#that i don't write a FREAKING NOVEL

[lunaetis]

@v-iciious asked :

“I am who I am because of you. You are every reason, every hope, and every dream I’ve ever had.” // for violet !!

unprompted. || always accepting

─「ヴァイオレット」─  you're a weapon and weapons don't weep.

                THE BEAST OF BOUGAINVILLIA was exactly that. she was a living weapon and a proof of how far one could be pushed into becoming deadly enough to be called a weapon rather than a person. despite possessing an appearance of a young woman, those azure eyes had shown no emotions ever since she was brought up. she was raised, and taught to be nothing but a killing machine. a living, breathing tool for someone to use, and a BEAST to bring victory to her master. fight and kill. blood and ashes. war and sacrifices. that was all she knew. that was her entire life. one order after another. no question, no emotion, none.

                and here she was, the same beast, the WEAPON whose her collar was cut loose and she latched onto the person who freed her from the officials ready to dispose of her. bright blue eyes were no longer emotionless, however, as they sparkled with silent delight every time they landed upon HIM. perhaps, not unlike a puppy awaiting to be petted, to be praised, to be called.

                " i am who I am because of you. you are every reason, every hope, and every dream i've ever had. "

                and the SOLDIER stared at him, feeling the warmth of his hand against her cheek, feeling the warmth of his words seeping into her heart. each syllable registered itself into her mind, wrapping like vines so tightly and securely around the BEATING ORGAN in her left chest. and she stared at him with her eyes revealing everything words cannot.

                she looked at him like he was light, like he was hope in the darkness, like he was that silver-lining through the endless storm, like he was dawn that broke the dark, like he was EVERYTHING.

                and it was just that. it was truth. to violet, lir was her reason to live.

                shouldn't it be her who said those words to him ? shouldn't it be HER who told him just how much he meant to her, how she would be so willing to break every bones in her body just to keep him safe ? it should be like that, right ? her gloved hand slowly came over his own, gently pressing it closer to her cheek as she leaned into his touch, head turning so that she could nuzzle her lips into that the calloused palm that had been stained with blood countless of time. even so, she treated it like he was HOLY.

                lir ... lir ... lir ...

                " please don't go where i can't follow. " it was a plead, a confession, a pledge, a VOW, all in one. in that single sentence, it was clear how her whole existence was tied to this person, how her VERY sense of self was made up, and around, the man before her. nothing else mattered, no one else could come close. his existence in her life was so massive that she cannot comprehend GOING FORWARD without him.

                " no matter where the path you walk would lead, whether it leads to salvation, eternal paradise, or literal hell, i will follow you. i will follow you anywhere. " LOVE ... she knew this was love in its purest sense, in the sense that she would have loved him regardless of time, circumstances, or any change in the future. she clutched his hand a little tighter, then leaning forward just so she could rest her forehead to his. like a lost puppy, like a lost soul finally finding a home after wandering aimlessly for so long.

                " i never dream, never hope. i never have desire for anything ... except you. "

                " if a weapon, a war tool like myself can become someone's hope and dream, then it's all because of you. i owe it to you. because you taught me what love is, all the love i have in me is for you and you alone. "

                " this body, this heart — it's all yours, lir. "

[yuzuna123]

Jun...my sweet beloved lonely angel...you don't deserve this my love! 😢😢 i hope future games and future tekken 8 content, or any content after Tekken 8 whatever they may be, manga, light novels, Story DLC's, movies, treats you with the love you have for Kazuya and Jin.

[grassbreads]

Y'know I really value my anonymity on the internet, and I think keeping my "Andromeda Grassbreads, fandom gal" persona completely separate from my real life and creative identites makes my online experience 10x better in just about every way.

HOWEVER, it does drive me absolutely batshit sometimes that anonymity means I can't post about any of my ocs/original creative projects on here.

Like, I'd like to genuinely make/publish stuff about these stories someday, which I want to do under my real name, which means it all has to stay extremely separate from anything grassbreads or my anonymity goes out the window. And that sucks. I am so sure my beloved mutuals would get a kick out of all the little gremlins that live in my brain, and I am just bursting to talk about them. But it's forbidden by my own self-inflicted rules :(.

[earlgreytea68]

Okay. It's time for an AI rant.

My nephew is 13 years old. Whenever he writes a paper for school, I check it over and fix all of his mistakes for him. He said to me, "Maybe I'll proofread your paper for you in exchange," meaning one of the scholarly articles I write for work. I said, "Cool," and gave him the file. And he said, "Well, this is full of errors! See, you always say you have a lot to correct on my stuff, and look at all the stuff you got wrong!" And I said, surprised, "What? Where?" Because I'm sure there are typos in the draft I sent him, but not, like, that many.

And then he pointed to the screen and said, "Look at all the blue and red lines you have."

And I said, "Yeah, but those are wrong. Like, those are blue and red lines I'm ignoring because the computer is wrong." And then I paused and added, "You know you can't proofread a paper by just looking at the red and blue lines, right?" And he gave me the blankest look, because that clearly is EXACTLY what he thinks. And it became even clearer suddenly why, whenever I correct something on his paper, his immediate reaction is, "It didn't have a blue or red line."

There's a very good reason for that: THAT'S BECAUSE THE COMPUTER ISN'T SMART ENOUGH TO KNOW THAT IT WAS WRONG.

I am so tired of being sold the idea that computers are better than humans and so we should just outsource everything to them, which is clearly the lesson my nephew is absorbing in U.S. middle school. COMPUTERS ARE NOT BETTER THAN HUMANS. Like, maybe they are better at humans at crawling through rubble to find people trapped inside. They are also better at preserving things in a searchable format. Things like that. Very limited circumstances.

I don't want to sound alarmist but everything I hear about people using generative AI freaks me out. It's not just that I'm freaked out by people being like, "I use it to write novels!" (Although I don't see how they do, I have tried to have it write fiction for me and the output was truly terrible.) But I recognize my bias around creative writing and so no one needs to credit my views on artificial writing. But! Other things are alarming, too! "I use it to brainstorm x, y, or z." But...why? Why not just...use your own brain...to...brain...storm? The computer doesn't even have a brain to brainstorm with! And you might be like, "But it comes up with things that my brain would never think of!" So would other people! You could also brainstorm with other people! Or even through Google to see what other people have thought before you (not AI). Please don't belittle the wonder of thinking.

I just feel like the marketing around generative AI boils down to "Wouldn't it be easier not to use your own brain to think about things?" Everyone. No. It would not be. Please just trust me on this. I'm not just an old person who is out of touch with technology or something. I promise. USE YOUR BRAINS. IT WILL BE OKAY.

[byanyan]

ok i have one (1) more food ask that i'll be aiming to answer tomorrow... and then i'm thinking i'm gonna try to start getting back on top of my drafts before letting myself poke at more inbox stuff?

[orlissa]

A few weeks ago I read a YA book - it doesn't really matter which one exactly -, set in Argentina and Egypt, in the 1880s, and it included a sentence I cannot get out of my head:

[The dress] had a matching parasol, ruffled and useless save for protecting my skin from the sun.

This unassuming sentence, my friends, is one of the stupidest shit I've ever read (I honestly don't know how it slipped past the editor).

On the one hand, like, consider the word itself: parasol. It literally means "to protect against the sun." To say that a parasol is useless save for, you know, protecting you from the sun, is to say something like "a pen is useless save fro writing."

ITS FREAKING PURPOSE IS TO PROTECT YOU FROM THE SUN.

And even that is not useless - a parasol is vital, especially, you know, in Egypt, where 90% of the novel is set. You don't have sunblock in the 1880s, and, vanity put aside... you don't want to end up with a nasty sunburn - hence the parasol. It's not "useless" - it has one specific and very important function - which it fulfills! It doesn't have to do anything else!

And the most infuriating in the whole thing is that you just know that sentences and sentiments like this stem from the misconception that everything women did or wore pre-20th century is the product of the opressive patriarchy and should be condemned. Corsets are yucky. Long skirt are ewww. Parasols are USELESS.

Heaven forbid that all of these things made sense in their given context.

Honestly, I really wanna see some heroines in historical/fantasy books who go, like "no, I feel naked without my corset, it's like my armor" and "you want me to wear pants? I don't know, I'd feel so awkward." And, you know, heroines who thrive in the period specific femininity, instead of trying to dismantle it, because that's so cool.

[hollow-prey]

So since I've already played through Julian's route once and I know how it ends (in the upright ending, at least) you would think that replaying it would be less stressful and more fun since I know the outcome. Incorrect. Because I am an overly sensitive fool who's emotionally attached and invested and I hate to see him suffer the way he does through the first half of this game.

On one hand, major props to the Ar.cana team for such good, compelling, effective story writing and making such wonderful characters that are so easy to get attached to. On the other hand, their writing was so effective that the whole trial/hanging section and the nightmare segment later on stressed me the fuck out while playing the first time and, despite knowing the (upright) outcome, I'm nervous/ dreading having to go through them again

[glknight]

I am way too broke for my Fantasy Horror setting to get art.

I got Viking Elves.

I got living statue people.

I got Harpy Eagle x Orangutan hybrid birds.

I've got little birds as loud as a loudspeaker.

I got living outlines of people filled with the spots you see when you're blinded by the sun.

I've got Fashionista Spider People.

I've got living shadows that were formerly psychopathic killers.

I've got intense body horror.

I've got Muscular Dommy Mommy Demon Generals.

I've got Non-Binary Crime Lords.

I've got a thing made of mouths and hands and blood (HEAVY SPOILERS for Book 02 involving that reveal).

I've got Cenobite looking corrupted Angels in a cocoon of reality who's mere presence causes madness.

I've got people who have turned themselves into living Hands Of Glory.

I've got SO MANY CHARACTERS, MONSTERS AND ANIMALS I've yet to reveal. And I'm trying to give that to you guys while surviving on $150 a month.

And yet here I am, trying to write the story that ties everything together so I can make an ILLUSTRATED NOVEL SERIES out of the whole thing. And then make a TTRPG set after the story's end.

[ancientgoddessofegypt]

Astro Notes : Short N Sweet - The power lilith holds <3

Lilith in the 1st - Very strong personalities. Gifted in using the eyes to seduce others. Magnetic. Can fight the demons off of you so please be weary of getting to close if you don't want them to see what hides beneath the surface. There angelic, believe it or not. They're not here to see the world as you see it, they have a taboo personality, yes, but its also because they must learn how to live for themselves and not for anyone else.

Lilith in the 2nd - Cash cow. Can basically get any man to give them what they want. They have to be comfortable in getting under peoples skin, because they can trigger people with how they talk. Insensitive? Not exactly. Just doesn't budge and cares to be 'nice'.

Lilith in the 3rd - Creative freaks. Can use the mind in a million ways, but they still seek out one thing that works for them as they are very passionate people and whatever keeps their attention the most they'll go at it forever. They are use to the attention from people since primary school. So they like to hide a lot. They have a weird mind and they don't care to share it with too many people. If they ever considered writing, they could make some pretty interesting stuff. Sibling rivalries are a thing here.

Lilith in the 4th - Tumulous relationships with family & friends. It's because they're the outcast of the group. I mean, they know a lot and they can't stand for nothing but the truth. But sometimes the truth kills, even when they don't mean for it to be. Can be a hard knock life but they make it worth something. They're no angel, just the universe in the flesh. <3

Lilith in the 5th - Captivating presence. Lovely auras, and amazing bodies. Could be good at dancing. Could be a lil promiscuous. Could be a little dangerous. You never know. Secretive/private about their affairs.. But the stories they have I promise you its like reading a novel. Naturally sensual & can't get enough of them, even if you tried ;)

Lilith in the 6th - Goes hard for groups that aren't seen enough. Can have jealous coworkers or people who want to annoy them and get them out of character. Could also have sensual experiences with co workers. Demands compensation. Could be extremely well liked or hated no in between.

Lilith in the 7th - Spicy individuals. People love to hate them. Could have bisexual allegations from time to time. Most people like to be around them but despise them after a while. Sweet as a pie though, most people allow the rumors to get to them but usually these people are naturally sweet and empathetic. Popular loners.

Lilith in the 8th - Strong personalities. Capable of seeing beyond the veil. Has issues with society due to their daring nature but they do come out ready and swinging. Hypnotic presence. Can heal as much as they can poison, so be careful wit em ;)

Lilith in the 9th - Very beautiful spirits who are the epitome of being carefree. The universe takes them wherever their hearts want to go, and the journey is always something that last a life time. Being connected to someone with this placement could give you the feelings of something amazing. Always hold their hand tight because once their gone its over.

Lilith in the 10th - Dreamy auras. Have a knack for the public and the audience can feel their raw energy. Have haters from all area codes, this just makes them more confident. They know how to appease society well, and they can take on roles that others are too afraid to. This is great placement for lilith to be in.

Lilith in the 11th - Could had to fight to keep their self esteem in check. Due to being outcasted alot, they could of been the scapegoat for a lot of reasons that didn't pertain to them much. With time, they learn to accept that their energy isn't for anyone, and that their value is more than what you can define it. Helpful sweethearts who just wants to be around community that gets them.

Lilith in the 12th - The dream world is a nightmare. My apologies to y'all cause I'm suppose to start it off a little sweet. But this is placement of a witch/warlock. You guys have many gifts that go past the ordinary. And you more than likely come up with some ish down the line. There is a time where you will undergo a lot of spiritual refinement to keep your head going. Don't be afraid of what shows up, it might teach you something!

[greaseonmymouth]

I saw this shared around on Threads (why do I go there, I hate it) and commented on as 'this article is so good' and 'must read' including by a few people whose opinion I normally respect, and seeing as monsterfucking and monster everything is like a special little interest for me, I of course instantly clicked through to read it

and I have to say

what the everloving heterosexual fuck is this

two fat paragraphs about omegaverse that don't even mention its origins - I mean - I just - gaze upon this phrase, and despair:

During estrous, Omegas’ vaginas ooze with “slick,” responding to the Alpha’s intoxicating pheromonal perfume.

IT'S CALLED "SLICK" BECAUSE IT'S FROM SELF-LUBRICATING ANUSES. THE REASON THE OMEGAS NEED SELF-LUBRICATING ANUSES TO BEGIN WITH IS BECAUSE THEY DON'T HAVE VAGINAS.

I. have been rendered figuratively speechless. the straights don't know what slick is. the. i. how. how did we end up like this

their dicks swell at the base, creating a “knot,” which lodges them inextricably in the Omega’s slick-soaked (I am so sorry) vagina.

"(I am so sorry)" girl you're writing an article about monster smut and then you have the gall to be embarrassed by the this tame ass (or should i say vagina?) heterosexual omegaverse?

okay, okay. deep breaths. we've only just got started. we started by covering Morning Glory Milking Farm, a minotaur/human erotic romance novel, which well - I've read it, and it's not a bad book by any means, it was actually very very good, a solid story with a great cast and perfectly paced and satisfying romance and loads of sex - is very straight. it's just a minotaur. it's a big guy with a big dick. it's your standard gentle giant/normal sized girl romance. it's not very freaky, but you know, I don't blame the average reader for coming into this thinking this is some out there stuff. gotta start somewhere, right? we didn't all come up through draco/the giant squid crackfic in 2005, you know? and now we've covered Sarah J Maas and we're entering omegaverse territory, this is getting knottier now, right, freakier? this article is going somewhere, right?

you can imagine the intrigue, enemies-to-lovers, and other story lines involved as each captured female eventually finds the member of the barbarian tribe who is destined to worship and fuck the living daylights out of her for the rest of their lives. Oh, and their dicks have a sensitive spur on top designed for clitoral stimulation. It’s just as blue and velvety as the rest of their big alien bodies.

okay so the minotaurs aliens are blue now, i guess.

It seems, also, like the romance genre as a whole is being pushed by monster romance to make things in human-human books as freaky as possible.

ohh?? are we finally getting a proper freak on now??

This genre, “why choose?” or “MMF” (or sometimes even MMMF or MMFM), and also known as “reverse harem,” always features a heroine who is showered with sexual attention by men who are also sexually involved with each other.

having a thousand yard stare moment over here

this author seriously thinks that all these heterofied monster romance tropes are paving the way for the real freaky stuff that is, checks notes, "two hockey players fucking each other while the heroine calls the shots"

this author is positing that human queer erotica/romance are freakier than monster erotica/romance. like. she said that. with her whole chest. black on white.

on one hand a monster, an inhuman being, and on the other, a queer person, a human being. and apparently the real freak is not the minotaur or the blue alien. it is the queer human.

is this satire? it has to be, right?

because if it's not satire, this article is an entire case study in itself on the monstering* of queer people. stunning.

*academic term

[sasukeibu]

Also I read Ring by Koji Suzuki and it sucked ass. It SUUUUCKED. Sometimes dudes write what they know (guys being dudes) and you can't help but rapidly skip over parts wanting the protag to die. WHICH HE DIDN'T. ANYway. Sadako Yamamura is MY wife. She's my wife actually she's mine. Fuck this guy actually.

[olderthannetfic]

A lot of female protag books I've seen in recent years aren't really fandom worthy? At least not fanfic worthy, not sure about the rest of fandom. I notice it's often a very explosive boom of popularity, and there is a lot of buzz but almost no fanfics for the books, movie or show at all. They're power fantasies? But they don't serve anything else that really captivates people to stick around and write.

--

Harry Potter blinded everyone to the fact that books very rarely get big fic fandoms. Yeah, there are a few exceptions, but it's just not something I would expect with 99% of books that are fandom-bait.

The reason is simple and has nothing to do with the books' content: One printing of a novel might be like 20k. A bestseller sold 5k in a week. An unpopular tv show "no one" liked had a million viewers per episode.

There's a real survivorship bias in talking about what generates a fic fandom. We can work backwards and say what generally doesn't generate one, but having all of the traits of the big fandoms' canons tells you nothing about whether this other thing will get a fic fandom.

Here are the top few book fandom sections on FFN:

Harry Potter (847K)

Twilight (222K)

Percy Jackson and the Olympians (80.5K)

Lord of the Rings (58.3K)

Hunger Games (46.4K)

Warriors (27.1K)

Mortal Instruments (17.5K)

Maximum Ride (17K)

Hobbit (13.1K)

Phantom of the Opera (12.8K)

Chronicles of Narnia (12.8K)

Gossip Girl (10.4K)

A song of Ice and Fire (10.1K)

Outsiders (9.9K)

Vampire Academy (8.7K)

Divergent Trilogy (8.4K)

Song of the Lioness (8.0K)

Inheritance Cycle (6.3K)

Look at how those numbers plummet and look at how many of these things have major, popular adaptations with a bajillion viewers.

People are always like "But Twilight...", but the existence of a few freak outliers doesn't mean other books are going to generate that kind of fic or twimoms or people turning Forks into a theme park.

So these recent books' content might contribute to them not taking off in this particular way, but lack of fic doesn't really need an explanation.

[hitomisuzuya]

hiiii! hope you've been doing well and having a good christmas season time!!!💞

not sure if you're comfortable with writing this or not but what about wanderer with a s/o who gets overwhelmed and cries very easily during that time of the month? i just really need some fluffy fluff and you're the best at writing it 🥹

wanderer (scaramouche) x fem!reader. fluffy fluff fluff. period woes. comfort. soft scara

aww merry christmas and happy holidays to you and everyone around the world❤️ i cry very easily during that dreaded time 😭

before this happened, wanderer didn't know he would be thanking himself for having incredible foresight to buy one specific thing for you.

ah, your period. wanderer knew he wouldn't quite fully understand the monster (as he liked to call it) that was your period. he hates that he can't just purge it like he could unruly slimes screwing around too close to sumeru city.

wanderer is frozen with wide eyes. there you are, sniffling and crying with a closed light novel in your lap. he'd in a way sensed when your time of the month is coming, but it still gave him whiplash how the symptoms could suddenly rear their ugly heads at any given moment.

he couldn't imagine what it did to you.

your period also genuinely freaks him out. you are bleeding all the time, therefore you are dying. and you are always in so much pain that it hindered even your movements at times.

"why are doing that nonsense?" wanderer bristled, taking your hands off your face so you would look at him. "stop it," he hates seeing you cry. hates it. he can barely handle it.

"bu-but, the main character died at the end," your words wobbled as you sniffled, uselessly brushing tears away only for more to fall from your eyes.

"did you really like the main character that much?" he asked, glancing down at the light novel in your lap. "what was so great about him?" he was going to try and get to the bottom of this, even if he wasn't the best at expressing himself sometimes. he knew he ran the risk of sounding like an insensitive asshole and making things worse.

"no, not particularly. it's just.." you sniffled again, trailing off as your lower lip trembled.

"hm?" wanderer knew he absolutely had to be delicate in approaching this. please, just tell him how to fix it. it's always hard on him seeing you cry.

"his dog must be so lonely now. the main character promised he would come back, and animals have feelings too. i can't imagine the lonely sadness his poor doggo felt realizing his owner, who cared for him since he was a puppy, wasn't coming back," you are crying more tears now. "the main character is an only child, and his parents are dead. who would take his dog and care for him and love him now? it's just so sad," the words came tumbling out of your mouth.

you buried your face in your hands again, and wanderer let you. he knew you didn't like him seeing you cry.

as wanderer slowly processed what you said, he suddenly knew exactly what to do. he immediately turned and strode to his little hidey spot for gifts he'd gotten you. this one in particular was originally to make up for him being an asshole to you earlier in the week. who knew it would come in handy double like this.

you felt something tap the top of your head. "why don't you ask him yourself? he's right here," you opened your eyes to see wanderer holding a soft, plush dog that looked incredibly similar to the dog you are crying about in your book.

"aw, scara he is so cute," you cooed, taking the plush from him and putting it's nose against yours for a moment. wanderer is incredibly relieved that you instantly stopped crying.

"there, now he isn't going to be lonely or sad. see? he looks happy already," wanderer couldn't believe he was referring to an inanimate object like it was actually alive.

but it sure made you smile.

"he can keep you company while i run out and get some things for you. you need a new heating pad, right?" he hated how hooded your eyes looked from being in pain from cramps and body aches. he was already making a checklist in his head. pads, a heating pad. disgusting chocolate, both kinds.

"i can go with you," you started to get up.

"no. no, just stay where you are," he abruptly held up a hand to stop you from getting up. he could tell it hurt you to even move. he wasn't going to have that. he glared at you a little when you opened your mouth to protest.

sighing, he looked down at the stuffed dog in your lap as he grabbed a blanket to put around you. you would be in less pain while he was gone if you were warm. the concept of heating pads taught him that. "ask the mutt to hold down the fort for me," he knew he sounded incredibly silly, but it was worth it to him to see you smile softly up at him and nod.

before he left, you gave him a quick kiss. "thank you, scara. i love him, he is so cute. you are the absolute best," wanderer's vision on his chest lit up.

[akiizayoi4869]

The discourse around the Roku Novel has been so amusing to me for the past few days that I just had to make my own post about this lmao. Ok so for all of the morons in this fandumb who are hating on Gyatso for what he said to Roku (despite the fact that he was entirely within his rights to do so. There is nothing better than to have someone being blunt with you about something when you absolutely need that reality check) and saying "why are they trying to make the Fire Nation look worse?! This is terrible writing" I just have one thing to say: THAT'S THE ENTIRE DAMN POINT🤣. Of course we're going to be shown the Fire Nation being shitty and whatnot, this is before the freaking 100 year war started! You really think that the Fire Nation was all sun shine and rainbows before Sozin's reign? Looks like Roku wasn't the only one who needed that reality check from Gyatso. If the Fire Nation was this place where nothing fucked up was happening and everything was perfect, it would have never given rise to a man like Sozin, and he never would have done what he did. The novel is pretty much giving us a glimpse of what the Fire Nation was like during Roku's time, and how it ultimately resulted in the war. I don't know how or why that's so hard for some people to understand.

Also, the Fire Nation committed a genocide. Pretty sure you can't get any worse than that lol.

[elodieunderglass]

It's not really my business, but honestly it feels like it would be advisable to hire a copyright lawyer. Like I don't feel like you're in it for the money, but it might be gratifying to have the guy milking your idea at least have to formally acknowledge you. I think I'd do it just for the peace of mind to know if I've been "legally" wronged or not. Either way, hope you continue to inspire, and live out a peaceful life.

(In reference to this post about the guy who pretends to have invented “Elder Teletubbies,” specifically how he is now kickstarting DnD minis of them.)

Ha, well, it’s all a little tricky I think. I might, hilariously, post on the r/legaladvice Reddit (even though they’re all cops lol) because the only thing I want here is for him to stop selling my “transformative work,” and ideally to stop pretending he invented it (which might be difficult as he appears to fully believe his work is creatively independent.)

I think if anything, my post counts as protected commentary or a transformative work of BBC’s Teletubbies, and I think it’s stinky to profit on that stuff in general (like I’m 190% okay with buying LotR fanart on stickers ! but I wouldn’t dream of trying to publish a fic with the serial numbers filed off. Why?)

I think ultimately I’m not a grifter, I’m a grownup, and I think it’s several levels of eye roll to sell fanart of a tv show on this level. I would be embarrassed to touch money made on that. I’m too fucking scrupulous and artisanal. I have toyed with a silly original novel for funsies since 2019 but keep saying things like, “oh, people will think this is too similar to something else that already exists” as if a silly original novel I write for fun has to somehow pass a Bar of Originality higher than anything salary-writers aim for.

I’m also pretty anti-intellectual-property myself in that leftist sense where I don’t believe people should be acting as if creative works are, like, oil. Like the resource extraction angle of intellectual property freaks me out, I don’t think getting super high-horse and snotty about Magical Brain Property is entirely compatible with the artisanal temperament I personally got going on here. I am like snufkin about this, simply smoking a pipe and making a flower crown saying “poor fools! Producing works for market, and serving as the guard dogs of the market, lest their work lose value if it becomes more common!” I do not have a high horse. I am not going to post 6900 words about the importance of defending fucking… Mickey Mouse. I buy those lotr stickers on Etsy! I do have a horse, but it’s a pretty low horse.

If it was his own work I would not care about this guy doing this in the least (apart from loftily calling it stinky - but hey, nerds are common and nerds are stinky, it’s not rare) IF he wasn’t STEALING FROM MY ANTI-COMMERCIALISATION DREAM TO DO IT.

That’s the bit that PISSES ME OFF too much to ignore: that and accepting compliments for being original like 😌 yes my twisted mind did this idk lol.

Like if you asked him point blank about the artistic choices he’d be like idk my twisted mind just sees the Teletubbies this way teehee! but if you ask ME why, for example, the adult Teletubbies live in the forest I’ll explain that in 2017 I was at a major life crossroads and this dream was ABOUT that. It was goodbye to my identity as a foreigner from the pine forests, and full steam ahead to settling permanently in the fucking shire (where the baby teletubbies on the bbc show live). It was about going back to work having had my first child, and saying goodbye to my various career dreams for myself (famous scientist! Published author!) as I chose instead, finally, the responsibility of working humbly as a public servant for the actual good of society. It is about witnessing the wild and saying “I am not of it, but it is my job to be its witness and voice.” That’s why the adult Teletubbies are dancing in my native forests while I’m watching them from the English hills. This guy doesn’t know that he just vaguely heard “spooky forest cryptid” and didn’t develop it at all, I do more work than that with FANFICTION in my time off!!!

So it’s really about nebulous stuff and ethics and not something worth paying a lawyer for I think!

But thank you so much for this, I think the thing that gets most perennial about it is the TOTAL GASLIGHTING of the “outside world” of the rest of the internet like, fully believing they invented this, and they DIDNT. They’re so wrong on the internet and they don’t know

[genericpuff]

say sike right now, she's actually going back to The Doctor Pepper Show-

Like, this is just "What if The Doctor Pepper Show and LO had a baby?" Because at this point it's very clear Rachel only knows how to write from inside her own head, which is full of unresolved salt towards her childhood and medical fetish shit. The imagery in the first panel is very LO, and the imagery in the second is literally The Doctor Foxglove Show-

Evidently she's been reskinning the same shit for years-

Listen, I've been, for the most part, keeping my lips sealed on a lot of Rachel's old projects and what I've dug up on her previous works, for a few reasons:

1.) We were all cringe on the Internet at some point in time and a lot of these older works, such as Freak Scene Surgery and The Doctor Pepper Show, would have been from when she was in her late teens / early 20's. I'm not here to judge Rachel's personal preferences or whatever kind of fetishes she's into. It's totally normal, expected even, for a lot of creators to have older works they're trying to bury or disconnect themselves from because it's simply not them anymore.

2.) Ultimately I've been focused on discussion around Lore Olympus and Rachel as she currently operates as a creator, so I don't want to go digging up her old skeletons as any sort of "gotcha" towards LO today. Ultimately a lot of these works don't have anything to really 'do' with LO as it exists today.

That said, the reason I'm bringing it up now is because these new series... are bridging that gap that I've been avoiding for ages now. The gap that's filled with skeletons of Rachel's past that she's trying to both disconnect herself from but now fall back on with LO come and gone. It almost goes to show that her being a one-note pony goes back since far before LO - these are literally the only ideas she's able to come up with at this point, and it's painfully obvious in how both these new "graphic novel pitches" are pretty much the exact same and could apply to the same character, and that character may as well just be Persephone, i.e. Rachel, all over again.

Like, I'm calling it now, Patients in the Dark is just gonna be more "moms are bad" rhetoric, and Eleanor's Deathbed is gonna be Hades and Persephone, but replace Hades with some death god and Persephone with a training mortician, which is basically also still just Foxglove training to be a doctor, and Icy Shaw bragging about fondling corpses.

If anything, now that Webtoons is no longer carrying her around on their shoulders, this is gonna be Rachel's moment of "put up or shut up". She can either actually put in an active effort to write something that's decent, or she can flounder under the weight of her own tired mediocrity that's been knocking at her door for years now. As much as she's using her labels that were bought for her to sell these books which aren't even in real development yet-

-Webtoons isn't gonna be there to buy her Eisners forever. This is entirely on her and the imprint that Webtoons shoved her into. Her process is still the same, she's learned nothing from the experience of making LO, she's just got the money and awards now and is trying to run with it, but all she has are the same tired pitch lines that she's been using for decades now and just so happened to work with LO because LO had both Webtoons and the appeal of it being a Greek myth "retelling" to carry it into fame.

I'm gonna go into a bit of a tangent here, but it's been weighing on my mind since I found out this news and have been discussing it with pals within the ULO circle. Rachel once said in an interview that she wanted to use her platform to raise awareness of issues regarding sexual assault, mental health, and "the patriarchy":

"Who do you know that hasn’t been sexually assaulted? The number is depressingly low, right? Why is that? There is no short answer or an easy fix. I have a platform. I can tell a story that will hopefully educate and help others feel acknowledged and vindicated." - Rachel Smythe, Interview with Gossamer Rainbow

"...obviously I'm very feminist, and that sort of stuff really matters to me, um, the best way to approach this question is… I began, the pilot was written in sort of mid-2017, and I think what I wanted, what I wanted to achieve, and I don't even know… probably in 5 years time I don't know how I'm going to feel about this but I'm taking the risk, I really wanted to write a story where, uh…this female character goes through these things and I think what I wanted to do, what I wanted to achieve, was like a really common, I can't speak for like, men, but I can definitely speak for like, you know, if you're sitting in a group of your female friends and you're like "Hey! Who's been sexually assaulted?" … The response is going to be really depressing… Most female people that you know have probably experienced sexual assault to, on one level or another, and I'm like, for me I'm like "Why is that? Why?" And is it because there is a lack of information, lack of education, like what is it? And I'm lucky enough to have a platform and I'm like, if I could just provide some information in story format, would that help? Is this what I can contribute? So I feel like, especially, when writing sexual assault in media often it's… it's a way for the main male character to be, like, uplifted to hero-ness by, usually like, violence is the way to fix the problem, and that's not the approach that I want to take… um, I think [sighs], oh god, sorry I've lost my train of thought, [sighs], yeah, I think a lot of the time in movies when they, like, show rapists or something it's generally someone who's jumped out from behind the tree at a lady in a park and it's not really how it is like 90% of the time [laughs], so I just wanted to make something realistic where people could at it and be, like, "hey, nagging someone into sex isn't cool" or like removing all of their opportunities to say no isn't cool, or for someone to look at it, and just like feel validation, this is me trying, trying my best to make a difference with the platform that I have, and yeah, this is my roundabout answer for it" - Rachel Smythe, Interview with The Comic Source

And yet not once has Rachel actually used her platform for good outside of herself. She just asks the question, "Sexual assault?" and then writes off the answer "yes, it's bad!" and it especially shows in LO where the resolution to the one plotline she kept around to draw in readers was "assaulters are sent to the timeout corner!" Sure, it works for the readers who are simply seeking validation that their experiences aren't unique to themselves, but is it actually doing any real work to talk about the systems in place that leads to people like Apollo being created? Is it doing anything to address purity culture as it exists and the double standards that exist for women who are navigating sexual relationships? Is it doing anything to take the discussion outside of the narrative and put it into action through support of women's shelters, charities, mental health support for men, etc.? Not really. Like many of Rachel's ideas throughout LO, she simply goes, "Men, amirite?" and the answer is "yeah men suck!" and nothing more. The answer to the entire SA plotline is "rape is bad, don't do it" when anyone who could even relate to that conclusion in the first place already knows that.

Ultimately the activism she claims she's trying to do doesn't actually service the issue at hand - it just services herself and her own insecurities, her own unresolved trauma, her own need for validation through Eisners and merch sales. She asks the question, "Who hasn't been assaulted?" so that when she responds to the women who come forward and relate to Persephone, it's with the intent of getting them to read LO and buy her merchandise. She winds up making herself the center of other people's experiences, even ones that she cannot relate to. At BEST her attempts to "use her platform" as a means of starting discussion around ongoing societal issues like the patriarchy and sexual assault towards women is about as effective as Bell #LetsTalk, it's purely performative, self-profiting, and offers nothing of real tangibility.

If she just wants to write her own self-empowering personal works, that would be fine. Plenty of creators do it. Art is, at its core, self-expression. But it's extremely telling that she's built a platform off her self-expression, and twisted it into what she believes to be "activism" and "feminism", so that she can continue to profit off it in her future works such as this, which, again, are just reskins of her previous projects which were largely centered around the fetishizing of abuse towards women.

I don't want to claim that this is what it is, but... how much of the "feminism" in LO is done purely through the lens of victimizing women? Why is there more effort put into torturing female characters like Hera, and Demeter, and Minthe, and even Persephone to a certain degree, than there is into actually addressing the larger issue that she's claiming she wants to shed light on and resolving her questions with actionable answers?

That is the only question I will leave you all with. I am absolutely 100% not planning on touching these works with a ten foot pole, even if they should come to fruition. With the recent realization that she was into artists like Trevor Brown, alongside the fact that we've known for a long time she's into Lolita and there are very clear parallels to draw between it and LO, I think it's safe to say at this point that Rachel's work is not something I want to continue to support even when it's "hate reading". Again, I'm not going to outright accuse her of anything, but I feel like the writing is clearly on the wall here and I'm taking that writing as my warning to steer clear.

I didn't want to discuss the elephant in the room - her older works as they exist in the distant past of the early 2000's - but she's now riding the elephant.