#like if i was putting all these issues in a book the editor would tell me to tone it down a notch

[mrs-barnes-rogers-writes]

The Fate Of A Fae - Part 3

Marvel AU

Pairing: Bucky Barnes x reader x Steve Rogers

Theme: Soulmates / Monster/Fantasy AU

You know on sight. Friends also know when they meet you if you're a match for one of their friends.

Summary: Natasha Romanoff is a meddling, pain in the ass Sprite, who you wrongly thought would leave you alone once you introduced her to your best friend, Darcy. News flash, she doesn’t and she won’t. Not when she thinks you’re a perfect match for two of her best friends. Could she be right? Maybe. Just don’t tell her that.

“Never tell Natasha Romanoff she was right” - Clint Barton

Chapter Summary: This Zoom call could have been an email and the reader is starting to teeter.

If this Zoom call went on any longer you were going to take the pen you’d been twiddling in your fingers for the last half hour and gauge it into one of your eyes.

Dramatic but a Zoom call that could have been an email or voice-note was not what you wanted or needed this morning.

You continued to look out of the window again. The drizzle of the rain and wind a reflection of your mood. Probably too windy for dragons too.

Your laptop pinged with a WhatsApp message and you immediately regretted adding it to your desktop. There was a reason your phone was off. Luckily the others had seemed to have taken the hint. Your work acquaintances not so much.

Tyler At least act interested

Did you mute yourself so we couldn’t hear you sighing, because we can still see your eyes rolling you know!!!

Shit she’s asking you a question!!!!

You tried to style out you jumping up in your seat and your eyes going wide as you scrambled to take yourself off mute.

“Sorry you broke up at the start?” you lied.

Amanda huffed, she knew you weren’t paying attention but let it slide. You were one of the best freelance editors she had. Your deadlines were always met, you were meticulous in your work and you could hold your own with the writers, even with some of the more arsehole creatures. The fact you weren’t paying attention was out of character. Glancing at the screen she knew the other two editors were on friendly terms with you and Tyler’s concerned face along with Marshall’s frown pushed her to break her usual ‘no casual chat’ protocol.

“Y/N? Is everything ok?”

You felt a lump form in your throat. Was it that obvious that something was wrong? That someone that barely knew you would ask if you were ok?”

“What do you mean?”

“Are you alright? You don’t seem like your usually bright, sarcastic self.” She said lightly trying to make light of the situation, when in all honesty you looked like shit, and this book was awful. You’d usually have given opening notes on how bad it was but you’d barely said hello.

“I’m fine” you replied too quickly for any of their liking.

“Are you sure kid? You don’t look good.” Marshall replied.

Tyler put his head in his hands. Fuck you were 100% going to lose it now. Marshall might have been 10 years older than you but him calling you kid was something you hated, him pointing out the obvious of you looking like death warmed up was sure to make you snark back.

“I’m fine. What was the question?”

Tyler couldn’t help but let his mouth fall open in shock. Where was the snarky reply?

Amanda repeated the question a frown across her forehead.

“We were going over plot issues?”

“One sec I have a list” you’d replied, reading them out like a shopping list, no usual sarcastic notes to go with them. As you rounded up the end of your notes the funny anecdotes were back but the glint in your eye that usually came with them wasn’t.

“It’s basically like he’s watched a bunch of Walking Dead, 28 Days Later, a couple of low budget movies and pushed them together. How the virus started has changed three times and we’re a third in.”

“Okay, okay. Let’s pause on this, put in your invoices so far and make a start on the next project.”

The next thirty minutes was spending prepping for the next project. This time a military and spy type drama, which was almost entirely human based.

“So it’s a fantasy drama then?” Tyler had quipped.

“Just make a start please.” Amanda replied pleadingly.

“Y/N? You OK to lead this one?” Marshall asked. You were looking out the window again.

“Y/N?” Amanda asked.

“Sorry what?”

“Are you good to lead? And actually what’s so interesting on that side of the room?” Amanda asked.

“The window.” Tyler replied for you.

“What?”

“I’ve been to her apartment, it’s the window.”

“What? I’m not doing anything?!” you interrupted.

“I just asked if you were good to lead?” Marshall asked softly again.

Clearly you weren’t. Leading meant checking everyone’s work, being thorough and you couldn’t even pay attention on a zoom call.

“Actually no.”

There was a flurry of gasps and widening eyes.

“Y/n?”

“I don’t have any military background, and I’m not entirely human am I so, I don’t think I should lead this one. I should be last edit.”

Your laptop pinged again.

Tyler What the fuck is going on?

You never take third!! You’re way too qualified for that.

Y/N what is going on?

You ignored it and looked back at the Zoom call. You were met with concerned faces. Amanda broke first.

“OK, why don’t we sleep on this and regroup tomorrow morning? But put in your invoices for the zombie trash.”

You nodded, trying to hold yourself together and left the call. You pushed down your emotions and pure exhaustion and decided going back to bed with a cup of tea and some chocolate was the answer. Yeah that was it, you were a bit hormonal and that was the problem. It had nothing to do with meeting one of your soulmates, your complete lack of self worth and the fact you were damaged, along with your ears now felt like they were on fire.

Yet none of that had stopped you looking out the window hoping to see Bucky again. It’s too wet and windy for dragons anyway.

As you pulled a mug from the drainer, your favourite mug no less, you caught it on the stack of plates, sending them towards the floor. Trying to catch them you caught the mug on the worktop and broke it in half.

It went downhill from there when you threw what was left of it on to the floor in your temper. This was quickly followed by you swiping all the other dishes off the drainer as a scream of frustration ripped from your throat. You burst into tears and slipped down on the floor and sobbed.

Your laptop pinged repeatedly. Messages and missed calls from your work colleagues.

Then Darcy.

Darcy Boo Can you pick up please? Tyler called. He said you were out of it on the work call. Are you ok?

Please? I’m worried.

Bucky Doll, is everything ok?

Precious, I’m going to need you to answer me.

I’m coming over there if you don’t reply.

Look, I know we aren’t bonded yet but I know something is off.

You have 5 minutes to reply or I’m coming over.

Answer me.

On the other side of the room, sitting on the floor among broken plates and mugs, your sobs slowed as you drifted off to sleep.

[cowgurrrl]

OKAY WAIT

late night talks with college!joel - how reader and him came to date. they were studying they got distracted talking about something and stayed up all night taking. now joel can get her off his mind. 😉

thank you harry styles <3

I’ll kiss you on the mouth dude I love this idea

UPDATE: I DIDNT KNOW HOW TO END IT AND IF IT WASNT FOR MY MELATONIN KICKING IN I WOULDVE CONTINUED IT

She’s got a book for every situation

Pairing: college!joel x fem!reader

Summary: this ask

Author’s note: typed in tumblr and not proofread so god speed slayers 🫡

Warnings: mentions of alcohol, Joel being The Biggest Flirt, June your BA in English is showing, I think that’s it??

Working at the writing center on campus has its perks. You get unlimited printing, editing experience, and free coffee. Granted, it’s from a pot that had been simmering for several days but it’s free nevertheless. You’ve even managed to get in good with a few professors who would recommend their students come to you if they need help. Normally, they don’t take the advice until finals week and they all scramble into your office all at once. So, when a tall guy with curly dark hair walks into your desolate lobby, you’re a little surprised. He looks lost with a stack of papers piled in his hands and visibly relaxes when he sees you peek your head out.

“Hey there. Can I help you?” You ask, approaching him.

“Maybe. ‘M from Dr. Phillips class and she said to come to the writing center and ask for…” He trails off as he glances down at his paper before saying your name. “Said she might be able to help me with my paper.”

“Yeah, I think she can help you with your paper.” You say and hold out your hand to grab the red inked paper. It’s a paper on Kerouac who’s never been your favorite. In fact, you wrote an entire paper about how pretentious and privileged Jack Kerouac actually was but that’s neither here nor there. The bottom line is that you know how to write a paper professors are looking for. You feel his eyes scanning your face as you read his thesis and try to ignore the blush creeping over your cheeks.

“I take it you’re the brilliant writer Dr. Phillips likes so much.” He says. You smile but don’t take your eyes off his words so you don’t get distracted by his presence.

“Dr. Phillips doesn’t like anyone.”

“She seemed to like you. Told me all about how smart you are,” he says. “Never mentioned the pretty part, though.” Finally, you look up and meet his gaze.

“Technically Dr. Phillips isn’t allowed to recommend one student editor over another. It’s against our policy and makes things a little fairer for everyone. So, can we keep this little secret between us…” you let your sentence end, realizing you never asked his name, and he holds out his free hand.

“Joel.” He says and you shake his hand.

“Well, Joel, I’ll tell you what. I’ll agree to help you get your paper in order if you agree to not get me fired. Fair deal?”

“Yes, ma’am.” He says politely.

You spend the rest of the day walking Joel through essay structures, grammar mistakes, and thesis issues. His argument is strong but it needs to be more concise and punchier. When you try to explain it to him in those terms, he looks at you like you’re from Mars. Eventually, after a little too much flirty small talk, he tells you about his dad’s construction company and you learn to put flowery, over dramatic writing advice into clean, neat boxes that he understands completely. Unfortunately, you don’t end up finishing the actual essay before the center closes.

“You’re free to come back tomorrow morning so we can finish this.” You say as you gather your things and stuff them in your backpack. Joel stretches in his chair, his shirt riding up just enough to reveal a gorgeous sliver of tan skin and you have to force your eyes away from the sight.

“D’you live far from here?” He asks, standing and throwing his own backpack over one shoulder. You waffle for a moment, unsure if you want to tell this almost perfect stranger where you live.

“Maybe a ten minute walk. It’s not bad for Austin.”

“Can I walk you home? Since I kept you so late,” he asks. Once again, you hesitate. Joel doesn’t seem like the typical frat guy you’ve come to fear since your time at school. He actually seems gentle and genuine. You turn the thought over a few more times before he throws his hands up. “‘S just an offer to make sure you get home safe. I’ll even carry your backpack for you if you want.” He offers and you smile. You take another second before handing him your heavy backpack. He slings it over his free shoulder and walks to the door to open it for you, keys jingling in your hand as you lock up the writing center for the night. The humid Texas night suffocates you the second you step out into the fading daylight.

“You always carry girls’ backpacks home?” You ask as you start walking in the direction of your apartment. Campus is mostly empty this time of night, everyone crawling home after class to pregame or cry or both. Squirrels patrol the sidewalks for any students who may want to hand them a piece from their bagel or sandwich. Someone honks their horn in distant standstill Austin traffic, and the sun slowly slides behind the Capitol. It’s peaceful.

“Only when I make ‘em read my shitty writing.” He says and you laugh.

“Your writing’s not bad, Joel. It’s actually very good. Essays are just the worst to write.”

“You like ‘em enough to work at the writing center.”

“Yeah, but that doesn’t mean it’s what I actually care about,” you shrug. “At this point, I’m a warm body with a clicky pen.”

“Woah there, Kafka. I think you’re a little more than that,” Joel laughs and you have to laugh too. Not only for the perfectly on brand joke but for the tone in his voice. The playful lilt makes your head feel fuzzy. “Alright then, if you don’t like essays and you don’t like Kerouac, what do you like? What do you wanna write?” He asks and you take a deep breath. It’s a question you’ve fielded more than enough times in your college career to know that not many people like your answer.

“I’m not sure yet. I like a little bit of everything.”

“Have you written anythin’ I would’ve read?”

“No,” you laugh. “Probably not.”

“Why’s that funny?” He asks and you shake your head.

“Because nobody wants to publish my work. It’s too… rough.”

“Rough?” He raises his eyebrows at you.

“Yeah. Publishers either want the next Great American Novel or nothing at all, and I am not next Great American Novel material.”

“How do you know?”

“Because nobody’s publishing me.”

“Maybe, you’re not lookin’ in the right places,” he says. “‘M just sayin’ someone as smart as you has to have somethin’ someone will wanna take.”

“Yeah, well, don’t go holdin’ your breath on me, cowboy.”

“Why do you do that?” He asks suddenly and you stop to look at him.

“Do what?” You ask.

“Try and play it off whenever someone compliments you.” He says with glaring honesty. It sets you back in your heels but you quickly recover.

“You’ve only known me for a few hours. How do you know I’m not just incredibly humble?”

“I guess I don’t,” he says. “Could I buy you a drink and figure it out?” It could be the way he, somehow, sees right through you already or the way his brown eyes look in the sunlight but you can’t stop the butterflies in your stomach. You purse your lips together and dare a step closer to him.

“Tell you what, if you get an A on this paper, I’ll let you buy me a drink.” You say.

“And if I fail?” He asks and you shake your head.

“You won’t fail.”

“But what if I do?”

“If you do, you have to…” you search your brain. “Carry my backpack home for me for a week.”

“You drive a hard bargain, ma’am.”

“But I take it Joel Miller’s a bettin’ man.”

“See, smarter than you think.” He quips and you roll your eyes.

“One thing at a time, lover boy.”

Joel ends up getting the highest grade on his essay out of anyone in his class. Dr. Phillips commends his dedication to bettering his first draft and tells him to keep up the good work. “Whatever you did to change this, keep it up.” She says when she places his graded essay on his desk. When he presents the A to you at the writing center, all you can do is applaud him and smile.

“I told you you’d pass.” You say, poking at his firm chest.

“Yeah, yeah,” he rolls his eyes. “Maybe I just needed a little motivation.”

“Oh, yeah? What was that?”

“I think I was promised a date.” He says cheekily and you nod.

“You were, and my mama raised me to be a woman of my word,” you smile. “Jenny, do you mind closing up for me tonight?” You ask the receptionist and she shakes her head.

“Not at all, darlin’. Have a good night.” She winks at you when Joel turns his back and you stick your tongue out at her.

Say what you will about the writing center but you think a date with a broad, tall, handsome cowboy is the best thing that could’ve come out of that hell hole.

[jemdeserveslove]

Sarah J. Maas is much more comfortable and better at writing multiple pov's books

I wrote this TWO years ago and never posted, but I think it's still valid, so I uptaded a bit. Welcome to my TED talk: if you love or hate Rhys, this is for you!

I was inspired to write this due some discussions I have seen here lately surrounding Rhys and the pregnancy plot in acosf, so I'm gonna throw my two cents here. Honestly, I don't think I have a very formed opinion on this. I don't agree with what Rhys did and I think it was wrong, but I do think it was on his character to do so. When I was reading acosf, I remember thinking how it was such a Rhys thing to try to come up with a solution to the problem before saying it to Feyre, especially considering that it was a life/death situation. NOW, that's not really a good thing, cause Feysand's whole thing is how they treat each other as equals and Rhys's attitude kinda of went agaisnt that.

Of course, there was the whole "let's not stress the pregnant person out, cause that won't do any good to anyone", which, let's be honest, it's true. But, still, I remember thinking how ewww it was that literally EVERYONE knew about that (hell, I think even Helion knew, right?) except for Feyre. And, yk, it's her LIFE, so she should know (obvs).

NOW, here's what I really wanted to talk about. I think one of our biggest issues surrounding this is the lack of reaction from Feyre. I think it's said in the narrative that she and Rhys had a huge argument about it, but that in the end it was cool. And that's really bad. For us, the readers, it was like "some really serious stuff" BOOM "unicorns and rainbows", we didn't get to see any of that

And the thing about this (and correct me if I'm wrong, cause it could be fake news lol) it was stated that they cut out a lot of scenes that sjm wanted to include, I suppose as bonus chapters, and those scenes were especially Feysand scenes. But her editor thought it was better to cut them out, because that would have diverged the attention from Nesta and Cassian (which, sort of did for some people anyway, but whatever).

And I think this is such a big mess and it's some bad writing in a way. I don't think sjm is a bad writer, quite the contrary, I enjoy her writing very much. But the issue with ACOTAR is that we had three books solely with Feyre's pov, so everything we know about all the characters were because of her and we sort of only had her character growth (if you get what I mean). And, now, we're having this trasition with each new book with two new pov's, and it seems that it's not really covering everything that it should cover to tell the story. ACOSF held a attention on Feysand that I understand why they did it, but if they're going to put a lot of weight into them to that specific story, they should've added more scenes with their pov's.

And, for me, everything comes down to sjm being a lot more comfortable in writing stories with multiple pov's. She did that with ToG and CC. To make a personal comparison with her latest books, hosab had a much better structure than acosf and I think the plot flew a lot better. I can't say the same for hofas, but I think the problem there was the unequal weight of the povs (Tharion and Ithan compared to the rest lol). But in ToG is done beautifully! Of course, sometimes we don't care about certain povs, but that's normal.

Anyway, really excited for some acotar 5 news and tbh, looking foward as to how we can slander Rhys again lol (I love him, ok)

[ganeshpnf]

heyyyyy! i see a lot of criticism on wottg lately and i think they are sooo right. what's your opinion on wottg?

Hmm I already shared a bit of my thoughts about it but who am I to hurt you? Im just gonna rant again and more detailed I guess XD

First of all, I was soo confused by how rushed it was. You can even tell it by the title names. The book felt like it was written in one night. The mistakes also proves it. Editor was asleep? I dont know. Rick is just too old? I dont know. The worst of all, Rick doesnt care enough to put efford anymore? I still dont know, but it sure feels like it. Leo is treated like he is fine and daisy, Clovis being Morpheus's son, weird huge typo mistakes...

Not to mention characters were so ooc. And no Im not talking about: Annabeth threw a party, thats so ooc. I think she was so in character for that one. In fact, that part was my favourite in the book. It was good to remember her rebellious side after show messed her up with her goody two shoes personality. The real issue was Annabeth's and Percy's dynamics felt like they had 0 development in pjo. Wdym that girl is suprised when Percy comforts her? I just read SOM and I can pull so many scenes of Percy comforting her. Wdym Annabeth is fucking surprised when Percy acts all smart? How old they are? 12? (I suggest reading @lilislegacy s criticism for this parts, it was more detailed and so right!)

Its so obvious that Rick wrote this book when he was working on the show and wanted to merge them both together, which is soo wrong in my opinion. Look I like show actors, they are fine with the tv show. But they are NOT the book characters, they are actors. Walker is not Percy Jackson, he is the actor of him in the show. Leah is not Annabeth Chase, she is the actor of her in the show. Aryan is not Grover, he is actor of him in the show. I think Rick and some fans tbh, dont understand this fact. I love them and they deserve to be shine in the big screen, but books should stay books. When we open the book, we should see the book characters, not them. Book canon and show canon should never be together. Because no, they are not the same and would never be. Rick spent this whole book on advertasing his tv show and it was too cringe. Olympus+? Really Rick?

One of the weird thing was also adding Chiron's injury. I was confused bcs like I was sure Percy rode on him before and I know he would notice this. Its just makes 0 sense.

Were they good stuff? Yes, trio's scenes in general werr adorable. Seeing old campers again also. But I want to add that Rick lost a big chance to make this book shine. Where is Jason? Even mention of him would be a big hit, imagine him in that party. I know even with these mistakes, this book would be a hit. Also so many fans wanted this Idk why he didn't go for it.

I like Rick, even though he makes me so angry with this kind of stuff. He gave me a perfect childhood with this characters. But that doesnt mean I have to agree with his every decision and support him no matter what. Idk if he is getting old or anything but this book was just a fanfiction. And not a good fanfiction because I know I see so many better written fanfictions. I hope he fixes his mistakes in the next book because I am still hopeful, even though I am a bit scared. I still want the next book soo bad. Wishing it would be more like Chalice you know :)

Oh and before I finish it, I am forever mad for him mixing Annabeth's lemon shampoo!!! I'm sorry but that was special to me. Apple shampoo? Wdym usual apple shampoo? Someone need to fix this typo mistakes!

Thank you for your ask anon :)

[genericpuff]

Hello I’ve had this on my mind for awhile. How much of the plot is Rachel’s doing? What I mean is that we all agree that the canvas series was written better. So how much of the original is actually written by RS and how much by webtoon? RS said it herself that she didn’t think the comic would be longer than 40 episodes. What are your thoughts?

There have been AMA's in the past from Webtoons Originals creators where people have asked those questions, and many other statements from creators on Twitter basically verify everything that's been said in these AMA's (or at least pretty close). I don't know what Rachel's situation is specifically, but Webtoons really doesn't exert as much control over the final product as, say, traditional markets do.

Like, in the book publishing market, if you want to work with a publisher, that means you have to submit a manuscript to publishers until one accepts you. Then they'll typically assign you an editor who will go through your book and help make it into the best version it can be before it gets put on shelves. While they'll try to work as best to your original vision as possible - as your original vision is what they accepted in the manuscript stage - they'll still be holding certain expectations over their authors because they don't want to release a book that's crap. They want to ensure the book that releases is good enough to make money, because if it makes money, that benefits both the publishing house and the writer. If the writer refuses to work with the editor - whether due to the publisher not acting in the writer's best interests or the writer being too stubborn to allow change - then the publishing house and writer may decide to go separate ways as the publishing house doesn't want to sell a book that isn't up to their standards.

Webtoons, on the other hand, does not operate this way. The 'editors' seem to be less for the sake of quality assurance and polish and more for acting as middlemen between the creator and the company. The creators do not speak to the "higher ups", if they have questions or concerns that can only be answered by specific departments in Webtoons (ex. statistics, finances, etc.) then they have to ask those questions to their editor who will then go to the higher-ups, get the answers they can, and then relay them back to the creator. This is basically the bare minimum function of editors. Anything else they do for creators is offering helpful suggestions which, unlike in the traditional publishing industry, the creators are not obligated to listen to. The creator's only real obligation is to meet their deadlines. The editors are really just there to ensure that the creator is following Terms of Service guidelines (i.e. if the creator submits an episode that blatantly breaks those rules, the editor can tell them no) and to act as a liaison between the creator and the company.

So, knowing this, I fully believe a lot of what's happening in the comic is Rachel's own doing. That said, they could very well have a different structure with how they operate due to Lore Olympus being the #1 comic on the platform. Maybe Rachel is more obligated to listen to whatever the higher-ups say. Maybe it's in her contract that she has to include certain things for the sake of "marketability". We don't know.

What we DO know is who edits Lore Olympus. Bre Boswell.

This is where I'm gonna go on a bit of a tinfoil hat rampage, so bear with me, but take everything I'm about to say with a potentially-lethal dose of salt.

I see people bring up the editor a lot, but honestly, I don't think LO having a bad editor is the case. Bre Boswell edits a lot of series on Webtoons - and it's a well known issue that many editors are working on WAY too many series at the same time but that's a separate can of worms - but none of them are quite as blatantly awful as LO is. The Kiss Bet isn't a masterpiece, but it's just fine for what it is. Shiloh and Nevermore are both solid pieces of work with great art and great writing. Aside from that, I've spoken personally to people who know Bre and can attest that she's a great editor and a very sweet person.

But Bre wasn't always the editor of LO.

The original editor was Bekah Caden.

Bekah is no longer an editor at Webtoons. Whether it was her own choice, again, we don't know, but she does stand by the fact that Webtoons wasn't an awful company to work for during her time there, so I'd like to believe she had an overall positive experience.

Of course, Bekah has not been the sole editor of Lore Olympus since Episode 30. So while I'm sure she's speaking in good faith here, I think a lot has changed on the backend of Webtoons since she was a part of it, especially during that pandemic period when Webtoons experienced a boom in readership... only to lose a lot of it by 2022, when the company made some risky ventures in advertising and got (justifiably) called out on it, and when many creators stepped forward to talk about their negative experiences with the company (as much as they could under the weight of their NDA's). I'm not saying Bekah is lying here, more so just that clearly things have changed since she was working for the company. She hasn't been the sole editor for LO since 2018, literally two years before the plague.

Of course, that was when she was the sole editor. For a short period of time, LO actually had two editors - Bekah Caden and Annie LaHue.

Now, Bekah has worked for other publishers like Dark Horse and has calls for work, but Annie, on the other hand, seemed to have her breakout with LO, and then switched gears entirely by working for Webtoons' competitor, Tapas. Now it seems like she's stepped away from editing entirely (but she's writing a book so that's neat ! )

Anyways. Where does Bre come in to all this?

Bekah slowly phased out of editing LO, fully quitting by Episode 54 where Annie took over.

And then Annie just... disappeared.

There was no transition period like there was with Bekah. Annie was there, and then as soon as Episode 100 hit, she was gone. Bre took over as the sole editor of LO with Episode 101, and she's been the editor ever since.

So now let's talk about Bre.

Bre is the editor of Lore Olympus. She's also the editor of Down to Earth, Shiloh, Nevermore, The Kiss Bet, The Doctors Are Out, Edith, Metaphorical HER, Messenger, Matchmaker Hero, Lavender Jack, Wolfsbane, Soul on Hold, Muted, Unlucky is as Lucky does, Brass & Sass, Assassin Roommate, BOO! It's Sex, and I'm sure many more that haven't been updated on her website. She's not the only editor who's managing this many series, there are some editors who are rumored to have 30+ series on the go. That is a ridiculous amount for ONE person to have to keep track of. That's a lot of series for one person to have to read all on their own schedules, let alone manage. In Bre's case, out of that list alone, that's something like 16 separate creators to keep tabs on, communicate with and for, with series that vary wildly among genres and contractual obligations.

So yeah, Bre is a straight up badass, but something about her sudden presence in LO has always bugged me. Then it came to me, something that I believe I've mentioned here before, but will talk about again because it really is interesting food for thought to chew on.

Bre came on as the editor in March 2020. Five months after the Jim Henson purchase was announced.

And what does Bre have on her resume?

Traditional animation, with a minor in Writing for Television.

This is very tinfoil hat, don't get me wrong, so take this with MOUNTAINS of salt, but there are a LOT of things that point to LO turning out the way it did due to its TV deal. Not only did Bre come on suddenly shortly after the TV deal was announced, but that time range is when the art really started to look like what it does today - because it's where Rachel started taking on more assistants, some of whom still work on the series to this day (ex. Dnaeri, who came on as a regular assistant around Episode 74, which came out August 2019, two months before the TV deal was announced, but had likely already been signed. Dnaeri, btw, has an education in... you guessed it, Fine Arts in Animation.) Many of her assistants nowadays are people with experience in larger industries and massive portfolios featuring work far more advanced than what's being done in LO.

So while I don't think a lot of the plot threads are on Bre or the platform - I think it's genuinely just Rachel writing herself into a corner and not wanting to let go of the one project she clings to the most as her only "success" - I do think there are some creative decisions regarding the structure of the comic (like it's constant use of pointless soap opera style cliffhangers and its corporate scrubbing of the art style) that may be consequences of the comic being picked up for TV. Like how it now feels like the comic is being fluffed up with way too many plotlines, possibly in an attempt to give the TV show more to do, or how it feels like they're scrubbing and retconning all the S1 content that came from before the TV deal.

A shame if that is the case, because the TV show hasn't happened and likely isn't going to happen. It feels like such a waste of Webtoons' resources and money to sign on all these industry-class assistants and editors for a comic that's being managed by Rachel "Retcon" Smythe.

[thedomesticanthropologist]

**pre note: Exclusively voice to text was used to write this.There will be errors in wording, spelling and grammar even while I complain about published.Novels having the same issues

I have huge issues with the fantasy and particularly fantasy romance.Novels that are being published.

On one hand I am over the moon.I am thrilled that the things that I used to be only able to get through fanfiction are now available for purchase on bookshelves. I have huge respect for the authors that have taken the time to write out these stories for consumption

But what the hell is going on in the editing and publishing industry?!?!

I am seeing books being put on the shelves.That should have had at least one if not three more rounds of editing done. I'm seeing book series where the titles are so consistent with other authors' works that it is almost impossible to tell who wrote something and it's almost impossible to tell which series are which!

I see cover art and in particular choice in cover font. That is so consistent that it's insane to me, that these are by different designers and different publishers.

And when you're actually reading the book looking through and finding missing quotation marks misspellings of main characters or side characters' names inconsistencies with descriptions of what type of stonework buildings are made out of inconsistencies with grammar and just overall things.That you would find in a first draft, and yet i'm paying twenty six dollars canadian for a paper back !!!

Not to mention longer series that have severe issues with red conning characters or dropped plot points or contradictory plot points that sort of a thing is one thing.But when i'm reading a book and i'm seeing them repeating information that was introduced earlier in the same book in a manner that suggests that the author forgot that they already introduced that information when I am seeing a character getting their name misspelled -

This is not just of writing issue.Especially seeing words that are used like on repeat if I see the same word repeated in a giant paragraph five or six times in a seven sentence paragraph that is not the author's problem that is an editor's problem.They should have caught that!!

Why is everything a court of something? Why are all of the main love interests?The same guy in a different hat?? Why are all of the main characters? The same basic brat type personality in roughly the same age range.???

And someone's gonna get on here and say, if you don't like it, don't read it and someone's gonna get on here and say they write it because it's what sells, and it's what's popular and they want to make money and someone's going to say all of these things, and you know what fuck you.

The type of why that i'm asking here is not something that has that basic of an answer.I am prompting screaming, begging and pleading for editors and publishers to stop rushing things in the name of capitalism and for authors to Please stop being so god damn formulaic

[augustheart]

DC Pride 2023 Tribute to Rachel Pollack

This is a transcription of the text that appears at the end of DC Pride, written by a variety of authors in memory of trailblazing writer Rachel Pollack. I've done my best to copy everything exactly as it was written, and I apologize for any errors. It's over 3,000 words, so I'm going to put it under a cut outside of the foreword. The rest of the tributes are in plain text and not italicized except in places where they were by the original authors.

(If you would like a PDF of the following transcription, one is available here.)

“On April 7, 2023, the legendary writer and Tarot expert Rachel Pollack passed at age 77. Her work for DC's Vertigo imprint���including the celebrated Vertigo Tarot deck and a long run on Doom Patrol that was a deep influence on the property's recent HBO Max series—was profoundly meaningful for generations of comics fans. She was a trailblazing trans woman in comics and sci-fi communities that were frequently male-dominated, and her lifelong love of both superheroes in particular and the comics medium in general allowed her to confidently turn their storytelling tropes inside out, truly queering her comics in every sense of the word.

In the months before her passing, the editors of DC Pride were speaking to Rachel about writing a new story for this very issue, and her enthusiasm for the project was boundless, as she planned to return to her themes of the superhero and the secret identity, of the "kink" of costumes, and of the revelatory freedom that she found in these characters. Unfortunately, just as work was set to begin on the script, completing it became impossible for her. In the absence of that last great work, but with gratitude for the incredible stories she did give us, we've opted to turn the pages we reserved for Rachel's story over to her friends, and to the fans whose lives she changed, to share their memories of her.”

—Unspecified Author or Editor

“I met Rachel Pollack in 1985, at a convention, where I was interviewing her about Salvador Dali’s Tarot, and then I met her again a couple of days later at the Milford Science Fiction Writers’ Conference, and we became friends fast. She was smart and funny, she was a brilliant writer, and she was the first person I’d met who knew more than I did about obscure Jewish mythology.

She told me off for writing a line of dialogue. ‘But that’s the only thing in the whole story that’s actually true,’ I told her, and she explained that art truth and reality truth were two very different things. And I knew she was right.

I don’t know how much I learned about writing, but listening to Rachel and Gwyneth Jones and John Clute and Lisa Tuttle and the rest of them, I learned so much about reading, and what I learned would change me as a writer.

Rachel was my friend. I had never met a person who had transitioned before and I had so many questions and, patiently, she answered all of them. She decided I needed to know Roz Kaveney, and Roz and I have been friends for decades now.

In 1988 I was writing Books of Magic and knew I needed a Tarot reading in the comic. Rachel was in London, and I asked her what the reading should be. She took me out to buy a Tarot deck that spoke to me, and I saw what happened when Rachel Pollack walked into a Tarot shop. It was a little like what happened when The Beatles went on Ed Sullivan. And then she gave me a beautiful reading of four cards, which encapsulated the whole of the story I was trying to tell.

She won the Arthur C. Clarke Award in 1989 for Unquenchable Fire, and I read it and suspected Rachel was creating her own school of fiction, her own brand of magical realism.

We argued, gently, about Wanda’s fate in A Game of You, and Rachel did what I wish everyone who had an argument about art would do, which is she took what she wanted to say and put it into a comic. Tom Peyer had asked her to write Doom Patrol after Grant Morrison left, and she did a remarkable job. I loved the delirious joy of her comics, the magic and the sense of fun, in Doom Patrol and in the comics that followed Doom Patrol.

I was thrilled to see Rachel when I moved to Upstate New York, and then I didn’t see her for years. I did that thing where you think you’re in touch with your friend, but really you’re just on social media at the same times. I was stuck out of the country during COVID, and Rachel had cancer. I was thrilled when I returned to hear that she had beaten the cancer, and then I was going to see her and she hadn’t beaten the cancer. A whole new cancer had turned up on the day she had beaten the first one.

I got to see Rachel more in the past few months than I had in the previous few years. She was as funny as ever, as sharp and as wise. I got to know her wife, Zoe, and to appreciate their love. I got to tell her bad Jewish jokes that, I suspect, I’d probably first heard from her. ‘Everywhere I went, people said ‘Look at the schmuck on the camel!’’ Some people die well—not necessarily bravely, necessarily, but gently and wisely and kind. Rachel was going to be one of those. She asked me to come to her funeral, and I said that I would.

Her funeral, several months later, was in the sunshine. It was filled with friends of hers from comics, from fiction, from Tarot, from writing, from teaching, from family, from the world, and Rachel lay above the grave on a wooden plank, wrapped in white winding sheet. We said true things about her, and we were funny and honest and there was so much love, and then we shoveled the earth on her, and cried, and said our goodbyes.

I’ve never met anyone like her. I’m glad she was my friend.”

—Neil Gaiman

“Rachel Pollack and I had the same favorite comic book—why, Doom Patrol, of course—and for a while she was its writer and I was its editor. She followed Grant Morrison, whose name was big and growing even then, and for years it seemed like Grant’s era might totally eclipse hers in memory. But DC released her Doom Patrol omnibus in 2022, and in the process unwrapped the radiation-proof bandages from her work, exposing the piercing and radiant appreciation that so many fans felt for it. On top of that, this year Dennis Culver and Chris Burnham, the creators of the excellent Unstoppable Doom Patrol, paid a moving in-story tribute to Rachel’s cast of broken-but-healing heroes.

I’m glad she got to see the omnibus, and I’m grateful for the chance it gave us to relive her perceptive, ironic, unsettling, and revelatory run. It was known for being strange and surreal, but there was so much more going on. Doom Patrol had been weird before, and funny, but never quite as wise or kindly meant.

A story that I always think of when I think of Rachel featured yours truly. At the end of my time as an editor—I had decided I wanted to write full-time—I called the creators I worked with to let them know I was leaving. Most of them, quite understandably, reacted with some implied variation of ‘What’s going to happen to me?’ It made me start to think I was being horrible and selfish. But when I called Rachel and nervously told her what I had decided, there was a silence, and then she said, ‘Quitting is good for the soul.’”

—Tom Peyer

“I met Rachel Pollack in the late ‘90s at WisCon, the feminist science fiction convention where we were both guests. It was the first day of the con, and they were introducing all the guests. I had read Rachel’s Doom Patrol comics and at least one of her books, Unquenchable Fire, and was excited about meeting her. She must have felt the same about me, because when the introductions were over, we headed straight toward each other as though we’d been magnetized, and we became friends immediately.

We lived on opposite sides of the continent, so we didn’t get to see each other that often, but thank the Goddess for email. I visited Rachel’s house once and she visited mine once. Her house was nicer. She took me to visit Hyde Park, Franklin Roosevelt’s old home, now a historic site—we were both FDR fans—and I taught her a Yiddish World War II song. We were both into our Jewishness, but from different angles. Rachel was interested in the mystic side, and I was into Yiddishkeit. Rachel had a bat mitzvah, and I studied Yiddish.

Rachel and I discovered we had the same birthday—August 17, which we shared with Mae West and Davy Crockett. So we sent each other birthday cards that also included happy birthday wishes to Mae and Davy.

I knew Rachel had written many books on the Tarot, so when one day I found a complete set of Tarot cards lying in the street, I decided the Goddess wanted her to have them, and I sent them to her on our birthday. After that, the Goddess would put out Tarot cards for me to find almost every year, often just in time for Rachel’s birthday presents. In return, she sent two Tarot cards that she had drawn for me when I was being treated for cancer. (I’m cancer free now!) I saved them and put them away safely—somewhere.

Last year a neighbor who was a collector of stuff died and left his collections to us, his neighbors, to take for free. Among all the stuff in his stuff-filled rooms was an unopened set of Tarot cards. Shortly after I found the cards, my Romani neighbors who lived around the corner put a book on Tarot out on the street, so I took that for Rachel. I mailed the book and cards to Rachel for our birthday.

For the first time, I got no answering card. I didn’t know that Rachel’s lymphoma had come back.

And somehow, it all got away from me.

Periodically, I would think, ‘Phone her—must phone Rachel,’ but something would come up and I’d forget to phone, or it would be too late to phone because of the time difference between New York and California. Damn it!

I miss you, Rachel. In our next lives, I’ll try to be a better friend.”

—Trina Robbins

“I first met Rachel Pollack when I was the assistant editor on The Sandman and she was the new Doom Patrol monthly writer. I shared an office with Tom Peyer, who was Rachel’s editor, and when Rachel swept in like a redheaded bohemian priestess, I always wound up putting aside my own work so I could chat a bit with Rachel as well. She had the rare gift of wielding her considerable expertise about comics and mythology in a way that made the person talking to her feel smarter.

After I left DC Comics to write full-time, I moved to Rhinebeck and discovered that Rachel lived there, too. We formed a small writing group that met once a week, usually in my kitchen. Always as kind as she was insightful, Rachel spent more time celebrating what worked than critiquing what didn’t. She did a lot of celebrating, of others’ writing and of her own, delighting in the words and worlds that moved through her.

She was, pre-pandemic, a frequent guest at my Passover Seder, the only person besides myself and my mother who knew all the Hebrew and all the traditional melodies. Her vast knowledge of midrash and Kabbalah made her comments more delicious than the charoset she made, and let me tell you, that was pretty damn good. 

In October, when she started to get really sick and I started to visit more frequently, often with Neil Gaiman, Rachel defied any expectation of how a dying person ought to act. She cracked Borscht Belt jokes and talked about writing and writers, and then I went with her wife, Zoe, to pick out a grave. We discussed the Tarot, which I had belatedly begun to study along with her seminal book on the subject, Seventy-Eight Degrees of Wisdom. I asked, ‘What does it mean when you get an auspicious card in a place that means it’s negative?’ ‘It means that’s what you’re struggling with,’ she replied.

I am struggling with this turn of the cards. I cannot fully fathom that she will not be sitting at our favorite local café, writing, but ready to put down her antique fountain when she sees me. Yet when I turn back to her writing, I feel her still with me: Doom Patrol Rachel, Writing Partner Rachel, Rachel of the Passover Seder, Rachel Poet, Rachel Priestess, Rachel Friend.”

—Alisa Kwitney

“Rachel Pollack loved comics.

When we first talked about comics, it was about her own. Eight years ago I asked Martha Thomases if the Doom Patrol run after Grant’s was worth checking out, as I hadn’t heard much talk of it. She said ‘Yes. Read it.’ I adored the run and reached out to Rachel via email to let her know. To my surprise, I heard back from her within 20 minutes.

Over time we talked about the comics and creators that she loved. Carl Barks and the Duck comics, particularly the characters of Huey, Dewey, and Louie, meant a great deal to her. Little Lulu was high on her list. And The Fox and the Crow inspired a whole arc of her Doom Patrol run. The works of Jack Kirby (particularly on Fantastic Four and the Fourth World saga), Steve Ditko, and Gene Colan were brought up often, as were series including Xambi and Promethea, which she revisited often. She had even reached out to Marvel back in the early ‘70s inquiring about writing opportunities, two decades before writing at DC. 

Rachel saw the inherent queerness in superhero comics back in the Silver Age. One example she would reference was “The Town That Hated Superboy!” from 1967’s Superboy #139. In it, the citizens of Smallville turn against Superboy for nearly two pages. What stood out to Rachel was how Ma and Pa Kent pretended to hate Superboy out of fear that if they didn’t, those around them might suspect that Superboy was really their adoptive son, Clark. Though taking this sequence and relating it to an idea as heavy as the violent consequences of inadvertently outing someone by simply treating them with kindness was unlikely Otto Binder’s intention, the subtext was picked up on by many queer comics readers at the time in addition to Rachel.

Through the years I got to have a greater understanding of Rachel’s unbelievable kindness as well. She saw the world as a positive place and held out hope for just about everyone. Rachel discussed how attitudes with London’s Gay Liberation Front turned against the trans community in the ‘70s, but she would also talk about how some of the same people came back around and were vocal advocates for trans rights by the ‘90s. Whereas most, understandably, would allow themselves to be bitter and resentful, Rachel’s capacity for love and compassion was too strong for that.

I was devastated knowing just how many projects Rachel had in the works and how many stories she still had to tell. But after taking time to think on it, I know that no matter how long she stayed here with us, her work would never be done. Her stories will continue through those who love her and those who haven’t found her yet but will love her just the same. 

I love talking about Rachel’s work and her kindness. I plan on doing so for the rest of my life.”

—Joe Corallo

“‘It’s so cool that you created the first trans superhero,’ a very nice person told me recently. Writing feels like stuffing a message in a bottle and lobbing it out into the open sea, so to meet someone who had caught one of my bottles and read what was inside was extremely exciting. Unfortunately, I am a nerd first and a lover of accolades second, so I had to correct them. 

Galaxy, the character I created, is not the first out trans superhero in the DC Universe. Kate Godwin, created by Rachel Pollack 30 years ago, is. Kate is important, but more than that, she’s important to me. 

I was a teenager 30 years ago. That’s also important.

There’s a lot of talk of firsts in superhero comics, most of it meaningless. Dick Grayson absolutely deserves the ‘Sensational Character Find of 1940’ label trumpeted on the cover of his first appearance, Detective Comics #38, but you don’t need to read it, even as a die-hard Robin fan.

You can’t say that about Doom Patrol #70, the first appearance of Kate Godwin. That issue changes everything. That issue changes lives. Because Kate, a kind and funny woman, with an amusing power set and questionable taste in superhero outfits, who is beautifully, unapologetically trans—Kate is the viewpoint character.

Imagine the power of that. Holding up a trans woman—a lesbian trans woman, at that!—and saying ‘This, this is who you, the reader, should identify with.’ To have a trans woman be smart and pretty and likable, and not an object of scorn or pity, or a side character. She was the hero! I can tell you from experience, that is a tough sell now.

Reading that comic in the 1990s felt like a lightning bolt from heaven.

It was too powerful for my teenage self to handle. It was radioactive, and yet I would read my copy ragged to bask in its glow. I can call up its panels from memory. When I finally began my transition, many years later, I wore a lot of black tank tops and jeans, unconsciously aping Kate’s unofficial uniform. I didn’t put it together until recently, rereading those 30-year-old stories that I had imprinted upon like a baby bird. Early on, I wasn’t sure of the kind of woman I was, but clearly I knew the kind of woman I wanted people to see. Someone like Kate Godwin.

I never got the chance to meet Rachel Pollack and tell her how I had received her message in a bottle. How I had held it close to my heart until I finally found the strength to absorb its message. How she showed me I wasn’t alone, and I could be a hero, even if that just meant saving myself.

But I hear people say those words to me, having read about Galaxy. Which will have to do.

Thank you for being first, Rachel.”

—Jadzia Axelrod

[calliope-nash]

The Little Nash: Buddie's Girl

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Callie: So, guess who is back in my life.

Dazja: I thought he lived in Texas. When did he move and why is he a firefighter. Not that I am complaining about that. Wait, are you going to connect both books?

Callie: I think so. Plus, it would make life easier for me. Though Eddie found out I wrote some spicy scenes, and he wasn’t happy. But that other guy who I was thinking about making the other love interest, seemed to calm Eddie down. He is totally cool with a love interest. 

Dazja: Just be careful. Don’t get feelings like you did last time.

After that I didn’t respond to her. Eddie had been someone I was close to, but feelings were something I never accounted for. I was normally good at keeping myself at arm’s length from those I was working with. Eddie just broke through so many walls I held up, but I couldn't start anything. Luckily at the time he was married, and I didn’t worry about that. Now I have no idea if those feelings will return or if Buck will be the new person they will go too. I pray for neither or hell even both. 

I got up for the day and started to look for my old files on Eddie. I made it a mission to learn everything I can about the people I write about to make it seem more real and less like interviews. It helped to humanize some of the soldiers who didn’t have much of a personality except that they needed to protect others. 

I found the file I was looking for, the one about his wife Shannon. I figured that I needed to update the file seeing as if Eddie was in LA, she was too. I looked up her name and LA in a search bar. What I learned saddened me. She died. Eddie must have been devastated. I decided to look up the case file from her death. I needed to get access to that. 

As if someone knew I was doing research, there was a knock on my door. Okay no one knew where I lived yet. But when I opened the door, there was my brother and a woman I wasn’t sure who she was. I let them in and asked if they wanted anything.

“Callie, this is my wife, Athena.”

“You got married again?”

Bobby only nodded. I didn’t waste anytime and hugged her and welcomed her to our weird ass family. She seemed surprised by how okay I was with them not inviting me to the wedding. I had no issue with it mostly because I was too busy writing my novel at the time I wasn’t really talking to anyone except my editor.

Bobby promised that the three of us would get together and have dinner. I agreed as long as he didn’t mind, I used it as an interview for my new book. Athena looked at me with confusion. I told her about my new idea and how the two male love interests were going to be based on Buck and Eddie. Which was the first Bobby heard about.

“No.”

“My book, my rules. Besides, Buck already agreed, and Eddie has given me permission to use his likeness and or his personality in any novel I write.”

Athena just gave Bobby a look, which I read as ‘your sister is sassy, and I like her.’.  I high fived her for her support. We all sat down to have some breakfast before Bobby’s shift started. As we ate, I was glad to have a sister-in-law who didn’t take any of Bobby’s shit. At one point Bobby went to the restroom and I got a chance to talk to Athena alone.

“How the hell did my brother get to be with an amazing woman? Like seriously, he has no game at all, and the man has some fucking issues.”

“It just happened. We decided to give it a shot after an interesting call about a man on a motorcycle. Besides that, everything about us has been good. Your brother is a good man who has been through hell and back.”

“I know he is. He just worries about me sometimes. We didn’t talk for a long time after I left to work as a journalist who wrote about overseas missions. That’s how I know Eddie. I was embedded with his team on his last tour.”

“Bobby told me about that. I read some of your articles from your time there. You never used anyone’s name. Why?”

“Its their story to tell, if they want to put their name on it that’s not my decision to make.”

Before I could say anything else, Bobby came back. I told her we would talk later. Athena just laughed. Bobby told me that if I planned on going in today, that I should get ready before he left and he would drive me to the firehouse. I told him to just go on without me. I had to do something first. Athena asked what I needed to do. Grabbing my laptop, I showed them my google search about Shannon. Bobby was the first to speak up. He told me not to talk about her around Eddie. Like I was planning on bringing more trauma to his life than he has already been through. 

After talking to them about what I needed to know about Shannon’s death, I was glad I never mentioned that Diego, the character based on Eddie, had a wife. I had written about a son, but never a wife. Which I can easily explain in this new book. My heart broke for Eddie, he was a good man who had more love to give than he was given. The few times I talked to Shannon without Eddie’s knowledge; I hated her. Though I understood what she was the way she was about Christopher. She had no clue what it was like to have a child with a disability.

I walked the two of them out. Before I could get dressed, I started crying. Eddie needed someone in his life who could be not only his rock but also good with Christopher. Though I knew that crying for a man who didn’t want to talk to me right now was pathetic, I cared about him. I got myself composed and got ready to be in interview mode.

Getting to the fire house wasn’t that hard, but getting out of my car was. Just as I was going to open my door, I saw Eddie’s truck. Taking a few deep breaths, I opened my door and walked toward him. 

“Eddie?”

“Calliope.”

“Okay I deserve that. Listen, I promise I never meant to keep those scenes from you. It just never felt like the right time to bring them up. After everything that happened to us in Afghanistan, I figured that you didn’t want to talk about anything relating to your time there. I promise to try and make this up to you. The first step for that is informing you that the next book will be a sequel which makes the series into a why choose romance. Diego will still be there, but Stella, the female lead, will have another male who takes interest in her. He will be based on Buck.”

“WHAT?! First you write scenes with basically you and me. Now its going to be you and Buck?”

Before I could explain anything, Eddie walked away, leaving me standing there like an idiot. Slowly, I walked to the lobby to check in with Bobby. Almost immediately he knew something was wrong. I just shook my head and told him to drop it. As I started setting up in one of the spare offices, Buck entered. He looked like he wanted to apologize for something.

“Eddie’s response to what the plans are for my novels are valid for him. Though he didn’t let me explain that it wasn’t just scenes that he thinks I am going to write. The character that is going to be based on you will be having some sex scenes that are with my female lead. Eddie thinks it means something more than it is.”

Buck tried to help me understand where Eddie was coming from. Though I suspect it has more to do with not wanting his teammate in a foul mood at a scene. I thanked him for listening and asked when we could do our first interview session. The word session messed with Buck a little. He seemed annoyed by it. I just laughed at his face.

“Guessing you don’t like the thought of therapy? That is kind of what interviews are though. At least in my experience.”

“Just don’t want people to see me in the wrong light.”

“Buck, the interview is just for me. Its to help me pick details for your character. I might even show you the first one I did with Eddie some day. With his permission of course. Consent is sexy.”

My final sentence made Buck laugh. We talked for a bit and got to work on scheduling his first interview. Learning about Buck was nice. He had a good heart and I was hoping to reflect it in the novel. The bell rang and they all went out. Eddie was the man behind for the first half of the shift. Which was just fantastic. 

I distanced myself from him and started working on an outline for the story. We weren’t going to be talking anytime soon with his attitude the way it was, but I still held hope that he would let me explain. 

Around lunch, once the team had returned, Bobby made burgers. He asked me and Buck to help make some sides. I worked on making fries, regular and sweet potato ones, while Buck made macaroni and potato salads. 

“Why do people eat those? Mayonnaise is disgusting except in a few circumstances.”

“You don’t like mayonnaise? How are you Bobby’s sister?”

“You have no idea how many times I was asked that growing up. Minnesota is brutal when it comes to their salads. Though I think it has something to do with my mom being from Oregon. She was a character.”

Buck grabbed the salads as we walked to the table. He apologized if talking about my mother was difficult. Shrugging was my response. It wasn't hard to talk about her, it was more living with the memories of her and the ones i won't be able to share with her.

We got the table all set up just as Bobby finished the last of the burgers. I waited until everyone else had gotten their food before getting mine. Figuring I wasn't welcome to sit with the 118 family, I started to walk back to the office I was set up in. 

Bobby asked me where I was heading. Gesturing to the office, he told me to sit down. Buck waved me over and I sat next to him. Eddie was on his other side. I thanked whichever god was watching over that Buck didn’t make me sit between the two of them. Lunch was a nice change of pace. Howard, who told me to call him Chim or Chimney, asked what the plans were for my time here.

“Well, once I have enough information from all of you guys, I'll probably leave until the book is done. No distractions. Though that is just the plan as of right now.”

“You'll leave like always” Eddie’s voice held a venom i wasn't surprised by.

“Edmundo, do we need to have a private conversation now, or wait until we schedule a time for an interview?”

“You are going to interview me again?”

“Yes, you have changed. Why wouldn't I want to know what has changed and what is the same.”

My comment shuts Eddie up for the time being. Buck lightly squeezes my hand under the table. The gesture was welcomed, but surprising. I tried to ignore the looks Bobby and Buck were giving me. But Bobby was the one I was more worried about. He never wanted me to date a firefighter. 

I stopped talking after my staring contest with my brother. There was nothing worse than when Bobby got over protective. Especially after what happened in Minnesota. 

After lunch, I went back to the office I was set up in, to work on setting up a schedule for who is doing interviews when as well as when I wouldl be shadowing the team to better understand what they do on calls. Bobby used to try and tell me, but I was bored most of the time. Never felt the need to know. 

After roughly twenty minutes, Athena came to the door. She informed me that Bobby had asked her to check on me. Rolling my eyes, I shook my head.

“He wants to know what Eddie meant at lunch. I don’t want to talk about it. Besides, Eddie can’t say anything about my leaving when he was the one to… Nevermind, it’s in the past.”

“Eddie lead you on?”

“No, I got romantically invested, and I needed space. I think he thought I wanted to leave before their mission was finished. Which was not the case at all. The longer I was with them, the harder it was going to be for me to leave. Honestly I would have gone to Texas with him.”

Athena understood what I was impling with my confession. “Have you ever told him?”

I shook my head. He was married and I wasn’t going to be a homewrecker. Looking back now, Eddie always asking me about my personal life just as much as I was asking about his. Before I could tell her anything else, Buck walked in. I realize everyone was back. I thank Athena for listening. She gave Buck a pat on the shoulder as she left. 

“I don’t want to talk about it. Eddie and I are a complicated friendship.”

“Good, because I asked Bobby a question. Now I am going to ask you one.”

“Buck?”

“Have dinner with me tonight?”

[pawbeanies]

tagged by: @emo-mmy !!! hi!!! running around in circles around you thank you for the taggg

im. putting this under a readmore because i realized i like talk so much and then i got embarrassed because this is so long and silly and i go on a billion tangents. tagging games fun though !!!

last song:

covering my face with my sleeve paws i may be silly. lately i am getting into vkei bc beloved people in my life are like "you would like it!!!" and i DO !!! this specific song is actually a cover of the op of the 80s rose of versailles anime which like is in itself a whole other fun thing to talk about because of its like influence but like OK its a good somg. its a good cover. lareine is no longer together but like the members have gone on to do other stuff !!!!

favorite color: pink and blue !! i am indecisive and it swaps... but i like those the most

currently watching: sara z's video on dear evan hansen!! for some reason. my yt algorithm is like all musical theatre videos. or episodes of kitchen nightmares. i don't even think i'm all that into theatre but i like listening to people who know more tear into it

last movie: i was like in agony trying to remember what the last movie i watched was and then i remembered. its twilight. it was twilight. im on a vampire kick right now it seems (but also it was like at a friends house and i was only half watching because they brought their pet rabbit out to hang out with us and i was playing with it the whole time and it was BITING ME !!!!) (but also i was like locked in for the baseball scene. the best scene in all of cinema.)

sweet/spicy/savory: cruel i cannot choose one... trapped between sweet and savory because while i love spicy things i cannot handle them ...... i feel like i like sweet things sliiightly more but. hmhm. like when you eat too many sweet things you end up wanting something savory yknow .....

relationship status: single ........... there is an obvious reason why i think you can tell from my posting (its that im annoying and do not shut the fuck up .........)

current obsession: unfortunately the vampire book series i have been like talking about so much, silver under nightfall and its sequel court of wanderers !! i am thinking of what i wouldve done differently in the sequel fkskfksf (also coming to the horrid realization that they were like setting up pegging but i dont think my guys ever got pegged. whats the point. truly. heres my editors notes. why didnt the main character get pegged? like theres so many things that were set up and mentioned and that didnt come to fruition and thats not my only critique its not JUST about pegging. but the lack of pegging is like representative of many of the issues i have with the book. why didnt he get pegged. they bring it up MULTIPLE times and yet we never saw the strap. they describe it in universe as being "shafted" and YEAH i certainly feel shafted !!! i need answers!!!!!!!! im OPENING my googledocs and writing the fic where he gets pegged !!!!!) this will like pass in a couple days im sure. i think. i hope

um also my fun game blorbos i think. yah

last thing i googled: "pin feathers" like the kind that birds have !! i dont remember the context anymore but they're like. developing feathers on a bird and sometimes they have BLOOD in them and then they are called blood feathers isnt that cool... i wish i was a bird

tagging: not tagging anyone in particular because i'm nervous about tagging people fksjkf BUT if you see this and you wanna do it please pretend like i am !!! tagging you !!! do these !!!!!!!! im tagging you in spirit if you want to do these. tagging you with. my mind. yipee

[crmsnmth]

September Sky Chapter One Part 2

"It will. If you don't stop writing that is. You have a style all your own. It's like you're just telling a story around a fire one night. And you're story is good. I mean, really good. It's well written. It's introspective. Makes you question some things. And it's original. It's a new idea."

"Is that why there's red ink all over it?" I said, with a half-smirk. I was making fun of her needless habit of editing every single piece of creative fiction that passed before her. I wasn't sure, but if she stuck with her habits, she could go on to being one of the best editors out there. And I didn't know shit about the actual world of writing, but I knew editors were important.

"Shush. It's just grammatical and spelling errors." She crossed her arms in front of her, and sat forward, resting them on her desk. "Make me a promise?"

I looked at her, this time with my own confusion. "What?"

"Don't stop. And if you ever get anywhere with this, put me in your thank dedication." She cracked a smile at me. Her teeth were extremely white, contrasting against her darker complexion. I wondered for a second how often she bleached her teeth.

"I won't. I don't think I could, even if I wanted to." I meant that. From the moment I was able to write, it never stopped. It's why I did so poorly in high school. I would spend my classes writing shitty high school emo poetry. Every night before bed, I would journal. There were always snippets of story ideas all over my notebooks, and pretty much anything else I could write on. "And if I ever a thank you page, you'll be on the list. You don't need to ask for that. I really would thank you."

"For what?" She asked with curiosity.

"I don't know. Kind words? Support. You're one of the few who didn't make me completely hate this place." I shrugged. That's all I had. Hopefully, it was enough. My writing never came through in how I spoke. I always tripped and stumbled over my words. Or said inappropriate things. Or just totally missed out on normal social cues.

"I'll take it. Good luck, Chris. Keep in touch, please." she said. I hated hearing the disappointment in her voice, but I was doing this for me. I hated this place. I hated the environment. I hated the crowds. The people. All it did was set off my anxiety issues, and I'm beyond fucking tired of having panic attacks hidden in some bathroom, hoping no one comes in to hear me cry and sob until I can catch my breath and breathe again.

"Yeah, you too," I said, standing up and grabbing my backpack. I looked up and saw the time. "Shit, I gotta go. I'm going to miss the bus." I took off, hurriedly out into the hallway, where a crowd of other students was pushing through. It was just past noon. Lunch hour. Fuck. The fastest way to the bus stop was through the cafeteria.

And the cafeteria was packed with a massive crowd of hungry kids grabbing something quick before heading off to the next hour or so of boredom and sleeping in class. Luckily, I'm very small. I'm only 5'7" and I weight 117 lbs, if I'm soaking wet. I could slip through crowds pretty easily. And that's what I intended to do here.

I didn't really know anybody at the UW, other than my professor's and their aides. But, I was well known. Mainly because of how I looked, and the fact that almost ninety percent of anything that came out of my mouth was pure unfiltered sarcasm. It was a coping skill, keeping people from breaking through my shell.

And has I pushed through the crowd, I swear I heard someone shout my name behind me. I turned my head for one second. One simple second, and that's all it took for me to collide into someone, knocking their books and an apple to the floor. I guess I was missing the book. I never did find out who was calling for me, or if anyone actually was.

"Oh shit, fuck. I'm sorry," I said, dropping to the ground to pick up the books and the now bruised and tainted apple. It was when I grabbed the apple, that I saw the ratty and old combat boots, leading to fishnet covered legs and a flowing gray skirt, that ended right on the knee. A black t-shirt, with the lips from Rocky Horror Picture show screen-printed on, covered up part of a massive sleeve tattoo of roses, vines and skulls on her right arm. Her nails were painted a bright red.

[etherealising]

sweetheart. this isn’t gonna be the nicest message and I do not intend for this to come off as being a hater; but as a fellow author, I felt this obligation to voice what I’ve seen that might be considered “cringe”.

i was highly, highly, HIGHLY invested in your Carmy Berzatto “all i ever knew, only you” series, but frustratingly lost complete interest by your erratic postings and timeline. like having “interludes” instead of just chapters? it’s outstandingly confusing. if you want to write a flashback, just do it with confidence, but your organization of your fic is frustrating to read. you’re not a terrible writer, on the contrary - I think you’re very good. like VERY good.

however, you lose yourself in an avalanche of details. you try W A Y too hard to foreshadow and allude to certain details, but you just confuse yourself and end up “putting your foot in your mouth”.

author to author, it helps TEN FOLD to pause and reread; to reedit. fuck a publishing timeline, fuck the followers that pressure you into posting, just make sure your story makes sense in a chronological order - cause the story’s whiplash was a turn off.

and I know, I know, what’s one reader to a plethora of others? i just felt the obligation to say that while it has the potential to be a GREAT story (that you keep incredibly expanding and deepening), it is wildly confusing in terms of your “timeline”.

my best wishes, support, and eagerness to see what else you might publish! and my apologies if I came off too harsh or rude - I’d simply love to see fellow authors expand on their craft!

not angry just dejected, take this response how you want i do not care : )

please do not refer to me as sweetheart. no matter how many times you explain that this isn’t a bash or negative feedback, calling me ‘sweetheart’ implies that you’re being condescending : )

first off [aiekoy] was not supposed to be a full fledged chaptered fic, so please writing gods forgive me for the utmost heinous act of writing and figuring things out as i go.

i can understand your “critique”, but you failed to explain how duel timeline in a story is “cringe” … i’m confused??

i’m sure you’ve read a mainstream book with the duel timeline trope, that’s exactly what this is. you’re implication that i’m cringy and not confident is such a fuck you to me because regardless of your intentions with this message it’s not coming across the way you intended.

my interludes are not a “confidence” thing, if I didn’t have confidence this fic wouldn’t have seen the light of day : )

imagine telling someone writing FOR FREE that their idea is “cringy” and a “confidence” issue??? i’m sure you can understand why i might come across a bit annoyed : )

i don’t try way too hard to fucking do anything, i just WRITE. i would honestly love to see where i “put my foot in my mouth” because i genuinely don’t see it. and that’s fine because it’s my writing and i’m constantly going over this shit ALONE so of course i’m not gonna catch every little detail that make people tick.

i am not getting paid to write this story. i am not getting paid to edit this story. i am writing this story because i had an idea and felt like sharing it because why fucking not. fan fiction does not and will not always be the best piece of literature/fiction you have ever interacted with and thats okay.

if you have fuck all time to edit, re-edit, draft, re-draft, and have a beta editor then i applaud you. but i have responsibilities outside of fanfiction so if something isn’t up to YOUR standards it’s not MY highest priority.

you also say “fuck a publishing timeline, fuck the followers that pressure you into posting,” but in the same breath explain that YOU quit reading because of my “erratic postings” and timeline. maybe i’m just not understanding it but it comes across a bit contradictory.

please understand that if my timeline is confusing, it’s because the bear’s canon timeline is confusing and contradictory as fuck. i’m literally doing somebody else’s job by trying to make this timeline make fucking sense.

don’t know who bestowed upon you this “obligation” you speak of but it was not i sis : )

to whoever this anon is i hope you can understand my defensiveness as i DID NOT ASK for this critique and obviously i’m going to be defensive this is MY work. and please if my response rubs you the wrong way please do not chime back into my inbox yapping off at the mouth that i’m a “bitch who can’t take critiques”

because i actually can but your critiques are UNSOLICITED for one and it just came across extremely pretentious (at least it read that way to me).

i probably would’ve had a much better reaction to your “help” if you had given me examples and explained a bit better your point of view, but you didn’t so i don’t, sucks to suck : (

have a great rest of your day, hope your journey as a writer continues going swell : )

[arda-marred]

And so we come again, as so many discussions of fantasy inevitably do, to J. R. R. Tolkien. As a writer of fantasy, Tolkien hardly needs an introduction. Even before the success of the film adaptations of his work transformed him into a household name, he had won first the hearts of children with The Hobbit in 1937 and, some twenty years later, the hearts and minds of adult readers with The Lord of the Rings. But, like Coleridge and MacDonald before him, Tolkien thought deeply about his craft as a writer and creator, and it is largely by virtue of this thought that his art has achieved such timeless success. His 1939 lecture “On Fairy-Stories,” subsequently published as an essay in the 1964 book Tree and Leaf, is, as the editors of the recent authoritative edition of the essay put it, “Tolkien’s defining study of and the centre-point in his thinking about the genre [of fantasy], as well as being the theoretical basis for his fiction” (Flinger and Anderson 9). In this seminal work, he addresses all the points about the imagination raised by Coleridge and, following MacDonald, defends their application in the literary arts. We have already explored the other facets of Tolkien’s theory of fantasy as it contributes to the fantastic sublime, but I have saved his thoughts on the imagination for last, because I feel they serve as a linchpin for the fantastic sublime as a whole.

At first glance it would appear that Tolkien dispenses altogether with Coleridge’s whole tripartite scheme of primary imagination, secondary imagination, and fancy. Indeed, he takes issue with the desynonymization of imagination and fancy, though he does not single out Coleridge directly. A philologist of the highest order and sometime editor of the Oxford English Dictionary, Tolkien may be displaying false modesty when he ventures that, “[r]idiculous though it may be for one so ill-instructed to have an opinion on this critical matter, I venture to think the verbal distinction philologically inappropriate, and the analysis inaccurate” (OFS 59). Having deconstructed Coleridge’s framework, Tolkien then counters with his own, which is, by his own admission, just as arbitrary as Coleridge’s imagination/fancy divide.

The mental power of image-making is one thing, or aspect; and it should appropriately be called Imagination. . . The achievement of the expression, which gives (or seems to give) the inner consistency of reality, is indeed another thing, or aspect, needing another name: Art, the operative link between Imagination and the final result, Sub-creation. For my present purpose I require a word which shall embrace both the Sub-creative Art in itself and a quality of strangeness and wonder in the Expression. . . I propose, therefore, to arrogate to myself the powers of Humpty-Dumpty, and to use Fantasy for this purpose. (OFS 59-60)

But the advantage to this approach as both a theoretical model and a critical framework is that it separates out and clearly labels the writer’s mind (Imagination), the creative process itself (Art), and the finished product (Sub-creation). Fantasy is the end result.

Although Tolkien’s theory dispenses with Coleridge’s distinction between imagination and fancy, however, it preserves and even strengthens Coleridge’s assertions regarding the qualitative similarities between primary and secondary imagination. This isn’t immediately obvious, though the term “Sub-creation” gives us a telling hint. But to fully understand Tolkien’s debt to Coleridge, we must travel back to 1931, eight years before Tolkien delivered his lecture “On Fairy-Stories.” In that year, following a latenight conversation with his friend C. S. Lewis in which he defended the truths of Pagan myth even in a Christian world, he crystalized his thoughts into a poem called “Mythopoeia.” He quotes several lines from the poem in his lecture, and they are worth quoting here as well, for they cut to the heart of the similarity between primary and secondary imagination:

Man, Sub-creator, the refracted light through whom is splintered from a single White to many hues, and endlessly combined in living shapes that move from mind to mind. Though all the crannies of the world we filled with Elves and Goblins, though we dared to build Gods and their houses out of dark and light, and sowed the seed of dragons, 'twas our right. (Mythopoeia 61-8)

The metaphor of light that Tolkien employs here and elsewhere for the imaginative process is more vivid than Coleridge’s original distinction, but it nonetheless conveys exactly the same sense. In fact, the verbs Coleridge uses to describe the process of the secondary imagination—dissolves, diffuses, dissipates—suggest he was thinking along the same metaphorical lines. But Tolkien, usually so careful to avoid overt religious reference, here actually makes the religious and spiritual implications of the imagination more explicit than Coleridge’s “infinite I AM.” While, as we saw, George MacDonald is uncomfortable with ascribing to man the power of creation, Tolkien actually revels in man’s creative power. As in Coleridge, man’s creative power differs from that of God only in degree, hence the word “sub-creator.”

Tolkien’s vision of man as sub-creator leads him to openly challenge Coleridge’s willing suspension of disbelief. Like MacDonald, he argues that a secondary world, or sub-creation, must be governed by a certain consistency if it is to hold an audience’s attention. To him, “this suspension of disbelief is a substitute for the genuine thing, a subterfuge we use when condescending to games or make-believe, or when trying (more or less willingly) to find what virtue we can in the work of an art that has for us failed” (OFS 52). The true aim of fantasy, for Tolkien, is to draw the audience into a state of “Secondary Belief” similar to the sustained participative imagination argued for by MacDonald. The real change from Coleridge, and even MacDonald, here is that it places the burden of proof, so to speak, on the artist rather than the audience. When confronted with a good work of fantasy, the audience should not have to voluntarily suspend disbelief. Rather, “the story-maker proves a successful 'subcreator'. He makes a Secondary World which your mind can enter. Inside it, what he relates is 'true': it accords with the laws of that world. You therefore believe it, while you are, as it were, inside” (OFS 52). I can’t help but think that Coleridge would have admired the symmetry of this idea of primary and secondary belief with his own idea of primary and secondary imagination, and would have conceded the point to Tolkien. And it is here that the fantastic sublime comes into full flower.

Tolkien’s language here reflects many of the writings on the sublime, from Longinus all the way up to present critics like Robert Doran. There is a certain inexorable, inevitable, magnetic pull that surrounds works of the sublime like a gravitational field. The sublime grabs hold of readers and doesn’t let them go. It turns their gaze upward and pushes their minds and spirits to see and experience things they could not have otherwise imagined. And at the same time, it makes audiences see themselves from those same heights, see their own mortality and frailty, and want to climb higher, be greater, do better. But while traditional conceptions of the sublime see this process as occurring in flashes, as lightning during a tumultuous storm, Tolkien insists we can have more than that. In his view, we can actually live in a world, if only for a little while, where the sublime is made manifest, where it is as real as rain.

And like Coleridge and MacDonald before him, he insists that these sublime worlds are not merely the playgrounds of children, but the kingdoms of all readers, of any age. He is in agreement with Coleridge about the educational value of fairy-stories. While tepidly approving of fairy tales written specifically for children, he urges that “it may be better for them to read some things, especially fairy-stories, that are beyond their measure rather than short of it. Their books like their clothes should allow for growth, and their books at any rate should encourage it.” But Tolkien is adamant that fantasy or fairy stories (he uses the terms more or less interchangeably) should be read by everyone. “If fairy-story as a kind is worth reading at all it is worthy to be written for and read by adults,” he says, for “they will, of course, put more in and get more out than children can.” (OFS 58).

Tolkien delivered this lecture about two years after publishing The Hobbit, and just as he was beginning to work in earnest on The Lord of the Rings. While the former book is clearly a book for children, the latter effort “grew in the telling,” as he notes in the foreword to the second edition. Fortunately for the reading world, he practiced what he preached in “On Fairy-Stories.” But he did not build this world on sand. Tolkien scholars point to the medieval sources for Tolkien’s world, and rightly so, for these are indeed his secondary world’s bones and sinews. But its life-blood is, I would argue, the imaginative laws... that both create and sustain it. He took his own advice to heart and created a secondary world, Middle Earth, that has captivated and captured the imagination of millions of readers, drawing them into a state of secondary belief that, in some cases, lasts long past the reading of the books.

[cinematicendevaourz]

Rebel Moon (Duology) #CVReview

Zack Snyder can make a really shitty movie without the constraints of a studio like Warner Bros. behind him forcing an editor into the room to clean up behind him.

Such is the issue with Cameron, Scott, even Tarantino - but the big issue with Rebel Moon here is that whereas Scott and Tarantino use dialogue to bloat that runtime and Cameron uses elongated camera shots to make an epic, Snyder warps time with various slow-motion scenes (first half speed, then a quarter in some instances) which in the near six hours that encapsulates the theatrical release of Rebel Moon's duology gets easier and easier to notice and makes any movie buff want to call Snyder out for cheating to make an epic.

The first part of the film starts off with assembling the band, then the last part is an extended Battle of Endor.

I wouldn't have had much of a problem with this being yet another shameless Star Wars rip-off but the lack of blood and cutscenes away from the gorier parts for a TBD director's cut (as his DC films sans "Man Of Steel") release is the definition of a shameless money grab, sacrificing the art for essentially twelve hours of content.

If those would have came out instead of this intentionally watered-down shit, I believe the film would have had more than a limited run in theaters and picked up by a distributor other than lame ass Netflix.

How does an Anthony Hopkins voiced A.I. that looks like some reject off "District 9" get more screen time than Cleopatra Coleman when her Elsa Bloodaxe is the main fugitive in the story?

And then the obligatory Euro-cinema miscegenial relationship between the protagonist Sofia Boutella's Kora and some non-rememorable coward-turned-soilder Michiel Huisman.

That was casting's best idea for a White Knight? I mean, I know Euro-cinema has a thing for emasculated caucazoid males under negroid females but Jeebuz !

The rest of the cast gets a pass though. Glad to see Snyder is still treating Ray Fisher well with his role as Darrian Bloodaxe and Ed Skrien started off as the next best thing to Michael Shannon, then ended up stealing scenes and becoming the most interesting character on-screen other than Anthony Hopkins as that bot.

I didn't like the part two intro. I hate when Snyder puts these instances of Welsh folk music in his films and these weird ass pagan celebrations like when Aquaman was bringing fish back to his village in "Justice League".

That is an annoying film trope (Hey, did anyone else notice a woman is almost raped in nearly every Snyder flick?) for Snyder to have and in no way did any square dancing or shucking wheat look anywhere as cool as the training scenes in either "300" films, but took up just as much time.

"Rebel Moon" is an ambitious project. While writing this review I see that the red band trailer just dropped for the director's cut, Elsa is featured in a prequel comic that dropped at the top of the year, there's videogames and all this other stuff to expand this Snyder brainchild, but I don't think I am alone when I say I wish Snyder would have went as hard for "Sucker Punch" as he did for this.

Steampunk and sci-fi meneagrie's work very well in books, but if audiences (other than myself) didn't like "Borderlands", I'll let the box office tell it.

What I'll say though is to start off "Rebel Moon" where "Return of The Jedi" ended was a bad move. To bloat a runtime with half of the film being shot in various speeds of slow-motion is a cheat to make an epic. To have Anthony Hopkins in a film as just a voice and to give Cleopatra Coleman around five minutes on-screen in a nearly six hour duology is a travesty.

Lastly, I dont know how Snyder did it, but he made laser-fire look more annoying than a Lego flick. Snyder should stick to Amazons and Spartans, not Star Wars. Sometimes it's ok for a director to go outside of their wheelhouse, "Rebel Moon" should teach Snyder to stick to the script.

-

C.V.R. The Bard

10th/Sept.2k24

[literaticat]

Hi Jenn, can I ask what you would do in a situation where your client was presented with 'final art' for a PB that your client loves but has a few issues with (let's say that some pictures don't accurately portray NF elements of the book, and these are concerning to your client?) Would you just advise your client, who didn't see full sketches, to roll with it because you've been told that it's too late to make changes, and to avoid putting noses out of joint? Or would you intervene?

If there are NF elements that are actually WRONG, there may still be time to fix them, and they should be fixed if at all possible.

So I would first want my client to talk to me so we could make a game plan and figure out what are actually, truly, the most important things.

Then I'd write the editor (or if my author was comfortable, they could write them, but cc me, so I could back them up) and a) be FULL OF PRAISE for all the wonderful art, but b) also do state the concerns in a concise and straightforward way.

Nicely! Of course!! And focus only on the things that have potential to actually affect the Accuracy / Reader Experience of it all -- in other words, if you don't like the color of the dress on page 5, or you think the cat should be a Tuxedo cat instead of a Tabby cat -- sorry, but get over it.

But if the sign on a shop on page 5 reads "EAT A DOG" in Yiddish instead of "GREENGROCER", or the scientific formula on the blackboard is for NO2 when it should be H20 -- please tell them! NOW!!!

They might or might not be able to fix these things. But if you wait, they will no longer be even potentially fixable. I am sure they would rather have the minor inconvenience of adjusting some images now than have some internet brouhaha or pissed librarians coming at them later!

[bettsfic]

craft essay a day #11

took a couple days off because i got a plot bunny for a fic that turned into a short story that turned into a novella that turned into a novel but might still be a novella depending on whether i want the main character to commit a murder or if i just want everyone to have a good time.

"The Sword of Damocles: On Suspense, Shower Murders, and Shooting People on the Beach" by Anthony Doerr, The Writer's Notebook II: Craft Essays from Tin House

beginner | intermediate | advanced | masterclass 

filed under: plot & conflict, structure, pacing, process

summary & my thoughts

in 2017 i was at tin house and i went to Anthony Doerr's lecture on simile. i use the word "lecture" loosely; it was closer to a performance. the guy's got great energy. i was so inspired by his lecture that i skipped the next one and returned to my room to start writing a new story, one that would go on to get published, win an award, and become my writing sample for the next four years, including my PhD application. i think that story was so successful in part because i wrote it only as a way to practice what Doerr had taught me about the work of similes. in fact in put so many similes into this story that when i workshopped it later, my professor wrote a little note in the margin that said, "not everything has to be like something else."

i wrote the thing to practice similes, and i ended up taking all the similes out. so it goes.

later, i attended Doerr's reading. having an audio processing issue, i'm really not a fan of readings. i would be able to listen if i could just look down at my phone, but that's rude so i end up only really getting disparate sounds and the occasional fleeting mental image. so i sit there in the back, bored and wishing i could process sound without requiring a second sensory stimulus.

with Doerr, a miracle happened: somehow, there was something about his sentences and paragraphing that made me able to understand what he was saying. for a brief, shining moment i understood the cultural obsession with podcasts. he was reading an excerpt from a short story, and i was hooked. and then it ended on a cliffhanger. so, being in the back, i left right before the end of the event and bought his book, hoping that when i asked him to sign it, he would tell me where i could find the story.

i was first in line. i gave him the book to sign and asked about the story. he said sorry, it wasn't published and probably wouldn't be. devastating. as he was signing my book, he looked at my badge which had my name and listed my genre as creative nonfiction. he asked what project i was working on. i was somewhat taken aback by this (because his line was now a mile long and also why would he care?), and told him the truth: "i'm writing a memoir on fanfiction."

over the years, i've been pretty open with just about everyone regarding how cool i think fanfic is and that i write it. it's not something i'm ashamed of and i'm generally not afraid of being judged, because it's an awesome and wonderful thing that exists in the world, and anyone who thinks otherwise has no idea what they're talking about and probably isn't someone i care to know. i've talked to dozens of authors, editors, and agents about fanfic and for the most part receive mild and polite curiosity as they attempt to align what i'm telling them with what they know of publishing. ultimately i'm sure they dismiss it, but for a beautiful couple minutes, i introduce them to something new.

(not a single person i've ever spoken with has known anything about fanfic. to us it seems so huge, but in literary circles, some people haven't even heard the word fanfiction.)

Anthony Doerr's eyes went wide. he gasped. he glanced around as if having a grand epiphany and said, "everything is fanfiction, isn't it? everything is inspired by something else."

"yes!" i said excitedly, appreciating that he and i are both excessively, possibly offputtingly, enthusiastic people. he signed my book, For Beth! A fellow writer. Your fan, Tony.

unfortunately his line was getting even longer (that's what happens when your book wins a Pulitzer i guess) and we had to cut our conversation short. a week later when i got home, i cracked open his book (all the light we cannot see) at, i don't know, 8pm maybe, and didn't go to bed until 5am when i finally finished it.

which is all to say, what Anthony Doerr says about writing, i listen to.

his essays are a lot like Mary Ruefle's in that he kind of talks about and around a general topic, and as such, this essay is a bit hard to summarize. in the vein of Wayne Booth he also leans heavily on dissecting block quote examples, and so this is a very long essay.

he begins with a disclaimer: "i'm an absolutely terrible writer of suspense. i use up most of my sentences describing trees or snow or light." i actually lol'd at this because i use his short story "The Hunter's Wife" in my lesson plan on developing imagery, and specifically refer to his detailed descriptions of trees, snow, and light.

he introduces the idea of "suspended suspense," or the moment of the story at its apex and relishing in the length of time it hovers there.

"I'm more interested in measured, proportionally handled suspense; the kind of suspense that makes you simultaneously want to skip forward a few paragraphs and to find out what will happen and dwell for as long as possible inside the slow blister of rising action."

he goes on to pull my favorite move of any craft essay: elaborating on the etymology of the term he's discussing, in this case "suspense," which comes from the latin "pendere" which means "to hang."

he talks about the idea of a plot being the thing in a story that is always ticking down to zero, and then compares storytelling and the concept of an obstacle to sports games and the reason people watch them.

"One way to look at games, tournaments, and seasons is that they are essentially highly formalized structures designed to produce obstacles. Why? Because obstacles are delay, and delay produces compelling narration."

Doerr believes that the draw of suspense is the ability to create a kind of anxiety outside of reality where one can feel emotions within the safe bubble of narrative structure. the story, after all, must always end, but life continues on.

he elaborates on two ideas in relation to suspension: interruption and diminishing returns. he cites a study which declares that humans crave interruptions in anything lasting. taking a break at work, for example, or an intermission at a play.

"Maybe interruptions—slowing down scenes just at their most pleasurable—are a way of making the sensations of vicarious anxiety and longing feel acute to us for as long as possible."

of the law of diminishing returns, he says that humans "crave newness" and that part of the allure of a break is to make new something pleasurable and familiar. for example, savoring chocolate by eating it slowly.

"...a huge percentage of writing your most climactic, emotional scenes is about learning to go very slowly. One has to learn to trawl the attention through the texture of the dream."

while all of this is great in theory, it doesn't really address the practicality of writing the damn thing. my favorite rule of thumb is "when the action is hot, write cool," an adage from Debra Gwartney that is certainly prescriptive but something i always keep in mind regardless. action hot, write cool is more or less what Doerr is saying. he's saying, slow down and take your time, while Gwartney is saying, the way to do that is to create narrative distance. my go-to example is the climax of the personal essay "The Fourth State of Matter" by JoAnn Beard, in which we become so distant from JoAnn's point of view we reach into the point of view of someone else.

climaxes are my least favorite thing to write. once i reach them, i skip all the way to the end of the story and write backwards, until the only thing left to write is the climax. i can't say whether or not this is effective advice, because i simply can't do it any other way. if there's a better way, i don't know it.

but i do have something you can try when you finally have to buckle down and get it done:

climaxes are generally the most emotional and visual part of a story. it's where the internal conflict meets up with the external conflict, and therefore you're dealing with both interior narration and sensation, and external movement of bodies in space. you should not expect yourself to handle all of these things at once. you only have one brain, and these sorts of scenes take two brains, maybe even three (how can you expect yourself to be inside your character's perspective while also standing outside of it to direct the action?), and so sometimes you have to layer them.

for your first pass on the climax: work on blocking only. all you're doing is rendering bodies in space. who are the characters in this scene, where are they in relation to each other, and what are they saying. how do they get from A to B interpersonally and/or physically? let's say your characters are finally having their first kiss. you have two bodies that have to go from not touching each other to touching each other. you potentially have some discussion between them. don't worry about dragging it out at this point per Doerr's recommendation. just get mouth A against mouth B. this is more or less only a light pencil sketch of the scene.

second pass: you've focused on the movement, now you go in and add the static details involving the sensation of the kiss and any other external detail your character is attending to, like an airplane flying overhead. most writers like to elaborate on what a person tastes like, which personally i think is weird and unnecessary because i as a reader don't really need to know what someone had for lunch, but whatever. you do you.

third pass: interiority only. my favorite way to pace out a climax is to allow your narrator access to time. allow them to think into the past, into something we don't know yet, or have them realize something, or whatever. let them think. you're controlling the mind of your narrator; use that to your advantage.

if you need to, make a pattern of it: blocking sentence, external sentence, internal sentence. movement, feeling, thought. of course, you're going to revise the shit out of this whole scene later hopefully and so you'll be able to move things around and rewrite as necessary. but in terms of just getting the whole thing onto the page, i find this layering technique pretty useful.

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[kilowogcore]

Back to the Silver Age: Wally West's Origins

With all the excitement goin' on in The Flash ongoin' series, I figgured I'd go back an' read The Flash #110 from January, 1960, which wuz the first appearance of Wally West, my favorite Flash!

Unlike Barry Allen, who's a cop an' kinda self-obsessed, Wally wuz always about helpin' others an' connections with family an' friends.

We first get introduced ta' him as the head of a local Flash fan club. Back in' the olden days before the internet kids had ta' get together in a physical location ta' do things like play Dungeons an' Dragons.

Before even Dungeons an' Dragons, though, they got together an' formed fan clubs fer celebrities! Nowadays a lotta our knowledge a' fandom an' the activities of these celebrities come from the efforts of these fan clubs, not ta' mention they provided lotsa young Boomers ta' scream their heads off fer people like Elvis Presley in a way that puts the most ardent Belieber or Swiftie ta' shame!

Seriously, go look at video a' live concerts from the 60s, an' remember that next time any Boomer complains 'bout "kids these days." They were way, way weirder an' less socially balanced than us.

Anyway, Wally's a Flash fan, so Barry secretly becomes the Flash ta' shake his hand, a nice thing ta' do fer the kid!

Then, as a treat, Flash shows Wally the exact set-up a' chemicals that gave him his powers! Y'know, as ya' do.

An' then he puts Wally right where he wuz standin' when the accident happens! Which seems, um, irresponsible? Like where are ya' goin' with this Barry, what if--

Oh, a freak lightning bolt out of a clear blue sky just hit Wally. Huh. I feel like this wuz predictable an' coulda been avoided by, y'know, not posing a child near dangerous chemicals.

Anyway, Wally's Kid Flash now. Barry gets him a little costume (a duplicate of Barry's, he wouldn't get the iconic yellow costume 'til later), an' like any responsible adult of 1960 tells Wally ta' stay put an' not use his phenomenal new powers until he gets back from work. Then Barry wanders off ta' go, I dunno, it's 1960, I assume as a cop in the midwest he's pointing hoses at civil rights leaders or something.

I know, I know, he's not a beat cop, he's in the forensics lab. So he'd only be supportin' the cops who hold the hoses, but c'mon, comedic license!

Anyway, Wally is of course not goin' ta' stay put, an' since he's a true hero he immediately goes off ta' help people! A disgruntled former employee let a bunch of animals out of their cages at the zoo. This bein' a 1960s zoo that wuz probably the best thing fer those animals, but ya' can't have half-starved lions an' bears roamin' the street, so Kid Flash deals with the cleanup real quick.

Barry, lookin' on, reflects how wonderful it is that he's not alone, an' that he now has someone else with his powers. Which, again, adds the whole unnecessarily detailed re-creation of his accident a rather sinister bent. Did Barry do all this deliberately?

(Spoiler, it would later come out that Barry caused the lightnin' bolt that gave him his powers, an' in Mark Waid's run it's speculated that Barry's subconscious desire caused the lightnin' bolt that gave Wally powers. So yes, Barry did all this, though perhaps not consciously.)

Honestly, fer such an important story, it's kinda by the numbers. There ain't much character development, stuff just kinda happens. But it wuz the first sidekick creation of a major hero in the Silver Age, an' it wuz chock full of the comic book super-science that DC editor Julius Schwartz loved so much. An' important piece a' comics history!

An' Wally is still my favorite Flash. Even if he's been sinisterly isolated an' maybe possessed by Reverse Flash? I dunno, I look forward ta' Simon Spurrier's next issue!