#i mean i love the book still but. the struggle was tangible

[lemonhemlock]

Hi hope you're having a good day / night from where you are !

Just out of curiosity among HOTD / GOT characters, which is your favorite and least favorite ?

But also aside from shows, is there a book character who you prefer or dislike ?

hi anon i hope your well-wishes are well-returned <3

hotd-wise i would say alicent & aegon are my favourites. honestly aemond too bc he is soooooooo cartoonishly evil in the books that it just makes me cackle like a murder of crows & i love anything that makes me cackle. got-wise, well, you know, my cersei-jaime-sansa trifecta, to which i'd add others like brienne and davos and theon. never met a lannister i didn't like (yes, including tywin & tyrion). not very different from the books overall.

characters i dislike - i have to be honest - i tend to get irritated with lannister-haters, no matter how justified they are in their POV. 😹 (apart from my queen salsa starch who can do no wrong) so i have a difficult relationship with characters like catelyn or arya, but that's just simply me rooting for my problematic faves & living life to the fullest. i've come to appreciate catelyn a lot more over the years and i've always found her chapters interesting regardless, so it's hard to label it as dislike per se. generally-speaking, i would say that arya & dany are the most frustrating for me, in large part as a result of their fanbases, which doesn't really have any bearing on their construction or importance within the text, but here we are.

as far as arya is concerned, i'm not really a fan of survival narratives, so her chapters, while interesting in parts, are not something i would willingly choose to read and, as a result, her character is just not entertaining for me to engage with. i also really rolled my eyes at how overpowered the show made her. when it comes to dany, she was fine in AGOT and i really liked her, but started to get more obnoxious as the books went on and it got to the point in ADWD where i outwardly cringed whenever i turned the page and the title read "daenerys". unfortunately, she also attracts a lot of aggressive & delusional fans who make fandom spaces insufferable with their inability to engage with criticism, so it all ends up piling on my lack of patience with her.

similarly, what irritates me the most in tyrion is his fandom perception. i've had to put ADWD down during his chapters bc i just couldn't take his inner voice anymore and had to force myself to pick it up again. so witnessing all the PR whitewashing surrounding him was another eye-roll era for me

EDIT: oh my gosh i forgot stannis and renly. the failbrothers. one is cringe the other delulu. speaking of which, i'm not the biggest fan of olenna and margaery either

[astradyke]

I would adore a deep dive into your thoughts on Phil’s quiet but wonderful way of showing his love for Dan being through photos

hi, i’m sorry i’m responding so late to this, but i really appreciate you enabling me here because i do seriously think about this constantly. i don’t know if i have the words to articulate it, though, so… bear with me. i'd quite like to try.

nobody loves in just a singular way, that’s the preface to this. when i say that Dan loves through words and Phil loves through photography, i don’t mean that Dan doesn’t use photography as an act of love— because there is a polaroid, in their house, of Phil that Dan took— and i don’t mean that Phil has never said something profound about Dan, because we all remember how he talked about Dan’s book at the end of the haircut video (19:13). i, at the very least, never really left the parts at the end of what Dan and Phil Text Each Other 2 where Phil constantly amplifies the work Dan is trying to do, unmasking his own frustrations at the struggles Dan has to experience, and meets Dan's self deprecation with affection (here's that dissertation) (19:57). Dan may use words in a very abstract, artistic way, professing his love for Phil as a ‘soulmate’, an unmatched connection, but Phil still has a careful, casual way of endlessly maneuvering himself to stand by Dan’s side. etc. and of course, there are five thousand other ways to adore a person. Dan and Phil do a little bit of everything; we are lucky to see a spare few snippets.

all that said, let’s talk about photography, yeah?

there is a permanence to photography, even if it’s not always a tangible permanence. they are timestamps, living commitments; i refuse to accept the idea that photography is somehow a ‘stand in’ to ‘true human connection’, rather than a critical facet of it. ex. i know that my best friend is real even if i didn’t have a photo of him sitting beside me on a wayward bus, but it’s still important that i inscribed that memory distinctly into the fabric of my life by taking a moment to chronicle it.

Phil Lester uses photography as a way to immortalize a thousand different fragments of his forever with Dan. there’s a distinct thought process, right, to see someone you love and decide— i never want to lose this moment. that decision, in of itself, is enough of a love confession, but there’s another layer when you decide, on top of all of it, i want the entire world to see this. when Dan described his love for Phil as "more than just romantic", he opened up a piece of himself to show the world, this is how i love this person. this is how i see him. when Dan calls Phil bubby, or dear, this is him cracking a hard exterior to say this is how i see you.

the two of them, upon first meeting, took a selfie together at the Apple store— Phil was the one to press the button. when they sat at the top of the sky-bar, Phil was the one to take a photo of Dan amidst the golden hour light. maybe he didn’t know that Dan loved him back, yet, but he had a certainty in his own adoration of Dan— that regardless of whether Dan wanted him back, Phil wanted him. the image feels timid but assured, like swallowing down anxiety to look yourself in the mirror; you can feel that through the pixels of it, so transparently. Phil’s love of Dan was not conditioned on anything: it was a terrifying but beautiful thing, and he wanted to preserve it, so even if it all went wrong he could say this is how i loved you. this is how you are loved, to me. you don’t have to want me back, but know that you were wanted, here, crawling into your own head sitting across from me in a city i’d like to call home with you, someday. so let me. and when you look at this photo of heart eyes Howell, cradling a bear, it’s louder than a blood rush: i love you.

[ID: Dan Howell sitting in the sunlight, looking outside the window while holding his phone. end ID.]

[ID: Dan Howell in a fuzzy hat, holding a stuffed bear against his face and looking at the camera with a small smile. end ID]

(sorry. it was necessary to include).

every year, Phil spills this oath into his camera roll. when Dan’s birthday arrives, Phil has a thousand candids to show for it, a thousand of silly and unflattering photos— a “loving” selection (7:41). exposing my heart a little here, but when you are someone who struggles with insecurity at some level, photos of you that are unflattering circling around feels horrifying. you want to be composed, and pretty, and loved— but then, maybe, it settles in that you are loved someplace beyond conditions. Phil chronicles these casual, vulnerable moments with Dan, and he shares them, because he loves Dan to a level past the flat logic of if he is composed, if he is pretty, then he is loved. Dan may be unattractive at points, but he is never unloved. never again.

these photos also demonstrate how much Phil romanticizes the little moments with Dan. watching him play Skyrim in VR; sitting beside him while he plays Elden Ring (3:40); admiring an oddly-shaped tear in his pants (missing citation); taken aback by a large poodle jumping into his lap. there are hundreds of photos of Dan taken by Phil which have escaped. imagine how many more linger. if we can go off of this (admittedly horrifying) tweet, we can envision a camera roll overflowing with him.

when they go on vacation, Phil takes soft photographs of Dan. here’s this love in a new city, just like we did fifteen years ago in Manchester, before i knew the right way to hold your hand, the right way to counter your cynicism, the right way to systemically reject every pet name because saying your name like a promise is enough— i’m putting this love into the world because i no longer live in a world where i go a second without it. Phil saves photos of Dan looking at him like he hung the stars, and he saves photos of Dan walking in front of him— he would never save them, as an Orpheus, but thankfully he doesn’t have to anymore, not after 2019— and he saves photos of Dan happy, because he wants to save that, too. Phil will save photos from every era of Dan’s life, but he wants those photos the most.

Phil has seen Dan perform in front of thousands. he has seen Dan pass out from standing up too quickly in their living room. he has seen Dan stumble home from a unexpected solo walk, he has seen Dan try to hide his fear-to-death in Phil’s childhood bedroom, he has seen Dan try to use a laundry machine, he has seen Dan in every way a person could: i love you.

Dan knows all of this. Dan sends Phil photos of himself when he’s solo traveling for his tour; the two of them almost never call, not unless Dan’s in a cab, but they regularly facetime. Dan winces at old photos of himself, but Phil coos at them.

Phil Lester is a romantic. he likes to hold his love to his chest— sharing photographs, but careful not to share too much. i think we under-estimate the shift Phil had to make, sometimes, in 2019: coming out was a major deal to him, too, even if he had already been out to some. more than that, coming out while Dan was also out is a very different experience. still, he likes to stay private, which is why we’ve not seen what i imagine to be hundreds of photos of Dan in Phil’s arms, or Dan kissing him on the cheek, or Dan asleep beside him in his bed (because we know how often he takes photos of Dan asleep, but i can't even begin to get into that right now).

even still, from what we can see, God, it’s everything, isn’t it? i can’t imagine what it felt like, for Dan, first trying to reconcile all of this. when you go so long without experiencing a safe kind of love, your reality fundamentally shifts. everything is brittle: you have to be hard enough to survive it, but not too hard to break the little you have entirely. half of you is a secret, the other half of you feels like it should be— who you are shifts, when you are loved, so in the reverse: when you go so long without it you feel displaced internally. when you find that love, you throw yourself entirely into it, expecting nothing but wanting everything. you punch a wall only to feel the plaster cradle your touch; you tell yourself you’d never turn back and you hate that need to; you expect to hit the sea but the wax never seems to melt. impossibly, you are okay. maybe i showed too much of my own heart there, but when i look at 2009 Dan, i see all of that. eighteen years old, and for the first time since he was a tiny child, he actually felt safe.

because Phil says Dan like it’s the sweetest word in the world. because Phil has a hunger for everything Dan creates. because Phil held Dan when he dropped out of university, picked up his first radio job with him, moved in with him, and never left. because Phil never treated Dan like an experience to hide away. Phil loved parts of Dan back into life.

because Phil takes photographs of Dan, everywhere in his life, to say: this is my world, now. you can’t take a photo in the daylight without capturing the sun. you can’t take a photo in the nighttime without capturing the absence of it. Phil says Dan’s name in every video, and he takes another hundred photos, because he’s so fucking sure about this love. there’s not even a question to be asked.

this is only a fraction of what there is to say about it, some messily constructed analysis, but it's hard to capture. i'd call Dan a lucky bastard, but it's hardly luck, is it? Phil makes the decision to love Dan every single day, and it might look quiet, but it's so unfathomably loud.

[top-vi]

the contrast of rhaenyra's and alicent's experiences with motherhood is so fascinating

I’ve always argued the storyline of being wary of motherhood and childbirth would’ve worked better with Alicent than Rhaenyra.

Alicent doesn’t get to choose who the father of her children is, she doesn’t have access to contraceptives nor can she refuse Viserys when he calls for her.

The themes of forced motherhood and the consequences of this would work so much better with women like Alicent: struggling to love children forced on you, not understanding why you’re not overcome with maternal affection, suffering from undiagnosed postpartum depression etc.

With Rhaenyra it just doesn’t work because unlike Alicent she can choose her children’s father and she can decide when she wants to be pregnant. In the books she has three back to back pregnancies and then stops for 4 years, whilst in the show she has Joffrey eight years after Luke which means she intentionally had a third child. Either way it all comes down to Rhaenyra having bodily autonomy; if she didn’t want to be pregnant she wouldn’t be pregnant.

Also having Rhaenyra be the one who expresses her wish to not have children honestly feels more sexist because the writers are implying not wanting to be a mother isn’t normal, so once Rhaenyra gives birth to Jace she realises the error of her ways and happily has five more. This implication doesn’t sit well with me.

so i wasn’t fair to you anon, and i’ve let this sit in my inbox since may. the reason for this is because i wanted to see how alicent and rhaenyra’s relationships to their children were developed, explained, and expanded on in season two.

regarding alicent and her children:

i think we officially got your wish anon (mine too). while some people may be unhappy with her arc in season 2, alicent has always had a deep-seated love-hate relationship with her children. i’d argue that in season one we also got glimpses into the just…visceral revulsion that she cannot shake when she looks at her children, aegon in particular. but in season two i think she’s truly confronted, in a noticeable tangible way, with the facts of her sons.

obviously, i wish we’d been able to see more of this kind of dynamic back in season one, especially with a younger alicent. however, there are season constraints and we can only see so much in ten episodes (side note: 8-10 episode seasons with a two year wait in between is a rant for another time, but know i’m not being like “yay season constraints!”).

the problem with alicent’s arc and struggle is that so fucking much of it is internal. it is so incredibly hard to show on screen and i find the way its been done so far admirable. up until luke’s death, alicent is lying to herself over and over every day about her relationship to her children, aemond and aegon particularly. once the war starts i believe the tower of lies she’s told herself (this is morally correct, i’m just doing my duty, i was treated well, i’m protecting my children like any mother should) start to crumble. i hate so much that we never got her reaction to aemond killing luke for this reason.

also, to a certain extent she may not ever truly come to grips with her trauma. there are no words for what she went through—marital rape was not a concept then. it still manifests, obviously, but i think we can tell with her repeated insistence that viserys was a decent husband and man [loud incorrect buzzer] that she still thinks she’s the one who’s done something wrong. i’ll be interested to see if the writers ever actually have alicent come to grips with the fact that viserys was, in fact, not a good person or king. personally, i don’t believe they will, but we can always hope.

anyways, all this is to say that: i do believe the themes of forced motherhood and its lifelong consequences are well done and explored with alicent (thus far). people will disagree, perhaps even you, but her eventual rejection of aegon and aemond; her desperate, almost chaotic protection of helaena; her ideas about daeron; all of it really speaks to the struggle she’s had and is going through as their mother.

regarding rhaenyra and her children:

this is more difficult that alicent lol

before i get into my gripes with her story, i do want to push back just a little bit on the idea that rhaenyra truly has bodily autonomy. regardless of when or with whom she gets pregnant, she’s still expected to get pregnant and have children. while its unfortunately not explored, she does need to produce heirs.

now. i agree with you for the most part. rhaenyra’s relationships to her children really make no sense. the only one that’s fleshed out is jace, and while that is interesting in the “she’s doing to him exactly what viserys did to her,” it is not complex internally (in the same way alicent’s is). i also personally see joffery as an oops baby, but who really knows. i don’t even know how to explain her children with daemon. they were plot necessary i guess lmfao

the problem with rhaenyra and her children is that almost all of the critical moments in their relationships happen off screen during the time jump. its a structural tv show problem and it brings up these kinds of issues when looking deeper into the relationships she would actually have. i think the writers did a good job this season of making the internal conflict and intrapersonal strife within team black better, but this is just one of those things thats never going to be explored. in this sense we’ll never really know her true feelings or the development that could’ve happened—which is a massive shame.

my personal headcanon (so take with a grain of salt and don’t come for me), is that rhaenyra isn’t against the idea of children as a teenager, she’s against the childbirth. i believe this both because of the horrors of watching her mother’s repeated miscarriages and eventual death while in childbirth, and her consistent refrain of the desire to be a man. i think she wants, to her core, freedom and, as a woman, having a child requires much more sacrifice than having a child as a man.

i don’t personally see the change from not wanting children to totally wanting children as misogynistic, but i don’t blame you for seeing it that way because of the utter lack of canon explanation for it. again, i wasn’t really fair to you keeping this until season two was finished, but i think both alicent and rhaenyra’s relationships to motherhood were developed well.

[shrekgogurt]

Ten Questions for Writers

Thank you for the tags! @artsyunderstudy @roomwithanopenfire @youarenevertooold @emeryhall @monbons @larkral I'm eating up reading your answers because we're all so DIFFERENT.

How many works do you have on AO3? 9 (technically 10 but we orphaned one of them out of shame)

What’s your total AO3 word count? 99,978 (mine) + 7,531 (shared) + 9,991 (someone else's) = 117, 500 (total)

What fandoms do you write for? presently, Carry On but back during my high school ff.net days I did some Percy Jackson/Heroes of Olympus (Percabeth and some separate OCs), Alex Rider (OCs), The 100 (as an elaborate prank), Harry Potter (literally just a My Immortal parody), and Divergent (OCs) and if they weren't oneshots they were never finished.

Do you respond to comments? Why or why not? YES! I'm currently behind on my replies, but it's so fun! It's like a book club but for stuff I created!!???? Shit rocks. I fully didn't expect anyone to read IKABIKAM (my first fic on ao3) when I first published it and so every comment still feels like a miracle.

Have you ever had a fic stolen? No.

Have you ever co-written a fic before? Yes! I love collaborating because it gives me something to bounce off of. A scene partner. A ticking timer. It's like lifting a heavy object by yourself versus getting someone else to bear some of the weight with you. It's easier. I also find myself constantly seeking collaboration with other people even with my solo fics. I'm all up in those DMs pestering people both as motivation and as external processing. And by GOD, do you fuckers have some good ideas. Y'all make me exponentially better.

What’s your all-time favorite ship? SnowBaz but also in a very real sense...Percabeth. (You never forget your first.)

What are your writing strengths? I got my start with rping, so dialogue is really comfortable for me. I also think my training in other art forms (dance, music, theatre, film, academia) positively influence my approach. When writing action, I often mentally frame it as 'blocking' the scene or 'choreographing' the movement. When crafting sentences, I'm constantly evaluating the rhythm and rhyme and repetition (not to mention alliteration) as if it's a song, always searching for the perfect word or metaphor. I also listen to actual songs and pull the emotion from them, using them as character studies or a musical soliloquy. I imagine shots and then write what I see from the perspective of a director explaining the actor’s motivating thoughts. I constantly revisit my thesis, grounding the narrative in callbacks and a cohesive structure like it's an academic paper. And all those things combined create this kinetic cause and effect style I'm really proud of and tangibly improves every time I write something new.

What are your writing weaknesses? I do not have a firm grasp on proper grammar. I'm also really slow and inconsistent with my output because my process is so physically disorganized and meticulous which often frustrates me. I'm also impatient. I don't do wholesale messy drafts; I edit as I go and when I'm done I want it published immediately. I also fall victim to the white room syndrome with physical descriptions. Establishing shots? Don't know them. What a guy looks like? What they're wearing? Sorry, I haven't told you because it felt weird to jam in there. Outside of fanfiction, I also struggle with creating something from nothing. I'm a theologian rather than a god. I much prefer playing in a sandbox and exegeting meaning from someone else's grunt work rather than conjuring the wood and the sand myself. My writing is also incredibly referential to pop culture which I'm not sure would translate outside of fanfic, but I guess I'll cross that bridge if I ever get to it.

First fandom you wrote for? Divergent (big cringe)

Now tagging! @onepintobean @cutestkilla @theearlgreymage @thewholelemon @mooncello @brilla-brilla-estrellita @you-remind-me-of-the-babe @bookish-bogwitch @facewithoutheart @fatalfangirl @urban-sith @prettygoododds @valeffelees @ileadacharmedlife TELL ME HOW YOU WRITE YOU GENIUSES

[neoninky]

HSR Penacony spoilers BUT imma gonna talk about this

Honkai Star Rail related/kinda personal tangent under the cut. It's something that's been hanging in the back of my mind for a while, but I haven't seen people talk about it so I'm talking about it now.

I honestly should have screen-capped this when it happened ingame but oh well- Real talk: I was playing the last patch in Honkai Star Rail when this scene happened. You meet up with Robin again - who btw is a friggin ANGEL for real omg - and you meet this group of children that she has been helping teach (I believe?) and the main teacher NPC, Grace, is introducing the audience/Trailblazers to the children by name and she says this... "And as for Gary, he's been living with autism since he was a child..." Some context: I'm an undiagnosed adult with suspected autism. I word it that way because, like I said, I haven't been officially diagnosed. It's something that I want to achieve in the future but even so, I'm about 95% sure that I'm somewhere on the spectrum. Sometimes I still struggle with denying or doubting it because I do not have tangible proof on paper. Also, I can do things that a lot of people on the spectrum cannot (to an extent). But it's called a spectrum for a reason also masking is a very real thing. So is imposter syndrome but that's a whole other story-ANYWAY

With that said, I do have proof in that there are a lot - far too many in fact - common factors between myself and others on the spectrum that I've seen online, watched in videos made for and by autistic people, or even read in books. So I'm just now getting comfortable telling people out loud that I am autistic and explaining to them the sensory and social issues I sometimes have just so we can hopefully understand each other better. Back to the game - when I reached this part, I had to stop, pause the dialogue, and just sit feeling recognized in a way I never had before when consuming media. Sure, I've played games, watched tv/films, etc., and had seen characters I relate to before. But this was the first time that I've experienced a narrative that wasn't specifically written for/about an autistic character, say "Yes this is a so-n-so and they're autistic." No character coding, no implications, just outright. They don't make it this big to-do or something weird or pitiable (not that it should be by any means). It just is. And that's my favorite kind of representation. In this grand sci-fi space adventure drama mystery murder dinner theater of a game, there's an autistic kid named Gary. Love it. I may not love everything about Hoyoverse games, but this? I will give you your flowers for this Hoyo, thank you.

[senasadventures]

Hey! (It's me, almathecolormaniac just in asks tumblr only lets the main blog to ask)

Do you mind if i ask here, about your comic?

Like how did this story come to your mind, or what is your motivation to make tangible. (i mean my ideas for stories never get further than my mind 😆) And what does the drawing process look like for you?

When did you found alta and what is that you like about it, do you like to read fan fictions too?

Or just ramble as much and about anything or nothing really, no pressure i dont mind at all.

If anything, thanks for your art and have a good day!

Hello there! Thanks a lot for your message!

I’m posting this as public because maybe it could help somebody else too. When I first started making this comic, I was really overwhelmed and wished there was someone to share their own experience to help.

This is going to be long!

When I first started with Sena's story, I was not intending to write a tangible story or make it into an actual comic. I was simply drawing a character as I was fantasizing about an Avatar story.

Just with this little drawing, there was immediately a concrete picture of what kind of character this was in my head, along with her age, her name, her possible path... Other characters followed in much of the same way, without even trying to create them. It was like they were just there. Sometimes the stars will align and such things will happen.

It's interesting how it all started with Nina (whom you do not know yet) and not with my main character Sena. But it's not strange as I always loved drawing waterbenders the most (and their hair loopies)! Nina gave me the headstart to imagine all the rest.

Wishing to give these characters the story they belong to, I began writing , in book format, without any plans on what to do with it later.

I talked about this in another post before, but one of my biggest motivations was that I wasn't content with what followed after the original show and really wanted to see what I'd do with the Avatar Universe. I wanted to prove that a story didn't need to have war, epic battles, villains or "edgy" superpowers to be interesting. And I wanted it to be about "kids", having the same naive and simple (yet deep) quality that I love about AtLA.

Much of the initial writing came naturally to me, and I was influenced by the themes that played out in my own life. Many of Sena's struggles are also my struggles and it means a lot to me to find out where they lead in Sena's case. I write the story as I go and although there are certain events I already know I want to lead into, much of it is still uncertain.

( One of the influences to this story was The Neverending Story, which I had read shortly before I started writing this story. Some of Sena's characteristics were inspired by Bastian, and Kai's were inspired by Atreyu. )

At some point I decided to make this into a comic, which I was hesitant since I knew it would be laborious, but it was the medium that this story would really flourish and catch other's attention as well. And I did want to share it.

There were a lot of tasks ahead of me before I could actually start drawing the first pages. I have different locations in this story, different cultures. I needed a visual language for them.

Shun Fei is a culture that borrows from both the Fire Nation and the Earth Kingdom, but it's not supposed to look like either of them. On top of that, it has some of what may be called Western influences to it, as it carries the kind of values that in our world, first came to be in the West. In order to incorporate that while preserving the Asian aesthetic of the Avatar Universe, I borrowed some subtle elements from both Roman and 19th century European aesthetics, or even a little bit of medieval Europe. The pillar architecture of the Shun Fei government building, or the white shirts with puffed sleeves and raised collars of Shun Fei citizens are examples to that. For the color scheme, I went with white, black and brown. It's weird how that hadn't immediately occur to me, but was the most sensible choice, given everything about Shun Fei.

At times, I kept some colors and elements from Earth Kingdom and Fire Nation fashion, but I think it was too much. I actually generally dislike this frame anyway :D

When you're making a comic, there are so many details that are invisible to the viewer, but you nevertheless have to work on. To be honest, it was driving me crazy, because I was unable to produce anything visible for a while. It's best to know this beforehand and be patient with the early stages of your work. It is going to save you so much time later on.

Once I started drawing the pages, there was once again, a lot more that was driving me mad.

I was trying to be authentic with my visual language of the comic, such as the design of the frames and the flow of the story, because I wanted this to have a "book-ish" feeling and a little bit of ancientness to it. I didn't want it to feel like a modern comic. This was taking a lot of effort, because there isn't anything exactly like it that I can imitate.

Secondly, drawing comics is A LOT OF work. It takes so much time that I was unable to move forward with the story! I went from fully colored to monochrome, and later from hand-drawn to all digital. I tried a lot of different approaches and if you look carefully, you can see how the style changes throughout the pages, which I think is not a good thing professionally, but fortunately this is a personal project from which I'm learning.

What I currently do is, I make a storyboard on paper with adequate details to use as a sketch under my digital lineart process later on. I have at least 3-4 other pages' storyboards ready before I start drawing a page digitally. I used to make the storyboards from the text I wrote when I began writing the story in book format, which was difficult to adapt. Nowadays I'm working on a segment which I hadn't written in text and I directly write on the storyboard.

I still don't know how some people can draw so many pages in so little time, it's a mystery to me. But I did get faster and more efficient in time, mostly because I understood how to do things and don't have to think every single thing through anymore.

Another thing with my process is how much I've found it difficult (and mostly still find) going consistently at it. There were many long breaks along the way and it took me longer than 2 years before I made 20 pages and started uploading this comic here.

All of these things can be very discouraging. I questioned my ability to be professional a lot, which I do want to be, since I don't want Sena's Adventures (and other stories I want to make) to just be my story and stuck with me. I want to share it with the world and do it in the best way possible. (It was my dream ever since childhood) To do that, you need many practical skills. But these do come in time and I feel a lot more confident now. I love this story, I've had a bond with it and I love doing something related to AtLA, my old time love. And I really wanted to see where this experience would take me, so I stuck with it.

A lot of people, like me, miss the Avatar of their childhood. I wanted to make a story that had the same kind of feeling. I tried to stick to the original spirit of the show, while incorporating elements that matter to me on a personal level and which I believe are on the same line with AtLA.

-----------

For your second question,

I used to see AtLA on TV as a kid and at some point I started to get interested in it, and later became a die-hard fan. It was 2008 and I was 12. This also marked my entry to digital art and the DeviantArt community, which became a huge thing for my life. I kept making Avatar fanarts until I was like 14-15, some of which were fairly popular back in the day! Good times.

As a kid and teen, I was someone who always lived with fantasies of my current favorite show in my head, the most long lasting one being AtLA. I wonder how many nights I must have fallen asleep thinking about the next romance story between Aang and Katara.

I occasionally had attempts to illustrate stories in my head throughout the years, but these were mainly childish attempts (although there's nothing wrong with that) and always left too early, so I never knew what a professional effort would look like until I began this project. It has been a great learning opportunity.

[itsmicqua]

Turning Slow Living Into Reality

It’s been 4 years since I last put something up on here- that’s crazy. You’d think after setting up a tumblr account for every single one of my 164291 emails I’d finally give up. But this is the story of my life: try, falter, and try again. I’d like to think that’s better than giving up. 

All this time I've been trying to figure out why I struggle to sit alone with my thoughts and put them into words. As far as I know, and as much as I know myself, I think.. it’s because I write what I think, because I’m too afraid to say it. Afraid because I think no one would listen and care. As I sit and type away on my laptop, I realize how that’s both terrifying and empowering. To, at least, be able to put my thoughts and feelings in a little corner on the internet and not have it ruin or affect anybody but also have it existing, as proof of my emotions and experiences.

I wonder why this is important to me. I wonder why it’s important to remember. Is it because I don’t want to forget? Or is it because everything is changing and I can’t keep up? 

This is my attempt to remember- that this year, 2024 in August I truly lived by what makes me happy. Without worrying about societal norms of success, conventional notions of happiness and just being in the moment and following my joy.

So, what has transpired since the last time I wrote? Well, it’s officially been 7 months since I broke up with my then-boyfriend. Yes, after 5 years of not seeing each other and meeting for the first time in real life in September of 2023, I called it off in March. This was 6 months after our time together in Europe, which, don’t get me wrong, was really good.  3 weeks in Europe was unforgettable and unreal. But I couldn’t see myself in a passive relationship where it was up to me to make things happen. 

How detailed should I go into this, I wonder. I'll chalk it up to... If they wanted to, they would. And maybe, if I had the means, resources and opportunities to have made it work and move there and be the one to do the traveling, to uproot my life but even then still, it would have continued to ruin me and eat at me- constantly thinking I was never going to be worth flying halfway across the world for. It felt one-sided, as if I was the only one that would go through all the hoops, flights, visa applications and re-arranging my life. You know what? Maybe I was, but I gave it a real shot. I'd like to think I deserve to want to be desired to be with enough to make them see where I'm from and be with me here. And if they weren't able to do that, then what's the point? So, actually, the breakup was inevitable given that he just couldn't bring himself to make plans to see me within the next year. I tried waiting but it just felt like begging at one point and that was my lowest low. Begging for someone's time- because you shouldn't have to, if they loved you. Or maybe that's just me and my love language is quality time. So, I decided not to make that my reality and called it off. It wasn't easy, still isn't- but I am 100% better for it and I feel changed altogether.

I remember coming across a quote before that says, something is only real when it is shared. Is this why I have an urge to express my thoughts and feelings? Because they are only real when I transform them into a tangible thing- in this case my writing. Do I write about my life and experiences because I want them to be real and exist as more than just a mere memory in my head? Maybe that’s why I’ve avoided writing about the end of my relationship for the longest time. My journal hasn't even had my pen inscribe every trivial detail of the final moments of my last relationship. But now, it's really over.

My reality now is filled with the comforting feeling of warm sunlight on my skin, quiet afternoons without worry, cuddles with Ponpon at night, laying on the beach while reading a sad book, blasting good music at the hostel and completely being myself enjoying every day as best I can.

Now, I live on my favorite island- Siquijor. Volunteering at a hostel while working online. After 5 years of back and forth traveling to and from Manila, I was scared I'd be tired of this island but constantly meeting new people from all over the world has kept giving me different experiences. And, each time I come back, it's different. Maybe it's because I also keep changing. I often meet people that end up being good friends. On the odd times, I meet people that inspire me and make me want to give writing another shot.

I used to obsess over living the 'right way' or find purpose or meaning and something bigger for my life- maybe I'll find it or figure it out. But I have come to know and accept that living day by day and knowing yourself and being present is good enough. Maybe releasing these words into the wild will somehow make it true or real (I hope it does).

This is me trying, at least.

[grapesodatozier]

Insight Check

my contribution to @reddieweek this year!! thank you so much to the mods for putting this all together <333

written for Day 5: Books/Games/Movies/TV

Richie Tozier is a bard harboring a secret crush on his best friend and a secret power he has no control over. When an ambush against Richie and Eddie brings the latter secret to light, Richie's guilt over putting Eddie in danger makes him distance himself from Eddie. He can at least still keep the being in love with him a secret, right?

dnd 5e au!! richie is a tiefling bard/wild magic sorcerer multiclass, eddie is a halfling ranger!

word count: 6,378

rating: mature for mild violence and raunchy sex jokes lol

tags/warnings: pining, secrets, insecurity, guilt, miscommunication, angst, angst with a happy ending, love confessions

read on ao3 or below!!

Richie sat perched in the tree, purple tail swishing behind him as he watched Eddie check over his components list once more. He had everything he needed, and his pronunciation was pretty good, but he was struggling with the somatic components. Richie watched him try a few more times, his wrist and fingers refusing to make the shapes he needed, before he slid down from his perch. 

“I knew you were there,” Eddie said without even turning to face him. Eddie never let Richie have the satisfaction of thinking he’d snuck up on him.

“Is that why you keep choking?” Richie teased, walking leisurely up to his friend. “You trying too hard to impress me?”

“Fuck off,” Eddie said, his brow furrowing further in concentration. He said the incantation again, but again, nothing happened. He let out a frustrated breath and his posture slacked.

“Eds, it’s called wind wall,” Richie said, coming up behind him. “You think wind is that stiff?” 

Eddie let out a frustrated sigh, but he didn’t move away from Richie. “Walls are supposed to be pretty stiff, dumbass.” He looked over his shoulder, having to look up quite a bit to meet Richie’s eye, given that Richie had about a nearly three foot height advantage over Eddie. Nonetheless, Eddie bumped his shoulder against Richie as he ribbed him. 

“Still,” Richie said, concealing the lump in his throat he always got when Eddie looked at him like that, all big brown eyes and long lashes, “you need to loosen up a little. You’re gonna need to be able to do this on the fly, which means you need to find what feels natural.”

Gently, carefully, Richie put his hand on Eddie’s. Richie’s hand was a light lavender, speckled with spots of darker purple, Eddie’s hand tan and sun kissed. Eddie’s hand was a lot smaller than Richie’s, with a bit of dirt under his short nails, but their fingers were both covered in similar callouses—turns out, lute strings and arrow strings have similar effects. Eddie gave another little huff, but once again, let Richie show him. Richie pressed so gently against him, a barely there touch, to help Eddie even his breathing. He loosened Eddie’s fingers, encouraged his wrist to relax. 

Being this close to Eddie, it felt like everything around them was utterly still, like the only tangible thing was the beating of Richie’s own heart, and the smell of Eddie’s hair, the warmth of his skin which Richie was barely touching.

He stepped back when he caught himself lingering too long. “Uh, there, try it now.”

This wasn’t a new thing, Richie wanting to be close to Eddie. It was just new that he’d realized what it meant, and that maybe it wasn’t just what good close friends felt for one another. None of their party had ever really commented on it, and while Eddie would playfully shove him away, he’d just as soon cuddle up to Richie.

But lately… Lately Richie found himself wanting things that didn’t strike even him as particularly platonic. He wanted Eddie in ways that were selfish. In ways that weren’t fair to Eddie. He kept doing this, kept leaning closer to Eddie than he should, kept staying there for longer than he should, making up reasons to touch his hand, his arm. 

Meanwhile, Eddie had no idea. Surely he wouldn’t let Richie touch him so constantly if he knew how Richie truly felt, if he knew that Richie wanted to hold him closer than anyone else, that he was constantly thinking about Eddie, about holding him close, how much he treasured the moments he had Eddie to himself. How even when he made Eddie smile and laugh it was selfish, because Richie got to bask in the warm glow of Eddie’s attention. 

So Eddie didn’t know, and Richie was trying to keep it that way. And it turned his stomach sour thinking about it, because it was just another thing that Eddie didn’t know about Richie.

But it was for the best Eddie didn’t know. Especially about the other thing.

That thing Richie had known about for even longer. That thing had been happening since he was about twelve, and only Bill knew about it, and even that was only because he was the only one there the first time it happened. Bill checked up about it, but Richie assured him it was fine, that it was under control. And Bill had promised not to tell any of the others as long as Richie promised that he was okay. The honesty in those promises, Richie wasn’t proud to say, was shaky at best. But he didn’t want his weird mysterious magic shit to be another problem for Bill to deal with. It was dangerous, Richie knew that. So he tried to tamp it down, tried to suppress it so he wouldn’t hurt anybody. He was perfectly happy making magic come out of his lute, he didn’t need some shit he didn’t understand and couldn’t control coming from fucking within him, thank you very much.

Yet it kept growing inside of him, even as he tried to ignore it and cover it up. He tried to focus on his instrument, to focus on learning spells, safe spells. But the other abilities just… kept coming. And he never knew what it was gonna be that came next.

He couldn’t put his friends through that. 

More selfishly, he couldn’t put himself through how they might react if they found out.

Richie had a bad habit of getting too in his head like this. It helped, at least, that he always had Eddie looking out for him—just like he was when he stiffened even further just then, his hand flying to his bow. “Richie,” he said under his breath, “I think we need to go—” 

“What’s this?” a voice called out, the interruption bouncing off the trees around them. Richie scanned the area, spotting Henry Bowers sauntering out of the trees northwest of them, with Belch, Victor, and Patrick behind him. “Your party lets you two out on your own? You barely stack up to a competent adventurer combined.”

Eddie drew his bow and knocked an arrow, pointing it in warning, not yet releasing it. “Fuck off,” he growled. 

Panic began to well in Richie, and with it, the sparkling, prickling feeling that shot from the center of his body to his fingertips. But he wasn’t about to let Eddie be the only target here.

“I think you need to get out more Bowers,” he said, “if you think skulking around in the woods of your hometown like a creep makes you an ‘adventurer.’” 

It was a lot easier to suppress his panic when they had five other people backing them up. But here, they were outnumbered. Richie thought maybe there was a chance he and Eddie could take them, but he wasn’t betting on their odds, no matter how much shit he was talking.

“You really shouldn’t hang out in the woods alone like this,” Patrick said, his voice dripping a slimy, cold delight as he ignored Eddie’s warning and Richie’s heckling. He stepped forward. “Your friends are probably gonna be pretty sad when they find you.”

Richie reached for his lute, but something deep red was already falling over Patrick’s eyes, his hands forming a shape Richie thought he recognized as a shatter spell. 

His hand slipped on his lute.

Eddie let the arrow loose, and it thudded into Patrick’s shoulder. It looked like it hurt, but it didn’t stop his casting. 

Patrick’s wrist twisted.

Fuck.

There was no time. 

Fuck.

There was no time for math—only the chill down Richie’s spine as Eddie’s spell faltered and Patrick’s went off.

Richie pushed his glasses up, letting the panicked prickling surge forward into sparks.

“Revertis.” He ground the word out between his teeth as though that might keep the consequences at bay and waved his hand in the air, wiping the energy that came at him and Eddie away like brushing the dust off a library tome. He felt it ripple against him, the energy of Patrick’s thwarted spell mixing with the fear that hatcheted away at Richie’s rib cage.

It stirred something.

Richie had tried to tap into it carefully, but he could feel that familiar sensation of something becoming dislodged.

The sparks staggered statically in his fingers for a moment before shooting rapidly inward, concentrating and swirling like an inferno in his chest.

Fucking fuck fuck.

“What the fuck?” Belch called out.

Henry was seething, already reaching for his blade, rusty and worn, stained proudly with old brown hints of previous violence.

Patrick… Patrick just tilted his head and smiled at Richie like he was some sort of interesting bug. 

Richie didn’t look at Eddie. He couldn’t afford to; it might break him.

And for once, Richie’s shame was on his side—for as Henry, Victor, and Belch surged forward, the inferno surged up Richie’s throat, ripping his jaw open farther than he thought it ought have been able to open, and a cone of flame and heat burst forth, igniting not only the assholes in front of him, but the grass and brush around them as well.

The meadow was alight.

“R-Richie?”

Eddie’s voice was like a bucket of cold water over Richie’s head.

“You can’t do that,” Henry gritted out, frantically trying to shake off the flames. He was hurt, but not out of the fight, not even close. “You don’t… You’re a fucking bard, and a shitty one! You don’t know that kind of magic—”

Shit, the flames were spreading fast, chasing toward Eddie, and Henry was getting his blade out again.

“Richie,” Eddie said again, pulling him out of one panic into another. “Are you okay?”

Richie did something then that he knew he’d be apologizing for until at least the end of the month: he threw Eddie over his shoulder, using the momentum to swing his instrument into his hands, and turned from the fight. 

“Portat ianua,” he said, his voice seeming to warp as he plucked at the lute’s strings. Suddenly, the heat and screams were gone completely. Instead, Richie’s feet were pounding against clearer grass, a stream running behind them, the parting of the trees that led to the garden behind the library within sight. Richie set Eddie down as soon as it was safe. 

“Richard fucking Tozier—”

“We should still be running,” Richie said, grabbing Eddie by the hand. “They could be behind us, but we’re almost there—”

“Okay, fine, we can run first and talk later,” Eddie begrudgingly allowed, taking Richie by the hand. 

A new thrill shot up Richie’s arm, one that was almost as terrifying as the other sparks had been, almost as volatile. 

They made it to the back of the library without incident, Richie’s lungs burning by the time they arrived. But the physical exertion wasn’t the only thing that had Richie’s heart racing, and they certainly hadn’t run far enough to excuse the bile that was forming in Richie’s throat. He froze in place as Eddie opened the back door, the one that Mike let them use.

Eddie began to step through, then paused when he saw Richie wasn’t following. He looked worried, the expression always clear on his face when directed toward Richie, but then another familiar one came along: frustration. In his head, Richie saw it turning into anger.

“Richie—” Eddie stepped toward him. 

But all Richie could feel was the fire that had come out of him, the fire catching on the grass.

He was looking at Eddie, but he was seeing Bill, around twelve years old, his eyes going wide. Richie had been practicing spells on his lute, but he wasn’t getting very far. The frustration and shame had burned hot inside of him, swirling in a way that felt potent and new, yet somehow familiar, like deja vu, or an old favorite song he’d forgotten about. He’d just meant to shake out his hand, to loosen his cramping fingers, but a jolt of ice and chill had burst forth from his hand, hitting a rock to his side. It had been fun, when it was just that. Richie tried to do it again, getting there quite easily. Bill had laughed and watched him, Richie shooting them out left and right, getting fancy with it. He still remembered Bill, giggling and running for cover. He remembered feeling that heat within himself, the power of it dizzying. He remembered when he’d assumed it was just the thrill of learning he could cast without his instrument.

But then, suddenly, as the frost shot forth from his fingertips, Richie had become paralyzed for just a moment, no longer the one in control of his body as the thrill concentrated, turning suddenly much too hot, so hot Richie needed it out—

And out it had come, in a line of lightning that burst from his chest. It was so bright it nearly blinded him, and the sound of it was almost as bad as the sounds of the trees it had hit creaking and popping.

Richie’s face burned when it was over, movement returning to his limbs in the form of violent tremors. Where the power had built inside of him before, he had felt after it sickeningly empty. Like he always did when he was terrified, he had looked to Bill. Only, Bill had worn the same expression, and it was directed at Richie. 

After the initial shock, Bill of course grabbed Richie by the arm and made him run alongside him, keeping him safe as the trees began to fall. But Richie would never forget the tightness in his grip, the sweat on his palm. He would never forget the crashing of the trees behind them so close behind them. All of that horror, with him forever, yet the worst of it all was that look of horror on Bill’s face. Bill, Big Bill, endlessly brave and stubborn and headstrong, had looked at Richie like he was the scariest thing he had ever seen.

He thought he sometimes still caught glimpses of that look in Bill’s eyes even now, when Richie got angry, or if a combat came on suddenly.

The lightning was only the first time the power had been released, but Richie had made sure that it was the last time he ever released it around another person.

That was, at least, until today.

Richie couldn’t handle Eddie looking at him like that. He couldn’t handle explaining himself to Eddie. And he couldn’t forgive himself for risking something so unpredictable around Eddie. If he had hurt him…

No. He was way too chickenshit to face this.

And Eddie, apparently, could tell.

“—don’t you dare—”

“I’m sorry, Eds,” Richie said, his voice weak and gravelly. He cast invisibility on himself through his lute, clinging to it like it could somehow stop the turmoil inside of him. Eddie lunged forward for him, but Richie just managed to side step him.

“Richie, you shit—” Eddie grumbled, throwing his hands out. But Richie teleported away. Eddie was safer at the library anyway.

He made it back to the apartment he shared with Bev in one piece, reluctantly making himself visible again before entering.

He didn’t end up leaving the apartment much for the next few days, skipping out on group events. He went out a little with Bev and Stan, but he avoided the library and any other places Eddie might be.

This behavior, of course, did not slip by without comment.

“What happened?” Bev had asked plainly the next morning. “You went to bed at a responsible hour last night. Something’s gotta be wrong.”

“I’m getting my life together,” Richie had said, then ran through a handful of other bluffs until Bev gave up, huffing in frustration.

Stan had gotten a little further, as he had updates about the world outside of Richie’s bedroom, kitchen, and bathroom. Updates about Eddie, also put fairly plainly. “Why are you avoiding Eddie?” he’d asked. “He asked me to go to the stables with him. He always takes you to the stables, and when I brought it up he said to ask you why you weren’t going with him.”

“Maybe I’ve got a cold.” 

“I’m not gonna be happy if you’re hanging out with me while you’re sick.”

“Okay, I’m not sick.”

Stan didn’t press; just went back to his books.

“You’re not gonna ask me any more questions?” Richie asked.

“I’m not the one you need to be talking to about this,” Stan answered. “Besides, I know you and Eddie can’t stay away from each other for longer than a week. One of you is gonna break in a few days.”

Richie turned bright red at the implications of that and saved himself the analysis of his habits, personality, and desires by finding something else to occupy himself with.

It was Bill who ultimately got through to him. In retrospect, Richie figured it had to be.

“Rich, Eddie’s really upset that you keep blowing him off,” Bill told him. They were hanging out in the temple to Maturin, which helped calm Richie’s nerves. It wasn’t really a temple—more a community organized space, not much more than the hideout they’d made together as kids, only this one was open to people other than just their inner circle. Still, it was empty now, save for the two of them. He wasn’t the most devout person in the world, but all seven of them had felt the protection of Maturin in undeniable ways, and not just through Bill and Mike. Being here brought him a sort of peace—or, at least more peace than a person who has unpredictable magic boiling up inside of them at any given point tends to feel.

“I don’t think that’s what he’s upset about,” Richie finally said. It was the first time he’d budged on the topic since it happened. He blamed the turtle. Or maybe Bill had a zone of truth on him.

No, Bill wouldn’t do that. Not unless he really needed to anyway. Besides, Richie was too good at dancing around the truth without lying, so it wouldn’t have been that effective anyway.

He was letting Bill in because Bill was already in, and he was the only one. He was letting him in because it was Bill. 

“It’s what he told me he was upset about,” Bill said. “He didn’t mention anything else.”

Something stirred inside Richie as he pictured Eddie grumbling to Bill about him. As nice as it was to think that Eddie had just been pouting about wanting to see Richie, he knew that wasn’t what had happened. Maybe it was what Eddie was telling people. Maybe Eddie was covering for Richie—no one had come knocking Richie’s door down or acting scared around him, so he assumed Eddie was keeping what he’d seen to himself. But surely he was upset about it. It was probably only getting worse; Richie was isolating Eddie, making him keep secrets. He was probably terrified but felt too bad to say anything about it. Eddie probably resented him, and with good reason. God, it made Richie sick to think about it.

“Rich,” Bill said, placing a gentle hand on Richie’s shoulder, “what happened?”

For the first time in days, Richie let the act drop. He stopped acting aloof. He let his eyebrows draw together as he looked up at Bill through his glasses. He relaxed all the muscles he’d been tensing in his relentless pursuit of a casual disposition. He finally let himself toy with the bracelets on his wrists like he’d been aching to do, pulled his lower lip between his teeth. The anxiety rolled around in his chest like a landslide with nowhere to go but back in a circle, building.

“It happened,” he said, a small quiver in his voice, “around Eddie. Bowers and those assholes, they were trying to start shit in the woods, and it was just Eddie and me, and I got scared and I panicked and—” Richie stopped abruptly, unsure if he wanted to share the details of the fucking dragon’s breath that had burst forth from Richie. “That’s what he’s upset about.”

Bill gave him an understanding look. Richie waited for the anger. He waited for the lecture about safety. What came instead was a smile that almost looked… amused?

His bewilderment must have shown, because Bill was quick to walk it back. “Sorry, sorry I don’t think it’s funny that that happened! That sounds really scary, and I’m sorry it happened. And we should definitely plan better as a group for Bowers encounters. Although it kinda seems like you scared the shit out of them… I saw Vic the other day and he basically ran away from me. So whatever happened ended up being pretty sick.” 

Richie allowed himself a small glow of pride that the gamble had at least succeeded in protecting his friends a little bit.

“Still, though, I know that’s always scary for you when it happens. Why didn’t you tell me? Are you okay?”

“Yeah, fine, I just…” Richie scrunched his face up to mitigate the sudden urge he felt to cry. “I really didn’t want anyone to know. Eddie… I can’t look at him and know he’s afraid of me.”

This time Bill fully laughed. Richie whipped his head around, ready to smack Bill across the back of his head.

“Dude, I’m serious—”

“Shit, okay, I’m sorry, I know, it’s just… You’re gonna have to work a little harder to make Eddie afraid of you, Richie. He’d kick your ass if he heard you say that you thought you could scare him.”

“He should be scared!” Richie raised his voice in indignation. “We should all be scared!”

“You’re scared,” Bill said, rubbing Richie’s shoulder. “And it’s understandable. But you should let us help. You should let Eddie help.” His expression softened. “He’s worried about you. You know he wants to help. He wants to know why you’re avoiding him, and I bet he wants to know what happened. He won’t be mad; he’ll know you were just trying to protect him.”

Richie considered that quietly.

Bill gave him one last soft bit of encouragement. “Go talk to him.”

Richie almost went home after that. But he played Bill’s words over and over in his head, telling him that he couldn’t scare Eddie, that Eddie was worried about him. It was messed up. He didn’t deserve Eddie’s worry. Eddie at least deserved to hear that. And he deserved an explanation, Richie supposed. 

Stan’s words also echoed in his mind, reminding him that he wasn’t fooling anyway acting like he could stay away from Eddie. His cheeks flushed from learning how obvious it was, but it wasn’t like he could deny it; the days away from him had been torture. He missed Eddie like a plant misses water. He missed his laugh, and his rants, and how he’d shove Richie with his shoulder but then stay close to him. He missed his smile, and his voice. He missed his snarky retorts and his dreamy contemplations and the way his freckled nose scrunched up when Richie poked and squeezed and teased him. He missed the feeling of being around him: a giddy thrill that drowned out all the rest of the noise that was constantly buzzing inside Richie and a peace not even Maturin could muster. 

It didn’t take long to find him; Richie didn’t find him on his favorite hill, the grassy one with the little white and yellow flowers, the one that overlooked the main road that headed into town, so he figured Eddie must be in the library.

Mike beamed at Richie from the front desk when he walked in. “Hey, Rich! Been a few days.” Coming from someone else, Richie may have taken that as a dig. But the only thing that hinted at any feeling other than the joy Mike projected was a tinge of sadness in his eyes. Richie gave him a guilty smile, and he could tell that it was enough. “You got a book you’re looking for?” Mike asked. 

Usually Richie would just make some joke about books with pictures (or, occasionally, actually check out a book on political theory—always a toss up), but this time he paused, unsure how to explain what he was actually there for.

Luckily, Mike excelled in both intuition and knowing what was going on in the town at any given point, especially with his friends. So he gave Richie a grin and said, “I’m fucking with you. He’s upstairs in the archives with Ben.”

Richie turned bright red. He could try to deny it, but what would be the point?

“Right, thanks,” he said. He started for the stairs, then paused and leaned dramatically backwards to look at Mike. “You’ll at least say that I asked, right? You won’t just tell people it was obvious?”

Mike laughed and shook his head. “Richie, it’s been obvious for over a decade now.”

Having heard enough of that, Richie carried on his way.

He felt his heart pounding again, getting louder with every step he took toward the archives. 

It was quiet when he got there, which wasn’t unusual for Ben, nor Eddie when he was with Ben, but it was eerie all the same. Though as Richie got closer, he realized it wasn’t quite silent—Eddie and Ben seemed to be speaking in hushed whispers Richie couldn’t quite make out. Whispers which stopped abruptly once Richie came into view. 

Richie was positive his heart actually stopped for a second, seeing Eddie again. It had only been a few days, but it felt like an eternity. Eddie looked like a deer in headlights for a moment, which made Richie’s stomach drop, but he quickly schooled his expression into something closer to a scowl. Which was at least better than fear, Richie supposed. 

“Hi, Richie,” Ben said, smiling at Richie with all the subtlety of a dog who’s just eaten something it definitely shouldn’t have. Richie didn’t have to cast detect thoughts to figure they’d probably just been whispering about him. Not that he could blame them.

“Hey, Benny boy, good to see ya.” Richie grinned, covering any quiver in his voice with a false bravado. “Nothing personal, but you mind if I kick you out for a second? Gotta talk to Eds real quick.” Richie flitted his eyes toward Eddie, who was looking pointedly down at the book that laid open in front of him. “That is, if he’ll allow it.” Eddie raised his gaze to Richie’s, shrugged, and went back to reading. I’ll take it, Richie thought. At least nothing had been thrown or cast at him. 

Ben made a face that was somewhere between a grimace and a smile. “Sure thing, Richie.” He put his book back and slid out of the room. “See you guys around!”

“Like a wheel,” Richie grinned over his shoulder.

And then it was just Richie and Eddie again. Like it was so often. Like it had been right before Richie had gone and fucked it all up.

This wasn’t the first time Eddie had been angry with Richie—you didn’t get through almost two decades of friendship without a spat here and there. But this was different. Eddie had seen Richie in a way Richie had hoped he never would. And he wasn’t even looking at him.

“Watcha readin’?” Richie asked, sticking his hands in his pockets and moseying over to the other side of the table to peek across at what Eddie was reading while still keeping a respectable distance.

“Nothing,” Eddie said. “Just about the history of the town.”

Richie could see that this was technically true—that was the book that Eddie had open. But there were various other folders and tomes and notebooks beneath that one that really piqued Richie’s interest. 

“Since when do you care about the history of Derry?” Richie asked. “Mike and Ben putting you to work now? You getting good wages?”

Eddie just glared at him. 

Richie felt like he’d been hit with a hold person spell.

And yet—he kept going, because his courage was waning significantly now that he was realizing he’d have to actually address what had happened.

“I bet you’re hiding something under there,” he teased. He’d said it lightly, but he wasn’t really joking, and his methods proved effective when Eddie looked up at him with a look of guilt clear on his face. “Edward Kaspbrak!” Richie gasped. “Do you have porn under there?” 

He pushed the book aside while Eddie was slightly off guard.

“Richie, stop—”

Eddie shoved the book back in place, but Richie had glanced enough of the papers he’d uncovered. His breath caught in his throat.

A lot of words jumped out at him.

“Casting without components…”

“Dragon’s breath…”

“Sudden new powers…”

Wild Magic.

Richie felt it again. The panic. The buzzing. The itch he couldn’t scratch that clawed up his throat.

He staggered back. 

“Richie,” Eddie said, his voice much softer this time. Richie clenched his hands into fists, as if he could hold back whatever might spring forth from them. He knew logically that there was no risk as long as he didn’t cast anything, as long as he kept to his bard spells, but he could feel the power swirling in him, coiling like a snake, even when he had no desire to tap into it.

He hadn’t realized that Eddie had stood and come closer until he felt Eddie’s hand on his arm. He nearly jumped.

“Richie,” Eddie said softly. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have—”

“No,” Richie cut him off quickly. He brought his hand to Eddie’s side, then quickly pulled it away. “Shit, Eddie, I came here to apologize to you, please don’t say you’re sorry.”

Eddie shifted then, ambivalence written in every move of his muscles and dilation of his pupils. He kept his hands to himself, but he didn’t move away.

Richie took a deep breath. “I’m sorry, Eds,” he said. His voice shook, all too loud in such a silent room. “That was so fucked up of me. We could’ve gotten out of there without that, I never should’ve put you in danger like that. I had no idea what would happen, and I knew fucking anything could’ve happened. I just… I panicked, and I needed to get us out of there. But it was still horrible of me, and I understand if you don’t…” Richie forced himself to speak through the rapids surging in his chest. “If you don’t feel safe around me anymore. I thought I could protect you from it, but that was selfish too, because I should’ve known I would never be able to keep that up forever. So yeah, I just… just wanted to say sorry for putting you through that. That’s all I came here for.”

Eddie was silent for longer than Richie could handle without looking to see what was happening. He looked… confused. And pissed again. 

“You think that’s what I’m mad about?” 

Shit. How had he managed to make things worse?

“What else?” Richie asked.

Eddie punched him on the shoulder. Richie let out a little wince. “I’m not fucking afraid of you, Richie!” he exclaimed. “I’m pissed because you ditched me! I’m pissed because you were clearly really fucking freaked out about what happened and then you wouldn’t even talk to me about it! I’ve been worried sick about you but you fucking turned invisible and teleported away before I could even get the chance to talk to you and comfort you about it! I’m pissed because you’d rather cut me off than let me help you!”

Richie thought that scaring Eddie was the worst possible outcome.

He hadn’t realized that making Eddie sad was a possibility in this scenario. And god, it was so much worse than any response of fear or anger would’ve been. Eddie was biting his lip, trying to maintain his scowl while his eyes became watery. He crossed his arms, and Richie’s heart sank. He wanted to pull Eddie into his arms, to make all his pain go away, but wouldn’t that just be the most selfish thing he could possibly do? Pull Eddie closer?

And the worst part was that Richie didn’t see a way to be honest with Eddie and not make things worse.

“Eds,” Richie said through a hitched breath, “I’m so sorry. I didn’t… I appreciate that, but this isn’t something anyone can fix.” 

“You don’t need to be fixed, Richie,” Eddie sighed, exasperated. “I don’t want you to change. I just want you to let me in. And I was mad that you didn’t let me in, that you kept it from me, and I realize now that that’s not exactly fair and that you telling me should’ve been on your terms, but I just… I was so worried about you, Rich.”

Richie felt a stinging pressure behind his eyes. “I don’t want you to have to worry about me.”

Eddie almost seemed to seethe at that. “Richie. You fucking numbskull. Don’t you worry about me? Don’t you want me to be safe?”

What the fuck kind of question was that? “Of course I do—well, I mean, you know, not that you can’t handle yourself, but of course I want you to be safe.”

Eddie stepped closer, narrowing his eyes at Richie. “Then why shouldn’t I worry about you? Why shouldn’t I want to keep you safe?”

“What if I’m not safe to be around?”

“I think I can handle it,” Eddie snorted. 

“But I can’t predict it—”

“We’ll figure it out together. It’s okay.”

“No, Eddie! It’s not okay!” Richie threw his hands up in the air, running them through his hair. “You say you don’t want me to change but I keep changing all the time in ways I don’t understand! What am I supposed to do with that? What are you supposed to do with that?”

“I just wanna be there for you!” Richie hadn’t realized his voice had been getting louder until he heard how loud Eddie said that. “I don’t know what to do with it or if there even is anything that needs to be done, but I wanna be there with you when it happens because you shouldn’t have to handle scary shit happening to you on your own!”

“But it’s my problem, why should you have to figure it out?”

“Because I love you, you idiot!”

That shut Richie up. Sure, he knew Eddie loved him, the way he knew all of his friends loved him. But that… Was he imagining it? He didn’t think that sounded so platonic.

Eddie softened, and some air came back into the room. “I love you,” he said again. “I wanna be with you. All the time. I wanna know when you’re struggling with something and I wanna help you with it. I wanna take care of you, I want… I want you. I miss you.” 

Richie’s breath hitched again, and he started to crumble. “I miss you so fucking much Eddie—”

Eddie grabbed him by the shirt and pulled him down. Richie needed to lean so far down to meet him he almost fell over, but he caught himself, and Eddie lifted up on his toes to meet him halfway, and then their lips were pressed together, and Eddie’s lips were so soft, despite the force behind them. It took a moment for Richie to realize he could kiss Eddie back, but when he did, he was like a man starved. 

Quickly growing frustrated with the lack of leverage his position afforded him, however, Richie lifted Eddie by his waist and sat him on the table, stepping between his legs. He cupped Eddie’s face in his hands and slotted their lips together more neatly, forcing himself to slow down and really appreciate what was happening, to process it. Eddie’s hands slid over Richie’s shoulders and up into his curls, holding on tight. “Eddie,” Richie breathed against his mouth, “Eds, I love you so much.” 

Eddie pulled away to catch his breath and pressed his forehead to Richie’s. “Don’t call me Eds,” he panted, but he was smiling.

“Mhm, sure, definitely won’t,” Richie grinned, then kissed him again. “Whatever you say, Eds.” He kept kissing him and kept talking, the words murmured against Eddie’s lips. “And I won’t pick you up again either. I can tell from that little squeak you made that you really didn’t like it.”

Eddie slapped him playfully on the shoulder, but he didn’t argue.

They traded a few more kisses before Richie pulled back, his body thrumming with adrenaline—it was still a little scary, but overwhelmingly it was good. He let himself really look at Eddie, at his pretty brown eyes and kiss swollen lips. He’d probably spend forever convincing himself this was real.

“You really aren’t scared?”

Eddie scoffed. “You wish you could scare me.” He kissed Richie deeply and ran his fingers through hair, grazing his thumbs gently over Richie’s horns in a way that had Richie shivering. “Honestly,” Eddie said, his voice low, “it was kind of hot.”

Richie groaned, his brain fizzling out for a second. “Okay, well, I’m not really sure I can do it again, but I’ll keep that in mind. But you should probably cool it on talking to me like that until we’re in a bed or something because I don’t think Mike would appreciate me getting jizz all over his pristinely maintained archives—”

“Richie!” Eddie screeched, kicking his thigh lightly. But he was cackling, and Richie kissed the dimples in his cheeks and nuzzled his face into Eddie’s neck, where he would’ve been happy to stay forever, with Eddie shaking from laughter in his arms.

“I love you,” Richie repeated against his skin. He couldn’t believe it was all out there—all of it, every single thing Richie had sworn to keep to himself for the rest of his life was sitting in Eddie’s lap, and Eddie loved him. “I love you,” he said again, “I love you so much.”

[incesthemes]

final thoughts: supernatural season 10

wow holy shit that sure was a season. i'm not actually sure how i feel about it???? aside from the obvious brainrot it's given me and also the mental illness. idk i'll put down my thoughts and maybe by then i'll figure out how i feel.

for starters, this might rival seasons 6 and 7 for the "fewest amount of episodes i enjoyed" award. specifically, i liked 1-4, 8, 12, and 18-22. the finale... i'm unsure about currently. i'll have to think about that and come back to it in a few paragraphs. so 11 of 23 episodes is... whew. this season was rough for me for sure.

overall the balancing of the A plots with the B plots felt rather juvenile, even though the overarching plotling felt so much more present than it has since like, basically kripke era. it felt like for the most part, episodes started with a topical conversation between sam and dean, then they went off and worked a case that was hand-crafted to parallel the seasonal arc, and finally at the end they sat in the impala and discussed the lessons they learned today. feels more like kids programming than the TV-MA rating suggests, lol.

but see that's the thing, right? like i said, the seasonal plot felt so present compared to past seasons. everything was tied in together, nothing felt really out of place, it all circled back to the big picture of the season. for a post-kripke season, that's pretty damn awesome and a much needed relief. i've gotten used to half-baked filler episodes that hardly relate to the story at all and feel hamfisted in because they don't know what else to do, so it does feel nice that the plot was actually relevant, always an undercurrent to every episode and informing the characters' actions.

i just... well, i probably feel this way because of the poor pacing of the story. i mean don't get me wrong, i didn't necessarily love the A plots of those episodes either (for the most part), but like i mentioned in a previous post, i just don't think it's handled well. it's a GREAT concept but the execution is lacking in so many places between season 9 and 10. the dearth of serious developments throughout most of the season dampened the urgency of the plot, the lack of consistency in the mark's effects made it hard to predict where the show was leading, and the empty promises bored me. they're all absolutely terrible ingredients for a tense plot, so even though the plot was relevant in all these episodes, it felt stagnant and barren. there's really only so many times sam can fret about "dean getting worse" without dean actually, tangibly getting worse before i have to roll my eyes.

at the same time, a lot of those episodes i didn't like had some AMAZING dialogues and scenes in them. i know i've been raving about the parallels and mirroring between season 8 and seasons 9-10, but these seasons really are phenomenal at painting a Big Picture. they know what they want and how they want to do it; they just seem to really struggle with the details. dean confessing in a church to mirror sam confessing in sacrifice? sam lying to dean about burning the book of the damned to save him to mirror dean lying to sam about gadreel possessing him? sam getting charlie killed because of those lies to mirror how dean got kevin killed because of his lies? sam comparing himself to claire in order to highlight how he's abandoned his desire for independence? these are all really impressive story beats that on a higher level serve to contain these three seasons in some kind of sick brotherfucking ouroboros that's like, a narrative metaphor for how wrapped up in each other they are. they spin in circles around each other like binary stars, repeating each other's mistakes, throwing everyone else in their lives away, clinging to each other with a toxic ferocity and devotion that should kill them, that does kill them so many times, that ruins their lives and leaves them broken and bloody and alone except for each other. and still the story spins and spins and spins and never stops, because they never stop because they're insane. it's deranged. they're deranged.

i don't understand how there can be such a clear, amazing vision that's fucked up so spectacularly on an episodic level. i guess because i'm so used to seeing the opposite: the details are great, but the big picture is messy and unsatisfying. supernatural continues to defy logic, and it's utterly fascinating to me.

anyway i said i'd come back to the finale so here i am. i know cain foreshadowed the whole "dean will kill sam" thing in the executioner's song, but i really... don't think there was much substance to that to warrant the sudden development. sam continued to be, throughout both season 9 and season 10, pretty much the only person dean didn't nearly kill—and quite the opposite, since sam was the only one capable of placating dean when he had the first blade in his hand. sam functioned more as a grounding presence for dean, so the textual dialogue between the characters and the visual reality of it all just did not match up. and so when dean brought sam to him to kill him, it didn't really make any sense at all.

also frankly, the conversation between death and them wasn't all that convincing either: death claims with such self-assurance that sam would go to the ends of the earth to save dean at any cost, but sam and dean have both individually proven that they're capable of, well, not doing that. dean went to lisa after swan song, sam found amelia after survival of the fittest. and if sam is meant to be a mirror of dean in this season, then it stands to reason that, if sam made a promise to dean to move on (like dean promised sam in swan song), then sam would have made good on the promise. yes, sam is psychotic about his brother, but there's not only precedent for sam "moving on" (loose definition), but it would have been narratively cohesive to finish off the role reversal, if dean really had been sent into fucking outer space (lol). again: the textual dialogue does not match with the visual reality here.

so why did sam have to die? because, of course, they needed the cain and abel parallels. but they just... set it up so poorly, and they fumbled the mirroring, and in the end it felt weird and cheap. sure, bringing sam there to explain the circumstances and threatening him on pain of death if he interfered was totally warranted (sam is psychotic about his brother), but when he gave up? why would he need to follow through? there's a poor foundation for it, so the development felt very contrived and poorly executed. which is unfortunate, because i was looking forward to the fratricide. what's even more unfortunate is that this would have been such an easy fix. just make dean more aggressive toward sam. like deadass just have them fight more, have dean get uncharacteristically angry with him (though the thing at charlie's cremation was a nice touch), have dean actually visibly contemplate fratricide, yknow. something that isn't "oh my baby brother is the only person who keeps me sane" followed immediately by "i'm going to kill him." if you're going to have a prophecy, you need to commit to it!!! i'm just saying!!!

and now that i've written all that out, i think thaaaat's why sam's emotional speech at the end felt so cheap. there was no real reason for him to be in that position in the first place, and there was no support for the weight it was being given. honestly a shame, because i think the speech itself was very good and emotional; it just did not hit without the buildup to it.

and then not to beat a dead horse, but everything i said before was proven TRUE in the very next moment: dean killed death to save sam, because sam is his rock and his reason for living and he could never hurt sam, past present or future. like i said! dean really was a negative threat to sam this entire season!! sam was the only person who could even influence him positively!!! cas tried to do what sam so consistently did and dean beat him to a fucking pulp!!!! the tension was NOT there because dean is weak to sam; there was never any other option, or even a hint of it.

i suppose all that answers my question... i don't think i liked the finale, no. which is honestly surprising, because i think supernatural generally goes very hardcore with its finales. this might be the first one i've disliked? maybe? or no, i don't think i liked the season 7 finale either to be honest. but season 7 is season 7 so like. it is what it is.

i don't know. this season was bizarre, and there were a lot of moments that made me so, so much worse than i thought possible—like i thought the season 9 finale made me bad, but then they just kept going and good lord. i will not get over this role reversal plot any time soon. the concept was amazing, and i appreciate the level of commitment the writers had to this development. the mediocre execution really dragged things out longer than i feel they should have though, and as you can see i have plenty of criticism. it has so much charm though, and it finishes off the three-season wombo combo in what was meant to be a satisfying way—like i see what they were trying to do i just think they failed at it. so it's definitely no season 6, that's for sure. the vision was its redeeming feature, and GOD what a vision it was. i adore what they were trying to do with seasons 8-10 so i really can't dislike it yknow. because holy shit!!!

anyway i guess that's all. which means it's time for my detox, and after that i'll officially be in Late Season Supernatural, finally. i can't wait to see where that'll take me (i'm looking respectfully at red meat). i'm also watching season 1 with a friend, which is a delight because jesus christ this show has such an incredible foundation. if i get a chance between that and reading fanfic, i think i'll watch sharp objects finally, since it's short and sweet (not actually sweet, from what i can tell). so that'll be fun :)

[wordsinhaled]

No okay but I was just listening to Dead Club from Tunng for the billionth time and I'm just getting .so many Dreamling Feelings from all of the songs. Possibly even hobrintheus from Eating The Dead. And I say this so much but Woman and Man hits me right in the Hob Feels. Specifically these lines from Woman, and everything from Man, maybe you have some insight into them 😂

'Someone might read your body like a book. \\ Kata was cared for, had a varied diet, and was buried wrapped tightly in cloth.' ... 'Someone might read your body like a book. \\ Unearthed, undead again. \\ What we know is Kata had little thoughts, all the time. \\ Then stopped. Like us. \\ She made a hand sign, asking us "let me rest". \\ And she made it. And made it. \\ And alas we will not.'

okay, so i got this ask while i was half-awake early this morning and absolutely have ever since just been vibrating with emotion because... i just fucking love tunng and their music. this album in particular is so meaningful and important to me. dead club as an album and as a concept is just so... augh, incredible. i can't recall if it was you i spoke with about tunng before but... i basically had to, like... wait until i'd had breakfast and a beverage to be able to speak coherently about all the thoughts i have about the songs on dead club, asdhfhg. i have now had sustenance and i'm still not entirely sure i'm gonna be able to say everything i think, but i will try!

so first of all, like... i don't know if i talk about it much on here actually, but i am in so many ways an existentialist at heart. it's also one of my two main theoretical orientations as a therapist. it's something that just, i guess, vibes with my soul in a way; to contend with these fundamental aspects of our existence that can be so scary and daunting, and yet when examined closely can bring so much clarity and newfound purpose. and there is so much of that on this album, so much of that grappling with freedom and responsibility and mortality. so much memorializing and documenting of the smallest units of people's humanity too - in cups of tea and counted breaths and the struggle against darkness through the search for joy and meaning.

like, this album is just everything i care about as a person. there is so much love wrapped up in it. it's somber but still somehow uplifting in its realness and frankness.

something about that song in particular just... the way it describes the experience of such a profound yet everyday love that it actually transcends death, but in a way that is so organic and not metaphysical at all and thus - it is a preservation of memory attainable to everyone - because everyone has access to these little mundane moments in the lives of their loved ones—fights big and small, cups of tea, lovemaking, breakfast, movie nights... the visceral experience of shared memory and how it lives on in organic ways. in the way we stand, sit, and move about our space and world in the wake of our loved ones.

the experience of just. how loved ones imprint themselves on our hearts and souls so fundamentally that it is as though we have consumed them, absorbed them irreversibly into ourselves even once they are no longer in our lives (by death or other forms of leaving). and this idea that love is powerful and baffling and clarifying and as cleansing as death—it is a dying of the individual self and a giving over of the self into the partial keeping of another—once you have lost a person you would hold on to even the smallest aspect of them, even the unfavorable parts, to make them more real, more tangible again.

the title of my hob playlist comes from "eating the dead" (all the business of living)... the idea of living memory, generations of it held inside a single body, i think would really resonate for him. the coming to terms with death and dying, and the loss of his fear of it. his experience of life as a progression of memories compartmentalized and held in his heart, each person he has ever been living on within him, each person he has ever loved deconstructed and consumed. perhaps he still has bits of eleanor in his modern handwriting. perhaps he preserves the memory of his mother in his bread recipe. sense memory, tangible memory. perhaps each time he drinks a specific type of ale he thinks of his stranger. he holds on to the clothes and mannerisms and memories of hundreds of people long-gone, and he will never be gone, but he sometimes has to deconstruct and consume bits of himself. the permutations of his last name, gadling, gadlen, golding, and then gadling again once it's been long enough. the way he remembers himself each time dream calls him hob even when there is no one else left alive who first knew him by that name. the way he remembers and memorializes dream - the way maybe he kept the gloves and the hat from 1889, how he reinvents himself but always holds a space for dream in his heart. how he builds the new inn as a space for their living memory to continue.

faith, that takes me back.

and "woman" is so incredible as well. it really speaks to me about how we can look back at the past and shake hands with it because we are not so far removed despite the many many intervening years, generations, eons that compact humanity back down into atoms and carbon. that the sentiments are relatable, that the lived experiences were different but not so different. and about the types of knowledge that we have lost through time and regained through our conversation with the past. about the context that is lost in history. how we build over it. how we redefine it and commodify it and remove the agency of the dead through superimposing our modern impressions onto them. thinking about how we all come back to the same atoms. someone might read your body like a book. and the way that it reminds us that even our small stories are important, can be the evidence of our existence long into the future, that we will be one day the components and building blocks of future lives, even long past our own ability to know it.

i'll stop here, but THANK YOU so much for stopping by and please feel free to talk more to me about this or anything else that springs to mind <33333

[definitely-not-a-wasp]

Hey this ones kinda opiniony but how do you think your new flock would react to an Angel that keeps telling them the same things she did in the original books?

I love talking about my personal opinions! And talking about LTNW!

So when you say "the same things she did in the original books", that can mean a lot, because Angel said... a lot. She developed from telepathy or oracle powers, got a god complex, and had a few separate villain arcs where she started to talk like a 30-year-old before reverting back to normal. But the LTNW flock would have a very similar reaction to all of those things happening, which actually winds up going into meta about the differences between canon and LTNW flock.

In canon, Max does bring up the potential for psychosis and hallucinations from time to time, but they are a very, very abstract thing. She thinks she's hallucinating Jeb when she's in shock in California, and then quickly orients herself and acknowledges it's real. She hallucinates when she's in a sensory deprivation tank for hours, but it doesn't cause any lasting effects when she's out. She plays with the idea that The Voice is a hallucination, but still follows its orders on the assumption it's real. For canon, psychosis is a scary hypothetical, and if it DOES happen, it never sticks around.

I wanted very much to make it tangible in LTNW. Max hallucinates constantly. Iggy has paranoid delusions. Fang has Cotard's syndrome. There is a reason I established Max's hallucinations and Iggy's episodes before the inciting incident, and that's because psychosis is not an abstract worry. I would argue that, in some cases, it's not a worry at all, because it's so ingrained into their lives that they accept it as normal.

So if Angel were to start spouting oracle stuff, or god-complex stuff, they'd assume she was developing psychosis, the same way the older kids did. They'd try to figure out triggers, figure out how to handle what they see as new symptoms, and would not re-evaluate this stance unless any of her future-telling came true. In a lot of ways, this means that the cast of LTNW has to be more grounded in reality than their canon counterparts, despite being less mentally stable. They have to make sure all of them are seeing or experiencing something before they assume it's true, they have to find evidence rather than relying on Max's Voice, because either it's a hallucination or a trick from the Institute, and they certainly can't rely on Angel's future-telling, because there would never be a way to distinguish it from a delusion, and they work so hard not to encourage their delusions.

I don't think one type of story is necessarily better than the other, in this case. JP wrote a world where Angel's powers are possible, so of course she's going to be taken more seriously. And I wrote a world where delusions and hallucinations are genuine struggles, so of course they wouldn't be able to take her at face value. Neither is right or wrong, as long as both remain consistent.

[rayeim0gen]

To whom it may concern:

I’m sorry, but I will not be proceeding with any DBT lessons. I can’t even pretend to believe it’ll actually help me.

My problem isn’t my thought processes.

It’s the fact that I had my life and all my worldly possessions wiped off the face of the earth while I showed up at the RUH ER multiple times in crisis and facing nothing but hostility and dismissal.

It’s from being told “getting in isn’t an option for you, there’s nothing the ward can do for you anyways” (btw, that’s the night I tried Meth for the first time, cause if I’m too far gone to help, what did it matter?).

It’s from being told “next time you show up here EXPECTING to be helped, make SURE you have a way to leave, because you will NOT be getting another taxi voucher” (all while the nurse went chest to chest with me and wagged her finger in my face) after being told I wouldn’t be getting in and “I dunno, try the homeless shelter” when I asked them where I was supposed to go at 4:30am on a Sunday morning in December when it was -40°C after having sat in the waiting room since 11am the previous day.

It’s then being told “sorry, this is a mens shelter” (I’m trans) and having to beg for even a few square feet of floor space for a few hours.

I had to cry and beg.

It’s being turned away and rejected from every social service I was told to go to for help.

It’s my psychiatrist abandoning me and telling me to call and book another appointment once I was back on my meds, because apparently if I’m un-medicated and homeless I certainly don’t need any support and will be just fine.

It’s my friends and family cutting ties with me because, as some of them put it: “if you were actually trying to get help, you would have gotten it by now”, and “you have to stop lying to your doctors and those who love you. We don’t believe you’re actually trying to get help”.

It’s the fact that as a result I’ve lost everything I’ve ever cared about, down to all my childhood family photo albums AND my baby book (I’d been holding onto them since my mom passed almost a decade ago now).

It’s the fact that it cost me my entire sense of self worth, repeatedly being humiliated begging for help.

It’s the fact that I go so low I denounced my transition multiple times.

I still haven’t gotten much if anything of my enthusiasm about transitioning back, and I struggle to care about taking my HRT.

It’s the fact that I followed the list of things to a T that I’ve been told to do since I was a kid while in crisis / suicidal, only to find out that either it all was a blatant lie, or that the system is there to help everyone BUT me.

Either way, I’ve lost my faith in the healthcare system.

As I said, my trauma isn’t something that can resolved by “thinking happier thoughts”.

Im not even going to humour anyone or waste someone’s time or resources trying to take DBT seriously.

This means my counselling sessions are coming to an end, as well as eventually my peer support with Tracey.

I have an appointment on December 17th with Dr Clark to discuss the future of my transition, and whether I’ll continue it going forward. I’m not sure I will.

Getting involved with the Sask Health Authority has done nothing but ruin my life, and I regret ever getting involved with it.

Not sure why I thought I was worthy not only of a successful transition, but emergency / crisis / social services help in general.

All I want to do now is wean myself away from the SHA and get on with my life (which is difficult seeing as I don’t have a single tangible item from my previous life) with my girlfriend and our cats and try to forget that the past 5 years of my life ever happened.

Regardless,

Raye.

[alllinesarebeautiful]

Day 428 Art meditation, Paper wall sculpture #2, “Tree Ring” Heart Art

Dear You, 

Filling up the house with paper wall sculptures! This is the 2nd ‘Tree Ring’ paper wall, with a pattern of 3 blocks, to see if it inspires something new ...

It’s so meditative. It’s tangible. It fills my heart up with joy. I am healing myself one moment at a time. 

My sister recently told me that she doesn’t define “trauma” like I do, and it was the first time ever we even approached the topic …

She’s right, compared to most people, my version of trauma was nothing.

And I know I would never have bothered to go deep into healing work, but the fact that I have been struggling on so many levels the last ten years, it left me no choice but to go Inward. One of the reasons this journey is taking so long is that my ego-space has done everything to try to get out of it, every distraction possible. But I always end up here, at my Heart.

I am so grateful that G gave me the book by Dorothy Corkille Briggs, “Celebrate Your Self: Enhancing Your Own Self-Esteem”. The single most important book in my (and G’s) life, because it is crystal clear on what it means to find your True Self. There is a reason it was never a best seller - it’s the hardest path.

If my life had gone the way I thought I wanted it to go, I would never have tapped into all this inside me. 

Every time I make a paper sculpture, I am learning how to trust myself more.

Every time I make a new Heart Art Brand Bundle, I trust myself more. 

The art brings up a stillness for me, and there is my voice, and time to write.

(Which is one of the reasons I leave it open to purchase, because combining art and writing is powerful … )

Art 🖼️ on walls …

I’ve always loved to look inside the houses of artists - Henri Matisse filled his house with art, especially in his last years when he was confined to a wheelchair and he and assistant (who was probably also one of his art models) hung the huge paper cut out art pieces all over his house, which later became some of most famous art ever. It’s on my to-do list to write and design a love letter into this part of Henri Matisse’s life and art … I have not forgotten.

Georgia O’Keefe’s gorgeous adobe Studio House in Abiquiu, New Mexico was very simple and every room filled with artful, mindful objects. Dreamy…

Recently I saw a 2016 Architectural Digest article of Marc Chagall’s heavenly house, and I’m not surprised that a lot of his own oil paintings hung on the walls …

Ansel Adams and non-artist wife lived in Big Sur, CA, and I remember seeing the AD issue of their house - the living room was a gorgeous dark blue, the windows all had views of fir trees … And there are all kinds of interesting art. 

So many stories with each art piece, and what a haven, each home. 

If I could travel for one year just visiting artists' homes, I would! Maybe for now I’ll just re-subscribe to Architectural Digest. 😍

I am grateful for these art walls now, together with G’s oil paintings, making our home as beautiful as I can with materials I do have access to. 

I have to remind myself to be present now, that I’m already living the dream, in many ways. And what’s more, art and my creative bubble is where I focus now even during the times I’m not actually doing my creative work. That skill alone took 10 years to build up. 

So grateful. 🙏🙏🙏

Lots of love,

Anne ◎

◎

Ⓒ 2024 Anne Hunsicker | All Lines Are Beautiful. All rights reserved.

[finishinglinepress]

FLP BOOK OF THE DAY: The Flightless Years by Jamie L. Smith

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The #poems and #essay fragments in The Flightless Years investigate the #relationship between memory, myth, and meaning. When our heroes fail us, and we can’t reconcile our love for someone with their actions, do myths and the stories we tell ourselves about ourselves help or harm? Over the course of The Flightless Years, a beloved friend commits a violent crime, a mother’s mental illness destabilizes the speaker’s childhood, and the speaker’s own addiction wreaks havoc on her relationships. Still, Icarus flew before he fell, and Persephone returned from the underworld. The figures present in these pages, however flawed, find their thrills, and revel in beauties ranging from the crushed glass that glitters like stars on the sidewalk to the greater cosmos and constellations.

Jamie L. Smith holds an MFA from Hunter College (2020) and is a PhD candidate in English Literature & Creative Writing at University of Utah (2024). Her poems, nonfiction, and hybrid works appear in publications including Bellevue Literary Review, Red Noise Collective, Southern Humanities Review, Tusculum Review, The Write Launch, Red Wheelbarrow, and elsewhere. She lives and writes between Salt Lake and New York City.

PRAISE FOR The Flightless Years by Jamie L. Smith

“Mine wasn’t the sort of epic downfall myths are written about,” says the speaker in “Flawed Mythologies,” the lyric essay and psychic spine of this searching debut collection. Without a trace of self-dramatization, refusing easy resolution, preferring question over blame, Jamie Smith’s insightful poems explore loss, absence, addiction, the violence and contradictions that haunt our most intimate relationships. We cannot recover our losses, but we can recover. The Flightless Years is the deeply intelligent, beautifully wrought record of this struggle.

–Donna Masini

Moving between fact and fantasy, the personal and mythological, childhood and adulthood, the poems in The Flightless Years attempt to reconcile what is lost with the act of remembering itself. Whether it’s in long elegiac lyrics like “Flooring” or her “Flawed Mythologies” series, Smith focuses on tangible, fragmentary details of the past that should make memories easier to recapture and reconcile. And yet these same memories evade adult comprehension, thus the collection gestures to the impossibility of catharsis, becoming less about narrative reclamation and more about continued metamorphosis and destruction. When faced with the difficulty of healing the past, how can we not turn lost friends, parents, and lovers—even ourselves—into “flawed myths” of love? Jamie Smith is a writer asking the hard—maybe even unanswerable—questions about identity and change, a writer who understands that each of us is a strange, hybrid creature of myth and memory.

–Paisley Rekdal

“[Flawed Mythologies] is a deftly choreographed and deeply felt essay. The essayist uses a tripartite structure and a combination of tones and dictions to fully exploit the possibilities of the essay—to create a moving exploration of how ideas and experience intertwine, how thinking about the past is an obsessive activity, thinly concealed by the forms of intellection and apparent arrangement, which may help us move towards what is difficult to consider, but will not, in the words of James Agee, ‘tell me who I am.’ Still, the attempt, which in this case is considered, offered with both the risk of revelation and the efforts of discretion. The result is a poetic acceleration at the end which is moving and earned.”

–David Lazar

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[smol-warrior-1258]

I also think a specific big thing is that part of Annabeth's arc in the first book is that she hasn't had the chance to test herself in the outside world since arriving to CHB and is champing at the bit to go on a quest. Like she had her time with Luke, Thalia, and Grover pre-CHB of course, but a major motivator for her in TLT is a desire to prove herself because "the real world is where the monsters are. That's where you learn whether you're any good or not" and she volunteers (a change which I suppose I won't get into rn) bc Percy is her chance to finally join a quest. It's a very complex thing of her personal confidence in being ready to go on a quest juxtaposed with an understanding that no level of expertise at CHB proves her skill like a quest will.

Moreover, when we are introduced to book!Annabeth - and at the beginning of the quest - the idea IS that she is the planner & smart & generally Knows What To Do. I think the show successfully (if a little heavy handed-ly) highlighted that aspect. But if anything, throughout their quest we get to see that she doesn't always have an answer (let alone the absolute correct one) in time to make a plan. Her intellect often comes into play in a reactive way (ex once they realize it's Medusa she takes the strategic lead, but isn't able to predict the specific danger)

She has the expectations placed on her - by herself, by her mother/being a daughter of Athena, by Luke & other campers - that she should be taking the lead and know what's best and that's a role she sometimes is challenged by. The reason I find this character adjustment so significant is that when we get to TBotL where Annabeth is finally leading her own quest, she is still struggling with the same thing. The Labyrinth directly conflicts with her logic and her strategy and that nearly unravels her before they even leave. Once on the quest she worries she's risking her friends by her leadership choices (having a 4 person quest despite the rule of 3, the Janus scene) and that she'll fail.

Not to mention her conflict during TTC and the emotional vs rational decision making involved when interacting with Luke, but I digress.

To imply in s1 that she's already confident and unwavering in trusting her own reasoning - and her ability to compartmentalize her emotional instincts - does a real disservice to those later moments, and to any character-building internal conflicts Annabeth could have in later seasons. There's a few moments in the show where we can maybe see that that self-assurance/bravado is a mask Annabeth wears to live up to those aforementioned Smart Leader Expectations (props to Leah's acting for that one I think) but I don't feel there's enough tangible follow through because she's missing those elements of indecision or simple oversight. The overemphasized "six steps ahead" aspect in the show means we rarely see her respond to stress with her intellect (an exception being in the Tunnel of Love), and instead are left with the cold logical strategist side. We miss out on a huge chunk of her character and I don't see why that would benefit the shows narrative.

Even the whole thing with Athena punishing her for the disrespect (again, a change for another time) - which ostensibly is a mistep on Annabeth's part - ultimately proves that Annabeth was right when she cautioned against sending Medusa's head to Olympus earlier on. Also that her observations about the rules when it comes to the gods was completely well-founded.

You know what? No. The Arch is not a change to discuss later because it perfectly exemplifies what I'm trying to get at. In the book they go because Annabeth wants to see it and may never have another chance (yay for 12yo architect enthusiast energy) and the whole chimera situation is the massive consequence for "going off mission to sightsee" as it were. By contrast, the show makes going to the Arch an intentional strategic move by Annabeth that would have been correct (in the show canon) if not for the temporary removal of sanctuary by Athena. Which, as I already said, also wraps back around to Annabeth being correct and smart about everything with no extraneous elements.

Um yeah so long story long they're smart but they're also 12 & inexperienced and that's a good thing. The show needs to trust the process.

rick riordan you became the thing you swore so much to destroy. why change some of these things in the show??? the thing im most angry about is that the changes are either purely nonsensical or just done poorly

theyve completely eliminated the books sense of urgency, like theres no stakes on anything. you can miss the deadline and everythings fixed with a little talk with zeus. you recognize medusa and crusty and the lotus hotel right out of the gate, and obviously the only conclusion is that kronos is behind everything even though hes supposed to be locked in the deepest part of tartarus and youre a 12yo who just got thrown into this life and is just learning that monsters are real. fights are over in 30 seconds and theres no injuries or consequences except for an off screen comment on how you lost your bag or maybe a new stain on your shirt. theyre 12 but also they know everything there is to know about the greek myths.

in the books they learn and realize things as they go! its the experiences that change percy and grover and annabeth and things are supposed to be HARD because theyre kids!!! and they were sent on a mission they shouldnt have been sent on, but they get through it with each other and with a sense of comedy because theyre fucking kids! yea theyre gonna almost die and then say hello to gladiola the pink poodle, and play hacky sack on the bus stop, and stuff themselves with cheeseburgers every chance they get bc kids arent supposed all knowing and mature all the time

you cant promise a faithful adaptation of a book and then change the basic things that made the book be loved in the first place

[human-loveletter]

The envy of: n o s t a l g i a

I get nostalgic sometimes. Replaying in my mind fond memories with past lovers, old friends, closest family. From previous periods of my life. We all do. Thats the beauty of cognitive memory – we can replay and relive our most cherished moments. A time capsule. Traveling through the essence of life.

From time to time I revisit old memories… and yearn. For the curiosity of people who were in my life, but aren’t any more. For past experiences and connections that have come to an end. For versions of myself that I’ve outgrown and now seem foreign, even to me.

I’m in a relationship now. And sometimes I struggle with the envy of nostalgia.

Ugh, I hate to admit it. The envy of something imagined. Not even tangible. He’s wonderful, truly. Yet somehow I’m struggling with envy of the nostalgia for his previous partners. I’ve never met them. Of course all his friends and family have though. He’s much older than I am. And previously had a years-long relationship that almost lead to marriage. He looks back fondly on his time with his ex. Even shares how he still loves her in some ways. Their photos are still on social media too. Vivid depictions of their past love. Lasting remnants of their relationship, their friendship. For the world to see. I wonder what he yearns for. In his moments of nostalgia.

The envy of nostalgia. — But remember…

Our past experiences outline the shape of who we are. Reminiscing on the past is a source of comfort. Of joy. An appreciation for the journey. And celebration of who we are.

Everyone has such a unique journey. Hell, I know I do. And the past is not meant to define our entirety.

Our past experiences are like chapters in the book of our lives. Intricately woven, creating the narrative of who we are today. Each moment, triumph, setback, joy, and heartache contributes to the rich tapestry of who we are. This history shapes us. Our identity, the essence of who we are. Influencing our values, the way we navigate the world. The way we live. The way we love.

Despite the envy, I recognize to embrace the entirety of someone, we must embrace their past. Every choice. Every relationship. Every challenge has played a role in molding the person that I care so deeply about. Our past is not a collection of isolated events. It’s a continuous thread that runs through time, producing and connecting to the present.

To truly love. To truly understand someone, it’s essential to appreciate their journey. The culmination of lessons learned, the growth experienced, and even the relationships formed along the way. When we love someone, we accept not just the present version of them. We accept every chapter that came before ours. The moments of vulnerability. The scars left by past wounds. The memories that still make them laugh. Or even the ones that still make them cry.

Loving someone means to recognize their past is part of the mosaic that makes them unique.

The idea of love is so resonant for me. To understand and accept each other’s story. Fostering deeper connection. Learning to honor their narrative. And the role of different characters, past and still present. — Maybe it’s okay to envy their nostalgia. But it can’t end there.

Embrace their nostalgia.

Don’t observe it and assume the entirety of their journey. Or jump to conclusions. Or even worse, to judgement.

— I’m learning to show myself grace. This is a new range of emotions I’m feeling, for the first time. Processing the emotions – evolving and growing from them – is all a part of the journey. (:

I’m learning to embrace the nostalgia. My own. And the nostalgia of others. Creating a space where honesty and vulnerability can thrive. Allowing us to comprehend the motivations behind our behaviors, fears, aspirations, and whatever it is that makes us unique. Strengthening the bonds between us. Then we can begin to write the next chapter of our story – together.