#if i had a nickel for every time i wrote something that is dc and has snow queen reference i would have two

[spaceghostbuddy]

one day, the blobs came back with a strange magical artifact. it had so much residue of ectoplasm on it that it acted like a reflection for danny to see the real world in and so he loved it. however being a six feet tall ornate mirror and it's drawbacks and so danny came up with a terrible brilliant plan. he broke the mirror so he could carry around a big piece. victor and nora help him cover in the edges so he won't cut his hand. he was happy about it however this lead to his quickly loosing track of all the shards of glass.

eventually the justice league dark managed to track down the cause of the hate curse that spread. it turned out that shards danny lost would end up scratching or in people's possessions and so the rage filled ectoplasm, that didn't really affect danny's area because of all the ectoplasm from him and the blobs, caused people to act out in anger. so the justice league dark decided to ask danny if he knew a way to fix it. a few heroes have tried to approach danny before, but perceiving them as a threat he either hid or pushed them away. once the justice league dark got to danny, which for some reason involved beating santa (who was trying to convince danny to join his side), danny was horrified at what happened and sent the blob ghosts to clean up the mess. the justice league dark also happened to get a small mini kinda member in their ranks that day.

Danny's portal accident has left him blind.

Not fully blind, he can see ecto entities just fine actually, but everything else he cannot.

Danny is left stranded in the ghost zone after the portal collapsed behind him and just left him on a random floating island, he's terribly wounded because a literal tear between worlds opened on him and then just spat him out and closed itself.

So, he isn't having a great time.

Then he gets found by a pack of blob ghosts, who instantly swarm him and just kinda... drag him away basically. Then Danny is given some cloak (His own were damaged to the Ancients and back, also they stole the cloak off a guy a long time ago), some bandages over his eyes and for some reason Blob ghosts are really good at medical care??

Then he lives with them for an undetermined amount of time, getting used to being a ghost with their supervision and is given full access to all the stuff they've stolen over the years.

One of them included a magic ball and Danny, stuck in a cave with not a lot to do, decides to fuck around and try it out.

A while later he's being fretted over by a whole lot of the Blob ghosts because the entire cave was filled with ice.

Not to self, don't use his apparent ice abilities without a sense of control like he did before.

Then a while later, while still trying to control said ice magic, he gets given a crown. One that he can't really see because there's no ectoplasm in it, but also can vaguely see the outline because there was something else inside it.

Later told it was a magic crown they got from a wizard who suddenly decided that he literally had zero use for the thing and traded it with the Blob ghosts since it'll just collect dust.

They traded it for a gem by the way.

So, when Danny finally perfected his ice abilities (with help from the crystal ball) he decides to leave the cave for once in his life and then he subsequently falls through a portal (with his blob ghosts) into the world of DC and boy is he out of his depth.

Then he becomes a villain, not on purpose really. He just needs to see and used his ice do to just that, and because of that he's taken over an entire section of a city (unnamed by it isn't Gotham) and his blob ghosts regularly steal stuff outside to bring back to him so he can eat and stuff.

Of course, taking over a whole section of a city isn't really seen in a good light.

[veliseraptor]

got tagged for two fic writer memes yesterday! the one from @ameliarating first:

How many works do you have on AO3?

509.

What’s your total AO3 word count?

3,432,24. dang! that’s a lot of words

How many fandoms have you written for and what are they?

I have written for...counting the MCU as one fandom, on AO3 I have written for 32 fandoms, including at least one work in:

MCU, The Sillmarillion, Caliban Leandros, both DC and Marvel Comics, the book Barebacked by Kit Whitfield, Doctrine of Labyrinths, Doctor Who, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Star Wars, Black Jewels, Dragon Age, Lucifer, Dexter, Temeraire, Gentleman Bastard Sequence, Supernatural, A Song of Ice and Fire, Greek Mythology, Lymond Chronicles, Merlin BBC, Code Geass, Good Omens,  Death Note, and White Collar.

this is not a comprehensive list of every fandom I’ve ever written for, because it is not including ones that live only on FFN or Livejournal.

What are your top 5 fics by kudos?

Life In Reverse tops the list (11066), aka my 200k Loki-centric post-Thor AU fic that I wrote between 2012 and 2018 and with which I have a decidedly complex relationship at this point. I love it but also I no longer think it’s my best work but also I credit it with teaching me a fuck of a lot about writing and writing longer projects in general.

With Absolute Splendor is rapidly catching up, to my astonishment (6559), despite having been posted for less than half as long. Aka the wedding planning fic that’s really just me mucking about in my Jiang Cheng and my Jiang Cheng and Wei Wuxian feelings, at length.

some good mistakes (4618) was my first foray into the Untamed version of “characters who hate each other going on resentful roadtrips together, feat. Lan Wangji and Jiang Cheng.” I have gone on to write others and will continue to write more.

Unraveling (3069) is a little bit of a surprise but also not - it was originally just sort of WWP stuff for my ‘what if people remembered that blunt force trauma is a really bad thing actually’ problem that pops up sometimes, re: Loki at the end of The Avengers, and then it kind of turned into a whole thing. I personally think it’s the weakest of the installments of the series it belongs to, but it is the first one and also the one that gets least into the broader family dysfunction and depression stuff that probably is less everyone’s thing (but is what came out this fic that mattered more to me, personally).

I am a little surprised to see Steve Rogers’ Halfway House for Notorious Supervillains (3068) here too! I was expecting one of the more...idk, mainstream concepts from the MCU to win out? But I also wasn’t expecting two Untamed fics to make it here, either. But I am stupid proud of this fic even if it is very extraordinarily unfinished. This is one of those unfinished fics that will nag at me unless and until I finish it, at least a little, because the concept - if I do say so myself - is so goddamn good and I think I was executing it pretty well, too.

Do you respond to comments, why or why not?

Pretty much never. I was never very good at it and now I’d feel like I had to go back and reply to all of them and I just. I can’t do that. and when I do try to just start at the beginning I get overwhelmed very fast and start avoiding it.

Basically I decided that if it’s a decision between wrestling with myself to reply to comments versus actually doing more writing I’m going to end up landing on the latter as feeling both more doable and more productive.

What’s the fic you’ve written with the angstiest ending?

probably it’s The Worlds Forgotten, the Words Forbidden for sheer level of “so then what was the point” of it all. but like. I’ve definitely written a few extraordinarily miserable fics, and by “a few” I kind of mean “a lot.” Other nominees I’d put down might be nor autumn falter (for currently personally making me suffer most), once there was a way to get back home (for I think having the ouchiest summary), and Waiting for the Summer Rain (which remains one of my personal favorite Supernatural fics I wrote).

but like. there are 43 fics I have marked with Major Character Death warnings and every single one of those, pretty much, has a downer ending.

Do you write crossovers? If so, what is the craziest one you’ve written?

I have written several though not in a long time! My craziest probably remains the Morgoth/Cthulhu short I wrote that actually got sporked because someone took it seriously (???) enough to do that. But the craziest that actually has any merit, (I’d argue) is probably the Maeglin/Viserys one.

not linking to either, if you want to go find them I don’t think it’ll be that hard.

Have you ever received hate on a fic?

Yeah, a few times on a few different things. More if you count “people who seem to like the fic but love telling you how much they hate the female characters you’re writing about in it” as ‘hate’ which I would but isn’t, you know, quite as straightforward. If I had a nickel for every time someone bitched about Jane in Life in Reverse, though...lots of nickels.

Do you write smut? if so what kind?

Sure do! But what does ‘what kind’ mean, I don’t know how to answer that question. I feel tempted to just put in my “Mike’s Hard Kinks” image edit in this space.

I guess usually I tend to write smut that at least involves a little bit of a kink? I don’t think I’d feel comfortable writing entirely kinkless smut. I think I’d feel weird about it, the same way I do when I write really nice fic, generally.

Have you ever had a fic stolen?

I think I did back when but I don’t remember anything about it. I feel like it was one of those mass data scraping things where my fic happened to be among those caught up in it.

Have you ever had a fic translated?

I have! several actually, mostly into Russian and Chinese. every time it happens I’m immensely flattered that someone wants to put in that kind of work on something I wrote.

Have you ever co-written a fic before?

I think I’d be very, very bad at it.

What’s your all time favorite ship?

Depends on when you ask me! I could probably give you a top five but then I’d remember six that I forgot to mention five minutes later. I guess if I were to think about ships that feel like they hold very special particular places in my heart... Xue Yang/Xiao Xingchen, Steve Rogers/Loki, and Min/Rand come to mind.

What’s a WIP that you want to finish but don’t think you ever will?

oh god do you want the whole list cause honestly I could just like. screencap the entirety of my “in progress” folder with a crying emoji watermarked over it. and that’s not getting into the fics that are like...half formed babies in my consciousness but not anywhere on paper.

and also I just hate to admit that I might not finish something.

you know what? the Lucifer/Good Omens crossover I started would’ve been a lot of fun. I’m probably never going to finish it, but it would’ve been great if I had. I know other people did it too but my contribution could’ve been amazing.

I can say this very boldly with the near certainty that I’m not going to finish the fic so no one will be able to disagree.

(...also the Last Herald-Mage fix it. that was going to be a good fic too, and also will probably languish unfinished forever.)

What are your writing strengths?

I’m pretty sure dialogue is my strongest point. Dialogue and emotions, which is why I always end up just wanting to write about characters talking and having feelings at each other.

What are your writing weaknesses?

Writing action sequences throws me into conniptions every time I have to do it and I will take drastic actions sometimes to avoid doing it at all, which probably weakens the work as a whole.

Also, I don’t plan ahead and this means I write myself into corners kind of a lot. If I wasn’t writing long, dense fic it wouldn’t be a problem but here we are.

What are your thoughts on writing dialogue in other languages in a fic?

I tend to avoid it unless it’s in the context of, as in CQL/MDZS fic, leaving certain terminology untranslated. I’m pretty sure I almost never write full exchanges of dialogue in a different language than I’m using for the narration within a fic, and generally speaking my reaction to other people doing it is at least mildly negative.

What was the first fandom you wrote for?

Harry Potter was technically the first fandom I wrote for, but it was a crack fic I wrote to make my friends laugh more than anything; I tend to count Wheel of Time as my first actual fandom for which I wrote my first actual fic.

What’s your favorite fic you’ve written?

some days the answer is “all of them” and some day the answer is “I don’t like anything I’ve written in my entire life” and I never like giving this a definitive answer. yesterday I reread efforts in a common cause (the bound copy!! thanks @spockandawe) and you know what, that was a good fic and I’m proud of it, so I’m going with that one, for this meme, today.

tagging: @mostfacinorous, @jaggedcliffs, @silvysartfulness, @mikkeneko, @kasasagi-eye, @curiosity-killed, how many people am I supposed to tag for this one anyway

[ecmusgrave]

It’s 3pm on a Sunday. I am on an Amtrak train back to NY from a weekend in Virginia. It’s been a long weekend that has simultaneously felt extremely short, and I don’t feel ready to go back. I miss everyone already, my heart is heavy and I have still yet to get over this discomfort with goodbyes.

In between the last time I wrote and now, I had a birthday. I turned 24 on a day that began bitterly cold in Brooklyn and ended up being somewhat temperate by the time I walked home from the train at 10pm. I had friends out for sushi that evening, I called my sister, I called my uncle, I called my mom and dad. A few nights later more friends took me out drinking at Duff’s in Williamsburg. I was plied with good food all week and was reminded of how loved I am, and part of that was a mini-vacation the following weekend (ending today) to hang out with my sister Caroline, her husband Ryan, my sister Sarah and her two boys, at Caroline and Ryan’s house in Richmond.

Thursday was a dreary and kind of woozy day, the train ride down took forever (or felt like it did) and I finally landed at my sister Caroline’s around 10pm. She made me soup, and we sat around her dining room table, small but fitting for just the three of us. The soup was thick with celery and herbs and felt like the most nourishing thing I’d had in weeks, and I slept well that night.

I came to Virginia kind of sick and got sicker on Friday. The weather was rainy Friday and Sunday, but very nice on Saturday. Friday I was meant to get a tattoo from Katie Davis, a local artist who I’ve wanted to have a piece done by for years. My first tattoo was done by her husband, Fred Pinckard, at Salvation Tattoo in Richmond where they both work. I follow both of them on Instagram and realized I could take an extra day for this weekend trip and get a tattoo done by Katie. I was going to get a deer tattooed on the other side of my body from where Fred’s tattoo was done- hers would be on the outside of my left thigh. The deer was meant to be an homage to my time in the UK. Friday I spent most of the day throwing up, with some kind of stomach bug, so I had to cancel my appointment, which I made a month out. I felt awful about it.

My hope is to come back and get it done, but I think what I’m so disappointed about is that I don’t know for sure when I’ll be back. Train tickets are expensive, my budget is tight enough as it is, and I can’t really justify taking time and money to go do it. If circumstances were different I’d probably stay another night or so in RVA and get the tattoo done, but I’m still in such a transitional period (read: broke) that a $70 train ticket isn’t something I can shrug off. Maybe in a few months I’ll feel differently, but missing out on this session (after I’d set aside time and money!) because I was sick was a huge bummer.

So was missing out on a lot of things I wanted to do in the UK because I was sick, frankly, and so is not feeling like I have the money or time to go to a doctor (if that would even help?) and figure out what I need to do to not get sick as often as I do. I don’t want it to become a trend, I don’t want to have a weak stomach- but how much money and time do people waste in denial about medical conditions? How much time and money to people waste, in general? Am I wasting time and money by staying in New York?

Unclear, not the point. Now that I’ve done enough complaining: 

The weekend was great as soon as my sister Sarah and my two nephews Nate and Eli, arrived at Caroline’s house. We sat around and played card games and I ate some rice and felt better, slowly. I woke up the next day feeling much better, though still tried to take it easy- maybe I’ve learned my lesson with overcompensating from a sick day. Sarah let me drive her Subaru to bowling, and I paid a cash toll for the first time, tossing the coins in a big silver basket coming out of the booth. The second time around I missed it (I’m publishing this on my blog, Jesus) and Sarah scrambled out of the car and picked up all of the coins I dropped for us to be able to get going. I ended up winning the second round of bowling, Ryan made us spectacular spaghetti and meatballs for dinner, we watched the 2018 Robin Hood movie and everyone just sat around, comfortably watching a movie, which I was taking part in for the first time in what felt like a long time. I am feeling tears prick at the backs of my eyes thinking about it.

And I got to go out and photograph under the Nickel Bridge in Richmond. I took Caroline’s car and drove less than two miles from their house to this park connected to a boarded-up pump house, and walked out on the towpath along the river for a while. It was cold enough to want for a jacket, but I didn’t need my coat. (I feel like I’ve been wearing a winter coat for eight goddamn years.) I leaned over a chain link fence and trespassed over CSX property and breathed in crisp pre-spring air and felt my feet sink deeper into the ground, and it felt freeing. Shooting 35mm and feeling free, in Virginia, is how I started taking the pictures I take now, and every time I do it I feel like I need to do it ten times over.

Caiti mentioned my feeling sad was about growing up, maybe growing away from my family more than I’m comfortable with. I said, if I’m growing up why do I still feel like a dumb kid? Does anybody ever really figure out how to balance this shit? I worry that my family feels that I’m aloof and inaccessible because I chose to live in New York. The truth is I don’t have the resources to put up more than one person, and my apartment is small enough that my family members (almost all of whom are older) would still feel cramped. I wanted to move away from the DC area, and wanted to avoid going to a community college, or taking a gap year, or embracing the unknown, when I moved to New York: I didn’t want to move away from my family, but that’s what I ended up doing, and now I have a life in New York and they have lives elsewhere.

And that’s okay! I’ve had important growth since then, and learned important lessons, and honestly having made a life for oneself (anywhere!) is a goddamn challenge, no matter who you are. I grant this. I trust myself, I trust my choices, but it’s hard when it feels like sometimes I’m turning my back on people who do things like scoop up coins from the road for me, or who get me a whole cake a week after my birthday so I still have candles to blow out, or who give me the last of their awesome homemade soup (even if I did reject it the following day), to pursue my own path and make my own choices and be my own person, somewhere that feels so far away.

--

Part of this is sadness that I’ve been denying my own narrative, under the pretenses of furthering others’. Right? It’s probably time I got serious about what I wanted, if I’m having the feeling that I don’t want what I have.

I had simple wants and needs when I started looking for a new job: I wanted free time without sacrificing decent pay, I wanted to be able to skip town every once in a while without getting into trouble or missing out on anything. (To be fair- two of my favorite standup comedians did shows in New York while I’ve been out of town.) I needed to take care of myself and not feel so irreparably sad all the time. I don’t think my wants or needs have changed much- just my ability to pay attention to them.

Our train is pulling through DC currently, in a minute I’ll look out the window and see Silver Spring. I went to Book Thug Nation in Williamsburg a couple of weeks back, spoke to the cashier at length about the store and the neighborhood since I’d never been before. It turns out he grew up maybe a mile away from where I did, in Silver Spring, home to many, beloved by few. We’ve now veered away and are plugging away through Hyattsville but I’m still stuck thinking about that conversation, where we talked about not feeling okay calling ourselves New Yorkers, even though that’s what all our family and friends from Maryland felt like we were. My parents often call me that, and I don’t mind, but it feels like a lie. We’re pulling through the suburbs just below Baltimore and the ground is already dusted with snow- it feels just shy of cruel- which is me being melodramatic. I just don’t want to claim this snow as mine.

I’m thinking about how terrified I was to move home and stop making work after college. The new work I’ve been doing, I decided recently (after a come-to-jesus with Julie over a mountain of nachos and some other very important dialogue), is about my impetus to keep making work after school. It’s about determination and willfulness and the urge to keep doing, to keep going. I’m doing it subconsciously but I’m doing it, mostly in places that aren’t where I live.

In some ways, I wonder if I’m honoring the places I’m from, the places I leave part of myself every time I leave, by bringing it back to New York and actually MAKING the work here. I don’t have an Imacon in Maryland or Virginia, it’s not like I would have guaranteed access to anything if I moved; I couldn’t even find somewhere that sold film south of New York, much less a place that develops it, without charging a huge markup. I made the choices I made not because they were wrong or right, but because they were my choices to make, and given the circumstances I was when I made them, I think I chose wisely. In this practice, though, I need the escape as much as I need to return to the fold. I was writing a few weeks ago about longing, and how longing leads to searching, and how, usually, if you search stringently enough, if you sift through enough dirt, you find something good. I’m still searching, and it’s a laborious process- but I have rewards. I have tangible evidence that I’ve made work and continued the patterns that are good for me (and dropped some that aren’t), which is what I wanted.

And I still want it- I think a casualty of that is feeling sad I can’t spend all my time in one place for too long without getting an itch to leave. I loved traveling. I will do more of it. I’ll also come back to the places I’m from more. I wanted to promise this with a tattoo, but I don’t need a tattoo to promise myself that. (Though I still want it, goddamn it.) I want it to be enough to promise myself something. While I was asleep an old friend texted me and asked what my goals were for this year: I think that’s a decent one.

[circlesandsoundwaves]

“It's always a vulnerable feeling putting so much of yourself into a song”: Email Interview with Bearings

Photo by Ryan Stacey.

After the 2016 release of the Home Is... EP (listen on Spotify here), Ottawa, Ontario five-piece Bearings have released a brand new song, “North Hansen”. Frontman Doug Cousins wrote “North Hansen” about the loss of his father six years ago; check out the music video here.

In our interview, Cousins describes the band’s music as “an existential crisis from start to finish”. To learn more about Bearings, read on for our interview!

CIRCLES & SOUNDWAVES: For the record, could you please state your name and your role in the band?

Doug Cousins: My name is Doug and I'm the lead vocalist of Bearings!

C&S: You recently released the video for "North Hansen", which was about your father passing away. How did it feel to finally write that song and how does it feel to have it out there for everyone to hear?

DC: It's always a vulnerable feeling putting so much of yourself into a song, but that's what makes it so powerful. The response has been great, and the support people have shown has been incredible. I've had people open up to me about loss in their lives and what that song means to them. It's heartbreaking and relieving all at the same time.

C&S: There's some imagery of flowers in the video, is there any meaning or symbolism behind that?

DC: Loeden- the director of the video- had the idea for that. He wanted to tell a story through imagery rather than with people, which we all thought was very cool. Flowers are always seen at funerals, grave sites, and are connected with loss. Near the end you see the flowers lose their petals which symbolises loss, and then in the final moments of the video the flowers rewind backwards to when they were healthy, a reflection of what once was.

C&S: The band is from Ottawa, Ontario- what's the local scene like in Ottawa?

DC: Only Collin [Hanes, bass] and Tyler [Nickel, guitar] were actually raised in Ottawa. Ryan [Culligan, guitar/ vocals], Connor [Kington, drums] and myself grew up in southern Ontario, closer to Toronto. We all met when we came to college in Ottawa and stayed to keep the band together. Ottawa has a great scene, people go out to shows, it's a tight-knit community that cares. It's going strong and I believe that with younger bands like Castlefield and Nighttime in Kansas on the rise, only good things are yet to come. Oh, and we have the coolest friggin' venue in Canada, Ask A Punk.

C&S: What are some other bands from Ottawa that everyone reading this should check out?

DC: Oh jeez, there's too many to count haha. The scene here has completely exploded over the last couple years and it's given us some great bands. A few I absolutely love watching every time I get the chance are Missioner, Pine, and Mayfield.

C&S: Who are your biggest musical influences?

DC: Growing up my two biggest influences were The Beatles and Blink 182, however I listen to a lot of everything nowadays. There's so much good music out there to study and take something away from.

C&S: What else can we expect from Bearings this year- any shows or tours coming up?

DC: We have some really cool shows happening in march throughout Ontario and Quebec. As for the States it looks like we will be crossing the border this spring! Lots of new adventures this year and a lot more shows.

C&S: What's your response to haters or any who doubts your band?

DC: I've never actually met a hater but I once heard that "haters make me famous" so hopefully we can acquire a few with this new release. The best way to avoid listening to music you don't like is to not listen to it, it's really THAT easy. 

C&S: Is there anything else you'd like to say?

DC: A big thank you to everyone who took the time to share the new video. I'm glad so many people could connect with it and I'll see you at a show real soon.

 Thanks Doug! Be sure to keep up with Bearings on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.