#procrastinating on adrians story again | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

ghostofscarley · 2 years ago

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hello everyone.. alas i am bored and instead of finishing my prepls or school work (aha procrastination), i saw an author write out their entire playlist that fit with their fic and gave mini explanations as to why they paired each song.. so i would like to present, ahem

GHOSTOFSCARLEY's REASONS FOR THE SONGS OF HER PLAYLIST; RWTS

now ofc, all credit isnt mine.. my lover @emso12 wrote 'Rewrite The Stars' and ive been in love with it for just over a year, id say, now, however i made the playlist not too long ago, which consist songs that just made sense following the storyline of this fic.. now, whilst a good lot of the songs cannot simply be explained, i removed them for the sake of this post and so if i remember them, ill add them again.. that being said, it still left a good 6 hours left of songs so we're in for a ride..

fair warning; quite a lot of songs, therefore this is basically a rant.. a hefty one.. read at own risk (the risk being pure boredom unless this somewhat interests you like it interested me) spoilers too for those who are yet to read RWTS

lets get started !!!

Rewrite The Stars - Zac Efron, Zendaya

obviously, as the name of the book itself, and a running metaphor throughout as the chapters as the book progressed, it only made sense. the song focuses on the differences between y/n and adrian and how they overcome those differences as they grow older and mature and write their own story; their love story

Wanna Know - Sabrina Claudio

my perception of this song is that a couple is within the stage in which they're now sharing the 'l' word. obviously this is a big commitment and sometimes one can wonder whether their significant other truly means it. this can be set when adrian first says it to y/n or when they're broken up (temporarily). if they were so hurt from the actions of the other, were they truly in love?

I Don't - Sabrina Claudio

now this song is moreso focused on the lovely miss emilia morales and well.. the dick-ish miles bletchley. this song focuses on a toxic relationship. similarly, no matter how much miles seemed to hurt our girl, because of her love for him, all of those reasons meant nothing, she was so in love with him that she could not bring herself to leave him. she knew that he meant well and would better himself

Frozen - Sabrina Claudio

now again this song can be set when y/n and adrian are younger and are just lounging during a break or a weekend at hogwarts in a common room OR when they have moved in together. this was chosen to show how no matter what, they always knew the other would be the ONE for them, they would love each other no matter what.

Orion's Belt - Sabrina Claudio

so, talking about a constellation and relating it to freckles? i immediately thought of adrian and how his upbringing (as well as his kids names) being somewhat related to space. this song is also about familiarising the feeling of love and romantic warmth together. they create a safe space that was to only be shared between them.

We Have Time - Sabrina Claudio

not too far into their relationship, or maybe even before it became official, adrian has said that he did not want to rush things; i mean this was his first serious relationship. so this song represents how they slowed the pace and took their time to really get to know and inevitably fall in love with each other. through this, it evolved into a loving relationship in which they both gained a significant other and best friend, and it did not feel forced.

Natural - Sabrina Claudio

this song focuses in on the development of a crush that they held on each other and how quick it was to happen. having both been in relationships, it felt new when they started falling for each other, because it was real. not just physical or shy and awkward, but tender and warm and with a friendship already developed, it meant they already knew each other to some degree. and they both continued to fall harder for the other.

Best of the Kind - Jereena Montemayor

now when people say that their significant other is their 'other half', it cannot be portrayed better than in this song. its vaguely implicated. with adrian, y/n felt like a better version of herself. no matter what issues or problems they went through, they knew they would get through it together. they truly were each others better half; they completed each other and it would be hard to imagine one without the other.

Close As Strangers - 5 Seconds of Summer

this takes place during the break up as well. of course the lyrics insinuate that they would still be together, but for the sake of this fic, not quite. it still, however conveys the pain that they felt. in fact, when it comes to lyrics like ' late night calls and another text', this could be happy memories of letters sent between the two when they were still together. but then it says 'but you know that i'll always wait for you', so despite being apart and even somewhat seeing other people, they still hold an amount of love for the other. they could never truly let the other go

Moving Along - 5 Seconds of Summer

whilst y/n showed signs of having moved on (and actually being interested in joseph), it was clear that whatever adrian did with pansy was to streak a sense of jealousy through y/n, yet it was clear he was never truly into pansy, just needed a distraction from the pain. that he had unwillingly caused. adrian tried hard to get through to her, it was never his intentions to hurt her, but for the moment, it was clear that the issue was beyond repair. oh and y/n specifically said 'i know youll find someone else who you can love'.

Lie To Me - 5 Seconds of Summer

this can be set anytime adrian sees y/n with joseph, perhaps when they are together near the black lake or just outside of the gryffindor quidditch tent. seeing her happy after the downfall of the 'it' couple of hogwarts, it was clear that she had moved on (though it was otherwise). at this point, the supposedly new couple is moreso a rebound from the pain that was mistakenly thrown onto y/n

She Looks So Perfect - 5 Seconds of Summer

a more happy song with a happier interpretation. often people find this song silly due to the lyrics. but personally, i find this song quite sweet. no matter what, she would always look perfect in his eyes. i relate this song specifically to the scene in which y/n gave birth to baby z, with fly away hairs, sweat dripping down her forehead and the softest smile as she held the first born pucey against her chest, adrian had never thought that she had looked more perfect then in that moment. the yule ball look was quaking.

Wherever You Are - 5 Seconds of Summer

and we are back to the breakup. though they were separated, in this case romantically and physically, though y/n was in a committed relationship that, though controlling, was respected, it meant that boundaries were created and thus the closeness between her and her friends severed more. so through this song, it insinuates no matter where she may be, near or far, though they may no longer be together, she will always be a lingering thought of adrian's.

Not In The Same Way - 5 Seconds of Summer

ooh a bit spicy. well this takes place during (i was gonna say the first) both trips to france, where, fun times in the sheets happen between miss y/l/n and mr pucey. suck on that joseph. obviously this does not fix what was lost, but they allow themselves to embrace each other as if it is to be their last. they still feel the same love that remains from their past relationship, however the pain of the 'affair' is what holds y/n back.

Want You Back - 5 Seconds of Summer

think this is pretty self explanatory, however, this is set closer to the breakup. obviously in this stage, adrian is still working hard to get his girl back (despite still being seen with pugface), however as time progresses, its not that he stops trying, but rather, that he believes she would be happier with someone else. so he lays off, seeing as his past efforts were rather futile.

Better Man - 5 Seconds of Summer

now this relates moreso to his years before he met y/n. he was, to use emilias words, a man whore. obviously as he indulges in her and starts his first serious relationship, it is shown to his friends just how much y/n changed him. for the better. she had really tamed him

Disconnected - 5 Seconds of Summer

they were officially in love and in love with the idea of losing themselves in each other. they had truly found their safe place. their happy place. the soft and happy yet upbeat song perfectly defines the 'love' stage of y/n and adrian in my opinion. they were completely enamoured with every little thing the other did, and quite literally felt themselves disconnect from the world that surround them as they only needed each other.

Lover Of Mine - 5 Seconds of Summer

this is set just after the battle, when adrian finally gets his girl back. maybe even a little after. he finally reflects on the mistakes that his younger self made, how idiotic he was, and how he would only need y/n, for all that she would take of him. he would continue to better himself and vow to never make those mistakes again for he could not bare to lose her. she was it for him. and he was to make sure that she knew that.

Story Of Another Us - 5 Seconds of Summer

sad again. this is set during the breakup. maybe just after pansy has slapped adrian and y/n is officially with joseph. despite the upbeat tone and quick tempo, the lyrics hold a sombre mood and saddening message, yet so beautiful. every happy memory with y/n is like a movie. and adrian can only hope can he can start a new story with his love. though for the moment, it would have to be but a wish.

Ghost Of You - 5 Seconds of Summer

as they drift further apart, the memory of each other becomes like that of a ghost. the side that the other may have once occupied, the indent of what once was a familiar body begins to flatten out. the familiar music that may have echoed in the room, is now only danced to by a single person rather than a pair. and the company of a past lover is replaced with someone who could never be the other. 'that my feet don't dance like they did with you'.

Best Years - 5 Seconds of Summer

similar to my fic, this song is set just after the battle when our lovers reconcile. adrian promises that shes it for him (though we all knew that already), that he wouldn't make that mistake again, that there was no one else he'd rather, even if she didn't want him anymore. spoiler; she still wanted him.

If You Love Her - Forest Blakk

when adrian had come to terms with y/n and joseph being a thing (understanding that she had cut contact to respect her relationship), i pictured this song. i pictured adrian telling joseph to look after y/n and more importantly, her heart. to never hurt her. i pictured this thru an unsent letter where he then went on to rant abt the small yet simple things she loved, because to him that's when his love for her grew, watching her eyes glow as she did the things she loved. 'shes the best thing that you'll ever have. she'll love you if you love her'.

Kiss Me - Sixpence None The Richer

when i think of the moments where y/n and adrian sit together out by the black lake near their initial-carved tree, i think of this song. i think of the more intimate yet non-sexual moments, the ones of just pure love and admiration that they share between them. and i think of the desperate whispers shared as they lie in bed together, drowning everything else out

Till The End - Jessie Ware

this one is pretty self explanatory and similar to my own fic of the song. it is set around both the end of the war, their makeup and when they get married. it's a promise to be each other's 'other half', till the end of time

Can't Help Falling In Love - Kina Grannis

obviously this song is a classic love song by the king, elvis presley, however i chose this version as even tho the story is set in the 1980s-1990s, the softness of Kina's voice (and the fact that it was used during the wedding in Crazy, Rich Asian' just made sense to me), it just seemed right to incorporate it with the wedding between y/n and adrian

#Spotify #adrian pucey #adrian pucey x reader #adrian-pucey #y/n #adrian pucey fluff #adrian pucey angst #miles bletchley #emilia morales #rwts #we love em #angst #fluff #5sos #sabrina claudio #ghostofscarleytalks

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howdybesties · 3 years ago

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Day 1: I’ve been procaffeinating

Gym Series being replaced by Coffee Shop AU

Thank you to Lu @belikov-barnes and Steph, without them I would literally never contribute to this fandom

These titles are actually from an old Coffee Shop Story I was working on back in Uni, so I’m glad I can dust it off and use it.

No beta we die like Strigoi. I can’t tell you what tense this is in.

--------

This is the fifth time he noticed her come in. Always observant, Dimitri liked to take note of repeat customers. But this one has him perplexed.

Somehow, he is always behind the coffee grinder when she makes her order, so he hasn’t gotten her name yet. She liked to set up in the corner booth: laptop open, paper documents spread out. She tidies up when her blonde friend joins her, carrying a green tea and what he presumes is a hot chocolate under a mountain of whipped cream.

Sometimes, she arrives with a redheaded boy who brings textbooks. The boy sneaks sips of Gatorade from his water bottle. They spend hours laughing at the diagrams. Dimitri wonders if he is her boyfriend, they act awfully friendly with one another.

But today was his lucky day. His cousin Adrian was off sick, so he works the counter. And then, she entered.

She is busy scrolling on her phone when she makes her order.

“A hot chocolate with extra whipped cream, please. To go, this time,”

So it was hot chocolate.

“Name?” Dimitri asks.

Her head whips up to look at the barista for the first time, jolted by the new voice.

“You’re not Adrian,” She looks confused.

Play it cool, Dimitri.

“Adrian’s off sick. Could I get your name for the cup?”

“Rose.”

Rose. Roza. That’s a nice name.

“I’ve noticed you're coming in a lot,” He mentions as he rings up her order on the till.

“Yeah, I’ve been pro-caffeinating on this essay,” Rose was busy rummaging through her bag for her wallet, not looking at him.

He couldn’t stop himself if he tried.

“You mean procrastinating,” he corrects her.

“No. I mean pro-caffeinating. Procrastination and Caffeine combined,” She looks proud.

He notices a student card for the local university.

“What type of logic is that?” Dimitri raises his eyebrow.

She smirks at him, with a playful gleam in her eye.

“It’s Rose Logic, naturally,”

She hands him the cash and walks over to where his sister Karolina makes the drinks.

Dimitri hopes she comes again.

#howdys coffeeshop #dianawrites

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prizrakis · 4 years ago

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(MILENA TSCHARNTKE, TWENTY FOUR, CIS WOMAN, SHE/HER) ⮕ Hey, isn’t that [MIKA ANTONOVA]? I heard that they were a part of the crew. According to the wiki it says they’re the [EDITOR] of the group. Avid fans say that they’re [CHARMING], but that they can also be [AVOIDANT]. Maybe that’s because they’re a [SCORPIO]. This gossip forum says they’re in the group because [SHE HAD A SUPERNATURAL EXPERIENCE WHEN SHE WAS YOUNGER]. I wonder if that’s true. I also heard they [DO] believe in ghosts. I wonder if their time in arcane inc will change that. (ooc peyton, 23, est.)

stats.

full name: mika antonova antonov nicknames: none yet! birthdate: november 7th, 1996 occupation: editor for arcane inc nationality: english-russian

orientation: bisexual moral alignment: chaotic neutral myers-briggs: estp temperament: choleric

about.

mika doesn’t remember much about her mother and father. the second child to natasha and maxim, they lost custody of their two children when mika was two years old due to neglect. her brother at the time, adrian, only five. the children’s grandparents agreed to take the two of them in and moved to london so it would be the family’s permeant residence. there were supervised visits with her parents over the course of the next few months but after a year they stopped showing up. she was too young to understand but not too young to feel the pain of abandonment. no one has seen them since.

that being said, mika and adrian had a relatively normal childhood. their grandparents were caring and attentive, albeit strict with the children such as making them go to church every sunday. they were comfortably middle class but lived below their means to teach their grandchildren how to save. mika was a typical happy, energetic, sunshine-y girl who liked to tease her guardians and pull innocent pranks on her older brother.

she did have a knack for getting in trouble and in her teen years would often find herself grounded for sneaking out of the house or staying out past curfew. her babushka would always say the girl was going to put her in an early grave.

in high school mika had a podcast that gathered a humble following with two of her best friends. they talked about local legends and ghosts and true crime stories and would sneak into places they weren’t supposed to be so they could record their live reactions. they each had a job to make sure things ran smoothly and she was in charge of editing the audio. it was a a harmless hobby and something to keep the group out of trouble, more or less.

it wasn’t until they stepped foot into an abandoned house, the story was the patriarch of the original family who lived there had gruesomely murdered his own family then every person who lived there after died under mysterious circumstances. of course they had to cover it. they decided to spend the night there and make it part of a special episode before they all went their separate ways to university.

she isn’t sure where it went so wrong. one of the friends had brought an ouija board to see if they could make things more interesting for the audience. when the planchette began to move, they all figured they were messing with each other until all of the lights went out. mika’s memory from that night is pretty hazy but all she knows is that it was bad. by the time they ran out of the house they were scratched up and bruised from some sort of invisible force. they end up all heading to their respective homes but none of them rest.

tw death mention: mika grew paranoid, feeling as if she was being followed and seeing shadowy figures in the corner of her eye. the other two shared how they felt this way as well. something wasn’t right. a sleepless week after the encounter one of them, audrey, was in the hospital for a few days before passing away. it shook mika. it changed her. she didn’t want anything to do with the podcast or her remaining friend anymore. the two don’t speak again and she goes away to school for film. mika avoided any talk about anything supernatural after what happened, though and just wanted to move on with her life. she gets her degree but moves back home immediately after as she didn’t really know what she wanted to do.

anyone that didn’t know about arcane who was on the internet lived under a rock. she was a fan of them when they were just a group of friends because it reminded her so much of her own life. when a school friend recommends the job of editor to mika, she’s hesitant. she didn’t want to relive what happened but she missed the thrill of it all. besides it’d get her out of the house and get her grandparents off her back.

headcanons.

mika knows english, russian, and british sign language. adrian is deaf so she had to communicate with him some way.

she has a large scar on her back that goes all the way from her right shoulder blade to the center of her lower back. it’s from that night but she still doesn’t know how it got there.

likes to go out and have fun! she isn’t exactly the happy little girl she used to be. mika’s pretty dry and sardonic nowadays. her apathy for her own well being makes her a pretty good party buddy though. can and will drink you under the table. she also somehow always has weed on her.

to her nothing can be as bad as what happened so she’s near impossible to scare at this point. if the demons take her then they take her.

listens to a lot of midwest emo like some sort of angsty teen. please show her anything else other than modern baseball.

skater girl. it was her other big hobby and she never got her driver’s license so she had to get around somehow. she never learned how to ride a bike anyway. when she’s procrastinating (as she usually is) she can be found dicking around somewhere with her board.

good with people but not good at keeping friends! stop pushing people away and go to therapy!

wanted connections.

i’m sorry head empty you can just like this and i’ll message you for plots.

#arcaneintro #( *about. )

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bereft-of-frogs · 5 years ago

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If you are ever so inclined - I'd be very interested in your horror recommendations.

This got…probably more involved than you intended. :D It was a good procrastination tool/distraction from A Thing I didn’t want to do though, and I had fun revisiting some of these old trailers.

This ended up really long. I’m sorry. I don’t know why I’m like this.

“The New Golden Age”

[These are what I’m talking about when I talk about us entering in a new golden age - really genre bending, specifically out to subvert tropes, make social statements, and empower people who have been shut out by horror in the past.]

Jordan Peele - Get Out (2017) and Us (2019)

Ah, Jordan Peele. The master of the comedy to horror turn. Get Out was the most fun I’ve had watching a horror movie in a long time. I love how it really fits itself to classic tropes but subverts them by flipping the genre and race dynamics. (Daniel Kaluuya’s character embodies the ‘Final Girl’ trope.)

Us fucked me up. Like, woke up at 3am thinking about it, couldn’t really look at Lupita Nyong’o for a while. The remix of the song that plays over the trailer literally gives me goosebumps. It freaked me out, so much. That one is a genre bender - you think you’re watching one thing (a classic home-invasion type trope with some weird mystery to it) and then the final scene basically upends everything you thought you were watching. Fucked. Me. Up.

Ari Aster - Hereditary (2018) and Midsommar (2019)

I’ve been talking a bunch about how much I loved Midsommar. It’s gorgeous visually, Ari Aster is so great at just letting things hang and letting tension build and build - and it was the first horror movie I think I’ve ever felt weirdly empowered by. Like, similar to when I saw Captain Marvel, I walked out of the theater like “is this how men feel all the time?” Hereditary is probably a better movie overall, not counting the fact that it was practically made for me. At its core it’s a grief drama, a phenomenal portrait of mourning…and it’s also really fucking scary. Those slow-tension building scenes are really used effectively in Hereditary.

I also think it’s interesting because Ari Aster is keeping pace with Jordan Peele, but did it in the opposite order. Hereditary is the genre-bender - you kind of think it’s a family drama/psychological horror for most of it, and then it takes a hard turn and makes you question everything you were watching. Midsommar is more on-genre norms - it’s essentially the classic ‘bunch of terrible people getting picked off one by one’ trope (I don’t know if there’s a better name for that), but by applying folk horror and really centering female characters as both pro- and an- tagonist, it does a lot of unexpected things.

Robin Aubert - Les Affamés (”The Ravenous”) (2017)

It’s a zombie movie, but it’s more than that. This movie is so layered. I saw it at a festival when it first came out and then we watched it again this year on St. Jean-Baptiste (Québec national holiday) because we wanted to be #OnTheme. (And to celebrate St. Jean-Baptiste without having to interact with crowds) and it kind of clicked what it was doing. It’s really about the absorbing of difference into the dominant, hegemonic culture and the struggle for marginalized individuals to survive. Robin Aubert has a couple others I haven’t seen yet, but have heard good things about and are on my list. I saw a critic call his main brand ‘pastoral terror’ (terreur pastorale) which I absolutely love as a concept.

Alex Garland - Annihilation (2018)

Some people might argue with me if this is horror or not, if it’s sci-fi, but I think it’s body horror. And it’s beautiful body horror! See this is what I’m here for. Body horror is not just gore - there’s not a lot of blood in this movie. Body horror is about distortion and the grotesque. There’s this one scene that still gives me chills when I think about it and Tessa Thompson’s final scene is beautiful body horror at its finest. (There was also a really similar scene in Midsommar, so I clearly know what I like.) The soundtrack is also phenomenal.

[I had a whole rant about the book series, which I hated, here, but it was getting long and derailing so I cut it out. the tldr is I hated the book.]

“Classics I actually Enjoy”

[I don’t always love what appears at the top of the like ‘essential horror’ lists, but these are the ones I think are worth it.]

Dario Argento - Deep Red (1975)

I really, really wanted to like Suspiria more, because the concept and Goblin’s score for Suspiria both appeal to me a lot more. But I had a lot more fun watching Deep Red. So far it’s my favorite of the giallos.

Richard Donner - The Omen (1976)

Classic. It’s so good. “It’s all for you, Damian!” Plus, I love any movie that comes with rumors of a curse.

Alfred Hitchcock - Psycho (1960)

I would classify most of Hitchcock as ‘thriller’ rather than horror, but Psycho is firmly psychological horror, and The Classic.

Stuart Gordon - Re-animator (1985)

I couldn’t really decide if I wanted to put this one. Especially because on a long drive my friend and we basically covered how this was really ripe for a remake because it’s flaws…did not age particularly well, especially re: gender and race. (But it could be so, so good. It could be an amazing commentary about consent and the use of marginalized bodies…but the original …is…not.) But I’m putting this on here because of body horror. They clearly hired dancers or choreographers to do the reanimated movements because they really lean into it and it’s great. It gets…heavily derailed at the end by an absolutely ridiculous gore climax and missing the opportunity to actually have a coherent storyline or a message of any kind…but they got the grotesque movements down.

Honorable Mentions: The Amityville Horror, The Exorcist, Rosemary’s Baby, *sigh* Cannibal Holocaust (like…I don’t actually recommend anyone watch it. I’m glad I did, because it’s really important for how the ‘found footage’ genre developed, so it’s a piece of film history but like. Don’t actually watch it.), The House on Haunted Hill

“Random Others In Between”

Adrian Lyne - Jacob’s Ladder (1990)

You might recognize Jacob’s Ladder as the movie that more heavily inspired the first chapter of ‘dark underground//violent sky’ more than I had originally thought. I had originally been basing a lot of the tone and style on current trends in horror TV, but then I happened to watch Jacob’s Ladder while I was in the middle of writing the second half and was like…oh. Like, I knew I had been heavily influenced by Jacob’s Ladder and the ending, but I had forgotten about how the film differentiates between ‘reality’ and ‘dream’ - in that it doesn’t! And that was an effect I was specifically striving for when I was writing ‘dark underground’. It’s also just a really weird, trippy late-80s/early-90s movie set in New York when New York was still really dirty and that’s fun.

Hideo Nakata - Dark Water (2002)

This is my favorite Japanese horror film. I think it gets a little bit looked over in favor of some others (Ringu, Ju-on, Audition), but it’s my favorite. (Has a terrible American remake, so be sure to avoid that one. It comes up first when you google. -_-)

James Wan - The Conjuring (2013)

I did really like this first entry - the sequels are kind of aggressively meh.

Scott Derrickson - Sinister (2012)

THE DANGER IS IN THE VIEWING!

Honorable Mentions: Session 9, Se7en, The Ritual, It Follows, The Descent, The Hills Have Eyes (I just really like bright horror movies), The Exorcism of Emily Rose (for fun bonus pretension, you can also watch Requiem, and then when people ask you if you’ve seen The Exorcism of Emily Rose, you get to be like “Yeah, have you seen the German original?” though, technically, it’s that they’re both based off of the same true-story. it’s still fun to say), Hard Candy, Ils (Them), THE VVITCH (should only ever be pronounced ‘The Va-Vitch’ lol)

“The Parody Films”

[What is there to say? They’re great, so much fun.]

Joss Whedon - Cabin in the Woods (2012)

Remember back in 2012 when Avengers 1 came out, and then Cabin in the Woods came out, like, immediately afterwards, and we all loved Joss Whedon? We were so innocent back then.

Eli Craig - Tucker and Dale vs. Evil (2010)

This movie is so pure. I love how they both play into and subvert the rural hillbilly tropes with the two main characters. They just want a vacation home! These kids keep killing themselves on their property!

Honorable Mentions: Shaun of the Dead, I was googling to confirm the year of Tucker and Dale vs. Evil and I saw What We Do In The Shadows listed as horror paraody, but I would count that more as a Gothic mockumentary, but I listed it here because I love it so much.

“Documentaries”

Xavier Burgin - Horror Noire: A History of Black Horror (2019)

This movie was so interesting! Highly recommend. I think Shudder is planning on producing more of these documentaries, about marginalized groups in horror, and I am Here For It.

Honorable Mentions: Cropsey/Killer Legends, Best Worst Movie

I think I’ll stop here and maybe someday do a separate one for books. And maybe TV series, but I’m having a hard time teasing out the line between mystery and horror because of how popular and kind of unique Nordic Noir is right now. It’s just hard to draw the line for TV.

But I’ll end by summarizing reading thoughts (in a more disorganized manner):

-I have two separate ‘complete tales and poems’ editions of Edgar Allen Poe - one to look pretty and one to annotate.

-If you come for my girl Mary Shelley I will come @ you. Once a kind of asshole-y friend once was like ‘Frankenstein is terrible because it was written by a teenage girl’ and, I swear to God, I almost fought him right there in the bar. The Last Man is also great.

-I also almost forgot how much I loved Dracula. The Harkers especially. (I once tried to read League of Extraordinary Gentleman and gave up with a rage-headache 15 pages in because of what they did to Mina.) (Ah yes, let’s make her a “Strong Female Character ™” by having her divorce Jonathan and almost be raped in the first 15 pages.) (Couldn’t deal with it.) (I’m sure I would in general like that series but I just had too much attachment to Mina Harker to get over it.)

-I physically cannot get through Lovecraft. I can’t do it. I’ve tried so many times, I know how important it is but I just. Can’t. Don’t want to. Won’t. Sorry.

-A lot of adapted books I tend to prefer the books they were based on. Some are kind of obvious, like I Am Legend by Richard Matheson, which is a way, way better book than the movie. (They changed the ending which undercut the actual message.) But others are still decent movies, I just tend to prefer the book. Like, everyone always puts Let the Right One In on ‘essential horror’ lists, but I actually liked the book by John Ajvide Lindqvist a lot better.

-Similarly, you may have noticed I put no Stephen King movies on this list - there are a few I really like, but I think they work better as complements to the novels. Misery and the original Pet Sematary (haven’t seen the new one yet) are my two favorite movies-based-on-king. The Shining is visually stunning by character-wise, wildly disappointing, so point to the novel for this one. (King also hated the adaptation for what Kubrick did to Wendy.) My general King recommendations are: Carrie, Misery, The Shining, The Mist, Insomnia

I’m having a bit of an issue with how male-dominated this list is. It’s partially my problem that I’m working on correcting (I’m at the point where I’m actively trying not to read horror books by white men anymore) and partially a general problem in the industry. It’s hard to get into an industry that for a long time unquestioningly based itself on violence against women and other marginalized peoples’ bodies. -_- But yeah, I have a list of contemporary horror novels by women that I’m working my way through, and I’m trying to catch up on some older staples like Shirley Jackson, Angela Carter, and Octavia Butler.

UPDATE: After I finished compiling this list, I googled ‘Horror movies directed by women’ and there are a couple that I would recommend, I think they’re just not as visible. (Did not realize they’d been directed by women until this Google.):

Mary Lambert - Pet Sematary (1989)

Karen Kusama - Jennifer’s Body (2009)

Mary Harron - American Psycho (2000)

Lynne Ramsay - We Need To Talk About Kevin (2011) (though I liked the book better)

This list was probably incomplete and I’ve probably forgotten a bunch of things I really like! It’s also only made up of things I’ve already seen/read (though it’s not comprehensive). If something’s not on here and you think it should be, lmk! It may be that I haven’t seen it yet and I’ll add it to my to-watch list. Always taking suggestions, especially for more horror (films or books) from underrepresented groups.

#veliseraptor #horror movies #fright night #this took a long time i need to go eat lunch now #ha i meant to break this off at a normal point but #alas

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dropletsofink · 6 years ago

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Iron and Steel

[Part 3]

Summary: The story of Lyria Whitethorn, daughter of Queen Aelin Ashryver Galathynius and King Rowan Whitethorn, and Tristan Havilliard, son of Queen Manon Blackbeak-Crochan and King Dorian Havilliard

A/N: And, after an eternity of procrastinating, I’ve finally updated!! I’ve also managed to draft out the plots of future parts but because of exams I don’t think I can update soon. -_- Sorry!! But, anyways, enjoy!!

Although they were close, Tristan and Lyria both had responsibilities they needed to attend to.

In separate kingdoms.

Tristan was well versed in court politics and magic, taught by his father, and trained in discipline of body and mind by Manon.

And, even though Manon and Dorian lived apart, Tristan never felt like they didn’t care for him.

Especially after the incident.

He’d alternate between Adarlan and the Wastes, but resided mainly in Adarlan. After all, he was to rule it one day.

Not that that had always been the case. What had seemed like a lifetime ago- only five years- there’d been another heir to the Adarlanian crown. His older sister.

Astrian.

But those memories were best left undisturbed. Tristan had long learned to lock the darkest parts of his life in the back of his mind; dredging them up left him paralysed.

Dorian had taught Tristan that the best way to know his people was to live alongside them. And so it wasn’t rare for him to dress himself in commoner clothes and mingle amongst them.

And as much as King Dorian II tried to vanquish the cruelties of the Adarlanian underworld, it was still rife in the streets.

Gangs, brothels, opium dens, they still fed off the innocent young who were cast out too soon. He’d learnt that from Lady Lysandra’s story.

She often frequented the brothels, with huge sums of money to buy the girls’ freedom and offer them homes in Caraverre. Tristan was awed by her tale, being cast out simply for having magic, chafing under Madame Clarisse’s ‘tutelage’, shackled to Arobynn Hamel.

Only to end up slitting his throat and fighting her way alongside Queen Aelin.

Tristan tried to follow her example- helping whoever he could and beating the life out of the lowlifes exploiting those weaker than them in dark alleyways.

He was beginning to draw attention to himself from those who he didn’t particularly want it from, which only spurred him to get stronger.

It was during one of these exploits that he found himself in a run-down tavern, seated in the corner with a tankard of cheap ale on the stained table in front of him.

The court may be a haven of whispered rumours, but the best tales came from places like these. And, although tavern brawls were common, some of the things he heard here made it worth it.

Tonight was like any other. Sailors and wretches were hunched over tables, with Tristan keeping a sharp ear out for anything that would interest him. The bartender- Adrian- flashed him a quick smile before returning to his work. He was an old friend of Lord Ren’s, and welcomed Tristan whenever he frequented.

Picking at his nails with his dagger, Tristan soon grew bored. There was nothing worth hearing today, apart from which noble was engaged to whom, so he drained his ale and got up to leave.

Just then, a hooded figure brushed past Tristan, his fingers glancing against his for a moment.

Leaving a small sheaf of paper in his palm.

The figure raised his head slightly and put a finger to his lips, before taking the seat that Tristan had occupied moments ago, crossing one leg over the other. He saw a flash of grey eyes before the figure flicked his wrist, motioning for Tristan to leave.

What was that?

Tristan sauntered out of the tavern and hid in a gap between it and the adjointed building. His power sparked at his fingers, tendrils of ice forming around his hands. If this person meant trouble, he’d give it to them willingly.

The sheaf of paper was still in his hand, but he didn’t dare take his eyes off the street. This could be an ambush, and he’d had enough of those to last a lifetime.

“If I wanted to hurt you, young prince, I would have done it already.”

As Tristan whipped his head up, the hooded figure jumped from the shaky scaffolding that barely held the tavern together and landed neatly beside him.

He took no chances. In a heartbeat, the razor-tipped icicles formed out of thin air and hung, suspended mere millimetres away from the figure’s throat. “What do you want?”

“Relax, Tristan. I’m a friend.” He slowly put his arms up in front of him and drew back his hood, revealing a tanned face flecked with thin scars, unruly black hair, and a lazy smile. He looked to be about 30, and the ease which he carried himself with told him to be a thief of sorts. Or at the very least, trained enough to climb buildings.

Tristan, unimpressed, raised an eyebrow but didn’t move the shards away from the man’s throat. And said nothing.

The man simply sighed and rolled his eyes, and fast as an asp, hooked his leg around the back of Tristan’s knees and threw him to the ground. He dodged the ice shards as they were flung towards where he’d been standing moments ago, as he braced a knee on the floor and pinned Tristan’s hands behind his back.

With a sudden shink, Tristan’s iron nails sliced upwards into the man’s skin. He jumped back and swore, giving Tristan enough time to scramble to his feet. He stood with his back to the crack in the wall, and although he could run, he refused to. If this man was intent on harming him, who knows what he could do to others.

“Nice to see that the prince has some bite.” Although there were several deep slices in his palms and wrist, all leaking blood, and despite the fact that he was backed into the alley wall, he seemed completely at ease.

“Well, for someone who calls me his friend, you seem to have a strange way of introducing yourself.”

“Maybe so.” The man took a handful of gauze out of his pocket and leisurely wrapped his wounds. Tristan stalked closer to him, iron nails now fully unsheathed. “But have you read my note yet?”

The note? That sheaf of paper- he must have dropped it, because the man finished wrapping his hands and produced the note from another pocket, and held it out for Tristan to take.

Tristan, without shrinking his iron nails, took the paper from the him. He smirked, grey eyes twinkling with mischief or ill intent. Tristan decided not to analyse.

“I’m confident that you’ll find the information interesting, for personal reasons. Royals often frequent places like that,” He cocked his head to the side, in the direction of the tavern, “For gossip. And you don’t strike me as the type to care about who marries who.”

“How-”

“I’ve been watching you.”

Tristan edged closer to the man, who didn’t retreat. “I don’t care who you are, but if you’re planning something-”

Smirking, he raised his hands in mock surrender. “Fear not, Your Highness. I am but a messenger.”

“A messenger who can climb buildings and fight as well as an assassin?”

“I have a complicated past.” He folded his arms. “And a lot of enemies. At least that’s something we have in common.”

Tristan opened his mouth to retort, but the man suddenly leapt and caught the dipping edge of the rusted pipe, swinging himself upwards and somersaulting onto the scaffolding.

With a roguish wink and a salute, he called out. “The name’s Nox, by the way. If you need me again, you’ll know where to find me.”

And with that, he vanished.

Leaving Tristan in the alleyway, nails drawn. And feeling incredibly stupid.

With a huff, he straightened and checked himself. There was a bruise blooming already on his shoulder, so he froze the skin around it.

His iron nails shrank back into his skin, and he unrolled the sheaf of paper. The writing was small and sloped, and the ink had bled as if water had soaked into the paper, despite it being dry.

“Tell the Queen of Terrasen to protect her youngest. Power and sway are much coveted, and those who seek it attack the weakest link in the chains of royalty.”

Wait….

Marion?

She was being targeted? For sway over Terrasen?

For a moment, he wasn’t in the dingy alley next to the tavern. He was back where he was five years ago, watching Astrian’s back from his hiding spot and she snarled at the dark shapes in front of her.

Memories of the incident flashed back to him, unbidden, as Tristan braced his hand on the wall. He clenched his jaw and squeezed his eyes shut, willing his breathing to stay even and the thoughts to vanish. He couldn’t break down here, not when he might be seen.

Tears pricked the corners of his eyes and he pressed his palms into his face, gasps shuddering out of him.

Marion was being targeted. He needed to tell Queen Aelin.

He didn’t stop to think that it might have been a false alarm, or a ruse to weaken Terrasen. Even if that were the case, it wouldn’t do any harm to guard her, just in case.

And if the chances were that Nox had been telling the truth, then there was no way he’d let Marion be hurt like that.

So, he put the note into his pocket and shifted into an owl, swooping across the Adarlanian rooftops and back to the palace.

#iron and steel #fanfic #throne of glass #tog #tog fanfic #aelin ashryver galathynius #rowan whitethorn #dorian havilliard #manon blackbeak #terrasen #sjm

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fvkisla · 5 years ago

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hi. I’m v sick at the moment so this should be interesting xD enjoy the sassy sarcasm that is my existence!

PREFERRED NAME — Lo. I really dislike my full name so I shorten that shite.

PRONOUNS — she/her

AGE — as old as time itself if time started 24 years ago.

PINTEREST — okay, I’m a bad rper and female in general and I don’t understand pintrest. like I open it and my face looks like this

DISCORD — it’s historicallo something but again, I’m never on because I suck.

TUMBLR (PERSONAL/MUSE/RPH) — historicallo.tumblr.com !! I’m never on it but its like an archive of baby Lo

OTHER SOCIAL MEDIA YOU’D LIKE TO SHARE — *shamelessly plugs my art instagram* follow loartx !!

MYER-BRIGGS — ENFP-T

HP HOUSE — Ravenpuff all the way

ZODIAC — gemini

DO YOU BELIEVE IN ASTROLOGY? — YES. I am a gemini through and through (if you think gemini’s are the worst then you are reading trash zodiac shite xD) and I have found my friends and family have lined up quite accurately with that.

HOW OLD WERE YOU WHEN YOU STARTED RPING ON TUMBLR — 16! (thought I did roleplay on neopets when I was 12 because I’m fucking cool)

WHAT YEAR WAS IT? — 2012????

NAME A RANDOM ROLEPLAY THAT STICKS OUT IN YOUR MEMORY — notanotherhighschool rp because I feel like that’s when I really fell into my character development.

WHAT WEIRD ANIMAL WOULD YOU HAVE AS A PET IF IT WAS REALISTIC — FENNEC. FOX. I love them??? I got to hold one once and I cried. I went to see them at the zoo after a hard falling out of a friendship and I cried. they own my heart. his name would be reginald and we would be glorious.

NAME THE FIRST SONG ON YOUR DISCOVER WEEKLY ON SPOTIFY OR THE FIRST SONG THAT COMES ON APPLE MUSIC / ITUNES SHUFFLE — Painkiller by Beach Bunny 🤘🏻

NAME A BOOK THAT YOU READ IN SCHOOL THAT YOU SURPRISINGLY LIKED — *screams* IT’S A PLAY BUT I LOVE SHE KILLS MONSTERS AND IT’S SO WONDERFUL

NAME A BOOK YOU HATED THAT MOST PEOPLE LIKED — lord of the motherfucking flies. kill it.

WHAT TV SHOW DID YOU RECENTLY BINGE? — black mirror. ugh, I love it.

FAVOURITE QUOTE — “though she be but little, she is fierce”

LINK TO A VINE THAT EXUDES YOUR ‘ENERGY’ — honest x

DO YOU WRITE OUTSIDE OF RP? WHAT DO YOU WRITE? — I got my degree in Creative Writing :3333 I specialize in historical fiction and realistic drama. my medium I specialized in is script/screenwriting yeeet

THREE YOUTUBERS YOU STILL TRUST — farfromsubtle (all of those bastards), superraedizzle, booksandlala, safyia nygaard, shane dawson

A CELEBRITY CRUSH THAT JUST WON’T QUIT — and IIIIiIiIiIiIIII -HOLY SHIT- will always LoooVvVVe Y O U

EVER MEET A CELEBRITY? SHARE YOUR STORY — no BUT the beach my family has a house at, adrian brody also has a house there so ????

WHAT’S YOUR PICTURE-PERFECT NIGHT? — literally watching bootleg theatre shows with friends while drinking and talking about different theatre things until 3 am.

A CONSPIRACY THEORY YOU KINDA BELIEVE IN — none actually. Idek why that is.

ARE ALIENS REAL? — FUCK YES!! we can’t be alone in this universe ok we simply CANT !!

PLAY ANY PHONE GAMES? WHICH ONES? — BITLIFE OWNS MY SOUL

WHAT’S A FILM YOU LOVED WHEN YOU WERE YOUNG AND RECENTLY WATCHED, ONLY TO FIND OUT YOU DON’T ANYMORE — LITTLE FUCKING MERMAID. DON’T GET ME STARTED. I HAVE A THING ABOUT THE LITTLE MERMAID. linday ellis actually did a really good video about the problems with it.

DO YOU COLLECT ANYTHING? — alice in wonderland copies and memorabilia, books, student debt, and fennec fox stuffed animals

WHAT’S SOMETHING YOU WANT TO LEARN MORE ABOUT BUT YOU’RE TOO LAZY? — except for languages or instruments because I don’t have the dedication, I’m a very much a person who loves to learn. I sometimes research for fun........#nerd

THREE LANGUAGES YOU DON’T SPEAK, BUT WISH YOU COULD — french ( I speak some), sign language (same), japanese (literally know like three words)

MOVIE YOU’VE WATCHED MORE THAN 5 TIMES — coraline. I actually saw it 3 times in theaters and a billion times on dvd.

NAME A FICTIONAL CHARACTER FROM TV/FILM/MOVIE/GAME/BOOK THAT YOU FIND YOURSELF PROJECTING ON / YOU RELATE TO — Beatrice from Much Ado about Nothing and Jo from Little Women

DO YOU FOLLOW ANY SPORTS? WHO DO YOU ROOT FOR? — Only college hockey and SUNY OSWEGO BABBBY

HOBBIES BESIDES WASTING AWAY HERE? — video games, reading about and participating in theatre, reading, art, writing, procrastinating on writing, makeup and improv comedy.

PLUG A TV SHOW / MOVIE / BOOK / VIDEO GAME / ETC… YOU WISH MORE PEOPLE WOULD CHECK OUT — BIOSHOCK, BIOSHOCK 2, AND BIOSHOCK INFINITE. THEY MAY BE OLDER BUT UGH. THEY GOOD. also check out farfromsubtle youtube pls and thank. they so goood.

WHOSE BRAIN WOULD YOU LIKE TO PICK, ALIVE OR DEAD? — anne boleyn or henry the viii

TEAM EDWARD OR JACOB? — team fucking anything else. TEAM SATAN

LAST MOVIE SEEN IN THEATRE — the new lion king movie. it was meh.

DO YOU STILL READ? — MY ROOM IS OVERTAKEN BY BOOKSHELVES AND I GO TO BARNES AND NOBLE EVERY MONTH. NOT ONLY DO I STILL READ, I HAVE A PROBLEM

IF SO, WHAT ARE YOU CURRENTLY READING? — Salem 1692 which is a day by day account of the witch trials. it’s a big boi. I’ve been reading it on and off since june.

ON A SCALE OF 1-10, HOW MUCH DID YOU HATE FILLING THIS OUT? – a solid 4?

#wshedooc #wshedtask002 #((watch out she's out of character ;; ooc))

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theyaremydivision · 7 years ago

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Eleven questions

Post the rules.

Answer the questions given to you by the tagger.

Write eleven questions of your own.

Tag eleven people.

Tagged by @captainofthegreenpeas ; thank you very much ! it took me forever to answer, sorry !

1) Best Disney Villain? (If you’re not into Disney, best villain of a children’s film)

Well, my personal favourite is Claude Frollo, mostly because of the original novel. He’s a terrible person, and even a worse one in the Disney movie, so I guess it’s a good start. Then, there’s the fact that he’s just an human being with no superpower and still one of the most vile and dangerous Disney villains.

Honorable mentions: Jafar, Scar, Maleficent, Captain Hook...

2) Your favourite hero/ine duels your favourite villain/ess. Who wins? Who dies?

I can’t tell who’s my all-time favourite villain. Let’s stick to the comic books ones : in this case, it’s Harvey Dent/Two Face. My favourite hero being Batman, well... it’s much likely that Batman wins. Harvey wouldn’t die, tho.

3) Pick one: a big pile of dishes to wash by hand OR a massive pile of laundry to wash in a washing machine. (You can tell what I’m procrastinating right now can’t you?)

The dishes !! I hate to do the laundry.

4) Pick one: You write a masterpiece, but it isn’t acclaimed until 200 years after you die and your authorship is disputed, OR you earn fame, fortune and fans in your lifetime but because your work is So Bad, It’s Good.

Oh my god, this is a tough one, especially considering that I actually wanna become a writer. It would be awful to die before getting any recognition for my work, but I’d obviously prefer to write a masterpiece.

5) Goriest/grossest death scene you’ve ever read/watched? (For the sake of spoilers, feel free to say how they died but not who died)

Anything involving a skull being smashed. I’m thinking of Game of Thrones (season 4) and The Walking Dead (season 7).

6) The book/movie with the best plot twist is:

Maybe not the best, but the one in Spiderman Homecoming made me scream :’‘) Also, I was mesmerized the first time I saw Gone Girl.

7) Name a song that lifts your mood

Oh. Bombez! - Alain Bashung, these days.

8) Your best fanwork? Your least best?

The least best (I’d say the WORST lmao) was a fanfic I wrote when I was... idk, 11-12 years old ? The pairing was Kirby x Meta Knight and I cringe so hard every time I think about it again.

The best ? Hmmm... Couldn’t tell. I started a Hannibal fanfic four years ago, it was a crossover AU with The Hunt (Jagten). I still really like the ideas I had for this work, but I never finished it. Never went beyond the first four chapters. Last year, I wrote a short fanfic about Percival Graves but it wasn’t that good. A few years ago I wrote a Post-Reichenbach Sherlock one-shot, I was kinda proud about it, but I’m pretty sure that I’d hate it now.

9) The year is 2576. The dust cloud clears. One meme is left standing. It is:

(can’t believe I actually thought about it for several minutes)

I couldn’t decide so I did 2+5+7+6 and chose the 20th picture in my meme folder :

OH MY GOD. (I don’t even know the origins of this meme)

10) On the spectrum from hero—->villain, which character sits most exactly in the middle, neither one or the other?

My first thought went to Adrian Veidt - Ozymandias from Watchmen. I know I’ve been thinking a lot about him recently, but I genuinely think that he’s standing perfectly in the middle between good and evil.

I LOVE ONE (1) MAN !!!!

11) Your favourite trope/cliché?

Ooooooh myyyy gooood. Too many. Too many character tropes, too many plot tropes... Let’s say daddy issues. I think it includes a lot of other tropes that never fail to get me.

My questions for: @bloodfool, @edgeworth-s, @proustration, @prissrosen, @chiefofsinnersandofsufferers, @dying-suffering-french-stalkers, (damn I do not have 11 people to tag) Feel free to do it or not, whether you’re tagged or not !

1) Classic one : if you had a time-travelling machine, would you prefer to see the past or the future ?

2) Who’s your favourite greek god ? And goddess ? Why ? (If you don’t really like/care about greek mythology, you can pick them from any other mythology)

3) One book. One movie. One painting. One song. Only one of each.

4) Who’s the most controversial character you like ? How are they controversial ?

5) Physics, biology, chemistry, maths ; which one is your favourite and why ?

6) What do you usually like the most about a novel ? The characters, the story, the author’s writing style, the general atmosphere ?

7) Describe a perfect meal.

8) What’s your ideal outfit ?

9) Growing up, did you have a role model, real or fictional ? Who was it ?

10) What is the darkest/creepiest/saddest animated movie you ever watched ? (I mean those who are supposed to be for children. Animated movies for adults are somehow always dark, creepy and depressing :’) )

11) If you had to choose between being omniscient or being omnipotent, which one would you pick ?

#finally!#thank you! :D #tag #this was a lot of fun #my english is still bad tho kfjgfjdk

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kitsproject2 · 6 years ago

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EvaluationProject two was all about identity whether that be your identity or exposing other peoples identities at different lengths. the assignment Brief stated that we had to “It’s not the destination, but the journey” “The ‘process’ is the journey by which you end up at your final outcome. This is an essential part of any creative discipline and enables ideas to be developed and refined. This ‘evolution’ should hopefully produce a more successful outcome.” i Felt that my main piece has related to the brief in someway i did follow what the brief stated, i did generate my ideas and research quite bit what i was going to do and how i did it. The creative process i followed to look at different forms of identity and decide whether or not my final outcome was going to portray my own identity or others. In the end i deiced to portray my own as i was struggling on ideas or what i would preform best at. Over time a lot of artists have used there own emotions and feelings to build the fundamental bricks of there projects. To come up with my ideas i would generally just sit there and think while listening to music and jot the odd idea down this is just how my brain generated its ideas the best. I also experimented with different techniques like doubles exposures, slow shutter speeds and long exposures to get to my final outcome. The sources of inspiration i used i guess you could say came from myself and how i really feel about myself and the world that I’ve been born into along with the overindulgence of the society that i live in. other sources of inspiration that i used were photographers like Gillian wearing and Adrian Piper. i took inspiration from Gillian due to the fact that she asked random people to write there current feelings or thoughts onto paper and she would photograph them after i reflected on this and decided i would take some form of inspiration and write on peoples bodys using my feelings and thoughts instead of paper. I also took inspiration from Adrian piper because of her philosophy on basic human nature and society and usage of ostracism which really helped me come up with my final outcome.the planning that i used to come up with my final outcome was pretty much using my primary research and mind map from the beginning of the assignment. The things i had to think about when planning or executing my shoot were the basic fundamentals of lighting, angles and composure. I also had to think about the layout of the wiring on the models body that i used to make sure you could see the majority of the writing which was actually quite hard to achieve, thats also where the stylistic decisions also came into play because i had to really think about the composure and the way the models were set up which i experimented with a lot. I didn’t use any post production techniques as i shot on film because i feel like film links with my identity more than DSLR does. My images that i decided to use are portraying my own identity, i decided to use two separate models because i wanted the images to reflect how i feel that i have two personality's one that i have in front of my friends and loved ones and one that i kind of keep to myself and don’t share with other people. I chose to write my thoughts onto other people because I felt that it kind of linked with identity because I’m reflecting my own identity onto other peoples bodies which is there own personal front or identity that they put on or demonstrate, This is how i would personally say i connected the theme of identity with my final piece and in my opinion i fell that i demonstrated this quite well. I used symbols and words to express my own identity, for example for the first image i wrote Ciggies and Tinnies on Rubys body due to the fact that i numb my feelings and emotions a lot thought the use of alcohol as its and easier option. i wrote ciggies because i smoke a lot because I’m very stressed out and feel like it represents not really caring about life because i smoke cause i fear of growing old. I also outcast on her chest because that's how i feel a lot of the time that I’m out-casted from society and don’t feel as accepted as most people are which has been the case ever since i was young.I stated the word Punk as well because i perceive to my friends a lot of the time that i live a bit of punky life style because I’m not phased or don’t care where in actual fact i do. I wrote rest on her hand because i never get to rest or shut off and spend most of my life awake because I’m constantly thinking of the past and present or problems that have absolutely nothing to do with me which have quite and affect on me. I painted a mask black and put it on her face to represent how i mask my feelings to everyone and how i feel. I also drew a question mark on the mask because i want to question identity because what really is identity, does anyone actually really have one or are they just trying to fit into some stereotype that there actually not. I also wrote a comfort in being sad which was a line taken from Nirvana- frances farmer will have her revenge on seattle, which meant quite a lot to me when i first heard it because it spoke wonders to me as i couldn’t agree more as a lot of people can’t seam to get out of the mind set of being sad because maybe they don’t actually won’t to because what do you have to worry about when being happy?? is a stress free life really good for the human brain. I also chose to add the antichrist symbol into the image because I’m a strong believer against religion as i think it is on of the biggest downfalls of humanity and was only set in place to control society before we had a proper democracy set in place, being a anti Christ also offers free will which is the devils temptation which i would rather chose then having my life planned out for me. The other image i chose to use was of my close mate Boris i took many photos of him as i did Ruby to try and find the best one i also had a really cool double exposure of him but you can’t really see the writing and symbols on his body so i decided not to use it. For the image that i chose to use of Boris i started off by writing suffocation of the soul on his chest because that's the sort of affect i feel that my anxiety and other issues have on me as they are constantly suffocating me and stopping me from being the person that i actually am. I also wrote damaged goods on him as I’ve had things damage me in my past and things that still damage me in the present which i think a lot of people suffer from. I also drew the Anarchy sign on his body as I’m a slight anarchist and don’t completely agree with democracy but who really does. also being a part on the sub culture of anarchy means being a social outcast which I’m deffinelty fit into. I understand that in art and photography that profanity is maybe frowned upon or not entirely accepted but i asked Boris to pose like this because its how i feel toward the world and a lot of people that i come across, this may come across a bit self profound but its how i feel. what made me choose what i did was i felt that i could preform the best if i related it on my personal reasons which i kind of struggles with and procrastinated as I’m not a very open person and am quite reserved which i meant i struggled with this assignment and epically the evaluation but if i had chosen anything else it probably wouldn’t have been done to my best ability. I feel that both of my images go together and tell a story about my own identity. I'm quite satisfied with my final piece if anything I’m almost quite shy about it but i like the look of the final outcome i feel that it links quite well with the assignment of identity and that there's a lot of hidden messages in there even to the point of the colour of the image but the true satisfaction is up to the viewer of the image. I think my weakness of this project were the generation of ideas as it doesn’t seem like i had a lot but my mind was pretty set on what i wanted to do from the get go which explains the lack of ideas. My strengths i would say would be the framing and lighting of the images as i didn’t have much to work from as i wasn’t in a proper studio and didn’t have a lot of space and had to make do with what i had. If i was to do it again i wouldn’t have left everything so last minute and would have tried to generate more ideas. But overall I’m quite happy with the final outcomes.

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theliteraturenerd · 7 years ago

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Getting Unstuck, Writers’ thoughts on writer’s block. Illustration by Caitlin Hazell, Article originally published on Rookie

Fran Lebowitz

(From an interview on Bullseye With Jesse Thorn)

I have only one fear in life, and that is of writing.

Up until the point that I got my first actual writing job, I loved to write. I wrote all the time when I was a kid, and when I was a teenager. But the second I got my first $10 writing assignment from a tiny, tiny newspaper, suddenly I hated to write. Part of it is that I just hate work. I am by nature a sloth—I am really lazy, and I really don’t like to work. I have never had any work that I’ve enjoyed.

I’ve spent most of my life reading, and I have probably never read without feeling guilty. I always feel that I’m supposed to be doing something else—and I always am supposed to be doing something else. When I was a kid, I was supposed to be doing homework; as an adult, I’m supposed to be writing. If I tell myself, “Fran, you have to write,” I will not do it. I am so resistant to authority that I am resistant to my own authority.

Writer’s block is painful. There are painful things in our lives that we don’t seem to be able to fix. Things that you know the origin of, you have a high chance of fixing. Obviously, if I knew exactly what this was, I would fix it. I do not know what it is, exactly. I have my theories, but I don’t really know. However, I do not believe that I will never write again. And since no one would ever accuse me of being a cockeyed optimist, probably I will.

Joss Whedon

I wasn’t sure how to start this, so I did anyway. I’ve faced plenty of writer’s block in my time, though maybe less than some. I’ll lay out whatever rules for dealing with it that come to me. I think I’ve already laid out the first.

Control your environment. No one comes or goes. You’re alone, with enough time not only to write but to fall into the place of writing, which can take a while. No internet, no phone. Play music. It can amp the mood and separate you from the people on the other side of the door. (I listen to movie scores when I write. Nothing with lyrics—too distracting. Modern movie scores are very drone-y, in a good way for writers. Just sustained emotion. Hans Zimmer, Rachel Portman, Carter Burwell, Mychael Danna…there’s tons.) Make sure your desk faces the right way. (I have to face the room, not the wall.) Not too much clutter…it all matters.

Start writing. You can overthink anything. You can wind yourself up into a frenzy of inertia by letting a blank page stay blank. Write something on it. (Don’t draw something on it. The moment I doodle on a page I know nothing else will ever go on it. The blank page is scary, but it’s also sacred. Don’t mar it.) Anything can be rewritten—except nothing.

Be specific. You want to write something. Why? What exactly are you going for? Whether you’re at the beginning or the middle or the last damn sentence of something, you need to know exactly what you’re after. Verisimilitude? Laughter? Pain? Something that rhymes with orange? Whatever it is, be very cold about being able to break it down, so even if you walk away, you walk away with a goal.

Stop writing. Know when to walk away, when you’re grinding gears. This is tricky, because it’s easy to get lazy, but sometimes straining for inspiration when it’s not there is just going to tire you out and make the next session equally unproductive. I believe that Stephen King once likened it to kissing a corpse. But then, he would. Walk away, relax, and best of all…

Watch something. Watch, read, listen—it fills the creative tanks, reminds us why we wanted to write in the first place, and often, it’ll unlock the thing that’s missing. That doesn’t mean you’ll see something and subconsciously steal from it (though it doesn’t 100% NOT mean that), it just taps into the creative place a blocked writer can’t access. Very often I’ll see a movie that’ll completely inform what I’m writing, which will bear no resemblance of any kind to that movie. I’ll just know how I want to feel when I’m writing it. (Episode 10 of season three of Buffy: totes indebted to The Last Temptation of Christ.)

Have a deadline. I would probably never get anything written if it weren’t shooting next week. I’m a terrible procrastinator, which means the adrenaline of last-minute panic is my friend. (It’s all that kept me afloat in school, I’m sad to say. My attention has a disorderly deficit. There was no acronym for that when I was little.) But you can create deadlines of your own. Friends are good for this. Make yourself mutually accountable—you have to deliver such-and-many words by this-or-then time, as do they. You might not always (or ever) hold to these, but they can help you remember that your writing may matter to someone besides yourself.

Have rewards. I’m talking about cookies. Actually, I’m finishing with cookies. What matters more? Earn them, then enjoy them.

Malcolm Gladwell

I deal with writer’s block by lowering my expectations. I think the trouble starts when you sit down to write and imagine that you will achieve something magical and magnificent—and when you don’t, panic sets in. The solution is never to sit down and imagine that you will achieve something magical and magnificent. I write a little bit, almost every day, and if it results in two or three or (on a good day) four good paragraphs, I consider myself a lucky man. Never try to be the hare. All hail the tortoise.

Susan Orlean

1. If you think you are suffering from writer’s block, stop writing immediately.

2. Walk away from your computer.

3. Remember this: writer’s block doesn’t exist. What does exist is a condition in which you don’t really know what you’re trying to say, and therefore are having trouble saying it.

4. Don’t try to think of what you’re trying to say—yet. Go do something other than writing or thinking, preferably something where you’ll sweat (running, weeding the garden, walking the dog) or be pleasantly distracted (cooking, going for a drive).

5. When you’re done with that diversion, start thinking about what you still need to learn before you know what you’re trying to say. Don’t start writing yet.

6. Usually this will require making some phone calls, or doing some research. DON’T START WRITING YET.

7. Once you’ve done that additional research and thinking, start composing in your head the idea that got you stuck.

8. Find someone whose opinion you trust. Explain to her what you are writing. Listen to yourself as you’re talking. You’ll be sorting out your thoughts as you’re talking.

9. NOW sit down and try writing that down. If you’re still stuck, maybe you still don’t know what you’re trying to say. Repeat steps 1 through 9. If necessary repeat again. And again.

10. Celebrate getting past a hard part of your writing!

Adrian Tomine

The worst case of writer’s block I’ve ever experienced struck when I was 14, before I’d actually written anything. I knew that I wanted to be a cartoonist more than anything, but thanks to a childhood spent reading superhero comics and science fiction novels, I’d gotten it in my head that you needed not only an idea, but also a plot and even an entire fictional “universe” before you even started, so instead of actually writing or drawing, I sat around wishing I was writing or drawing. And when I did eventually stumble upon what I thought was a suitable idea (e.g., Elric of Melniboné mixed with Neuromancer, only it’s set in an alternate, futuristic version of the 1950s, and all the characters are robots…or are they?), it was so ambitious and convoluted that I would get frustrated and give up before I had completed a single page.

Fortunately, I soon discovered comics by people like Chester Brown, Harvey Pekar, Julie Doucet, Seth, and Joe Matt—people who made comics about themselves, about everyday life. At first I was like, “You can’t just do a story about waking up and making a can of soup for breakfast!” But then I’d find myself thinking about that story for a long time after I’d read it, and going back to those comics and rereading them, trying to figure out what made them so compelling. I wasn’t smart enough to work up any big theories about the true nature of art or anything like that, but I did feel, admittedly arrogantly, that if they could do stories like that, so could I.

I felt like I’d been trapped behind a massive roadblock for years, and suddenly I was able to just hop right over it. I could write and draw about anything, even the most mundane occurrence in my generally mundane teenage life. The ideas had been there all along, I just didn’t realize that they counted.

Then, of course, I was faced with the realization that making comics was about so much more than just coming up with an idea or a story. Contrary to what I’d believed when I was sitting around endlessly brainstorming (“I’m an amazing cartoonist…all I need is an idea!”), I was terrible. It was obvious that I had a lot of practice and learning ahead of me. But I was actually, finally, writing and drawing; and I was surprised to discover that once I started making comics, those elusive ideas came to me with much greater ease than when I was sitting there staring at a blank sheet of paper. They weren’t high-concept blockbuster ideas, but they were stories I was eager to tell, and that’s a great feeling.

Julie Klausner

Writer’s block is hardly ever a symptom of having nothing to say. It’s usually just your dumb lizard brain beating yourself up because you’re afraid of (in this order, at least for me):

1. Discomfort/ boredom 2. Not knowing exactly what it is you want to say yet 3. Failure

If you can push through the squirminess and clock the hours at the computer like you’re doing brain cardio, puking out whatever it is you MIGHT want to say in a fixed period of time, you’ll be OK. Because once you get ANYTHING on the page, you’ll be able to return to it later and make it better. If you leave and you have nothing, you’re not being very nice to your present OR future self.

The good news is that, even if you’re judging yourself while you barf out that crappy rough draft, what you write is usually not as bad as you think it is! Just make sure you sit on it for a little bit of time before returning to it and editing the shit out of it. It’s always easier to shape something from something than to make something from nothing. So try as hard as you can to blurt something out, even for 10 minutes, and know that once you’re done, the hardest part is behind you.

Writer’s block isn’t magically ordained, or sent down as a decree from God or whatever. It’s not external—you’re the only one doing the blocking! So please try to be gentle to yourself. Being hard on yourself is the #1 cause of misery and wasted time and keeping yourself back. I’ve never heard of anybody who’s bullied themselves into being more prolific or successful.

Give yourself the gift of letting yourself put something down that isn’t perfect. You will return to it later and make it wonderful.

Vanessa Davis

The hardest thing for me has always been the beginning of a project—just getting started.

I went to painting school, and I learned all about how to stretch canvases in all of the olden-times ways, with hand-made stretchers and millions of layers of rabbit glue and sanding (so much sanding). All of this fussy craftsmanship shit. I’d think about painting, but the idea that everything had to be perfect and gorgeous and “right” had been drilled into my brain, and I wouldn’t even be able to start. Any ideas I’d have would immediately be second-guessed (by me) and would evaporate.

After college I decided to make comics, but at first I didn’t really know “how” to make comics. I’d never thought of myself as writer—I didn’t know how to structure a story. I didn’t know how to plan out my pages. I didn’t know how to draw my characters.

I thought back to a painting teacher I had when I was 16, who did one tiny painting a day, just as a way to always have something going. Like a diary. When our class visited his studio, he had thousands of paintings on his wall—the last five years of his life displayed all at once. It was so moving, so cool. I decided to do something in my sketchbook every day. I told myself I wouldn’t to show it to anyone. It could be big or small, a cop-out or an ambitious project.

There’s always something that happens in a day, something worth remembering or noticing. Putting those moments together started to form a story, without my even trying to write one. It was reassuring, but also humbling—it meant that I didn’t always have control over everything I made. And you don’t, either. Sometimes what makes something good is something you improvised, or something you weren’t even conscious you were doing, or something you thought was a bad idea. If you go into a project demanding perfection, you’ll never have a chance to be pleasantly surprised by those lucky “accidents.” But if you leave yourself room to figure things out as you go, you’ll not only have an easier time starting a book/poem/article/diary entry/whatever; you might also end up with a better end product.

I did eventually show people my sketchbook, and those sketches became my first graphic novel, Spaniel Rage. Since then, my process has changed—I found that I do like to do some pre-planning now. But when I just don’t know where to start, I stop and look around, and write and draw whatever I see around me, whatever I’m thinking about. It’s my start button. You can find yours, too.

(Also, I have put a waterproof notepad in my shower. All those good ideas you get in the bathroom go right down the drain if you don’t write them down!)

Jenny Zhang

I have been telling stories and making up nonsense words for as long as I can remember. But around the time I started high school, I started to realize that for me, writing wasn’t just a hobby. It was my freaking life. I knew I wanted to write and not just wanted to write but wanted other people to read what I wrote and not just wanted other people to read what I wrote but wanted other people to read what I wrote and like it and not just wanted other people to like my writing but wanted other people to read it and like it and be transformed by it.

Do you see how if you go down that path you will (a) seem full of yourself and (b) scare yourself into doing nothing by placing outrageous expectations on your writing? So let’s you and I take a step back, and try to remember a time when an afternoon of writing was something to look forward to, not something that caused us crippling anxiety and agony. Here are some tips to get you there:

The internet is not your friend. The internet wants you to do excessive online browsing. The internet wants you to scroll through Tumblr until your wrists hurt. The internet wants you to read other people’s writing. The internet wants you to have 30 tabs up at once that you can’t possibly close until you’ve read every single link from the Wikipedia page on zombies. You have to peel yourself away from the internet.

You could do what Miranda July does here, or you could download an app like Freedom or Self-Control, both of which block you from going online for whatever amount of time you specify. I personally prefer Self-Control, because even if you restart your computer, you still can’t get online as long as you are under the time limit you’ve set for yourself. Also, the app allows you a “whitelist”—a small number of websites, pre-ordained by you, that you can still access. I like to keep one tab open for Dictionary.com and one for Poetry.org, so I can look up words and poems as little breaks between writing bouts.

Give yourself small assignments and projects. I’m the first one to resist any kind of writing exercise because I’m all like, I am far too complex to submit to a lowly writing exercise. I will come up with my own inspiration, thank you very much. And then I go online shopping and spend three hours finding 45 items to add to my shopping cart until I have the equivalent of a down payment for a house in the ol’ cart. So, no, I am not too far advanced, and, yes, I do need a kick in the ass sometimes. So kick yourself. Tell yourself that whenever you get a paper receipt from a store, you will, by the end of the day, write a poem on the back of that receipt, or the first few sentences of a short story.

Take an old book that you don’t care about and a black Sharpie and make an erasure poem, which is where you delete entire chunks of text to create a new poem. It’s way more satisfying to do it to an actual, physical book, but if all of your books are precious, you can check out Wave Books’ online portal for creating erasure poems here.

Keep a notebook at your bedside, and every morning write down whatever you remember of your dreams the night before. If you don’t remember your dreams, make them up. Dream up your dreams.

Go to a café and eavesdrop on other people’s conversations. Write down what you hear, then go back over it and scramble it up, take stuff out, add what you want, and turn it into an absurdist play.

If the physical act of typing or using a pen on paper is somehow a block for you, get a recorder and record yourself telling a story. Transcribe it the next day.

Be curious about other people. You know who has a million and one stories to tell? Your parents. Your grandparents. Your weird uncle. Your weird aunt. These are people who have lived through a lot of shit, and what’s more, they know other people who have lived through a lot of shit. Yes, some of the stories are boring, and some are about how cute you were when you peed yourself at the movies, but there are also amazing, incredibly sad, and incredibly hilarious stories to be uncovered. Gabriel García Márquez’s inspiration for One Hundred Years of Solitude was just sitting around his kitchen table listening to the women in his family gossip. He turned that gossip into gold. You can too.

Read, like all the freaking time. I meet young writers all the time who don’t read, and I’m always like, “What are you doing? Stop writing so much! Read more!” Be a better reader before you start worrying about being a good writer. Reading George Saunders in college inspired me to write better short stories; reading Kafka and Babel and Gogol and Kharms inspired me to write with more imagination. Reading Chelsey Minnis in grad school got me writing poetry again. Ariana Reines’s first book, The Cow, encouraged me to keep writing poetry and eventually to emerge from my writing hole with my own book of poems. Read other writers. Develop your tastes as a reader and eventually, just as Ira Glass says in this video, your writing abilities will catch up to your high standards as a reader.

Dreaming counts! We’re all told that we’re supposed to be “productive.” There’s a glut of things to know about, memes to forward, hashtags to create, instagram photos to take, etc., etc., etc. There’s not a lot of time in our lives to dream. But being a writer is saying that you want to see beauty in places that other people often overlook. So give yourself a day or a week off, or even a few months off, to daydream. But don’t let your brain get comfortable. Make it spin. Give it time to gather strength from ideas.

A lot of writers swear by routine, but I swear by chaos. There’s enough fucking routine in my life. Every day I have to brush my teeth. Every day I have to smile at strangers. Every day I have to worry about money. Every day I want something I can’t have. Every day I find some way to go on! I know that writing every day for an hour would help me tremendously with writer’s block, but I also know that I need an element of wildness in my writing. I need to know that writing is something I do because it sets me free. It makes me feel golden with confidence. It gives me the gift of gab. I feel like a god. I feel like an entertainer. So write when you damn well please.

No one is going to die if you don’t write. The world will find a way to go on. But you might find your soul shrinking the longer you go without writing. The thing about writer’s block is that sometimes it’s real, and sometimes it’s just your brain taunting you: What if you’re not a good writer? What if once you put the words down on the page, it becomes evident that they are not so brilliant after all? And then there’s the fear that if you do write the most perfect story or poem in the whole world, will that mean you won’t ever have another good idea? What if you run out of ideas? Well, then you…

GO OUT AND LIVE YOUR LIFE, BECAUSE AS LONG AS YOU DO THAT YOU WILL NEVER RUN OUT THINGS TO SAY. The best way to avoid living your life, as a writer, is to spend your time worrying about writer’s block. So, live your life for a while. Your talent and your instincts as a storyteller won’t die, I promise. And then when you’re ready, hole the eff up, and write, write, write.

Etgar Keret

“Writer’s block” is a term invented by very spoiled and whiny writers to refer to periods in which they do not feel inspired. The assumption hidden behind this term is that creativity is an everlasting, full-powered fountain, so that if at any given moment we wish to write but nothing exceptional comes out at the other end of our keyboard or pen, there must be some malfunction obstructing the natural cycle of everlasting creativity.

I’d like to offer an alternative perspective. Creativity, very much like love, is a gift. And you don’t get to get gifts all the time. If you go on a date and you don’t like the guy or girl you are meeting, you are not experiencing “lover’s block”—you simply don’t love at that moment, and if you’re patient enough you’ll experience love in the future (probably in the place and the time you’d least expect it). If you don’t write well, keep writing bad stuff (don’t worry, bad writing is completely ecological—it doesn’t damage the ozone layer or give you cancer). If it gets too frustrating, stop doing it—move on to badminton, collect airplane models, or do all those other things that people who don’t write do. But mostly, wait patiently. (Patiently as opposed to impatiently, or angrily, or bitterly—because those kinds of waiting don’t breed future good writing. Patience does.)

Writing isn’t a habit. It’s a unique form of expression. And nobody owes you that special experience on a daily or a weekly basis. But if you make an effort, when it’s gone, to keep living your life and experiencing new things, it will eventually return. And when it does, enjoy it as much as you can, before it goes away again.

Ayelet Waldman

I had writer’s block today. Here’s what it looked like:

I woke up late and sluggish, a result of having spent last night watching a six-episode marathon of Say Yes to the Dress. Too logy to work, I lingered over my oatmeal and tea, reading the New York Times on my phone despite the fact that the actual paper paper was lying on the kitchen table, next to the sugar bowl. Convinced that I would never be able to focus on work without a dose of endorphins, I headed to the gym. An hour later, I was far too physically exhausted to even contemplate opening my computer, let alone work. Ever the taskmaster, I forced myself to it—and spent an hour pinning wool blankets and linen throw pillows to my Pinterest wall.

Then I was hungry. So I ate lunch. Afterwards, I considered what a challenge it is to concentrate on a full stomach, but I forced myself back to the computer. Isn’t it remarkable how an hour of web surfing passes in the blink of an eye? Before I knew it, it was time to pick up the kids.

Another day lost to the torment of writer’s block. Right?

No. Wrong. There is no such thing as writer’s block. There is only procrastination, and laziness. Had I just turned on Freedom and sat the hell down, I could have written at least 1,000 words today. They may not have been good words. In fact, they probably would have sucked. But that’s not the point. The point is not to produce lyrical perfection—that’s what rewriting is for. The point is to sit your ass in your chair and write, even if all you write is a paragraph about what a lazy cretin you are.

Writer’s block is a myth. Get to work.

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