#the process was more than satisfying!

[romanticize-until-you-drop]

So I just won a competition for my research project…

MOM DAD IM A REAL SCIENTIST!!

[lunarharp]

:')

[fictionadventurer]

Beauty and the Beast for the WIP game?

My only real attempt at writing poetry before this year happened during a stretch when I tried to write a Beauty and the Beast retelling in verse. I got about two-thirds of the way through before it fizzled out and languished forever unfinished.

When it comes to my recent novel-in-verse obsession, the simplest option would be to take another look at this work and try to finish it. There's a lot of terrible poetry in there, but there are some that are somewhat better than I remember. I can't claim to be a judge of what's good poetry, but some of these are readable, so I'll share some of them here.

The first set of semi-readable poems covers the first meetings between Beauty and the Beast. (These are all numbered, and I'm leaving the numbers in place to better differentiate between separate poems. I think the speaker in most of these is fairly clear from context, but just in case, I'll put the speaker's name in the title, too.)

VI. beauty and beast

he is every nightmare i’ve ever forgotten he is thunder and darkness and death he is fear with fangs he is beastly

she is every dream i’ve never dared for she is roses and sunlight and life she is hope with jewels she is beauty

*

VIII. beauty

the chair creaks when he sits

my knees quake when he speaks

the master laughs when i ask

when i will die

my ears doubt when i hear

my mind reels when i realize

the master wonders when i began

to think he’d kill me

IX. beast

the rules are these you are mistress of this castle the servants will obey your every whim the rooms and all within are yours including me

you will dine with me at dusk we will not speak if you want silence you will look at me and try not to scream

i will not harm a hair of your head i will not cause a moment’s worry you will do whatever you wish except leave

X. beauty

his mercy shatters my world makes it bigger and at the same time smaller

how can i live in a monster’s cage

my life will be long and lonely with him my friend and at the same time jailer

how can i look at a monster’s face

the castle teems with wonders that all belong to him and at the same time me

what do i do with a monster’s love

*

The next set of poems I feel like sharing starts with Beauty finding a portrait in the castle, and then leads into her sharing a dance with Beast that makes her kind of freak out over the fact that she might be falling in love.

XXII. beast

today you found a painting in a long-forgotten room covered in cobwebs and shrouded in dust

there was a reason it was lost

the portrait showed a man with a face like the dawn and eyes like the sea you thought he looked kind

he was young and a fool

you may keep it if you wish or lock it back in darkness it matters not to me i used to see him daily

i doubt i’ll see his face again

*

XXIV. beauty (and beast)

if rooms have souls the ballroom is wise a radiant beauty long past her prime

she treasures the days when she lived and was loved she keeps them and counts them like pearls on a string

(she is not the only one, my dear)

long past midnight in moonlight and hush this sleepwalking girl can glimpse former days

a flash of a gown and a whisper of waltz what glorious balls must this room have beheld

(they were marvelous indeed, my friend)

it seems a shame she grows old alone with nothing but darkness and dust held within

i would dance for her return the spark of life if only we had music and i had a partner

(i will gladly dance with you, my love)

XXV. beast

my dear beauty don’t you know i learned dancing long ago

one step closer take my hand with a waltz you’ll understand

let the music guide your feet in a dance that’s slow and sweet

hand in hand and heart to heart it’s not love but it’s a start

XXVI. beauty

he is hulking beastly

i am small delicate

i should be stumbling crushed

but

we marvelously miraculously dance

and it feels like flying

XXVII. beauty (to the portrait)

man on the wall i may be mad but i must give voice to the storm in my heart and you are the only one near

the master puzzles me i know his home as well as my own but i know so little about him

(is he beast or man or nightmare or dream or captor or friend)

i saw his face and thought him a beast

(but he grows roses and reads poems and has never killed or even raised his voice)

i heard his voice and thought him a monster

(but he spared my life gave me his home and all he owned offered his heart and never once has been anything but gentle)

i watched him dance and thought him a man

(with grace like an angel or a prince and i think that maybe he was not always so lonely and that his heart aches for things lost)

what am i to think do say be feel about him now

and why do these questions always come at midnight

*

The final poem is one that I had completely forgotten about, so I was shocked to find it lurking in the latter sections of the document and showing signs of using some decent imagery. By polishing up the last couple of lines, I've got something that's not half bad as a standalone poem.

This one occurs during an extended period when Beauty is still trying to process her feelings toward Beast and figure out if this is really love or if her feelings are being warped by isolation and close proximity.

XXX. beauty

if this is love it is a dark and grasping love a child stumbling in the night crying for a candle flame and cherishing the smallest spark of light

if this is love it is a bleak and desolate love a skeleton tree in a barren desert windbeaten and scrubbed to bone and bursting into bloom at the first drop of rain

if this is love it is a smoke and mirrors love a sleight of hand or trick of light that takes my broken heart and fools me into thinking he can make it whole

[thegreatyin]

2 and 19 for fl?

2. a compelling argument for why your fave would never top or bottom

i think mr veils fallen london is actually extremely peggable. no i cannot explain this. no i will not even attempt to explain this. i just. i feel it in my soul. ever since it pulled a doomed yaoi that bat has been YEARNING for someone to come around and put it in its place and i think someone needs to step up to the plate and do it already. yes this answer is completely unserious but also some of it is entirely sincere and i'll leave it up to y'all to decide which is which

-

19. you're mad/ashamed/horrified you actually kind of like...

head in hands. looking back at it now, uh. i. uh.

i think knifegate was actually pretty fun.

[serpan-alfie]

experimenting with render again so I drew her

Well it wasn't supposed to be this polished so I didn't really pay attention to perspective neither expression and now I have little urge to redo.... Well I'll redraw it one day anyway so it won't bother me this much tomorrow. Gotta work on noses more I think.

Makima from Chainsawman

[blizzardrush]

( ah, well. such is enjoying minor characters. so minor, in fact, that their role in a story is completely malleable! they're an empty canvas! you can tweak 'em and the events around 'em however you want! so don't you mind if I... )

[esbielle]

please forgive my most passionate disruptions, written by @pumpkinpaix and read by esbielle, is now finally complete! You can check the whole podfic now on ao3!

[c1airidryl]

Hmmm papas gonna need to switch to edibles again soon

[dicketysplit]

day 2 of the move!!!!! my body gave out on me at like 3-4pm yesterday and my 69 year old mother and 78 year old father were fucking supreme for not letting me exert myself and doing all of the cleaning and heavy lifting themselves

[00queasy00]

x rambles in the tags about my art struggles, nothing new to see :0

[i-love-tubbs-the-cat]

you know a legitimate worry i had was hitting a wall after a certain point

[lunarharp]

into the deep end - 30k T orufrey fic, focusing on memory trauma, disability, and romance.

the sweet oblivion of the victim, the poisoned freedom of the witch.

for one moment - it had felt like two parts returned - the needed reunion of two disparate halves. no more secrets, no more pain.

the moment you get to give back what you never wanted to take. that moment, under the night-blooming flowers, when they had both let out the same single broken sigh of relief.

but they were never whole to begin with, were they?

qifrey swore he wouldn't say 'sorry' to this man any more if he could help it - sorry is cheap now. he didn't want to be in a position ever again where you only have 'sorry' left. so he just looks down into the threads of his blanket, strains his eye until it hurts, feeling his insides - his throat, heart and head - burn with pain. he expects more, but olly says nothing.

olly says nothing.

[mysticalgalaxysstuff]

31st December 2022

Ethan Ramsey & Marissa Sanders

“Each day I love you more, today more than yesterday and less than tomorrow.” 

[nordfjording]

theres a response on the male suicide post that goes basically "it's not that men aren't allowed to show feelings, it's that men show emotion differently from women which isn't accepted" and I'm sure there is something to that but it's funny to me because i have four straight older sisters with what i'd call average rates of romantic relationships and every single boyfriend that's made it through our family in the last 30 years have had more classical displays of emotion than my sisters have.

which is deeply anecdotal and probably says more about my family than anything else. still funny.

ofc it doesnt matter because to my understanding it's got very little to do with how feelings are shown vs how feelings are recognized, validated, processed or regulated.

[forcedhesitation]

After my last post I decided to sit down and rank all the possible companion pairs. here is the tierlist, should you wish to fill it out yourself.

This is a "ship" chart, but it's important to clarify that I am interested in how the dynamic works overall, not just romantically. I am very invested in how the stories of different characters overlap, and how they could mesh together to change both people involved. so the more interesting I find an individual character, the more likely they are to be higher in the chart.

How interesting I find characters also usually translates to my desire (or lack thereof) to draw them. So my likeliness to draw a pairing is the scale I used to describe each tier, rather than a nebulous "S," "B", or "F." This way, I feel it is better understood exactly why each pair is placed where it is.

Once again, sorry to those who enjoy miss SH. I do not hate her, I just do not find her to be an especially compelling character. I like the voice acting for her, but I don't care for her design, and I feel any element of her story is simply better explored in those of other characters.

*Special Exception 1: I have to split this pair off specifically, because I've thoroughly disparaged it in the past, based on erroneous judgments of halsin's character. when I first played the game, I locked myself out of a lot of Act 2 dialogue with him, which meant I missed the parts of his character that I do find interesting. I will say, it does still deeply bother me how much of his character revolves around sating the sexual desire players might have for him. I also hate that, as far as I'm aware, he can only acknowledge the player's relationship with astarion in the context of having sex. But after spending an entire campaign playing the game correctly, trying to learn as much about halsin as I could, and thus romancing him, so that I could properly judge him, I have grown attached to my rewritten version of him. so I'm not so much fond of the star/halsin pair as it is in game, as I am of that dynamic in the context of corydalis' campaign.

*Special Exception 2: after what happened with halsin, I feel it would be unfair to judge how interesting I might find minthara's relationship with most of the other companions, given that I've not yet had the opportunity to recruit her. despite this, I can safely say that I have no interest in whatever would likely play out between her any of the men, bar gale. gale is the exception because I've seen snippets of dialogue between them. I do not necessarily think they'd work together romantically, but again, it's more that the potential dynamic between them is interesting to me, regardless of the type of relationship they have. also, I do not categorise all other minthy x male companion pairs as bad because I am of the belief that she is not bisexual. I have faith that this game would make an effort to show us that she was a different identity, were she, because it already does a great job of affirming every other companion's bisexuality outside their potential relationship to the player. what I do not have faith in, however, is that minthy has as beautifully written a story as lae'zel does, where she learns to abandon the cruel and bigoted beliefs her society indoctrinated her to have. not when origin companions like wyll & karlach still lack material, and not when halsin's writing is as inconsistent as it is. I do not think that either halsin or minthy have, or will ever have, fully fleshed out narratives.

if you've interesting commentary about a particular pairing that you like, that you feel I might benefit from reading, do feel free to share it! even if I dislike a pairing, I am usually willing to read someone's thoughts about why they do find it interesting, granted it's not like...something utterly foul. I just ask you keep any commentary you choose to share to companion/companion pairs or companion/companion pairs in the context of polyamory with a tav/durge. NPC romance is another conversation.

[waterfallofspace]

Hii I hope you feel better soon, and I have a question!, idk if anyone's asked you this before but what's your fav content to make?

Aw, thanks!~

I did answer this before, but I'm happy to answer again, since I have a bit of a different view! I think my favourite content to make is writing fics~ I do love drawing too, but I'm not good enough yet to be fully satisfied with what I've created. And while I enjoy wavs, I'd say probably the same, my skills aren't where I'd want them to be, plus it takes me a bit to record enough snz to make it work.

But I've always loved writing, and while I don't think I'm great at it, I can usually get something that at least somewhat meets my own standards, plus it's just a lot of fun to me!