#sorry like vampire Daniel stuff is almost entirely boring to me

[iwtvdramacd18]

Assuming Daniel lives past this season where would you want to see his character go outside of any DM stuff that might happen after season 2? Besides dead please 😂

😭 You really making me to put in work here bc not even just on a hater basis (which I am also on.) I do think Daniel dying IS the narrative decision to go forward with his character because not only does it wrap up his whole deal nicely it also ties into the theme or mortality in general... I would very much like to see Louis come to grips with reacquainting himself a human, meeting him both at sort of the "peak" (pre-peak?) and "fall" of his life there's like so much good ground there. Daniel is interesting BECAUSE he is mundane and thrown into all of this, and while I hate him for it the ways he lashes out (condescending, mocking, etc) because he knows he literally has no other power at hand is dependent on him being human and his fear and frustration pushing him more and more. You take away the vulnerability of that humanity I have no further interest unfortunately... SO TO FINALLY ANSWER YOUR QUESTION ideally he would be very background and not dead but dying. I think him sending Louis letters could be an interesting avenue to go in tbh, a bit of a reversal.

[amylanchester]

PitchWars #PimpMyBio

Hi, I’m Amy.

This is my first ever PitchWars, and I’m hyped af.

About My Manuscript

Title: More Fierce Than Fire (title comes from here)

Genre: YA Contemporary Fantasy

Word Count: 75,000

Comps: The Young Elites by Marie Lu, The Story of Owen by E. K. Johnston

Sixteen-year-old Abigail Hunter, the best healer in Grady Hospital’s Magical Trauma Ward, has a secret. Ten years ago, Abby wished her mother dead on the worst possible day—the day dragons awoke and brought magical powers to everyone in the world. Abby's angry wish became the powerful spell that ended her mother's life. 

Abby has devoted her life to healing magic to atone for the sins of her past. Though she’s still afraid of losing control, she has become increasingly aware of the threat the dragons pose and frustrated that she is helpless to do anything about it. Hoping to develop the skills required to protect others, she joins a new United Nations-sponsored program which promises to give her the chance to work directly with the dragons and their victims. Training with some of the best young mages in the world, she prepares for the war to come.

And the war is coming. When a group of unregistered mages leads the dragons in a deadly attack on American cities, Abby must decide if she’s ready to join the fight against them, or if she’ll be stuck reliving the mistakes of her past forever. 

A Note About Diversity

Diversity is extremely important to me in my writing. Most of the characters in my book other than my MC are POC and/or LGBTQ. I did not feel that I had the skill or experience to write a first-person perspective for a POC/LGBTQ character, so I didn’t. However, I have been fortunate to grow up in an extremely diverse place, so I’ve included a number of POC/LGBTQ characters (loosely) based on real people. I feel that authentic, thoughtful representation is important in all forms of media and am hoping to find a mentor who feels the same.

MS Pinterest Board

Novel Aesthetic (Quotes & More on My Instagram)

About Me

Let’s start this the way you did back in pre-school. My name is Amy Lanchester, and I’m twenty-eight years old. My favorite color is pink (and has been since long before millennial pink became a thing #ILikedItBeforeItWasCool). More Fierce Than Fire is my first novel. 

I’m “from Atlanta” in the way that most people who say they are “from Atlanta” are “from Atlanta,” in that I actually grew up about thirty minutes away and only moved to the city as an adult. I set my book here because I feel that entirely too many books are set in NYC, London, or Chicago.

I’ve been funemployed for the past year.

I started my first “real job” before I’d even finished my master’s degree, and after working there for three years, I decided I wanted to do a few things before I’m too old/settled. So I’ve traveled Europe:

ALL

OVER

EUROPE

and the western United States:

ALL

OVER

THE 

WILD

WEST

and I finally achieved a life goal in writing this book. I highly recommend taking a “gap year” to anyone who is able.

I live with my boyfriend and our beautiful asshole of a cat, Bret. We found him about two years ago at a local McDonald’s hanging out near the drive-thru. We went back the next day and lured him out with bits of hamburger, and he’s been our lovable jerk of a pet ever since. 

Why You Should Mentor Me

- I am really, really serious about this. I’ve devoted an insane amount of time, energy, and research on this project in the past year and fully intend to see it through all the way. I love and believe in my work. 

- I am crazy meticulous. I come from a STEM background, and I use the tools I learned there in my work. I’m a firm believer in spreadsheets, outlines, automation, and using technology to the fullest. I am a grammar nut who googles everything she isn’t sure about and spends hours nerding out reading style guides and grammar blogs.

- I take criticism well. I’m a fairly self-critical person who is realistic about her flaws and shortcomings. Though I love my work, I know it is far from perfect, and I am greatly looking forward to receiving a thoughtful critique. You won’t hurt my feelings. I want my work to be the best it can be, and I know that takes knowledge and experience I don’t have.

Writing History

I had the idea for my MS in May 2016. It was inspired by this tumblr post which made its way to reddit (a site I love and hate and spend entirely too much time on):

I decided I could write that book, and so I did. I wrote a prologue that I cut and part of the first chapter on a train from Warsaw to Berlin in September. I made an outline when I got back home in October, and I wrote the rest of the book during NaNoWriMo 2016. I did finish my 50,000 words in November, but the book wasn’t done. I had a completed (terrible) first draft of about 55,000 words by the first week of December. 

My first draft was mostly just dialogue and action. I discovered that I hate writing description as much as I hate reading it. So my next several drafts mostly involved adding description to scenes, and it took forever. I cut several scenes and characters entirely during this process and added a few more scenes and characters, bringing my final word count to 75,000 words. My current draft contains very little from the original NaNoWriMo draft, and believe me, that’s for the best.

Writing Style

I am definitely a planner. I would have gotten nowhere without my outline or character spreadsheet. However, most of my character’s personalities came out through writing their dialogue. I used dialogue (that I went back and cut because it was boring and redundant) to solve plot problems and work out motivations in scenes. If I ever got stuck, I just started writing a conversation between my characters, and it solved basically all of my problems. 

How I Write 

I started writing in Scrivener, a program I’d gotten for free when I worked at the Apple Store back in 2010. It helped me a lot with organizing scenes and research. I transitioned to Google Docs after a save file got corrupted and I spent an evening panicking that I’d lost everything (I hadn’t, thank God). Google Docs sucks for long documents, but it saves to the cloud every few seconds, so I suffered through it.

I write at night almost exclusively. My best creative work comes after midnight, and usually once I’m already in bed.

I dread having to get back on a normal schedule because the night owl life is best for my writing.

Favorite Writing Resources

- Excel/Google Sheets

- Grammar Girl

- Chicago Manual of Style (I’m too poor to actually own this, but I use their FAQs and this hyphenation table all the time.)

- Hemingway Editor

- Grammarly

- ProWritingAid

Upcoming Projects Preview

I have so many ideas. I think of new project ideas every day, and I constantly struggle not to get distracted by my newest, shiniest concept. Here are a couple of things I’ve started planning:

- Shakespeare’s plays retold in a combined setting like into the Woods or Marissa Meyer’s The Lunar Chronicles. A central, overarching series plot with individual volumes devoted to some of the plots of the original plays. I’ll be combining side characters from one show with main characters from another.

- A space opera/sci-fi series centered on a girl who rescues an alien from a hostile species at war with Earth’s space empires. The aliens have superior technology and are annihilating the space colonies, but we can’t communicate with them. My MC and her android nanny devise a method for rudimentary communication and are captured by government forces who have ulterior motives.

Stuff I Like

Books

- Harry Potter, obviously. Prisoner of Azkaban is my favorite. I spent years convincing myself I was a Gryffindor like Hermione, my hero, but I’m really a Ravenclaw.

- The Young Elites by Marie Lu

- Exit, Pursued by a Bear by E. K. Johnston

- A Song of Ice and Fire by George R. R. Martin

- Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams

- Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov

- 1984 by George Orwell

- Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes

TV Shows

I freaking love TV. 

I’m convinced that if Ray Bradbury had lived in the Golden Age of Television that we’re living through, he would never have written Fahrenheit 451.

A short list of shows I love: Futurama, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Parks and Recreation, BoJack Horseman, Game of Thrones, The Handmaid’s Tale, Breaking Bad, The Wire, Jessica Jones, Broadchurch, Steven Universe, Stranger Things, You’re the Worst, Crazy Ex-Girlfriend

Musicals 

I love Broadway so much. 

I’ve been in (school productions of) Once on This Island, Les Miserables, Into the Woods, and Dreamgirls. Other shows I love include Hamilton, The Book of Mormon, The Last Five Years, Aida, Phantom of the Opera, Evita, The Sound of Music, Fiddler on the Roof, and West Side Story.

Cosplay 

I picked up cosplay a few years back. I didn’t own a sewing machine, didn’t know how to sew, and had limited crafting experience. I taught myself using books, online tutorials, and YouTube videos. Some of my projects:

Daenerys Targaryen from Game of Thrones

Chell from Portal

Luna Lovegood from Harry Potter

Elsa from Frozen

Joy from Inside Out

Eleven from Stranger Things

That was entirely too long, and I’m sorry.

If you read this far, you’re probably my soulmate. Please send me a message on Twitter and let me know. :)

[killingdoll]

Warnings: spoilers, inappropriate jokes, careless language, messing up the order of events

Is there anyone else who is surprised that this season only has 13 episodes? I remember reading somewhere before that there would be 16 episodes. Where have the three episodes gone?

On a slightly note, I’ve just learned that Michael Narducci will leave the show after this season, giving full rein to the capable hand of Julie Plec. Given the mess that The Vampire Diaries became, this is by no means positive news. The best I can hope for is the fifth season of The Originals won’t turn into the fifth season of The Vampire Diaries, which, as far as I’m concerned, is an enormous fall from which the show never ever recovered.

But that remains to be seen in the future. For now, let us give a big applaud to Daniel Gillies’ successful directorial debut. I think this is my favorite episode of this season so far.

Mostly because its focus is Elijah’s storyline, his Red Door and the fabled Beast lurking behind, all of which have been postponed for two seasons. Let’s say all of these aren’t a disappointment.

I especially the look of the all-white seemingly endless corridor. Maybe it’s just me but I find all-white places far creepier than dark, dimly-lit places. It probably has something to do with the color white being associated with death in some cultures. Perhaps they had that in mind when they designed this corridor as representation of Elijah’s mind to highlight the grim fact that death follows his each and every footstep.

All in all, the white corridor is very aesthetically pleasing. And the all-white aspect is a beautiful contrast to the ones that set foot in it, namely Freya, Hayley, Hope and later, Elijah (or rather, step out of the door).

Kinda makes me wonder how Finn’s mind would have looked like. What color would have represented his psyche?

Anw, let’s get back to the episode first.

From the screencaps on Tumblr, I almost thought we got to see flashback of Bex in the 80s. Maybe it’s just me but her red dress and hairstyle kinda gives off the 80s vibes.

She looks good btw, as she always does. And she’s ready for some fun with a random guy…

… who happens to be a vampire from Elijah’s bloodline and has a heart attack right after having a little make out session with Bex. Rude (I mean the guy).

This is pretty much a confirmation of Tristan’s fate if there were any doubts after the ninth episode.

Forever bitter I’ve never got to see his transformation into a vampire and Elijah’s exact motive to turn someone he deemed dangerous and lunatic. He could just grabbed any random guy to pose as himself to complete the Klaus-Rebekah-Elijah trio – they were all compelled and who cared if they weren’t real siblings – and compelled the human Tristan to jump off the cliff or something. Yet Elijah just had to give Tristan his blood. His reason for doing so is as enigmatic as how the Trinity managed to elude Mikael despite being baby vamps.

Anw, back to present.

Kol and Bex are quick to deduce what happened to their brother and they’re immediately flying back to Nola.

Klaus’s still pushing Freya to resurrect Elijah while Freya gives him a medical, or shall I say orthopedic, analogy as explanation. Does this have anything to do the fact that her girlfriend is an orthopedist?

While waiting for Rebekah and Kol to catch a taxi home, Klaus spends some minutes giving Klelijah shippers a beautiful speech that ends with a heartbreaking note “I’m so sorry, my brother.”

And then, that Klebekah

The Klaus-Rebekah-Kol squad. Hearts will be ripped and blood will flow. That much we can expect.

Alas, this squad doesn’t last long because Kol’s gotta find the Harvest Girls for a chance to contact Davina.

Why does everyone, including Klaus, have to keep repeating that Elijah killed those four girls? Yes, it was terrible. Yes, it was cruel. Yes, it was inhuman. But it wasn’t anything new at all. At least Klaus of all people should understand this (is the “murdered in cold blood” absolutely necessary?).

At the same time everyone has to keep forgetting that those girls weren’t Harvest Girls to begin with; they weren’t chosen since there were no elders and the Ancestors simply were disconnected. Ironically it was Elijah who ‘chose’ them and now they’re having the title and powers of Harvest Girls to brag about whenever they are onscreen. It’s getting a bit boring.

Not trying to justifying Elijah’s act here, just looking at both sides of the matter, which the characters kinda forget to.

Dunno whether to praise Marcel for his gallant chivalry or his naivety that he could take on a 1500-year-old likely-to-be-immortal super evil witch. Remember the last time that creepy witch dude wiped the floor with him?

Naturally Marcel fails big. Better luck next time.

So big question: who’s in possession of the dagger that can kill Marcel?

Kinda surprised the big bad Hollow just lets him take a nap right there and does nothing to him while she threatened to build her kingdom upon his ashes before.

This Hollow girl is probably the first villain in the entire TVD and TO universe to have absolute nothing for viewers to sympathize with. The name truly befits her.

Even her motives are unclear. Vincent was rightfully terrified by the prospect that once resurrected, she would burn the city to the ground (for what?). So far she hasn’t burned anything, just strolling around the city in fancy footwear making flowers withered and killing her own followers or lurking in the cemetery. Huh?

Maybe deep down she’s still a teenage girl who wanna have fun. Next she might even want to go to school just so she can be in the cheerleading squad and attend the Homecoming ball.

Freya’s got to witness a merry moment of her younger siblings. Such a rare sight to see Kol joke and throw stuff playfully at Elijah. And of course Klaus just has to bring snack to the dinner table.

Lucky for Freya she doesn’t open a door that stores some of her little brother’s more… mature memories with his lovers over the years (Katherine, Celeste…). That would be really awkward.

The entire episode could be dubbed ‘The Trip Down Memory Lane’ instead.

Have to strongly disagree with Hayley here. The person who’s closest to Elijah should be Klaus as they’ve been by each other’s side since the very beginning and they’ve seen the best and the darkest aspects of each other. Hayley’s been with him for about seven years and she has yet to see everything that makes Elijah Elijah, the evidence being she has no idea about the existence of the Red Door and the Beast. If it had been Klaus who was sent into the pendant, the outcome would have been vastly different as he would not have run, he would not have been shaken to the core facing the Beast and he would have been strong enough to fight this manifestation of Elijah’s darkness. But since Klaus has to hunt the rose bushes, poor Hayley has to suffer by the hand of the Beast before once again Hope saves the day.

Although the Haylijah ship has hit a rather bulky rock, on the bright side it’s a necessary challenge and development of their relationship. No relationship, I believe, can be deemed healthy and strong if the partners have not seen each other at their best and their worst.

Both Phoebe and Daniel deliver this heartbreaking sequence really well. While Phoebe’s done a great job in portraying Hayley’s terror and despair at being assaulted by the darkest version of the man she so loves, whom she fails to reach and wake, Daniel nails the Beast’s mute malevolence. There’s something as beautiful as it is unsettling in the Beast’s serene expression and his absolute silence in contrast with the atrocities he’s been committing.

Can we perhaps think of this Beast as a humanity-off Elijah? We’ve never seen an Original switch his or her emotions so this is the closest to that.

Elijah looks so lonely here.

In hindsight the whole entering-Elijah’s-mind could be a perfect opportunity for the writers to tie the knots with Tristan’s storyline by showing the scene where Elijah turned Tristan and compelled the Trinity to become the Mikaelsons – something we’ve been deprived of since forever – instead of showing two scenes from the first season.

Hearing Klaus praising Elijah once again moves my little Klelijah heart. Elijah may not truly be the best of them but Klaus certainly thinks he is.

Still, it probably takes a while for his reassuring words to sink in Hayley’s scarred heart.

I’m a little disappointed in Kol for being ready to leave the city. Family’s crisis aside, he gives up too soon. The Harvest Girls give him a witch headache, sure; they also break his neck and take his stuff, sure, but come on, he’s a Mikaelson who has gone through death twice; shouldn’t he be a little more adamant in his will to see and speak to Davina?

Of course, the Hollow brings Davina back with a catch. Having gone through Klaus’s mind, she should have known better than to link herself to Davina; didn’t the last time Freya and Elijah sacrifice Davina in order to defeat their foe? The history may just repeat itself.

The Hollow can be considered the Mikaelsons’ in-law, can’t she?

Wait, does that mean the Hollow is mortal?! As in killable?!

Looking forward to the next episode.

[Rant] Phantomesque – The Originals 4×10 Warnings: spoilers, inappropriate jokes, careless language, messing up the order of events Is there anyone else who is surprised that this season only has 13 episodes?