#i've never been much of a horror writer but i lowkey want to give it a try lmao

[thesmokinpossum]

@little-prince-sits-on-his-stone

Btw your last comment made me realize how much I want a story where Tom goes through his death from The Godfather's Revenge, including the whole coming to peace with dying thing…Only to wake up in his own bed.

He then assume that it must have been a particularly vivid nightmare except that he do have a painful mark on his head where he was pistol whipped and there is indeed adhesive marks on his wrists. He then assume that maybe Nick Geraci decided to stop the whole thing at the last minute (why and how? He has no idea.) but when he gets in contact with his supposed attempted murderer the guy clearly hasn't got the smallest idea of what he's talking about.

Tom is therefore left feeling like he's going insane, fully unaware that his death has simply been Declared Uncanonical by the Studio…

[eowynstwin]

I just love love love the way you write! Especially sex scenes! You make them so intimate when they need to be, and absolutely filthy simultaneously.

Have you taken any inspiration from published books? And by that, I mean have there been any notable books that have helped you navigate your writing process, or is it all just organically from the brain?

<3

gasp I love this question. I'm going to ramble.

So the first books that spring to mind are The Locked Tomb books by Tamsyn Muir, I love how simultaneously sincere and irreverent she is!! She has this way of describing things that i find really evocative and charming, and the charm contrasts really sharply with the subject matter (gore and grief and cosmic horror), so it makes it lowkey really funny.

Example, while giving a seminar about not getting swallowed by the ninth layer of hell, a character draws diagrams on a whiteboard with a "chubby marker." Chubby marker has always stuck with me because it's not a pair of words I would normally put together, and that's been pretty keystone to me. It taught me that the way you describe things matters just as much as describing them at all.

I also think about timing a lot thanks to The Raven Cycle by Maggie Stiefvater. She's another writer who knows how many times she can make you laugh without undermining the seriousness of the things she writes about, and she is so so so good at character banter and relationships.

There's a bit in Blue Lily, Lily Blue where one character is harassing his friends by rickrolling them with a horrible song, and it's not really important to the plot, but it sort of embroiders the friendships that are important to the plot. Fucking with your friends is a time-honored tradition and it just makes everything feel a bit more real and precious—it makes you really believe in the verisimilitude of the relationships, like they have lives outside of the prose itself.

Then there's Robert MacFarlane! I've only just gotten into him. I'm reading Underland, and I started listening to The Old Ways audiobook but I'm gonna find the book at the library instead. i love the way he sets his scenes, or establishes his details. He's got an economy of detail that I've really been loving.

What I mean is—"The cave is dark and quiet around me" will become "Quiet cave, dark around me" or something similar. He eschews articles like "this" "the" "that" "is" and "are" because they're not necessary, and they'd slow down the pacing. It lends to a very dreamlike quality to his prose, I feel.

I feel like that's a commonality between nature writers too lol because I also love Robin Wall Kimmerer (who he quotes in Underland!!) so I'm going to search out others in that genre.

Honorable mention—I do love Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry for getting the cadence of a western too. Especially when listening to the audiobook. The narrator for that one is GREAT.

For sex scenes—lmao I've honestly never read any in published work that do anything for me. Fanfiction smut still blows trad pub AND self pub out of the water. I suspect that may be because very explicit sex scenes (ironically) put a good majority of readers off—I couldn't say why, though, other than to speculate that a lot of romance readers don't really have a good relationship with their own sexuality. (Hot take.)

How I write sex is instead influenced by the way my friends in this fandom write it, and it's also me thinking about what is noteworthy to ME about sex. I think about the smell, the weight of another person's body, where I want them to put their hands on me.

Sex is also sometimes the vehicle for the narrative, rather than the point in and of itself, so I ask myself "how do I characterize this interaction to serve the story?" It's a conversation, after all; two (or more) bodies navigating each other.

I think that's it! Dear god that got long.

[hanaybuns]

Happy Karamatsu day 2/22

i honestly have nothing of substance for you guys today, i'm just gonna talk about karamatsu, as i always do

hmmm it's kind of hard to describe why i like karamatsu or the way i enjoy his character. sometimes, characters really just click for me and there's no other explanation. maybe it's because i can see myself in him? i'm not sure. but also i started watching osomatsu san in 2020 and my fave at the time was jyushi. kara was in second place. that being said, i never engaged in any fan content when i first watched the show and i only started liking kara more after i got into ososan fanart and fanfic.

i actually only got into ososan seriously when the season 4 announcement came out and i was like "huh, it's been a while since i've gotten news about osomatsu san". that was when i really started looking into the fandom and discovered the horrors. in the beginning though, i really liked karamatsu angst. i loved all the super angsty fics where kara went through something horrific, i still do honestly. it's funny because i like putting him through really horrible stuff in my brain, but the second i see him upset about something in canon i feel so sad for him.

something about me is that i really really enjoy drama and good character dynamics. i can put up with the worst pile of slop plot if i can latch onto the characters and analyze their relationships. so osomatsu san was really a treasure trove for me, because you can really tell that the writers give each of the characters subtle nuances and internal conflicts.

that being said, i always like to keep my analysis and head canons based in canon. it's actually more like i'm bound to it. i get weirdly embarrassed when i write something that i feel doesn't really line up with the show. but that's also the challenge when it comes to writing about karamatsu. the writers give us so much, but also so little when it comes to his character and his internal conflicts. so you have to go out on a limb if you want to talk about something that isn't fully discussed in canon. but when i read some of my analysis back, it lowkey feels like this

but i get soooo happy whenever i see anyone write anything in response to my writing. even a simple "i agree" makes me so giddy! i want everyone to know that when you write a comment or reblog my work and write stuff in the tags, i read all of it. then i read it again and again. especially when people choose to write an essay in the tags, it makes my day, truly.

so yeah, i'm excited for s4 and i'm probably gonna get a lot more annoying when it comes out, so get ready for that.

happy karamatsu day!