how these technologies may still have the potential to make us all into heroes. Also Rui is a hot gender black hole and I want to be them so badly.

Samurai Flamenco (2014)

In a lot of ways, Samurai Flamenco is sort of the anti-Gatchaman Crowds; it's a straight deconstruction of the tokusatsu genre that's less interested in analyzing the role of superheroes in a society and more about using its own genre to examine the ways fiction allows us to project ourselves as something greater than what we are, while also commenting on said genre's iterations over its history; so ultimately it comes across as both a tribute to it and a deep examination of what exactly makes its fans tick.It is also bat fuck insane and I can't tell you a single thing that happens in it because it goes places. Watching this as it aired was an incredible experience.

Slam Dunk (1993-1994)

The best sports anime ever made. Dead serious. Not only is this a love letter to the game of basketball as a whole that manages to capture the intensity and adrenaline of every single thought that goes through the head of a player in the final minutes of a game, it is also a touching love story with one of the most compelling central casts of characters I've ever seen.

The anime was largely inferior to the manga for a long time on account of it being left unfinished, while the manga remains largely remembered for having one of the most bittersweet endings ever put to page; an equal parts tragic and triumphant culmination of the main character's journey from delinquent layabout to passionate athletic prodigy. Then, last year, we finally got one of the best looking anime films I've seen in my life adapting the final volume of the manga while also expanding the backstory of one of the secondary protagonists of the series.

Part of my love for this series is highly personal. I grew up watching this on TV back in the old country, and seeing it finally be finished after 20 odd years brought me to tears. A lot of it might be outdated by now, but there is yet to be a single anime I am so comfortable watching over and over and over again. I will go to the grave singing its praises.

Soul Eater (2008)

It's Soul Eater, you know Soul Eater. Probably the single most stylish show I've ever seen, visually; and to me still at the peak of the shonen genre as a whole. It's got both some of the best action ever put to animation and some of the most engaging core casts of characters I've seen despite how small its ensemble is. If it seems like I have less to say about it than others in the list it's mainly because it's already popular enough I don't feel like I can contribute much to the conversation; everyone likes Soul Eater. You like Soul Eater. Explaining why Soul Eater is good is like explaining why it is good to eat. Every time I watch Crona's episodes I cry a lot.

RahXephon (2002)

Talking about RahXephon is difficult because conversations surrounding it are usually centered around its relationship to Evangelion; and this is partially because it is, in many ways, a response to it and a reformulation of a lot of the questions that it asked about its story. This is not wholly unfounded, as director Yutaka Izubuchi is a longtime friend and collaborator of Anno's who did do some work in Evangelion prior to this, so the influence is definitely there. For a lot of people, this was rebuild before rebuild. I personally prefer the adage "Evangelion on antidepressants".

I do, however, overall feel this is unfortunate, because taken outside that context, RahXephon is one of the most complex and deeply layered reconstructions of the mecha genre I've ever experienced, with a beautiful score and haunting visual design propping up a story that's equal parts impenetrable as it is deeply layered; made up of so many small character arcs woven into each other completely seamlessly that you always feel like you're watching but a tiny fragment of a large tapestry of stories coming together into a single complete whole. It makes the world of the anime feel simultaneously small and huge, which fits the melancholic post-post-apocalypse visual aesthetic of the narrative It's one of my favorites not because of what happens in it, but because it is one of the most enriching experiences I've had with an anime or any other form of visual storytelling; I always feel like rewatching it makes me take something new away from it that I didn't notice before.

Ergo Proxy (2006)

Part of me has to admit I like Ergo Proxy less as a story and more as an aesthetic. If I had to put a name on how it feels to watch this show it'd definitely be "contemplative"; it's a slow going, compounded puzzle of a narrative which at times borders on self-indulgence with how many layers of things happening at once you're keeping up with. To give you an idea; the seemingly random text crawls during the opening of the show are key pieces of understanding what exactly the plot is by the end of the story. Peel away those layers, and you get a much simpler narrative than it might first appear, with one of my favorite one-sentence summaries: "what if three different Ends of the World crashed into each other at once".

While that seems reductive, one of the things that makes Ergo Proxy feel rewarding to watch, then rewatch to fully understand, is how it does ultimately completely nail the landing with the story it's trying to tell, despite having a complete non-ending that somehow manages to feel satisfying all the same. It's a story that explores themes of identity and human nature through the genre of ecological horror with one of the most stylish depictions of a bleak, dead world I've ever seen put in any narrative. So long as you're okay with a story that doesn't give you a full sense of narrative closure and one where a single watching won't give you all the pieces of the story, it is one of the most rewarding experiences to go back and pick apart, in my opinion. Like a puzzle, you will be left wanting to put all the pieces together by the end.

Ouran High School Host Club (2006)

Don't fucking look at me like that. I watched Ouran at an impressionable age and now I'm bigender. It has a place in my bunny heart. It is foundational to the person I grew up to become.

Cardcaptor Sakura

I watched this dubbed into Spanish back when I was young, and admittedly I don't remember 60% of it, but that doesn't mean I don't think fondly back on it moreso than any other show I ever saw back when I was a child, and one that I've had a lot of joy in going back to it as I've grown older.

I don't have as much to say about it as I do some other shows, and like with Soul Eater, it feels like everything there is to be said about it has already been said elsewhere and better; it is one of the foundational texts for the modern magical girl genre, it is one of the most beautifully animated and designed shows I've ever seen, and the best at keeping the distinct house styles CLAMP is recognizeable for intact in animation as far as I'm concerned. It's my personal choice for what other people would call a "comfort" show; but I do not wish to diminish the story or reduce it to an aesthetic the way a lot of people do for shows like this, considering just how strong the character dynamics and their progression throughout the story are, and the wealth of emotional depth that can be found in just about everyone's arcs.

While the overarching plot and the world of the story aren't as interesting as some other shows of its type, its strengths lies in how it uses that as a solid foundation through which to explore a distinct aspect of the human condition through each of its characters - love, grief, loneliness, devotion to another and many others.

Kekkai Sensen (2015)

This is one of those cases where I feel like I'm going to repeat myself. Take everything I said about Soul Eater, put it here. It is stylish, it's got a strong central cast of characters that are all equally fun and contribute the same amount to the narrative. It's got some of the most intense, lovingly rendered large-scale action scenes I've seen, along with some of my favorite small, touching narratives; thanks to one of the best urban fantasy settings ever put together.

The first season's storyline is a blend of manga chapters with an anime-original plot, while the second season mostly adapts the manga much more closely so it doesn't come together as tightly as the first does, but it is more of the best show of its type of the past decade as far as I'm concerned; and nothing takes away just how incredibly tight that first season feels, even if the final episode was months late and had to go double length while the animation melted a little. And yet, it all comes together beautifully in the end.

Angel Beats

What a surprise this show was. I'll always feel a little bittersweet about it, due to the circumstances that led me to see it, but I'm forever grateful I did. Angel Beats' greatest strength is the way that it disarms the viewer by presenting a fun, albeit somewhat dark supernatural comedy about kids in the afterlife, letting one get comfortable with the silliness of the world before really taking the "children in the afterlife" premise to its logical conclusion: This is a story about death, trauma, tragedy, and moving on- Quite literally, in this case- from the things that weigh us down.

I make no hyperbole when I say that this show has the single strongest emotional climax I've ever experienced, and every time I watch it again I am moved to tears, sometimes more than last. I can't say much, since a lot of what makes this show fun is experiencing it, and realizing the depth of the world along with our point of view character; but the biggest endorsement of it I can give is how gracefully and tactfully it deals with complicated subjects such as abuse, disability and addiction in stories where you know how they all end, and yet give you a satisfying emotional conclusion while also keeping the mood balanced between cheerful when it has to be and heartbreaking, with the latter becoming more and more common by the end of the story.

It's a story about growing up, as much as it is a story about dying. It knows the tragedy of its premise and it chooses to ask the viewer to find joy in the time they have with its cast - a beautiful metaphor for life itself woven deeply into the narrative and never once stated out loud. We know where this story is going, but we're here now, so we might as well have a little fun along the way. That is ultimately what youth is about.

[likeadevils]

what songs so far do you think were daydreaming exercises? to the best of your knowledge?

obligatory i’m just some guy

songs i’m pretty sure are fictional

I'm Only Me When I'm with You: it’s a 2003 song, before she moved to nashville, so she didn’t have any super close friends at the time. the romantic connotations are almost definitely made up

A Perfectly Good Heart: could be her being dramatic about a middle school breakup, but i think it’s more likely she was just daydreaming about being really sad

Fearless: taylor’s said she was just daydreaming about the perfect first date a million times, look at any concert she played this at in 2007/8

Timeless: she wrote it sometime in 2009, likely sometime after june because she mentions antiquing as a new hobby in the lover journals from that month. so it could be about somebody we don’t know about, or maybe taylor lautner, but my guess is she was just wandering around an antique store and daydreaming about being in love

Stay Stay Stay: she says she was just daydreaming, and while she definitely bent the truth with the red secret messages in particular, i’m prone to believe this one. she wrote it sometime in 2010, so “daydreaming about real love” could be a really sick burn about any number of people, but i think this was just her in between relationships fiddling around

Death By A Thousand Cuts: you can get into conspiracy theory stuff about just how on and off again her and joes relationship was, but it’s a pretty direct retelling of something great, so i believe it when she said she watched the movie and then got inspired

like, the vast majority of the unreleased tracks

song that kinda blur the line

Stay Beautiful: cor(e)y passed her in the hallway and she thought he was kinda cute, i don’t think it was a big thing as the song makes it seem

You Belong With Me: taylor’s said it was inspired by one of her band mates apologizing to his girlfriend on the phone, but everything else is made up

Mine: she said a guy put his arm around her and she saw a whole life flash before her eyes, so like, it kinda happened? it wasnt anyone she got super serious with though

Speak Now: she was the +1 to hayley williams’ ex’s wedding, joked about speak now-ing, then had a nightmare about one of her exes getting married

too many songs on folklore and evermore to list out

anything she’s ever written for a movie soundtrack

songs that probably have a muse but not anyone we know about so could be daydreaming

Cold As You: there’s an unreleased song, love to lose, that parallels cold as you. so possibly there’s some guy that inspired two songs, or she was just circling around similar themes

Electric Touch

Foolish One: possibly joe jonas angst, possible pre-relationship john mayer angst, possibly someone else, who knows what taylor was up to in 2009 man that girl had a fucking roster going

Everything Has Changed

Message In A Bottle: i like to think it’s about eddie redmayne but genuinely i have no clue

Wildest Dreams: iirc she said it was her being dramatic and thinking no one would ever want to really fall in love with her at the grammy museum performance but like who knows if it was general discomfort or a specific person that inspired it

Crazier: could be a drew song, could be her daydreaming

Beautiful Eyes and I Heart ?: don’t know enough about these songs to say one way or another, but i believe she’s claimed the i heart ? thing actually happened? cant remember where though

[ultra-kek]

Is it true you don't like anything from Grant Morrison, or just the man himself at all?

I don't think I've mentioned my thoughts on Grant Morrison here but I do really love Grant Morrison's early DC work, in particular Animal Man being one of my favorite comics of all time, but I find their later work to be so terrible that I consider it my least favorite comics of all time. I blame this on the running themes of Metatextuality and a sort of reconstructivist ideology in Morrison's work that has ended up completely antithetical to what i desire from comics.

While the absurdist ruminations on the nature of fiction in Animal Man made for an amazing and radical sort of comic that deconstructed a lot about both superheroes and the relationship between fiction and reality, over time their work fell into what to me feels like just very shallow and uninteresting narratives that frequently fall into the same traps as like, redditors and youtube theorists, where it doesn't really have that much to say beyond "woah... this is a work of fiction and we're breaking the fourth wall!!!!!1111" and "superheroes are actually super cool and should never be criticized". The top examples i can think of are their Batman run, which brought back several concepts but in ways that felt shallow (was it really that necessary to bring back the Batman of Zurr-En-Arrh as an edgy violent alternate personality?), meanspirited (Son of the Demon being brought into canon, but retconning Bruce and Talia's loving relationship to... that.), or even offensive (if you're going to make a modern version of the Batmen of all Nations, even if you're going to be rewriting them to attempt to make more realistic and progressive incarnations of them is it really necessary to keep the more offensive designs, and redesign others to be even more offensive? I don't think they had people of color on hand for that stuff...). Meanwhile there's the multiverse stuff that I just really can't bring myself to care about, that kind of thing is already really boring for me personally and though Morrison tries to make more meaningful narrative in them that narrative is just "Aren't superheroes really epic and cool?"

There's also the fact that regardless of being nonbinary Morrison hasn't really had the best track record when it comes to depicting minority groups. I already mentioned the Batmen of all Nations but there's them turning Talia into a misogynistic and somewhat racist stereotype, and Professor Pyg, who's Buffalo Bill-type queercoding is so offensive that I genuinely can't stomach it as a character. This is more controversial, but I feel this even about A Serious House on Serious Earth, both in the character of Mad Dog but also in the comic's general depiction of Batman's rogues' gallery not as characters of their own but as caricatures of mental illness existing primarily as foils for Batman's personal conflicts, which bled into the comics and kind of became a defining part of Batman as a franchise and its frequent usage of psychological themes.

Morrison also has a particularly unfortunate flaw in that theyre kind of... redditbrained. They're famous for their personal theory on the ending of the Killing Joke of how it actually represents Batman finally breaking his one rule and killing the Joker, despite how the comic very clearly frames the moment as the one last moment of understanding the two will ever have. There's also Morrison's idea of all Batman media being true, and justifying it as the sillier parts of Batman being caused by... him and Robin being on drugs. They've literally said that.

My main like, ideological opposition to Morrison though is in their reconstructivist themes and the way they place superheroes as like gods to be aspired to. I certainly fall closer to Moore when it comes to my perspective on comics and while I don't think they're beyond salvation Morrison simply isn't doing them any favors. I just don't want to see comics about how epic Batman and Superman are or whatever, I want to see more radical stuff that breaks down superhero comics as a whole. By all means I like seeing the weird reinvention of old concepts, but being so stuck in the past is just kind of, stupid.

[thesummerstorms]

This is sooo late, but I didn't have a proper keyboard while I was housesitting and I've just managed to sit down now and do anything that required any length typing.

Thank you to @nepobabyeurydice for the tag!

If I'm being honest, I've not perfectly been able to keep track of who I saw answer this already on my dash, but if you are a writer and we are mutuals, consider yourself optionally tagged.

When did you start writing?

I remember typing up original stuff on our hand me down Windows 95 computer in elementary school, though I could not tell you what any of it was about.

My first fic was a very, very, very cringy Naruto fic when I was 11 and emo everything was at the height of its popularity. I never finished it, and it is now nonexistent, which is very much for the best.

Are there different themes or genres you enjoy reading than what you write?

I read a somewhat decent amount of science fiction that isn't as "loose" in it's worldbuilding as even space opera, but you will never catch me doing world building outside of fantasy. I can make things internally consistent, but do not ask me to make them realistic to science.

Also, just in general, while I don't read action per say, or at least read for action, a lot of my favorite genres and series do have fight scenes, and I cannot write those at all.

Is there a writer you want to emulate or get compared to often?

I can trace a few things in my own writing- both good and bad!- to a handful of authors that particularly influenced me as a young teenager, but I don't think it's anything anyone else would pick up on.

Can you tell me a bit about your writing space?

I have a proper desk in my bedroom with a desktop PC and two monitors and everything, and if I'm doing any serious and researched meta, or leaving comments on particular fics, I use that.

But I don't really write fic so much these days, and what I do post tends to be... fragments? Concepts? Worldbuilding that morphs into slightly-longer than drabbles? here on tumblr. And 95% of that gets posted from my phone because inspiration struck and it was in my hand.

What's your most effective way to muster up a muse?

I don't go seeking things out, honestly. Like I said, I don't write plotted or long fic or really much fic at all. So what I do write comes out because it's sitting there poking at my brain for too long and then I can't ignore it anymore.

Are there any recurring themes in your writing? Do they surprise you?

... looking at my SW stuff and my PJO stuff, one thing I guess I like the idea of a lot is the boundary between human/larger than human, mortal/immortal, mutable/immutable etc.

I loved some eldritch Force stuff and I love the idea of the PJO gods as being forces as much as or more than they are people.

Like, there's an Anne Carson translation of a Sophocles quote I saw for the first time years ago on tumblr- "Nothing vast enters the lives of mortals without ruin"- and I can't help but fixate still on that idea. What if the vast is inherently part of you but in a way that is alien to your humanity? What happens when the "vast" is both sympathetic and destructive to your personhood?

Also, a slightly less pretentious and definitely less wordy answer, I just think angst is fun to write. Not pure tragedy or grimdark, but angst.

What is your reason for writing?

My brain Will Not Shut Up and it has to go <i>somewhere.</i>

How do you want to be thought about by your readers?

I want people to talk about ideas with me!

What do you feel is your greatest strength as a writer?

Not as a fiction writer per say, but I fucking killed every literary analysis paper I ever wrote in college. Like, this may sound arrogant, but I got nominated for awards by my professors. I thrived off of getting their feedback and that looping into a discussion. So I feel like meta comes easily as a result.

Now if only you could get paid and have health insurance writing literary analysis... alas, I cannot afford a doctorate and academia doesn't pay well or have decent enough healthcare access for my many needs.

How do you feel about your own writing?

I wish I could write long fic and coherent plots, but I am proud of the ideas I come up with sometimes.

When you write, are you influenced by what others might enjoy reading, or do you write purely for yourself, or a mix of both?

I feel like most of my writing is in conversation with what I read, whether it be the original text, other folks' fic, or meta. But even if it's in conversation, I'm never going to even have the idea much less the words unless it's something I'm interested enough in that my brain snags on it.

[thelooniemoonie]

So I just finished reading House of Leaves...

Here are my thoughts. I will do my best to avoid spoilers, but will mention a thing or two.

Oh man, that was one hell of a ride. While I myself am a huge fan of horror, this was the first horror book I have read, and what a great experience it was!

Going into the book I already somewhat knew of the madness that lurks inside (that being the quarter inch, and the impossibly long hallway) and was surprised that the madness started on very early. Being the book is over 700 pages long, I sure as hell didn't expect it to start about 60 pages in.

What you don't expect however, is the madness that takes it's toll the longer the book goes on. Multiple storylines, narrators and themes start converging together to the point where everything starts falling into place, to the point it becomes nauseating as exploring the house itself. What I can say however, is that the house is only barely scratching the surface of what is truly going on within these pages.

For context the book is cleverly written as a meta-narrative, as an essay analyzing the film The Navidson Record, a fictional film that does not exist in the real world. What the book strangely does however, is reference actual real life sources when dissecting its premise, to the point where reality and fiction start blurring. The book feels as if it's having a conversation with itself, covering countless of different themes and metaphors that overlap with one another. Given this thing has been analyzed and picked apart for decades since its release, I'm gonna leave it to the experts about the secrets within its pages. (Although I will say this: pay attention. The longer the book goes on the more the different puzzle pieces will start clicking together.)

I was curious as to how a book may scare a reader since I'm unfamiliar with the experience of reading horror, but I will say the longer the book went on the worse it got. If I had to make a comparison, it would be the same feeling I experienced when watching Skinamarink: Dread. A long, droning kind of dread that one experiences when you are alone in your house and all the lights are off and everything is black. And you know no one is coming for you. But you swear you saw something from the corner of your eye. It's the feeling of running up the stairs after turning the lights off and praying something isn't running after you. Dread.

Very quickly things will become nauseating. At first I wasn't scared of the premise of the house: it's a haunted house that defies reality. So? But I found myself not dreading the events that unfolded or the "interesting" formatting of the book, but that the reality of the book itself seemed to be imploding on itself. Spoilers, but the one moment I think where I specifically started spiralling was when Exploration #5 was occurring, and Navidson had to stop and rest with only his matches, he pulls out a book to read and it's....the House of Leaves? The book you're reading right now? But how is that possible? How is Navidson reading the real life book that you're reading, when the fictional events that are pertaining to him are happening right now to him?? What are even the Johnny segments?? (Note: don't read them at work like I did) Why does nobody cited in this book know who the Navidsons are, even though they're quoted directly in reviewing the film?? What the hell is going on???

.

I made a joke in an earlier post that Navidson wants to fuck the house. I meant this as a joke. What I soon horrifically realized was that others were correcting me in that it wasn't a joke. Navidson wants to fuck the house. But he also doesn't want to fuck the house. But it is also a secret third thing that's literal to the foundation of this story. (No pun intended.) But oh god it gets so much worse.

At the time of writing this, I just finished the book 1 hour ago. I feel like I just stepped off the worst rollercoaster. And I loved it.

10/10 very spooks

On a less serious note I think the funniest moment in the book was when the Chad's and Daisy's teacher, after noticing their strange behaviour at school due to the effects of the house, reasonably decides to pay their parents a visit to talk about it. What the poor lady doesn't expect however, is that she arrives right after the events of the house unfold and the Navidsons are having the worst week of their life, coming to the screaming and crying family while there is a dead body on the floor.

In essence it can be summed up by this gif, which frankly sums up the vibe of the story overall:

So yeah it's a good book. I recommend it.

[twilightmalachite]

Timbres of Heaven - One For Two 6

Characters: Hinata, Yuuta

Translator: Mika Enstars

JP Proofreader: ksts

"I’ve always disliked that kind of thing about you."

[Read on my blog for the best viewing experience with Oi~ssu ♪]

Season: Spring

Location: Residential Area

Yuuta: I’ve always disliked that about you.

…It seriously makes me sick.

Hinata: …

…That’s Neiro’s like, isn’t it? From Timbres of Heaven.

Yuuta: Yup. Great that you noticed.

Hinata: I’ve been reading a lot in preparation for filming. I’ve memorized most of the scenes that I’m in already.

But you started talking in such a serious tone, it surprised me. What’s up with you all of a sudden?

Yuuta: You’ve been a coward all day, Aniki, so I started a fire under you to sober you up.

As you know, while the script for Timbres of Heaven is complete, it’s developments may change depending on the audience response.

If things stay the way they are, Neiro and the heroine will end up together—

Hinata: And depending on my efforts, there might be a chance it’ll be Amane instead.

Yuuta: Yup. Or one where Neiro, Amane, and the hero will all three be happy together.

The last one isn’t too realistic, but hey, it’s fiction. I think it’ll be an ending that’ll stick the most with the target audience.

Anyways. How it ends depends on our efforts—

In other words, it’s a match between you and me, Aniki.

Hinata: Right… I feel we’ve just been fighting ever since we entered ES, but…

I’m down for more. Every time we collide, we resonate and grow stronger.

I won’t lose to you, Yuuta-kun.

Yuuta: Right. I won’t lose, either. Right now, I—Neiro has an advantage, after all. Do your best to catch up!

I’ll be waiting for you, Aniki.

Location: Dressing Room

On the day of shooting of the Twin Wedding Vows MV, Timbres of Heaven’s theme soon. In the dressing room…

Hinata: …Oh, Anzu-san, good work so far today. Are you here to check in on us?

Yup. Today we’re doing the magazine interview and shooting the music video.

It’s a love drama, so it’s stuff like… When was your first love? What kind of love would you like to have? I’m a little tired of only being asked questions like that…

‘Cause I’m married to my work! ☆ Ohohohoho!

You’re like that too, aren’t you, Anzu-san? You, go-getter~♪

What you have there in your hands are work documents too, aren’t they?

…Wait, what? Bridal magazines… Marriage features…?

…Oh, you received a proposal from a bridal company, so you were reading them for reference?

I-I see~, it is nearly the season for bridal projects, isn’t it?

That spooked me. I started thinking you were gonna get married—

Hinata: I mean, not like I’d feel upset over that! Not at all! Don’t get me wrong, okay!

…Hm, what? Are you asking what my thoughts on marriage are?

You’re asking me, Anzu-san? …Well, it’s a question you’re asking me as a producer, so it’s fine.

I’ll give you a serious answer, as an idol.

…

If I get married, would it separate me from Yuuta-kun?

If it does, I can’t imagine it at all. We’ve been together since we were born.

So maybe we could all get together as three, like in the drama.

Even if we wouldn’t be able to register it, I guess it’s fine as long as we live happily.

It might look like a distorted relationship to everyone else, but… Happiness comes in different forms for different people.

And I want to choose a path that’ll end in happiness for both Yuuta-kun and I, whatever it may be.

Yuuta: Hey~, Aniki~. Filming for the MV’s starting~.

Huh? Wait, are you in the middle of something?

Hinata: Nah. We were just chatting.

Yuuta: I wonder how true that is~. ♪

Hinata: It’s true! Hinata-kun does not lie!

I’ll see you later, Anzu-san.

Yuuta: I’ll be borrowing Aniki, Anzu-san~.

Location: Timbres of Heaven MV Shooting Set

A couple minutes later…

Hinata: “♪~♪~♪”

Yuuta: “♪~♪~♪”

—Sooo, what were ya talking to Anzu-san about, Aniki?

Hinata: You’re so persistent, Yuuta-kun!

…It seems that she’s considering idols to appear in a bridal project.

And so she asked for my thoughts on marriage to use it as reference. I was just answering her question.

Yuuta: That’s all? You sure she wasn’t using work as a front and trying to probe the topic~?

Hinata: Anzu-san wouldn’t do something like that.

…Her lack of ulterior motives does irritate me, though.

Yuuta: So? What did you answer with, Aniki?

Hinata: That I don’t wanna be separated from you, Yuuta-kun, so I’d like to get together as three.

Yuuta: What? That’s unrealistic. Life isn’t a drama.

Hinata: …Yeah. That’s what I answered Anzu-san tentatively, but…

I want to stay with you, Yuuta-kun.

If I’m made to choose one person, then I choose Yuuta-kun.

Yuuta: Because without you, I’d be all alone?

What is that. Aren’t you smug.

Yuuta: (It’s you, Aniki. You’re the one who can’t live without me.)

…Enough talking about this. I can’t even imagine getting married.

It’s about time to focus on the filming, you know?

“♪~♪~♪”

(…This isn’t the time to get distracted, seriously.)

(Even though I’m trying so hard with my solo activities… In the end, only the weapon that is 2wink has landed us big jobs.)

(I’m not recognized by the public yet as an individual idol.)

Yuuta: (But, that’s to be expected. I’ll use any weapon available to me to pave a path, without getting discouraged.)

(And then… I’ll catch up with, and overtake Aniki… And beckon to him from somewhere warm.)

(“Come here, Hinata-kun.”)

Hinata: (…Yuuta-kun sure is in high spirits, huh?)

(It’s clear that he’s trying to have his presence be felt through Timbres of Heaven.)

(Twin Wedding Vows was created in a way that it’d fit any ending of Timbres of Heaven, but…)

(Even though it’s a song for the heroine, I feel like I’m singing about ourselves.)

(…Well, if I were to tell Yuuta-kun that right now, he’d probably say something like “that’s gross”, though. ♪)

(Hey, Yuuta-kun. What will happen to us in the future?)

(Will we be always together, even if we find a special someone? Or, perhaps…)

(…)

Hinata: (No matter what path we end up taking… I believe we can move forward with our chests held high.)

(Because it’ll be a path we paved together, as Yuuta-kun and I.)

(…I’m sure that our future is shining beautifully.)

“♪~♪~♪”

[ ☆ ]

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[just-jae]

About Vivsiepop's Beelzabub

Lots of drama over Bee's design. My Thoughts:

Beelzabub's design isn't forein. She's a canine character, like the Hellhounds she rules over. She wears knicked tanktop and shorts- Just like Loona and Tex's everyday clothes. She even talks like Loona, which is the best way I can describe at the moment is City-youth culture.

About her colors-- the pink and blue aren't her true colors, those are for the "Cotton Candy" song she sings-- she's wearing cotton candy colors. When bathed in yellow. and when transformed, her clothes turn red and black, her glowy hair turns completely gold. Even her little tuft turns gold.

This Matches with the general colorscheme of the other hellhounds except for the Yellow/gold.

So her design matches other characters.

As for Bee's bug theme:

She's got six, thin, long limbs. Fly wings you can hear flapping around, antenae lashes and ears, and stripes. Which is all a call to the bug theme of Biblical Beelzabub, who may not have been specifically seen as a bee, but at least was a flying bug. Even so, there's no rule saying you HAVE adhere to previous depictions of an entity in a fictional work. You don't, and shouldn't have to know anything about the bible to track who a given character is. Biblical lore can help predict what a character's about, but the show's own writing is what makes and defines the character in that show (Something I get to later).

When it comes to character design basics, Bee's still pretty in-lane, being introduced with an easy-to-recognize silhouette.

When it comes to animation practicality, Bee's base design (clothes, patterns) doesn't seem much harder to animate than these guys.

Even then, Bee's animation is very high quality in this episode, like the animation in the "Truth Seekers" episode or some parts of "The Harvest Moon Festival". They were adding extra details to the animation for fun, not because her design required it. The Honey was globbier than it needed to be, her body movements more fluid and detailed than they needed to be. It was for fun.

They could have definitely animated Bee's honeymane simpler than this, if it were that much of a strain on the animators, and still retained the same design. Plus, there are shortcuts to pulling this off, like animating the basic outline first and having another layer behind it that doesn't follow the outline, but instead is cropped by it. They do this with Stolas' sparkly cape in "Ozzie's".

(Obv, Bee's honey was more hands on, but you can see a similar method used if you watch how the globules move.) They can also animate the lava effect by itself and drag that animation to stay inside the outline, which they seem to do for the lava belly.

Even then. The whole point of this episode was to celebrate the show's success and progress. They did all this out of joy and to have fun. The only thing I'd say could have been concretely "better" only really applies if you approach this as a serious, plot-significant episode (Which it isn't), and that's the writing of the Bee's introduction scene (which was a song that was more to celebrate the show and Spotlight Kesha than providing important context on the characters/setting/themes.)

Other than that, most of the criticism about Bee's design is preference (subjective), expectation (subjective), or an overreaction to furries (Ironically plenty of fans of this show apparently find furries disgusting or lame and saw Bee's design and went "A canine Sin? The Furries are taking over!") (Subjective).

Acting like this is Viv being lazy, uninspired, or unreasonable, is just-- unfair, and unwarranted negativity. People are really acting like this is their work, and not Viv's. Viv didn't do anything technically wrong with Bee's design. It's one thing to not dig it (I personally still haven't warmed up to Ozzy's, and prolly never will, but I warmed up to Bee's a lot faster- especially after seeing her personality) it's another to try to shit on the creator or act like their designs are "wrong" because of expectations or personal taste, ESPECIALLY for an episode that isn't plot relevant and was made to celebrate real-world things like Viv's success in producing her own show and being able to work with Kesha.

Chill the fuck out, and kudo's to the team.

End thoughts.

[jormofyore]

Mental Illness and TTRPG's

Today's post is a little more serious, and it's something I've wanted to touch upon for years, and that is the inclusion of mental illnesses in TTRPG's. For reference, I have schizoaffective disorder, which is a weird combination of schizophrenia and bipolar type 1, along with ADHD, added onto having a minor in psychology and a lifetime of experienced with this damnable illness.

Last year, I presented at NEPCA, an international pop culture conference, on the representation of schizophrenia in the video game Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice. Might have even got a couple of awards from it, which is pretty cool. That said, I gave some rather strong critiques of the game, and it isn't the first time I have encountered mental illness in media and games; don't get me started on crime shows. The point I want to make is how clumsy games often are when representing mental illness in their medium, especially TTRPG's. Mental illness is too often treated as a blunt weapon when utilized in games, and I'm not entirely sure of why. Maybe it's because of a lack of a understanding, or maybe it's because it's an edgy inclusion, but too often, these illnesses are meant to create a tragic character of some kind or give their purpose meaning. Give wikipedia a glance when listing fictional characters with schizophrenia, and you'll notice quickly how many of them are villains or used as a kind of comic relief. It's a tiresome trope, I assure you.

The main question you should always ask yourself before "giving" a mental illness to a villain or hero is: "why do they need it?" Sure, it may make the fallen paladin feel more authentic to have PTSD, and rightly so, it would be traumatic to make an error that you are unapologetic about that cost everything that defined you. But what is it about psychosis that draws people to give it to their villains and other characters in an effort to flesh them out? What purpose does it provide? What does it add to the character to make them see or hear things or fall into random, serious depressions? Why does it matter? These are just a smattering of questions that are important before deciding to make a character edgy. Once, a couple decades ago when I wasn't properly medicated, I was in a LARP and became afflicted with a Malkavian's Total Insanity. Lucky for me, I was already in the throes of a psychotic break that evening, and got voted for bonus experience points for what everyone thought was some of the best roleplaying they'd ever seen. Hilarious, I know. But recognize that some people's fiction is another persons real life that they often cannot escape before you include that "fiction" in a game. I'll never forget the mess of a book Hero's of Horror was for Pathfinder 1 and their inclusion of various mental illnesses, including schizophrenia, as a penalty inducing trait. A bit embarrassing to see my illness turned into a game mechanic, bro.

I'm not telling anyone not to include mental illness, because games are about exploration and agency. I want people to experiment and play about with what it means for a fictional world to have aspects of seemingly inescapable realities. It may seem funny to include a clown who is told what pranks to do by the voices he hears, thus foiling all kinds of divination magics. But what I am asking is that you just ask yourself a few questions about the purpose of including mental illness in a game before you pursue making it a theme. Be sensitive that it may cause discomfort due to how close to home it is. It's a tricky topic that is potentially going to upset or offend a person you may never expect, so all I ask is to treat the inclusion of these illnesses responsibly.

[robotlesbianjavert]

i’ve been following you for a while and i love your blog! got a question however: i see you blogging moral orel and i’ve never seen it but from what i’ve read on wikipedia, how would you compare the bad dad to bnha’s bad dads. is he fit to join the club. looking at him gives me afo vibes somehow.

eyyyyy thanks for following and keeping up !! you're a trooper. anyways clay puppington is way way worse than the bnha bad dads. like easy clear. one of the best characters! but definitely the worst dad.

moral orel primer

The thing about Moral Orel is that it's an edgy-ish mid 2000s satire about hypocritical fundamentalist Protestant environments and how badly one eager and god-loving kid can be lead to misinterpret the bible. It's got that irreverent humour. Skip the episode "God's Xhef" if you ever watch it. To set up my point, one of the running gags for the series is that at the result of Orel's shenanigans is Clay taking Orel to his study to belt him. And then his pants fall down! haha.

The series then takes a swerve, starting from the first season Christmas episode and leading into the third season, for a darker, more character-driven narrative. It delves more into the citizens of Moralton, the impact that their Christian environment has on them and their relationships with each other, and bits of history to understand how they turned out the way they did, etc

One of the characters most impacted here is Clay. While he's always been the second-most prominent character after Orel himself, and their relationship is central to the story, it's with this new take on the story that Clay really becomes the deuteragonist of the series. He becomes that much more fascinating a character, and his treatment of Orel and his family becomes that much more vile. Sadly the third season is cut short, reportedly after execs saw a particularly dark episode (not Orel or Clay related!) and thought. hm. that wasn't funny.

I lay that all out to explain that while Moral Orel starts off as a pretty silly, shock-value cartoon about how weird Christians are, it also depicts a lot of serious subject matters, and the treatment of that is much more frank and realistic and difficult as the series progresses.

So while he becomes a much more developed character that the audience can understand, Clay's abusive behaviour loses a lot of that wink-wink satirical irony. He's also CRAZY pathetic.

also it's got the mountain goats! that's how i first found moral orel!

how comparable is it to bnha?

First things first, I do think there are largely interesting things to say about how BNHA depicts abuse, despite the downhill trend of writing in the third act that I complain about all the time. I don't think every aspect is perfect, but it's like. I do think there's more positive to say there than how other stories depict abuse. There's actually lots that I love about what the series does, or think that it could do were it not hobbled by things and stuff.

Ultimately, there isn't really a bulletproof way of comparing fictional abusive situations to another, because respective to real life you can't compare one abusive situation against the other.

But one can compare things like the genre and structure of a story, who the intended audience is, what the production of the story is like, how much time and focus can be devoted to certain subjects and what the actual focus is meant to be, etc etc.

Moral Orel can pull together different elements of abuse, like the suffocating environment of Christian fundamentalism, the abuse of a self-destructive alcoholic, the neglect that comes from mutually disaffected and inept parents, the generational nature of abuse, so on and so forth in a sincere way. Meanwhile BNHA, as a weekly serialized shonen battle manga whose creator has become increasingly rundown, has Things To Say, but doesn't necessarily have the same capacity to devote its power to those things. Abuse is vital to the themes of BNHA, but it's not the center of it the way it is for Moral Orel.

So when Clay does his thing, stripped of the fantastical couching of BNHA's bad dads, it just feels more real and it feels worse as a result.

anyways.

clay SMASH bnha's bad dad club

Never a question that Clay is a worse dad than Enji lmao. However one feels about Endeavour's arc, or how well-written or 'deserved' it is, or how successful and genuine Enji is in his efforts, at the very least he's realised that he's done wrong and wants to atone for it, while also grappling with the fact that there may be no way for him to do that. spoilers but clay shan't do this. you get flickers that he has regrets, but he'll NEVER change baby.

I guess Clay gets a one-up where his marriage with Bloberta is mutually destructive, harmful, and toxic in comparison to Enji unambiguously abusing Rei though. so failmarriage win.

Kotarou is actually similar to Clay though! Lots to say, to compare and contrast. I'm actually kind of obsessed, especially because what I said about Clay being more realistic also applies to Kotarou - Kotarou just gets less screentime. They're both deeply affected by their childhood and relationships with their own parents in ways they take it out on their children (the "explained but not excused" idea behind fictional depictions of generational abuse). They also project an image of the upper(?)-middle class family man and Patriarch of the household, either to make up for the failings of their childhood or because it's what expected of them as a man in their world. (Wee bit of conjecture on Kotarou's part but I think it has solid grounding.)

But there's also significant differences. Physical abuse is normalized as corporal between Clay and Orel, on top of the emotional abuse, manipulation, and neglect. Kotarou's abuse of Tenko is largely emotional, with the big slap implied to be the first time that abuse manifested as physical and a line crossed for the rest of the family. And while I'm sure some people would debate this, the idea that Kotarou promised Nao a home full of joy feels genuine. He did want that, the happy family full of smiles he lost as a kid, only for his own resentment to poison everything when Tenko can't obey the rules Kotarou created and enforced to achieve it. Clay, on the other hand, like. There's bits of him implying he loves his family but doesn't have the means to show or act on it, but when he has a whole speech about the sacrifices he makes for his family, family never rings as more than an obligation that he has to put up with for the appearance of manhood.

And Shigaraki can have xyz feelings about his dad forever, but he accepts and espouses the one true lesson Kotarou taught him, that heroes can't do shit all. His father was always a scary and domineering figure, but it feels like while he will never forgive him, Shigaraki does understand him more as an adult. Meanwhile, Orel tries as hard as he can to honour thy father until he can't anymore.

Again, I think that Clay and Kotarou are probably most comparable in terms of being the Bad Dad with some similar hang-ups and relationships to their kids, but part of what makes Kotarou interesting is that we don't know what he would have done had Tenko's quirk not triggered how and when it did. With his family finally willing to push back against him and himself feeling regret for hitting Tenko, could he have changed? We don't know! But much like I said when talking about Enji, Clay's never going to change.

All For One has become more of a cartoon villain that I am determined to turn into a dress up doll for my own amusement than a bad dad and is more evil guardian or whatever. BUT there's one thing that I almost forgot about when I was first writing this up, but realised is actually soooo interesting.

There's a lot to say about AFO and Clay being the primary "teacher" to Shigaraki and Orel! I that while AFO does influence Shigaraki's villainous ideals, he also lets society and Shigaraki's experiences speak for themselves. And frankly, Shigaraki has a lot of leeway and agency in evolving his ideals through his own experiences, particularly after AFO's incarceration. He sees AFO for what he is, probably has for a long time, and is determined to establish his own identity outside of AFO regardless of what Shigaraki has learned from him. Clay is much more strict and obvious about imposing his worldview on his son, but while Orel is desperate for his dad's approval and love and can be led to do things that feel wrong for that love, Orel never absorbs those lessons the way that Clay wants him to, and separating himself from his father and come to terms with what Clay has done is a much more difficult process.

but mostly i just think that clay could do this

and afo could do this

beautiful world.

[linklethehistorian]

Linkle’s Fazbear Frights & Lore Insights #3: Count the Ways

[Read the general disclaimer and important notes for this series of articles here.]

[View the Masterlist of all completed articles here.]

Some Count the Ways specific notes:

I may be briefly talking about one of the mini-games in the game version of Into the Pit which revolves around Count the Ways, and in general, discussions about the book version and my thoughts on it in my previous article, as well as my thoughts on To Be Beautiful, may come up at certain points, so if you want to completely avoid Into the Pit and To Be Beautiful spoilers, maybe hold off on this one for now.

Again, my takes on William as a father, in regards to the games, may ruffle more than a few feathers of people who still insist on holding onto some of the old fanon stuff/do not believe in Frights Fiction. If you don’t like it and won’t go into it with an open mind, please just don’t read it; I’m not really in the mental state to go through a thousand comments trying to convince me of a notion that I simply don’t personally feel has any logical evidence behind it.

Now that that’s been said, let’s jump below the cut and get right to it! This is your last spoiler warning for Count the Ways, so if you want to turn back, do so now.

Overall Impressions

The Book:

I have to say, in terms of story, this one honestly just might be my favorite of the book. Don’t get me wrong; Into the Pit and To Be Beautiful are both great stories that I enjoyed listening to quite a lot, but the constant looming sense of danger and dread that this story oozes throughout every page and the way that it’s so expertly written so as to make all of the flashbacks feel natural through Millie’s reminiscence at the end of her life is something that simply can’t be outdone.

There is something especially, absolutely terrifying about the helplessness with which this tale is framed from beginning to end, knowing that Millie is trapped and there is absolutely nothing she can do but look back and reflect on every little thing that led her to where she is now, and the soon-to-be tragic end of her life that is — despite all her best efforts — inescapable.

Funtime Freddy’s horrifyingly menacing personality, too, with his cheerfully cold outlook, has to be one of my favorite things in the Frights series thus far; it’s such a fun, believable, and yet deeply unsettling characterization for such a relatively innocent-and-friendly-looking animatronic, and it frankly makes me hope that we will eventually get to see him again.

Millie and her grandpa, too, are quite unique, well-rounded, likeable and interesting characters for the length of the story we are given, and I have to say that I’m quite glad that Millie’s crush, Dylan, isn’t framed as a bad person for not being in love with Millie and having chosen someone else — which I feared the book might do, when I found out he was with the cheerleader of the school.

I’m glad that Millie is admonished by Dylan for the hypocrisy of her judgement of others based on their looks and interests, as I think that Millie being a genuinely flawed character makes her much more interesting than if she were treated as a complete victim and her judgment of Dylan’s girlfriend was proven to be correct.

As for the general theme I believe the book was trying to explore outside of the context of FNAF lore — how, often, when we say we want to die, what we actually mean is just that we want life to be different and better, and how, in those scenarios, the concept of dying is a form of escapism rather than a serious desire — I think that it was gotten across quite well, and in a very thought-provoking manner.

There is a lot more that I could say on the depth of this subject and hard-hitting themes that it tackles so beautifully, but I don’t want to spend too long in this section, as I know that the lore is what most people want to hear about, and I fear that I couldn’t do it the justice I desire, anyway, so for now, let us move on.

Normally, I would be cutting to a section where I talk about another version of the story that exist, but at the time of writing this, there is no graphic novel of Count the Ways, and I don’t really have much to say about the Count the Ways mini-game in the video game adaptation of Into the Pit, other than…it’s confusing, and I don’t really understand what it’s getting at half the time in relation to the story it’s supposed to be based on.

Lore Relevancy

Honestly, despite how much I loved this story, this is probably going to be one of the shortest posts I’ll make in regards to the lore relevancy section, since it’s really…pretty straightforward in its points of interest and, at least as far as I could tell each time I went through it, there isn’t all that much to speculate on, either.

The Lies and Half-truths

Well, calling Funtime Freddy pink was certainly one of the choices ever — I’ll start by saying that. In Sister Location, he’s very clearly a purple and white bear and not a pink one, but it’s extremely clear that that’s who they’re meaning to be the bear in the story — especially with Into the Pit’s game version properly confirming it in the mini-game based on this take — so, yeah, no idea what’s going on with that, exactly… Maybe I just have a different idea of what qualifies as pink. At best, I could see arguing he’s a particularly vibrant shade of mauve, but even then —

…Ah well, it doesn’t matter.

I think it goes without saying that, unless it comes up again in a story that sheds doubt on this, Millie probably isn’t a real person in the FNAF universe, or at least didn’t have all of these things happen to her or die, but that’s pretty much something we can say about nearly every person in the Fazbear Frights books.

That being said, the way that Millie died is quite similar to how one very important character — namely, Elizabeth — does die in the mainline canon, so at least that much isn’t a lie; it’s just that it didn’t happen exactly the same way as it did to Millie, nor did it ever happen to Millie herself, as far as we know (if Millicent Fitzsimmons even exists, which is doubtful).

The Truths and the Likely-Truths

The things I KNOW are True

So, now that we’ve moved past the lies and have gotten to talking about the truth, what are the things that I’m 100% confident Count the Ways is trying to tell us about the FNAF mainline canon lore?

Honestly? Not a lot. Whereas in most of the previous and soon-to-be-upcoming stories, there was a pretty long list of things I felt would be certainly or almost certainly relevant to the canon, in this one I actually think the two main points being discussed here are not only very simple, but also explored in very simple and obvious ways.

As I mentioned in the previous section, Millie’s death while being trapped in Funtime Freddy’s stomach is very clearly a parallel of Elizabeth and her death in Circus Baby, so I don’t think it requires a ton of proof or a long discussion of any kind before I can state that the story quite simply exists, first and foremost, to show off what the main two children-snatching, artificially intelligent Funtime Animatronics can do, and give us an example of some of the way Elizabeth could’ve died and why no one around Baby was likely to hear her over the general noise of the restaurant and customers.

Here is list some of the major possible function we learned Funtime Freddy (and possibly, by extension, Circus Baby) possess:

A just about soundproof design to prevent their captives from truly making enough noise to be noticed by those who might otherwise be able to find them.

The ability to keep children inside of them long enough for them to die of dehydration, or even provide them with water so that they could potentially die a longer death starvation, instead. Which stems from the fact that…

They can flood their belly chambers with water, allowing them to possibly drown their victims, or at least boil them alive by heating their internal temperature exponentially.

The ability to freeze their victims is also evidently within their capacity, as is the ability to electrocute them by sending bolts of electricity through their body cavity.

The power to send blades and metal rods through their stomach cavity in order to impale, decapitate, or bisect their captives quickly, making for a faster and more efficient kill.

I think, to that end, the story also exists to show off the fact that those animatronics are clearly programmed with their primary objective being to kill or to help each other kill, and that that is why most of their personalities in particular tend to feel so…either sadistic or utterly disarming at times in their dialogue of the games. They were made to be children snatching and killing machines.

And then, obviously, you have the return to the on-going theme of the Power of Wills and Wishes™️, this time presenting itself in Millie constantly saying and writing and thinking that she wishes for death, and her ‘coincidental’ encounter with Funtime Freddy then having him comment on and decide to grant her that (even though she realizes, just like Oswald and Sarah before her, that she should have been careful about what she wished for, as getting it didn’t ultimately turn out to be what she thought it would be at all).

The things I FEEL are True

Well, if that’s all I can state with absolutely certainty, are there at least some more, less objectively obvious things that I’m fairly confident in?

Not a great many, I’m afraid.

Even as I’m writing up this last section, I’m listening to the book yet a fourth time, analyzing every line as though I’m trying to crack some sort of hidden code and still coming up empty on the smoking gun that I’m seeking.

There are definitely things that I feel strongly are intentional — messages that I think are wanting to be conveyed — but not in the same way as I have with every story before this, and quite a few that I’ve read which come after it.

For example, I can see and I feel quite certain that there’s some manner of attempt to bring to the reader’s mind the story of Pizzeria Simulator, considering not only that Funtime Freddy was found by Millie’s grandfather in a Salvage yard in this story and there’s a lot of talk of her grandpa liking collect junk and putter around in his workshop salvaging and repairing things, but also that in the former book, To Be Beautiful, the obvious stand-in for Circus/Scrap Baby was found in a scrapyard and had to be ‘salvaged’ by Sarah; however, I’m not sure why this is the case.

It’s definitely there, but I still don’t know what relevance it actually has, in terms of telling us something about Pizzeria Simulator; the only theory I’ve yet been able to come up with is, admittedly, a bit too seemingly contradictory to what’s implied in canon for even me to fully believe, and that’s that, like Millie, Michael’s apparent willingness to die and/or casual acceptance towards the idea of doing so — as we’ve seen in the Security Logbook and had implied in Pizzeria Simulator — wasn’t actually a serious wish he had, and, despite having apparently in some way also given Henry the impression that he wanted it, he truly ended up regretting it once it was much too late, and the opportunity to die had been granted to him by said man.

While it’s not impossible that this is the reality, I’ve never been particularly convinced of the “Henry killed Michael against Michael’s will, wrongly assuming he wants death as much as Henry did” narrative, as I feel that it makes more sense for Michael’s character if he does genuinely not want to live in a world in which his entire family is gone — especially given the fact that he’s saddled with so much clear guilt for what happened to Garret at his own hands, and the domino effect of countless deaths that occurred thereafter.

Nevertheless, I do think it’s an interesting idea to note and contemplate, so I will put it out there.

As for whether or not I think Millie is meant to be a stand-in for Michael beyond that — despite what you’re probably expecting me to say by now, after two articles of insisting that this entire Fazbear Frights volume is trying to get across some sort of message about him — not…precisely.

The thing about Millie, as opposed to Oswald and Sarah in the two stories prior, is that while she does share some similarities with Michael that I think are at least partly intentional, and she also is clearly taking the place of Elizabeth in terms of how she dies, she’s also still distinct enough in both personality and plight that I don’t think she’s particularly meant to be anyone we already know in particular — just a unique character through which to convey various small tidbits of information about different people and events.

Believe me, I’ve sat here comparing her to every important character in the main canon for much longer than I’d care to admit, trying to see if there’s something or someone I could be overlooking that her individual circumstances could be solely relevant to, but at least at the time of writing this, I just haven’t found enough evidence to come firmly to such a conclusion.

I jotted down in the early notes for this article how it seems that the story of Millie and Hannah is a direct parallel to Abby and Sarah, respectively, just told from the opposite perspective, and I’ve asked myself in doing so (as per my previous article’s conclusions) whether or not this means that Millie is meant to be a stand-in for Elizabeth beyond just the circumstances of her death, but there is just absolutely nothing else that they have in common, so that idea had to be promptly abandoned.

At least if we said she’s Michael, there are some things that could be used to support that claim:

Her last name, Fitzsimmons, is phonetically reminiscent of one of Michael’s chosen aliases later in life: Fritz Smith.

She is called “Dracula’s Daughter” by many people in her school after being obsessed with the book, Dracula, and in Sister Location, Michael is obsessed with a soap opera style TV show called The Immortal and the Restless, which is about a vampire named Vlad — who is clearly meant to be a metaphor for Michael’s father, William. This technically makes Michael “Dracula’s Son”.

Funtime Freddy refers to Millie as an “ice cold goth”, and in general, throughout the book, she is shown and described to be an angsty teen who is distant with her family, which, minus the goth part as far as we know, does seem to be at least decently accurate to Michael’s character pre-Bite of ‘83.

Nevertheless, I’m not particularly convinced that this is exactly the case, either; certainly, I do think that Millie is supposed to have some traits that may harken back to the vague concept of Michael, so that readers might continue to keep him in mind, but I don’t think that she is Michael.

She does share Michael’s desire for death — whether or not Michael himself later felt regret at the end of his life, as speculated earlier as a possibility — and she also ultimately has that same secondary overarching theme of main characters feeling unlovable, unwanted, utterly invisible in any possible positive context, and like life is meaningless in its current state, but that doesn’t necessarily mean they’re one and the same. There just isn’t enough overwhelming proof or connection for me to personally come to that conclusion.

I know — that might come as a shock to people who have read my previous articles, with how strongly I’ve been asserting that I believe this entire volume of Fazbear Frights is trying to tell us something about Michael, but it’s true; while I do still think the story is trying to tell us something about him and about the nature of the Funtime animatronics, I don’t think that Millie is particularly meant to be any one character from canon. I think she shares things in common with at least two of them and is supposed to remind us of them for different reasons each, but other than that, she is very much and very clearly her own character with her own unique traits.

Michael doesn’t have a canonically mentioned equivalent to Dylan. Michael’s parents aren’t flighty, impractical people who squander their money and jump from project to project, and country to country. Michael’s grandfather — or anyone that we know he knew, for that matter — wasn’t canonically stated to have been a retired teacher of some form. Michael wasn’t known to be goth. There are certainly things we could read into certain details like these and more, if we really wanted to reach for things, but without any solid amount of undeniable proof, it’s all just rampant speculation.

No, it’s far easier to just say that Millie is her own character created for the purpose of the Fazbear Frights story, who borrows traits and elements of her life story from others who actually existed in the in-universe real FNAF world.

As for other things that I think are worth mentioning, I can really only think of the fact Funtime Freddy is described as pink in this story; I’m not sure what significance this actually has, but my immediate thought process was that he was described this way so as to bring to mind Funtime Foxy, since every other Sister Location animatronic had been represented in some way in this book already (Ballora and Baby through Eleanor, and Funtime Freddy through himself). I don’t know if this is true, and I don’t even know if it matters, but it is something I wanted to throw out there. That or…it was a mistake in the writing, or the author just defines colors differently than I do. Who knows?

Whatever the case, I could be missing something here, but I think that’s pretty much everything I wanted to talk about with this book. I hope you enjoyed, and I’ll see you all in the next one!

[bemusedlybespectacled]

Sure, yeah, death is an important part of life and catharsis is great and all life contains tragedy.

But that's not what this is criticizing.

It's saying that Izzy's death does not fit with the established themes and rules of the fictional universe we're in. This show has, over and over, shown us that characters who are even slightly sympathetic are going to live, no matter how certain their deaths would be in real life. It's not unreasonable for people to expect a certain degree of escapism in a show where our characters have survived things like getting gut stabbed all night with only minor discomfort, or getting beaten to death with a cannon ball and yet having no head injuries at all.

The text prior to this episode was very clearly "this show runs on muppet physics." The show has already lied to you, in both a literal "that's not how real life injuries work" way and an emotional "the only people who die horribly are people you want to die or at least don't care about" way.

But it's also not like there couldn't be catharsis in the show without Izzy dying. If anything, one of the serious problems I have with the second season is that they didn't really address any of the actual emotional trauma that the characters experienced, in favor of either bulldozing over it or ignoring it, and pinning all the catharsis on an unnecessary death. Sure, cruelty makes kindness more precious, but our characters have already experienced cruelty that has yet to be addressed at all.

Ignoring the yo-yoing Ed's arc undergoes in this season and especially in the finale itself, both involving his sense of self and his relationship with the crew he basically tortured for months, we have now gone a whole 18 episodes without Stede ever actually telling Ed anything about himself, his thoughts, or his personal life. Stede knows Ed's darkest secret; Ed still doesn't know even basic things about Stede, like, I don't know, any of his shitty childhood experiences that underlie his entire personality as an adult.

But even if we accept that character death is the only or best form of emotional catharsis, I disagree strongly with this:

Izzy’s death had me sobbing entirely BECAUSE it’s infused with this meaning. He didn’t die alone. He didn’t die unloved. And he knew it.

That is absolutely not what we're shown at all. Jim, Frenchie, Fang, and Archie, who in the opening episode comforted Izzy while he was having an emotional breakdown and then kept him alive at their own risk, are just kinda There looking sad and don't do or say anything to or about Izzy. None of the other characters who had improved relationships with Izzy this season – not Wee John, not Lucius, not Stede – do anything, either. Even Ed's attempts at apologizing and saying he loves Izzy get shot down by Izzy. Izzy's dying words are him saying that the crew loves Ed, which we are definitely not shown, with not a word about himself.

If any of the past season's emotional growth had paid off in Izzy's death scene, then maybe I wouldn't be so angry about it; I am a huge sucker for characters dying for their friends. But Izzy's death wasn't cathartic for me because none of that emotional buildup actually went anywhere. In the end, it's just him and Ed, not him and the crew that he just spent seven fucking episodes with, which kind of makes it seem like none of that shit was ultimately meaningful.

Re: "But don't you find it beautiful and meaningful that Izzy got to experience happiness before he died? He ended his life surrounded by love and that was great for him."

You folks are sailing right past our one main issue here. Namely, why did he have to die at all?

It's a comedy show - a comedy show where not-really-deaths outnumber actual deaths by ten to one - why did Izzy have to die? Some of you are talking as if he died the way that people in real life die, like it's one of those things you just can't change. But this wasn't like that. This was a constructed narrative where a decision was made that not only should he be dead at the end of the series, but that it should be confirmed beyond all doubt with OFMD's only grave. Even the Badmintons weren't shown in their graves.

So why did Izzy have to die?

And why do so many of you find it fitting and appropriate that he died? This is a good opportunity to sit down with yourself and maybe examine your own thoughts around ageing and disability. Con O'Neill is in his 50s, not his 90s, and a missing limb is not some kind of down payment on death. The show even went out of its way to fit him with a new leg, breathe new life into him. So "he had to die because he was basically halfway out of the door" is rooted in some nasty ideas about ageing and disability, ideas which you should not allow to fester in yourself. Dig those out. If you're healthy and young, this might seem like a very remote issue to you. It won't always be.

David Jenkins has indicated in interviews that Izzy had to die because (1) he was Ed's 'mentor', a frankly baffling assertion which is contrary to nearly everything established about Ed and Izzy's relationship in the show, and (2) "it's a pirate show."

Okay! It's a pirate show. Seems fair at first.

Until you remember it's also a comedy show where guys turn into birds and people routinely survive explosions and gun shots and being stabbed through the liver on a regular basis. Throughout the narrative, OFMD has established and confirmed over and over and over again that it upholds the comedic law that death is never really death. You can relax seeing Roach fall from the rigging because it's a comedy show - they're not going to do that to you.

But then they did.

They reversed that fundamental law within the world just so that Izzy could die - and so that Izzy could just die. Nothing came of his death. It didn't open up a new section of plotline or change anything. The show could have ended with Izzy off on adventures with the crew he'd grown to love.

Instead he just died. And we're struggling to understand why.

Telling us that he got to be happy before he died doesn't make any sense. If it was all so beautiful and meaningful to see him experience temporary happiness, wouldn't it have been nice to see him happy ever after?

So why did the writers give him death instead?

We're scared that it's 2023 and some folks still think it's just fitting for visibly queer characters to be tantalised with happiness then struck down. We're scared that at the bottom of this, it makes sense to you that Izzy died because you think he was old and broken and no use to anyone now. We're scared to have discovered that even the show which said kindness, kindness, kindness right from the start had none for this character we loved, and we're scared that you find it so beautiful.

[terrariumfiction]

Evaluation

I have come to learn that I find exhibiting work and moving forward very difficult; it's easy to only notice a thing's flaws once it's not hidden and completely under my control I guess? Figuring out how (and if) I want to push forwards into an arts career will be a slow kind of thing, I think, and I'm sort of looking forward to a serious break from this kind of making.

BUT, (this isn't a negative post!!) I am so proud of this exhibition and what we have accomplished together - how we have each grown as artists.

Referring back to my proposals from the three years, these are the common goals that were shared by each of them:

understand the commonalities between the different strains of my practice

develop my writing to act as a kind of central pillar

more closely consider installation and audience - what experience I want people to have

I'm pretty happy overall with how these things have been addressed and figured out. The themes and thinking behind the work (systems, interlinkage, ecology, the wretched self) have served me well and continue to intrigue me - I think I've found my niche. Through the writing tasks in years 1 and 2 I developed my voice, and the ways in which I could interrogate subjects with different kinds of writing styles and visual presentations; I even had some of these assignments published in a little collection. I feel my writing has come a long way, and I'm really happy about this; feel I know how I can keep that moving.

Centering writing in my practice has been an interesting challenge - one I think I have come close to realising. I like how the writing in the film appears as sound, voice, and visual text - each bringing in different ways of interacting with text/reading (though I acknowledge the method with which I've done this - through the visual language of videogames - is not something every audience member can connect with, potentially alienating or confusing some viewers). The comic, also, is something I'm proud of. It was a labour of love, and the fine details like the pacing and overall visual flow are not quite perfect, but I wonder if this is a setback of the medium as a whole. It is almost impossible to edit comics, without just redoing the entire thing.

Figuring out how to talk about the presence of writing and fiction within the work is tough. I have two ways of talking about it presently:

like the hyperobject, the story as a whole is presently unseeable to audiences, but can be approached through local manifestations - serialisation (releasing one chapter at a time).

the story - more succinctly, the story's synopsis - is the set of conceptual parameters within which the work can emerge.

But, every time i've tried to vocalise these ideas, I get very blank looks, so I may have some way to go yet.

One thing I had in this year's proposal is that I wanted my work to be less negative this year - I think I have achieved this. There's plenty of humour and silliness in both the printed imagery and the film. There is, I think, a goofy joy to the way I'm telling the story, no matter how dark it is, that seems to be infectious enough to make some viewers chuckle -- nice!

Doing the exhibition at Cornwall Street this year was amazing - I feel so energised about performing and presenting my work as a live event. The feeling I got doing that reading was the single best experience I've ever had making art. I'd like to do that more. I'm looking to hopefully get some work at one of the theatres in Plymouth. Theatre might be a future for this stuff.

I wanted to leave myself more time to contemplate the installation this year. Though I had thought about it ahead of time, I found myself in the same frantic situation as last year when it came down to it - I had/have no space to make or store the large scale work I wanted to make. I knew the work would be scruffy - I wanted this to an extent - but I feel a little disappointed in myself that I didn't do any grander? I don't know. There is some success in the scruffy large drawings, the way they introduce some of the visual motifs and larger metaphors of the work - and in how they network the imagery within the comic in a larger space.

Anyway - moving forward is a tough thing to think about. I feel like simultaneously I have a lot of drive and hope - to find a future making art, and like I have no energy to see this through. I find it difficult applying for things, writing and talking about my work, and find it really really hard to get rejections. I find it hard to exhibit my work and receive reactions and feedback. Not sure what I want to do! I feel my resilience hasn't really grown, and I'm not sure how much energy I would have to pursue a long term career in this direction. I don't know how important it is either.

BUT I'm very much pleased with where I've ended up after this MA. I think I've grown in the ways I wanted to. I think my uncertainty in the exiting is a reflection of this fucking hell world and my poorly mind, so.

I might edit this later if I get feedback that it's a bit too negative ;)

[yegarts]

“I Am YEG Arts” Series: Rayanne Haines

Sometimes, you don’t know where you belong until you get there. For Rayanne Haines, that’s meant showing up, doing the work, and sharing what she’s learned and questioned. It’s meant writing. And has she ever! In addition to being a best-selling author of three poetry collections and a four-part urban/fantasy series, Haines is the 2022 Writer in Residence for the Metro Edmonton Federation of Libraries, VP for the League of Canadian Poets, and host of her own literary podcast. By the looks of her next project, she’s also just getting started. Educator, hybrid author, and contemptuous doomscroller—this week’s “I Am YEG Arts” story belongs to Rayanne Haines.

Tell us about your connection to Edmonton and why you’ve made it your home.

I was born and raised on an Arabian horse farm about half-an-hour outside of Edmonton. My family still has their farm there, so I feel like I’m an Edmontonian-lifer. After leaving home and looking to find my way, I moved into the city to go to MacEwan University and have worked in various arts organizations throughout Edmonton over the past twenty-odd years. So It's always been my home, and it probably always will be.

How did your love of writing begin? Were you always a storyteller, or was it a “detour” while on a path to somewhere else?

I think that I was always a storyteller but didn’t know it until I grew older. I have, for example, very vivid memories of telling stories to my parents’ horses. So rather than being really serious about practicing for horse shows, I’d go out into the back forty and make up stories and plays with my horses.

For the longest time, I actually thought I was going to be an actress or involved in theatre—and then I ended up working in the music industry as a detour. So it took me a long time to find my way to understanding that, for me, the stories behind the music and embedded in the theatre were what I was most interested in, and I wanted to be the person writing those stories and performing pieces that I’d created. So, yes, it was always there. It just took me the longest time to understand that that’s what it meant to me to be a storyteller—to be the one writing the story.

What themes are you drawn to as a storyteller?

I’m really drawn to the lived experience of women and women-indentifying people. I’m drawn to the stories of lived experience and the narratives that we women inhabit in this society that we live in. I’m also drawn to interrogating mental health within my work and looking at connections between mental health and womanhood and the empowerment that comes along with understanding or navigating those questions.

What is it about poetry that makes it your starting point for other forms of writing?

I think that poetry, for me, lets me put limits around the chaos—and not limits in the way of limiting what we’re sharing—rather, it allows me to use structure, and form, and shape, and what we visually see on the page as much as the language that we use. And I like that about it. It allows me from these places of chaotic discoveries around mental health or these really massive conversations surrounding women's identities or queer identity to use the form of poetry to shape those ideas to further question what it is that I’m asking amongst those ideas. That capacity to use poetry to shape has actually allowed me more freedom in the questions that I’m asking—and it took me a lot longer to understand how to do the same thing within an essay form or a fiction form.

I also think that because so much of my work is personal, poetry lets me come at it from a lens that respects that personal nature and allows me to shape-shift what I want to say or question, based on how I go about putting it on the page or using my line breaks. Sometimes I can create dual or triple meaning around something just by the way I choose to shape it on the page. So there’s a lot of freedom that is offered in poetry, while also having these capacities for playing with form.

What’s been the biggest surprise lesson you’ve learned hosting your literary podcast, Crow Reads?

I think the biggest surprise for me—as a woman who talks often about the importance of inclusion, and representation, and decolonizing—was realizing just how white my lens has been. Coming from this place of being a good ally, because of the work I’m doing with that podcast and all of the diverse people that I speak with, has really highlighted that lived experience from that white lens and increased my desire or capacity to want to try to decolonize my view and to learn and question that as much as possible.

What role have awards and funding played in your career? And what doors do they open for artists?

That’s such a good question. I think that funding support has been huge for the advancement of my career. The validity that receiving a grant offers you as an artist is massive because what it tells you is that a group of people believe in the power of what you’re doing before it’s a done thing. They believe in the idea, they believe in you, and they believe in supporting your work—before it is finished. The legitimacy that that gives you as an artist is incredible because it acknowledges the work that you’re doing as having merit and importance to your peers.

That being said, I also have a bit of a love-hate relationship with it because it’s a competitive thing that we get forced into in order to be able to create. So I wish we lived in a world in which we didn’t have to rely on grants or compete against each other to do our work and receive funding. I certainly think that winning awards does shift things for you as an artist, but more than that it acknowledges the work around your craft. Speaking from a literary world, being able to look back at these awards tells me that I’ve done the work to elevate my craft to such a point that it is acknowledged by other writers or experts in the field. And for me, that’s been huge because it allows me to see myself differently—to get away from the imposter syndrome that all of us artists live with. It lets me step beyond that imposter syndrome to say that I do have value to offer others and to then go back to my community and offer that support, knowing I’ve done the work to have my artform seen in that capacity.

Tell us a little about the non-fiction collection of essays and poetry you’re working on.

The idea behind the collection is that I really wanted to pull away from form and create a hybrid text because I’m looking at the in between spaces that women inhabit when we don’t know who we are, or are questioning our identity, or our capacities around grief. My mother was diagnosed with cancer a couple of years ago at the beginning of the pandemic, and we were told it was not a cancer she would beat. She has now passed, so I think the genesis for the collection came from who I am now as a grown woman who needs to grieve my mother but is not allowed to grieve my mother because my mother is not dead—even though I know. So I am in this in between space. The in between space of motherhood and aging—as an aging woman, what does that look like? The in between space of academia. The in between space of my own identity—questioning my identity when I have conversations around queer identity or bisexual identity and what that means as an aging woman. All of these spaces that we inhabit or are trying to understand how we inhabit come with a lot of chaos and questioning. So the idea behind the collection was to work within that chaos and interrogate those questions in many different forms and many different spaces.

What’s your favourite way to procrastinate?

It’s a horrible way to procrastinate, and it’s social media. I’m a doomscroller. It’s not cooking, it’s not cleaning—it’s none of that. Just scrolling through the crap. I have a good friend who puts timers on her phone and locks it all up, but I can’t quite get there.

What does community mean to you, and where do you find it?

Community to me means the support of people who care about you and that you care about—both in terms of human connection and your artistry. I think I came to the arts community as a single mother trying to figure out my place in the world, and this city and community lifted me up, and held me, and helped me find my way. So, for me, that’s what it’s about—service, and supporting others, and the work you can give back in order to build a stronger community.

Where do I find it? I think I find it by showing up—and not just physically—but by showing up when someone is looking for support, or asking for guidance, or even an ear to talk to. That’s going to look different for everyone and every art community, but certainly in Edmonton and around the literary world, it means showing up for new writers and being someone who can offer supports or mentorship in a way that feels healthy, while also placing boundaries on our time and what we can give. So, for me, at the end of the day, community means showing up, doing the work, and lifting people up on their journeys.

Want more YEG Arts Stories? We’ll be sharing them here all year and on social media using the hashtag #IamYegArts. Follow along! Click here to learn more about Rayanne Haines. And visit the Edmonton Arts Council’s website to learn more about grants and awards that support YEG artists.

About Rayanne Haines

Rayanne Haines (she/her) is an educator and hybrid author. She is the 2022 Writer in Residence for the Metro Edmonton Federation of Libraries and a best-selling author of three poetry collections—The Stories in My Skin (2013), Stained with the Colours of Sunday Morning (Inanna, 2017), and Tell The Birds Your Body Is Not A Gun (Frontenac, 2021)—as well as a four-part commercial market, urban fantasy/romance series. She hosts the literary podcast Crow Reads and is the VP for the League of Canadian Poets. Her poetry and prose have been shortlisted for the John Whyte Memorial Essay Alberta Literary Award, the Robert Kroetsch Award for Poetry, and the National ReLit Award for Poetry. Tell The Birds Your Body Is Not A Gun, a hybrid poetry collection that interrogates grief, won the 2022 Alberta Literary Awards, Stephan G. Stephansson Award for Poetry. Rayanne is a past Edmonton Artists Trust Fund Award recipient. She’s had work published in journals and online in Canada, The U.K., and the USA. Rayanne teaches in the Department of Arts and Cultural Management with MacEwan University.

[asablehart]

So, about short stories...

This year, it was my goal to become a SFWA qualifying author by focusing on publishing my short fiction. I wrote about 20k words of short stories over winter break '21, and I spent the rest of the new year editing and submitting those stories. Since then, I’ve sent over 100 submissions, and I’ve received 77 rejections and 7 acceptances. Of those acceptances, 4 are in SFWA professional magazines (at least, before they changed their qualifying guidelines) and 1 is in an HWA professional magazine.

Needless to say, short story publication occupies a FAR GREATER portion of my brain than it has any right to. Below are some rambling thoughts I have about the process behind short story publication.

This introduction is intended to bring you to the dark side (a.k.a. you, yes, you, should be writing short fiction)

The process of submitting short stories is SO EASY, especially when compared to novels. Your cover letter will probably be less than 4 sentences. You just attach your short story to an email or form and press “submit,” and then you just wait. Having to query a publication or pitch a story before submitting are both very rare occurrences, and typically reserved for longer stories, like novellas. I’m serious. Sending something to a mag takes like 30 seconds. I use the same cover letter for everything. It’s stupid how simple this is. Read this formatting guide and you’ve got all the information you need to send a story to like a dozen markets.

Also note that I’m going to refer to short story markets as mags, lit mags, journals, etc, interchangeably, so don’t get confused. Most short story markets, from magazines to anthologies, function in extremely similar ways, at least when it comes to the author's role.

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Please start submitting, but…. not to be a bummer, but it’s a numbers game, and most of those numbers are going to be rejections.

Acceptance rates are low. According to the Submission Grinder, many magazines have acceptance rates lower than 2% (note that I’m usually referring to professional and semi-professional spec fic magazines, since that’s what I submit to.) This statistic is probably artificially increased because the Submission Grinder’s user base is a self-selecting group of authors who care enough about magazine submissions to use a third-party website to track them (a.k.a. the actual acceptance rates are probably even lower than they appear).

So when you see rejections that say “We can’t wait to see more of your work” or you see editors on social media say “We reject good stories every single day,” these aren’t empty platitudes. Magazines recent hundreds of submissions during open calls and are operating on razor-thin budgets (it’s actually very likely that the magazine you’re submitting to doesn’t even turn a profit).

What should you take from this? Submit often, and to as many markets as you can. Don’t bet on a piece getting accepted at one particular magazine. If you’re writing for a specific themed call, have a back-up plan (but probably delay sending that piece to a bunch of new magazines after a rejection; everyone else rejected from the same themed submission call is likely doing the same exact thing, at the same exact magazines).

Anyway, the best way to cope with a rejection is sending out a new submission.

Also, use Submission Grinder to track your subs. I’m in love with this website.

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Should you take simultaneous submission guidelines seriously?

A simultaneous submission is when you send the same story to multiple magazines. Some magazines will tell you that they don’t allow for simultaneous magazines. Some will tell you that it’s totally OK as long as you disclose what you’re doing (in your cover letter) and promptly withdraw your submission from them if it’s accepted elsewhere. The editor of a magazine who bans simultaneous submissions is trying to avoid a specific situation: they’ve devoted a significant amount of time to a story they’re considering for publication, only for them to learn that it has already been purchased by another magazine right before they were going to send the author an acceptance letter.

How often does that specific situation happen? Very rarely. Like I said, acceptance rates are extremely low. The odds that you’ll get two acceptances on the same piece at the same time are just astronomical. Additionally, most magazines will take at least a month to get back to you, but probably significantly longer. It could take you longer than a year to get a piece published if you only submit to one magazine every 1 - 3 months. For some context: out of all my published pieces this year, only one was accepted by the first place I sent it to. The others have between 3 - 6 rejections each. Some of the pieces that I haven’t managed to sell yet have 10+ rejections. Some of these magazines held onto my stories for 100+ days.

In my opinion, it’s a real disservice to authors for a magazine to demand No Simultaneous Submissions while also taking months, and months, and months to respond with rejections. It’s disrespectful. It’s treating you like your time isn’t important. My favorite creative writing professor hated that magazines banned sim subs, and often encouraged us to treat these guidelines with a grain of salt if we decided to start submitting.

So should you listen to a magazine when they say No Sim Subs? It really comes down to your comfort level and how patient you are. You may also need to consider how easy it is to withdraw a piece, because some submission forms make it more difficult than others (looking at you, CWSUBMISSIONS). 

Ultimately, you never have to disclose why you’ve withdrawn a piece from a magazine, and authors CAN and DO withdraw pieces for a variety of reasons.

But if you decide to break writer law and the writer police come to get you, don’t be a snitch, thanks. I said nothing.

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Lit mag twitter is surprisingly useful

Magazines announce future submission calls, their reading period schedules, and themed issues on twitter usually far in advance. You won’t get this information unless you’re checking their individual websites regularly (which would be a waste of time). I wouldn’t be prepared for half of these open calls if I didn’t have a twitter account. And unlike novel publishing twitter, you don't have to post or interact with anyone to reap these benefits.

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Most speculative fiction magazines are publishing literary fantasy, scifi, and horror.

There are sometimes very clear divisions between literary fiction and genre fiction, but you won’t find that line with pro/semi-pro speculative fiction magazines. In my experience, literary speculative fiction far outnumbers pure genre fiction (however you want to define that). Short stories also tend to be more experimental, in terms of both content and story structure.

Why can short stories afford to take these risks? I think there’s a few reasons for this. The first is that many magazines survive off of yearly crowdfunding campaigns and independent investors/sponsors, not individual sales. So much of their money comes in advance in this lump sum from future subscribers, so they don’t have to cater to market trends like novels do. Additionally, subscribers generally don’t buy magazines because there’s one story in the magazine that they enjoy—odds are, they enjoy the editorial voice of the magazine. They trust the editor(s) to curate a cohesive collection of stories, which means the magazine doesn’t have to depend on a viral, popular story to boost their sales. 

This all comes to a head during award season (the Hugos, Nebulas, the Bram Stoker award, etc). Look, I’ve never edited a magazine, but the way magazine editors are constantly promoting during award season… you know it’s important to them. They’re probably looking for stuff to nominate all year, which means they’re chasing literary fiction, stuff that really resonates with people on a deep personal level. And you’ll see short stories on the ballot by authors you’ve probably never heard of unless you’re really up-to-date with lit mags. In my opinion, this leads to a diversity of fiction that’s very hard to find elsewhere. 

I also think this means you can and should just write whatever the fuck you want without worrying about marketability, which is a really freeing feeling. Seriously, lit mags publish some WEIRD shit.

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Lots of people (including editors) will tell you to read a magazine to get a sense of whether or not your story will be a good fit—I think this is bad advice.

Don’t get me wrong, I think you should read short fiction if you want to write short fiction. I also think that if you dislike the content that a magazine publishes, you probably won’t be able to sell them a piece. And that you can improve your craft by finding a publication (or two, or three) that consistently publish works that you enjoy so you can analyze their structure and incorporate what you’ve learned into your own stories. Additionally, if a magazine’s content really resonates with you, and you consume it regularly, it’s probably because your writing style is similar to their editorial style—this may be a sign that they’ll enjoy your work. That’s something that happens organically, in my opinion, not something that can be forced.

But like I said in my first point, the key to success here is to send out a LOT of submissions. I’ve submitted to over 40 different markets this year. I’ve read stories from maybe 10 of those markets (usually when it was offered for free on their websites). I don’t have the time OR THE MONEY to breeze through issues from that many magazines, and I’m not going to stop myself from submitting somewhere just because I haven’t read what they publish. In fact, I think it’s really unfair for editors to place this onus on the writer, especially if their magazine doesn’t have free content available and especially if their submission guidelines are otherwise vague AF—PLEASE, PLEASE, editors, just tell us what kind of writing you enjoy in the guidelines.

The fact of the matter is, even if you read a magazine and write something specifically for them, odds are you’re going to get rejected anyway. I’m not trying to be a bummer here, that’s really just the statistics. It’s really a fundamental misunderstanding to assume that authors regularly write entire short stories with one specific market in mind, and that they’ll forgo sending that story to other markets because it was only intended for Clarkesworld or F&SF. 

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Personal rejections are nice, but don’t think too hard about them. Alternatively, writing is so much more subjective than you think.

Rejections come in tiers, but they can be summed up as form rejections and personal rejections. Form rejections always look the same, and they are generally (but not always) sent to stories that weren’t really considered that strongly for publication--in fact, many magazines utilize first readers, who are volunteers who read the first few pages of submissions and make a quick judgement call about whether or not to send that story to the editor for second-round consideration. Form rejections often come from first readers. (Of course, this is not always true. Some magazines don't use first readers at all. Some magazines use first readers, but still refer every story to the editor anyway and promise submitting authors that the full text of all submissions are read before a decision is made.)

Personal rejections include specific references to your story, often explaining why the editors decided to reject it. This might be phrased as constructive criticism or simply as observations. Some magazines make it their goal to ONLY send personal rejections, but those are the minority. Typically, personal rejections come after higher tier consideration, and usually take longer to receive than a form rejection.

The thing is that writing is subjective. It’s tempting to think that editors, who are often the arbiters of publication, can objectively separate good stories from bad. The logical conclusion, if you think this way, is that they’ll give you objectively sound advice to revise your piece before you submit to another magazine.

But this isn’t really true. A personalized rejection is giving you good advice—if it were possible to resubmit the same piece to the same editor for the same magazine (and unfortunately, you usually only get one shot). The same advice might not help you sell your piece to a different magazine. In fact, it’s very likely that aspects of your story that one editor disliked will be the same things that make a new editor fall in love with it. I experienced this while submitting my sci-fi/horror story “Rider Within,” which was rejected from PseudoPod because of the amount of exposition in the first few pages. This same piece was accepted by Dark Matter Magazine without any edits after the PseudoPod rejection. The key difference here is that PseudoPod is an audio magazine; every magazine from PseudoPod’s publisher boasts the same line in their submission guidelines, “Our readers can’t skim past the boring parts.” Podcasts have a much smaller margin for too much exposition, and that magazine needs to be picky about that sort of thing to keep their readership. A print/ebook magazine will have different standards.

Really, almost all of my rejections/acceptances can be used as an example for subjectivity in editorial taste. My story “In the Nest Beneath the Mountain-Tree, Your Sisters Dance” sat in Clarkesworld’s second hold pile for a MONTH, which is insane and probably something that will never happen to me again. This same story was rejected by a much smaller magazine (probably by a first reader) after like 3 days of consideration. The story didn’t just suddenly decrease in quality, it’s just that the editor of one of the most selective scifi magazines out there liked it enough to consider it for publication, and a different editor really didn’t enjoy it at al.

Back to the point, there’s still reasonable situations where you may want to make edits after a personal rejection. If you read critical feedback that really resonates with you or if you get feedback that points out parts of the story that you were already iffy about, then by all means, make those edits! You might also want to do some editing if multiple rejections point out the same things.

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Read the submission guidelines, but don’t self-reject.

“Self-rejecting” is when you look at a magazine and tell yourself “my story won’t work here,” or “I don’t fit the submission call,” or “I’m not good enough to be published here.” And not all self-rejection is unwarranted. There’s going to be times where you read the fine print and realize that you’re not the right fit. Submission guidelines are written for a reason, and while the worst thing an editor can say is “no,” it does help if you don’t waste their time (or yours).

That being said, you can really take some submission guidelines with a grain of salt. When it comes to themed calls, there’s a huge variety between magazines who want their theme followed very literally and magazines who consider the theme more of a vague prompt to inspire new ideas—and it can be really hard to tell them apart, so honestly? Just go for it.

And unless a magazine is very clear about “hard no’s” (such as asking you not to submit stories with gore or other triggering content), it’s more accurate to interpret “we don’t like publishing these topics” as “we don’t like the cliches associated with these topics, which makes them a hard sell.” Some magazines will clearly separate their anti-wishlists into Hard No’s versus You Really Need To Impress Us With This Content, but more often, you’ll have to read between the lines. I’ve found that lists of hard sells often include stuff like vampires, zombies, and werewolves, because editors have seen a thousand stories about the same magical creatures, and they’re trying to encourage more diversity in the submissions they receive.

My first publication this year was “Emmory and the Wolf” in LampLight Magazine, and it’s a case where avoiding self-rejection really paid off. LampLight was holding a special call for authors without a pro-sale, and I wanted to get a story in right before the deadline. It was a last minute decision on my part, and I have to admit that I skimmed the guidelines. I’d submitted to LampLight before, and I could vaguely remember that they specifically asked for no werewolf stories, but I didn’t see it in the guidelines this time. A day after I sent that submission, I looked at the guidelines there, and the “no werewolves” rule was there, staring me in the face. I was mortified, and I really debated withdrawing my submission, but ultimately I decided that I would just assume it was a rejection and try to forget that it was sitting there in the Submittable queue. So, of course, imagine my surprise when that story was accepted.

I think a lot of factors went into this acceptance: “Emmory and the Wolf” subverts typical werewolf tropes and rarely features the werewolf (in wolf form) on screen. In fact, almost all of the story is a conversation between a woman and her wife on a road trip. Additionally, I later learned that the editor of LampLight held this special submission call because these two issues of LampLight would be the very last before the magazine closed. If he published werewolf content in an earlier issue, that would have encouraged more people to submit werewolf stories. But that clearly wasn’t a concern here. All of these factors (skimming the guidelines, catching LampLight when it was about to close) are coincidences that I couldn’t have anticipated when I was submitting.

Honestly? I think you should usually err towards submitting over not-submitting, because like I said, the worst you can get is a rejection.

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Okay, that's honestly it for my short story thoughts. I hope this is helpful, informative, or just kinda interesting to someone ^^ Even if it isn't, I'm glad I got it out of my head.