#not edited because I wrote and posted this on the exact same day

[thelongestway]

hey no shade but you know dungeon meshi isn't actually based off dnd right? there are definitely some overlapping concepts and it can be fun to analyze it through a dnd lens but really it's its own homebrew fantasy setting. just checking bc i nearly got in an argument w someone over dungeon meshi lore the other day only to realize it was because they were trying to apply dnd lore to it ahahaa

Oh yeah, absolutely, it's its own thing. You don't even have to go far to show how it's its own thing: for one, the whole set-up with the dungeons being what they are isn't found anywhere else in D&D-inspired material that I know. You could maybe reflavor Halaster's Undermountain to something like the Dungeon Meshi dungeons, but that would be another layer of homebrew. That said, I do have the feeling that Ryoko Kui grew up on the same kind of D&D material that I did - stuff like Elminster's Ecologies, or old school Greyhawk materials. Her story genuinely feels like an AD&D game run by an old-school DM, maybe even earlier in the editions (hi, Chilchuck and "I'm a rogue, I'm not gonna fight"!). I don't mean that she follows D&D canon in any meaningful sense--her stuff isn't set in Greyhawk, nor on Abeir-Toril, nor on Krynn, etc. But I do think she's someone who's inspired by old school stuff, even as she makes her work thoroughly her own.

An acquaintance of mine once wrote that long tabletop games gain a quality that she called "being well-trod". This is when the players and DM are so familiar with the world they live in that it becomes, well, lived-in. They don't need to look up rules anymore to extrapolate: they understand the logic of the setting, and they get the same kind of intuitive feel for the world that we do when living in our own world, in real life. A feeling of where the boundaries lie, and how things work.

This is how I feel about Dungeon Meshi and D&D. It feels like a work written by someone who walked the same paths that I did, and whose work is therefore both new and startlingly familiar. That's it in a nutshell, but then I also wrote a bunch of examples, which got very long, so cut for length and spoilers!

I wrote somewhere in the tags on my Dungeon Meshi posts that it's incredibly surreal reading a story that seems to be informed by the exact materials that you base your own homebrew games on. Kui takes her work in a wholly different direction than I did - but the disparate elements of the story would fit in like a glove, because they're based on similar logic. I could quite literally take any of the ecologies elements of Dungeon Meshi and put them into a given module I'm running, and it would need less adaptation than 5e material. And most of the cultural/racial elements of Dungeon Meshi? That, too. Where it's not a one for one match, it would so easily be explainable by "different continent".

Let's take the example you're probably here from: the Canaries and elves in general, and let's take elves in general first. In D&D, there's been a switch in models of elven aging throughout the years: from "they are literal babies up until 60-ish, and then have 40 years of actual adolescence" to "yeah they grow to full adult size at about the same speed as the other races, and are then just culturally considered too young to make their own decisions". I am decidedly not a fan of the second model - I think it takes away from the cool biologies early D&D thrived on. BG3's treatment of Astarion's age of death, for instance, keeps throwing me. Yeah, I get it: it fits in with the edition they're working off, but I hate it. That's not how things work on our Faerun! But then we get to Marcille's backstory, and we see that she has the problems old school half-elves did, and you're like "oh, well of course someone invested in weird cool biology as an author would interpret elves like that." Her treatment of age makes sense to me. She makes the races as alien as possible, and hits that vibe of "D&D-style fantasy is its own thing, with its own set of rules" that I love. In contrast, and unlike any prototypes I know, Kui takes her half-foots in a different direction! They don't live longer than tall-men, they live shorter lives, closer to goblinoids. And I think it's for the same reason: because it's that much cooler to have different experiences of life in humanoid races. This is decidedly Not D&D, but it would absolutely fit into that vein.

With smaller details, I keep joking around here that the Canaries are grey elves, and of course they're not. But then Kui keeps putting in these tiny little details - which can be either nods to existing material, or the same extrapolations that other authors drawing upon high fantasy tropes have made. The white ships that have travelled all the way from Tolkien's Valinor to Evermeet and now to Shima. The fact that the Canaries have basically the right color scheme for grey elves threw me completely: I was not expecting that! Elves being that specific brand of destructive that they are - jeez, the Canaries would be right at home in Myth Drannor, or during the Crown Wars. So I joke around about these specific dolts a lot, and I am having an inordinate amount of fun seeing if my predictions that come from running a Myth Drannor game for a good long while now come true. And it goes on. Marcille doesn't prepare spells, and the magic here is obviously not Vancian. But Mithrun's teleport shenanigans are literally stuff I've done in games. The differences between races in D&D aren't because of wishes made by mortals; they're built in by gods for their own purposes. But the towns that spring up around anomalous spots and that have to deal with the weirdness have the same vibe. Kui draws on a more extensive tradition than just D&D, of course, but she transforms the tradition in a very similar way to old D&D. Of course the elves' magic in Kui's work does weird and creepy stuff with soulbinding and immortality; that's been their dark side since Tolkien and Celebrimbor's work with Annatar, and then it turned into stuff like elves regularly sacrificing their lives in high magic rituals in Faerun. Of course Senshi's backstory is about the dwarves that have dug too deep - but they are, of course, distinct from gnomes, and the gnomes are a peculiar and interesting breed of arcana specialists. Of course Chilchuck is a Burglar - but he works on dungeon delving unions, of all things! It's a familiar transformation, so the world makes sense to me, and I love it. So yeah. Tl;dr: not D&D ofc, but the vibe is there, and I am having fun with it.

Also - can you tell me about the argument? I am super curious, and I wonder if the person you were arguing with was working from 5e material.

[cavinginhisfvce]

All Things Borrowed | Jey Uso x Rhea Ripley

full disclosure: this is a fic i wrote a while ago, and posted, i just edited it to be jhea bc the theme of it felt so fitting.

Rhea knows it's selfish. She knows it's not fair to feel the way she does. She shouldn't feel like she's living on borrowed love from her boyfriend, especially not when Jey is always so willing to give Rhea the affection he knows the Australian craves.

It's selfish to take all that Jey offers, his joy, his fears, his love, and in return store those moments for when, if, that trust in Rhea suddenly vanishes, instead of giving the same. 

It's not fair of Rhea to store the love for a later date, a day where the love has suddenly stopped flowing and she's scrambling for some semblance of things being okay. Things being right.

If Jey knew Rhea was just counting down the days until the demise of their relationship, would he still bother with her? Or would he make all of Rhea’s worst dreams come true and feed her to the proverbial wolves?

Wrapped up tightly in Jey’s embrace, Rhea can't help but feel reminded that all love is borrowed love; no matter who the love comes from.

Whether it be family or others, others like Dominik, the woman is all too familiar with what it feels like to watch the reservoir of familial and romantic love run so dry the sight of the person makes you feel sick to your stomach.

Rhea’s love for Dominik, for example, burned so bright, and felt reciprocated in ways that blinded her to who her Latino Heat was becoming until it was too late, and Rhea had become a person Dominik held little to no love for.

Rhea in turn, watched with her own eyes as the love Dominik had for her ceased to exist, at least in a healthy sense. His obsession with her remains the same.

She doesn't think she can live through a pain like that again, even if the love differs from her relationship with Dom, even if Dom went too far with his love and it cost Rhea everything.

 Seeing the way Dominik has completely done away with her and seems better for it, hurts; but the feeling pales in comparison to the mere thought that Jey could be done with her, she can't imagine who she'd become if Jey decided Rhea wasn't worth the hassle. If he decided the panic attacks, and nightmares were too much to tackle, because let's face it, Rhea’s a handful. She knows this, and Jey, bless his heart, tries so hard with her, but he truthfully doesn't have to. 

Rhea knows if she shares these feelings with her boyfriend, the elder will reassure her. She knows Jey will take her in his arms and pepper her face in sweet kisses whilst he whispers all the reasons he loves Rhea more than she could ever know, Jey has done as much for less. 

But, there's the possibility Jey could do the exact opposite, maybe Jey just needed an out and Rhea opening up would be just that. Maybe in the same breath Rhea confesses her knowledge of living on borrowed love, Jey will pack his bags and leave Rhea’s life forever. 

The likelihood seems much higher now than it did before, especially with the stolen glances from Sami and Jey, the looks they think Rhea doesn't notice. She does. She notices the lingering touches, and that Jey will seek out Sami at work, long before he finds his actual partner.

Even in her muddled mess of a mind, Rhea knows she's being irrational, because just that morning Jey had woken her up by carding skilled fingers through her hair, nosing happily at the girl’s cheek until the latter stirred awake.

And yet, the possibility still exists. 

There could come a day when Jey is no longer the glue holding Rhea together, but the hammer that shatters her fully. It'd be too easy with all the cracks in the Australian’s foundation, because they're just that. Cracks in her foundation, difficult to patch up and make whole without running the risk of destroying it completely. 

Rhea isn't sure she'd survive that. So, she stays shut. What Jey doesn't know, won't be able to hurt Rhea.

If Sami and Jey are truly falling in with one another, then Rhea will pretend nothing has changed, because losing Jey? It's not an option. 

She’ll live on borrowed love for however long, if it means Jey stays with her.

[rjalker]

Ladd Ehlinger, infamously racist and misogynistic conservative, creator of the 2007 Flatland film thinks that adults who respect trans kids' chosen pronouns are pedophiles. He also thinks that using tax money to feed poor school children is the same thing as slavery, and that Black people are all inherently racist and if we don't jail them at disproportionate rates then they'll run around murdering white people all the time.

Can everyone stop creating fanart for his film? You are doing free advertising for him and his creation. Even if you're making the characters gay, you are still promoting his film, allowing him to get more attention.

This man is infamously racist, misogynistic, and now saying he thinks using a trans kid's pronouns makes you a pedophile.

There is no good reason to be promoting his film with hundreds of posts of fanart gushing about his versions of the characters when other adapatations exist, and you can literally just read the original book and then make your own original designs for the characters to make your shitposts for.

You cannot separate the art from the artist when the artist is benefiting from all the attention you are giving him and his creation for free. Which is what you're all doing by constantly making fanart for his versions of the characters and telling everyone how much you loved his film.

The man literally thinks that taxes being used to feed poor school children is the exact same thing as slavery. He thinks using a kids' pronouns makes you a pedophile.

Stop. Making fanart. For the racist misogynistic transmisic conservative's film that ignores all of the politics of the original novel because he is the exact sort of person Edwin Abbot Abbot was criticizing when he wrote the book.

Literally just make your own versions of the characters to fanout over. They're literally a square and a sphere. You can do literally anything you want. But stop making free promotional material for a racist conservative bigot.

Flatland fandom I am begging you to care about real world minorities more than you do the designs for public domain characters created by a bigot so blatantly racist and misogynistic that Republicans had to condemn him.

Literally make your own designs for the characters. It's free. It takes five seconds.

Stop promoting the creation of Ladd Ehlinger. Stop doing free advertising for him and his creation.

If you care about minorities at all you will take 5 seconds out of your day to make an original design for a literal square and sphere to make shitposts about.

My patience with this crap has been thinning by the day with the nonstop deluge of fanart for his versions of the characters that does not in any way reflect the progressive politics of the original novel.

By deliberately continuing to fawn over the designs for these characters created by a bigot, and pretending they're just two completely disconnected things who have noting to do with politics, you are directly contributing to the bigotry the original novel was created to fight against.

It is not harmless to do free advertising for a conservative bigot. It is not harmless to insist that you just have to worship the creation of a racist misogynist transmisic over taking 5 seconds to just make a new design for the characters.

I was trying to be nice and accommodating about this crap but that was before everyone started posting worse and worse things and I'm just not going to tolerate it anymore.

Make new designs for the characters. They are literally. A square and a Sphere. Open up MS Paint or literally any drawing app on your phone or get out a piece of paper and make a design.

Stop doing free advertising for a racist misogynistic bigot who thinks respecting trans kids makes you a pedophile.

I am no longer asking nicely.

Edit: Gravity Falls fandom, this also applies to you, since most people are hearing of the film from your end. Please do your part to inform people about this man's bigotry and ask them to stop doing free advertising for him.

Flatland is public domain. There are dozens more ways to learn about it that don't require watching the 2007 film and doing free advertising for it's infamously bigoted creator. This post is a masterlist of links for where to read, watch, and listen to it.

You're not at fault if you already made fanart before finding out about the creator. But now that you do know, you have to choose whether you care more about real minorities, or the designs made by this racist bigot.

[likeadevils]

Speak Now Timeline

This is a very long post that puts all the songs on Speak Now in order of Taylor creating them. I’ve also added a few other songs she wrote while writing Speak Now and quotes from Taylor and her collaborators talking about her process.

If you don't want to read all that, check out this playlist of the album in order or this playlist of her entire discography.

Due to a surprising amount of digital decay and her life not being highly documented yet, exact dates are bit harder to come by then they are with following albums, but you can still find a few! I’ve added this color coded scale of how sure I am of the date: 

Confirmed: There is some type of official source for the date

Inferring: Nobody has officially said “This is when we wrote it,” but everything points to that date

Speculation: This date is based off pure vibes and guesswork and is highly likely to change.

Unknown: All that is known is the year (from the US Copyright Offices)

More notes: I will probably be editing it as information about vault songs and new details about old songs get come out, so it probably won’t be finished until July, so check back in with this post and/or follow me if you want updates. Most tweet dates come from crawling through the wayback machine, but if you want further sourcing, feel free me an ask/dm.

Without further ado...

Sparks Fly: Late 2006 (Inferring)

Taylor opened up for Jake Owen on October 31, 2006 In Portland, Oregon (the secret message for the song), and wrote Sparks Fly about the experience shortly after. I’ve seen a few second hand sources say she wrote it on the airplane ride back to Nashville later that same night, but I can’t find Taylor herself saying that, so it might just be an old fandom legend, or the source has been lost to digital decay, or I just haven’t looked hard enough. She first performs the song in May 29, 2007.

Haunted: 2009 (Unknown)

Taylor: "Haunted" is about the moment that you realize the person you're in love with is drifting and fading fast. And you don't know what to do, but in that period of time, in that phase of love, where it's fading out, time moves so slowly. Everything hinges on what that last text message said, and you're realizing that he's kind of falling out of love. That's a really heartbreaking and tragic thing to go through, because the whole time you're trying to tell yourself it's not happening. I went through this, and I ended up waking up in the middle of the night and writing this song about it.

February 17, 2009: Tweets "It's 3:58 am in London.. And I accidentally fell asleep at 6:30 pm, so now I'm wide awake and have no idea what to do. Write a song?"

It’s possible that this was what Taylor was referring to when she said she “ended up waking up in the middle of the night and writing [Haunted]”, but it’s also very possible that Taylor didn’t write a song on February 17, and waking up in the middle of the night and writing a song is not a rare occurrence in Taylor’s life, so one tweet doesn’t really prove anything.

March 13, 2009: Tweets "A day off in Sydney. Drove two hours out of the city and spent the day on the beach. Wrote a chorus you'll hear on the next record. :)"

Pure speculation, but I think she was working on Mr. Perfectly Fine. It was created in 2009, and in my opinion, of the possible songs it has the most notable chorus.

March 19, 2009: Posts on Myspace “I’m wiped out. I’ve been in the studio all day ( I know, I know.. We JUST put out a new album. I think I have a problem, I cannot stop writing songs.) It’s so much fun knowing that you can take your time, because you have like a year and a half to make something you’re really proud of. I love recording a few songs, waiting a few months, recording a few more.. Instead of devoting a few weeks to “record the album” and then it’s just done. I like dragging it out, that way you can be meticulous about every detail. Daydream about different ways to put the songs together, and then take them apart. I’m pretty obsessed with the whole process. So needless to say, it was good to be back in the studio with my redheaded producer who I missed terribly.”

If This Was A Movie: April 2009 (Inferring)

Taylor has literally never talked about this song, but April would be six months after and Joe Jonas broke up in late September/early October 2008.

April 24, 2009: Taylor plays in Jonesboro, Arkansas, and possibly writes a song: "I'd get my best ideas at 3:00 AM in Arkansas, and didn't have a co-writer around and I'd just finish it. And that would happen again in New York [likely Enchanted], that would happen again in Boston [likely Long Live], that would happen again in Nashville." (x)

May 23, 2009: Taylor records Half Of My Heart with John Mayer

On March 1, 2009: John Mayer tweeted: “Waking up to this song idea that won’t leave my head. 3 days straight now. That means it’s good enough to finish. It’s called Half of My Heart and I want to sing it with Taylor Swift. She would make a killer Stevie Nicks in contrast to my Tom Petty of a song.” On May 23, John Mayer tweeted "I couldn't get Taylor Swift on my record so I found the world's greatest impersonator, Laura Jacksheimer" with a picture of Taylor.

Superman: Spring 2009 (Speculation)

This could have been written any time in 2009, but due to it's general sound and the following quote, I’d guess it was written sometime in spring, when her and John Mayer first started working together. Taylor: “This was a guy that I was sort of enamored with, as usual. This song got its title by something that I just kinda said randomly in conversation. He walked out of the room, I looked over at one of my friends and said, ‘Man, It’s just like watching Superman fly away.’”

May 29, 2009: Posts on Myspace “Tomorrow, after the performance on the Today show, I’ll fly back to Nashville and record a lot of new songs I’ve written in the last few weeks. I’m really excited about that.” (She also posts "Tonight I went shopping at Top Shop in New York with the band. I got purple shoes. I’m really excited about the purple shoes, and I just needed to tell someone. I got purple shoes. Ok. That’s done." Which. If I had a nickel for everytime Taylor teased her new album by posting about shoe colors I'd have two nickels, which isnt a lot but it's weird that it happened twice.)

June 4, 2009: Posts on Facebook "In the studio. I don't know whose computer I'm using. Pssh.. Such a rebel right now.."

June 9, 2009: Tweets (about recording Thug Story) "If I said I was in the studio with T-Pain, would you believe me?"

Better Than Revenge and Let’s Go (Battle): June 2009 (Inferring)

These were probably written sometime between June 12, when the Jonas Brothers released “Much Better”, and July 1, when Taylor posted on Myspace: “What else is new.. Recording a bunch of new songs. Lots of new things to write about…..”

Last Kiss: 2009 (Unknown)

Taylor: "The song "Last Kiss" is sort of like a letter to somebody. You say all of these desperate, hopeless feelings that you have after a breakup. Going through a breakup you feel all of these different things. You feel anger, and you feel confusion, and frustration. Then there is the absolute sadness. The sadness of losing this person, losing all the memories, and the hopes you had for the future. There are times when you have this moment of truth where you just admit to yourself that you miss all these things. When I was in one of those moments I wrote this song."

July 22, 2009: Tweets "Hanging with my producer Nathan, discussing the next adventure" and then in a separate tweet "...album #3."

August 25, 2009: An interview with Nick Buda, Taylor's go-to drummer, is posted and he says: "Sitting here in Blackbird right now in the process of starting Taylor Swift's new record I guess. We've been here the last couple days and we're here today again." Throughout the interview, you can hear If This Was A Movie playing in the background. (Thank you to @taylor-on-your-dash for finding the interview!)

Never Grow Up: Fall 2009 (Speculation)

Lover Diary Nathan Chapman: "The song 'Never Grow Up' is just she singing and I on acoustic guitar. We recorded ourselves live. That song probably happened in two hours." This could’ve been written at any time in 2009, but I put it here because she bought her Nashville apartment sometime before October.

September 8, 2009: Tweeted "Last night in nash before heading out tomorrow for 4 shows, then VMA's. But right now I can't put the guitar down."

September 13, 2009: VMAs Incident

Enchanted: September 15, 2009 (Confirmed)

On September 15, Taylor attended an Owl City Concert in New York Taylor: "It was about this guy that I met in New York City, and I had talked to him on email or something before, but I had never met him. And meeting him, it was this overwhelming feeling of: I really hope that you're not in love with somebody. And the whole entire way home, I remember the glittery New York City buildings passing by, and then just sitting there thinking, am I ever going to talk to this person again? And that pining away for a romance that may never even happen, but all you have is this hope that it could, and the fear that it never will. I started writing that in the hotel room when I got back. Because it just was this positive, wistful feeling of: I hope you understand just how much I loved meeting you. I hope that you know that meeting you was not something that I took lightly, or just in passing. And I think my favorite part of that song is the part where, in the bridge, it goes to sort of a stream of consciousness of ‘Please don't be in love with someone else/Please don't have somebody waiting on you.' Because at that moment, that's exactly what my thoughts were. And it feels good to write exactly what your thoughts were in a certain moment.”

September 26, 2009: Taylor plays in Little Rock, Arkansas, and possibly writes a song: "I'd get my best ideas at 3:00 AM in Arkansas, and didn't have a co-writer around and I'd just finish it. And that would happen again in New York [Enchanted & Back To December], that would happen again in Boston [Long Live], that would happen again in Nashville." (x)

October 17, 2009: Tweets "Travis: you look so out of it. Me: I'm writing a song in my head. Travis: oh, I apologize. I didn't realize you were working."

November 19, 2009: Bob Lefsitz (the guy from Mean) publishes his impromptu interview with Taylor:

Taylor laughed.  Said she could handle being criticized for having a bad voice, for missing notes. But she couldn’t live with being criticized for being inauthentic. Those songs are written in real time. About real people. Her cowriters edit more than contribute. Her next album she’s not planning to write with anyone. Not now, anyway.

November 30, 2009: Tweets "If I had a dime for every time my producer and I blurt out the same thing at the same time, followed by an awkward, uncoordinated high five..."

Ours: December 6, 2009 (Inferring)

Myspace Post on December 6: “I just got back to Nashville this morning after being in LA all week. Today I was out and about and in the studio all day” Taylor: "I wrote this when I was about to turn 20. I was in a relationship I knew people wouldn't approve of, and it was just a matter of time before everyone found out. When you're first getting to know someone, it's a fragile time, and then you add newspapers and magazine covers and it can get kind of rough. I wanted to have this song to play for him when it got difficult. Singing it for him was one of the sweetest moments I can remember."

December 22, 2009: Tweets "I was writing a song and my pen fell into the piano. Still trying to figure out if I should do anything about this."

January 2010: Starts polishing up the demos made in 2009 into fully produced tracks

Billboard: "Swift and Chapman had begun recording new songs almost as soon as "Fearless" was released. The two cut demos in his basement studio and would only take those songs to larger facilities once they felt they had an emotional foundation in the basic tracks. Still, it wasn’t until early 2010 when the album truly began to coalesce." Nathan Chapman: "We stripped it down and made the demos first. Taylor came to my studio and I played all the instruments on the demos, and because I have a good vocal booth, her demo vocals ended up being the vocals you hear on the record. After finishing the demos, we went out to different studios, and tried different combinations of engineers and musicians to replace some of the elements of my demos, mostly the programmed drums, and to do additional overdubs. [...] A pop artist would probably release what we'd done after five hours, but country artists don't want to hear programmed drums, they don't want to hear fake stuff. So once we had recorded the demos, we would book whatever studio we wanted for each song, to replace the drums, in many cases the bass, and to add whatever overdubs we envisioned, like fiddle, keyboards, percussion and strings. After we got the demos right, we opened it up and allowed ourselves to spend money and cut a big record." Taylor tweets on January 11: "Studio-ness with all the same boys who played on Fearless" and on January 13: "More recording. So excited. So excited. So excited. See, I said that three times. Once for every album we've made in this studio."

January 13, 2010: Posts on Myspace “Thank you January. I have had this month off. I have walked on snow-covered grass and discovered new coffee shops and laughed hysterically with friends about things that probably weren’t technically funny. I’ve written songs on napkins and sat at a giant table with my whole family on my mother’s birthday, all of us in one place for the first time in too long. I’ve gotten to take what has happened to me and process it to my full capability, and celebrate it the way it deserved to be celebrated. I’ve made new music. I’ve gone over the memories and jumped up and down with my producer and floated around with nothing on my schedule other than just appreciating what my life has somehow turned into. [...] Getting back in the studio with the same guys I trust and know and love.. (right, the pointing one: my producer Nathan Chapman) (Left, the waving one: Bass extraorinaire, Tim Marks. Clearly marked on his road case.) [...] Nick Buddha is in charge of the drums.”

February 13, 2010: Writes in her diary "I’ve been obsessing over the new album. I always do that until it’s just right. I don’t know if I have the formula just right for this one yet. I know there are great songs. I just need to figure out the strands that bond them together into a great album. And I will obsess until it’s there. This album, any album, is the next 2 years of my life. It has to be more than amazing. It has to be great enough to keep my attention for 2 years."

February 22, 2010: Posts on Myspace "I’ve been writing lots of songs"

Mine: March 10-12 2010 (Inferring)

Taylor (above interview, at 5:17): "I wrote Mine somewhere on the road, I think in Texas, actually." Nathan Chapman: "The demo for 'Mine' apparently took less than five hours to record, and sounded, according to Chapman, "almost identical to the record. After that we worked on the track for another four months, off and on, and spent $30,000 to make sure it sounded perfect in the real world."" Taylor: "This song is the first single because it has this…there was this moment between Nathan and I, my producer, when I brought this song in and when we made this demo in one day in his basement and we just kinda looked at each other and we were like, "This is it. This is the one. All of the times that I've had "The Moment" with songs of "This is the one," it's been a good call, so I'm hoping for the best on this one. Wish me luck." Scott Borchetta: "Mine" was a turning point in the album’s development. Swift and Chapman had begun recording new songs almost as soon as "Fearless" was released. The two cut demos in his basement studio and would only take those songs to larger facilities once they felt they had an emotional foundation in the basic tracks. Still, it wasn’t until early 2010 when the album truly began to coalesce. Swift presented "Mine" to Borchetta in his office [...] "We probably played that song four or five times," Borchetta recalls. "I’m jumping around playing air guitar, she’s singing the song back to me, and it was just one of those crazy, fun, Taylor teen-age moments."

March 13, 2010: Taylor records Mine, brings it to Scott Borchetta, and says she’s done with TS3

Scott Borchetta: "I said, ‘Keep going,’ [...] She kind of looked at me like, ‘You’re challenging me.’ And I said, ‘Yeah. You’ve found true north here. Keep going.’ " Taylor: “During Speak Now, when I went to (label head) Scott Borchetta and said, 'The album’s finished,’ he said, 'No, it’s not – you need to keep writing.’” (Right after playing in Texas, Taylor leaves for a vacation in the Bahamas, meaning Taylor likely had about a day in Nashville between the two trips).

Innocent: Late March 2010 (Inferring)

Billboard: “It was some time in the period after that challenge — between February and June — that Swift wrote “Innocent,” her response to the Kanye West incident.​​” Taylor: “Some songs take 30 minutes to write, and some take six months, which was the case with “Innocent.” When things affect me intensely and really hit me hard, it can take a while to figure out what I think about it and what to say about it.” (March would be just over 6 months since the VMAs).

March 24, 2010: Taylor goes lunch with Taylor Lautner and both of their publicists, inspiring Back To December.

Taylor: Swift says she based the song on a conversation she had with the guy about whom she's singing. "It's not loosely based," she says. "It's almost word-for-word. It is a song and a conversation that needed to happen, because I don't want to hurt people. If you unintentionally do so, you've got to make that better."

Speak Now: Early April, 2010 (Inferring)

On April 3, Taylor attended the wedding of Josh Farro as Hayley Williams (who is Josh's ex) plus one. That day she also tweeted: ""Nathan you smell really good! Is that a new cologne?" "Thanks! Actually it's a two in one shampoo and soap. From Dial." My producer rules." implying she was in the studio. The conversation below could have happened any day after the VMA awards in September, when Hayley first reached out to Taylor, but I think Taylor probably wrote the song fairly close to naming the album after it. Taylor: "This song was inspired by one of my friends who was telling me about her childhood sweetheart, crush guy. They were kind of together in high school and went their separate ways, and it was kind of understood that they were gonna get back together. Then, she one day comes in and tells me he's getting married. He had met this girl who was just this mean person who made him completely stop talking to all of his friends, cut off his family, had him like so completely isolated. And I just, kind of randomly, was like, "So, you gonna speak now?" She was like, "What do you mean?" And I was like "Oh, you know, like storm the church, speak now or forever hold your peace? I'll go with you. I'll play guitar. It would be great." She was just kind of laughing, and later on I just was wrapping my mind around that idea of how tragic it would be if someone you loved was marrying somebody else. Later I had a dream about one of my ex-boyfriends getting married, and it just all came together that I needed to write this song about interrupting a wedding. For me, I like to think of it as good versus evil, and this girl is so completely painted as the evil one. So this is "Speak Now.""

April 13, 2010: Names TS3 Speak Now

Lover Diaries: "So I’ve been obsessing over the new record to the point where it’s all I can focus on. I’m majorly stressed and borderline losing it, with all these lists and chronic dissatisfaction. Perfectionist-ness. I keep growing tired of songs because I know I’ve raised the bar and I can beat half the songs. Scott and I had lunch the other day. We were talking about the record and I had this epiphany. I didn’t talk in interviews about how I felt about much of what has happened in the last 2 years. I’ve been silent about so much that I’m saying on this album. It’s time to Speak Now. Scott freaked out. He loved it. We have a title, ladies and gentlemen!" Scott Borchetta: ""At one point, the record was not called ‘Speak Now.’ It was called ‘Enchanted,’ [...] We were at lunch, and she had played me a bunch of the new songs. I looked at her and I’m like, ‘Taylor, this record isn’t about fairy tales and high school anymore. That’s not where you’re at. I don’t think the record should be called "Enchanted."’” Swift excused herself from the table at that point. By the time she came back, she had the "Speak Now" title"

Dear John: Spring 2010 (Speculation)

This was likely written sometime after February 2010 (Taylor implies she's single in her vlog and her diary). Beyond that, it could have been anytime between February and June 2010.

Brief Interruption: The next two songs (Back to December and Mean) are going to use quotes from this interview that @1989worldtour found. If you've already listened to the interview attached to the Mine section, then it's the same interview

Back To December: Early May, 2010 (Inferring)

Taylor (above interview, at 5:12): "Back to December was written in New York City. Taylor was in New York city from May 3-5, and May 12-15 2010. she was not photographed in New York any other time in early 2010, and given her busy touring schedule, I doubt she was in New York at another time. USA TODAY: “Swift says she based the song on a conversation she had with the guy about whom she's singing. "It's not loosely based," she says. "It's almost word-for-word. It is a song and a conversation that needed to happen, because I don't want to hurt people. If you unintentionally do so, you've got to make that better."”

Mean: May 29, 2010 (Speculation)

Taylor (above interview, about 6 minutes in): "I started this song called Mean on my, like sitting on my kitchen counter, just playing it, and then, you know, took a plane and flew to the venue where we were gonna play that night and finished it in the dressing room." Now, this may be a too literal interpretation of "took a plane and flew to the venue where we were gonna play that night," but if we want to theorize: the only tour date (that Taylor could've conceivably written Mean during) without another show right before or after it was in Baton Rogue on May 29, 2010.

Long Live: June 2010 (Confirmed)

Lover Diary She likely wrote this around June 5, when she ended the Fearless Tour at Gillette Stadium (Wikipedia counts two festivals as being part of the Fearless Tour but Taylor doesn't, so I'm going with her opinion), since she said that she wrote a song for Speak Now in Boston (which is the closest major city to Gillette)

The Story Of Us: June 9-16, 2010 (Confirmed)

Taylor attended the CMT Awards (Which goes on to be the secret message for The Story Of Us) on June 9 and was sat very close to John Mayer. Taylor: "The people closest to me are used to me deserting a conversation and bolting into some corner of the room with my phone out, hunched over, singing some melody or lyric or hook into my phone. I wrote “The Story of Us” about running into an ex at an awards show, and I came home and sat down at a kitchen table and told my mom, “I felt like I was standing alone in a crowded room.” She tried to console me, but I was gone at that point." Lover Diary: "So I’ve been a little studio rat since the tour ended [...] Ever since, I wake up to my cell phone alarm around 9:30 each morning. Throw on a sundress, skip make up, tie my hair in a messy side braid, and head out the door with no shoes on. Because the only walking outside I’ll be doing is from my house to my car, then from my car, three steps to Nathan’s basement studio. [...] I worked on a song for a few days, then basically finished it in the car on the way to Nathan’s this morning. It. Is. So. Good. And I can safely say I am DONE writing this record!! This song is up-tempo, and hooky and sort of torn-sounding … like this horrible stressed confusion that comes on when you knew the person you’re pining away for is in the room. And for some reason, there are these invisible walls keeping things from being ok. So you’re not fine. And they’re not fine. And I’m so happy I wrote that song!! Footage of Taylor working on TSOU

June 30, 2010: Taylor tweets “@amosjheller is SLAYING a bass part in the studio right now. http://twitpic.com/21am7t” 

Footage Nathan Chapman: “We tried several bassists until we had a bass part that worked, which was played by Amos Heller, of Taylor's live band. In Nashville, it's rare for a road musician to be on the record, but he earned his way into this record by kicking ass. In fact, all Taylor's road musicians played some parts on the album, which was important for me and her.”

July 15, 2010: The orchestra for Back To December and Haunted are recorded (footage here, same outfit as these candids)

Taylor (talking about Haunted): “I wanted the music and the orchestration to reflect the intensity of the emotion the song is about, so we recorded strings with Paul Buckmaster at Capitol Studios in Los Angeles. It was an amazing experience - recording this entire big, live string section that I think in the end really captured the intense, chaotic feeling of confusion I was looking for."

And that's all for this timeline! Check out my others:

TIMELINES: debut • fearless • speak now • red • 1989 • rep • lover • folklore • evermore • midnights PLAYLISTS: debut • fearless • speak now • red • 1989 • rep • lover • folklore • evermore • midnights • entire discography GENERAL: tag

[physalian]

So you’ve got an idea for a story….

Once again and as always, writing is highly subjective and any writing advice that says you *must* do X or all books *must* include Y or doing Z during your writing process is *wrong* kind of misses the point of the freedom of storytelling and I’m not a fan. This is how I approach writing and one way you could consider doing the same if you’ve got all these ideas and nowhere to put them, not the way you must approach writing.

Cool? Cool.

—

We’ll start with how I write fanfic because that’s a far less intimidating market. I don’t write drabble fics and coffee shop AUs. I grew up writing fix-it fics and in-universe canon divergences. Essentially: Stop the real story right here, now what if this happened instead?

Personally, I just don’t get fulfillment from writing fanfic fluff (though I do love reading it). Even if I’m committing time and effort into something that will never make me money and that people might not even read for fun due to dead fandoms or whatever, I’m still going to use it as writing exercise and give it some substance.

That’s just me, though. I used to write stuff like character studies and deep dives, and the last fic I wrote to date was a “hey what if this villain went to the good side way sooner and it wasn’t just played as a joke on his cowardice?” and its sequel.

So I started that first fic with an idea: What if K joined the good guys earlier? How would that impact the story?

Immediately after that, I was thinking about the ending and what tentpole ideas in the canon I wanted to keep, but the meat of the story I knew I wanted to focus on K’s emotional and existential struggle of switching sides, risking becoming an enemy to both factions, after the inciting incident of his (absolutely canonical) partner’s murder, that, in canon, did not get the justice he deserved. When I wrote my post about beginnings and endings, I said that endings for me are way easier than beginnings—this is why. Before I even start writing, my ending is decided.

Basically: Yes, I’m writing a story using someone else’s fictional characters, as one does when writing fanfic. The story uses cartoon characters, but it’s about one person’s struggle with their identity in the wake of tragedy, and how they take life by the horns to make it out of the story the hero they deserve to be recognized as.

And with that core idea in mind, then I write the story around it. The story, which, outside the canon that I had to keep, I had no plan for. The settings and minutiae of the set pieces weren’t as important as what each scene did for the themes and K’s emotional reaction to them happening. I needed to give him enough alone time with the characters of the hero team to learn something from them, enough time on his own to test his new loyalties, and enough time with his old team so he can juxtapose the two and make sure he’s doing the right thing by deserting.

The last thing on my mind was what tropes I wanted to fulfill. Romantic subplots and the like just kind of happened organically and weren’t planned.

—

For Eternal Night of the Northern Sky the idea I had was this: Most vampire stories are about the drama surrounding vampires that depend on humans to survive. So what if I wrote a story where humans depended on vampires to survive, in the exact same way?

Yes, the story is about vampires and everyone can say what they will about people who write vampire fiction. But it’s really about what it means to be a monster when survival demands some brutal decisions. What does it mean to be a monster if everyone is a monster?

ENNS wasn’t planned, I just started writing and had the first draft done in 31 days and through the entire editing process, the plot didn’t change from draft 1 to draft final, save for a few scenes where I had to fix the surface level problem some characters were facing, but not the reason why they were facing it.

The plot never needed massive rewrites because every scene reflected back on the core themes of the story, and every single scene was necessary to tell it. So even when I had to change the intensity of an argument or flesh out a conversation or change the tone of something here or there, the purpose of whatever was underneath remained.

With that throughline in mind, the rest of the book fell into place around it. My core characters each have a role to answer that thematic question, and side characters around then were created to fill in the world, provide friends, relatives, romances, and the like, each with their own perspectives still on that one big question. My villains, too, all exist to answer that question. Outside of the romances, every single scene is doing at least one thing either for the plot, the protagonist, or the deuteragonist to answer that question. ENNS’ secondary themes were also written into as many scenes as I could (of which I won’t spoil here).

When you write with a theme like this in mind, it gives you these sort of bowling bumper rails to help keep you from straying off into superfluous storylines that bog down the pacing and start to feel messy.

Yes, you’re writing fanfic. But what is it really about? Now maybe it is just a coffee shop AU or 50k words of smut—you do you. Not everything has to be deep and meaningful beyond being entertaining. Themes just provide direction.

For example, I like the idea of slowburn fanfics. The idea. I will happily sit down for a fic that’s half a million words long if the characters and the slowburn are compelling enough. There might not be themes, but the story never forgets its throughline—these two characters eventually coming together.

In practice, though, I see way too many “slowburn” fics out there that are just 90% fluff. The chapters stagnate, trading development for taunting the audience with the will they/won’t they. The plot toddles off to to play around in irrelevant scenes with irrelevant characters. Things that probably wouldn’t bother me if I wasn’t already expecting the romance that was promised, the romance I have to keep waiting for when I could just go read something else that delivers it faster and clearer.

—

Even if your writing process begins with a few scattered sticky notes and a notion of what you kind of want it to be about, you don’t have to hammer out pages of prose to be productive.

If you get stuck halfway through, having your throughline helps you sit back and ask yourself this very important question: What does Character want, how do they get it, and what’s in their way?

[honeyydrunk]

I NEED SOMEONE'S OPINION !! i'm going to write a satosugu fic, but i have two options of the fic and since i'm REALLY busy, i can't do both. so can someone please 🙏 help me decide which to invest my energy on?

just dm me w a request or anything !!

option 1: bittersweet a slightly angsty 'confession on the tip of your tongue but never said'. very canon compliant bc i really love writing as cc as i can and there is something about ooc i despise. i'll write like cute pre plasma arc slice of life scenes ofc. but smth about a symbolic bittersweet 'i love you' but never said is so appealing. i want to write something so horrifically bittersweet you don't know whether to HATE me or not.

i'm the strongest after all, is it wrong i'm hurt by the fact that a goal you'll never achieve was more important to you than me. be lucky that my love for you is more than my want. you knew i never cared about jujutsu society or for the weak. but i'll never tell you that you were all that mattered. as i saw you standing there like you never cared i realised i prefer cherishing my memories of you than to risk ruining them for you

after all, i'm the strongest

option 2: cute high school fall in love okay the plasma vessel arc will happen, but instead of it all going wrong and sour (i'm still killing that girl) they continue on with their days but eventually there's a confession. they talk things out? i get to finally say how IDIOTIC geto's whole ideology is because i've got annoyances for days.

i perhaps just want to use every trope i get my grimy long fingers on and yank it in there because i'm nasty like that idk 🤷‍♂️ (ex: 5 + 1 things, they end up at the gojo mansion for no reason at one point, "cherry flavoured. want to taste?", basketball but there's flirting, gojo wearing crazy outfits for attention, truth or dare,)

love makes you do crazy things. he used to be the easiest person to be around. but gradually, without me noticing, it's no longer comfortable. wanting him to like me, no longer not even thinking about it because i knew he did. is he tolerating me now because we"re friends or now i'm wondering if he's even friends with me because he likes me or because i'm 'the strongest'? whatever that's meant to mean.

"hey what would you do if i said i love you?"

my final opinion:

this was originally going to be a kfc breakup but gojo tweaks out and goes "nah uh". because i couldn't actually fathom how someone how went crazy insane when dealing with toji round 2 just let geto go like that. but what changed my mind was that if i was gojo, i would've acted the exact same way he did. so i was going to write the bittersweet one showcasing what gojo wanted to do, but never ended up doing. however then i thought about the fact that i was him, i would've badly confessed during high school.

i'm also REAL sick of people mischaracterising the both of them. getting this close 🤏 to making a whole new post about how i think the should be characterised and why everyone should follow suit with my opinion.

(if this whole post looks messy it's because it is. i wrote this with no editing no proofread just whatever i managed to somehow manifest. i'm actually listening to she a wolf by wayv and growling like taeyong did in the tiger inside superm)

(did you know i know like japanese to a certain level?) (i watched jjk in sub)

[jordanrosenburg]

Argylle - A Breath of Fresh Air

**Spoilers Ahead**

I just got back from seeing Argylle with a friend. I knew I had wanted to see it because I like a lot of the actors in it, but I had seen the trailer so many times that I felt like I had already watched it.

That trailer couldn't have prepared me for the unadulterated fun I was about to have. Every other line out of Sam Rockwell's mouth was laugh out loud funny. What kept me drawn in, though, was the editing. The splices between Rockwell and Cavill was seamless. I know with modern technology, they easily could have greenscreened a lot of it, but it still must have taken a while to film all the same fight scenes in the same exact way to make the cuts as seamless as they were.

The score and soundtrack were brilliant. Between the funky tunes used for the fight scenes, and the dramatic notes used during what would be dramatic in a regular spy thriller, had me enjoying every minute. I will be looking up the soundtrack playlist on Spotify and listening repeatedly.

Henry Cavill is no stranger to playing a spy. In between Superman movies, Cavill starred in The Man from U.N.C.L.E. The latter was another movie that didn't mind being silly and wasn't afraid to have its comedic moments. Because Cavill has played so many daring roles over the years, where he's been the hero or the brute or even just the eye candy, he was the perfect fit for Argylle. You can tell he was having a blast, and not taking things too seriously. The audience isn't supposed to take it seriously either. The Argylle books in the movie are a personification of how cheesy those sorts of books and movies can be. The eye-rolling puns, the use of a femme fatale, and crude jokes.

Back in the day, that's how most James Bond movies were. They had their serious moments, but Bond was a cheeky spy who liked to fuck and crack wise with his villains. He was suave and sure of himself and a badass. But there was a transition in the 90's when the Austin Powers movies started rolling out. Now, I'm a huge fan of Austin Powers movies, I'll watch them any time, any place. But those movies, being replicas of the old Bond films but with more humor, outlandish sex, and over the top puns, made it difficult for the new Bond films to be silly. Suddenly, they were getting more and more serious, with more and more over the top action scenes and explosions.

Argylle brought back the silliness and the goofiness, and the ability to laugh at itself. Suspension of disbelief, etc etc. Sometimes you just need to sit back and let yourself enjoy the ride. Throughout the film, as the layers kept being peeled back, I kept thinking, "What is this movie?!" I can usually figure out what's going to happen, but the twists and turns in this film kept throwing me off, and that kept me in my seat and having fun.

There's a scene where Bryce Dallas Howard's character, Elly, thinks she's seen her parents die in cold blood. Rockwell is driving her somewhere in the south of France, and he asks her if she's okay. Howard, astonished, asks, "Am I okay? Am I okay?!", and then she started crying. This made me lean over to my friend and say, "all of us @ Elmo the other day", and we burst into hysterics. (If you're unfamiliar, Elmo's X account posted asking how everyone was, and there was a surge of responses of people using memes to show how not well they all are.)

A little more than halfway through, we find out that Elly's real name is Rachel Kyle. She had gotten into a bad accident on a spy mission and had no memory. The bad guys brainwashed her into thinking she was someone else, and it worked. The Argylle books she wrote as Elly, were really just memories coming back to her. We were made to believe her books were predicting future events, but really, it was the past. Samuel L. Jackson explained that to her. Rockwell then had to calm Howard down and get her to settle into the information. Slowly, Rachel remembers who she is. She hasn't lost all of Elly, but she makes it seem like she has in order to complete the overall mission.

Rockwell thinks that Howard has double crossed her, but in a very Knives Out fashion, she explains that she knew if she shot him in the chest in just the right spot, he wouldn't die. We learn that the two were lovers back in the day. Not only did he feel betrayed, but he was heartbroken. Later on, she double crosses the bad guys, finds her cat, then finds a room with all the weapons she could possibly need to get out. Rockwell finds her there, and they're able to hash things out. She assures him that they're on the same side.

This leads into one of the most incredibly choreographed fight scenes I've ever seen. You can tell the actors were having an incredible time. Smoke pours into the corridor and the two come out shooting. While throwing in body rolls and other dance movements, they take everyone out. This also included Howard lifting Rockwell up, much like how Dua Lipa was lifted up during the beginning of the movie by Henry Cavill, spread eagle. The shots used every time there was a lift like this was not subtle. We get it, it's an innuendo for sitting on someone's face. And it was funny every single time.

Then the next fight scene happened, which gave Howard a moment to shine. They were trapped in a room that was slowly filling with oil, so they couldn't shoot their guns. She remembers she's actually good at ice skating, and puts together makeshift skates. She sticks a knife into a gun, then rushes out like a hockey player. I thought I was going to pass out from laughing so hard. It was the perfect mix of hockey style skating and figure skating. Were these scenes filled with CGI and body doubles? Yes. Did it make them less fun? Absolutely not.

Everything works out in the end because of course it does. Her ending is given to Argylle and Wyatt. Personally, I think Henry Cavill and John Cena should have kissed, they were clearly in love. I thought they would have since Rockwell and Howard kissed. All of the scenes paralleled one another, so why couldn't that one? I digress.

For one last big laugh, at the end of the movie, Howard is back to pretending to be Elly the author, and is doing a book reading of the final Argylle book. She's taking questions from the audience, and she calls on a man. He stands and knowingly smiles. It's Henry Cavill, only he has a curly mullet and a southern accent. What is it with British actors and doing southern accents that brings me so much joy? He says, "I don't have any questions, but I'm sure you have a couple for me", and winks.

There was a post-credits scene. It was supposed to be the actual Argylle book's first film adaptation. The scene takes place in a bar called The King's Man. An Easter egg thrown in by director, Matthew Vaughn, who has also directed the 2021 film by the same name. We couldn't tell if it was serious or not, but I'd love to see a movie based off the fake books. I think mostly because the writer, Jason Fuchs, and Matthew Vaughn, should definitely team up again.

Even though there were parts reminiscent to other spy movies, this is one of the most creative movies I've seen in a while. This is my favorite kind of satire. There are so many movies that are just remakes of remakes of remakes these days. It feels like there are no original ideas left. So, this was a breath of fresh air. It was so funny and so brilliant with a star studded cast. I bet this movie was so fun to work on, you could just feel that energy radiating from the actors. There were some slower parts, but that's to be expected. For the most part, my attention was kept. It was one of those movies where I left thinking, "I can't wait for this to come to streaming so I can watch it again".

I don't think Howard is the strongest actor, and some of the plot between the good spies and the bad spies was a little confusing. I found a lot of that hard to follow, maybe that was supposed to be on purpose. Most spy movies aren't always clear on what the main issue is.

Anyways, if you're looking for an escape from the cold, or an escape in general, this is definitely the movie to see.

[syoish-aot]

HOLY SHIT IT'S DONE!!

I was having some intense posting paralysis all morning (I think I reread the last scene like 15x just to make sure it was worded exactly right).

*he terrifying fear when you write something you really love and you're scared no one else will like it as much as you do*

ANYWAY -

Thank you so much to everyone that's been regularly reading slash commenting on I Found You! It was my first time posting fic to tumblr and I had a lot of fun doing it!

I always have SO MANY ideas for fics, but I get overwhelmed by the idea of seriously perusing them. A lot of this comes from the fear that no one will read them and I'll have spent all of my time writing for absolutely nothing. BUT I've been trying to humble myself lately and recognize the joy in the writing process itself and the satisfaction of getting my ideas fully fleshed out on paper aka google docs regardless of the attention they get.

Despite that, anyone who writes fic understands how shitty it feels when you work for DAYS on something and get crickets in the comments. It sucks. And that's sort of how I've been feeling with my fics on Ao3 lately- which kicks my motivation right in the ass.

In writing I Found You, I think I got some of that motivation back. Not JUST because I was getting regular commenters (again, thank you so much) but also because I was able to slip fully into my self indulgence and finally write out one of the verses that's been existing in my mind palace for MONTHS!

So, all of this rambling is to say this -

I really liked sharing this story with you guys on tumblr, and I'm for sure going to be doing more of this style in the future.

I'll be posting I Found You to Ao3 as well, but I want to edit it a bit (and possibly add a few more scenes) before doing that.

Basically the version I posted here is more of a rough draft, and then the final version will be the one on Ao3.

If you like my writing, consider checking out my Reader/Eren long fic "Ten Seconds" (100k, complete on Ao3) or the post-canon Jean/OC fic I'm working on "The Letters She Wrote"

If you read all of this, then here's your reward - a sneak peak at the VERY LONG isekai/time travel fic that I'm going to be working on next...

Chapter 1 - "You, 2000 years in the future"

Shiganshina High - 2024

You’d taken Ancient History as an elective to fill your schedule because no other class fit in the period. 

Also to piss off your dad about not taking AP calculus.

(But mostly it was the schedule thing.)

It wasn’t that you disliked Ancient History, you just found it painfully boring and mind numbing. It was the class right after lunch and every assignment was another boring paper that sounded the exact same over and over and over again.

(Although it did leave you wondering how many times you could start a paper with “the oxford dictionary defines discovery as…” before Mr. Arlert, the ancient old man who taught the class, caught on.)

Thankfully, you didn’t have to put too much effort into the class to get a good grade and because of that the class was an easy A that you could use to maintain your honor roll. Mr. Arlert was retiring at the end of the year, so he was pretty much entirely checked out. You had a feeling he didn’t actually read any of your papers and gave your grades out based on how well he assumed you did the assignment. Which, again, meant you got an A on every one. So Mr. Arlert had a habit of putting on documentaries instead of actually teaching anything. 

And you weren’t about to complain about that.

Armin was sitting next to you furiously taking notes on the documentary that Mr. Arlert, his grandpa and teacher, had put on. You understood his struggle to impress his grandpa in the class he taught on a personal level. You used to be like that when it came to math, but now you normally felt yourself doing the opposite. “The opposite”, meaning:

Not taking AP calculus.

Writing the wrong answer on a quiz, even after doing the work to prove the correct one.

Asking pointless questions in class just to see him get that constipated I-can’t-treat-you-like-my-daughter-right-now-because-you’re-my-student-but-god-do-I-wish-I-could-ground-you look.

You smiled at the memory, feeling quite pleased with yourself, until the monotone voice of the documentary playing at the front of the class pulled  you back into the present:

“The ancient people of Paradis elected large walls, presumably to protect themselves from invaders during this time.” You looked back at the projector. There was a poorly done animation of what historians suspect the three large walls may have looked like, back when they still stood almost 2000 years ago. 

The documentary, just like every documentary Mr. Arlert put on, seemed pretty pointless to show to a class of eleventh graders who were already very aware of the mysterious history of Paradis. 

You’d all grown up here and had been taught about this stuff since grade school. Paradis was a major hub for ancient history. There were dozens of museums throughout the island, all holding different ancient artifacts and pieces of your country’s history. Pieces that’s functions had been lost to time, leaving archeologists only able to guess the true history of your people and what these items were for.

“...purpose of them is still unknown, some archaeologists theorize they were used for early agriculture, although others argue they may have been used for religious reasons…”

On the screen was one of the most mysterious relics of ancient Paradis. Two metal cylinders, attached to some sort of strap. Normally, they were found with a large box of metal that was meant to hold something, along with canisters of unknown contents. The were rare, but a few dozen of them had been uncovered in the last hundred years and have only continued to add to the mystery of ancient Paradis. 

Of course, you were curious what their origins may be too, but not curious enough to look into it further than this class and the occasional trip you make to the Paradis Museum. 

“...these large man-eating monsters were an important part of Paradis folklore, some argue they were likely worshiped as go-”

The bell rang, finally saving you from your mind numbing documentary focused torture.

“Ah!” Mr. Arlert jerked awake at his desk. “Yes, well- I hope you all learned something important today!” He quickly said as he stood. “Don’t forget, your final papers are due on Monday morning. Despite it, I hope you’re able to enjoy your weekend!”

You hoped so too.

God, did you hope so...

[iaus]

⭐ for anything in the latest chapter of epilogue?

the absolute. indecision i just faced. i had to go reread the chapter BSDJKFN. but okay. gonna put this under a read more because it spoils the entire fic but.

let's fucking go. (crying it's such a small section but it means SO MUCH TO ME)

okay, so. as i've mentioned i have had the ending of epilogue just sitting in my documents for the entire month i was writing it. it's TORMENTED me. it did undergo some revision and editing but at it's core it is the exact same thing i feverishly wrote back in may.

which is why i got jump-scared so bad when i saw that post that was like. we don't compare ankarna/cassandra to porter/jace enough because i had this fucking section that has been there since day one:

A seething, ever-growing malice that eventually fractures into a sunburst of rage. As Ankarna has Cassandra, Porter will have Jace. They will shake the foundations.

just sitting in my documents. and i was like legit about to combust because I WANTED TO SAY SOMETHING SO BAD. but i also didn't want to spoil the end of epilogue. while i don't want to say that i was digging really really deep for it, one of the big things about epilogue is i wanted to present a universe in where jace really was more than just an acolyte. where he was actually just as powerful as porter and was, unbeknownst to them both, an EQUAL. he is a partner in this and porter would not have gotten this far without his doting "husband."

that's also the big temperature thing i had going throughout. we have jace associating porter with warmth and rage and we have jace who is chill and spite.

i literally would sit there thinking. what domain would jace be and epilogue!jace would be a perfect god of spite/resentment/malice.

he's stewing in resentment the WHOLE fic. he says he doesn't feel rage but he sure is feeling something. he has no kind thoughts for the goddess who gave him his new life that he COULD have used to try and fix things (though, could he really have with his unfortunate circumstances) and he throws it in her face. he encounters a student who is being so sweet and empathetic to him, but he still brushes him off. (personally, i find the grocery store scene the hardest to go back and read because to me it is so casually cruel. ruben tries to open up to jace and jace is like. no it's best you don't remember.) he then assaults briar using magic.

like. epilogue jace is the perfect complement to potential rage god porter.

he is cruel, vicious, under-handed, and so spiteful. what a match.

[notthatalex]

What are the origins of Augustus and the Chosen respectively, when did they first meet each other and what is their dynamic?

Ok so

The Chosen:

His first appearance was in a smosh Vegas episode. 'Playing Blackjack in Viva Smosh Vegas' (Sept. 2020)

How Shayne came up with the character is kinda interesting. Because he was supposed to play Aunt carolyn in that episode, but they didn't have her wig on hand. So he had to come up with something on the fly. He had a vague idea that he wanted to play a character like this already tho. He didn't have a name however, and like he came up with the name "Spencer Agnew" on the fly while being asked the question in the video. That's why a bunch of people think he was supposed to he a parody of Spencer when that was actually never the case. I think that is also the reason they don't bring up that name a lot anymore and just use "The Chosen".

Augustus:

Augustus is a actually a lot older as a character than The Chosen. But he is in a lot less videos.

His first video was 'DAMIEN KNOWS DA WAE' (Jan. 2018). A vr chat video.

After that he appeared in a bunch of maricraft videos. A minecraft let's play series on smosh games back in the day. There bunch of stuff got established about the Character and a bunch people think he got created there because they don't know about the vr chat video . He didn't get a look till 2020 though. Until then he was just a voice and name.

Augustus full name is Augustus St. Cloud and he definitely got heavily inspired by the Venture Bros Character with the exact same name. Damien never talked about it but it is a very strong educated "guess". They got the same first and last same, as well as the same voice and a couple of character traits.

Nintendogs:

Two only videos they interact in.

'POV: You entered a Gamestop'

'The Chosen vs Augustus: Bakugan'

They got posted only one day apart as well. In Nov. 2021. The ship name nintendogs came to be because in the Gamestop Video they play nintendogs together

I love their dynamic so much because they are both insufferable nerds. Also the competitive nature of their relationship. My favorite awful guys.

My hopes to ever get then in a video together again are not that high. Honestly I thought Augustus wasn't even going to show up again till the TNTL appearance a couple of days ago.

But a boy can dream.

If you want to know more and want to check out all their appearances in smosh content I wrote wiki articles for them.

The Augustus one I wrote entirely myself. So if anyone wants to add to it, fact check something or especially if I missed an appearance, I would appreciate an edit. Or tell me and I do it.

The Chosen one was already there, but it was a big mess. And I am still working on it. I edited a big chunk of it already but there is still stuff missing.

Both of them have videos that were exclusive to other platforms btw! (Facebook, Instagram). So if anyone wants more content for them, there is a chance you missed those. I listed them on their wiki pages.

I am thinking about making a wiki page for Nintendogs but I am not sure if the wiki administrators would like that lol. I fear that it would just be deleted. There is stuff about shipping on it, but it is very old and the only ship that has a page is Iananothy. Maybe I am going to ask them if I can. Idk yet haha.

Thanks for the ask hehe. I will take every chance to infodump about this I can get

[tchaikovskyed]

Hi! I am an Arthurian prof and I saw your post about Malory Daily. I have a few suggestions on editions!

Most scholarship these days focuses on the Winchester Manuscript version of the Morte, whereas most popular modern English editions use the Caxton version as their source. Any public domain versions of the Morte will use Caxton. Winchester is considered closer to Malory's original text (but it's not The original), since Caxton (often heavily) edited the text to better serve his mercantile audience. For example, he makes heavy cuts to the Roman War as well as the Pentecostal Oath. If you're looking to include scholarship with each day's post, I recommend taking this into account, as most contemporary scholarship is going to focus primarily on Winchester!

With that in mind, I have a few recommended editions, although these are not in the public domain:

For Middle English (ME), PJC Field's edition through DS Brewer is the only (as in best) option. There's a paperback edition that costs ~$25 that is a BRICK but it is the best bang for your buck while also just straight up being the best version. There's also a hardcover set of the Morte and accompanying notes that is like $350 and is considered the scholarly standard, but the paperback edition is the exact same thing minus the notes. If you haven't read ME before, Malory is a great place to start because it is VERY LATE ME. He was writing in the century after Chaucer, and it's much easier to read than good ol Geoff. This is the version that most scholarship will be citing; the journal Arthuriana requires all Malory quotes to be from this version. Field in general is a great expert on all things Malory as well.

For modern English, I recommend the translation by Armstrong from Parlour Press. I believe it's also ~$25. Dorsey Armstrong is currently the editor of Arthuriana and she quite literally wrote the book on gender in the Morte. Her translation is really accessible and sticks extremely close to the ME. In my opinion, this is going to give you the closest experience to reading the ME without having to read the ME.

Future editions: at some point a translation from Whetter and Tolhurst is going to come out. K.S. Whetter is one of the big names working directly with the Winchester Manuscript (literally wrote the book on it too, studied under Field, etc) so this is bound to be a great version for anyone who wants an experience closest to the manuscript.

I hope this is helpful!

Thank you so much for this, it's been extremely helpful! I was going to make a short post about different editions but this has been 100% more coherent than anything I was going to write, and I will include all your notes in the blog's about page!

Unfortunately because I'm not too sure about copyright issues, it's easiest for the Substack to include a public domain version (more specifically the version on Project Gutenberg), with an accompanying post comparing the differences between this version and the Oxford World Classics Helen Cooper (which I'll make available online via a big ol' resources GDrive) and the Complete Works edited by Eugene Vinaver (which I have a physical copy of).

Seconded on the P.J.C Field edition which was my bible when I was writing my dissertation, although I've had a look online and it's close to impossible to access unless you are affiliated with a university in some way. I had no idea a new edition was in the works but that is really exciting!

[infamousbrad]

Should you read the 1984 sequel "Julia"?

You may not have heard that the Orwell estate authorized author Sandra Newman to write a canonical parallel story to George Orwell's justly-famous book 1984. (Yes, that 1984.) I'd be surprised if you hadn't at least pretended to read the original, it's frequently assigned in school, the jargon he created is quoted heavily in politics and journalism, the book itself nearly universally praised as the greatest ever dystopian science fiction novel.

1984's protagonist, Winston Smith, works for the "Ministry of Truth" ("Mini-True") in the Records Department, editing old newspapers and library books to eradicate any mention of facts embarrassing to the ruling English Socialist Party ("EngSoc").

Over the course of the book he drifts into "thoughtcrime" (questioning the party's right to rule) and "sexcrime" (an adulterous relationship with Julia Worthing, a much lower-ranking party member who also works in Mini-True, as a mechanic who repairs the novel-writing machines in PornoSec, the pornography section).

At the end of the original novel, they get caught by the "Ministry of Love" and successfully tortured into denouncing each other on national TV, and brainwashed into actually loving Big Brother, then released into the public as forcibly ostracized "un-persons" pending their inevitable execution dates.

What Julia: A Novel Adds to That Story

Newman's novel tells the exact same story, treating all of the events of Orwell's 1984 as canonical (or at least, true as far as Winston knows). It starts before Orwell's book, ends a couple of days after the end of Orwell's book, and is told entirely from Julia Worthing's point of view. And hers is an interesting point of view because, as mentioned in Orwell's novel, Julia is a lot younger than Winston, a lot less political, and far more cynical. Oh, she's a victim of the regime, but she has none of Winston's pessimism about the Party's pretended omnipotence, omniscience, or eternal longevity.

In Newman's Julia, we find out that her private nickname for Winston is "Old Misery," and to her, the moment all becomes clear is the scene (in both books) where, after the first time they have sex in a rented room in a prole (non-party-member) neighborhood antique shop, Winston tells her that by defying the Party, they have both sentenced themselves to torture and death, that Mini-Love will catch them and kill them but it's worth it to him to have these few days of imagining what it would be like to be free, and (in both novels) Julia chews him out for saying this. Winston has given up on out-living EngSoc, but Julia absolutely has not.

Questions You Might Want Answered before Reading

I have more thoughts about this, a lot more, but it's too early to get that spoilery; anything else I write will be posted under a cut in later blog posts. But right now, you're probably asking yourself the same questions I asked when the book was first announced, and I can answer some of those without spoilers.

"Should I even care that this book exists?" Mostly only if you're a fan of the original. I'm a big fan of 1984, I've probably read it all the way through (voluntarily!) at least four times, maybe five. A book that respects the text and yet has actually interesting things to say about it was inherently attractive to me. Maybe you would also enjoy it if you're a fan of what's now sometimes being called "hopepunk," realistic dystopian fiction about people who haven't given up on making things better yet.

"Has it been updated to modern times?" Absolutely not. You have to treat this as an alternate history where both the United States and Great Britain had successful communist revolutions in 1973, a "what if it had happened" instead of the near-future sci-fi it was when Orwell wrote it in 1948.

"Is it rape-exploitation porn?" Flatly not. The novel acknowledges that rape exists as a weapon of war and that there are women who are raped, and if by a party member then often with impunity. But these are not things that happen to any of the characters in the book.

"Does the dog die?" It is mentioned that, during the English version of the Holodomor, some people ate stray dogs and cats to survive. But no beloved pets are threatened, let alone injured, in the course of this novel, nor are any animal deaths incorporated into the actual story.

"How grim is it?" Julia, who has processed her trauma differently than Winston, is not a chronic depressive and that, all by itself, goes a long way towards making even the grimmest parts of the book less stressful to read than the original. And while I don't want to spoil what the ending is (I really don't!), I can assure you that Julia gets a good first approximation of an actually-happy ending.

"What's Newman's message, here?" I don't blame you for asking, given that Orwell wrote, and intended, 1984 as anti-communist propaganda, after his gruesome experiences after the Soviets took over the anti-fascist resistance during the Spanish Civil War. Newman clearly shows me, at least, that she's specifically aware of soviet communist atrocities and the specific failures that resulted (after Orwell's time) in the fall of the Soviet Union, but that's not her personal obsession. If I read it right, her message is that during times of extreme oppression, when you're not in a position to actually bring down the regime, mere survival with a relatively clean conscience is a revolutionary act, is still heroic.

[pinkboxess]

ruminations on fanfiction

I have been all happy today because of all the requests I got, so I'm thinking about all the reasons I love fanfic, and all the happiness it brings to my life, yada yada yada.

So, I majored in English, and for the first half or so of my undergrad, I planned to go into the publishing field. (This will be relevant, I promise.) I wrote things that I submitted places and tried to get published. Some of them were accepted and some of them were rejected. I took editing classes and volunteered as an editor for my school's literary journal.

And I didn't like it.

I realized after a little bit that the more "advanced" I got into that field and that world, the more I disliked it. It wasn't what I was best at, either. I never really got the hang of making good editing decisions (as in, deciding whether to accept or reject a submission). Trying to cater my own writing towards what publishers wanted was also less than enjoyable.

I love, love writing, so it's not that I regretted my major or lost the passion or anything. But I like writing the most when it's not going to be evaluated. Either when that's my own writing being evaluated by a publisher, or me as the editor evaluating someone else's work. Those are important jobs that I don't want to dismiss as inherently immoral or something like that-- if you're an editor, that's awesome. But it just wasn't for me. I always liked people's pieces too much or not enough, depending on whether it spoke to me, personally. It was too hard to be objective. I didn't really like trying to be objective.

So I don't write stuff to send to publishers anymore. For one thing, I'm in grad school now in a different field, and for another, I just really don't enjoy myself as much when I'm writing a piece that makes my brain go into that mode of "this has to be good" in a literary sense of the word good. At some point in my life I might like to go back to that kind of writing. But for right now, it's just not enjoyable, and since writing is a hobby for me, I don't make myself try to sit down and write something that I'm not excited about.

But I write loads and loads of fanfiction because fanfiction is so freeing. It's the epitome of self-indulgence. It's like this giant playground where I can write about vulnerable concepts like sexual desire and body image and aging and relationships. I mean, personally, I don't see myself writing sex scenes in anything except fanfiction, especially ones so detailed and intended for enjoyment.

But it's really like you're writing in this separate little safe bubble where you can do anything you want. The only feedback you receive is positive (I mean, just personally, I've never received a hate comment, so I can say that.) You can write works that are as short or as long as you want. You can post every day or once a month. You can always write the exact same trope, or you can do something totally new every time. And whatever you write, there will probably be an audience for it.

It's writing just purely for the sake of enjoyment. You're not trying to be good. You're not trying to pen a masterpiece. You're not submitting it for approval-- instead, you're posting it to be enjoyed freely, with zero barrier to entry. And that's what prevents me from losing motivation. I don't get tired of it, because it's always fun, and if anything about it isn't fun, I just don't do that.

I am so glad I've found some people in one of the corners of the internet who read my fics <3 it's such a fun hobby and distraction and escape and therapy substitute. Thank you for feeding my hyperfixation/special interest/obsession.

[queenofthearchipelago]

I read your post about the 1941 flashback, which is the only one, that is a continuation of a s1 flashback. So, you do think we’ll get another 1941 flashback in s3? I hope so!

You know, when I wrote that little ficlet, I wasn't actually 100% sold on the idea that we Absolutely Would get another 1941 flashback in season 3. I was thinking it would be a coin toss, maybe we would get it maybe we wouldn't. But this ask made me really Think about it. And, I've changed my mind.

I do think we're getting another 1941 flashback scene.

(Edit from future me who just finished writing this, prepare for a meta and my theory for what the next flashback scene might be like)

See, originally, in my mind, I was only certain that we would get some sort of continuation. I didn't know if that would be in 1941 or maybe present day season 3. Because there are indeed a lot of loose ends with that story. The gun in the bookshop and the zombies still being out there, just two examples.

But the more I think of it, the less my "present day season 3" theory makes sense. Those zombies were created SPECIFICALLY to find out whether Aziraphale and Crowley were fraternizing. And now they're free to roam the Earth, killing at least one person per day so that they can survive. I can't imagine either Aziraphale nor Crowley being okay with the idea of that, especially not for 80 years. And especially with season 3 being about the Second Coming, I doubt there's gonna be time to deal with Nazi Zombies (though Neil can do what he wants, he always does lol)

I think it makes much more sense if something were to happen soon after that romantic dinner in 1941. Come walk with me now because I have an idea...

What if that first flashback in season 1 was just the prologue? And now this bit in season 2 was part 1 of a two part story? (That was a lot of ones and twos in one sentence... and I'm doing it again)

Here's what we know:

In season 3 we will be dealing with the Second Coming, and though we don't know how that will play out, we can assume that Crowley and Aziraphale will have to trust each other. Much like the bullet catch.

There's a gun in the bookshop.

Demons aren't allowed to kill humans (or potentially zombies with a contract with Hell that allows them to be immortal) (Reference: Crowley tells Shax this in episode 5, and it's one of the only things he says to her that he clearly isn't making up because she nods like she knows and then she has her line about how humans can be casualties when fighting angels)

What if, in that next flashback scene in 1941, Aziraphale and Crowley come face to face with the Nazi Zombies again. Only this time, angel and demon have decided that they really have to get rid of the Nazis for good this time. This would make it the first time in their existence they decided to kill someone.

And the situation unfolds into... another bullet catch?

Aziraphale has the gun, he aims it for a zombie, and Crowley is in the way. He can't use a miracle to kill someone, he just can't. He has to do this the human way or not at all. He aims, he fires, he... aims true.

He's killed someone. Nazi zombies who were planning on killing innocents and hurting himself and Crowley. But he killed them, his actions did that.

He tells Heaven that he was thwarting Hell's plans, so he gets away with it. He was just returning Hell's souls back where they came from so they'd stop doing harm.

And all this could still lead into my little ficlet here.

And the implications of that moving forward, that Crowley trusts Aziraphale with his life in the exact same way the angel trusted him. That Aziraphale IS capable of killing (and maybe this is why Crowley suggested Aziraphale kill the anti-christ, because he knows the angel won't like it, but he can). The implications to that could parallel whatever is going on present day with the Second Coming in season 3.

Regardless of if I'm right or not, I do think something has to come up again with those zombies and the gun. They might not even end up serving the same plot line, but in the meantime, it's certainly fun to think about.

[fachefaucheux]

WriteFest! // Days 4-14 + Genre Musings and Inat

So, I’m behind.

As of this morning, I’m at 45k. Which is great! Awesome! That is objectively an asston of words. Probably half a novel, if I was a normal person who wrote normal word count stories. Unfortunately, I’m supposed to be closing in on 75k. So…not great. But seeing as how we’ve all been living through A Hell Of A Time, especially last week, I’m not going to beat myself up over it too much. I’ve only had one day where I skipped writing entirely. (At least in terms of drafting…I did edit a full chapter that day, which is probably why I wrote nothing, because editing is the absolute worst.) And one day off over 2 weeks is…uh, hopefully not our future vision of a leisurely and unproductive pace, lol.

One thing I’ve noticed about myself as a writer is that I’m pretty damn inconsistent. Or, well, not just as a writer, but just on the whole. I’ve never been the kind of person who can stick to a “do something every day at the same time for the same amount of time” scheme. Of course, I have some sort of routine — humans are creatures of habit, we all fall into some kind of pattern. Mine is just very “vibes based”, so to speak. Some days, I’ll fall into the writing zone and barf up 10k worth of nonsense. Other days, I’m feeling the research side of things, or just feel like reading someone else’s work to get a fresh perspective. (I am never vibing with editing. Editing is always torture. But that’s for another post.)

I’ve never been able to follow a rulebook. I am a hopeless contrarian, oftentimes to my own detriment. In Serbia, there’s a sort of…hmm, cultural mindset, maybe? It’s called inat. Sometimes it gets translated as spitefulness, other times as stubbornness or perseverance. 

Your friends, your family, everyone tells you that doing something is a bad idea. But now you want to do it even more than when you asked for their advice, because what do they know? That’s inat. Some judgmental person tells you you’ll never be good at something, so then you throw out everything else in your life and grind at that one thing until you’re objectively skilled, just because that asshole told you you’d never make it. That’s also inat. It’s that “fuck you, I’ll do what I want” spirit, sometimes taken to unhelpful ends.

My Serbian language teacher once asked me why I was keeping my watchband held together with a band-aid instead of going to the shop she’d recommended to get a replacement, and I shrugged and said, “well, you know, I’ve been busy lately.” She smiled and shook her finger at me and said, “I see, you’re becoming a real Serbian now. Soon you’ll be skipping your lessons and telling me “the only thing I have to do in life is die!”

To be frank, she called my bluff pretty well. And maybe that’s why I didn’t have too many problems adjusting during my year in Belgrade. Because I’d been following inat long before I acquired my weird fixation on the Balkans.

This leads me to the genre problem.

I’ve always come at genre from the perspective that it exists more for the reader than the writer — a way of lumping together vaguely similar story elements and types so that readers can find the kinds of books they want to read. And I’m well aware of its connection to marketing, as much as I despise marketing with every fiber of my being. You drill down to the exact core of readers who you want to enjoy your book, you write for them, then you sell it to them. Or something. Like I said, I hate marketing, so I haven’t invested much time into it. (Probably because someone once told me it was important, and I was like, fuck you! I’ll ignore it. Inat in action.)

I wandered into both Canticle and the Niv/Yule story arc (which I really need to find a proper title for, instead of just shamelessly stealing a bunch of song titles and lyrics…) not from the perspective of “I want to write x genre of story”, but more from the perspective of “these two idiots would make for a fun couple, I wonder how they get from point A to point B?”. Most of the other elements — magic, angels/demons, whatever my passing historical fixation was at the time — came along for the ride because I just thought they were neat and fun. Which makes for an interesting story (or so I’ve been told), but not one that fits into the best genre boxes.

Take Canticle, for example. It’s really in some sort of genre black hole. There’s not enough historical immersion for it to be a true historical story, but at the same time, historical circumstance (the aftermath of the English Civil War, Louis XIV’s court, modernizing Europe) plays a big role in the themes and attitudes in it. It’s got some of the elements of your usual epic fantasy — empires and kingdoms and armies and the world in peril — but, uh, it’s not very action-forward, seeing as how most of what the reader sees are not the battles themselves but the aftermath in the infirmary. 

Even when it comes to romance, it’s not quite there. I’ve always thought of it as a romance at its core, because my only driving force when I first started drafting it was answering the question of “how did Gen and Mirk get together?”, but it doesn’t really follow the standard romance plot beats. The uncomfortable position I usually find myself in when discussing the story with other writers or workshopping chapters is that it doesn’t have enough romance for the romantasy readers/writers, and not enough fantasy action/too much relationship nonsense for the general fantasy readers/writers.

So, what am I supposed to do with it when it does come time to do the dreaded marketing? Or the even more dreaded editing? I suppose I could cut and edit to make it fit neater into one or two specific genre boxes, but, well. I feel that would kill the spirit of the story that the small band of readers (for whom I am eternally grateful) seems to find appealing. At the end of the day, I’m probably going to bank more on trope-based tagging and advertising guiding the sort of readers who’d appreciate it to the story. (Also, inat. You want me to make this fit into your genre requirements? Fuck you! I do what I want! Even if it means no one reads the damn thing!)

It’s hard for me to identify the genre of the story, but the dynamics are clear. The slow burn, it is glacial. The grumpy x sunshine is on point. And hurt/comfort? You want that? Canticle has it for…uh…centuries, lol. And, to be honest, I tend to look for dynamics/tropes in the books I read more than I do genre. I’ll read a contemporary or a sci-fi or a western, anything to get another dose of that black cat x golden retriever dynamic that I find so appealing (and can’t seem to keep out of anything I write). 

Anyway, enough blathering! And back to chipping away at my word count deficit! Since, you know, speaking of black cat x golden retriever…I’ve got another chapter of Mushroom Picking Season to write. 

[oceanspray5]

and it feels like the start (of a movie i've seen before)

Lockwood has never been able to stop wondering if he adapted parts of his parents that weren't so obvious to him every time he looks in the mirror. He's never had anyone left to tell him he walks with a stride just like his father's or his lilt while he speaks is just like his mother's.

He's never been able to remember how his mother threw his head back in a laugh the same way he does or the way his father ran his hands through his hair in frustration, messing it up until it stood in spikes in the exact same way his son does. He doesn’t remember clearly enough to draw the comparison himself.

He’s walked around with pieces of his parents he no longer recognizes for seventeen years, none the wiser of where they came from. So it takes a while for it to sink in, that the reason the things he does for Lucy feel like déjà vu, is because they're all the ways he's seen his father love his mother.

or, 5 times Lockwood repeats acts of service for Lucy that he's seen his father do for his mother and the 1 time George finally gets peace from their pining (and some of Lockwood's vulnerability as well).

For @locklyle-week Day 5: Love Languages on Ao3

So I wrote this over the last couple of weeks. It was already done and edited last week but I figured I'd wait an extra week to post it cuz it fit the prompt for Locklyle Week Day 5 perfectly. Updates will be frequent since it's already written. I just wanted to post it in smaller chunks rather than my usual format of long oneshot. If you enjoy this at all then please do comment, comments are the biggest motivators.