#the locked tomb twilight au

[ivypond11]

i've been obsesing over a tlt twilight au solely because of the silly edit with harrow seeing alecto alla bella seeing edward and.

it's so silly and dumb but gideon being the vampire and ianthe being the werewolf and they both obsessively pin over the weird loner wet rat harrow that just moved into town. i wanna say camilla, palamedes, dulcinea (the real one), protesilaus, jeannemary and isaac are part of the same family, all vampires, with abigail and magnus being the parental figures (basically the cullens). the third and second houses i'm thinking are all the werewolves, maybe the eight too. i just love the idea of ianthe and coronabeth being raised to maybe one day both take over the pack until they find out coronabeth is in fact not a werewolf. john and all the remaining of the first would be the volturi ofc but all the cavaliers would actually be alive? i haven't thought that far.

[fundraising-with-audiobooks]

This is @dyspunktional-leviathan, and this is a new project for helping to fundraise for Gaza, Sudan, Congo, Tigray, possibly more in future. Send me proof of your donations, and I will make audiobooks.

If anyone wants to join the project, you're incredibly welcome! Please message this blog for that.

My current plan is $30 per chapter, but I am not familiar with that currency and this is my first time making audiobooks too, so that might change.

Example recording — Canticle of the Dragon, the first prologue of Dragons of Autumn Twilight (CW for mentions of war, mass death and displacement, gods turning against their subjects):

The further recordings will be posted on AO3, with links on this blog. This chapter on AO3: https://archiveofourown.org/works/58599967/chapters/149305654

For every $30 of donations for vetted Gaza evacuation fundraisers (get them here: @vetted-gaza-funds), I will record a chapter of Dragonlance, starting with Dragons of Autumn Twilight and going in release order.

For every $30 of donations for Crips4Esims4Gaza (https://chuffed.org/project/crips-for-esims-for-gaza), I will record a chapter of The Locked Tomb, starting with Gideon the Ninth.

For every $30 of donations for the Mutual Aim campaign (https://www.tumblr.com/ana-bananya/753577456030679040/here-is-an-update-on-the-mutual-aim-campaign-for) that fundraises for the charities helping Sudan, Congo and Tigray, I will record a chapter of Fialleril's Double Agent Vader (https://archiveofourown.org/series/286908).

If/when I'm done with one of these, I will choose a new thing to audiobook for each branch of the project.

@ficsforgaza could I get a promo?

[bb-enablefreebuild]

I really, REALLY hope Lyctorhood isn't the sort of immortality that freezes you at the age you're turned. Because imagine being seventeen forever Edward Cullen style.

[lyannatropes]

We made a locked tomb AU for our dnd lesbians and I'm thriving

[varusai]

✨Get To Know You Meme✨

tagged by @elvenmoans thx! didn’t know people still did these lol

Three Ships:

1: Moonsea Tyrants (manshoon/fzoul) evil old men from my dnd campaign

2: Black Hands Clasped (enver gortash/julian of yulash) evil blorbos from my besties unpublished bg3/oc au fic that i get exclusive access to

3: Gideon/Harrow/Ianthe evil women (not gideon) from the locked tomb series

First Ship:

Genuinely i think it might have been Scar/Lex from AVP??? i can’t really remember anything before that. like actually writing/reading fanfiction for.

Last Movie:

transformers: revenge of the fallen

Last Song:

wake the dead - blessthefall

Currently Reading:

The Biology of Human Survival: Life and Death in Extreme Environments- Claude A. Piantadosi

Currently Watching:

lost (rewatching, on s01e03)

Currently Eating:

loaded baked potato soup and bread

Currently Craving:

wendy’s baconator combo and something sweet after😔

Tagging:

@revasnaslan @sunnidaydreamer @twilight-alchemist @voxiferous @bi-colored-corn @darkeecofreak @shadow-djinni @lara60 @minigenos @ro-blaze

[iantimony]

tuesday

i am bruising my fingers from how hard im knocking on wood but my health has been ??? good ???? are we back baby???

listening: IM ALMOST DONE WITH TWILIGHT MIRAGE...i just started the finale episodes and i think ill finish it before the next tuesdaypost!! and also the over the garden wall soundtrack as per the 'watching' section, and also delta's synthtober playlist :) it's. good. i'm really sad the spooky scary skeletons got removed though.

reading: fanfic!

locked tomb: ptolemia, like the gates of hell, explicit, mind the fuckin warnings fr

in the season of mirabells, very charming jodybeth

homestuck: splickedyhat, aliens sure are weird, fun little exploration of making the homestuck aliens More Alien

watching: my roommate decided she wanted to do a Yay October night so she made non-alcoholic hot toddies (by cooking off the alcohol lol) and pumpkin ravioli in a pumpkin sauce and we rewatched over the garden wall. i didn't even cry this time! i love that show so much.

making: working on my market bag more, i'll add photos once it's recognizably a market bag! and also trying valiantly to finish my fucking tank top. i've been working on it for over a year. literally all i have left is the straps but i'm full of indecision over them.

so i decided to be clever and over-engineer straps instead of committing to normal straps, a tie, or a racerback. i sewed some buttons on and technically finished one of the straps, but it looks. so bad with the buttonholes. i think because of the pattern, it's not just a knit strap but a knit one/slip one purlwise with yarn in front alternating type deal which does create a cool tube-like texture but it does mean that breaking it up to make buttonholes totally fucked it. i'm deciding now whether or not i want to unravel it and just redo it in a normal knit or stockinette so that it won't look like shit with the buttonholes, or if i just want to commit to making it normal straps because let's be totally real, i will never wear it without a bra (so neck tie right out) (UNLESS...i sew bra cups into it.....)(no i wont do this i dont think it'll look good) and i basically never wear racerbacks either. so. much to consider for that. maybe ill make a tumblr poll for it later with some photos lol id love to solicit some opinions.

i've also been working on my songxuexiao college fencing au fic. it's really silly and self-indulgent but that's what makes it fun to do lol.

misc: bro the kerr metric can suck my entire ass <3 that's all. the math for this week's homework is so nasty haha

[oakashandwillow]

20 Questions for Writers

Tagged by @bywayofmemory

1. How many works do you have on AO3? 91. A couple of those are 3SF compilations.

2. What's your total AO3 word count? 115,642

3. What fandoms do you write for? Narnia, mostly. Used to write some Supernatural, Doctor Who but mostly in crossovers. Once we get into 3SF or "i've written this like once" - Star Wars (Mandalorian & Andor/Rogue One in particular), Battlestar Galactica, original stuff, Alex Rider, The Locked Tomb, Mass Effect, DC Comics, Middle Earth (movies, all books, Rings of Power), MCU - a lot. Twilight because of my "what if Renesmee was not... what Meyers wanted her to be" series.

4. What are your top 5 fics by kudos?

Whose Other Side Is Salvation. Narnia/Doctor Who. Susan and the Doctor run.

we have to go on living. Young Justice. He can't hold it together forever. Robin, post-Failsafe.

to go nowhere with you. Torchwood/Narnia. "Minotaur," Edmund corrects automatically. Edmund/Ianto, time loops, minotaurs, coffee, and rift archaeology of sorts.

give me a world, you have taken the world i was. Hardy Boys. Joe wakes up alone in the dark. Things get worse from there, which sucks, because Frank is supposed to be home from college for Christmas break today.

Secrets Kept. Young Justice. Artemis knows Robin's secret. Spoilers through Young Justice 1x08.

5. Do you respond to comments? I... am nowhere as good as I would like to be at it.

6. What is the fic you wrote with the angstiest ending? ... considering all the Narnia and specifically Susan Narnia stories I write that is a hard call. Probably we have come to our real work. AU. When Peter and Lucy hunt the White Stag, Susan and Edmund are in Archenland. Things go downhill from there. It's pretty early in my fic career so it could be a lot better in terms of quality but it is probably the saddest ending I've written. In terms of saddest story that I'm actually proud of? Probably we should take warning, we should forgive each other. Narnia, Prunaprismia, the bitterness of loss and pride and decisions it seems like are the only ones you can make even though they aren't.

7. What’s the fic you wrote with the happiest ending? Do I.... do I write happy endings.

I suppose my Renesmee series has a pretty happy ending! between one June and another September. Twilight, Renesmee/Leah. Renesmee Cullen comes full circle and falls in love. Does not make much sense without having read the previous works in the series though.

OH wait i gave edmund/bacchus (Narnia) a happy ending in one year since i've seen the mountains. I can write things that are happy!

8. Do you get hate on fics? I am extremely under the radar for almost everything honestly so no! And tbh I just don't have patience for that so would probably just delete and block if it was properly hate.

9. Do you write smut? If so, what kind? I've written some, though it's pretty mild!

10. Do you write crossovers? What’s the craziest one you’ve written? Look, what haven't I crossed over with Narnia. Merlin (BBC), Doctor Who / Torchwood, Mary Poppins, The Dark Is Rising, The Library Trilogy. I've done Leverage/Supernatural and I don't even know what I've done in various 3SF rounds. If we're counting my RP days I had some WILD character interactions while playing Padme Amidala in particular.

11. Have you ever had a fic stolen? I doubt it? Never checked.

12. Have you ever had a fic translated? Once or twice! And podcasted once.

13. Have you ever co-written a fic before? Several times! Only one is actively published and available as a fic though. Winds To Catch, Narnia/Mary Poppins, with @siterlas and animus in the city on A03. A Very Long Time Ago @bedlamsbard and I did like... an alarming amount of words on a BBC Merlin/Narnia crossover in commentfic. (Alarming for me who mostly writes like, maybe 1-2k a fic, not for Bed who's chapters number easily in the multiple thousands of words.) @siterlas and zempasuchil and I once wrote a bunch of AU BBC Merlin RPF commentfic where we wrote both the actors as if they were in a show about Marx and Engels instead and also parts of the fake show that they were in. Definitely various Supernatural and Narnia commentfic across the years. Probably more? Have also written friend fic for Las with Animus and Z. I also did a lot of RP stuff over the years! Which is cowriting though not in the sense we think of with fic.

Actually I really miss commentfic. It's so fun. I sometimes get to do it a little in 3SF but most people don't even know it's a thing you can do these days I think alas. Very informal collaboration is delightful!

14. What’s your all time favorite ship? Yeah I can't answer that. I'm very bad at picking favorites, ever. If we're talking ships I actually write, Susan/Edmund (Narnia), Bo-Katan/Din (Mandalorian) and Kara/Lee (BSG) are probably my top three? But I love... so many ships.

15. What’s a WIP you want to finish but doubt you ever will? I started a follow up to my Hardy Boys story and I've noodled with it occasionally and don't think I'll ever properly finish it.

16. What are your writing strengths? I have been told I'm really good at ending lines! I like to think I'm good at just character study.

17. What are your writing weaknesses? Plot. Who needs a plot. What is a plot.

18. Thoughts on writing dialogue in another language in fic? I do not trust myself to get it right at all so I just don't overall.

19. First fandom you wrote for? Depends if we count doing RP in which case it's Lord of the Rings. If it's straight fic, Narnia.

20. Favorite fic you’ve written? My favorites land in very different categories, so I think I will pick the first fic I wrote that I properly felt "wait, I think I can be good at this writing thing" and still gets received well. this temporary flesh and bone. Narnia. Susan/Edmund. Susan, Edmund, and the zombie apocalypse in England.

I shall tag. @svgurl410 @lyntergalactic @liminal-zone @callowyn @ravenlilyrose

[flowerslut]

Hi so this ask is a request (desperate) for twilight content since i feel like i've read all jalice fics in the fucking universe and for some reason most part of this fandom is obsessed with edbella (idc the whole saga is about them that's a detail) so here it goes: what's your currently hyperfixation inside the jasper&alice hyperfixation? like plots for fics, au, headcanons about personality traits (since jasper's canon personality is based on loving alice and being a low profile hottie with a tragic past)

yeah being a jalice girlie in the twilight saga is a rough experience bestie, I can soooooo relate to you there 😔 we truly are a group who suffers from lack of content 💔

right now my main jalicey focus is on my fic WIPs roots that I've mentioned before! I've been a bit distracted over the last several months thanks to the locked tomb fucking up my entire brain, but despite that I've still managed to write a solid 75k of roots, which has been nice.

I'm actually not real big on fixating on or even discussing headcanons unless its something I need to dissect privately for fic purposes. I'm also a huge critical bitch about other people's interpretations of my favorite characters which is why you don't see me talking about it a lot on tumblr. so many people get it (alice and jasper) so, so wrong, and obviously I have it so, soooooo right 😌💅 but lmfao okay no I mainly keep my opinions and headcanons to myself so I don't come across as an unlikeable cunt on this stupid site. unless someone asks, and then I have no problem being an asshole and telling people their tastes are bad. but I've been so well behaved recently and people have been much nicer and less insufferable in the twilight fandom in recent years which has been nice!!!!

but another huge fandom interest I have is making playlists! so I have like a dozen or so jalice-themed playlists (most of them are fic playlists for various @goldeneyedgirl stories because she really just keeps pumping out banger after banger; sometimes I swear I think about lexie's stories than I do about my own) and I am constantly listening to and working on playlists. one day I'll finish all my twilight character playlists and my Main jalice playlist, but it's already been a few years that I've been working on some of them, so what's a few more, yknow???

besides roots, I still have a kajillion big fics I need to finish outlining—my third cotn installment, it's novella, my AH au, the neglected WIP projects I have already published (sorry to my edge of it all readers, specifically). most of my jalice fixation gets redirected into planning and writing fanfiction when I'm not constantly arranging and rearranging carefully curated playlists

but thank you so much for calling jasper a "low profile hottie with a tragic past" because thats so funny. "low profile hottie" is SO good. I love any description of jasper that brushes aside the tiny bits of canon characterization we get of him to be like "ok but forget all that. he's quiet and sexy." it's like this iconic tweet:

anyways thank u kindly for the message I am so sorry there seems to be a bit of a jalice drought currently. I know lexie has been throwing prompts into the void on here recently but I'm sure if you're in here pleading for content you've probably already read all of her stuff 10x over. I can't promise you any real content out of me this month (or next) but I can guarantee you'll get plenty of snippets!!! hold strong anon 💖

[figofswords]

sorry zelda followers I’m having a locked tomb moment and it’s my blog and my art so you’re gonna have to just deal for a bit

[citrine-elephant]

this sudden new au is growing rapidly.

i’m thinking of the shipwrecked people having guns, but limited ammo. the planet draws in many ships, but not every ship has enough weapons. 

they end up finding eridian weapons on the planet.

when zane crashes, they have no idea he’s a vault hunter because most of them never heard of vault hunters. or if they did, it was long before one-to-four actually opened the first vault. zane doesn’t mention this, but they do not expect him to be such a skilled fighter. 

zane being a skilled fighter makes him an even greater prize for those hunting him.

BUT.

they offer him to join them. well, it’s not really an offer, as he can only choose between slaving away for the cult, or death. zane of course fights back and tries, while battling the shipwrecked, to find a way off of the planet. 

the planet doesn’t let people, go, however. zane’s goal is to try to stop the planet from killing anyone attempting to escape.

[chaos-has-theories]

WIP tag game

RULES: post the names of all the files in your WIP folder regardless of how non-descriptive or ridiculous. Let people send you an ask with the title that most intrigues them, and then post a little snippet of it or tell them something about it.

I will consider myself tagged by @into-september. A lot of these were already on there the last time I did it... but last time I filtered out a bunch of them for various reasons, while this time you're getting the unabridged version.

Equally tagging WHOEVER WANTS TO DO IT, because I'm actually not sure who else among my mutuals does these things, but I would love to find out!

Fusion (ml)

Polyam Love Square (ml)

Give the Boy a Hug (ml)

Lucky (ml)

Secret Garden AU (ml)

Merlin AU (ml)

Whatever remains, however improbable (ml)

Locked Tomb Crossover (ml)

Daemon AU (ml)

DJ WiFI Fake Dating (ml)

Fairytale Ladrien (ml)

Miracuclass (ml)

possible Harriel fic (ml)

Bone Prom (tlt)

The General Impossibility of Returning Home (tlt)

Coffeeshop AU (tlt, comic)

The Silence of a Dragon (Merlin)

Nimueh Trilogy (Merlin)

Genderqueer Merlin (Merlin)

Chaos AU (Merlin)

Drosselbart (Merlin)

I Refuse (Merlin)

5+1 Knights Knowing (Merlin)

The Three Williams (Merlin)

Contingency Plans (Merlin)

flimsy excuse to be back on my bullshit (Merlin)

Long Way Home Sequel (SH)

ml AU (SH)

Trans AU (SH)

Puddyng (SH)

Wizard Tower (SH)

As you have gained it (SH)

Twilight Parasol (Twilight + Soulless)

Queer Ash (Three Wishes for Cinderella)

Monsters (Breath of the Wild)

Home's a place that I have never known (BotW)

Perpetuum (BotW)

Scholomancer (A Deadly Education)

[askandreth]

List of AUs I need that I'm never gonna write:

Pacific Rim AU

The Locked Tomb AU

Twilight AU

[tajomna]

I love that you can't make the locked tomb trilogy homestuck AU because it is already homestuck AU. It is like Twilight and 50 shades except both are good and I enjoy them .

[magictavern]

I posted 1,317 times in 2021

63 posts created (5%)

1254 posts reblogged (95%)

For every post I created, I reblogged 19.9 posts.

I added 342 tags in 2021

#art - 118 posts

#words - 73 posts

#fashion - 34 posts

#camillesart - 22 posts

#camille.txt - 22 posts

#the locked tomb - 17 posts

#places - 17 posts

#oh - 14 posts

#leverage - 13 posts

#btvs - 12 posts

Longest Tag: 140 characters

#like it's only a short bit hut i'm captivated by the sequence where all of the issues from the first three seasons remanifest all at once at

My Top Posts in 2021

#5

“The perennial sadness of a girl who is both Death and the Maiden.”; part two of me drawing ocs as tma avatars, this time feat. the end

23 notes • Posted 2021-08-15 19:31:05 GMT

#4

love to make self indulgent aus for ocs

25 notes • Posted 2021-08-14 14:33:48 GMT

#3

i'm here with fog in my locket, your name in my teeth

33 notes • Posted 2021-07-07 14:33:54 GMT

#2

i realized that i never did post the feast of patina illustration i did for the twilight mirage zine a while back so.... hi

61 notes • Posted 2021-03-31 02:31:27 GMT

#1

quick and dirty tim & steph doodle brought to you by nostalgia for winter 2019

116 notes • Posted 2021-04-26 02:52:16 GMT

Get your Tumblr 2021 Year in Review →

[dotsayers]

20 Questions: Writer’s Edition

tagged by the beloved @myrmidryad 

this is a LONG one so here’s a cut to avoid do you love the colour of the sky syndrome

1. How many works do you have on AO3?

101 after a recent purge... no one may know about my Past

2. What’s your total AO3 word count?

329004! used to be about 350k but again... purge

3. How many fandoms have you written for and what are they?

on ao3 i’ve written for (chronologically) doctor who, skyfall, discworld, les mis, star trek, lord peter wimsey, marvel (various), in the flesh, red vs blue, roosterteeth rpf, check please, hockey rpf, star wars, daredevil, rivers of london, dishonored, emmerdale, dirk gently, holby city, hot fuzz, kj charles, guardian, the covert captain, taskmaster rpf, good omens, ghosts, roswell new mexico, leverage, schitt’s creek, the magicians, 9-1-1, it chapter two, the magnus archives, the old guard, the mandalorian, the ritual, the locked tomb

way back on the pit of voles i wrote for twilight, harry potter, hetalia and xmen first class. and on the newsround chatrooms i wrote exclusively harry potter fic about my oc neville and luna’s daughter

as you can tell i am not prone to staying in one fandom writing wise, i tend to end up with one complete fic and seven abandoned wips concealed deep in my google drive

4. What are your top 5 fics by kudos?

finally see what it means to be living (captain marvel, carol/maria, i really hit the zeitgeist with this one i think i was something like the fifth fic in the ship tag)

do whatever you think (the magnus archives, this series is actually #2-7, then #8 #9 and #11 for me so i’m going to cheat a bit)

standing in a world of my own (daredevil, matt/foggy/karen, another zeitgeist hit! really miss writing for daredevil actually... it’s a perennial fave)

a winding road that stretches towards the truth (iron man, tony/rhodey, i STILL don’t know when this got so many kudos. i swear i looked away when it was at 100 and suddenly it ended up here)

where the long shadows grow (star trek aos, kirk prime/spock prime, thank god some people are checking the prime kirkspock tag is all i’m saying!)

5. What’s the fic you’ve written with the angstiest ending?

i don’t really Do angsty endings... possibly a blanket of stars just because i ended it on something of a cliffhanger and then completely zoned out of rnm for long enough that i forgot where i was going with it. there was definitely the intention of fixing things but then i just... did not do that. and now the show is on s3 and i’m over a season behind! life comes at you fast

6. What’s the fic you’ve written with the happiest ending?

where the long shadows grow, because it reunited kirk prime and spock prime and they DESERVE TO BE HAPPYYYY. i’m a complete sucker for presumed dead/back from the dead stories, actually, so on a similar theme i have two (TWO) daredevil fics which follow the trope, one about ray coming back post-s2 (might never be normal again) and one about foggy and matt reuniting post-endgame (in the corner, taking up space). this is the only time i will ever acknowledge endgame ever again

7. Do you write crossovers? If so, what is the craziest one you’ve written?

i do write crossovers! in fact i am often roundly mocked by my friends for the increasingly esoteric nature of my crossovers. way back in secondary i wrote a twilight/labyrinth crossover where angela was sarah and jareth’s daughter  because i had a massive crush on a girl who liked both twilight and labyrinth. however, since that has been comprehensively scrubbed from the internet, i think my craziest crossover is probably part three of ‘traced upon the skies’, already an esoteric crossover of rivers of london and hot fuzz, when i added in a crossover with the horror movie ‘the ritual’ just because i wanted rafe spall’s character to be happy 

8. Do you write smut? If so, what kind?

EXTREMELY rarely and only with extreme embarrassment. i will not be any more specific than that

9. Do you respond to comments, why or why not?

i used to really struggle with doing this, to the point that i had over 300 comments just. lingering in my inbox unanswered. so i decided to give those up and just commit to answering them from then on, which has been working fairly well for about a year and a half now. i love getting comments but i get overwhelmed really easily and struggle with replying in a way which feels meaningful without getting in my head about it! 

10. Have you ever received hate on a fic?

yes lmao it was for a harry potter fic on ff.net where harry got sorted into hufflepuff instead of gryffindor. it wasn’t a very good fic but i think the fact it was clearly written by an 11 year old should have scared off at least some of the less flattering comments.

11. Have you ever had a fic stolen?

i don’t... think so? i don’t know how i’d find out to be honest, my vanity googling is rarely very effective

12. Have you ever had a fic translated?

yes! as bronze may be much beautified (skyfall, mallory/bond) got translated into chinese, i was extremely pleased. i think it’s mandarin but the ao3 page for the translation doesn’t say and my mandarin is.................. extremely poor

13. Have you ever co-written a fic before?

also yes! me and jess little-smartass have written a lot together, although only our star trek/les mis series has been published, more’s the pity. we spent a lot of les mis fandom time workshopping aus and we were always extremely correct about all of it, imo

14. What’s your all time favourite ship to write for?

oh god. i think probably kirk/spock, although there’s some recency bias to that since i reread space manhattans recently and was reminded of my love for them. i really like writing jon/martin but i’ve mostly done that from outsider pov which is a bit different to writing shipfic, i think. joe/nicky from tog was also something i really liked writing but i struggle with plotting longer fic with them

15. What’s a WIP that you want to finish but don’t think you ever will?

i recently went through my abandoned fic folder so i actually have a few options for this. the obvious choice would be ‘any of the hockey ones’ but i did delete most of those just for my sanity. more recently i started writing a vaguely smutty pre-the thing mac/fuchs fic for alex @milkdrinker5000 which i really WANT to finish but am struggling with. most obscure answer (even beyond the thing) and most likely to remain unfinished is the insanely in depth post-tog booker/copley fic i had planned out back in about october. i wrote a good 6-7k of that one and then i realised it was going to be, like, difficult, and decided if i was going to put that much work into something it may as well be the novel im meant to be writing

16. What are your writing strengths?

once a friend told me i had an excellent facility for dialogue and ive thought about it every time i write ever since. i love writing dialogue and i think i’m good at knowing what sounds ic and what is right out. 

17. What are your writing weaknesses?

one of the things i struggled with for a really long time, and honestly still have trouble with, is depicting action in words. once i wrote a hockey fic which featured multiple hockey games and i spent probably four times as much effort editing those to make sense and be interesting that i’ve ever done on a talkier scene.

18. What are your thoughts on writing dialogue in other languages in a fic?

i’ve done it but only when i knew more or less what i was talking about - i did italian at school so i felt confident using it for nicky in something particular and real. i try not to italicise when i drop in words from other languages, which is what i usually do when i’m using a language i haven’t studied in depth (for example, joe’s use of arabic in some of my fic), and to only use words which i’ve heard used by native speakers in that context. i think if you don’t feel confident using another language, generally speaking, you shouldn’t do it. and for god’s sake don’t use google translate for a full sentence

19. What was the first fandom you wrote for?

harry potter on the newsround chatboards. ariana lovegood-longbottom my sweet child

20. What’s your favourite fic you’ve written?

this used to be an easy question because hands down the fic i was proudest of on posting it was i’ll be seeing you. i spent a year and a half on research and writing! but these days i do cringe a little at my hockey fic, and i think i’m prouder of some of my shorter works. let’s do a curveball and say layer on layer, down on down, which is my favourite of my rnm fics and the one i like most from a narrative voice perspective. getting michael right was stressful and i’m still proud i got it down for a TIME LOOP FIC, my absolute favourite trope

tagging @little-smartass and @leescoresbies just in case they want to try this

[nitrateglow]

Favorite film discoveries of 2018

Most represented year: 1968

I watched a lot more movies this year than I did in 2017, though I didn’t quite make my record in 2016 (over 400 titles). I was a little disappointed that I didn’t find anything that enamored me as much as A Clockwork Orange did in 2016 or Wait Until Dark did in 2017, but I still got some new favorites from this year, so here’s the top twenty.

The Thomas Crown Affair (dir. Norman Jewison, 1968)

This is one of my dad’s favorite movies and now it’s one of mine too. Though some accuse it of being “dated,” I consider it dated in the best possible way, in that it oozes 1960s coolness. The story is fun and bittersweet, the performances are top-notch, and the jazzy soundtrack makes me wish Michel Legrand scored my life.

The Incident (dir. Larry Peerce, 1967)

This movie is incredibly disturbing, despite having no graphic violence. A group of passengers on a midnight subway are terrorized by a pair of sadistic thugs. The thugs mock, harass, grope, and eventually injure the passengers. The passengers never band together, each one hoping that if they stay silent, they won’t be next. It really is astonishing, shot in a noir style and bringing up uncomfortable truths about human behavior.

I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang (dir. Mervyn Leroy, 1932)

Essential pre-code. Film noir enthusiasts often make the mistake of saying American movies were juvenile before WWII, but movies like this prove that was not so. Fugitive deals with injustice and misery, the farthest thing from juvenile. From the stark visuals to Paul Muni’s haunting performance, this is a movie which pulls no punches and does not sweeten the ugliness of American society.

A Shot in the Dark (dir. Blake Edwards, 1964)

Funniest new (to me) movie I saw this year, hands down. I enjoyed this one thoroughly, from the clever sight gags to Peter Sellers’ antics to Herbert Lom’s exasperated performance. Such care went into the construction of the story and gags. I feel like I should take notes the next time I see it.

Behind the Door (dir. Irvin Willat, 1919)

Think silent films were all innocence and light? NOPE. Behind the Door smashes all notions of innocence with its brutally violent revenge-tragedy plot. This was some Sweeney Todd level nastiness, let that suffice.

The Three Musketeers (dir. Allan Dwan, 1921)

Definitely my second favorite of Doug Fairbanks’ romantic swashbucklers (The Black Pirate is still my number one). Like Vivien Leigh with Scarlett O’Hara, Fairbanks was born to play D’Artagnan. 

Au Revoir Les Enfants (dir. Louis Malle, 1987)

Oh, how I cried-- this movie is what all coming of age stories should aspire to be. The kids felt so real and the tragedy was played with restraint.

A Patch of Blue (dir. Guy Green, 1965)

A lot of social message pictures tend not to age well, but A Patch of Blue puts such care into the central relationship between Sidney Poitier and Elizabeth Hartman’s characters that it remains a touching story about compassion and love.

Carnival of Souls (dir. Herk Harvey, 1962)

Awesome cult horror movie. It was like a feature-length Twilight Zone episode. I loved the weird atmosphere and acting.

Carrie (dir. William Wyler, 1952)

This story of class conflict, illicit sex, and broken dreams feels like it should be noir, but at its heart, Carrie is a thoroughly romantic movie. Despite the dismal fates of the characters, you walk away still believing love conquers all else and ennobles the soul. As always, Jennifer Jones is lovely, an underrated actress if ever there was one. Olivier gives one of the subtlest performances of his career. Wyler’s direction is assured and I would argue this is some of his best work.

The Whispering Chorus (dir. Cecil B. DeMille, 1918)

Cecil B. DeMille is a lot more responsible for setting the ground for film noir than most realize. While The Cheat from 1915 is known for its combination of chiaroscuro lighting and moral nastiness, The Whispering Chorus feels like it could have been made in the 1940s. All the familiar tropes are that: the wronged man sliding into sordidness and misery, crime, sex, death, the works. I was thoroughly moved by the sensitive direction and performances.

Don’t Look Now (dir. Nicholas Roeg, 1973)

I didn’t know how to feel about this movie at first. It’s billed as horror, but it isn’t particularly scary... until the end. But the tone of one of gloom, grief, and dread, and the atmosphere is so vividly portrayed that you feel as though you’re locked within a tomb, suffocating. I know I want to see it again, but the experience was so overwhelming that I’m nervous about doing that too soon.

The Nun’s Story (dir. Fred Zinnermann, 1959)

Audrey Hepburn’s performance, and the sophisticated treatment of religious and moral questions are what make this movie. For my money, Hepburn never gave a more sensitive, interior performance than this one-- if you needed proof that she was more than a charming clothes-horse, here you go. I also relate hardcore to the film’s depiction of an individual struggling within a religious system. It also features one of the most perfect movie endings ever.

Bullitt (dir. Peter Yates, 1968)

While the plot is typical of the police-thriller, the execution is what makes Bullitt a classic. I loved the slower pacing and the way the action scenes were shot-- no over-the-top acrobatics or shaky cam here!

The Last Unicorn (dir. Arthur Rankin Jr. and Jules Bass, 1982)

This movie has a melancholy I wish more family films would embrace. Philosophical and wistful, the film is nonetheless entertaining, well-animated and featuring a great voice cast.

The French Connection (dir. William Friedkin, 1971)

This movie deserves its place as one of the defining New Hollywood works. I enjoyed the acting, pacing, and action, as well as that brutal ending.

The Other Side of Hell (dir. Jan Kadar, 1978)

No one’s definition of a picker-upper, but man, this is a good TV movie. Alan Arkin plays the mentally disturbed lead who figures out he’s stuck in a hospital for the criminally insane where the end-goal is not rehabilitation but exploitation. It’s a long film, but a fine one, and a great showcase for Arkin’s dramatic chops for those only familiar with his more comedic modern roles.

Due Date (dir. Todd Phillips, 2010)

This movie is a new guilty pleasure. It isn’t really original or overly clever, but man, is it hilarious. I’ve seen it a few times and I laugh every time. Plus the soundtrack is really great.

House (dir. Nobuhiko Obayashi, 1977)

How do you even explain this movie? It’s a horror-comedy, yes, but unlike any other horror-comedy I have ever seen, it’s a million times more insane. It was one of those movies were I wasn’t even sure if I liked or disliked it at the end, but over the next several days, I just listened to the soundtrack constantly. Now I own the Criterion edition, so that counts for something.

Sorry, Wrong Number (dir. Anatole Litvak, 1948)

I’m all for cool thriller set-ups and Barbara Stanwyck, and this movie delivers. Stanwyck plays a possessive, bedridden heiress who overhears a murder plot on the phone-- only to realize she is the intended victim. It’s a slow-burn thriller and a great character study.

What were your favorite film discoveries in 2018?