#or just snippets of a group of friends who are obsessed with their craft and each other

[lohstandfound]

So I wrote a very bad thing for an iwwv au concept i thought of. toxic royal pains fight. i could have done a lot better but ideas started to fizzle out and im tired and its late so the short thing is under the cut

“You are so good at doing exactly what you are told, Jakob!”

Jake stood in the middle of the living area, illuminated by candlelight and the fireplace. Chloe stood before him.

“You are so good at being put in a box and acting how everyone tells you to act. You’ve always done that, from the very first day we met!”

Maybe Chloe was right. He was cast in these roles, so that is the role he continued to play when he left the stage. When he was supposed to let the characters free to return to their texts.

He held onto them.

Hamlet and Romeo and Orsino and Demetrius and Macbeth.

But Chloe was the same.

Clinging to her Ophelia and Juliet and Olivia and Hermia and Lady Macbeth.

“I don’t fucking know who you are!” Chloe screamed at him.

(They wouldn’t know it, but their friends stood outside the living area. Eavesdropping. This fight would not last forever, they would move past it. But it would only make it harder for Jake and Chloe to continue their obsession without the act of destruction)

Chloe grabbed Jake by the shirt and pulled him closer. “Fucking talk to me!”

Jake shoved her hand off him and stepped back.

He didn’t speak immediately. He carefully sifted through the array of options he could say to her.

Also, not giving into Chloe’s demand immediately just made her fume.

“You do the same thing, Chloe,” Jake finally said. He could say he felt guilty at the satisfaction from the look on Chloe’s face.

At the implication that everything she had built up for herself was just another performance. Just like him.

At the implication that she was not perfect.

That they were just as bad as each other.

(That was a fact they both knew, but they never acknowledged it).

“Excuse me?” Chloe said slowly.

“You heard me. You play into the role Gwendolyn gave us in our very first year. You play into the roles we were given just as much as I do. You don’t have any sort of high ground, not when I don’t know who you are either.”

“I’m not hiding anything from anyone!”

“You’re hiding from yourself.”

“You just said you don’t fucking know-”

“Yeah, but I’m not fucking blind. I see how you act with her.”

Chloe glared at Jake. “You must be blind if you don’t realise how he looks at you.”

[jamiesfootball]

Fic authors self rec! When you get this, reply with your favorite five fics that you've written, then pass on to at least five other writers. Let’s spread the self-love 💗

So I wasn't going to do this because I don't even have five fics posted yet, but then I decided you know what? Fucking goals, man. So here's the two I've got and the (top) three that I'm working on that should see the light of day this year:

The Man From U.N.C.L.E. fic - Did you like the 2015 Man From UNCLE movie? Did you walk out of that theater going 'what a wild romp? I sure hope it gets a sequel.'

Well we're never getting a sequel, but here's a lovely OT3 fic that I was lucky enough to co-write with the very talented @thischapstickaddict (the bestie with the best outlines). She brings the romance, I bring the punchy action scenes, and together we crafted enough dramatic backstory to hopefully satisfy the 100 other people online who were obsessed with this movie in 2015.

The Garrison Reserve (aka the BBC's Musketeers Cooking AU fic) - Speaking of older fandoms. Are you hungry? Would you like to be hungry? Come be hungry what started as a crack idea but slowly became a thinly veiled excuse for me to talk about food for 64k words and make my case for why D'Artagnan is a manic pixie Florida man (until depression and life circumstances dragged me to a crushing halt at chapter 4/5 with half of chapter 5 written and never posted) (ngl I miss this fic and now that i've got brain waves again it's back on the menu) (as soon as i relearn every side character's name again it's back on the menu) (we also did, in fact, write a real menu for this. those are real recipes)

NOW ONTO THE NEW STUFF BABY!!!!!!!

[Redacted Title] Post Season Three Fic - MY TRIUMPHANT RETURN. It's gonna have all the hits for me: food! crying! backstories for people who didn't get backstories! food as a love language! shameless nerd culture quotes that no one but me will notice! shenanigans! fun group scenes with multiple people talking and being friends! friends who are your family now! If you, a blessed Ted Lasso fan reading this post have somehow stuck it out this far here's your reward - I'm feeling really good about the progress, and I maybe might don't want to jinx it but I might be able to start posting. Soon. Soonish. Like within the month. Previously aforementioned bestie has been getting snippets and I am tentatively excited that it will be up to snuff. This is good news that only you, the patient one who's read this far, now know. Yay for you!

Pavlov's Dog (the Jamie falling asleep 5+1 I've mentioned) - it is going to be a race to see if this one beats [Redacted Title] to the light of day. This one takes an episode coda / deleted scene approach and its fueled by punk and sadness and rage (so mainly The Wonder Years songs with the occasional Mountain Goats lyric thrown in). I was actually making really really good progress on it and then Mom City happened and [Redacted Title] was born.

Now I've got a handful more Ted Lasso fics half-started in the rafters, but the other fic that's likely to get posted this year, the one that I've been just dying to get out there, that one that i'm like a redbull and an ADHD fit away from posting even though no one but me has ever wanted it:

MY BATFAM / THE CONJURING AU - THAT'S RIGHT. ARE YOU A FAN OF BATMAN AND SPECIFICALLY HIS ADOPTED FAMILY? DID YOU LIKE THE MOVIE THE CONJURING? ARE YOU SCARED? WOULD YOU LIKE TO BE SCARED? IT'S SCARY. I WROTE A THING AND IT'S SCARY.

This is my mid-year resolution! These things I have written - people will see them!

[tlbodine]

The King in Yellow

Robert W. Chambers was a prolific author of the 19th century, with dozens of novels and short story collections to his name. But if you've heard of him at all, it's almost certainly because of his 1895 collection, The King in Yellow -- a cluster of stories whose influence has far surpassed the fame of its creator.

What is The King in Yellow? How did it gain such infamy? And where can its ideas be found lurking, more than a century later?

There are ten stories in Chambers' collection, spanning genres from Gothic horror to Romance, all mostly centered on artists of various kinds. The first four of these stories (and certainly the best known) carry references to "The King in Yellow" -- a play that is universally censored. Even though it isn't performed anywhere, just about everyone involved in the art scene in the book has heard of it, and many have read it, suffering deleterious effects as a result. Because, you see, the censorship of this play has less to do with its contents…and more with what it might do to those who read it.

The specific contents of the play are left mostly mysterious, with only a few small snippets to hint at its contents. Far more explicit (and intriguing) is what happens to the people who come into contact with the text.

In the first story, "The Repairer of Reputations," the narrator is recovering from a brain injury after falling from a horse. While getting treatment, he reads "The King in Yellow" and becomes obsessed, falling into a delusion with the certainty of a conspiracy that would place him in line to a throne of succession -- if he just could get his cousin out of the way first. The story relies heavily on the unreliability of its narrator, and it's easy enough to assume that his brain damage (and not the play) is responsible for his break with reality…or is it?

The other stories tease at The King in Yellow similarly, from different angles. In one, a group of friends are driven variously to madness and suicide under the creative influence of the play. In another, a man in church thinks about the play and falls into a waking nightmare (or is it reality?) In one, a couple discover the play on their bookshelf after bringing home a related work of art, only to be filled with dread about what might happen next.

The rest of the collection does not directly reference the forbidden play, but it does share some similar vibes -- from the unsettling surrealism of the events to the artist characters to the vague hints that there is a great deal more happening in the world beyond the confines of the story.

It's hard to say for certain what Chambers had in mind when he sat down to work on these stories. They certainly seem to draw on the work of earlier writers of Gothic horror and fabulism, like Edgar Allan Poe, Ambrose Bierce and Charles Baudelaire. He may have also been inspired by "The Yellow Wallpaper" by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, which had come out just a few years earlier and crafted the link between yellow and a specific kind of madness. Given the (then) futuristic and dystopian elements of "The Repairer of Reputations," and the over-arching themes of artists, censorship, and messy interpersonal relationships, it's reasonable to conclude that Chambers was making a larger statement on art and culture.

Regardless of his own influences, the influence Chambers had on the future of cosmic horror is inarguable. H.P. Lovecraft was so inspired by Chambers that he included references to the work in his Cthulhu Mythos story "The Whisperer in Darkness" in 1931. Later, August Derleth would make the ties between the King in Yellow and the Lovecraft mythos more explicit, forever linking them together -- and creating a more monstrous, physical manifestation for the King himself.

All of that is interesting in its own right. But I'm more interested in the underlying conceit of the story itself -- the idea of a work of fiction that could destroy the mind of someone who came in contact with it.

Forbidden Knowledge

The theme of forbidden knowledge (and the consequences of learning it anyway) is a common one in folklore, from Adam and Eve's banishment from Eden, to Prometheus's stolen fire, to Bluebeard's too-curious wife. But in these ancient tales, the focus is a bit different: A person in authority warns you against doing something, you do it anyway, and they punish you for the transgression. Sure, you may sometimes find more than you bargained for (such as the myth of Pandora's box), but the punishment is being handed out by the authority you disagreed with.

Not so for The King in Yellow.

Considering the effect it seems to have on those who come in contact with it, its universal censorship seems to be a helpful thing. After all, if something could cause that much harm just by proximity, then banning it outright would be a good thing, right?

Unless, of course, its notoriety is what draws people to seek it out in the first place.

Unless it's the rarity of the object, and the difficulty of the quest, that attracts people already prone to a certain kind of madness -- or those people project their delusions onto the thing.

There is a principle called an "information hazard" or "info hazard," which refers to knowledge that, if it were allowed to spread, would lead to harm -- because it would put power into the hands of people who could not yield it responsibly. For example, the exact formulation of particular poisons or bomb-making materials could constitute an information hazard because they might fall into the hands of kids or bad actors. (the logistics of whether or not controlling that information actually works is a subject for another essay)

But what about knowledge that is itself inherently harmful -- not because it will be used for nefarious purposes, but because it hurts the person who learned it? Haven't we all had the experience of learning something we wished we didn't know, and from which there's no return? It's the horror of overhearing a friend saying something cruel about you when you shouldn't have been listening, writ large to a cosmic scale.

The universe is vast and unknowable, and you are a small and simple ape. If you have the misfortune of catching a glimpse at the wider world, the greater truth of the universe, you may not be happy with what you find...and you may not be able to leave it alone.

A Horror History of Tales to Drive You to Madness

The concept of art inciting violence or driving a reader/viewer insane crops up in modern horror in a variety of different ways.

In John Carpenter's 2005 short film Cigarette Burns, produced as an episode of the Masters of Horror series, a rare films dealer goes on a worldwide quest for a notoriously disturbing film titled La Fin Absolue du Monde. This film reportedly aired once and was meant to be destroyed after inciting a homicidal riot at its premiere; but it was not destroyed, instead passing through several owners and wreaking absolute havoc on the lives of everyone it's touched. We catch discordant glimpses of the film throughout Carpenter's movie, but the story makes it clear that the actual content of the film is not what gives it power. Rather, it's the evil act behind the film's production that makes it so dangerous.

The same could arguably be said for The Ring franchise of films adapted from Koji Suzuki's Ring trilogy (beginning in 1998). The initial conceit of the story revolves around a cursed videotape that kills anyone who watches it seven days later. In many ways, Suzuki's work straddles the border between ghost story and cosmic horror, and The Ring in particular spawned a number of pale imitations.

The story evoked in Cigarette Burns also seems to be the inspiration for the 2018 Canadian horror film Antrum, which claims to be recovered footage of a cursed film released in the 1970s. The film is bookended by documentary-style warnings and history. The film itself (which mostly tells the story of two kids who inadvertently summon the devil) is fairly underwhelming, but with that kind of build-up, it would almost have to be.

Part of Antrum's gimmick is that there are unrelated scenes from a purported "snuff" film spliced into the footage by an unknown person. Snuff (a film where a person is killed live on camera) plays a role in Cigarette Burns as well. But we cannot talk about snuff in the context of forbidden films without David Cronenberg's 1983 film, Videodrome.

Videodrome tells the story of a television exec who unwittingly stumbles on a satellite feed that appears to be broadcasting scenes of torture and murder. Intrigued and thrilled, he decides to investigate further and begins airing the footage as well. Unbeknownst to him, though, he's tapped into something quite sinister -- a sociopolitical weapon used to control the population. If you can make violent pornography destroy the people who watch it, society will be improved….right?

In a similar vein on a much smaller scale is 2012's Gut, directed by Elias. A disaffected office worker gets a thrill when a friend shows him a bootleg snuff video of unknown origins. Is it real? Is it fake? By the time it worms its way into his thoughts and forms a destructive obsession in his mind, it doesn't natter. Violence ensues.

Not all snuff films are sexual in nature. Consider the box of home movies in Sinister (also from 2012), evidence of grisly murders of multiple families. In watching, he unwittingly invites a demon into his life -- the evil force responsible for those murders in the first place.

At the fringes of these stories are other types of cosmic horror tales, all centered on the horrors of forbidden knowledge that pierces the veil of our understanding of reality -- from Lovecraft's work to Darren Aronofsky's π to Junji Ito's Uzumaki.

So what gives? Why our persistent fascination with being destroyed by what we should not know?

Horrors of the Information Age

Cosmic horror has been enjoying a resurgence in the last 20 years, and I don't think it's wholly surprising.

We live now in an era when the collective knowledge of mankind is, arguably, at your fingertips at all times. We have greater and more widespread literacy than ever. With that, unfortunately, comes the spread of misinformation. Our odds of stumbling across something ghastly are also higher than ever. A generation ago, nobody was likely to accidentally find grisly crime scene photos, a live streamed murder, a videoed terrorist decapitation, or anything else. Now, you can stumble across those things, and once these traumatic images have been seen, you cannot unsee them.

Sometimes you want to spread them. You want to pass them to the person next to you, maybe for the same reason you'd hand off a carton of sour milk. "Hey, does this taste rotten to you?" You want to know if the image is real. You want someone you can talk to about the emotional experience of seeing it. You want someone to share in that trauma.

There are also pockets of forbidden knowledge in our society, a handful of places where we are not allowed to tread -- certain subjects that are illegal to search for -- coupled with an all-seeing, vigilant watchman who will see us and judge us for our sins. When you know that whatever you search might land you on a government watchlist somewhere, it's plausible to become obsessed with that knowledge, or develop a compulsion toward that information, even if you don't even want to know it in the first place. That's a human nature thing that I think is reflected well in cosmic horror.

But what of The King in Yellow's other proposition -- that a sufficiently powerful story could drive someone to madness? Could a story really incite someone to violence the way Cigarette Burns would suggest?

Contrary to the worries of fandom antis, I'm not convinced that a work of fiction can cause an act of violence. Barring any supernatural involvement (tortured angels, for example), I don't think any piece of media can jump over the gate of free will and force you to do anything.

But I can see why artists might like to pretend we wield that kind of power. I don't think it's coincidental that Chambers wrote primarily about artists, and that authors and filmmakers would be so intrigued by the idea of a piece of art so influential it could take over a person's brain. It's a fiction...but it's a compelling one.

[dreamingofangelicflight]

The continuation of the angel ask meme! :3 I'm combining two asks in one if that's okay with you two? XD Btw thanks again for asking me!!! :3 *bounce bounce* sorry for the wait, I had to get some RL affairs in order before I could devote the time and energy to do this, especially as thoroughly as I wanted to do it. -x-;;

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@cedarholy

I saw you reblogged the "Angelic Ask Meme 2.0". Could you answer H and N, please?

@markaus-loves-vodka

A, J, Q!

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(Forgive me if you didn't also ask for the Angelic Ask Meme 2.0 and asked for something else markaus!!)

Here we go! :D

A-any memories that are different from how most other angels remember things?

My return question, which one? Basically every single one of my memories (with very few exceptions) are different from most other angelkin on this site. Those few exceptions where explicitly when I was visiting their world to check up on matters there, as a work and not social visit.

I've confirmed some of the same worlds or places that other angels lived in or visited, but only because I came and went there at least once in passing. My job requires me to visit the rest of the universe on a regular basis, and leave my home world to do so.

The only few who do not have different memories from me, are those who came from the same home world. And they're a barest handful at the most!

So if you wanna know the particulars of some more memories, check out my "ask meme" tag or the "sharing my memories" or "my personal experiences" tags. :3 Even "my confessional" works as well! Or just drop a line and ask me directly in anon or PM. :D I don't bite! <3

As long as I have the spoons to do so, I'm more than willing to talk at length about my memories. :3 I just may not always have the spoons but when I'm able to, I'll most assuredly reply! :D 

H-what was the first thing that made you suspect you were an angel?

Well, let me see.

For the longest time I thought I was just dragonkin, and the sensation of wings and astral wings was related to that. Even when my astral wings changed from scaly dragon wings to feathery bird-like wings that glowed like an angel's, I still thought the bird wings were from a winged cat side.

I never really woke up to actually BEING an angel until something weird as fuck happened when I was hanging with my friend and I had to fight it to help save him in the astral plane. Afterwards, the reactions of my angel guards changed dramatically (due to still glowing with power in the astral plane from my sudden "awakening") and I realized that I actually was an angel, a higher-level one at that.

It took me a long-ass time to come to terms with that because my first reaction was to think that I somehow became completely narcissistic with a giant ego to ever conceive of myself as an angel, let alone as a higher ranking. I thought I was making it up out of pure selfish need for attention and to be "better" than everybody else, and I was so terrified of ever ending up that way. It helped when my friend also confessed their very similar reaction to their spirit guards, and their worries that matched my own.

Fast-forward over a half-a-decade-later and we've come to terms with it now. (No thanks to the ...many shocking events that happened in-between that made it vehemently clear that this is real. One of which caused at least twice by a certain loveable "stalker" spirit we know and love in our group. You know who you are!!)

So that was quite the wild ride, since I never would've even remotely guessed at any angelic origins even a half-year before that event with my friend. Hell, not even a single day before that event happened.

J-Any symbolic things you’re associated with? (E.g. a certain number, planet, or direction)

My associations were: dragons, cats, the scent of cinnamon, bright white light, and the colors dark blue and gold. (At least that's as far as I can remember it. I may be wrong on some of those things.)

N-your favorite memory?

Hard to choose!

While I have very good ones that I've described before, such as the feel of my angel dad's hand, how my eldest brother helped to raise me, my angel mom tucking me in while I was half-asleep and curled around my husband (my boyfriend in this lifetime!), and many ones of interacting with my husband and mates back at home. <3

I have to say the most precious ones are of flying. Things like my embarrassing gaffes when learning to fly in the first place, or mastering the transition from the sky dancing to land dancing (that poor tree, my poor head!) As well as the boring long-haul flights in formation with my aerial racers team when I was in the angel equivalent of high school in my home world. (So boring. I apologize for the ...*ahem* mess I caused when I tried to act out and not be so bored. ...Sorry. <.<;; >.>;; Those kinda flights and me do NOT mix. -x-;; )

As well as some snippets here and there of mastering flying inside a tornado for the duration of the tornado being formed. Do not attempt the tornado one unless you've THOROUGHLY mastered every other bit of flying, and are prepared to die many times during the learning process. (Needless to say, my reaper twinnie was ready to throttle me himself after he was done bringing me back to life all those times. -x-;; Sorry twinnie!)

I also remember little bits of when I stayed entirely in the sky for over a year straight without even touching a single bit of me to the ground. It was difficult at first to get used to but I greatly enjoyed it once I got used to it. :D I also remember the embarrassing moments of leaping into the sky again any time I got remotely startled when I was trying to adjust to ground life again after that experience. (So many ceilings got hurt. So. Many. Holes. *wince*)

Since I am a sky lover and wing-obsessed, I tend to try to bring up as much as I can about flying memories. :3 Some experiences in this lifetime helped me finally get more than just a general feeling and some visual fragments here and there. Such as: the vertical wind tunnel, tandem skydiving with an instructor, the changing storm clouds in the distance while flying on a plane, standing on the edge of a cliff with arms outstretched and feeling the hard winds blow by me, or taking the same pose at the prow of a fast ferry heading back towards land.

It wasn't until I did the skydiving for the first time that I remembered that the sky actually had a SMELL. My soul remembered it, but nobody had ever told me that in this life so I was really surprised to encounter it.

As for the other memories I briefly touched on, you can find more in my other posts. :3 I've talked about them a lot so I figured to talk about something new this time around. XD Thank you!

Find more here: https://dreamingofangelicflight.tumblr.com/post/158625288668/c-n-z-angelic-ask-meme-20-my-memory-isnt or by looking through my responses on the "ask meme" tag. :D

Q-your weapon of choice, if you had one? If no weapon, an object or something you carried/used a lot?

Oh let me show you! :D

It's a gemstone sword! :D Dark blue diamond with some other space materials that helped make it. :3 It's shaped like a cross of a feather and a wing to be more efficient and have less drag when fighting in the sky. I often used a knife (not shown) in my other hand as a back-up to the sword in my fighting.

I love my sword and miss it so. TT^TT~ It was crafted especially for me by a master weapon-maker in my home world. X3 And it's been by my side through the War that devastated my home world, as well as everything since then. :3 <3