#link on the first word is the post that inspired this one btw. its good.

[consultingfujoshi]

so it's NOT just aziraphale comforting crowley here. it's both of them lamenting their complicitness in the suffering of humanity, it's them realising just how pointless it all is both of them making this one poor man's life miserable just to prove who's side is best (like this whole both heaven and hell torturing one guy to test his faith is that whole thing adam said about the stupidity of armageddon in MICROCOSM), and suddenly coming to the conclusion that they are the only ones who can understand each other. they have no one else in the world, in the universe, who knows how they feel. it's literally them reflecting on their respective positions in this great ineffable cosmic game of chess and realising they are not just playing opposite numbers, but are connected in such a deep and profound way such as that no one else would ever be able to comprehend.

and all of that is literally encapsulated in this one fucking screenshot. that's why it's eliciting so much inexplicable emotion in people. even without the context this shot is so provoking, but it really says it ALL once you understand what's really going on here. even without any dialogue or movement. the vast beauty that surrounds them, the purposeful distance maintained but nonetheless still sitting together peacefully, the quiet moment of reflection upon their places in the universe, and their places in each other's lives. the feeling that they really might be the only two people on earth who matter. what a beautiful place to build this season's romance from. I haven't even seen the scene yet and I'm already in awe

[hermesgoestojuvie]

do you have any permes hcs or fic ideas?

oh anon u have no idea what you've unleashed. the permes fic ideas are all i have some days, alas, im not that accomplished at the whole idea to words transition as i wish i was. i'll go into a few more concrete ones under the read more

Quick note: So like. All the things I plan to write happen when he’s 18+. and there's no sibling or parent incest. (bringing that up cause i got an. interesting dm once.) So this is just a quick disclaimer of sorts. And I’m not hating on anyone who wants to write or read something dark! I mean for instance I have a time travel Percy/Hermes brainworm that is considered dark and probably not what a lot of people want to read, so i'll tag it as such.

The One Where There is a War

Explained a little more in detail here but I have no problem talking a little about it again. It was inspired by this one perpollo fic that I'm still looking for so I can link it, bc trust me, it is GOOD. (edit: FOUND IT!!!! HERE it’s by @ghost-bxrd)The premise of that fic was a war between the gods and demigods, and my fic is meant to draw from that as well as some elements from Lore by Alexandra Bracken. It takes place post-second Giant war, but I'm toying with the idea of having the war and all related events, like gaea's rising, happen when percy is maybe 19-20? I'm not sure yet though. I might keep the timeline as is instead. For now, just know that it is post-second giant war.

Anyways, the premise is the new war the demigods have waged on the gods, when Percy, already a conflicted party to the war, comes across an injured Hermes when he is separated from his group of scouts.

2. Warning: Untitled For Now But It Is The Dark!Hermes One

you ever read child surprise by aphroditesfavorite or the breezeblocks series by violetmoreviolent?

Both are perpollo, and while I've not caught up to child surprise (i'm two chapters in, its been in my marked for later for a while, and ive had the tab open for ages, i just keep getting distracted lol) i know that it does deal with a time-travel trope, with percy, post-second giant and titan wars, waking up in the past, the day athena and poseidon compete over athens.

from what i hear, where child surprise is perpollo, there is a dark, forcecful hermes scene, which is absolutely not meant to be shippy btw! i heard from a friend who has gotten farther than me that the aphroditesfavorite has also stated that the shippy comments received about that hermes scene has made them uncomfortable so like, dont go reading it for that guys please.

breezeblocks meanwhile has a take on dark!apollo, a more ancient apollo, in a way. an apollo that you remember IS an olympian and all that may entail. i actually have caught up with the latest updates, and it takes place in the present. i dont want to go spoiling, but I will say that like, the way its all unraveling and unfolding is just so interesting, im high key invested.

@ashilrak and @mrthology have also written an absolutely heartbreaking, gutwrenching, exceptionally glorious banger of a fic, HAUNT ME, THEN- that also really captures the otherness and ancient, almost older, aspect of the olympians.

anyways, the reason i bring these fics up is because i just really love the idea that percy was born from the sea, while also acknowledging that one of my favorite parts of the whole book series in the first place is percy's connection to mortality and to his mother. reading child surprise really was root of a lot of ideas of percy emerging from the saltwater fountain in athens at the time of poseidon and athena's competition, with the idea that the trip to the past coincides with unwanted percy's ascension. it is not the birth of percy jackson the demigod, but in half, percy jackson the deity (the other half near coming to fruition in tartarus before he forced himself to stop.)

all that^ was just a very long way to say, this fic, im not sure WHAT it is yet, or where the direction its going in is, but we have established permes in the modern era, the time slipping happens when percy is struggling with keeping his impending ascension at bay, and then percy deals with a hermes at his like. prime? if thats the word. having to reconcile that with the softer versions they know later.

3. The One I've Been Struggling With

i'm just gonna copy/paste some stuff from my outline, like just the first two pages. this is the most concrete fic wip i have lmao. its all very rambly bc thats how the process goes for me so sorry abt that! anyways, starts below:-

an au that is not modern times, but perhaps in the past? Ancient Greek times? So more “ancient greek minded hermes.” Or if you think there is a better alternative, that would work too, I’m all ears. Trickster god Hermes (which he is) and minor immortal(?) Percy.

i dont know what percy's situation is yet. need to figure that out

i was looking at a comic and thought, trickster god Hermes would definitely pull something like this on Percy. And then I thought, what if, trickster god Hermes, sees this one man (Percy) and falls in love with him. But this man seems to pine for a woman who doesn’t love him back, and so Hermes takes her shape. (I don’t know who this woman would be. Annabeth? It could be her, but I also love the bond Percy and Annabath have in general, she and him are incredible friends. Rachel? I loved her friendship with Percy too.)

Anyways, Hermes taking their shape made me laugh a bit because wow Percy is getting catfished by a god. And then I was like WHAT IF- Percy himself is a minor immortal like. A young nymph-ish type. A prince of Atlantis? A demigod turned prince of Atlantis? I am not sure what he is, but, I am going to use nymph as a placeholder until I figure this out. 

So sure, Percy is immortal, newly or otherwise, but he’s young and still not fully like, aware (I don’t know if that's the right word) about what it means to be immortal because he literally was born 20 years ago, which is normal mortal young man age. And Percy is like, “I’m as old as them and I want to live as them. I was them.”

His father is protective of course, he is aware of the way of the gods and how they chase pretty people. Poseidon warned him about gods, how they come and go, how he should never fall for one because loving one usually ends in tragedy or heartbreak- that to them hearts are easily won by tricks and discarded as easily. (Thinking again: mortal Percy turned immortal by marrying/mating with Hermes? Except, then I thought, Poseidon wants Percy to be immortal–if he thought Hermes showing interest and Percy reciprocating would allow for Percy to choose to be immortal he would probably begrudgingly allow it. So then….immortal Percy? Need to think)

The big Hermes reveal is when Percy is attacked or injured, or some other god shows up, and Hermes saves him but reveals his true form in the process. 

BACK TO THE PLOT!!!

Hermes was like, I will have this nymph, and that is FINAL. And Percy is kind even though he is not necessarily always NICE, (it may be ancient greek but new yorker percy is timeless) he's sweet and cares so much. he’s a hero and so loyal. he's brave and mischievous and genuinely good, and Hermes is just. Blown away, by the way Percy loves, so deep and it consumes you, to be the one Percy cares for, Hermes thinks there is no feeling like it.

Hermes tells himself that Percy can't possibly be deserving of mortal love. So what if golden haired Annabeth (placeholder for now, still dont know if we're going the annabeth route?) is a warrior who can run like the deer and loves the very woods Percy does. No, he needs a god's adoration, a force to be reckoned with at his beck and call to fulfill his every whim the way Percy himself makes others feel. If people would be loved the way Percy loves, everyone would be a god. 

I am laughing at Hermes taking the shape of Annabeth while talking to Percy, but also using the moment to talk up Hermes. Like if Percy is in his starry eyed about Annabeth phase, Annabeth wanting to have a sit down would be so exciting for him, and Hermes as Annabeth would be petty enough to be like lemme proselytize about myself, “have you heard of the great wonderful god Hermes?”

Percy being like, “Yeah my dad tells me every day, stay away from these people and then gives me a list of gods, why?”

Hermes immediately pissy

Percy is still talking, “so yeah Hermes is on the list too- why, Annabeth? Did something happen? you look...not well. Are you sick?”

Hermes, through gritted teeth, “with all due respect to... your father, I think you should hear about the god Hermes because he's not... whatever it is your dad said.”

Percy: Well, apparently the god Hermes fixates on pretty people and tries to get into their pants using trickery.

Hermes as Annabeth: CHOKES

Hermes-Annabeth: THAT IS SUCH SLANDER. I have never.... ahem, i have never heard of that about the god Hermes

^That was the first two pages. there's 11 more of me realizing writing is hard and i have commitment issues. but hopefully i finish at some point bc this is the fic ive poured some serious time in!

anyways, that was the three main fic ideas ive been tackling. i have had more that i immediately forget about, but just know, i can think about them all day!

[polar-equinoxx]

☁️The heavens told me that clouds have been grey

yes that is from lady gaga's song hold my hand from tgm-

Here lies all of my icemav fics! So guaranteed smooches <3 (None of them link to each other unless they are in a seperate series btw)

Here is the big ol’ masterlist :)

goose and slider forever judging them in the background

☁️There's a silver lining on every cloud 13k+

Rated Teen, and with copius amounts of fluff :3 A collection of various icemav kisses prompts from a tumblr post full of them

☁️Only One Bed (1076 words)

Rated Gen, emotional hurt/comfort Iceman and Maverick are on a mission of somesorts together, and they get put in a room which has, yep, you guessed it, only one bed. And Maverick has a nightmare.

☁️Sunset on the Field (1086 words)

Rated Gen, first kiss, a sunset, that's it. Maverick invites Iceman to sit on a field near a runway to watch the sunset and maybe stargaze, a thing friends do, right? And they both deny their plainly obvious feelings for the other until neither of them can bear it any longer…

☁️Smoke in the Air (735 words)

Rated Teen, with anxiety, and hurt/comfort They don’t tell Iceman that Maverick is missing in action. Kind of important information when you're in a hospital ward twelve hours after you're shot down.

☁️Warmth (1020 words)

Rated Teen, angst and hurt/comfort Maverick hates sleeping in the same bed as Ice. He also hates himself. Tonight makes it way worse.

☁️Blame (957 words)

Rated Teen, angsty thoughts and its a sickfic, so.. Maverick was sick. Not the little cough and blocked nose sick, but the feverous, restless sick that gives thumping headaches and coughs that give you chest ache.

☁️Missed You (2119 words)

Rated Teen, secret relationship, anxiety, mental and regular hospitals (i'm sorry Mav) An accident. Two injured pilots, a broken wrist on one, a fractured ankle and twisted shoulder on the other. A string of numbers. 225 63 2829

☁️Still by your Side (2006 words)

Rated Teen, angst, post-break up, hurt/comfort, injuries It's been a couple of months since Iceman and Maverick broke up. They're still wingmen, they still fly missions together. But it takes a bad landing from an ejection for them to realise that they still need each other. Inspired by this post , that broke me.

☁️Even Ice Melts (1927 words)

Rated Teen, angsT, grief, stormy night, post-argument, hurt comfort, good god this has it all. “No one will be there to mourn you when you crash and burn,” Ice hisses slowly. Oh how he hated Iceman. “Then let us hope I crash and burn tomorrow,” he says harshly, still somehow maintaining eye-contact with him.

☁️Starved (1825 words)

Rated Teen, hand-holding, emotional hurt comfort, mutual pining sort of at the end... Maverick is touch-starved. He doesn't know it. Nobody else knows it. Nobody else except for Iceman. Of course he had to notice. And despite them being rivals, Ice plucks up the courage to offer Maverick a seat in the next lesson.

☁️Boys Don't Cry (1921 words)

Rated Teen, fluff, emotional hurt/comfort, Ice needs a hug. Iceman Kazansky has been told all his life by everyone older than him that 'boys don't cry', 'boys don't have emotions' and if they do one must keep it all to themselves. He gets it, it's kind of why he'd called Iceman. But if there's one person that'll unexpectedly rewrite that lecture it's his newly rival-turned-wingman. Or, Ice tries to hold all his emotions in for the hundredth time and Maverick helps him understand he doesn't have to hide them anymore.

☁️Cingulomania (2127 words)

Rated Teen, fluff, hurt/comfort, Maverick needs a hug (noun) - a strong desire to hold someone in your arms. "When I go, I hope I go out just as beautifully,” Ice muses out loud. “Oh-” Maverick starts, seemingly involuntarily. “I’d really prefer it if you didn’t go at all..” Or, Iceman has unknowingly forged an emotional connection with his wingman

☁️I'm in Your Arms, I'm in Your Care (4187 words)

Rated Teen, two parts in one, hurt/comfort, both Ice and Mav need hugs Luck wasn't a strong enough word to describe how much love Ice felt for Maverick. There was such a thing as touch, though, and that was heaven for both of them.

☁️The Time Will Come (2633 words)

Rated Gen, SO much fluff, dadt, dadt repeal If there's one thing that had got Ice this far, it was the promise that one day, things would get better. He'd just have to wait. But he had got this far, looking at the smirking face of his partner-in-secret, Maverick Mitchell of all people.

[animazi]

whoa look at me talking about the acolyte wow... I dislike commenting on currently airing shows largely because there is so much that is still a mystery ooh what could happen next, and this is very true for the murder mystery only the victims aren't who you think show.

this is an upsettingly long post ostensibly about how I think there will be a mae pov flashback, and really about how I think osha's flashback that we have now is not the full story, which is fairly obvious, but I've put way to much thought into getting together what passes for textual evidence for it. read at own peril contains much yapping about e3.

anyway. episode three. time to comment on the currently airing show. beautiful stunning cinematography - different director Kogonada, and yeah. wow. very pretty. a lot more obvious Symbolism shots, which I am a sucker for icl, and in general some very beautiful stuff this is, and I will go to bat for this theory (please please please be right c'mon leslye do this for me) half of the flashbacks, and it is all from osha's point of view. right ok. so. entertain me here. some people on twt have noted how there are some shots in flashback scenes in the trailer that we haven't seen yet, and this + torbin's scar and the one word title (all other episodes have been two words, with each clearly corresponding to mae or osha) + the fact that this episode is so visually distinct and Kogonada is directing e7 too + what I am about to talk about wrt mae and osha all leads me to think 'yeah, this is half of the flashback', and the other half is probably going to be the bit people get antsy about yay.

now! the mae and osha stuff - I think that Destiny (that's the name of this episode btw. I have so many thoughts about the jedi and agency as ever. that is a separate yap though) is going to be the less controversial of the two largely because, bear with me just lining up this wasps nest in my aim, it is 'pro-jedi' so to speak. the jedi are good, not bad. osha restates time and time again her desire to not be a witch, to explore the world, and the jedi are her way of doing this. sol is kind and saves her, and the jedi are nice, if strict. they stop her from having to do the ascension, a ceremony she really didn't want to do, and they saved her. now. for the disclaimer. I don't think the jedi are evil and bad, I think they are flawed as an institution, and that is the angle I am fairly certain the acolyte is going for - they care more about the legality of the situation rather than the 'moral good' of the situation they are in aka mae really does not want to leave, even if osha does - it would surely cause far more harm to take them both as the jedi pretty clearly intend to do. that in mind. I also think everyone is sleeping on how incredibly fun and biased these two (more on this later) flashback episodes will be. hands up if you've seen the last duel, anyone, anyone? well the last duel is a film about uh. the violent sexual assault of a woman in medieval france. and it is framed through three different accounts of the events as told by our three leads: jean (the husband), jacques (the rapist), and marguerite (the victim). marguerite's account is presented by the film as the actually accurate one, it is The Truth, but it is also the last version we see, so for the first two thirds of the film we have watched two clashing narratives, with no clear indication of who is right. the story of the acolyte is one inspired by leslye headland's relationship with her sister (linky link) a relationship where both sisters believe fully that they are in the right - if osha's account is 100% the truth, this really doesn't seem to track and the show looses most of its emotional depth, and while yes, sure, external material doesn't mean that the show will unfold this way, I am willing to bet (please please please please please) that it will. now. onto the actual content of this episode that I think supports my theory - aka osha's (clear) bias.

I am going to start with what I think is the strongest point, and work from there. so. basics. please remember that osha has spent the last 14 years of her life knowing that mae set the fire that killed her parents, the same fire that traumatised osha to the point that she was unable to continue her jedi training and had to take an illegal and dangerous mechanic job, and yet she still clearly loves her sister - I would guess from this information presented in e1&2 that mae and osha had a close bond before, and yet the flashback shows almost the opposite. osha chafes at mae's constant proximity, at the 'born as two but always one' line, they are near constantly fighting, mae seems like an out and out psychopath, freezing a space hummingbird and deliberately setting the fire in an attempt to kill osha (in funny news. the fortress had so many osha violations no wonder she wanted to leave hahaha I am a comedic genius). why does osha miss the shot then, in light of this? well, the thesis of this theory post is that osha is not remembering in full 4k HD honesty - again, she has spent most of her life certain that mae essentially killed her parents and indirectly ruined her dreams of being a jedi, and this lack of clarity about the truth comes through in how she acts towards mae. now. my evidence for this? largely vibes based, and could just be poor writing, but what is star wars (prequels edition esp) if not reading heavily into interesting writing :D largely here my hmmm moments all stemmed from how conflictingly Destiny (the episode) presents mae. she is at once a known freezer of space hummingbirds (but osha doing the exact same just for less time is fine?) and setter of fires while vowing to kill osha to prevent her from leaving, and also osha's clearly loved sister - yes they fight, but again, osha misses the shot that would have brought mae into jedi custody (custody that she fairly explicitly trusts). now, my hypothesis here is that osha looking back on these events as coloured by her knowledge of what mae will do unconsciously is framing mae as more in the wrong, inherently bad etc to make sense of mae's actions. now, additionally supporting evidence I will present to the review group is how vehemently osha (who is saved by and goes on to become a padawan to a jedi) supports the jedi, in a way that seems to have been, to me at least, argued before with mae. the girl has been drawing the jedi logo in her notebook, her love of the jedi is pretty apparent in this episode. and yet the witches pretty clearly fear the jedi and what they bring with them. they disagree with the jedi perception of the force - and this disagreement is not framed as wrong by the narrative thus far, the republic and jedi quite literally have banned them from ensuring the longevity of their coven - so why is osha so firmly convinced that the jedi are good? :warning: violent and unconfirmed theory :warning: through the lens of osha being biased as someone who was saved by the jedi, and clearly wanted more than life in the fortress, osha reframes her 'siding' with the jedi in childhood as a more 'moral' stance; the jedi and good, and mae, who burnt down her life, is bad; a conflict between (understandably) overprotective parents + a clingy sister and osha who wants to be her own person with her own identity (oh look a Theme) gets morphed into a conflict between the jedi (an identity osha later takes on, and still clearly largely adheres too, insert textpost about how despite leaving osha is still bound by core jedi principles e.g. compassion) and the witches (an identity osha never feels connected to and actively tries to leave behind).

I will also say I think you can see all of this in the title of the episode, Destiny. why is this the title? certainly its a break from e1&2 'lost/found' and 'revenge/justice', where they are descriptors of what osha and mae are (either literally as in being found or enacting). destiny does not fit this mould, and I think is a rather interesting framing of all this. it is osha's destiny to become a jedi, but for that to happen, mae seemingly must get cast as the villain, without any room for doubt or her side of the story. also, there is the fact that agency is such a big part of this episode (aww its my reoccurring favourite star wars theme). osha's lack of individuality/separation from mae, the way she feels unable to refuse the ceremony she clearly doesn't want to. the jedi (really just sol. I have so many thoughts about sol) offer osha the choice that she wants, and yet the 'sanctity' of that choice is taken away from her in the violent death of the coven and the burning down of the fortress. sol says if you wish you will train as my padawan, but she can never return to the ruins of the fortress, she must go to coruscant. logically and emotionally yes I understand this, but the show has made a point about how the jedi order does not really give you transferable skills - is the same not true in the other direction? osha has no family now, functionally nowhere to go that isn't the jedi order. the question is will you be my padawan, not will you be a padawan. destiny (or at least the actions of others) has made it so that the agency she just received has been dashed on the rocks. and to refocus on the actual topic of this post, that theft of autonomy was pretty directly down to mae, and so how else to process that other than casting mae as a villain.

now, in the show about troubled sororal relations (I restate my earlier link) there naturally has to be another side to the uh. sororal relations than just osha's. also I bet its going to be called 'choice' or some shit to mirror Destiny and the other episode titles and highlight the differences in worldviews of osha and mae, jedi and witch

this is all, of course, to go without even saying the unclear reasons for why mae set the fire. was she just evil and possessive, or (as the server posited) being controlled or mind tricked or startled or even was there some palpatine level manipulation going on by the master. questions that a mae specific flashback would answer.

anyway. good show I like it when the star wars makes me think about stuff even when it is 2am and I should be sleeping. watch literally none of this be true

[that-tall-queer-bassist]

okay i have so many thoughts on this that im actually going to put them in text not tags

So I often take titles very seriously, especially if im helping a friend (like @/blocksruinedme) out, and my answer? It depends on what the fic calls for.

this is the same for summaries, i dont do summaries in only one way because that would be doing an injustice to the fic.

Each fanfiction that i post needs something different. Sometimes it needs some joking tags to prepare the reader for a lighthearted fic, sometimes it needs a chunk of prose in the summary to set the expectations for flowery descriptions, and the title is absolutely crucial to this.

Lets see some examples, shall we?

closer to another shore by remrose is a scarian fic i just finished reading (highly reccomend btw, it was very good) and its got an appropriate name! its named after a poem (i believe, which is copied/linked into the end notes) and its lowercase. The fic has a tone of heartache and hope, something serious for the most part. it's got a weight to it, and takes itself seriously, and this tone is present throughout the whole fic but also in the title! it's a good title that fits very well!!!

SUPERCRITICAL by MasqueofPlague (@masque-of-plague) is an amazing superhero/reporter fic (again, scarian) and once again, the title is very fitting! Sounds like a superhero movie, and fits the energy of it well with Grian starting out very critical of HotGuy and his superhero-ing, and really just sets up expectations nicely while also keeping to the theme.

Hello, World by cricket_toast (@toasted-cricket) is a cyberpunk au with AI Mumbo and Netrunner Grian and the title!! fits so well because computers but also the very put together serious vibes of the beginning before things... get weird ( >:3 ) and I think it matches the tone very well!

to all the ships at sea by mxMallory ( @mxmallory ) is a Smalletho (also with Clethubs <3) fic that has its setting in a lighthouse, and the title captures the energy of it well, with a palpable loneliness and longing in the first few chapters that gives way to a lighter tone once we get introduced to a bucket of seal (still love that line Mal <3)

Maybe You Like Danger by BlocksRuinedMe (@blocksruinedme) is a second person pov smalletho fic, and it captures the premise in so few words, setting you up for the contents easily, and letting it take up the space it needs to with the capitalization. It demands attention, and sets up that expectation with itself. (also one of the few second person pov fics i like, and makes me Feel very intensely) (hi vee)

and because i feel like i should give an example of a title i came up with, one of my most recent (nsfw) fics is called "You smell like... carrots." because i was inspired by that canon quote to write a (honestly kind of ridiculous) fic. But the title is goofy! It sets you up for a goofy premise, without giving you false expectations! It fits, it sets the tone, and it made me laugh (which is something i wanted from that fic).

Each fic has different needs, because each is unique. Sometimes metaphors are the way to go, sometimes a line from the fic, and sometimes its a description! (see "5+1" fics, or the name of the AU (like The Pirate Witch by me))

And that's my thoughts on titles, i hope somebody enjoyed that, or at least the mcyt fic recs XD

okay. fic writers. let's talk about titles.

i personally am of the eternal lowercase crowd except for one (1) exception...i wanna know your bias and why!

[yourea--stubborn--man]

The link to my AO3 is on my blog, but I figured I’d make a nice and neat post with all my Star Trek fics in one place to reblog every once in a while. 

Edit: every time someone reblogged this post, I got 10+ kudos on AO3 compared to the usual 3, and 2-3 comments a day compared to a couple per week. The first time it happened I almost cried. Likes did not have this effect, as they don’t share the post with anyone. Not going to ask you to reblog, but look what a difference it makes.

Please remember that while I love getting prompts, I’m not accepting any at the moment as I have far too many WIPs I’m super invested in and want to focus on.

To avoid seeing this post again, blacklist #essebificmasterpost

Kirk/Spock:

✨ Ablutions: Mature, Oneshot, 2.4k words, No Archive Warnings Apply 

Jim wakes up after their first night together and watches Spock get ready for the day. Just a little fic about Jim being hopelessly in love with and in awe of Spock. 

Tags: Mention of sex | Nudity | Morning After | fwp (fluff without plot)

✨ Save the last dance: Mature, Oneshot, 3.9k words, No Archive Warnings Apply

In which there is revealing alien formalwear, slow-dancing and out-of-body sexual experiences.

Tags: Slow Dancing | Possessive!Spock | pining!jim | Mind Meld Sex

✨ One of your Earth emotions: Teen and Up Audiencies, Oneshot, 1.8k words, No Archive Warnings Apply

5 times Spock didn’t know what he felt for Jim +1 time he finally did.

Tags: Strangers to Friends to Lovers | spock doesn't know how to emotion | spock figuring out his feelings | spock's pov | Stream of Consciousness | 5 times + 1 fic | spock has a big fat crush from day 1 | self-hatred/shame

✨ Thank God for telepathy: Teen and Up Audiencies, Oneshot, 2.1k words, No Archive Warnings Apply

Based on this post by boldly-yo on Tumblr: "Anyway, Jim asking to kiss Spock followed by Spock leaning his head in as Jim sticks his hand out is, The Best fanfic trope"

Tags: First Kiss | Love Confessions | Getting Together | Friends to Lovers | just a small sweet thing that somehow became 2k words | Touch Telepathy | Jim Kirk can't say the word sex

✨You are my answer: Explicit, Oneshot, 7.1k words, No Archive Warnings Apply

After the events of The Motion Picture, Spock is ready to fully confront his feelings for Jim.

Tags: Post-Star Trek I: The Motion Picture | First Kiss | First Time | Mind Meld | Bonding | set immediately after TMP | Plot What Plot/Porn Without Plot | Jim was depressed in TMP you can't change my mind

✨ Mythos: Teen and Up Audiencies, Oneshot, 1.2k words, No Archive Warnings Apply

Spock tells Jim an ancient Vulcan legend. Written for the Star Trek Bingo 2020 for the prompt “mythos/magic”.

Tags: Established Relationship | inspired by tumblr post | Canon Jewish Character(s) | Vulcan Culture | Fluff | mention of nudity | Mention of sex

✨In Vino Veritas:  Explicit, Oneshot, 5.7k words, No Archive Warnings Apply

The Enterprise is celebrating the end of its fourth year in space. At the party, Jim is nursing a bottle of Saurian brandy, afraid he’ll never get to confess his feelings to Spock without scaring him away. Written for the Star Trek Bingo 2020 for the "free space" square. I chose the prompt "In vino veritas".

Tags: Bones is trying his best in this one but he isn’t perfect | which I think is canon | Mildly Dubious Consent | I guess | by which I mean Jim is very drunk Spock is sober and Jim gets very handsy | Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism | Drunken Confessions | First Time | no actual sex happens while Jim is drunk btw | he just touches spock... A LOT | Leonard "Bones" McCoy is a Good Friend | Nyota Uhura is a Good Friend | Vulcan Mind Melds | Vulcan Biology | The biology of Vulcans | Smut | Angst with a Happy Ending

✨Close to you: Teen and Up Audiencies, Oneshot, 7.5k words, No Archive Warnings Apply

A sudden snowstorm during an away mission interferes with the Enterprise’s transporters and communications, leaving Jim and Spock stranded alone on an alien planet. A small cave their only shelter and huddling for warmth the only way to avoid hypothermia, they are forced to confront their feelings for one another.

Tags: Pining | Huddling For Warmth | Partial Nudity | First Kiss | Making Out | Vulcan Mind Melds | Touch Telepathy | Mention of sex | Love Confessions | Light Angst

Julian Bashir/Elim Garak:

✨Secrets and Lies: Teen and Up Audiencies, Oneshot, 1.7k words, No Archive Warnings Apply

Ever since he was a child, Elim Garak had loved telling lies. Written for the Star Trek Bingo 2020 for the prompt “Secrets or lies”.

Tags: First Kiss | Character Study | Relationship Study | Not ASIT compliant

✨Detective: Teen and Up Audiencies, Oneshot, 1.7k words, No Archive Warnings Apply

Following the Section 31 attempt to enlist Julian, suspecting that Garak may not be volunteering all the information he can to Starfleet Intelligence and suspecting that the two men may instead be working together and exchanging military secrets to bring down the Federation, the Federation sends a private detective to investigate the matter behind Sisko’s back. Said detective uncovers a secret, but not the one the Federation was hoping for… Written for the Star Trek Bingo 2020 for the prompt “Detective”.

Tags: Mention of sex | one (1) swearword | Crack Treated Seriously | Sort of? - Freeform | POV Outsider | POV Julian Bashir | Team Dad Benjamin Sisko

[ladyartemesia]

Fic recs for taehyung? I love your stuff btw I’ve read them all uwu

As a beacon of extra-ness in an already extra world, I am entirely incapable of just recommending fics like a normal blog. No. I’ve got to wax on like a bloomin connoisseur. I have compiled some (but not all) of my favorite works in several different categories and sorted them accordingly. This crazy list is so long I had to add a “keep reading”... but I simply couldn’t bear to leave any of these off the list. They are all so good!

Fics have been divided into 8 categories. Some are under the cut. 

 ▨ FRIENDS WITH BENEFITS and FRIENDS TO LOVERS ▨  ▨ ARRANGED MARRIAGE ▨ ▨ FANTASY ▨ ▨ ANGST WITH A HAPPY ENDING ▨ ▨ HYBRID and ABO (alpha/omega) ▨ ▨ MULTIPLE PARTNERS ▨ ▨ NEIGHBORS AND ROOMMATES ▨ ▨ TABOO THEMES and DARK FIC (Sex Work/Power Imbalance/Very Unsafe Sex) ▨ ▨

▨ FRIENDS WITH BENEFITS and FRIENDS TO LOVERS ▨

Insomnia by @hobiwonder

This is one of those fics I read and literally could not stop thinking about. It is wildly hot and honestly hilarious. Poor reader cannot sleep and the beautiful bro she’s tutoring offers a rather unconventional solution.

(Ego) Hoe Chronicles: KTH by @suga-kookiemonster

Listen. If you find a niche fan blog devoted entirely to Ego Tae... I’m not gonna say it’s mine. But it’s probably mine. I once told suga-kookiemonster that I would literally read a story about Ego Tae going grocery shopping on a Wednesday night and I stand by that. In this lurid romp, the reader falls into the clutches of everyone’s favorite bohemian sex lord and he rails her into another dimension.

Falling, Falling, Gone by @johobi

Pining (mutual or otherwise) is not really my thing, but I would straight up read Jo’s laundry list if she posted it. As usual I was blown away by how everything she does seems somehow better than any other version of it. This reader is really unique as well, and her relationship with the wildly popular soccer star Tae comes to a sexy and hilarious head at a sort of bachelor auction. With sharp dialogue, delightful subtext, and fantastic side characters, you really shouldn’t miss it. It’s pretty much perfect.

A Friendly Favor by @baeseoul

This is the classic “teach me some sex for another woman” trope and it is done so well. Sweet best friend Tae is looking to benefit from your experience, but his is not the only world about to be thouroughly rocked.

Officer Kim and the Criminal Crush by @ddaengyoonmin

This is one of the best twists on childhood friends to lovers I have ever seen. Tae grows up to become a cop and reader grows up to be a societal menace. I won’t spoil it, but it’s the perfect blend of nostalgia, tenderness, and smut. This fic technically doesn’t have a name so I had to give it one to link it. It’s part of an AMAZING series Zoe did that I also highly recommend.

Out of the Blue by @jimlingss

This is one of those stories that blooms throughout the narrative until you are left with this gorgeous flower at the end. I loved the journey of these two characters. It was real and it perfectly captures the experience of finding your soulmate in the person you least expect.

Sin Pijama by @brilliantlybasicb

This fic is a switch culture fic. It is wild wicked hot and this Tae is unreal. I love the way he lets the reader think she is in control just long enough. It is a wild romp with an adorable sequel and honestly you should read it.

Girls Like You by @jjiminah

I was in jjiminah’s asks IMMEDIATELY about this fic because I had FEELINGS. The reader begins wordlessly teasing and tempting Tae on their morning bus ride every day until he is literally losing his mind. Everything that follows is fire. Jjiminah has hinted she will wrote more for these two and I NEED IT.

Sighs and Sonnets by @btsaudge

This fic is beautiful. Like it’s basically art. This is a bad boy who is bad for you. But he has the soul of a poet and the stroke game of a renaissance master. Bittersweet and seductive, this fic is a full experience.

The Text by @taetaesbaebaepsae

Tae is your friend with benefits but it looks like feeling may have been caught by one or more parties. When you attempt to soothe your aching heart with another pretty boy, Tae decides to stake his claim. This was very sexy. The whole fic was sexy.

▨ ARRANGED MARRIAGE ▨

Monster by @neonlights92

Monster and all of its companion series about each of the boys is one of those fics that I reread constantly and also just think about constantly. This is one of the best mafia AUs out there and it’s characters are vivid and unforgettable. Tae’s stubborn resistance to his lovely new wife in contrast with her quiet, clever strength really brings this story to life. A word of warning. The masterlist links are a bit messed up. To read part two you must click on part three. And to read part three must click on part four. The link to part four is at the bottom of part three (or you can just search it on her site. It is definitely all there though).

Dichotomy by @kpopfanfictrash

There is a reason the incomparable Shanna is on this list three times. She is truly incomparable. This is childhood friends-to enemies-to spouses and it is wonderful. I adore this Tae. He is sharp and vulnerable and occasionally heavy handed, but truly a gem. This fic also features one of the best angry sex scenes I’ve ever run my eyeballs across.

▨ FANTASY ▨

Chism by @kpopfanfictrash

The world-building in this story is genuinely awe inspiring. You could write series upon series within this vivid universe. The god of Winter is missing and Summer’s heat burns unchecked for many years. The reader is a warrior with a unique ability tasked with guarding a very interesting prisoner. This story is so good. I mean it is really bloomin incredible. It’s hard to say what I liked best about it, because it was stellar across the board.

Obsidian by @kpopfanfictrash

In the pantheon of delicious Tae incarnations, Obsidian Taehyung is essentially unrivaled as a grey witch who moonlights as a sexy rock star. His extremely erotic clash with a white witch detective plays out as the two of them track down a sinister killer (with the help of some truly memorable side characters).

Out of this World by @ddaengyoonmin

This one is really unique. Tae is a merman scientist on the water planet of Neptune and when the reader and her misguided crew crash into his sea, he takes it upon himself to improve inter-species relations. This fic features excellent world building alongside several twists and surprises. Clever scientist Tae is downright irresistible.

▨ ANGST WITH A HAPPY ENDING ▨

Picking Flowers by @jamaisjoons

So this story is a journey - truly a beautiful one and it’s a gorgeous addition to the hanahaki genre. There is real pain and I cried real tears, but gosh it was so sexy and so worth it. I was surprised by how truly immersed I ended up in this piece. I lost track of everything else. The end is insanely satisfying, but the journey is really what makes this fic unmissable.

Until Yesterday by @jimlingss

This fic destroyed me slowly then slowly put me together again piece by piece. When I say I went through it - I WENT THROUGH IT. The story is loosely based on the movie “The Vow” and it is just fantastic. Beautiful and tender till the last word.

The Foolish Muse by @bibbykins

This is the story of someone who is deeply in love, but knows they deserve better. It is a sexy and evocative work with allusions to mythology that fit seamlessly into the narrative. I think my favorite part is Tae discovering how much the reader meant to him and what choices ultimately lead them to a really delicious conclusion.

Back to You by @ladyartemesia

The last time I did a fic rec list, it got like 700 notes. Ya girl is not makin the same mistake again. I spent hours on this list. My work is comin along for the ride. Kim Taehyung is the love of your life, until one day he disappears without a trace.

Vacancy by @ppersonna

This one is the only idol AU on the list and I normally don’t read those, but Lindy’s work is too good to miss in any setting. I am thrilled I took a look because what I found was a glimpse into a beautiful relationship that weathers and eventually overcomes the challenges of loving in the limelight. There is a LOT of emotional depth and symbolism which really elevates everything about this lovely story. The reader’s internal struggles in the face of her lover’s fame are extremely well done.

▨ HYBRID and ABO ▨ (alpha/omega)

Eye of the Tiger by @opaljm

I am beyond hype about this story which is (very) loosely inspired by Zootopia and features a cocky tiger Taehyung and a fiesty prey hybrid he needs to fake date in order to keep panther Jimin from murdering him. (Tiger Tae got a tad too frisky around Jimin’s mate and now things are dangerously awkward.) This story is already so freakin good. I cannot wait for the rest.

Silver and Blue by @taetaewonderland

What happens when you get on the wrong side of the right werewolf? Very sexy - very crazy times. Chronologically this is the first of the Silver and Blue series which follows barely civilized were-Tae through his courtship and eventually his relationship with the spunky reader. Holla to all my impreg kink homies. This is the fic for you.

Heat Run by @ladyartemesia

As I said before, the last time I did a fic rec list, it got like 700 notes. Ya girl is not makin the same mistake twice. I spent hours on this list. My work is comin along for the ride. Alpha lawyer V is a man of many secrets, but his well ordered reality spirals wildly out of control when he crosses paths with a fiery omega set on saving the world from his wicked ways.

Beautiful Stranger by @interludemoonchild

This was a wild ride from start to finish. Taehyung is a tiger hybrid shifter who escapes from the circus to be close to a veterinary student he bonded with. There is a lot of interesting twists and surprises in this one. I was definitely screaming at the end.

Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell by @jingabitch

A very young wolf hybrid Taehyung adopts you as his pet human when you are just a kid. After Tae leaves to serve in the military he returns to an adult version of his sweet little princess and chaos ensues. Mind the tags for this one folks. It’s excellent, but there are very triggering themes throughout.

▨ MULTIPLE PARTNERS ▨

Level of Restraint by @lemonjoonah

This is not strictly a Tae fic in that he is only one of three major players in this twisted masterpiece. Lemon is the undisputed queen of the surprise twist and this one is truly brilliant. People dropped this fic in the discord calling it the best fan fiction they had ever read and I am not here to argue with them at all. Fair warning, every word - every inch of this fic is sexy and it’s delicious brand of titillation is wrapped around your psyche good and tight by the end.

Four by @luxekook

The quadruplets next door are fueling your very lurid fantasies. It turns out they have some fantasies of their own... You will need water if you read this fic. This is the original patented Kim Taehyung Horny Hive Mind 4D Experience™

▨ NEIGHBORS AND ROOMMATES ▨

The Heat Wave Series by @curly-bangtan

The original story (chapter 1) in this series is definitely famous, but I don’t know how many people have read all 9 chapters and if you haven’t, you are really missing the incredible journey of two very horny idiots stumbling recklessly towards real and amazing love. Everything is set off when the air conditioner breaks and a pair of wild roommates shed their inhibitions along with their clothes.

Flicker by @chimoona

So this fic started out with adorable neighbor dynamics and ended with erotic rope tying. Baby I was ABOUT IT. This was so bloomin hot and also like sweet and tender. Really a sexy and sentimental treasure.

Not Your Typical Flower Shop Story by @jungtaeyoongles

This story goes from “aww” to “WHAT THE-” real quick. Fast paced plot and twist after twist turn the whole flower shop au upside down and then inside out. I can’t say more because spoilers but like - WOW.

▨ TABOO THEMES and DARK FIC ▨ (Sex Work/Power Imbalance/Very Unsafe Sex)

Extracurricular by @ppersonna

One of my favorite professor-student AUs. The reader writes her gorgeous professor a borderline erotic analysis of several major works of art and he feels compelled to discuss it with her privately. Lindy really outdid herself on this one. It is scorchin. Professor Tae is actually really sweet and somehow that just makes the whole thing hotter.

Akrasia by @nitaescence

This is insanely hot. Emphasis on the insane because it’s basically a super erotic romp where you have sex with a man you don’t know (Taehyung) on a crowded public bus. I literally felt my blood pressure going up the longer I read. Whew.

The Client by @jungkookiebus

This one hit me right in the feels. Taehyung is a sweet and lonely man who has a standing Wednesday appointment with an upscale sex worker. As the story progresses, feelings become involved on both sides. When I say I am checking her page thrice daily for part three... This is so engrossing. And this Tae. I just want to hold him.

Daffodil Dreams by @sombreboy

Tread carefully ladies and gents. This story is excellent, but it is easily the darkest fic on the list and, if you choose to read it, please read the trigger warnings carefully. The reader is a psychologist called in to analyze a very dangerous criminal. As their sessions progress, however, several boundaries are crossed.

Obey by @jjkfire

Taehyung is the most feared and ruthless member of the local mafia and you are the world’s most inept escort. You needed a job, but had no real interest in sex work and you’ve managed to fly under the radar as a glorified waitress until Kim Taehyung himself walks into your agency and decides that you’re the only girl he wants. Oh my gosh I loved this story so much. It was downright amazing and there is a surprise at the end that makes everything even sweeter.

[sabugabr]

Why the Clone problem in Star Wars animated media is also a Mandalorian problem, and why we have to talk about it (PART 2)

Hi! I finally finished wrapping this up, so here’s part 2 of what has already become a mini article (you can find Part 1 here, if you like!)

And for this part, it won’t be as much as a critic as part 1 was, but instead I’d like to focus more on what I consider to be a wasted potential regarding the representation of the Clones in the Star Wars animated media, from the first season of The Clone Wars till now, and why I believe it to be an extension of the Mandalorian problem I discussed in part 1 —  the good old colonialism.

Sources used, as always, will be linked at the end of this post!

PART 2: THE CLONES

Cody will never know peace

So I’d like to state that I won’t focus as much on the blatantly whitewashing aspect, for I believe it to be very clear by now. If you aren’t familiar with it, I highly recommend you search around tumblr and the internet, there are a lot of interesting articles and posts about it that explain things very didactically and in detail. The only thing you need to know to get this started is that even at the first seasons of Clone Wars (when the troopers still had this somewhat darker skin complexion and all) they were still a whitewashed version of Temuera Morrison (Jango’s actor). And from then, as we all know, they only got whiter and whiter till we get where we are now, in rage.

Look at this very ambiguously non-white but still westernized men fiercely guarding their pin-up space poster

Now look at this still westernized but slightly (sarcasm) whiter men who for some reason now have different tanning levels among them (See how Rex now has a lighter skin tone? WHEN THE HELL DID THAT HAPPEN KKKKKKK) Anyway you got the idea. So without further ado...

2.1 THE FANTASY METAPHOR

As I mentioned before in Part 1, one thing that has to be very clear if you want to follow my train of thought is that it’s impossible to consume something without attributing cultural meanings to it, or without making cultural associations. This things will naturally happen and it often can improve our connection to certain narratives, especially fantastic ones. Even if a story takes place in a fantastic/sci fi universe, with all fictional species and people and worlds and cultures, they never come from nowhere, and almost always they have some or a lot of basing in real people and cultures. And when done properly, this can help making these stories resonate in a very beautifull, meaningfull way. I actually believe this intrisic cultural associations are the things that make these stories work at all. As the brilliant american speculative/science fiction author Ursula K. Le Guin says in the introduction (added in 1976) of her novel The Left Hand of Darkness, and that I was not able to chopp much because it’s absolutely genious and i’ll be leaving the link to the full text right here,

“The purpose of a thought-experiment, as the term was used by Schrodinger and other physicists, is not to predict the future — indeed Schrodinger's most famous thought-experiment goes to show that the ‘future,’ on the quantum level, cannot be predicted — but to describe reality, the present world.

Science fiction is not predictive; it is descriptive.”

[...] “Fiction writers, at least in their braver moments, do desire the truth: to know it, speak it, serve it. But they go about it in a peculiar and devious way, which consists in inventing persons, places, and events which never did and never will exist or occur, and telling about these fictions in detail and at length and with a great deal of emotion, and then when they are done writing down this pack of lies, they say, There! That's the truth!

They may use all kinds of facts to support their tissue of lies. They may describe the Marshalsea Prison, which was a real place, or the battle of Borodino, which really was fought, or the process of cloning, which really takes place in laboratories, or the deterioration of a personality, which is described in real textbooks of psychology; and so on. This weight of verifiable place-event-phenomenon-behavior makes the reader forget that he is reading a pure invention, a history that never took place anywhere but in that unlocalisable region, the author's mind. In fact, while we read a novel, we are insane —bonkers. We believe in the existence of people who aren't there, we hear their voices, we watch the battle of Borodino with  them, we may even become Napoleon. Sanity returns (in most cases) when the book is closed.”

[...] “ In reading a novel, any novel, we have to know perfectly well that the whole thing is nonsense, and then, while reading, believe every word of it. Finally, when we're done with it, we may find — if it's a good novel — that we're a bit different from what we were before we read it, that we have been changed a little, as if by having met a new face, crossed a street we never crossed before. But it's very hard to say just what we learned, how we were changed.

The artist deals with what cannot be said in words.

The artist whose medium is fiction does this within words. The novelist says in words what cannot be said in words. Words can be used thus paradoxically because they have, along with a semiotic usage, a symbolic or metaphoric usage. [...]  All fiction is metaphor. Science fiction is metaphor. What sets it apart from older forms of fiction seems to be its use of new metaphors, drawn from certain great dominants of our contemporary life — science, all the sciences, and technology, and the relativistic and the historical outlook, among them. Space travel is one of these metaphors; so is an alternative society, an alternative biology; the future is another. The future, in fiction, is a metaphor.

A metaphor for what?” [1]

A metaphor for what indeed. I won’t be going into what Star Wars as a whole is a metaphor for, because I am certain that it varies from person to person, and everyone can and has the total right to take whatever they want from this story, and understand it as they see fit. That’s why it’s called the modern myth. And therefore, all I’ll be saying here is playinly my take not only on what I understand the Clones to be, but what I believe they could have meant.

2.2 SO, BOBA IS A CLONE

I don’t want to get too repetitive, but I wanted to adress it because even though I by no means intend to put Boba and the Clones in the same bag, there is one aspect about them that I find very similar and interesting, that is the persue of individuality. While the Clones have this very intrinsically connected to their narratives, in Boba’s case this appears more in his concept design. As I mentioned in Part 1, one of the things the CW staff had in mind while designing the mandalorians is that they wanted to make Boba seem unique and distinguishable from them, and honestly even in the original trilogy he stands out a lot. He is unique and memorable and that’s one of the things that draws us to him.

And as we all know, both Boba and Jango and the Clones are played by Temuera Morrison — and occasionally by the wonderful Bodie Taylor and Daniel Logan. And Temuera Morrison comes from the Maori people. And differently from the mandalorian case, where we were talking about a whole planet, in this situation we’re talking about portraying one single person, so there’s nowhere to go around his appearance and phenotypes, right? I mean, you are literally representing an actual individual, so there’s no way you could alter their looks, right?

(hahahaha wrong)

And besides that, I think that is in situations like that (when we are talking about individuals) that the actor’s perspective could really have a place to shine (just the same as how Lea was mostly written by Carrie Fisher). In this very heart-warming interview for The New York Times (which you can read full signing up for their 5-free-articles-per-month policy), Temuera Morrison talks a little bit about how he incorporated his cultural background to Boba Fett in The Mandalorian:

“I come from the Maori nation of New Zealand, the Indigenous people — we’re the Down Under Polynesians — and I wanted to bring that kind of spirit and energy, which we call wairua. I’ve been trained in my cultural dance, which we call the haka. I’ve also been trained in some of our weapons, so that’s how I was able to manipulate some of the weapons in my fight scenes and work with the gaffi stick, which my character has.” [2]

The Gaffi stick (or Gaderffii), btw, is the weapon used by the Tusken Raiders on Tatooine, and according to oceanic art expert Bruno Claessens it’s design was inspired by wooden Fijian war clubs called totokia. [3]

And I think is very clear how this background can influence one’s performance and approach to a character, and majorly how much more alive this character will feel like. Beyond that, having an actor from your culture to play and add elements to a character will higly improve your sense of connection with them (besides all the impact of seeying yourself on screen, and seeying yourself portrayed with respect). It would only make sense if the cultural elements that the actor brought when giving life to a fictional individual would’ve been kept and even deepened while expanding this role. And if you’re familiar with Star Wars Legends you’ll probably rememeber that in Legends Jango would train and raise all Clone troopers in the Mandalorian culture, so that the Clones would sing traditional war chants before battles, be fluent in Mando’a (Mandalore’s language) and some would proudly take mandalorian names for themselves. So why didn’t Filoni Inc. take that into account when they went to delve into the clones in The Clone Wars?

2.3 THE WHITE MINORITY

First of all I’d like to state that all this is 100% me conjecturing, and by no means at all I’m saying that this is what really happened. But while I was re-watching CW before The Bad Batch premiere, something came to my mind regarding the whitewashing of the Clones, and I’d like to leave that on the table.

So, you know this kind of recent movies and series that depicted like, fairies in this fictional world where fairies were very opressed, but there would be a lot of fairies played by white actors? Just like Bright and Carnival Row. If you’ve watched some of these and have some racial conscience, you’ll probably know where I’m going here. And the issue with it is that often this medias will portray real situations of racism and opression and prejudice, but all applied to white people. Like in Carnival Row, when going to work as a maid in a rich human house, our girl Cara Delevingne had to fight not to have her braids (which held a lot of significance in her culture) cut by her intolerant human mistress, because the braids were not “appropriate”. Got it? hahahaha what a joy

Look at her ethnic braids!!!

One of the reasons this happens might be to relieve a white audience of the burden of watching these stories and feeling what I like to call “white guilt”. Because, as we all know, white people were never very oppressed.  Historically speaking, white people have always been in privileged social positions, and in an exploitative relationship between two ethnic groups, white people very usually would be the exploiters  —  the opressors. So while watching situations (that every minority would know to be very real) of opression in fiction, if these situations were lived by a white actor, there would be no real-life associations, because we have no historical parameter to associate this situation with anything in real life — if you are white. Thus, there is less chance that, when consuming one of these narratives, whoever is watching will question the "truthfulness" of these situations (because it's not "real racism", see, "they're just fairies"). It's easier for a person to watch without having to step out of their comfort zone, or confront the reality of real people who actually go through things like that. There's even a chance that this might diminish empathy for these people.

Once again, not saying this is specifically the case of the Clones, majorly because one of the main feelings you have when watching CW is exactly empathy for the troopers (at least for me, honestly, the galaxy could explode, I just wanted those poor men to be happy for God’s sake). But I’ll talk more about it later.

The thing is, the whole thing with the Clones, if you think about it, it’s not pretty. If you step on little tiny bit outside the bubble of “fictional fantasy”, the concept is very outrageous. They are kept in conditions analogous to slavery, to say the least. To say the more, they were literally made in an on-demand lab to serve a purpose they are personally not a part of, for which they will neither receive any reward nor share any part of the gains. On the contrary, as we saw in The Bad Batch, as soon as the war was over and the clones were no longer useful as cannonballs, they were discarded. In the (wonderful) episode 6 of the third season of (the almost flawless) Rebels, “The Last Battle”, we're even personally introduced to the analogy that there really wasn't much difference in value between clones and droids, something that was pretty clear in Clone Wars but hadn't been said explicitly yet.

In fact, technically the Separatists can be considered to be more human than the Republic. But that's just my opinion.

So, you had this whole army of pretty much slaves. I know this is a heavy term, but these were people who were originally stripped of any sense of humanity or individuality, made literally to go to war and die in it, doing so purely in exchange for food and lodging, under the false pretense that they belonged to a glorious purpose (yes, Loki me taught that term, that was the only thing I absorbed from this series). Doing all this under extremely precarious conditions from which they had no chance of getting out, actually, getting out was tantamount to the death penalty. They were slaves. In milder terms, an oppressed minority. And again, I don't know if that was the case, but I can understand why Filoni Inc would be apprehensive about representing phenotically indigenous people in this situation. Especially since we in theory should see Anakin and Obi-Wan as the good guys.

(and here I’d like to leave a little disclaimer that I believe the whole Anakin-was-a-slave-once plot was HUGELY misused (and honestly just badly done) both in the prequels and in the animeted series  — maybe for the best, since he was, you know, white and all that, and I don’t know how the writers would have handled it, but ANYWAY — I believe this could have been further explored, particularly regarding his relationship with the Clones, and how it could have influenced his revolt against the Jedi, and manipulated to add to his anger and all that. I mean, we already HAD the fact that Anakin shared a deeper conection with his troopers than usual)

Yes, Rex, you have common trauma experiences to share. But anyway, backing to my track

As I was saying, we are to see them as good guys, and maybe that could’ve been tricky if we saw them hooping up on slavery practices. Like, idk, a “nice” sugar plantation owner? (I don’t know the correct word for it in english, but in portuguese they were called senhores de engenho) Like this guy from 12 Years a Slave?

You know, the slave owner who was “nice”. IDK, anyway  

No one will ever watch Clone Wars and make this association (I believe not, at least), of course not. But if we were to see how CW deepened the clone arcs, and see them as phenotypically indigenous, subjected to certain situations that occur in CW (yes, like Umbara), maybe some kind of association would’ve been easier to make.

I mean, come onnnn I can’t be the only one seeing it

You see, maybe not the whole 12 Years a Slave association one, but I don’t think it’s hard to see there was something there. And maybe this could’ve been even more evident if they looked non-white. Because historically, both black peoples and indigenous peoples went through processes of slavery, from which we as a society are still impacted today. And to slave a people, the first thing you have to do is strip them from their humanity. So it might be easier to see this situation and apply it to real life. And maybe that could lead to a whole lot of other questions regarding the Clones, the Republic, the Jedi, and even how chill Obi-Wan was about all this. We might come out of it, as lady Ursula Le Guin stated in the fragment above, a bit different from what we were before we watch it.

Maybe even unconsciously, Filoni Inc thought we would be more confortable watching if they just looked white (and because of colonialism and all that, but I’m adding thoughts here).

And of course I don’t like the idea of, idk, looking at Obi-Wan and thinking about Benedict Cumberbatch in 12 Years a Slave or something like that. Of course that, if the Clones were to play the same role as they did in the prequels, to obediently serve the Jedi and quietly die for them, that would have been bad, and hurtfull, and pejorative if added to all that I said here. But the thing is that Clone Wars, consciously or not, already solved that. At least to my point of view, they already managed to approach this situation in an incredible competent way, that is giving them agency.

2.4 AGENCY AND INDIVIDUALITY

So, one of the things I love most in Clone Wars is how it really feels like it’s about the Clones. Like, we have the bigger scene of Palpatine taking over, Ahsoka’s growth arc, Anakin’s turn to The Dark Side, the dawn of the Jedi and rise of the Empire and all that, but it also has this idk, vibe, of there’s actually something going on that no one in scene is talking about? And this something is the Clones. We have these episodes spread throughout the seasons, even out of chronological order, which when watched together tell a parallel story to the war, to everything I mentioned. Which is a story about individuals. Clone Wars manages to, in a (at least to me) very touching way, make the Clones be the heros. 

Can you really look me in the eye and say that Five’s story didn’t CRASH you like a full-speed train???? He may not have the same amount of screen-time as the protagonists, but his story is just as important as theirs (and to me, it might be the most meaningful one). Because he is the first to break free from the opression cicle all the Clones were trapped into. 

His story can be divided into 6 phases.

1 - First, the construction of his individuality, in other words, the reclaiming of his humanity. 

2 - Then the assimilation of understanding yourself as an individual of value, and then extending this to all his brothers, not as a unit, but as a set of individuals collectively having this same newly discovered value.

3 - This makes him realize that in the situation they find themselves in, they are not being recognized as such. This makes him question the reality of their situation.

4 - Freed from the illusion of his state, he seeks the truth about it.

5 - This then leads him to seek liberation not just for himself, but for all the Clones (it's basically Plato's Cave, and I'm not exaggerating here).

6 - And finally, precisely because he has assimilated his individuality and sought freedom for himself and his brothers, he is punished for it.

His story is all about agency. Agency, according to the Wikipedia page that is the first to appear if you type “agency” on Google, is that agency is “the abstract principle that autonomous beings, agents, are capable of acting by themselves” [4], and this abstract principle can be dissected in 7 segments:

Law - a person acting on behalf of another person

Religious -  "the privilege of choice... introduced by God"

Moral -  capacity for making moral judgments

Philosophical -  the capacity of an autonomous agent to act, relating to action theory in philosophy

Psychological -  the ability to recognize or attribute agency in humans and non-human animals

Sociological -  the ability of social actors to make independent choices, relating to action theory in sociology

Structural - ability of an individual to organize future situations and resource distribution

All of them apply here. And this is just the story of one Clone. We know there are many others throughout the series. 

Agency is what can make the world of a difference when you are telling a story about an opressed minority. Because opressed minorities do exist, and opression exists, and if you are insecure about consuming a fictional media about opressed minorities, see if they have agency might be a good place to start. So that’s why I think that everything I said before in 2.3 falls short. Because the solution already existed, and was indeed done. Honestly, making the non-agency representation of the Clones (the one we see in the prequels) to be the one played by Temuera Morrison, and then giving them agency in the version where they appear to be white, just leaves a bitter taste in my mouth.

And honestly, if they were to make the Clones look like Temuera Morrison, and by that mean, take more inspiration in the Māori culture, maybe they wouldn’t even have to change much of their representation besides their facial features. As I said in part 1, I am not by any means an expert in polynesian cultures, but there was something that really got me while I was researching about it. And is the facial tattoos. More precisely, the tā moko. 

2.5  TĀ MOKO

Once again I’ll be using the Te Ara: The Encyclopedia of New Zealand as source, and you can find the articles used linked at the end of this post. 

Etymologically speaking,

“The term moko traditionally applied to male facial tattooing, while kauae referred to moko on the chins of women. There were other specific terms for tattooing on other parts of the body. Eventually ‘moko’ came to be used for Māori tattooing in general.” [5]

So moko is the correct name for the characteristic tattoos we often see when we look for Māori culture. 

These ones ^. Please also look this book up, it’s beautiful. It’s written by  Ngahuia Te Awekotuku, a New Zealand academic specialising in Māori cultural issues and a lesbian activist. She’s wonderful. 

According to the Tourism NewZealand website, 

“In Māori culture, it [moko] reflects the individual's whakapapa (ancestry) and personal history. In earlier times it was an important signifier of social rank, knowledge, skill and eligibility to marry.”

“Traditionally men received moko on their faces, buttocks and thighs. Māori face tattoos are the ultimate expression of Māori identity. Māori believe the head is the most sacred part of the body, so facial tattoos have special significance.”

[...] “The main lines in a Māori tattoo are called manawa, which is the Māori word for heart.” [6]

Therefore, in the Māori culture, there’s this incredibly deep meaning attributed to the (specific of their culture) tattooing of the face. The act of tattooing the body, any part of the body, is incredibly powerful in many cultures around the globe. The adornment of the body can have different meanings for these different cultures, but all of which I've come into contact with do mean a lot. It’s one of the oldest and most beautiful human expressions of individuality and identity. 

And in the Star Wars universe, the Clones are the group that has the deeper connection to, and the best narrative regarding, tattoos. In fact, besides Hera’s father, Cham Syndulla, the Clones are the only individuals to have tattooed skin, at least that I can recall of. And they do share a deep connection to it. 

For the Clones, the tattoos (added to hairstyles) are the most meaningful way in which they can express themselves. Is what makes them distinguishable from each other to other people. Tattoos are one of the things that represent them as individuals.

And I’m not BY ANY MEANS sayin that the Clones facial tattoos = Moko. That’s not my point. But that’s one of the things I meant when I said earlier about the wasted potential of the representation of the Clones (in my point of view). Because maybe if it were their intention to base the culture of the clones after the polynesian culture, maybe if it were their intention to make the Clones actually look like Temuera Morrison, this could have meant a whole deal. More than it’d appear looking to it from outside this culture. Maybe if there were actual polynesian people in the team that designed the Clones and wrote them (or at least indigenous people, something), who knows what we could’ve had. 

Even in Hunter’s design, I noticed that if you take for example this frame of Temuera from the movie River Queen (2005), where we can have a closer look at the design of his tā moko

Speaking purely plastically (because I don’t want to get into the movie itself, just using it as example because then I can use Temuera himself as a comparison), see the lines around the contours of his mouth? Now look at Hunter’s. 

I find it interesting that they choose to design this lines coming from around his nose like that. But at this point I am stretching A LOT into plastic and semiotics, so this comparison is just a little thing that got my attention. I know that his tattoo is a skull and etc etc, I’m just poiting this out. And it even makes me a little frustrated, because they could have taken so many interesting paths in the Bad Batch designs. But instead they choose to pay homage to Rambo. And I mean, I like Rambo, I think he’s cool and all that.

Look at him doing Filipino martial arts

But then, as we say in Brasil, they had the knife and the cheese in their hands (all they had to do was cut the cheese, but they didn’t). Istead, it seems like in order to make Hunter look like Rambo, they made him even whiter??? 

2.6 SO...

Look, I love The Clone Wars. I’m crazy about it. I love the Clones, I love their stories and plots. They are great characters and one of the greatest addings ever made in the Star Wars universe. They even have, in my opinion, the best soundtrack piece to feature in a Star Wars media since John Williams’ wonderful score. It just feels to me as if their narrative core is full of bagage, and meanings, and associations that were just wiped under the carpet when they suddenly became white. It just feels to me as if, once again, they were trying to erase the person behing the trooper mask, and the people they were to represent, and the history they should evoke.

I don’t know why they were whitewashed. Maybe it was just the old due racism and colonialism. Maybe it was meant for us to not question the Jedi, or our good guys, or the real morality of this fictional universe where we were immersed. But then, was it meant for what?

The Clones were a metaphor for what? 

(spoiler: the answer still contains colonialism)

Thank you so much for reading !!!! (and congratulations for getting this far, you are a true hero)

SOURCES USED IN THIS:

[1] Ursulla K. Le Guin, 'The Left Hand of Darkness', 14th ACE print run of June, 1977

[2] Dave Itzkoff, 'Being Boba Fett: Temuera Morrison Discusses ‘The Mandalorian’', The New York Times, published Dec. 7, 2020, https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/07/arts/television/the-mandalorian-boba-fett-temuera-morrison.html (accessed 15 September 2021)

[3] Bruno Claessens, 'George Lucas' "Star Wars" and Oceanic art' , Archived from the original on December 5, 2020, https://web.archive.org/web/20201205114353/http://brunoclaessens.com/2015/07/george-lucas-star-wars-and-oceanic-art/#.YEiJ-p37RhF (accessed 15 September 2021)

[4]  Wikipedia contributors, "Agency," Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Agency&oldid=1037924611 (accessed September 17, 2021)

[5] Rawinia Higgins, 'Tā moko – Māori tattooing - Origins of tā moko', Te Ara - the Encyclopedia of New Zealand, http://www.TeAra.govt.nz/en/ta-moko-maori-tattooing/page-1 (accessed 17 September 2021)

[6] Tourism New Zealand, ‘The meaning of tā moko, traditional Māori tattoos’,  The Tourism New Zealand website, https://www.newzealand.com/us/feature/ta-moko-maori-tattoo/ (accessed 17 September 2021)

[rebamacncheese]

THSR Designer’s Notes: The Suit

This is the fourth in a series of posts where I break down the design choices I made for my illustrated Frozen 3 fan-script, True Hans Soul Rebel. Link here if you haven’t read it: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27113293/chapters/66207733

Without further ado, Marie’s suit. 

This suit is next level. Big brain. Peak Marie, as a character. This is when she decides to live bravely - face what she actually wants for the first time in her life, and experiment with self-expression beyond conformity. 

Now, before I go much further on this vein, I should acknowledge that everyone’s gender journey is different. While I like to think Marie’s story has some universal appeal, she’s not meant to, and could never, represent everyone’s experience. Many MTF people glow up from a masculine presentation to a high femme one, and that’s how they live their truth.

But for this story, and this character, I couldn’t see her going from one box of binary expectations to another and finding much happiness that way.  With the suit, she reclaims masculinity - and begins the end of an arc about reclaiming her past actions, her life and all its contradictions. 

Lets break it down. 

The concept of the suit was one of the earliest visual ideas I had for THSR. Here’s a draft, which predates me figuring out what to do with Marie’s sideburns, and most of the plot:

And here’s a slightly later, post-burns draft, which also predates Elsa’s ruffle dress:

Minor color changes and shaping aside, the outline is basically there. All the same things about the fairy tale prince wardrobe that made Hans the most conventional thing in a room make Marie the least. The masculine wear is offset by feminine adjustments to the silhouette - the hair bun, the cinched waist, and the heels. On shaping, Marie’s asymmetrical lapels are a whole choice as well, adapting the boxiness of Hans’ suit jacket for something fragmented, angular, and flattering to Marie’s chest. Gnc af, no attempt at all to appear straight, or even really cis. 

A major inspiration was, of course, Revolutionary Girl Utena. Especially in the waist shaping, themes of defiance, and the palette (we’ll get to colors in a bit)

The whole ball scene, really, is just Beauty and the Beast by way of Utena. Watch out for falling petals, folks!

I ended up changing the skirt-like flared coat tails in the final to a cut that drew more attention to fact that Marie is wearing pants. The pants are going to be a plot point, how Marie’s accidentally clocked by the trolls, so it’s important that they’re uncompromised. 

You have Captain Amelia, fellow sideburns queen, to thank for the new cut:

You also have her to blame for the heels, likely. The heels are impractical, a stretch for the soft butch look, and are really there because I thought they looked foxy. There is some gender-significance to them, if you’ll bear with me. At ~5′10″ (my estimate), Hans was a respectable height for man, while Marie is uncommonly tall for a woman and it’s a source of insecurity for her. Wearing four inch heels anyway, which elevates her a little taller than Kristoff, is a bold flex in that context.  And in Marie’s defense, she didn’t expect to be in action scene that evening. Come the third act, I’m sure she’s grateful that she gets to spend most of the final battle with her feet off the ground. 

The hair bun was, like the best decisions, so simple and something I just did because it felt right, intuitively. But it really makes the look, the capstone if you will, and so I want to talk about how that happened. First, I was watching a lot of Gentleman Jack at the time, and though the bun is just the period, this was in my mind as Victorian Butch Lesbian chic: 

Second, the high bun makes Marie’s profile very reminiscent of the first Disney makeover:

The effect with the suit ends up being a mashup of Prince Charming and Cinderella, effectively Disney canon’s Adam and Eve. 

A note on hair, this is the line I had to walk. I wanted the length to be long on a man, but short for a woman - while still long enough to be bun-able. In other words, Mulan length: 

What are buns? How does gender? Is hair a society?

Moving on. Color!

From the beginning, I wanted the dominant color of the suit to be black, or something very dark. This is in line with what makes Marie romantic to Elsa - she’s brooding, mysterious, anti-heroic. The specific shade I landed on, with midnight blue highlights, matches Elsa’s ruffle dress and ends up matching the black ice of THSR’s title cards. And it pops nicely in the green spring palace. 

The final dark-on-light scheme is an inversion of Hans’ main ensemble in Frozen 1:

And takes the red and gold accents from Hans’ off-white ball ensemble:

This shot is like, the rosetta stone for Marie’s characterization and ancient hansoglyphics btw. 

I see all of the Hans references in the suit design as character-driven on Marie’s end. A part of her walking right up to the line of what she can get away with. She’s almost daring Elsa and Anna to recognize her. 

Earlier versions of the suit played with warm colors more to break up the blocks of black, finding a way to rework the feminine magenta maybe. But, simpler is often better for something memorable, and the suit also has to look good with fiery wings later.

The suit will be destroyed in the end, as it must. 3/3 outfits burned in three days - perfect score, Marie. I do think that after the dust settles, this soft butch style is what she sticks with day-to-day going forward. 

Here’s a version for a christmas special I may or may not get around to:

THSR is a fantasy - on many fronts, including a queer power fantasy. A fairy tale - where my heroine is pressured into a classic feminine makeover, says “fuck it” and shows up to prom in tux. And then the fairest woman at the ball, a goddess in a gown like a waterfall, looks her and thinks “She’s so beautiful, I don’t know how to speak to her”. That’s what the suit is all about, to me, in the end. 

But, y’know, with all the gay, sexy, morally compromised fun we’re having, it seems somebody has gone overlooked, overshadowed. Neglected. What about Frozen’s first heroine? What about Marie’s antagonist?

Next time on the THSR Designer’s Notes, Anna gets off the bench. Watch this space :)

[cthomashoodstory]

Best Years but Not in the Same Way (27)

Calum Hood x Reader

Previous Part

Hi guys if you’re confused I’m pairing Calum Hood and Reader but the character is Barbara Palvin, well… this story is a spin off based on stories i made on wattpad and it’s on my local language and i moved this story to Tumblr and i wanna make this story and the main character is the reader but I’m so attached with the barbara palvin character so… just pretend that you’re barbara hehe. Enjoy!

Oh btw if you just read this part and haven’t read the entire story, i put thr masterlist link below.

Masterslist

-

Calum and his band were busy promoting their new single, Easier since its released two weeks ago. And you were busy with your life at studio, working for Shawn Mendes’ upcoming album that he would released in 2020.

You were at your place right now since you decided not to come to studio because today was the schedule for you to clean up your apartment and you decided to do it now.

You started cleaning up the living room. Paving away the dust with feather duster, vacuumed the carpet, sofa and also the pillow. Then you moving to the kitchen, dining room, room behind the kitchen, and last your bedroom.

It wasn’t that hard to clean up your bedroom because it basically just clean since you did it everyday.

And now it’s time for you to decluttering your wardrobe. You went through your stuffs that you put on the box. You opened the first box and you found album photos of you as a little kid. You smiled when you saw it one by one. Then you stared at the picture of you and your parents at the park somewhere. You were in the middle, your mom was on your left and your dad was on your right. Your both hand held their hands and you were smiling. Such a decent smile.

You closed the album and saw the other things, like the present that your parent bought it to you, your first drawing of you and your parents and basically it was a stuffs that reminds you of your childhood. Going through on some memories sometimes is the best thing.

Then you moved on to the next box, which was your handwriting about poetry, motivation words, quotes, some lyrics you made when you were in high school. You read it one by one and you giggled. Young Saara Palvin really had a wild imagination. How could she even wrote a lyric about love when she never felt that before? Lol.

You saw a quote you made in a special quotes book, with a fractions of cd.

(Credit to @.thetypewriterdaily on instagram)

It was so cute honestly. How could you ever made such a beautiful words like that? You took a picture of it and posted it on your Instagram feed.

You put your phone away and then you put all the stuffs back to the box and moved on to the next box, which is the recent lyric books since 2013 until present. It was actually the lyrics you made when you were dealing with your hard emotion, for example the lyric you gave to Mali when you helped her with her single, it was came from this box. Everything you wrote when you were in your hard time, and you decided not to use it, you put it in this box. There was 3 books, the book one is from 2013-2015, second book from 2016 and the last one from 2017-2018.

You looked up at the first book and it mostly my writing about love, friendship, Calum. Yes, since you became friends with him, not long enough after a ‘bad’ introduction between you and him, you started to wrote songs about love and it inspired by him. You were smiling like a crazy person because the lyric was so cheesy and cringe. You also wrote songs about your trip with the boys, it was so fun to be remembered.

Ah, the more you thinking about it, the more you feeling so happy and grateful to be friends with Michael, Luke, Ashton and Calum. You also thanked God and Mike (Posner) for made you working with Jake Sinclair.

Then you opened the second book, 2016 book, which was the darkest book you’ve ever written. It was full of cursing, bad words, and it was basically not worth to read. You know the reason. Your ex. The famous singer ex that broke your heart more than you ever counted. He really torn you apart until this book existed.

You still hated him until today for making you suffered and gone through this phase, but you slowly letting it go away. Your anger is slowly fading away because you realized that horrible moment really lead you to your recent life. You found your happiness, and now you’re happy. Then you closed the book and put it back to the box and you decided not to throw it away because that book is part of your life.

Moved on to the last book, you only found lyric that you wrote only on a paper and the rest is blank. And its title called Habitual. Oh. You remembered you wrote it for months when you were still engaged to Justin. You really took your time writing it because you wanted the song to be perfect and you’ll giving it to someone that really deserve it.

You sighed. The song is finished and yet, you didn’t gave it to anyone. You felt hurt and angry at the same time. You didn’t know why.

Then you called your long time friend, Jason Boyd aka Poo Bear. You worked with him on Justin’s Purpose album at 2015.

“Saara Palvin,” he greeted you right away. “It’s been a long time, girl. How are you?” He sounded so excited.

“I’m fine, what about you?” You asked him

He laughed. “As always, I’m healthy and good. So, what’s up Palvin?”

“Oh,” you paused. “I just opened my old notebook and i found lyric that i’ve been kept for years and i think i will past it to you.”

“Are you for real?” He sounded surprised. “I have been waiting for something from you Saara. I’m so excited for what you’ll give me.”

You laughed. “Yeah i named it habitual, and i think i made a demo somewhere. I will email you the details. And the song and the lyric are all yours and you can use it or toss it or whatever. And you don’t have to gave me any credit. It’s all yours and you’re the only one i called.”

“Thank you so much Saara. I will… i have to give you credits and I believe the song you made is amazing. Thank you again Saar.”

You hung up the call and put all the books back to the box and put it back to your wardrobe. Then you opened your laptop to find the Habitual demo you made 2 years ago.

Finally you found it and you emailed Poo Bear the demo and the lyric you convert to pdf. All the lyrics you made, use or not use, you always save it digitally and non digital. You felt relieved knowing that the song is passed to someone else and you didn’t have to keep it forever.

The next minutes Calum texted you and you ended up chatting with your boyfriend.

-

To be continued

Next Part

[burningblake]

show your process

To continue supporting content makers, this tag game is meant to show the entire process of making creative content: this can be for any creation.

RULES - When your work is tagged, show the process of its creation from planning to posting, then tag up to 5 people with a specific link to one of their creative works you'd like to see the process of. Use the tag #showyourprocess so we can find yours.

I have been tagged by @lordbelacqua to talk about this gifset (thank you sm, I always wanted to make my own sort of gif tutorial hehe). Also, shout-out to lordbelacqua’s gifset here.

Since this is going to be long, I put everything under the cut.

planning: so since this is an inspired gifset, obviously the idea came from another post, this one here and as you will see this post has an insp credit on its own, but the user changed their url so I had to do some search to find their gifset. anyway, it’s here. the first gifset includes the greek words ‘eros’, ‘philautia’, ‘storge’, ‘philia’ but you will notice in my gifset I have an extra word which is ‘agape’ (my personal favorite as a greek person), this extra word I saw from the second gifset. 

At first, I wanted to do this with #alina starkov from #shadow and bone, but I realized that the word ‘eros’, i.e. romantic love would go for #darklina, whilst ‘storge’, i.e. familial love, would go for alina and mal, and becaure of the ship wars in the fandom, I didn’t want to potentially attract haters from doing this. btw, someone else did this after I posted the yennefer gifset and I was really happy to see it, especially because they used many moments/relationships I had in mind, so shout-out to @darkstarkova for the gifset. 

anyway, I also ended up choosing yennefer because for me it just felt much more meaningful to do such a gifset for her, since she has so much love to give and so few chances to do so. I also wanted to do right by it and use quality frames, so I went the extra mile and downloaded higher quality episodes. then I had to choose the shots that would work. some of the words, like “eros” and “storge” and “agape” I already had an idea what they would be, but for the words “philautia” and “philia” I had to fast-rewatch some episodes again. long story short, I first planned to blend this gifset for “philautia”, i.e. self love:

but then I rewatched the scene at the end where yennefer burns it all and as she was remembering all the times she’d been abused and maltreated, I teared up (I always do) and that scene just felt much more powerful to me, because it was then that she truly accepted herself and “let her chaos” be unleashed. 

giffing: to sharpen my gifs, I used the light sharpening action from this post. for the coloring and blending I’ll use the first gif as an example, but more or less, I didn’t follow any specific color palette, but went with what looked nice and what didn’t. so at first I had this gif: 

after I finished staring at this (took me a few minutes), I actually focused on the coloring. so first I used a curves layer and chose the light and dark areas (left pic below). Basically you choose the marker in the yellow circle to choose the lightest spot on yor gif, and the marker in the dark circle to choose the darkest spot respectively. I also play individually with the greens, blues and reds (right pic below) until I get a lighting base that I like:

Now at this part I usually just add a levels and brightness layer to further enhance the light and dark spots. At this point the gifset looks like this: 

personally I didn’t like the red tint on their faces and the cyan tint on geralt’s hair, so I used a selective color layer and turned up the cyans in the reds and turned down the cyans in the cyans like below. I also turned down the yellows in the cyans but I see that this didn’t change much, so it’s something I simply forgot to turn back to normal. 

I also added a color balance layer. With this I usually increase the blues, the magentas and cyans for midtones, shadows and highlights. So now: 

At this point, I add a gradient map layer in b&w, right-click on it, select ‘blending options’ and turn it to soft light, then play with the opacity if necessary:

Usually this is where my coloring ends, but I still didn’t like the result so I played around some more and ended up adding a second gradient map layer in b&w, left it at normal blend mode and turned the opacity down to 47%. So this is what I have finally:

So then I colored the second gif similarly and blended it in. For blending gifs, I follow this tutorial here. So now I had this:

As you can see, the coloring and light of the blended gif doesn’t match the base gif. Adding a similar second gradient to the blended gif didn’t really work nice. Then I decided to turn it b&w with a simple black and white layer and voila, the result just clicked. 

For the text I downloaded various fonts from here. So the title line “eros” is in the Bellerose font and the rest are in the Avenir font from here. I used the gradient text effect described here for the title line. And as for the second subtitle text, I simply opened “blending options” again, set the fill opacity to 0 and used a white stroke of size 1 px. Final result:

For the rest of the gifs I did similar coloring and blending.

arranging: To arrange, I simply play around with what looks good. The size I used is 540 x 450, because in the first gif I needed yennefer’s dark hair to take quite a large proportion of the gif, so that I could place the blended gif on (it does not show on light areas), so this determined the dimensions for the gifset. 

posting: I always “save as draft” before I post any gifset because I want to make sure all gifs play out correctly and also I want to see if the mobile app shows them correctly as well. So after I verify this, I add the caption and I search the necessary blogs to tag to spread awareness. 

I’d say it is my most quality gifset yet and I am kind of proud of it :) 

I’m tagging: 

@starkkov​ for this gifset | @captainheroism​ for this gifset | @swanthief​ for this gifset | @aleksander-alina​ for this gifset | @the-darkling​​ for this gifset

of course you can just ignore this or choose another creation of yours to show the process for <3

[churchkey]

2020 Writing Wrapped

I was tagged by the lovely and talented @anthrobrat and one of my resolutions is to do the stuff people tag me for (and also, Laura is just wonderful and I’m lucky that she’s my friend) so I’ll give this a twirl. 

Rules: It’s time to love yourselves! Choose your 8(ish) favorite works you created in the past year (fics, art, edits, etc.) and link them below to reflect on the amazing things you brought into the world in 2020. Tag as many writers/artists/etc. as you want so we can spread the love and link each other to awesome work.

I don’t know if I can make it to eight but we’ll see. Here’s a fun story - I used to be in this fandom back when we just shared stuff in a super-secret private community on LJ because many of the IRL guys were still alive and we were horrified of people finding out about us. But that was like 15 years ago and a lot has changed so here I am back on my bullshit and really so grateful that this fandom is still around because my love for this series and the very beautiful actors responsible for the fictionalized versions of the IRL guys and their crazy passionate ships who live rent-free in my soul has not dimmed a bit. So THANK YOU for being here and reading my stories inspiring me with YOUR stories and headcannons and being my friends. 

So here we go. All of these are Winnix, btw. Someday I’ll learn to write for another ship. 

Total (posted) Word Count: 119,294

1. A Spell of Riot (E) This is hands-down, no question, the fic I am most proud of having finished, not just this year but in all of my fandom career. I got the idea to write it from a kiss prompt last summer, just a light little thing about Dick saying goodbye to Lew as he drops him off for alcohol treatment. I never dreamed it would turn into 62k of something into which I ended up pouring three months of love and stress and tears and fairly painstaking research. The feedback I’ve gotten from you about this has been so incredibly humbling and I truly believe I’ve become a more compassionate person from this experience. You just never know what invisible battles people are fighting. I feel lucky to have had this opportunity to tell this part of their story.

2. It Is My Heart That’s Late (E) This was the first thing I ever wrote for the LLSS prompt meme, so it was kind of the first step I took toward actually being a part of the community rather than just going about my work in silence and isolation (which, tbh, I still do... I’m just that kind of writer, but I’m trying to get better about connecting with other creators). For this one I got to flex my description muscles, which was probably the biggest challenge of this story. I wanted to make readers feel immersed in the whole sensual world of Iowa in the summertime, as well as the inner nostalgic world of lovers coming back together after five years. It was also the first time I wrote an OC and had a lot of fun channeling what I think my mom/aunts would have been like at that age (as the whole thing was based on what she’s told me about growing up in that place at that time... Dick as the hired man is based on her family’s hired man, Tommy, who lived in a little cottage on their back 40. Sorry that’s probably more than you want to know.) ANYWAY. I was really happy with the subtlety (I think) I was able to bring out in the way their love has changed over the time they’ve been apart. And I got Dick’s ass to Chicago, finally!

3. Roger Wilco (E) I like this one because I think it’s the ultimate Porn with Feelings, even though when I started I tried to just make it straight-up porn. But I’m a sucker for them being completely smitten with each other, and those feelings sort of bleeding into everything they do/say/think/feel. I also think it’s pretty hot, if I do say so myself. Describing Dick pleasuring himself is like... maybe my favorite thing to write about with him, sex-wise. 

4. Things He Cannot Lose (T) The very first story I posted when I came back to the BoB fandom was Long Ago and Far Away, but that was a collection of ficlets I’d written many years ago. This one was the first new thing I’d written in many many years and it felt so freaking good to be writing again, and being in these guys’ heads again, and trying to do justice to the pining and brooding and angsting and loving. It was also the first peek of erection-probs Lew, which you all know by now is a thing I love to work in whenever I can. Sweet, drunk, lovelorn mess that he is, bless his soul. 

5. Free Kittens (T) It’s so silly but I’m proud of this one because I feel like I can’t write fluff and, aside from some of Dick’s decidedly non-fluffy attitudes toward the barn kittens, I think I managed to make it pure, uncomplicated domestic fluff. I hope so, anyway. I also freed myself of my narrative structure of staying in one character’s POV for an entire scene, trying instead to do a little more free indirect discourse and float back and forth between them. So even though it’s silly AF, this one has poked its sharp little claws into my heart. 

And I’m awful at the tagging thing and feel like I'm just annoying people by tagging them and also that they’ve already been tagged a million times but here we go @speirtongirl and @rillalala

[localskyrimchicken]

New Feelings

( Link for AO3 above; and if anyone is curious the song I was inspired by Is "Don't delete the kisses" by Wolf Alice. This is my first fanfic post on here btw. )

Summary:

The MC lies awake at 02:00 am, suffering from a identity crisis due to a certain dark haired, party girl, roommate of hers and that kiss they shared at the kappa sorority house. ( Thanks a lot Becca! )

.

01:57

........

01:58

........

01:59

..... 

02:00

 

The clock on her bedroom table flashes red with the numbers as time passes and Amy keeps repeating the last few days in her head.

Kaitlyn kissed her. Amy let Kaitlyn kiss her. Honestly why was she even surprised? Amy knew from day one that Kaitlyn was amazing, seriously.

Not only is she impossibly good looking with that dark shoulder length hair and beautiful brown eyes ( The fact that she made the most generic eye colour there is feel like it's the rarest one is enough to convince Amy she has a crush on her- )

Crush 

There it is. That one word she refused to use to describe the way she feels about her best friend. The dorky, adorable, fun party girl with a unexplainable obsession with horror movies.

She has a crush on Kaitlyn.

And she has no idea whatsoever what to do about it. Amy has never been the crushing type. She's has had multiple guys come up to her and ask her out, she always rejected them because she honestly saw dating as a waste of time. Simply put, she didn't want to date.

She thought that her and Chris had this in common, so they could have at least a little fun. And then he caught feelings, or at least Amy thinks so. It would explain why he so desperately sticks and glues himself to Becca's side and refuses to let whatever small flirting him and Amy once did go away. He keeps bringing it up and it's enough to ruin Amy's whole day.

Speaking of the blonde devil in disguise. Becca is the whole reason Amy is still awake, if it weren't for her stupid dare she wouldn't be feeling this way right now.

If it weren't for that dare she wouldn't have felt jealousy when Kaitlyn immediately went dancing with Darren instead of talking to her about anything, really. It wouldn't even have to be about the two guys pining over Amy or even about whatever it is that got Kaitlyn in such a bad mood.

But then again. If Amy went by that logic ( "If it weren't for the dare" ) then she could just as easily blame Kaitlyn for picking her instead of Abby or Madison or literally anyone...

She could wing it. Tell her how she feels. The only problem being that if she doesn't feel the same way, which is highly likely ( it was just one kiss. Her brain keeps repeating like a mantra ) not to mention it's garranted social suicide if anyone were to find out ( not that Amy thinks Kaitlyn would tell people but with how thin these dorm walls are its damn right plausible someone would hear. ) Even worse it could ruin their friendship.

She could go to Zach for advice on same-sex crushing since this is actually her first one of those.

( Amy wonders if this means she is bi. It probably does since she still finds some guys attractive like Chris- But that was before she realized just how stunning and amazing Kaitlyn was. Either way, she has plenty of time to figure that out so she doesn't bother right now. ) 

But then she would have to tell Zack about her crush on Kaitlyn and then he would tease her and make the situation already worse than it is.

Kaitlyn doesn't make it any better herself. It's like she knows. All of that light flirting they keep doing. (Heck. The first sentences they ever exchanged is how hot the other was. ) 

Maybe she could learn to deal with it and hopes it goes away with time. She highly doubts it will but it's worth a try right? After all there is no way Kaitlyn actually feels the same way.

...

.....

.........

.............

Later as the disco light flashes above them and Kaitlyn leans in to kiss her, a part of her feels bad for wasting so much time doubting herself, and kisses back without a second thought.

[quirkwizard]

Hi, first of all I would like to congratulate you and tell you that I am a big fan of your work and your blog. Second, how would you view a quirk based on the mythological figure of the black dog and what could be a cool quirk based on it?

Hey Wiz! How are you doing? I hope you're doing well. I don't remember if I have an older ask in or not(please let me know if I do) but I've been watching the original Charmed show and got the inspiration to ask this. One of the power the show's protagonists had is called "Telekinetic Orbing". I linked a wiki page that explains it more but its basically a combination of telekinesis and the shows verion of teleportation. Do you think it can work as a quirk? Thank you for answering this and for all that you do. Seriously its fun way to look at the series and a lifesaver for making OCs.

Hey there quirkwiz, first off, I want to say how awesime your work is. Especially how much effort you put into it. ^^ Second, I would like to ask you, in which category you would put a quirk that can manipulate the users bones, like Marrow from Marvel or the Kaguya clan, from Naruto, and why.

As of sending this your description says all requests are open, BUT if they’re not then please feel free to delete this! I also apologise if this has been asked before, but do you have ideas for a potentially villainous healing quirk? Maybe a quirk that requires the user to hurt someone in order for them to heal? Or otherwise may be frowned upon somehow? (Btw, I love your blog, and I always get excited seeing new posts and reading through them! You put so much thought and effort into your responses, and you’re not afraid to tell people when something wouldn’t work or needs to be fixed! It’s awesome!)

I have already covered such ideas with "Barghest", "Cell Cycle", “Osteophyte” and "Disappear" respectively. That being said, I would like to thank you all for your kind words. I do my best with this blog and it is so good to know that I am able to help you all with your characters, excite you with new ideas, or just make something you can enjoy reading. Thank you again for giving me such kind accolades and I do hope I am able to continue to make content we can all enjoy.

[intheepines]

Intro Post

About me

I don’t think I ever really made one of these. Hi, I’m Nik. I’m 30 years old and I write a lot. I’m trying to be more organized and systematic about it, hence the creation of this blog (accountability!). I went to undergrad for writing and philosophy, got a masters in publishing, and graduated law school about a year ago. I write horror stories mostly. I used to write a lot of poetry (especially in college) and hope to pick that back up at some point, but my main focus right now is fiction. Everything I write ends up being very large in scope and I think my current project is probably going to be the first book in a trilogy.

Faves

My main faves are Shirley Jackson, David Lynch, J.D. Salinger, Thomas Pynchon, Tove Jansson, Ali Smith, and Kurt Vonnegut. I also am having a big Bong Joon-Ho moment. My writing tends to meditate on trauma/loss and feature occult themes. (I do tarot readings btw, if anyone’s interested...) I’m also into dream analysis, absurdist humor, old New York kitsch, and surrealism. (I post things I find interesting/inspiring on my main @trysteroo)

My WIPs

Your Mirror Status: second draft Target word count: 70k A gothic horror novel set at an insular liberal arts college wherein young Harper Grady (bisexual cis woman) gets a first-hand education in the sinister forces operating within the idyllic academic institution--forces she must ultimately confront and attempt to thwart. Ghosts, bad spirits, magic, melodramatic hipsters, a weird cult, some taboo romance -- it’s all happening. I made a longer post about this WIP, which I’ll link to here. Think “dark academia” but absurd and deeply unsettling.

In the Pines Status: first draft (scrapped prior drafts and started over) Target word count: 70k A gothic horror novel set in Brooklyn and Upstate NY that chronicles the strange journey of Francis Hanratty (gay trans man) after he stumbles out of Prospect Park with no idea who he is. Features a rogue cop, a teenage satanist couple, a celebrity psychic, a sleazy bible salesman, a semi-famous emo band, a far-right self-help cult and its charismatic leader, Real Housewives, more magic, more ghosts, some murder, and an actual demon (or two). This story exists in the same universe as Your Mirror and has some of the same characters. (I started writing this first, but it’s on the back burner. It’s definitely not as well-developed as Your Mirror). Think Twin Peaks meets The Good Place.

If you want to know more about me or my WIPs feel free to drop me an ask :) Hope you’re all safe and healthy and gleaning at least some pleasure out of these endless numbered days.

[kaleidodreams]

2020 Fanfic In Review

Idea taken from @floraone! (FYI, if you saw this yesterday, I’ve deleted the original and reposted it again now that the glitches that were plaguing my Tumblr the past couple of days have been fixed.)

1. List of fics completed this year:

Sailor Moon

Selenophilia Series Taste Test Adventures In Babysitting Better Than A Unicorn Dahlias and Coffee Real Parents Awaken Shopping Trip Usagi, Mamoru, and the Three Mattresses Bad Day Blues Meet The Grandpa The Return of Nurse Minako

A New Future

Do No Cry For Me

Distraction

Stoplight

Investigation: Mystery Date

Kaleido Star

Friends With Benefits

Heart to Heart

Yuri!!! On Ice

What Happens In Vegas

A Morning Proposal

Reunited

Taking The Plunge

Perfect Idol

I’ve Been Thinking About You

Triple The Love

Confusion

The Bonds We Choose (WIP)

And a few more fics for the upcoming YOI Rare Pair Week, but since those won’t be posted until next month, I’m not going to list them.

2. Number of words written: I don’t really keep track. Posted? Around 130,000 or so, I think, but that doesn’t count unposted stories (like the Rare Pair fics I mentioned) and chapters. Plus, some stuff I posted this year was actually written earlier, so… 150,000 to 200,000 seems like a good estimate.

3. Your most popular fic: It’s always hard for me to judge popularity because there’s different ways you could look at it, but I’d say “Distraction” was probably the most popular at FF.net and “A Morning Proposal” at AO3.

4. Your personal fav: Probably my WIP, “The Bonds We Choose”, but of the completed stories… I actually really love “A Morning Proposal” even though it’s just a short, fluffy ficlet. I’m also quite proud of my two Sailor Moon Smutember fics, “Distraction” and “Stoplight”

5. Your fav scene: This is a tough choice… Probably the scene in “The Bonds We Choose” where Otabek takes Yuri to an open house and surprises him by asking Yuri to move in with him and Mila. I’m a bit of an HGTV addict, so it was really fun to write Yuri making snarky comments about the interior design.

6. A fic or scene that challenged you: “Do Not Cry For Me”, without a doubt. Most ironic title ever, because there was a period of, like, three or four days back in August when I’d start crying if I even THOUGHT about that fic because I hated the first chapter so much. (And that is NOT a normal reaction for me, BTW. I’ve never cried in frustration over a fic before that I can remember.) Just ask everyone on the SS Bang Discord. I was a mess. It was so bad that I got to the point where I wanted to drop the fic altogether and start a new one (I came up with “Stoplight” as a backup story) even though 1) my artist had already drawn a rough draft of the artwork and 2) there was only a couple of months left until posting. With the help of my beta and a couple of others, I managed to get it to the point where I wasn’t exactly thrilled with it, but I at least thought it was okay. Then a couple of days after I finished posting it, I had another sobfest over it because only one person left a review over at FF.net (and it wasn’t really a review; just a prediction of what they thought was going to happen). Which, in hindsight was pretty silly because I know FF.net was having problems the week I posted, and I actually received the most comments I’ve ever gotten over at AO3 (thanks mostly to @teamvanessacloud and @vchanny-og being nice enough to leave a comment on all seven chapters *hugs*) and a decent amount of kudos, but something about that one single FF.net review really got to me and seemed to confirm my fears that it was a terrible fic. I don’t know… That fic messed with my head so much, y’all. (Probably didn’t help that it’s probably one of the most depressing things I’ve ever written. You guys know I love angst, but maybe that was TOO much angst.)

7. A line of writing you’re proud of: I have two picks for this, and both are actually from my Smutember fics.

First one from “Distraction” - After a weeks-long drought, they indulged in each other like weary travelers drinking from an oasis, almost frantic as they writhed together on the bed.

And the other is a piece of dialogue from “Stoplight” - “Your vow of chastity during our previous lives didn’t stop me from loving you, Rei,” he reminded her. “A lack of sex sure as hell isn’t going to stop me from loving you in this life, either.”

8. A comment that touched you: I’m not sure if “touched” is the right word, but I was really happy that a lot of people praised “Distraction” for its realism even though I actually don’t have any personal experience with sex. I guess I did all right, though! *laughs*

9. Something that inspired your writing: I can’t really think of anything in particular, honestly. Oh, wait, “Dahlias and Coffee” was kind of inspired by a piece of Taiki/Setsuna artwork! Which, of course, I can’t find anymore to link to, although I know I reblogged it a while back. I know the artist’s name was Alex Asakura, though. (EDIT: Now that I’m able to search my Tumblr again, I found it. This is the picture.)

10. Your proudest accomplishment (that one scene; finally finishing that one fic; posting your first fic; etc): Despite all the tears, I guess I am kinda proud of myself of rewriting it to the point that I no longer hated the first chapter of “Do Not Cry For Me”, and I actually do think the ice-skating battle is the best action scene I’ve ever written. Also, finishing “Friends With Benefits” – one of the reasons I decided to return to fic-writing after a long hiatus was the desire to finish that story, so I’m glad I did, even if the fandom is mostly dead!

11. Do you have any writing goals for next year?: I’d like to finish “The Bonds We Choose”. Other than that, maybe get back to one of my Sailor Moon WIPs. Oh, and maybe learn to stop hating writing kissing scenes so much? *laughs*