#most of the original stuff i do is short fiction which i do really enjoy

[fourteenfifteen]

i want. to write a novel. one day

[copperbadge]

I was making breakfast and listening to an episode of Just King Things this morning, which is a podcast I do recommend -- two very smart English teachers are reading the books of Stephen King in publication order and discussing them. This could go extremely awry except they're both highly conscious of his failings as well as his skill, so they do really well handling a lot of his less salutatory content.

They've hit the point in King's ouvre (this episode was about Hearts In Atlantis) that follows his recovery from the car accident that very nearly killed him, where he was struck by a van while out walking. One of them pointed out that it seems as though he came back from nearly dying determined to write the wildest shit imaginable and only write what he wanted, which struck a chord in me this time despite having listened to this episode before. Perhaps because I was thinking about my own writing and where it's going in the short term (there are a couple of short stories I want to do that I don't quite have a way into yet). I generally don't think about the drift of my creativity in the long term because when I do I usually draw the wrong conclusions.

I don't really classify my life, the way some people who've had high-impact injuries do, as before-TBI and after-TBI (Traumatic Brain Injury -- the fairly severe concussion I had in January of 2020). For one thing, given I had to cancel a trip to NYC because of it, it may have saved my life; I almost certainly would have caught COVID as someone with known lung issues in New York at the time. For another, the TBI was way scarier to almost everyone else; for me it was just one more dumb injury I gave myself and I didn't even remember most of it so it hardly registered. I used to open the story of it with a joke about waking up not remembering going to bed the night before, but nobody ever found it funny.

It's true that there are changes it wrought in my life, though. Even practical stuff like making sure my living space doesn't have tripping hazards and continuing to wear a fitbit even though I don't really need to (the fitbit told us, the morning after, exactly when the concussion happened, because it registered a heart-rate spike when I fell). For weeks after, I had to move slowly and put off making important decisions because I couldn't trust my physical or intellectual judgement; I didn't even jaywalk in my own neighborhood because I couldn't be sure I was judging the cars' speeds properly. For about a year after I had periodic post-concussion syndrome which basically just slammed me back into concussion space, which wasn't painful or upsetting but was definitely inconvenient.

And it's also undeniable that my writing shifted after the injury. It's not necessarily because of the injury, since my initial recovery from the TBI and the declaration of quarantine happened at roughly the same time, and anyone who tells you that a years-long global pandemic didn't impact their artistic expression is selling you a line. But the last thing I wrote before the TBI was the first draft of Six Harvests, and aside from the Six Harvests publication draft, which had fairly minimal changes, almost all that I've written has been blue-sky, light-hearted, PG-rated romance. It's been on my mind that I've been writing different subject matter from what I used to, but the timing of it didn't strike me until just recently.

I don't mind, really. I love fandom and I support fanfic in whatever expression it comes, but I'm also happy writing my own stories. While I'm aware it's been years since I've meaningfully written fanfic, it doesn't bother me per se, as long as I'm writing. It bothered me much more when I could write fanfic but not original fic, especially in those last few awful months at my last job. I'm proud of the literary and non-genre fiction I've written in the past, but it's also much more trying and frustrating to write at times, so I'm enjoying having a different sort of challenge that feels more fulfilling in the process. I'm sure at some point I'll go back to literary fiction -- there are ways in which it's hard to avoid turning the later Shivadh novels into literary fiction, being honest -- but for now I like what I'm writing, and I'm writing primarily to please myself and without regard to what's necessarily rational or linear.

Just struck me, is all, that it's by far the most noticeable major shift in my work. I do sort of wonder what will be next.

[lesterwillington]

We Need a Lovecraft Musical (or play, I would not mind a play)

I love eldritch horror and weird fiction and I love musicals so I might sound biased, but I need this to happen. Technically, there are a few that exist, but I can find very little detail about them. So, what I'm asking the universe for is some sort of Lovecraft stage musical adaptation (preferably something from the Cthulhu Mythos) that recieves a major professional production somewhere in the world (like off-west end or off-broadway or chicago or something, I would love regular west end and regular broadway but I am trying to manage expectations here, kinda). Also, we just need more mainstream horror theater stuff in general. There isn't much of it, and what does exist mostly have been financial and critical failures. Now, you may be asking, "aren't Lovecraft's works famously unadaptable? why not just leave them as short stories and novels? also he was a pretty bad dude should we even be adapting his work at all?", and to that I say: 1. HA, if you really think that, you are a COWARD, a FOOL, and a SCOUNDREL! People thought Dune was unadaptable and now it is a critically acclaimed franchise with at least 2 movies as well as an upcoming tv show and a third movie in development. So, people that say things like that are dumb. Plus, that's mostly in reference to film adaptations anyway, which I can understand for Lovecraft's works. He mostly relies on the audience's imagination for the horror, he tries to get them to fear something they can barely begin to understand. It's hard to translate that into film because film is inherently a visual medium (mostly). However, theater almost always relies on the audience visualizing more than what is really on stage, so I think it fits Lovecraft's works perfectly, especially because of how short most of them are. You can really take your time to flesh out the world and characters if you wanted to. Or just do like, a one-act thing. That woks too. 2. I understand leaving them as their original works, but I think the theatrical experience can elevate the experience of the written works or at least get the audience to see them in a new light. I think an ideal theatrical adaptation would leave the audience extremely unsettled, but wanting more. And they can get more by reading Lovecraft. So, I don't think it's too much of a problem. 3. I'm terribly sorry but like 95% of old, white guy authors were bad people and I think it's reasonable to be able enjoy and appreciate what they made while also condemning who they were. Plus, it's not like Lovecraft or his estate is making any money off this because his works are public domain babyyyy. But yes I need this to happen desperately and I'm afraid it won't. I'm heavily considering trying to make something myself (because the works are public domain and I am a writer), but I have a lot on my plate right now (including an In Trousers screenplay that I have mentioned in a post or two) so I have no idea when I'd be able to really work on it and try to fully realize it. Plus, I have zero connections in the theater world so getting a major production for it would be extremely hard. I still think it's cool, though. Let me know what you guys think. Is it possible? Or are his works better left as they are?

[featureenvyproductions]

happy new year time for me to bother you with a TRAILER for my short animated film about a mars mission 🎉

surprise I have cobbled together shots I have done from my [traditional] animation I'm working on along with a TEST recording (which is why it sounds like it's being recorded in a toilet that is also a cathedral) of some of the music clips. I tried to edit it like a Real TM Trailer but the pacing is a little weird bc it's a silent film sorry

OK LOTTA BACKGROUND INFO UNDER THE CUT

So if you haven't seen my other posts, I sort of have this thing for doing projects I know damn well shouldn't be done by Just Me however if there's 3 things I enjoy it's exacerbating my wrist problems, traditional animation, and social isolation so last year to get my mind of the trash fire of an election season I bought a bunch of cels and paint and started working on this short film. It's gonna be maybe 10-15 minutes when done and, aside from a handful of tweaks*, it is all traditional 2d animation - hand drawn AND painted (which is why the frame rate makes even the recycled clips in 80s he-man cringe) .

Anyway if you didn't gather from the intertitles, this [a FICTIONAL STORY WHERE EVERYONE IS FICTIONAL PLEASE NO ONE SUE ME] is about the US and Russia collaborating on a mission to Mars where they're gonna send some folks up there to hang out and do research indefinitely until another mission happens. While the crew - comprised of an astronaut Adam and a cosmonaut Yuri - is in transit, war breaks out between the US and Russia back on earth, snapping the ever tightening rubberband of willing cooperation between the countries. Everything goes to hell, and in this case it also threatens to compromise the mission, meaning an uncertain future for the crew, who have to choose between loyalty to the death cult of blind nationalism, or loyalty to science and each other.

I am aiming to finish this in 2025...The story has been in the works for a while, but I only recently felt like "huh I kinda wanna animate this"

Im sorry the music is so....Like That lol. I wanted to get this done today before I go back to work and like I don't think anyone who follows me really minds if it's not perfect rn. See I only have a keyboard at the moment and I was trying to do an aux cable from it to my laptop to keep from recording the UNMANAGEABLE CLOMPCLOMPCLOMPITYCLOMPPP of the keys but it just made the sound toilety uhg oh well. Anyway I am writing some original stuff for the eventual whole film, but for this trailer I arranged some snippets of Tchaikovsky's sleeping beauty for piano (the score is in the public domain fyi...My arrangement is my own...). I've got some other bits of that in the works as well which will also show up in the full film.

Oh another thing is, most of the technical stuff should be fairly grounded in science (maybe aside from some Artistic License Engineering for story/ease of animation reasons, but....). So there's that. I don't think it makes much of a difference for the trailer but IM TELLING YOU BECAUSE I DID SIT THERE AND PAINSTAKINGLY RUN A FUCKING ORBIT PROPAGATION ALGORITHM TO BALLPARK WHERE THE SHIP SHOULD BE AT CERTAIN POINTS IN THE NARRATIVE AND YOU WILL KNOW I SUFFERED. FOR YOU, THE AUDIENCE.

*full disclosure by tweaks I mean stuff it's barely noticeable to you but impractical for me bc cels are REALLY expensive, so stuff like blinking and mouth movements I drew in photoshop because that's probably 100s of mouth-or-eye cels I can't really afford to waste, and you can only scratch paint off and reuse a cel so many times before it looks like crap. Some of the panning I also did by scanning the hand drawn cels and then changing the subject position in photoshop for each frame because I'm compositing frames essentially by sticking them face down in a stack on my scanner bed and haven't found a good way to do it yet. I've attempted to built a little track before but can't get it flat enough for the cover to make contact with the frames and smash them into the glass. If you have a solution for this, let me know.

anyway the target audience of this is people who liked Apollo 13 but wished it was worse quality and was more gay and anarchist so if you are vaguely that please enjoy and follow for updates on this costly and questionable venture

[hyenafu]

Have you ever thought of crossovers between Slightly Damned and Junk Hyenas Diner? Both casts meeting, even as what-ifs or jokes. Lucky and Kieri have similar struggles with their mothers and the expectations put on them by their families, so they'd likely have a lot to talk about. And then there's the two fuzzy chill guys who love food, and the short beings of nebulous origins that came back to life.

It's funny you worded your question that way! One of the reasons I stopped working on The Junk Hyenas Diner is because I felt my long-term plans for it were too similar to Slightly Damned. I made The Junk Hyenas Diner as my thesis project when I got my graduate degree from the Center for Cartoon Studies. I wanted to completely change up the way I did comics and do something new. I was afraid of having Slightly Damned being my only major project, and I didn't want to be stuck in a rut forever. And it worked out great! I loved working on JHD. With a different setting, I got to make different jokes. Working in black and white helped change the way I approach my art, as well. I think I learned a lot from the experience. I made a bunch of short stories and gained new confidence in my ability to adapt and make new things. I fully intended to continue The Junk Hyenas Diner as my second webcomic in tandem with Slightly Damned after I graduated. But... I ended up putting it off more and more. I got busy with going to conventions more way more often, and expanding the breadth of my merchandise. I also got more involved with my Patreon. I needed to do these things in order to secure my income so I could keep living off of my art. I also felt like my heart wasn't really into making a science fiction (well, more like science fantasy) story. I felt intimidated by other artists who could ground their work in a lot more concrete facts about space travel, technology, and biology. I just wanted to make dumb jokes about food. Now I know that just wanting to make dumb jokes about food is valid, but that was honestly part of why I lost my motivation. I've decided to completely drop JHD for the time being. I'll always keep the website archive up because I still think it's a fun read, and I loved the experience of making it. I also don't consider that door closed forever. If I feel compelled to return for whatever reason, I will! I have thought that JHD would be suitable project for a self-contained graphic novel. I could also just lean into telling jokes whenever they come to me. But I don't really have the time or motivation for it right now, so it's not a priority. I think artists should be allowed to drop projects if they're not really feeling them anymore. It happens. Since the last time I made any new Junk Hyenas comics, I went through some rough emotional events that led me to seeing a therapist. That helped me a lot! After that, I ended up leaning more into making mushy stuff (cutesy and romantic) and spicy stuff (kink art for adults) for Slightly Damned in my free time. That's just what's the most fun for me right now. Because it's fun and rewarding, I keep making more and more. Even if there are folks who don't get it (which is fine), being motivated to draw makes me practice drawing, and practice makes all my art better, so everyone who likes my art still wins in the end!

Motivation is a fickle beast. Life changes. I always have way more ideas than the time and energy to actually make them, and I hope that's a problem I keep for my entire life. I can't possibly do everything all at once. Having Slightly Damned be my life's work is still scary thought. Other artists are able to finish their webcomics and graphic novels and move on, so I end up thinking that the grass may be greener on the other side. I don't know when or even if I'll be able to finish Slightly Damned in order to free up more time to work on other projects. But at the same time, right now, I don't really feel like I need to. I am enjoying what I make, and I'm always pushing myself to make each weekly update better. I love my characters so much that I enjoy following my whims and making spinoff projects with them. I think as long as I continue to find this fulfilling (and there are still people willing to support me), there's no need to force myself to do projects that I'm not feeling especially motivated to do. I know this big wall of text isn't what you asked for, but I wanted to explain why I don't draw Junk Hyenas stuff anymore. Anyway, here's a Thanksgiving picture I did of the Slightly Damned and Junk Hyenas casts in 2016:

[liesmyth]

Any fiction recommendations? I’ve repeatedly read Locked Tomb, natch. I’d love something similarly brainwork inducing but maybe a touch lighter. Also not fantasy or sci fi…I need something to listen to while I do a ton of chores, and those can be hard (for me) because the unfamiliar proper nouns get confusing. :/

anon!! I'm terrible at reccing anything based on “if you liked TLT” because TLT is like five different genres in a trench coat, but I TRIED (⭐) Here are some brainworm-y recs that aren't sff — where by brainworm-y I mean that they stayed with me for a while after I finished them, but aren't overly confusing. (most of them are books, but available on audio)

Podcasts: a tumblr pal recced me the deviser based on me liking the eldritch elements of tlt; it's short and horror-y, and I really enjoyed it.

I haven't checked out the new TMA yet but I see many TLT peeps who are enjoying it (or S1 of the original The Magnus Archives could be a good entry point if you haven't ever listened to it)

TV: Unfortunately I hardly ever watch live action stuff BUT if you haven't seen either IWTV (the series not the film) or Yellowjackets, I do rec those! There's a lot of overlap between these fans and TLT fandom on my dash. His Dark Materials also goes hard and you might enjoy it (dysfunctional characters! worldbuilding! religious weirdness!) but it has more sff elements than other stuff I've recced. Oddball out of nowhere but The Great is a fun show if you enjoy the meme moments of TLT + people being gleefully horrible + having feelings despite your best intentions

Animanga: Utena (!!!!!) also Fullmetal Alchemist Brotherhood, which occupies a very similar space to TLT in my brain

Books!

✧ I went through my “women unhinged” goodreads shelf and found some books that are avaliable in audio format, and might appeal. These are wildly varied in scope and ngl the criterion was just “at least one person (besides myself) who enjoyed tlt also this book” and the similarities stop there. It's all vibes baby! Still, I tried

my heart is a chainsaw by stephen graham jones (horror, slasher), bunny by mona awad (horror, wildly unhinged), the witching hour by anne rice (horror, gothic)

matrix by lauren groff (historical, lesbian nuns), anything by sarah waters (historical fiction + lesbians), rebecca by daphne du maurier (historical, gothic)

the plot by jean hanff korelitz (litfic, thriller), sadie by courtney summers (thriller, coming of age). anything by gillian flynn (thrillers with terrible women).

✧ I really enjoy Tana French thrillers for the strong sense of place, great prose, and the complete emotional turmoil of her character-centric narratives. If anything sounds up your alley, I enjoyed the witch's elm + dublin murder squad series. They're murder mystery procedural but the messy characters really elevate the novels. Available in audiobook also

✧ American Elsewhere, technically scifi but set in New Mexico. Somehow, cosmic horrors who have taken over a quaint little town and worse! They are enforcing HETERONORMATIVITY upon it! They also have tentacles. The main character rocks

✧ Sundial by Catriona Ward: insane, gripping psychological horror. A mother and her unsettling daughter take a trip to the isolate desert ranch where the main chracter grew up. Surrounded by unsettling science experiments

✧ A Touch of Jen by Beth Morgan: when the parasocial relationship is so strong, it accidentally summons a hellmonster from another dimension

✧ SFF adjacent, sorry, but set in the real world (historical, tho) — Cuckoo Song by Frances Hardinge, a middle grade novel with fairytale elements that gave me more brainworms than any kids book ought to, mostly because I LOVED the main character. She occupies a very similar place in my brain as Gideon does. This is actually the only book on the list that I'm not sure is available in audio format, but if you get a chance and it's up your alley, I'd check it out

I hope there's at least ONE thing you'll like in here! lmk (also. lmk if you don't have access to a way to borrow audiobooks but would like to)

[cheeseanonioncrisps]

I know I've made this argument myself many times, but I'm starting to think that we're moving in the wrong direction when we respond to critics of fanfic and pulp romance by saying stuff like "Dante's Inferno was fanfic!" or "Jane Austen was dismissed as silly romance!"

Like yeah, transformative works can be just as creative and deep as original fiction, and romance-centric stories can be literature in their own right, but also…. it's fucking okay to read stuff that isn't like that?

Controversial opinion, but if your idea of a good read is a series of <200 word short stories about characters from your favourite TV show trying to book a hotel room only to discover that (shocker) THERE WAS ONLY ONE BED!!! then that's honestly just as valid a recreational activity as reading Remains of the Day or The Brothers Karamazov.

Do the works have equal complexity or literary significance? No, probably not, but that doesn't actually matter if the question is "what to read in the evenings so I can destress before bed?" or "what to entertain myself with while on holiday?"

It's not like we treat other forms of media this way. No one feels the need to justify having a generic flower painting on the wall by comparing it to Van Gogh's Sunflowers. Nobody excuses playing pop songs in the car by pointing out that "Mozart was the Taylor Swift of his day!"

Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying people don't get snobbish about this stuff. People get snobbish about anything. But reading is really the only hobby where it seems common practice to validate this snobbery by insisting that actually your preferred form of fiction is literature after all.

We all get that there are people who are consumed by a deep passion for art, or music, or food, or whatever, and that many of these people enjoy spending a lot of time (sometimes in professional settings) analysing various works to determine which ones are the most complex and culturally significant.

That's fine, we wish them well and they're probably doing good work.

But we also get that there are other people who just want to watch popcorn films or listen to whatever's on the radio atm while eating oven pizza, and that's also completely fine. Those things aren't invalid just because you couldn't write an academic essay on them, they're fulfilling a completely different but equally important function in our lives!

As someone with a literal degree in this stuff, it's fine to just let reading be one of those background things that you do purely to relax and don't put any thought into. Literally nobody has the time or energy to become a connoisseur in every field, and the average person will run themselves into the ground if they try.

Bread and roses are important, yeah, but so are bubblegum and fairy lights. Not everything has to be either work or educational.

[nerdallwritey]

✨ writing interview tag game!!! ✨

Gonna go ahead and thank @busy-baker and @khywren for tagging me :) I'm very late to filling this out, but I wanted to really dedicate some attention to it!

I'm a yapper, I apologize in advance.

When did you start writing?

I started writing when I was in elementary school, I think. I know my fourth grade yearbook said I wanted to be an author when I grew up, and that's only KIND OF changed, I still want to write for a living, but for TV instead of novels (though I'm not opposed to that, should I ever have the right idea for one). I remember going to my friend's house after school all that time and using her mom's laptop to open a blank Word doc and just start writing. We wrote tons of stuff that we never finished, but I'd give ANYTHING to read some of it again, if only for a laugh. The only story I remember was about four teens being stranded on an island - we called it "Castaway." No clue what became of that, but our main characters were always based on ourselves 😂 I didn't start writing fanfiction until 2022 and only started posting this past June!

Are there different themes or genres that you enjoy reading than what you write?

Hmm, that's a good question. I typically stick with what I like - romance, fantasy, silly - but it's fun to throw nonfiction in there every once in a while. Not sure how well I'd do at writing non-fiction without embellishing or getting narrative (even though I like reading those kinds of books as well). But yeah, usually I like to stick with what I know and enjoy most! It's also the best way to learn and improve; by reading a ton within the genre you love to write.

Is there a writer you want to emulate or get compared to often?

I don't......think so? I've always been told by English teachers and professors that I have a very strong voice in my writing, which I always interpreted as being unique. As corny as it sounds, I'm not trying to sound like anyone but myself. At the end of the day, I'm writing for my own enjoyment and am happy you guys found me along the way!

Can you tell me a bit about your writing space?

I don't have a dedicated writing space, but I often find myself writing either on my couch or in bed. Weirdly (or not that weirdly, considering most of us have day jobs) I write the best at night and I have to be alone so that I'm not distracted. Usually I'll find a song and play that on repeat while I'm writing (For Cheeks All Flushed, it was Resolve (Dark) from Fire Emblem Fates, and for Awfully Fond of You it was Climactic Return from Danganronpa 2). The music typically has nothing to do with the vibe of what I'm writing, I just need some sort of constant noise that won't distract me, hence why it's usually video game music with no words.

What's your most effective way to muster up a muse?

That's tough. The first idea I published on tumblr was the result of me making myself laugh when I was trying to fall asleep (If EYE were being propositioned by Astarion, my ass would probably be like "wait, what? Me? ME?! Why?"), but the others I've posted have come from just seeing where my brain takes me as I'm writing, known as the "flying by the seat of your pants" method. I have a pretty good sense of these characters by now so I think I know what they'd be up to at this point. Outside of fanfiction, it's really tough - I'll start with a small idea and then keep sitting on it until it's something I think I can write down. I'm definitely more of a planner when it comes to stuff outside of fics 😅 I guess my short answer is: No idea. It just happens. Someone please help me.

are there any recurring themes in your writing? do they surprise you?

OHHH this is gonna say a lot about me, but something I've noticed in my original scripts and even my first fic is that most of the time, my main character is deeply lonely (I'M FINE GUYS, I'm surrounded by friends and loved ones but I have Some Trauma there). It doesn't really surprise me, considering I know WHY I've felt those things, but it's still like.......yikes. Lol. Also humor. Gotta laugh it off, right? RIGHT?

what is your reason for writing?

To be honest, it's a good outlet for me. I went to school for screenwriting and my goal has always been to make people laugh and bring them joy - It's always been that way. I think if I weren't able to get my thoughts and feelings out on paper every once in a while, I might explode. It's also just fun and I like doing it! Piggybacking off of what Khy said in their post, BG3 has been a HUGE outlet for me creatively. The game is full and beautiful and complex, but there are still gaps that I want to fill in and roads I want to explore. What would happen if the player were given THIS option? How would this character react to THIS situation? It's been a blast and I've never felt this way in a fandom before. It's awesome!

Is there any specific comment or type of comment you find particularly motivating?

ANY comment makes my day. The fact that you took the time to read and put thoughts together to let me know how you felt about it is HUGE! It's such a good confidence boost (I second guess myself A LOT) and it always lifts my mood no matter where I am. I always love when people agree with my interpretation of Astarion's idiot tendencies 😂

how do you want to be thought about by your readers?

Hopefully as someone approachable. I'm a big dumb dummy and I love to chat/fan girl. If I can be someone to brighten their day with something silly that I wrote, that's all I need :)

what do you feel is your greatest strength as a writer?

Definitely my banter. I've always been a fan of quick snappy quips and have experience in sketch writing/performing improv, so it comes very easily for me when I need it to. I make myself laugh with it, so it's always really nice to hear that others like it too.

how do you feel about your own writing?

I really started writing as a way of entertaining myself, so the fact that it's able to entertain others is GREAT, but I am very self conscious about it at the same time. I know my interpretation of Astarion is goofier than most, I know I rely heavily on dialogue rather than scene descriptions and inner monologues, and I get very in my head about those things. My stuff has found its proper audience and I'm very grateful for that, but there's always the nagging thought of "this could be better," or "they wouldn't say this," etc etc. That's something I'll likely always struggle with. BUT! I always have fun when I'm writing and hopefully that comes through. I've become less of a perfectionist after posting my first fic, that's for sure.

when you write, are you influenced by what others might enjoy reading, or do you write purely for yourself, or a mix of both?

Aside from requests, where I'm trying very hard to make sure I get whatever it is right for the person who requested it, I'm usually writing for myself. I'm definitely writing what I think will be enjoyable, but it's usually what I personally would like to read. That's what I've been taught! Write what you know and write what you want to read! I'm so unbelievably grateful that you guys find it entertaining as well. My fave thing to do is slip inside jokes in for myself/my beta (calling Astarion "ass," turning to someone and saying "did you know those people?" after talking to a group of people you know very well, etc etc).

No pressure tagging: @maladaptive-menace, and @arzen9 (I know you're not a fic writer, but still!) - I think everyone else I know has been tagged 😅

[liaroflesbos]

I honestly feel a little like an asshole listing my favourite things. Like who the fuck am I? But also I want to review and talk about some of the stuff from the year so here it is! I guess it's ended up a list of what's been most impactful rather than my favourite. What's a favourite anyway? Lists in no particular order.

Books

Picnic at Hanging Rock by Joan Lindsay - My brother-in-law has been telling me to read this for like a year+ and all I'd heard about it was this podcast on the movie, so I was like meh. Eventually I guess, since I like my brother-in-law. But the book is so good; it made me realize that I'd never really engaged with Australian fiction in a major way because this is a book About the Australian project of imposing English civilization on a landscape that they haven't fucked into a garden.

Tenth of December by George Saunders - When my book club picked this book for our short story collection I was so annoyed. More literary fiction? I'll read it, I GUESS. But these short stories whipped ass so hard that it made me return to reading other respected fiction that I had dismissed. There were stories I enjoyed reading less than others but all of them have stuck around with me.

The Reformatory by Tananarive Due - My book club actually read her debut, The Between, but I misread which book we were supposed to be. They were meh on her debut but I adored The Reformatory, which is a book that makes you clutch the blankets with anxiety for the characters you honestly like and bare your teeth in anger for our common American past of horrors. I recommend reading her author's note/acknowledgements too.

Our Share of Night by Mariana Enriquez, trans Megan McDowell - Speaking of horror that gripped me by the short hairs, Our Share of Night was a hard read but one I couldn't put down (and lost me sleep cuz I read until 2AM). The slowly unfolding understanding of the horrors that Juan is trying to make sure that Gaspar can escape, and Gaspar's eventual attempts to understand who he is and who his father is in their wake is deeply moving; dark and queer and wrenching. I didn't go in knowing much about Argentinian history, but it had a lot to say on the subject, and I should probably find an Argentinian perspective on the book...

Our Band Could Be Your Life by Michael Azzerad - I did read quite a bit of non-fiction this year, but nothing gave me a deeper and more practical understanding of the world I live in and my own history as Our Band Could Be Your Life. A history of the hard edge punk scene of the 80s, the book taught me about being a musician in general--something I've never thought too hard about before--and about our punk predecessors in particular. Full of people just living, creating, and touring in their communities with love and hate and drugs and straight edge and leftists and nazis and poverty and middle class comfort.

Honorable Mentions to Bury Your Gays by Chuck Tingle, a book that's approaching the fear of AI right to me, and to Water Outlaws by SL Huang. Oh, and Inherent Vice by Thomas Pynchon! If you ever want to start thinking harder about the 70s...

Film/TV

I Saw the TV Glow (2024) - Have you ever seen a movie and said, "Wow this director is talking directly to me?" Horrifying and sad, and yet despite the tragedy of the end, oddly hopeful--like it's saying, this doesn't have to be you. the world is so hard but if you do what Owen can't then maybe you can break free

Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me (1992) - What I've always wanted from Twin Peaks: an unflinching look at the horror of it's original premise. That the weirdness and surreality of the story are sometimes the only way to look into so deep betrayal, so wretched an action. Everything that Sheryl Lee does here is phenomenal.

Paprika (2006) - Honestly I don't hear people quite talk about Paprika with same reverence that they do about some of Kon's other work. Like, "yeah yeah it's his final master work, we got it." But this movie pulls you so deeply into the dream, that it feels like reality could split apart beneath you for an hour when you're done. There is magic in the world--and that's beautiful, and amazing, and dangerous as hell.

The People's Joker (2022) - Personally I don't think you can really engage as a full Batman fan until you've seen Vera Drew's take on the world. I might still be only a small part of the way through my project to do all Batman media ever, but Drew's direct queering of canon, her reinterpretation of Batman as not the center of the goddamn universe, her way of expressing herself through the medium of canon--it feels crucial to any of us fangirls to at least see what she is trying to do.

Love Lies Bleeding (2024) - I Saw the TV Glow might have been speaking to me directly, but Love Lies Bleeding was exactly for me. From the director of Saint Maud, I should've known to expect grotesquerie and horror and yet I was delighted and shocked by their moments in this gay Americana love story. The human body is capable of horrors and of horrors being visited upon, and yet also so hot. The family must be escaped, but escaping it will only draw us deeper into similarity with the ones we hate the most.

Honorable Mentions to Monkey Man (2024), Tar (2022), The Green Knight (2021), House (1977), We Are Lady Parts Season 1, and Twin Peaks: The Return.

[tincansamurai]

pifo oc monday :)

original post here!

1. Is there someone [x] tries to protect?

mat: he generally feels really really weird trying to fill that niche, like he would be imposing himself on the other person. he would like stand up for amy or thom if something crazy happened but he's not the type to be generally protective. the longer he's with kaz the more actively protective he gets over him though, to point where he's gotta sort that out from the negative other half of the coin of feeling possessive/jealous.

kaz: kaz is kind of generally protective, like in the sense if someone does anything fucked up to a stranger or whatever, he'll totally say something. dude won't leave a woman alone on the train? he's telling him to fuck off, kinda thing. that goes double for people he likes and triple for people that are actually his friends. but he tries not to presume what people need/want, except in cases where he can conclude that the best thing for them would be for him to fuck off and die

2. What virtues does [x] value?

mat: honesty, sincerity. he hates guessing. he's always asking clarifying questions. just tell him

kaz: kindness. this extends pretty deep into his politics too.

3. Is [x] a good liar?

mat: y'know, he's not bad. he's great at lies of omission and half-truths. he is not good at straight up making up a lie whole cloth though. he will get red about it

kaz: depends who you ask. kimmy would tell you he's fucking awful at it, but most strangers and acquaintances would have no clue. he doesn't usually lie though, he doesn't like it. which is part of why he's always gotten in trouble for cheating and fucking around - he'd lie for a bit, then be like "fuck it, this is annoying" and let it get out for real. the only thing he wants to lie about is how fucked in the head he is, but it's the thing he is worst at lying about bc everything else about how he acts and lives his life gives it away

4. How does [x] get their hair cut or styled? A professional? A friend? Do it themselves?

mat: he definitely just goes to like a supercuts style quick chain

kaz: himself for maintaining the short parts, kimmy for the longer shit, himself for "i'm going insane i need to change something significant NOW" haircuts

5. Where did [x] go to school as a child? Or if fixed schools are not the norm in their culture, how did they receive their childhood education?

mat: public school in an nj suburb. he never moved or anything. his parents picked the best school district before getting pregnant on purpose, why would they move

kaz: public schools in pa suburbs. he moved once after elementary school when his mom found work in the city and they needed to be closer. she didn't want him going to school in the city though so they stayed outside it

6. Does [x] enjoy reading? Do they read quickly?

mat: mat loves old sci-fi. he's a fast reader. you can try and get him to read new stuff, or other genres, and he'll do it for a friend, but he doesn't care that much. very much a book re-reader

kaz: yeah, he misses having time for it, and outside pressure to force him into it. he reads at a pretty normal pace, but slower if it's nonfiction bc he likes to mark those books and take notes. he likes reading political and academic shit. he wants to be a philosophy guy but he can't concentrate on that well enough. he likes literature too. not big on genre fiction

7. Does [x] have a lot of friends, or just a select few?

mat: mat has two (2) friends. he kinda has some online friends but he doesn't keep up with them consistently or plan to ever meet them irl. probably a coworker or two consider him a friend, but he is dense about that kinda thing

kaz: kaz has a ton of friends the way that people who you met a few times who you're facebook/insta mutuals with are friends. not literally though bc he hates social media and basically never uses it. he's generally chill and friendly so he gets along with a lot of people. he doesn't have as many close friends. unfortunately his negative self perception is often reinforced by the fact that if he gets too deep too fast with new people they often go "oh wow ok uhh that's a lot" and fuck off, so he just doesn't get deep

[omgkalyppso]

things I would like to know about fellow writers

I was tagged by @dustdeepsea, thank you!! (:

Putting a cut in this because I'm very specific in some sexual language (not about my sexual history).

For this reason I'm too shy to tag anyone else, but if you see this and want to answer the questions, please consider yourself tagged by me.

Last book I read: The last book I finished must've been American Gods.

Greatest literary inspiration: I don't know. I like reading for reading and for learning, but no one that I really want to write like, and I feel bad for naming big names, still. JRR Tolkien, Douglas Adams, Diane Duane, Isaac Asimov (the short story Liar! has really stuck with me). And even then, that might influence how I used to write original fiction, but not at all how I write fanfiction, which I do almost exclusively now. I write far more original poetry than original fiction, and then ... I'm inspired by my mother, people in my community, all the music I listen to.

My fanfiction is a little inspired by my friends. I was going to link their a/o3 accounts but realized they may not want that. fghdfghdfg

Things in my current fandom I want to read but I don't want to write: Let's think of 3 for bg3 and 3 for fire emblem.

Vlaakith's defeat. - Idk enough about githyanki politics / how many "elite" forces (if any) are at her disposal.

Minsc's homecoming. - I feel like I'd have to play the first two games to be up to this.

He Who Was in control of his faculties but subbing very sweetly for Tav/Durge of any gender with bondage, hair pulling, overstimulation, spanking and the presence of a knife (I'd say knifeplay, but I don't mean bloodplay / cutting for him). - Reminder that this isn't a w/endy's, it's my blog.

Slowburn, longfic of Marianne moving to Faerghus with her eventual marriage to Dimitri. - Time.

Shura holding Kana for the first time. - I could write this. I won't.

Kink scene, free-use Hilda where her inner monologue is as complex as she is while still being wildly indulgent. - I started this wip; Hubert was also up for grabs in it. But it isn't happening.

Wait, also, Sylvain x Mercedes x Dedue starting a relationship with miscommunication and pining. - Planning this feels hard. fghdfg

Things in my current fandoms I want to write but I think nobody would be interested in them but me: 

With the note that I know I have at least 5 enablers who will (probably?? fdghfgdhfdg) always express interest in my completion of a project even if the won't read it, and so "nobody" being interested applies to strangers:

Komira and Locke, either domesticity or sexual intimacy.

A fic where Wyll and Ulder talk and it results in reconciliation, and then a bigger rift, and then understanding (people really don't like Ulder).

My Blaiddyd Bastard oc Almanzor learning to let go of the hang-ups on sex his parents gave him and fucking my oc Peregrine.

My oc Fae as a Student AU longfic.

You can recognise my writing by: The temptation to insult my own writing is so, so strong, but I don't mean to insult anyone who reads my stuff and enjoys it so I have to be nice. Hm. I don't know. "The way I write dialogue / inner reflection" is vague, but it's all I've got.

My most controversial take (current fandom): You guys (gender neutral and vague) can't call that shit self-insert if it's a non-human Tav (or Durge). It's first or second person writing (often, and not even always lately???), and x Reader fic, but self-insert To Me means that either any reader or at least the author has to be able to picture themself Being Inserted into the story. I haven't seen 1 isekai situation using this tag, which isn't a requirement, but you're giving the self-insert tiefling-tails and backstories, which is fun, but that's not a self-insert to me.

Top three favourite tropes: Slowburn (or emotional slowburn, sexually complicated), Hurt/Comfort (emotional or physical, whatever), Battle Relationship.

What’s your current writing mood (10 – super motivated and churning out words like crazy, 0 – in a complete rut): How current is current? Because potentially 0/10. I'll say 4/10 though.

Share a random frustration: I hate psyching myself out of a project because I worry something won't make sense (and I should post it anyway) or that it won't be up to my personal standards for myself.

[mylifeinfiction]

You Like It Darker by Stephen King

I sit at this desk thinking of galaxies beyond galaxies.

Here we are, again... another Stephen King Short Story Collection. I feel like I probably bash short story collections more than I actually should. The fact is, some of King's very best writing resides within these collections. The same is true with his latest, You Like It Darker , which includes several stories that I'd rank among King's best since C*vid. But the same issues are also present, especially the fact that too many of these—even some I thoroughly enjoyed/loved—feel too much like promising ideas rather than finished pieces. Also, most don't get nearly as dark as I was hoping for. In the end, though, this is a rock-solid short story collection and extraneous proof that King is the king... not just of horror fiction, but of American fiction, full stop.

Anyway, let's not fix what's not broken... here are my thoughts on each story:

*As Always With This Type of Review... POSSIBLE SPOILERS!!*

Robert Frost said home is the place that, when you go there, they have to take you in. It’s also the place you start from, and if you’re one of the lucky ones, it’s where you finish up.

Two Talented Bastids: A creative slant on the roots of talent; those inexplicable gifts bestowed upon unassuming people. It’s a likable if unevenly paced study of fate, and the actual origin of these men's talents is straight up my alley. - 7.5/10

The Fifth Step: I liked this one significantly more this time around. It’s very short and has a fantastic ending that isn’t only brutal, but plays into the story’s themes of addiction brilliantly. The idea of the addict fully giving themself to the recovery of one addiction by embracing another, more destructive addiction is so effectively executed, and shines a bright light on King's understanding of the addict’s mindset and the horrors and desperation that dwell within. - 8.5/10

Willie the Weirdo: Ooh, this was fun. I thought it was going to be a pretty straightforward serial killer origin story, but that ending made it so much more. Super dark and weird and I really dug it. - 8/10

"Belief is hard."

Danny Coughlin’s Bad Dream: Fantastic! A thematically compelling read boasting a gripping plot that delivers a creative, wholly satisfying and utterly nightmarish approach to familiar tropes and has a cast full of interesting characters. - 9.5/10

Finn: The first one that feels like filler. Not to say it’s bad, necessarily, it’s just kinda meh. There are some interesting ideas about luck, but aside from that it’s just a nightmare that doesn’t really go anywhere. - 5/10

On Slide Inn Road: I still dig the atmosphere and the grandfather—and what his relationship with his son and the contrast of their character has to say about the rift between generations. But, overall, it felt a whole lot less substantial than I remembered. - 6/10

Red Screen: I love alien stuff so this works for me. It's short and sweet, and while there's nothing amazing, it is a solid idea executed in a fun, mean way. - 8/10

The Turbulence Expert: An interesting, anxiety inducing premise, and very little more. It feels like the first chapter of a novel. It is well executed, though, and filled with characters that feel real. How King can do that so thoroughly in so few pages is always impressive. - 6.5/10

He watched the sunset. Laurie found a dead fish and peed on it. They both went home satisfied.

Laurie: This is a quietly beautiful story about that sneaky manner in which dogs tend to save folks. The first time I read this story, I unfairly disregarded it as being 'too light', and I was positive this would be one of the filler stories in this collection. I have no clue what happened in the last ~7 months, but I liked this a lot more this second time around. - 8/10

You get crazy ideas sometimes, ones that would seem ridiculous in broad daylight but seem quite plausible in the small hours of the morning.

Rattlesnakes: Nothing close to the story I was expecting—or hoping for. But it’s still a damn good, effectively creepy ghost story about the manner in which grief tends to overstay its welcome. I really was hoping for at least one more terrifying encounter with actual rattlesnakes aside from the flashback (which is awful in the best possible way), but I still really enjoyed this for what it was. - 8/10

"Barriers are usually there for a reason."

The Dreamers: I LOVED this story. This is a great premise with pitch-perfect execution. And while it's another one that doesn't quite feel like a finished piece, that works in its favor. I love cosmic horror, and this teases some seriously terrifying cosmic sh*t. In addition to that, it’s an interesting and deeply poignant exploration of PTSD in a time when nobody gave a sh*t about the soldiers coming home from hell. Still, I would've loved to see this expanded into a full novel. - 9.5/10

The Answer Man: Wow... King went and ended You Like It Darker on a major f*cking high note, didn’t he?? What a beautiful and tragic and emotionally exhausting story. I am a mess. Stories like this hit me hard in general, but this one is just so perfectly crafted. I am utterly wrecked. Go read this story... now! - 10/10

"Do we go on? After we die, do we go on?"

8/10

-Timothy Patrick Boyer.

[ewanmitchellcrumbs]

Any advice on how I can spot plagiarism as a reader? It’s sad but lately I’m feeling suspicious (not towards you of course!)

The short answer is that you can't.

A longer answer beneath the cut.

First of all, I feel it's important to have a proper understanding of what plagiarism actually is. @em-writes-stuff-sometimes has a very helpful post regarding this, which you can read here.

There is no way to know for certain that a story isn't plagiarised, but for the sake of your enjoyment of fandom, I would not adopt a bad faith take. It's better to assume that most people don't, and just enjoy the stories.

However, if you are reading a fic and think to yourself "this feels familiar", take a few lines and drop them into Google. If it's a story already posted to Tumblr then it will come up within the first few search results. This approach does not work with AO3, unfortunately, so you really have to know the original story to be certain.

I thank you for your lack of suspicion towards me. I have plagiarised before - I was fifteen and my English class was given a substitute for two weeks while our usual teacher was on her honeymoon. I was balls deep in literary analysis of Of Mice and Men and loving it, then became resentful of the fact that a stranger had taken over my favourite subject and was forcing me to write an essay regarding a poem I had absolutely no interest in. So, I took an essay from the internet, switched a few paragraphs around and ran a few words through a thesaurus.

The substitute immediately clocked me and I was given a lunchtime detention to rewrite my essay in my own words. I ended up getting an A for the rewrite, something I could have earned if I'd just sucked it up and written the fucking essay in the first place, instead of being a petulant asshole that ended up losing their lunch break and the respect of the substitute teacher.

I have not plagiarised since. My fan fiction is all my own, though not without riffing heavily from George R.R Martin's source material (sorry, man, but I wouldn't need to do this if ASOIAF didn't have such a woeful lack of pegging)

Sorry for the long as fuck response and tangent. And I am sorry that the state of fandom has made you feel this way. Unfortunately, plagiarists will have us all duped, until their handiwork crosses the path of someone who has read the exact same story before. Keep reading and enjoying. I promise you those that steal are a very, very small minority.

[girlfriendsofthegalaxy]

tuesday again 3/14/2023

one of the good things about the tuesdaypost series is that it reassures me i did actually do things in a particular week, even if the week felt very much like an unmemorable gray blob

listening

Aretha Franklin's Chain of Fools this came on last night as i was making dinner. two (three? let's not think about it) years ago i found the las vegas jazz station bc i wanted something on in the background while i wrote cowboyfic. and now (when i remember internet radio exists) it's in the rotation of things keeping me company while i tend to my databases

-

reading

it's been just over two weeks since philip marlowe has burrowed his way into my brain. i have read through most of The Simple Art of Murder, which contains the titular essay and eight novellas/short stories. if you enjoy reading and thinking about criticism as its own genre/art form, this seven page essay is well worth reading. chandler had extremely strong opinions about his colleagues that he kept to himself with varying degrees of success. aside from a brief catty snit at what we now call "cozy" mysteries, it's a very level look at the challenges and limitations of detective fiction as a genre.

The realistic style is easy to abuse: from haste, from lack of awareness, from inability to bridge the chasm that lies between what a writer would like to be able to say and what he actually knows how to say. It is easy to fake; brutality is not strength, flipness is not wit, edge-of-the-chair writing can be as boring as flat writing; dalliance with promiscuous blondes can be very dull stuff when described by goaty young men with no other purpose in mind than to describe dalliance with promiscuous blondes. There has been so much of this sort of thing that if a character in a detective story says, "Yeah," the author is automatically a Hammett imitator. And there are still quite a few people around who say that Hammett did not write detective stories at all, merely hardboiled chronicles of mean streets with a perfunctory mystery element dropped in like the olive in a martini.

i had a tremendous amount of fun reading through the novellas and picking out elements he reused and expanded upon in later full novels.

im yoinking this example from wikipedia but this sequence in The Big Sleep:

The room was too big, the ceiling was too high, the doors were too tall, and the white carpet that went from wall to wall looked like a fresh fall of snow at Lake Arrowhead. There were full-length mirrors and crystal doodads all over the place. The ivory furniture had chromium on it, and the enormous ivory drapes lay tumbled on the white carpet a yard from the windows. The white made the ivory look dirty and the ivory made the white look bled out. The windows stared towards the darkening foothills. It was going to rain soon. There was pressure in the air already.

first appeared in the short story The Curtain:

This room had a white carpet from wall to wall. Ivory drapes of immense height lay tumbled casually on the white carpet inside the many windows, which stared towards the dark foot-hills. The air beyond the glass was dark too. It had not started to rain, yet there was a feeling of pressure in the atmosphere.

when you are an exacting self-editor who will spend five months on one short story i imagine it's quite easy to go back and expand on a previous framework? it is fun to see how the sausage gets made

-

watching

the westerner (1940, dir. Wyler). really had me thinking about the Types of westerns i like. this is a perfectly adequate, well-acted little open range vs. homesteaders film with an impressive prairie fire sequence. walter brennan (a guy i love to see) more than deserves his oscar. gary cooper is great as a quick-thinking drifter who scams his way out of a noose. our heroine looks very much like olivia de haviland around the eyes. the original nyt review points out that cooper is very much overshadowed, and cooper only did the movie under duress bc he was worried about this very thing (p. 138-140).

between the fact that the movie thinks cooper should be the lead but brennan steals every scene he's in, this movie does not grab me by the lapels and shake me like some others i could name. part of it is that i do not like brennan's character. he is a self-appointed judge with a 100% hanging rate. i also think this is a totally different movie if you are not a woman, bc his character is INCREDIBLY weird about women. the ending tried very hard and failed to make me go "aw he was all right deep down anyway huh".

the other part of why this movie does not work for me: it starts off as my favorite genre "Some Guy has an incredibly fucked up day" but most of it is about good bible-thumping homesteaders enacting the american dream. what if we all got along??? america's big enough for everyone isn't it?? this movie really pulls its fuckin punches re: any sort of a theme, and i do not like cooper as an actor or brennan's character enough to say i had a good time. this movie does not delve into an aspect of the cowboy western mythos i am particularly interested in, but it is on kanopy, and it is part of my goal to watch every western on kanopy in order to convince the boston public library to add more westerns.

-

playing

man i wish fallou/t 4 was good. ive really got to fucking suck it up and start rdr2 even though i know it will consume my life in a time where i do not have a ton of time to spare

-

making

chicken fajitas. no pics all gone.

also: 6/10 baby blanket repeats. im trying to get this out by midapril so if i decide to fly down and look at apartments in person i can deliver it in person. so far i am happy with this rate of progress. i am going to frown about the edging for a while when im done knitting the body but that's a problem for future kay

[devitalise]

omg imo I could've sworn there was at least one full week left of november for some reason but dec 1 is on friday BYE locking myself up to finish my books 🏃‍♀️ HOW WAS YOUR NOVEMBER READING!! are you already in the holiday spirit are you planning on reading/watching some holiday related things to get you there? this one's rando, but do you have any favorite holiday foods/desserts/drinks you're excited to indulge in during this last month o 2023 ☃️

november being 30 days always goes by SO quickly she knows we're ready for the main event. november was a very good reading month for me let's get into the

november book wrap up

Small Island by Andrea Levy

i finished this pretty early on in novembr, my thoughts are along the same lines as my goodreads review: Great piece of historical fiction. I found parts of this so funny and I'm not sure if that was the original intention but I did have a giggle! The humour was found moreso in Gilbert and Hortense who are just so, so different to each other and Hortense's wilful misunderstanding and naivete as she tries to be a Model Minority was just so funny it was a much needed brevity compared to the heaviness of the rest of the story. Such foul racist thoughts that can be burdensome after a while, though. Yeah! I don't need to read the POV of a white British man stationed in India in the second world war ever again, actually! I enjoyed reading though.

A Game of Thrones by George R.R Martin

reread this because I hadn't picked up a high fantasy book I'd actually enjoyed in a little while. Great! I love ASOIAF as a series love returning to a known entity. I can't find my copies of A Storm of Swords or A Clash of Kings so continuing my reread is on pause until those unearth themselves.

Drive Your Plow over the Bones of the Dead by Olga Tokarczuk

Brilliant! So, so atmospheric. Incredible translation to me, obviously I won't know for sure until there ever comes a day where I can read Polish, but I got so much of the story out of this. It was just so cool and not what I expected at all going into it. I've never read anything like it before so getting to grips with all of the quirks of the style, subject and character was its on experience.

Butcher's Crossing by John Williams

Stoner was one of my top 2022 reads, so I saved this knowing that I'd like it. Rachel Cusk coded. It didn't blow me away like Stoner did, but I appreciate these are two very different books with completely different approaches. Where Stoner is so insular, things are kind of bursting in Butcher's Crossing. William isn't a complete active character, but he's participating in his life. Really cool setting, one of the most tense books I've read which I find can fall short in books with more action but the way tension builds and builds and builds in these fraught interactions between the four men on the mountain is fucking incredible. Immediately watched the film after this, and I love Nicolas Cage as much as the next person, but it fell short for me as an adaptation and as a film, sadly! Will be reading Augustus very soon as the last novel Williams' acknowledges as his own work.

The Power of the Dog by Thomas Savage

Another Western! Apparently I couldn't get enough! Not long finished this, so bear with for complete thoughts. Realised that I haven't read a book with such a sinister character in a while. Phil is sinister and strange and he's complicated, and I just really liked this book! Took me a while to get through because it is so dense at parts, but I think playing the long game definitely paid off. I love books that can make life so dramatic, all of the small stuff builds up to this big moment kind of thing. Netflix removed this film??? Will be making time to watch it this weekend for sure!

Outlawed by Anna North

3/3 with Western's which is so out of left field for me I feel. Finished it today, but on my top 2023 shelf, for sure. I think reading these back-to-back has made me appreciate the difference in style and storytelling so much more. I was a bit nervous because I've found previous Reese Witherspoon book club picks really juvenile, and whilst this is way more accessible than BC or TPotD, there's still a lot of complexity that I was able to enjoy. I love communities and found families, and it just really got me reading this book about these "women" ostracized from society making something of their own at risk of imprisonment and hanging. Thought it was really neat :)

December Reads

I'm on the Kindle through to the end of the year (10 days to New York!) so I'll be getting a couple new titles to diversify my options more. I don't have anything set in stone but I did download pdf's of The Hunger Games series which I've never read before so I might do those.

My Christmas mood started on November 1st! Multiple plays of Ariana Grande's Christmas & Chill, and I've already watched a few Christmas films. I watched The Holiday for the first time recently and found it boring :( I'm not a Jude Law enjoyer sorry.

Oh I love a hot cider! Ferrero Rocher's, stuffing, anything Christmassy really! I'm also so excited for a Christmas in New York! I have an itinerary going and many pictures to take!

[katherynefromphilly]

2, 8, & 20 for the writer meme

Thank you @shana-rosee ! Here you go.

2. Do you plan each chapter ahead or write as you go?

Ooo this is a long answer. Basically? I do it differently with each story. I’m still figuring it out.

I wrote And Like the Cycle of the Year, We Begin Again the absolute most difficult way possible: I started writing the first chapter and kept writing. However… the first draft, at 6 chapters, felt super contrived, and wildly out of character. So I rewrote the entire thing, but this time planned out major plot beats, crisis points, and conflict. But it STILL wasn’t quite right, so I took some time to read articles about plotting and writing effective scenes. During my third draft edit/re-write, I also wrote a summary of each scene, with all the stuff you’d see on a Scene Card. That helped a lot. I still needed several rounds of editing after that, so I wouldn’t recommend this path for a 200,000 word story, unless you want to write 8 drafts over 11 months.

With our Our Destinies Our Own, I extensively outlined the plot, but stayed too much a slave to that outline. The story is way, way, too long as a result. With Ever Onward, I tried something different, starting with a loose collection of scenes and plot points in my head, and then writing a super short outline. It was an experiment in writing more briefly, and tightening up my style, and I think it worked. That story is short, though, so maybe it only worked for that reason.

In my current story, which is longer and more plotty, I’m using Miro, a virtual infinite whiteboard product like Mural or Freeform. I want to try visualizing the escalating path of the plot. It’s been helpful in understanding where I feel the story is dragging. Also, in my Pages doc, right before I write each scene, I summarize the Setting, POV, and What Happens/What Changes. It seems to be working so far. But stay tuned.

I still do discovery writing/pantsing for my original short stories or my flash fiction. It’s less important when the max word count is 3 to 5 k, and you’re illustrating a theme or character, instead of taking them on a whole-ass journey.

8. Do you prefer the beginning, middle, or end of a story?

There is something really satisfying about a good story ending. I really like closing the open loops, drawing parallels, and letting my characters have that moment of rest after a long journey. My endings are more like endings + epilogues. I go crazy when I read a story that drives to a climax and then kicks you right out of bed afterward. Let me enjoy the characters and their success for a while, you know?

20. Have you noticed any patterns in your fics? Words/expressions that appear a lot, themes, common settings, etc?

I love writing about found family, and about unique people finding one another. I also love writing about older characters, and all the strength and sass and love they can have to offer. Eleanor represents the a type of woman I’ve frequently been blessed to know in my life. I really admire older women who have had a tough life but still have retained a loving, positive, caring heart.

Thanks again for the ask!