#there are so many italicised words in this post that’s how you know i am Serious kfkdgsnfkdg

[veradragonjedi]

85, 20 and 30 for the weird asks pls (:

20. Preferred place to write (i.e., in a notebook, on your laptop, sketchpad, post-it-notes, etc.)?

Ngl, when I first read this, I thought it meant where — physically! I was gonna say, my back garden, in the forest, on the swing at the park, somewhere outside when it's warm.

Anyway, I've written all my 300k words (including unposted works) of fanfic on my phone! In my notes app- because the laptop that I was supposed to receive exploded (hyperbole...). But it serves me well :)) I have a Samsung/Android so I get to italicise, embolden, undo/redo, colour words, it's not so bad!!!

30. Places that you find sacred?

I am not religious, but if there's a way to be intensely spiritual without being religious at all, it's me. Personally:

The 400 year old tree at the centre of the forest, with a swing hanging from it — the amount of people having grown up with that tree, swinging for generations, writing there stories there like I'm doing now!

The graveyard surrounding the church near my house, purely for aesthetic reasons. I also know the guy that cleans the graves, and I think that's an important role in society. Caring for the dead and appreciating them is a huge deal in so many cultures — why not Western??

Mariana trench — we don't need to go down there to know this.

The horizon line, the one that nobody can reach because the closer you get the further it moves.

:)

85. Fairy tales or mythology?

OOOOOOO mythology probably. I obsessed over dragons for ten to twelve years of my life, and they're still a huge part of my life. I had that dragonology book that signalled that I was neurodivergent definitely... I loved Greek and Roman mythology for a very long time, and loved figuring out how they were so different but so similar. Viking mythology was a favourite for a while, and I collected poems and stories. The latest chapter of my largest fanfic — BBB — is called Odyssey! It still lives with me.

[i-can-bench-220]

what if the cyber chase was a fred-centric film?

i recently read the essay from this fantastic post about how the cyber chase could have, and should have been a fred-centric film, and i can’t believe i didn’t put two and two together about it sooner!! the cyber chase is one of my absolute favourite scooby films because it just feels like a big love letter to the franchise as a whole, and so i’m ok with it not focusing on one single character in that respect. but i’m still so sad that fred was the only character to not receive any development in this fantastic and incredibly influential era of scooby films! but that sadness is currently the fuel to my thoughts, and boy have i been thinking. so… what if the cyber chase was a fred-centric film? i’m going to explore that! i hope you enjoy this post with a bit of analysis and a whole lot of what-ifs, and how much i believe in fred jones’ potential to continue growing and developing as a character.

eric staufer’s friendship with the gang is left pretty vague within the film, so let’s say that he is fred’s friend specifically. eric is his old friend, one he’s known since middle school. he’s also his only true friend at that (besides the gang, of course). both were social outcasts and had niche passions that they absolutely devoted themselves to (coding/video games and traps/mystery solving respectively). eric was quiet and reclusive while fred was much more cheerful and outgoing, but didn’t fully realise that he didn’t fit in with others. and even if he did, it wouldn’t dampen his spirit.

i’d like to think that eric was very much drawn to that about fred, and probably also had a crush on him for a while (that he doesn’t really have as much anymore, but the embarrassing memories are still very much There. maybe he can have an OH NO HE’S HOT moment when he sees him again for the first time in ages. as a treat.). but the point is that they’re besties now and you can’t take this away from me. look at them.

the pacing of the film is one of its biggest strengths, but i think i would give the gang just a little more time at the university before they’re transported into eric’s game. this would allow the boys to catch up, their friendship can be established (with some flashbacks maybe?), and we can have fred properly introduce eric to the gang.

now here’s the thing — fred’s development. for daphne, velma and shaggy, their stories within the other three films have of course been focused on them as individuals, the things they’re passionate about and the people that change them.

for fred, i would love an arc about his role as the leader of the gang. he received this position not just because he’s logical and decisive, but because he knows how to divide up bigger tasks according to the skillsets of his friends, and is of course the most enthusiastic about, well, everything! but this role naturally brings with it a lot of pressure, mostly self-imposed. fred cares for his friends so deeply, and would do anything to keep them out of harm’s way. he is constantly throwing himself straight into danger for their sake, because… ♪ he’s pretty sure he’s worthless if he can’t be of service ♪. (i used a scene from the cyber chase in my surface pressure post for a reason!)

what’s new, scooby-doo? came out a year after the cyber chase, and good lord is fred ever this series’ punching bag (physically, that is. he gets to be the emotional punching bag in mystery incorporated!). he gets thrown, breaks bones, is knocked out and kidnapped… you name it. and it’s all pretty inconsequential as the show has a more light-hearted tone. but i still think about it a lot.

because a few of these instances are just him being impulsive and trying to take on monsters that he can’t realistically fight alone. but a lot of them are also fuelled by his wanting to protect his friends, such as when he jump-tackles the zombie gladiator because it was about to hurt “[his] pal” (shaggy). he frequently bites off so much more than he can chew in this regard, to the point where others have to reel him in… like scooby.

have i mentioned that scooby saves fred’s life twice in this series? because it never fails to make me cry. i think that fred would feel so, so guilty at the fact that scooby would risk his life just to save him. so there’s a super fun internal struggle for him to have. because of course his friends are aware of the crazy things he does. of course they’re frustrated with and worried for him. of course they want to stop him. but of course that will lead to them getting into even more danger, and it’ll be fred’s fault — much, much more so. the cycle continues…

going back to the cyber chase, the game eric creates is, of course, based on the adventures of mystery incorporated. the next time somebody asks who the biggest scooby-doo fan is, i’m going to say eric staufer. anyway, as i’m developing eric as more of a timid character, i’d like to think that the gang are a big inspiration to him, and were the ones who made him want to use his talent at coding in order to bring joy to others’ lives just like they do, but in his own small way.

i think that fred should be going through a period of doubt and insecurity when this film begins. maybe a member of the gang got hurt in their previous mystery, and he thinks it’s his fault, that his leadership was flawed and he was so focused on his plan that he failed to think about his friends (spoiler alert: he is always thinking about his friends!! he is just way too hard on himself!!).

but being transported into the game, although perilous, affirms his role as leader. the gang and eric help him to realise that none of these adventures would be possible without him — he was the one to bring the gang together, he was the one who always came up with the plan and ensured a successful case, and he was the one who just genuinely wanted to help the victims of each villain’s plan. he isn’t perfect, and he can’t always think about everything. sometimes his friends will get hurt, but that’s not his fault. they have minds of their own, and will sometimes act foolishly or have a spell of bad luck. it’s all part of the job. and it’s a job that they all love, due in no small part to fred’s infectious enthusiasm constantly rubbing off on them.

i’d also really love to see a heart-to-heart between fred and cyber fred. this would be a way of showing how his character has grown and changed over time, much like daphne and cyber daphne’s scene (one of my favourites ever!). maybe cyber fred looks cheerful and collected, but is noticeably highly-strung, and much more serious. this is the final stage of fred’s development here, as he expresses everything he’s realised over the course of the film and reassures his cyber counterpart that yes, sometimes his plans will fail, sometimes his friends will be in danger, and things will never be perfect. but fred knows that all cyber fred can do is his best, and that’s enough. he doesn’t have to shoulder every responsibility alone, and he can afford to relax and simply enjoy the thrill of a mystery. he deserves it.

i think that the only other thing i would add/change that is isn’t directly related to fred is bill’s character and motivation for creating the phantom virus. maybe he’s actually an expert hacker disguising his underhanded work beneath the façade of a brilliant student. maybe he sees eric’s talent and is trying to subtly manipulate him into following the same path behind professor kaufman’s back.

but maybe he’s also just… lonely. overlooked. he was never deemed good enough, so he took to hacking and eventually creating the phantom virus as this big catastrophic thing by which he could finally gain some recognition, positive or otherwise. he’s so proud of the phantom virus because it’s finally something he can control. worst of all, he’s so wrapped up in this terrible pursuit and so conditioned to others dismissing him that he doesn’t realise that professor kaufman and eric do respect and believe in him.

i absolutely love how the other three films in this series have a running theme of “classic guy in a mask plot but then then they realise that there is also an actual supernatural entity”, so it’s a shame that the cyber chase didn’t do this too. to capture that theme, i think i would have bill accidentally reveal himself as the culprit while the gang are still in the game. the professor and eric get him to reveal his motivation, allowing them to give him the reassurance he always needed. he is genuinely repentant for what he’s done… but it’s too late. at this point, the phantom virus has gone completely rogue and turned against even its own creator. this would raise the stakes of the finale even more, while still keeping the themes of the joy of technology versus the danger of technology balanced.

it would also still give the gang a chance to have that big epic final battle where they’re all connected, ready to face the threat, trusting one another fully and following fred’s lead of renewed confidence. because if there’s one thing a fred-centric film should do, it’s emphasise the bond between the gang as a whole as well as just exploring his own character and struggles. because at the end of the day the gang are a part of him, and the most important thing in his life.

(and yes, from here eric would become an honorary member helping them out from the sidelines much like marcie in mystery incorporated!)

if you’ve read this far, thank you so, so much!! it means the world that there are people who are interested in my ideas. as i said at the start, i truly believe in fred’s potential as a character, and that hope is always fuelling my ideas. this film is still one of my absolute favourites, but making it about my favourite character would have been a dream come true!

if you have any more ideas you’d like to add (about the cyber chase or anything else) please feel free to send them my way! i would love to hear what you think.

thank you again! 💙

[jazzistolkienfanfics]

Beads and Braids - Kili x reader

Type: Imagine  Pairing: Kili x reader Summary: post BOTFA, everyone lives!AU, in which Y/N, a girl from Rohan seeking shelter in Erebor, befriends the Princes, and the mischievous Kili needs better ways of confessing his feelings. Warnings: ‘fuck’, ‘shit’ Word Count: 2735

All italicised, non-English words are in Khuzdul, one of the main Dwarvish languages.

Y/N was no stranger to being alone, nor was she unused to being unusual. Being on the run from a dangerous league of hunter assassins that were sweeping through her hometown of Rohan, spending months trying to reach Erebor, the Mountain of Gold, then arriving only to be turned away, had taught her not to care too much about loneliness.

Sure, she’d been allowed in eventually, after she’d insisted to the stingy King Thorin Oakenshield that she had ‘absolutely no fucking interest in your goddamn gold’, but the reminder that she wasn’t wanted in Erebor still stung dully day after day, even as she attempted to bury the emotion beneath layers of stone. 

Although, she was no longer completely shunned while in Erebor. The first few weeks had been difficult, especially as she was at least eight inches taller than everyone else, even as a relatively short human - Y/N was surrounded by Dwarves, and it was a transformative experience (she enjoyed being tall for a change). 

But as time went on, the Dwarves became far more accepting - mostly because when Bard visited with his children, Sigrid and Tilda (who was the reason they were there, to say hello to the ‘lucky Dwarves from the toilet’, namely Dwalin, her favourite) and saw her, he spouted a whole speech on the helpfulness of humans in the Battle of the Five Armies, especially how a number of them had charged Azog’s numbers, saving the line of Durin. That made Thorin begrudgingly become kinder to her.  

Y/N spent most of her days outside the cold fortress, reading old books on Dwarven culture and their previous interrelations with other relations on the ramparts or the grasses below the Mountain. It was on one of such days that she ran into someone who would change her life.

Well, Y/N didn’t run into him.

He really ran into her.

Y/N had been sitting on the ramparts, her legs swinging over the side and continually tucking her h/c hair behind her ears as the wind blew it into her face. A large book with a f/c leather cover that had stood out to her in the towering shelves of the Library was sitting in her lap, gold-leaf lettering across the front of it boldly proclaiming ‘A History of the Honourable Line of Durin’. She’d been told by Balin (a frequenter of the Library) that it was updated often with the latest triumphs of the youngest of the Line of Durin: Thorin, Fili and Kili, the Royals Under the Mountain.

Y/N wouldn’t lie, she was mostly reading it to make fun Thorin, but then again, history was interesting. 

She looked up from a particularly hilarious passage about Thorin’s ‘incredible bravery and innumerable acts of service to the Throne of Erebor’ at the harsh cry of a raven. It circled around her, cawing enthusiastically with something less akin to malevolence and more to happiness in its black eyes, before flying off. 

Y/N had been smiling but she frowned when she realised that the raven was not flying towards Erebor, as most did, but away from it.

Then it had to be flying away from something … Y/N connected the dots just as the door to the battlements whipped open and something slammed into her back just as she was turning around, knocking her off the ramparts.

She screamed loudly, looking at the ground beneath her and envisioning the fifty different ways she would splatter all over it.

A hand encased in a brown glove but for the fingers suddenly swung into her view, catching ahold of hers in a startlingly tight grip.

Y/N looked up, seeing a Dwarvish face that was at once familiar and entirely seperate from her small existence in Erebor, and she couldn’t put a name to him.

His brown hair reached just past his shoulders, and was not braided. Paired with his beardless, kinda attractive face (stubble did not count in Y/N’s eyes), Y/N reached the conclusion that he was still young, definitely under 100.

He was holding onto her with one of his hands and his other was held by a blonde Dwarf with much more facial hair than the former and a messy blonde mane like a lion who stood behind the battlements where she had been sitting prior to being knocked off by (presumably) one of the two. 

Y/N was very impressed that the Dwarf was holding her up with one hand, as she was at least more than half a foot taller than him, but she had no energy to be focused on that emotion beyond the hot fear coursing through her veins.

“Oi! Pull!” the brown-haired Dwarf yelled, and the blonde did so, clenching his teeth and heaving, until all three of them were safe on the ramparts.

“I am so sorry for my brother’s clumsiness, Miss Y/N!” the bearded, seemingly older Dwarf apologised. 

“Itkit! (Shut up!)” the younger brother hissed, giving the blonde a scathing glare. “But I do apologise, Lady Y/N.” He emphasised the title he gave her, though it was definitely not one she actually possessed.

“I’m sorry,” Y/N replied to the two enthusiastic Dwarves with confusion etched all over her face. Here they were, having knocked her off the side of a fucking Castle, calling her ‘Lady’ and apparently knowing her name when she could not match a name to either of their faces. “How do you know my name? Do I know you?”

“Oh, that’s right,” the brunette said thoughtfully, turning to his brother. “Uncle Thorin said she was new.”

“He also said she was a-”

“Oh Mahal, shut up! How many languages do I have to say that in?”

Uncle Thorin? Oh shit ....

“Anyway. Prince Fili-”

“-and Prince Kili-”

“At your service!” they both chimed, bowing low in unison and springing back up with wide grins that made them seem a lot younger than they probably were.

“Fuck...” Y/N muttered under her breath, curtseying as low as she could. “My Princes, I apologise-”

Her embarrassed apology was cut short with a squeak flying from her mouth as she was yet again jerked up by Kili, who brushed off her f/c dress that was dirty from falling off the ramparts. 

“Lady Y/N, you needn’t apologise; it is technically my fault for knocking you off the walls of Erebor!”

“Then you needn’t call me Lady Y/N,” the girl retorted, almost instantly regretting the familiarity with a royal figure, but also proud when Kili gave a loud laugh and wide smile. “I’m just Y/N.”

“Alright then, Just Y/N,” Kili teased, wiggling his eyebrows and taking her hand, kissing it gently. “On behalf of the Prince of Erebor-”

“-Princes, you little shit,” Fili interrupted, casually spinning a knife on his fingers.

“... Princes of Erebor,” Kili rolled his eyes. “Welcome, new friend.”

---

“You two are unbelievable,” Y/N complained, though a wide smile was affixed on her face.

“We know,” Fili and Kili replied, both still covered in flour from when they’d begun to throw it like snowballs in the middle of baking with her. 

“Well, at least we salvaged-” Y/N cut herself off as she took the cake out of the oven. “Mahal. What is that?”

The cake was less a cake, and more a complete mess. Half of it looked gooey and porous, and the other half burnt. Y/N just turned to the brothers, raising an eyebrow.

They eyed each other too, shuffling their feet. 

Y/N sighed. “This is why we don’t have food fights in the kitchen, guys.”

Fili and Kili had the decency to look a little sheepish as Y/N turned to dump the mess in the bin. As she did so, she glanced out the window and flinched.

“Shit! I’m meant to meet Bard soon - it’s a meeting of great importance. And I’m not ready, there is flour everywhere, my hair is a mess-”

“Well, we can handle at least one of those things,” Kili told Y/N, lightly pushing her into a chair, his hands clean of flour now. “I know a really good hairstyle for special occasions - our mother used to wear it.”

He began to run his fingers through her hair, gently untangling the knots with a brush Fili gave him (honestly, how much did that Dwarf have in his coat?) and braiding it. Y/N closed her eyes, enjoying the feeling of his hands in her hair and its soothingness. Suddenly, she opened her eyes, flushing red. 

Was she falling for the Prince of Erebor?

No, surely not. After all, he was a dwarf, and she a human: a human the King of Erebor didn’t exactly have a partiality towards. It would never work out.

That doesn’t mean feelings just stop, dumbass. Y/N’s brain reasoned. She rolled her eyes at herself. 

 “Alright, it’s done! And Fili and I will clean up the kitchen,” Kili announced, pulling her up and lightly dusting off her f/c dress, careful to avoid any areas it was improper to touch, a small hint of pink on his cheeks as he did so. Y/N pulled some of her hair around her shoulders - Kili had done several braids amongst her loose hair, most of them tied with black bands but one with a beautiful bead in it that she didn’t get a proper look at.

(A/N - imagine this hairstyle, but only one bead, and that bead has lots of jewels all in different colours)

“We’ll clean up what?” Fili protested. Kili smirked, pushing her out the door.

“We’ll see you later, Y/N!”

---

Y/N ran as fast as she could, considering her annoyingly impractical skirt, and she finally skidded to a stop in the snow outside the great doors, taking in who was there.

Bard bowed his head in greeting, his eldest daughter, Sigrid by his side. (Y/N had thought she had heard faint giggles from inside, meaning Tilda was hanging out with Dwalin again), Thorin stood impatiently, leaning on his sword, and next to him, keeping a petty distance was …

“My lord Thranduil,” Y/N bowed, having also read all about the infamously glamorous Elvenking of Mirkwood. “I apologise for my tardiness.”

“You are on time, Y/N,” Bard said, giving Thorin a side-eye. The damages of the Battle of the Five Armies went far beyond death. 

Thorin chose to sit on a ledge that a) placed him higher than all of those present and b) allowed him to rest. Recovering from being impaled by the Pale Orc was a lengthy process, and one still far from finishing. 

“What is the importance of this meeting?” Y/N asked, eager to go back to her chambers and think on the startling discoveries she’d made on what her heart told her about Kili Durin.

“The purpose, Y/N, is for this …”

---

After the meeting, Y/N went to leave, but Thorin called her name, stopping her.

“Yes, my King?”

He reached for one of the braids Kili had put in her hair, smiling kinder than she had ever seen him do so.

“Kili’s bead. So you have not tamed the Lion, but you have chosen the Fox. Loyal, yet cheeky and sweet.”

Y/N opened her mouth, confused, but Thorin kept speaking.

“I congratulate you on your courtship, Y/N. I wish you much love and happiness.”

“My King, I’m sorry, but I am not courting-”

He swept off in a majestic swirl of furs, leaving Y/N with a finger raised and her eyebrows wrinkled in confusion.

“Courting?” she wondered aloud. “What in Middle-Earth ...” 

Suddenly, she recalled Thorin’s observation of ‘Kili’s bead’, and she pulled her hair in front of her face, scanning it for the singular, beautiful silver bead, with its nine differently-coloured gemstones, and some vague thought buried in the back of her brain called to her.

“That Dwarf ...” Y/N cursed colourfully, tossing her hair over her shoulder, picking up her skirts and running as fast as she could to the most familiar area of Erebor.

The Library. Shelves upon shelves, thousands stretching out further than Y/N could see from the entrance. She raced for the section on Dwarvish customs, pulling a dusty red tome titled ‘Dwarves and Their Secrets - The Rites and Customs of Their Culture’ and flipping through it, coughing as swirls of dust swam into the air.

Finding the page she was after, she slammed the open book onto a nearby table, running her finger down the page as her h/c hair fell in her face.

“That little fuck,” Y/N hissed, closing the book with a slam and sliding down one of the shelves until she sat on the floor, her arms curled around her knees, her face hidden from the world and vice verse by her h/l hair.

“So you found out,” a meek voice said, prompting Y/N to lift her head as Kili sat next to her.

“You bet your non-existent beard I did,” Y/N grumbled. 

“I’m sorry,” Kili mumbled, burying his face in his hands, which were large, the same size as yours. “I didn’t know how to tell you that I liked you. I chose the coward’s way out.”

“I can understand that,” Y/N admitted. “Although telling everyone that why were courting via my hairstyle was not the smartest way of going about it.”

“Well, technically, your hairstyle doesn’t say you are dating. (A/N: this part here is completely made up) These braids in this style, paired with the loose hair actually means unrequited love. And seeing as I did your hair, and I have a matching braid-” he briefly pushed his hair behind his ear, pulling on a small braid, that was, indeed matching, even with a simpler version of the bead, with only two gems. “-it basically tells everyone that I have a crush on you. Uncle Thorin just misunderstood because he only looked at the bead, which he knows I own.”

“What do the gems mean?” Y/N asked, knowing she was avoiding the topic of Kili’s love for her and her possible love for him, but too afraid to cross that bridge.

Kili smiled nervously, already flushing from what he anticipated Y/N’s reaction to be, and he pulled the bead from her hair, pointing to each gem as he explained their meaning.

“The white one with the blue sheen - moonstone. It means patience, like how I am willing to wait for you. This pink one is morganite. It symbolises divine love and prosperity. These two are the ones that I have in my matching bead.” And Y/N saw that this was indeed true.

“The red ruby, which symbolises passion.” Kili’s cheeks looked as red as the jewel as he hurriedly moved on. “An emerald, green, which is fertility. Not only in children, but fertility in the soil that grows the flowers of success. Old wive’s tale. The purple one’s an opal - which is for emotional purity. It’s meant to guard against jealousy and anger. The garnet and the citrine - orange and the yellow - both stand for protection, though the citrine also provides prosperity and success.”

Y/N was completely entranced by his knowledge of the gems, even as he came to the last few.

“This pastel blue one is for fidelity, although I don’t think you need that, you have loads of it.” Y/N and Kili laughed together, and Kili fixed the bead back in her hair.

“Wait! You didn’t explain the last one!” Y/N protested, eager to hear more.

Kili stopped, smiling. “Oh. That’s a sapphire, which means trust, like how I’m trusting you with my heart. But I put it in there because it’s the exact colour of your eyes.”

Y/N was so touched by this last one, that he trusted her with his heart, even after she heard that it had been broken by the death of the Mirkwood elleth, Tauriel, that she threw her arms around him, squeezing him tight. On the floor, they were a similar height, and he hugged her back lightly.

“You know, Kili of the Line of Durin,” Y/N said teasingly as her arms lingered around his neck, though she pulled back so she could look him in the eye. “I think I need to thank you for the bead and the braids, because you made me realise something.”

“What?” Kili breathed.

“I realised I’m kinda in love with you.”

And hidden in the endless shelves of the library, Y/N kissed him, right there and then.

Hi there guys! I’ll be putting up a dialogue prompts request list soon for you to request UP TO THREE numbers.

Thanks for reading! Please feel free to heart this imagine, give me a follow and/or request (it makes my day so much!).

[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

[sparxwrites]

I've noticed recently that I've become accustomed to capitalising words for Emphasis, both in the absence of italics and in tandem with them. As a language nerd, what does this suggest of language mutation going forward?

this isn’t language mutation! at least, not in the way i suspect you mean it. it’s more of a linguistic adaptation to the inherent limitations of text-based communication - which is a bit of a mouthful, and a lot to unpack, so, let’s start with the basics:

in spoken english, we have words and grammar and sentences, the same as we have with internet english. however, we also have facial expressions, and body language, and hand gestures - and most relevantly here something called prosidy, which internet english is lacking (at least in the traditional sense). prosidy is the changes in pitch and volume of your voice when speaking. this gives rise to stress and intonation in speech, which serves several purposes - one is distinguishing between words (ie. record the object, and record the action), another is conveying emotion, and another is providing emphasis.

the last one is the primary purpose of both italics and initial capitalisation in internet english. since we can’t have prosidy over the internet via pitch and volume, we’ve adopted other methods. 

words with the same spelling are usually disambiguated by context, so they’re not hugely relevant here, but there’s some interesting things going on with emotion and emphasis.

emotion is usually done with memes, emoticons, gifs, or other “verbal tags” - stuff like “/s” for sarcasm or “uwu” (which, interestingly, started off as a genuine expression of “i’m not mad at you!” and is now sarcastic and passive aggressive, so that’s a- lexical? possibly-lexical mutation there), or even acronyms like “tbh” and “lol” and “lmfao” which are now more often used to indicate the mood of a particular statement. for example: when was the last time you saw someone using lmfao to Actually Literally Mean “laughing my ass off”? now consider when the last time you saw someone using lmfao to mean “the previous statement is intended to be mildly humorous in a bleak and self-depreciating kind of way” was. think of the number of posts about “adults need to learn to text!” where people think their parents are angry because they ended a text in a full stop. think of all the wonderful variations on ellipses we have!! the way people use question marks as rhetorical devices, to indicate uncertainty in their statement, or to point out how obvious something is!! i love it. emotion tag-words are my favourite.

emphasis / stress is usually (or at least traditionally) done with italics in written english - it isn’t particularly a internet english thing, it’s been done by writers and comic book artists since well before the internet. this is part of what’s called prosodic stress in spoken english, and it’s used in a couple of different ways. aside from general the most relevant one here is to point out new information in a sentence (called focus in linguistics):

“However, it’s not enough to assume that turtles merely like the taste of pineapples. We must consider the possibility that turtles are deeply, sexually attracted to fruit.”

there’s also contrastive focus (a sub-type of focus, where the person you’re speaking to makes an assumption, and you’re contradicting / correcting them). wikipedia has some nice examples of how it’s often used both online and out loud:

I didn't take the test yesterday. (Somebody else did.)I didn't take the test yesterday. (I did not take it.)I didn't take the test yesterday. (I did something else with it.)I didn't take the test yesterday. (I took a different one.)I didn't take the test yesterday. (I took something else.)I didn't take the test yesterday. (I took it some other day.)

other things italics can do include indicating sarcasm (“Oh, of course, no one else has ever thought of this, because you’re so clever.”), and highlighting important/argument-relevant (“As I mentioned earlier: fish can feel love. This is just one reason amongst many, however, that fish-human marriage is undeniably ethically sound.”). i’m 90% sure that that latter one is probably also focus-related, but i don’t know enough about information structure generally to commit entirely to calling it focus - tbh, given how many different theories of focus there are, it may be focus under some theories, but not others (see also: that one theory on the wiki page where anything not given is focused, so if you’re specifically bringing up or reminding people of a relevant piece of information it’s probably not given and therefore focused). if the important / argument-relevant use is not focus-related, though, then it’s at least somehow related to information structure; perhaps italics are more generally useable to indicate something about information structure, without it specifically needing to be focus.

stress done with initial capitalisation, however, seems to be a little different - or at least, seems to occur in broader contexts than the one above. i suspect you could do an entire postgrad thesis on the similarities and differences between the two (and i also suspect that i don’t remember enough about syntax and phonology and information structure etc. to offer the best insight possible here), but let’s see if we can’t at least pick the differences apart a bit.

so! initial capitalisation can certainly be used in the same contexts as italics, for focusing new / relevant information and for contrastive focus. this evidenced by: (a) “omg, have u considered that turtles are Sexually Attracted To Fruit??” and “pls remember that Fish Can Feel Love” are both perfectly a-okay in internet english, and (b) by an edited version of the wikipedia examples:

I didn't take the test yesterday. (Somebody else did.)i Didn't take the test yesterday. (I did not take it.)i didn't Take the test yesterday. (I did something else with it.)i didn't take The test yesterday. (I took a different one.)i didn't take the Test yesterday. (I took something else.)i didn't take the test Yesterday. (I took it some other day.)

(initial capitalisation with “I” is always a little tricky (is it emphasis, or is it just normal capitalisation?), and in my expereince people tend to default to italics with it wherever possible for this reason. i’m also… unsure about how happy i am with the grammaticality (how “okay” a particular sentence is within a given language / dialect) of examples 4 & 5 (“The” and “Test”), but that might be because those two are a little unusual even with italics - “i didn’t take The Test today” looks much better, i think, and can mean both “i took a different one” and “i took something else”.)

however, it’s clear that initial capitalisation can occur in places where italicisation is either outright incorrect, or at least looks kind of weird:

[cute picture of a cat lying on its back, pulling a face, having knocked a plant pot off the table]

commenter A: “Why Do Cats Do These Things”

commenter B: “why do cats do these things”

commenter A’s statement is perfectly correct internet english; commenter B’s statement is just about interpretable, but quite clearly clumsy / not really acceptable in the opinion of most “native internet english speakers”. but why?? well, we’re clearly not focusing “do these things” (because it’s not really providing any information, it’s just sort of… pointing out that the cat in the picture is being weird and then asserting that this is prototypical cat behaviour. it’s trying to tap into a shared knowledge of “what cats do / are like” between “speaker” and reader), and though it’s somewhat humorous it’s not actually sarcastic, so italics are a no-go.

what commenter A is trying to do, however, is to indicate a specific usage / meaning of “do these things” via a specific “tone of voice”. commenter A is not just asking why cats behave specifically in this manner re: knocking pots off and pulling faces, they’re trying to indicate that they consider cats in general to act weirdly and look goofy; typing “why do cats do these things” would be mostly fine if you are indicating frustration / anger with a sudden plague of cats-knocking-off-plant-pots, but that’s not what commenter A is trying to communicate.

additionally, when i say “Why Do Cats Do These Things” out loud, there’s a specific tone of voice i use for it, that i suspect others do to - this kind of flat monotone, with a heavy weight on each word that’s not so much emphasis but a very careful over-pronunciation. it’s not quite emphasis, and definitely not focus-emphasis; it’s almost a comedy thing, or a joke; it’s drawing attention to a specific interpretation of this sentence that’s both humorous and typical within internet spaces; it’s indicating a kind of emotion (exasperation / affection / despair) more than anything.

some other examples of this, where capitalisation is a-okay but italics are somewhere between weird and entirely unacceptable:

“nah it’ll be fine, i’m Basically Immortal lol”

“getting run over would be Suboptimal”

“if word crashes and deletes this essay then, i swear to god, I’m Gonna Die”

“you’re a Terrible Human Being and i love it”

(if anyone can think of any examples where italics and capitalisation is okay, but are in the same style as the above, then let me know! or if people disagree with my analysis of what initial capitalisation sounds like out-loud. this sort of thing relies on native speaker judgements, usually, and although i am as close to a native internet english speaker as you’re gonna get, i’m only one person. other people may have other judgements.)

i suspect, from all of this, that the function of initial capitalisation is to indicate any kind of change in prosidy in the speaker’s voice (though primarily weird monotone), usually with an emphasis on a specific interpretation of the particular phrase that’s initially-capitalised. this is why it can be used for focus, and for sarcasm, and for more general emphasis the same way - but why it can also be used to represent a monotone (“I Would Prefer Not To”) in a way italics can’t, or to indicate that specific “you know what i’m talking about / i am referring to a concept we both share but that cannot be put into words” tone (“Why Are You Like This”), or that looping-up-and-down voice people use when they’re winding someone up (“I Am A Joy And A Delight, idk what you’re talking about :3ccc”).

italics can kind of be used for some of these, but only really as an extension of its function as an indicator of sarcasm - which means that italics are intelligible in that context, but just look weird, and like the person using them isn’t very fluent in internet english. that’s because initial caps don’t quite indicate sarcasm, though it occupies a similar teasing-dramatic tonal area; in some / most instances, initial caps seems to function similar to adding “lmfao” or “lol” onto the end, which suggests it’s also indicating a self-depreciating or bleak humour / drama to the sentence. initial caps seem to function, then, as a focus / emphasis device, but also as an emotion indicator, which is a sort of fascinating crossover of function - but very similarly to the way we see voice and prosidy being used for both focus / emphasis, and for conveying emotion.

so, you probably use italics + capitalisation in conjunction because you’re trying to convey two different things. for a sentence like “drinking three cups of coffee in a row is a terrible, awful, no good idea and oh my god Why Would You Do That”, the italics are conveying where you’re putting stress / emphasis in the sentence (on “oh my god why would you do that”). the initial capitalisation, however, is indicating that on top of emphasis, you’re saying “why would you do that” in a specifically unusual kind of prosidy, probably quite a flat and monotone one, and that it’s designed to be teasing / humorous.

i also suspect that italics + capitalisation can be used as a kind of “double emphasis”, or marking out an emphasised section within an already emphasised talking point. kind of the way bolding sometimes works?? (except the internet tends not to use bolding fsr, or only uses it for headings / as a way to highlight the most important sentences in a wall of information. it’s a structural-level organisational device, essentially.) so you can re-parse “it’s so important we feed cats and dogs different food, because cats are not dogs and have different dietary requirements!!!” as “[...], precisely because Cats Are Not Dogs and have different dietary requirements!!!”. in this instance, you’re emphasising that the reason for different treatment is that cats are not dogs and therefore have different dietary requirements, but also emphasising the fact in and of itself that cats are not dogs.

i also also suspect that, when we just need one form of emphasis and are choosing whether to use italics or initial capitalisation, we consider the context of our writing. in this “essay”, i’ve mostly used italics - they’re a little more “formal” as far as internet language goes (so, not very formal at all, but still more standard than initial caps), they’re more semantically accessible (i.e. if non-tumblr people find this essay, whereas they might be able to proactively work out what initial caps are intended to convey from context, they’ll probably intuitively understand the use of italics here), and they’re more visually accessible / they disrupt the visual flow of the text less. when i’m talking with friends (especially on platforms like skype and discord and tumblr messenger which, if they support italics at all, do so in a “non-intuitive” way, i.e. not using ctrl+i like word processing software does), in shorter / less formal settings, where the visual flow of the sentence is part of the meaning / emotion of the sentence in and of itself (how long are the sentences? do you use full stops? do you capitalise the beginnings of sentences? do you send each sentence as a new message? on a new line? how many dots do you use for ellipses? keysmashes? ?!??!??!?!?!?!!!! ?), i tend to use initial caps.

so tl;dr: italics seem to be primarily used to indicate focus - you’re pointing out a new or specifically relevant piece of information, or you’re correcting / denying a piece of information that your conversational partner has provided (or perhaps being sarcastic). initial capitalisation can Also/also be used for this purpose, but is additionally used to represent Any/any kind of change in prosidy that would occur if you spoke the sentence aloud (since we also mess about with intonation for other reasons beside focus). ...i sincerely hope someone has done / is doing / will do a thesis on this bc honestly this probably has some fascinating implications for information structure or prosidy or Something/something tbh.

regarding the “mutations” comment: these sorts of internet english quirks are not language mutations, per se, because we already have features for distinguishing this kind of thing in spoken english - and also because a lot of this stuff is what we call paralinguistic phenomena, which means that sarcasm and emphasis etc. communicate something, but it’s not actually strictly part of the language itself. it just adds an extra layer of meaning on top of the stuff being conveyed by the actual words.

instead, they’re adaptations of our orthographic (writing) system to cope with the increasing demands of written/internet english to convey these sorts of things. online, we don’t have people’s prosidy and their body language / expressions to read, so we need altered orthography or other visual indicators to ensure that people correctly understand the intent and mood behind your communication, not just the raw word-content of it. that’s why internet english has developed these quirks. essentially: our communication has always had these paralinguistic phenomena, these ways to convey emotion and emphasis; we’re just finding different ways of expressing them in response to environmental restrictions, i.e. the fact we’re all increasingly communicating via text on a regular, intensive basis. historically, we’ve primarily communicated verbally, so it’s not developed due to lack of need - but the internet has has created a heavily-used, text-primary environment, so now we do need it, and we’re collaboratively creating it as a result because humans (especially young humans) are excellent language innovators. it’s pretty neat!!

(as an interesting aside, i suspect that there’s also an element of in-grouping going on here. people want to mark out the community belong to, the people they’ve chosen as their “tribe” - irl, we do this via slang, and accents, and sometimes through certain types of wordplay or forms of prosidy / gesture etc. obviously, online, we can have slang (think about how often you’ve seen someone on tumblr say “top kek”, versus how ubiquitous that phrase is on reddit), but accents are a little harder. so we instead develop different ways of typing, different ways we use italics or capitalisation or emotes. some of this depends on platform constraints - if your community’s site doesn’t allow bold/italics, or automatically converts emotes into weird yellow smileys, you’re gonna have to develop workarounds for that - but some of it is us going “these are my people, and i can tell because we talk differently, and we’re Not Like You People”. this is why it can sometimes be linguistically disorienting going onto a different platform; i often find posters’ “tone” on reddit hard to read, because they seem to signal emotion differently to on tumblr!!

this may, perhaps, also be a reason why we’ve ended up with both capitalisation and italics - if one social group developed italics as emphasis, and a second social group (perhaps on a platform without capacity for italics) developed capitalisation as emphasis, and then the two groups merged or interacted, you’re gonna get this linguistic transference where the groups adopt one another’s styles without dropping their own original style. and then- voila! both italics and capitalisation for emphasis. but because language often tends towards getting rid of redundancy, the two styles specified out into having slightly different connotations / occuring in slightly different pragmatic environments. or, perhaps, the capitalisation style was always broader than italics, and there’s not been any change yet to reduce redundancy, but there will be in the future. who knows!)

(as a second interesting aside, all of this is probably partly why autistic people often report online friendships being easier / report preferring textual communication to face-to-face. whereas expressions and prosidy can be exceptionally difficult to learn to read if they’re not instinctual - think of the infinite variations of muscle contraction and relaxation in the face! the number of different pitches and volumes and patterns we can make with our voice! they’re very difficult to categorise because they overlap a lot and tend to gradient into one another - these kinds of “emotional tags” are usually quite easy and clear-cut. “/s” indicates sarcasm every time it is used, entirely unambiguously. stuff like “lol” or “tbh” are a little more ambiguous, but even then, they have a more limited set of emotional contexts that they’re used in than, say, the corners of your lips moving upwards. gifs and memes are even better; if they don’t outright say what they mean on the gif or in the meme, there’s entire websites dedicated to cataloguing and explaining memes should you be unclear of the usage.

additionally, internet environments can be a little more forgiving wrt people not picking up on tone, or using an incorrect / weird tone, when conversing; it’s hard to display tone online, and even allistic people (especially internet newbies or older people) struggle with it, so tonal faux pas or misunderstandings are a little more expected (and therefore forgiven) than irl.)

[youtiaoshutiao]

translation: shen yue’s and hu yi tian’s long messages about “a love so beautiful”

The day before ALSB aired, Shen Yue posted a heartfelt weibo essay about her experience filming the drama and about her fellow cast members. Just today, two days after ALSB finished airing, Hu Yi Tian also posted a really long weibo post (which if you stalk his weibo, you would find that that is extremely abnormal among the rest of his posts consisting of barely a few words) about ALSB. Just really thought that both posts were super sincere and lovely and felt like translating it, though I’m not sure if other people have already done so. Please excuse any awkward sentence structures!! I tried my best :P

original posts by: shen yue and hu yi tian @ sina weibo

translated by: yt st / youtiaoshutiao @ tumblr 

(All italicised words are additional notes by me)

shen yue: “written for our little beautiful moments” [published on the 8th of November 2017, a day before ALSB started airing]

(Original link: https://www.weibo.com/ttarticle/p/show?id=2309404171872605503107)

I as a person probably have a foible of absolutely having to say a really long paragraph of words before major events happen.

In that case, I’ll begin to speak. Okay… then let’s begin speaking from the auditions of A Love So Beautiful (ALSB).

On that morning of me attending the auditions, to boost my courage, I swallowed half a glass of red wine in one mouthful. But I didn’t expect that my face would flush when I drank alcohol, when I arrived at the audition site, my face had turned as red as Lord Guan (NOTE: Guan Yu, who is often portrayed with a red face in Chinese Opera)…… My manager turned her head around to look at me and got a huge shock, she kept on muttering that we were ruined… It was precisely with this face of Lord Guan that I met everyone’s Teacher Hu (NOTE: referring to Hu Yi Tian).

You guys, don’t look at how I normally appear so quick-witted or write memes on Weibo and think that I as a person am quite ok, actually in real life, once I am faced with a major scene/spectacle/occasion, I become super cowardly. Fortunately, the alcohol that day achieved its purpose, allowing me to be totally fearless even in front of the super handsome guy that Teacher Hu was, and let loose and act.

Following that was a period of endless waiting, I really felt that I waited for an extremely long time. I waited till the point where I began to beg the koi on weibo (NOTE: a common phenomenon on weibo where netizens often reblog a picture of a koi for good luck). Then one morning, I finally received a Wechat message from my manager saying that they had decided on me. I hugged my phone and shrieked while lying on my bed for about three minutes, itching to go downstairs and set off some fireworks.

Later on Teacher Hu told me that actually at the last juncture of finalising who to act as Chen Xiaoxi, his own opinion did have a little bit of impact, and he hoped that I in the future would not forget who had dug the well when I drink water (NOTE: meaning to not forget your benefactor). These words have caused me to feel chills down my back whenever I drink water now.

After entering set without a hitch, I met Teacher Hu, Zi Wei, Sun Ning, Old Gao one after another.

Teacher Hu and I are both people who are slow to warm up to others. To let both of us become familiar with each other quickly, everyone forcefully made us do everything together. Every time Zi Wei, Sun Ning and Old Gao gathered together and chatted with each other passionately, Teacher Hu and I would stand by the side, being so awkward and at a complete loss of what to do, staring into space separately. Later on, I forgot how Teacher Hu and I became close to each other… It probably started when we had a meme/emoticon picture war…. After that we slowly became friends who could share snacks together, and when we became even more familiar with each other we started despising each other (NOTE: this is in jest, hahaha), and we fought with each other everyday.

Zi Wei is a very enthusiastic girl. Just after we added each other on Wechat, she sent me a message: “Chen Xiaoxi! I am your big brother!” Once I saw this style, I felt like it was really compatible with me, and I immediately replied her with a emoticon/meme picture saying “Let’s sleep together when we are free”. I don’t know if she really took it seriously, but sure enough after that she repeatedly invited me to go to her room and sleep together with her…

As for Sun Ning, Sun Ning immediately upon meeting me started to be courteous with me, saying, “Aiya, you’re really adorable.” I also was courteous with him, saying, “Thank you, thank you.” Later on, our conversations often went like this – “You’re really adorable.” “Bah! Who are you saying is adorable? You are the one who is adorable?” “Hey, who are you scolding that they are adorable?” “You are adorable, you’re the most adorable person in the world”… This repeated itself endlessly.

As for Old Gao, I initially really thought that he was really cold, and that he probably didn’t like to hang out with girls. So sometimes I was pretty afraid of acting together with him. Later on we were filming a scene, I was crying really wretchedly and my mucus got onto his clothes. He said, “Chen Xiaoxi, why are you so disgusting?”, then the two of us got into a fight, and after that we were close.

I’m really thankful for all the people I met on the ALSB set. Even though the entire production crew, from the director to the costume people, makeup people and props crew, all seemed to despise me, and all liked to deride me, but they genuinely and sincerely took care of me. I love you guys.

*exhales* lastly, I haven’t seen the final product, and I don’t know how I’ve portrayed my role, so now I’m also really panicky in my heart. Just after we finished filming, the few of us said that if the finalised drama airs and we don’t dare to watch it alone at home, we should arrange to watch it together at an internet café, and we could even roast each other as well. But now everyone has their own matters that they are busy with, and we are all in different cities, so we can’t meet together.

In a true sense, ALSB is Teacher Hu’s and my first time acting in a show. I feel that the producers are really daring to let us act as the main male and female leads. The final presentation may perhaps have areas which people are not too satisfied with, I can only… plead with everyone to pardon me/us more.

Bowing.

hu yi tian’s weibo post [written on the 12th of December 2017, two days after ALSB finished its run]:

(Original link: https://www.weibo.com/3228634923/FyR2kg4qt?type=comment#_rnd1512809496922)

(screenshot of first episode’s title: “Dear Jiang Chen”)

To all audience who like ALSB:

“Hello, I am the actor who portrayed Jiang Chen, Hu Yi Tian.” This period of time, it seems like this is how I am always introducing myself to everyone, sometimes I even will begin to blur the boundary lines between myself and Jiang Chen. In many of the interviews, I am often asked this question – “Do you think you and Jiang Chen are similar?” My answer is also always very certain. How he is very reserved with regards to his emotions, and the many times his words do not actually reflect what he feels, these are the biggest similarities between me and him. Therefore, during the airing period of ALSB, while on one hand, I was really happy about the love that everyone had for ALSB, and the love everyone had for me, on the other hand, I was really nervous in my heart, and I was also feeling overwhelmed from the favour everyone showed me. Just like Jiang Chen in the drama, facing all the “Chen Xiaoxis”, I felt an unprecedented nervousness. Did my present self really deserve this love everyone was showing me, could I properly respond to this love from everyone?

Because actually, as opposed to Jiang Chen’s perfection, I personally am very ordinary. I have an ordinary family background, an ordinary family environment, an ordinary growth trajectory, I spent twenty plus years just being this ordinary. But the airing of ALSB allowed me to have the fortune to come into everyone’s presence, and come into the Mahjongs’ (NOTE: the term for Hu Yi Tian’s fans) presence. This one month plus, I got to know you guys and got to have you guys, your affection and your support also made me become not “ordinary” anymore. Even though I’ve already said words of gratitude many times, but I still want to say, really, thank you so much.

At the same time, I also want to thank my team for handing Jiangchen over to me. For close to two years, we have worked hard together, and came this far today, and we will still walk the roads that come after this together. It is inevitable that the start of a novice’s journey will be chaotic and full of turmoil. I also hope that everyone would give us some more time, believe in me, and also believe that my team will all become even better.

ALSB has reached its finale, even though I don’t want to say goodbye, I still have to say goodbye. However I believe that we will see each other again very soon. In order to match up to this love that you guys have given me, I will work even harder, and improve myself as quickly as possible, to let you guys see an even less “ordinary” me on a bigger screen, then after that, to continue accompanying you day after day. (NOTE: Hu Yi Tian’s name - i.e. Yi Tian, literally means “one day” in Chinese)

[spamzineglasgow]

(REVIEW) Pain Journal Issue 3

In this review, Maria Sledmere draws out the material poetics of intimacy, glimmer, memory and salt in issue 3 of Pain Journal, from Partus Press, asking what kinds of dream-writing and ecopoetics we might find among the tangle, the camaraderie, the trace.

> Pain is an immaculate journal of new poetry and short, creative essays, edited by Vala Thorodds and Luke Allan, published by Partus Press and designed by Studio Lamont. Folding out the cover of issue 3, you’ll find an epigraph from Robert Creeley’s ‘The Flower’: ‘Pain is a flower like that one, / like this one, / like that one, / like this one’. Pain is a making, a sap, a sort of seedling and fruiting of where we are in the years. It likens itself to more than we’d tend to acknowledge. A blood, a fur of skin, a flower. It’s such a luxury to hold issue 3 in its peachy, matte dust jacket, admiring the beautiful type and the list of contributors. There’s an air of the covetable to Pain: maybe it’s the print quality, maybe it’s the poetry, maybe it’s the curation. I think it’s also something to do with the cover, dominated by the sans serif title PAIN: when I read this walking in the street, I make some kind of statement. It feels charged with the ambiguity of some high fashion statement, and yet what lucky readers are we that something of the contents may tell the pain — we don’t just wear it.

> Where to start! These are lush poems of communication, intimacy, sensation. Ásta Fanney Sigurðardóttir’s ‘Gleam & delicacies’ is a surreal and elliptical lyric of superstitious glimmer. Poetry as ‘a trap for the superstitions’. I find myself googling what a ‘glowfruit’ is and find some reddit discussions around the appearance of ‘glowfruit trees’ in Sims games. There’s this line, ‘I still have wild glowfruit trees. Do you?’, which feels like a summons, a challenge. Enter into this logic with me, where the one-time event of the glowfruit’s arrival has seeded the game’s eternal time. Someone comments, ‘They seem kind of random to me’. I had forgotten the magic of games and their luxurious richness and dream logic of glitches and hacks and splintered paths of narrative. Perhaps my childhood adoration of Sega and Nintendo was my way into poetry. The opening veils of an overlain world. Sigurðardóttir’s poetics have that quality of drifting between rooms and scenes, or falling between bodies and scales by one gesture of a linebreak, the slide of a button control, ‘I give birth to suns / for the morning hoax / slippery planets’. It reminds me of David O’Reilly’s video game, Everything, where you can move between a roving shrub, a celestial body and an oil rig in the space of ten minutes. What is meant by a ‘nighthaired waiter’? There is a dream-hand that extends to our proprioceptive venturing, that offers casual refusal (‘I didn’t come here to toothbrush the wolf’) by way of assembling the real and its purpose. The real which feels more like a ‘silhouette’.

> Significant, perhaps, that this poem of mirror-tricks and shimmers stands opposite Ruby Silk’s ‘Re:’, a poem that takes the banal conceit of email and pulling on tights in the swimming pool changing room to figure something of desire and its thirst. ‘we communicate drily’, the poem begins, ending with a slide on the nature of being quenched, on the question. Both poems forego punctuation, and more or less carry themselves on the turns of language: objects form a multiple syntax of moving between. Their cleanness on the page is perhaps what makes them gleam, they seem to hold their own. The gleam is present elsewhere in the issue, with Eloise Hendy’s ‘scrubland’ beginning, in the manner of Marianne Moore moving into Plath territory, ‘i too have a gleaming future. / a future like a fish scale, the eye / of a small bird’. Trauma or remembered pain is a matter of scale(s) and perception, of the body and its existential whittling, whitening. The speaker asks about whiteness, light, memory and dream: ‘all that spilt milk. all that gleaming’. You could say the gleam is metonymy for shame, the beaming cheeks, the sense of glowing or almost burning there in the situation. No capitals, a whittling. The idea of ‘nonsense’ itself, whittling down to the first gleam, its tender origin: ‘as a girl i was very soft’. The way the lines and stanzas slip, enjambed between, the idea of a passing through. The speaker offers her hurts: her fish eye, her pale appetite, her starved future, her dreams of fish bones and choking. ‘be gentle with me’, she implores. I think of this line from the film Lady Bird (2018), after Lady Bird loses her virginity under a pretence of shared experience and the boy Kyle is like ‘Do you have any awareness about how many civilians we’ve killed since invasion in Iraq started?’ and she replies, ‘SHUT UP. SHUT UP. Different things can be sad. It’s not all war’. ‘as an adult i am softer still’, Hendy writes, as though softening herself into the palest ghost and somehow becoming defiant, ‘my hand / is an arrowhead. a future / like a fish eye’.

> It’s no surprise that Pain is tinged with other existential tremors, those of the body and the world, of ecology and domesticity, of sex and dust. Helen Charman’s ‘In the pocket of Big Pig’ wears high theory cool on its sleeve as it sweeps into the muck and dirt of where we are. The movement of ‘manmade’ materials into the ‘natural’ is an aesthetic act: ‘Plastic / can holders entwine themselves around the / sea kelp — to tame and smooth frizz’. In that em-dash I feel the lines reaching out, the kelp and the twine and the human arms, the bristles. Does poetry do more than brush back the mess of the world, or tease it back into static? What are the ethics of pain’s poetic entanglement?

    ecopoets try again and again to convince us of the whiteness of the snow drift. I like            muddy ducklings               dirty reedbeds

                                                          (Charman, ‘In the pocket of Big Pig’)

If ‘muddy ducklings’ has that childlike assonance of storybook rhyme, ‘dirty reedbeds’ feels adult, insistent, dark. The place where you tangle and possibly drown. Turning away from the pristine ‘snow drift’ that pulls us into the picturesque, an ecopoetics that continues the aesthetic throwback of nature poetry before it, this is an anthropocene poetics of living in a fraught, affectively entangled now: ‘I think we’re nostalgic for more than VHS when we / fuck in front of the Blue Planet poster misty-eyed as if / we’ll ever get to show the oceans to our own kids’. Sex is ambivalently yoked to procreation in the ‘misty-eyed’ act of fucking to get back to something primal, deep and planetary. The world as it once supposedly was and exists now mostly as mediation: scenes on tv, posters for Blue Planet. And the word ‘fuck’ for sex that feels iterative rather than tender, two bodies trying to make something of what they have, an intensified point in time and space, a mediation or trace of each other.

> A similar kind of iterative sweetness and friction occurs in Jack Underwood’s ‘Behind the Face of Great White Shark’, where some new entry to the ecosystem upsets the home, ‘Since we brought you home from the hospital / I have begged these hours to a stub’. Enter the metaphoric playground of sharks and dogs, worms, rats, beans and bananas. Something of this new love, the baby perhaps, the shark or the tender thirsty thing at dawn, is a hurt: ‘I admit I have been sick / since we met, pursuing this love-wound / like a moon beyond the windscreen’. A love you’d drive to all through the night, to arrive back where you started, chaste in your own ‘dawn kitchen’ with a moony look in your eye. I think of Dorothea Lasky’s ‘wild lyric I’, the one she discusses in her new book Animal: this playful and manipulative ‘metaphysical I’ that ‘can harness all fragmented senses of self and use them whenever it needs to’. Underwood’s I thrashes like a shark on the sick shores of a new love, a birthing tide, dark and light. An I that threatens violence, desire from all angles and limbs ‘fucking ambidextrously’; an I that ‘can keep you safe inland’, that pulls you into its glow, for this is just ‘the lesser work of living’.

> It is tricky to identify highlights from a journal where, as with amberflora (whose sensibilities resonate here), the selections are impeccable: focused, resonant, but also lovely alone. Nina Mingya Powles’ ‘The Harbour’ has something of Clarice Lispector’s radiance, pressed into a teeming poetics of its own. Its section titles add an epistolary quality, italicised as they are, ‘Dear whales,’, ‘Dear dreamer,’. Post-Arika, with all talk of Moby Dick and the mathematics of the whale, it seems these cetaceans are having a real moment. Powles’ address to the whale is elegiac, ‘I can pinpoint all the places you have died, / where I’ve buried you’. She’s putting pressure on the work of metaphor, the whale as so much more than whale, the whale as what cannot be contained, the whale that cannot contain itself. Her whale is more of a comrade, a friend:

When I looked out of the train and saw your deep blue body and you saw mine you stayed close to me, swimming alongside. We were both travelling home.

What if ecopoetics, or anthropocene poetics, were something more like this surprising camaraderie? Does it matter whether the encounter was imagined or actually happened? Running through Pain is this suffering silk with its shadows and texture of echo and gleam, ‘the dream is wet skin against her hands / the fact is echolocation’ (Powles). I’ve been thinking about what the tensile ethics of this fugitive touch are: the touch of the image, the whale and the speaker on the train, the relative distance of speed and time between them, the hospitality she extends to the animal she is also. ‘I’ll show you my mother’s potted orchids’, in a world where to cross one human threshold is to know that later the sea will be deep enough for you once more. Pain asks how much of each other we need to hold. There’s this passage from Hélène Cixous’ novel Hyperdream (2006) that speaks to this:

I hear it, I hear a murmur your skin speaks, a blood thinks, I hear your thought running under the skin I hear your life thinking under the neat eternal spotless silk. I read with my life. I am torn. At the same time I am healed and glued back together again. During this time the world suffers and dies [...]

What is the murmur of our speaking skins, our thinking blood? The body that dreams? One pain can open the next, there’s a gesture of infinity, the way that Anne Boyer identifies in her ‘meditation on modern illness’, The Undying (2019): ‘My new calamity meant it was possible to feel every cell at once and, in these, every mitochondrion, and that it was possible, too, to have a millionfold shitshow of sensations in locations newly realised’. To have your body illumined, intensified, surged to the end of each nerve and cell with this searing consciousness. When I had shingles, I felt real dreams; they seemed to extend to a million tips, concentrated in clusters on the skin of my belly. Real dreams/real hurt. Is a body in pain the body that dreams the most, from her almost-paralysis in sensory excess? I think poems like Powles are asking these questions, declaring, spacing, opening up, leaving us on the brink of a blank that is its own quiet sublime, ‘everything is so !’. And if ‘the fact is letting go’, what of the fact have we been holding all along? Is this like Creeley, gesturing towards this or that flower, as a way of describing, to insist on it. Something we ask as children: does a flower or a plant feel pain? Pain, pain. There it is in the world, it just is, like a flower, or something more tiny and abrasive, salt after salt. A period.

> Rowland Bagnall’s essay ‘The Metal We Call Salt’ closes the journal with a meditation on the poetry of Philip Levine and Elizabeth Bishop, writers who ‘[address] the delicate failure of poetry to say the things which can’t be said’. This is Creeley, surely, with the flowers which stand for the shapeless pain. I’m reminded of a line from Rachael Allen’s ‘Kingdomland’: ‘the glass and salt my crooked pathway; impassable glass and salt’. The glittering remainders which excoriate the entry and exit of threshold, painful debris of the sea. This is the ‘tantalising’ poetics that Bagnall writes of, words that ‘say that they are lost for words’, words that gift and withhold by their material gesture: words that carry traces of what they may be. Salt-tanged and gleaming as glass. ‘What got revealed when the layers of leaves / Were blown backwards?’ Ralf Webb asks, in his ‘Three Sonnets’. What is it to walk over the crunching ‘pathway’ of such poems for pain, ana-cathartic as they move into, above, through, around and from the wound and its ferric sting? The essay also looks at the paintings of John Salt and photographs of Mark Ruwedel, considering how as a preservative and purifier, salt as both an archival and corrosive mineral: art as what consumes and reveals, what glints with the not yet spoken. Salt in the wound for pain will sting, but it will clear. These poems are such interfusions, sweetness and dreams, the ‘torn’: healed and suffering of a life and a world, coming over. And, for just a while, Pain will hold you together, soft in its peachy embrace.

Pain issue 3 is out now and available to purchase here.

~

Text: Maria Sledmere

Published: 5/1/20

[the-cryptographer]

@rainstormcolors

Why are the reviews on AO3 all so articulate? asdfg. (I wrote up most of this before reading them.)

You’re articulate too, though! You don’t give yourself enough credit, omg.

But if you guest comment on ffnet, I can’t reply to your review through the site. Which was maybe why you commented there instead of ao3, but here I am, responding publicly anyhow :p

-YGO is a franchise with such a separation from reality; it’s always striking when a fic plays their world so grounded, with all the details and routines of our reality to tend to.

Haha. This was conceptualised before DSoD. And, now having watched it, I kinda think a ygo future fic about Seto sould be more sci-fi and futuristic in its general aesthetic. there’s some kind of discrepancy even in the ygo world between the kind of mundane limitations given to the cast and the technology they use that’s of our world, versus solid holograms and the ability to upload your brain to a virtual plane(?) but, yeah, post-DSoD the idea of Seto running a company in turn-of-the-century Japan that’s more or less limited to the realities of corporate Japan seems kind of... naïve? Seto will run his company however he wants!! - that means it doesn’t have to be limited to the laws of physics, let alone the realities of political or economic policy.

But, yeah. Aside from the fact that a fic meant to be a deconstruction of boss/subordinate pupship kind of requires a mundane company setting, I kind of like the realism of these characters having to do these really ordinary tasks. I think season zero mixed the kind of daily school life vibes well with these more absurd and fantastical moments. I think I was trying to call back to that kind of vibe.

(omg, haha. i was so worried the roller coaster crash would just jar everyone out of the fic. i’m sorry i can’t actually take these characters or their setting seriously.)

- [*snip*] Basically, I like your Seto.

I am so glad you liked their meeting so much, and that there was a very clear quality to Seto‘s mental state.

For me, many fanon interpretations of Seto run either too kind and cooperative, too competent(?) and stable, or both. I was just following my headcanons about him, but I was worried he wouldn’t be well received~ Coming from somebody else, I’d worry that they’d consider the visibility of Seto’s vulnerability an insult, lol. I’m glad his bitter form of fragility seemed on key. Thank you :)

- I’m trying to put into words how you’ve matured [Jounouchi]. It’s a culmination of small details.

I think what I was hoping for Jounouchi was to make him seem a little more self-resigned and down-to-earth. He can be pretty arrogant, even how I write him, but he’s not entertaining a lot of the same grandiose dreams he once was or- er- not with the same kind of high hopes that he used to. I think there are both good and bad things about that but- Yeah, I think he’s spread himself thin enough that there’s not a lot left to put into figuring out his own goals. Which is probably somewhat intentional.

- The moments of friendship are cute, between Yugi and Jou and between Jou and Anzu. Jou and Honda seem outright brotherly to me.

x)

re: Jou and his father.

Ah, it’s somewhat of a pet peeve of mine. (Child) Abuse as it is portrayed in fanfiction... Ah, um, I think there tend to be lots of conflicting feelings and circumstances. But, um, even if you care about someone you shouldn’t stick around them if they can’t treat your right. Advice that Joey absolutely refuses to take because he’s been raised not to.

- I like how Jonouchi doesn’t remember to return Mai’s handkerchief for so long, but apparently he’d put it on his person regularly. It’s become a token of her. I’m trying to think of how to describe the Polar scenes in general. Mai’s a presence in Jou’s heart and we’re given blips and fractures of these meaningful moments between them, and perhaps that’s a reflection of their separation. There’s almost a sort of vague dreaminess to those scenes, I think because of the way they’re spliced into the greater narrative and because there is this literal distance between them. I think the hyphenation might be contributing to this effect as well, as it reminds me these scenes are spliced in. Mai seems elegant and warm.

Thank you! I’m glad you liked the handkerchief scene!

lol, I’m doing my best to not let anybody forget for even a second that Mai is a presence in this fic, even via her absence. Jou certainly hasn’t forgotten.

The italicisation of her sections is maybe a bit on the nose. There’s a point where their conversations are going to turn ‘real’ and the italicisation will stop.

- According to the comments on those AO3, you were tentative about going with Manga Mokuba for the fic. I prefer a more worldly, biting, independent Mokuba myself. I love when he’s a character in his own right and not just somebody to prop up his troubled brother. You seem to have gone the awkward teenager route with him.

I was reading someone else’s JouKai, which didn’t actually feature Mokuba that much, but it was the manga version and I kind of fell in love with the idea of Jounouchi interacting with a Mokuba who... looks down on him slightly(?) or is a little more pragmatic than emotional in his acceptance of Jou’s presence, and Jou kind of responding to that with a more measured mix of indulgence and resistance. Manga!Mokuba is a little less iconic in ppl’s minds than the sweet anime version but, maybe more importantly, Mokuba’s gonna be taking a somewhat antagonistic role against Seto in the plot and I was concerned that those two features mixed together would make him unrecognisable. Even when Mokuba’s acting independently in the series (stealing star chips in DK, challenging Yuugi to CapMon) you get the feeling he’s doing it with his brother’s goals in mind.

But I also prefer Mokuba’s when he’s more biting and independent. There’s a lot of potential for a Mokuba that has motives and goals that run in opposition to Seto’s. It’s a... very scary time for Seto as a result. But I think what I was trying to get at with all those oblique posts was that it might actually be good sign for them. I think it’s Mokuba saying that he believes that both Seto individually, and their bond as brothers, are strong enough to make it, even if he rocks the boat.

haha. He is an awkward ugly teenage Mokie. There’s a kind of horrible tradition of making antagonists ugly, but since the antagonist is also un-secretly the sweetest little brother and the sweetest person, I thought it might cross the line twice back into adorable. Somebody give this poor ugly troubled teen a hug~

- You put effort into explaining Jonouchi’s pale hair. How would you explain Yugi’s hair?

I think I posted on tumblr about it. I’m convinced Yuugi’s hair is naturally curly. Like, at least ringlets, if not afro. He lost the genetic lottery and so he’s a foot shorter than his peers and also has the nappiest hair for someone Japanese. No wonder he got teased.

I think I also said that Yuugi gave Jou his hair dye. Yuugi bleaches his bangs. If you’re asking about the magenta though... idk. It’s anime. I’m just gonna go with bleached bangs and the rest is black to maintain some kind of parsimony with realism.

- No, bad Isono! You’re supposed to become a surrogate family member to the Kaiba brothers according to my headcanons! Boo! (Not really. I guess if he were fleshed out as a character, he should be given his own life as well.)

I know, right?! Haha! It was a good foil for Jou though. What do employees owe their employers and vice versa, yada yada? Also I had trouble imagining Jou being able to climb all over Kaiba’s office like it's his personal jungle gym if Isono was there to put a stop to it with disapproving looks. Stop Jou 2k17!

I think in canon the Kaibros are a bit underappreciative where Isono is concerned, but I hope you didn’t miss the implication that Mokuba and Isono are still in contact. They are friends. They chat about their personal lives, and Isono asks after Seto. I kind of hope they’ll reconcile and Seto will give him some references and visit him in Fukuoka, once Seto’s a little more sane and a little less self-entitled.

asdfghjkl; This was such a kind comment ;^; You are very wonderful rainstormcolors, I don’t know what I did to deserve. Thank you for commenting and giving me the excuse to blabber more about my fic~

[wellamarke]

top five things to change? Two hard ones: cabin pressure and humans :)

ooooooh thank you!! very hard because y’all know those are my two absolute favourite shows in the whole entire world and i frequently claim that they are pefect, but I will try!!

5 things I would change about Cabin Pressure:

1. Alphabet what now?! I would, obviously, extend it to at LEAST one more series! Its only flaw of note is that it ended :/ 

2. I know that the actors had very minimal rehearsal time and that when recording, they can’t always go over lines for a very tiny slip, and I also know I am overly pedantic, particularly for someone who isn’t particularly eloquent out loud….. but the only person of the main cast who never miss-emphasises a line is John. Cause, you know, he wrote it. Benedict straight up changes the company name to ‘MGN’ more than once in series 4, Carolyn and Douglas both lose the one-syllable game by choosing the two-syllable pronunciation of ‘beer’. And I was listening to Douz today and remembered this, which I cannot unhear now that I’ve noticed it: 

MARTIN: I am the senior pilot on board, Carolyn.
CAROLYN: Yes. But Douglas is the better pilot on board.

why does she inflect pilot and not better? That’s what she’s correcting him on, after all. I adore Stephanie Cole with EVERY FIBRE of my earthly being, and if this was a normal show that she had extensive rehearsal and reshoot time for, they would have got it right, I know. But since we’re picking faults, I’d change that line for sure! 

3. The change in Caitlin’s name, from Cayt-lin to Caht-lin, will always annoy me. I know that it has WOG explanation, but that doesn’t mean I have to like it. I would have them stick to saying ‘Caytlin’.

4. The timeline! Arthur’s 28 and a half in Boston, and “nearly thirty” in St Petersburg, but when asked, the Finnemore usually claims that the timeline is supposed to run sort of parallel to its broadcast. Somehow, July 2008 to August 2011 - more than 3 years - is condensed into 18 months, and as someone much cleverer than me has worked out, somewhere, this throws out other people’s ages too, and messes with things like the length of time Martin’s worked at MJN. So I’d change Douglas’s line in SP. Or maybe make Arthur 26 and a half in Boston! 
(But outside of this post, my theory is that Arthur understands the word “nearly” to mean “around the general area of”, so he doesn’t correct Douglas - 31 and a half is nearly 30, after all, it’s just after rather than before.) 

5. Although I loved Zurich and thought it was a beautiful end to a beautiful show, it’s forever devastating that Martin leaves. Give me that Air Liechtenstein AU any day of the week. 

Lol, most of these are so petty and tiny, and maybe someone who isn’t me could think of really smart, conceptual improvements to the show as a whole, but…. I…. just really love Cabin Pressure, okay. 

5 things I would change about Humans

(which got a bit long, sorry lol)

1. Obviously, I would put Fred in series 2. At first I wasn’t sure how I would put him in, but I think I would have had Athena trying to fix him/introduce V into his mainframe in the early episodes, despairing and going after the other prototypes when she couldn’t, and then maybe repairing his code with Karen’s help? This would kill two of my series 2 birds with one stone: because one, I really missed Karen interacting with any of the Elsters this year (she literally exchanged one look with Mia, that was it.) and two, I started joking that Athena and Milo’s scenes were actually a crossover into another show, because they interacted almost exclusively with each other (and V) for most of the series. I had an easy time getting to love Renie, Flash and even Hester, because they were so involved in the lives of characters I already loved. In the early episodes, the most connected I felt to Athena was when she went to talk to Hobb, of all people, hehe. So giving her Fred to fix would (a) fix Fred and (b) make Athena feel more part of the show’s core. 

2. Joe and Laura’s interactions with Sophie in the second season. Well, more particularly Joe, since Laura had other niskesque things on her mind. How does Joe not realise specifically that Sophie is mimicking synth behaviour very early on? Instead he talks vaguely about her ‘putting up walls’, when it’s painfully obvious what she’s actually doing. He tries, repeatedly, to talk her out of it in hushed, Serious Tones, rather than trying to engage her properly in childlike activities (although props for the foodfight scene, and maybe the lack of anything similar that went before it is what makes that so affecting). And the most!!! annoying thing!!!! is that in whichever episode it is that Renie comes over (4/5?), they let her answer the door and let Renie inside, like? is it just me? or should they have been at least listening out - just in general when a child answers the door but particularly when a child who’s supposed to be staying away from synths answers the door to -apparently- a synth! Who’s come to visit your son, no less? Like why didn’t they even check what was going on? This is made worse by the fact that when the Ominous Utility Synth of Doom arrives, they’re suddenly all about knowing who’s coming and going. Basically, Joe and Laura are only interested when it’s convenient, when it’s not interrupting their covert whispering about how worried they are about Sophie. Less whispering, more parenting, guys. 

3. I gotta get in one petty intonation point, okay - the way Lindsey Kiwanuka, bless her, says that Vera can do “ten times what the D-series can do” instead of “ten times what the D-series can do”. It just… sounds so wrong, so I would substitute that line for the proper inflection. I don’t know if you’ve noticed haha but I am a person who italicises for emphasis, like, a lot. I speak quite emphatically IRL and I like that to be reflected in anything I write. So I guess I’m quite tuned in to it, and whenever I hear some poor actor botch the inflection of a line, I think to myself “I bet the writer didn’t italicise that properly in the script!” (oops, there I go again). So, yep, that. But kudos for Humans for having very few examples to choose from. I actually can’t think of any others. 

4. Pretty much all the deployment of Odi in series 2, like… need I say anything more, that was just heartbreakingly inadequate. I loved parts of it very much, but it sort of feels like they wasted his character and kind of implicated Mattie (and all of the Hawkinses except Sophie, really) by having them neglect his needs. It’s just sad. Not the kind of tragedy his character provided in series 1, which was art. Just sad sadness. 

5. Above all else, though, I would change the length of each series!! It’s a common complaint that series 2 tried to stretch itself over too many storylines, but honestly I don’t know which one I’d go without, per se - really, I just wanted more of pretty much everything, except Joe, because no. Every plot is intriguing and valid and has amazing points, but they pretty much all suffer from underdevelopment and scarcity of scenes. I feel like the stuff with Hester was very well done, good pacing, excellent development, but she was pretty much the only character I found wholly satisfying as regards her narrative deployment. Everyone else left me wanting explanations, extensions, more of the quiet llittle character moments series 1 was full of. The Hawkinses, for example, seemed like more of a unit in series 1, when they were divided and tense, than they did this year - all spread into their little corners of the plot. Does Mattie even know Renie exists? Does Joe know Odi’s name? Imagine if we had, like, 12 episodes even - I’m not saying go 24 like some American shows, necessarily, though I’d obviously love that - you wouldn’t need to add much plotwise, just give us some breathing space. C’mon. Commission a slightly longer 3rd series, powers that be…… you know it makes sense. 

Thank yooooou this was fun! 

Send me a show and I’ll try and come up with 5 things I’d change 

[wellpurorganics-blog]

Difference In Between Organic and also Natural - Easy Overview | Wellpur Organics

Organic is the brand-new buzzword.

  Yet there are distinctions in between Certified Organic, Organic as well as Natural that you may be wondering about as well as need to certainly understand.

  Everyone seems to be discussing it, the mommies at the institution canteen, your boss on her "only eco-friendly vegetables will certainly enter my air" diet plan, and maybe even your teenage child in an effort to get rid of the pimples she really did not welcome along on her puberty journey.

  Yet like all buzzwords, there is a great deal of misconstruing around the word and some nasty problems also. Believe it or not, the idea of organic is actually quite simple, much like everything Nature associated. Generally, anything complex as well as incorrect with it is possibly triggered by mortals, and possibly some vampires ... however that's one more story.

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If staying on top of all the natural subtleties is doing your head in, don't stress. This overview should establish you straight.

  1. There actually is a difference ...

  In Between Licensed Organic, Organic and also Organic/Natural based items, that is. I do not condemn you for being a little iffy regarding this set because as a person submersed in this area of proficiency, you would certainly assume I 'd have this one down pat by now.

  Seriously, I believed I did.

  Yet as I talked with a potential representative in Thailand recently, I became aware that maybe I just understood the difference in Australia. In all my naivety, I actually (rather unreasonably, it appears) believed that maybe there would be a worldwide definition for Organics. Foolish me because that would certainly make it, oh I do not understand, easy!

  It turns out that in Australia a minimum of, Licensed Organic describes items that are Organic and have actually been declared thus by an ideal government/independent body. Companies that are producing Certified Organic Products most likely have Chief executive officers that have actually lost all their hair now. I'm not kidding; I 'd in fact be prepared to put a wager on it which is stating something considering my disappointing wagering document. Obtaining Organic Accreditation is not a tiny task, it takes loads of time, great deals of documents, going back and also forth a billions times and also lots of financing.

  Organic is most likely (do not shoot me, I did say most likely and even italicised it) specifically the very same in terms of quality as well as handling as Certified Organic without the main badge of honour. What stops some individuals from purchasing organic however is that there's no official evidence. It's like swearing that you saw a spaceship without the picture to verify it. You might be questioning why I've italicised official two times previously. It's because the suppliers of Organic Products should have some kind of documentation specifying that the products have actually had no chemical and also unnatural processing taking place before it got to your fingertips. Must does not constantly mean they do, which is wrong. Really wrong. A minimum of in my publication anyhow however we all have different yardsticks ... you understand.

  Essentially natural products are based on relying on the manufacture reasonably. Though there's no main qualification, the document specifying the above still implies the supplier better be telling the truth or they're most likely to be in hot water if somebody figures out otherwise.

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Organic/Natural Based is typically described as Organic by Default.

  What this implies is that an organic based item is most likely to be exactly the means Mother Nature intended. It's like expanding your own tomatoes in your backyard and then offering them at your youngsters' lemonade stand. They were grown specifically the method the environment desired them grown, the naturally ideal method and also you do not need to have any kind of paperwork stating so because well, Nature really did not pass one along, did she? Since if she did why are you right here reading this blog post? Go as well as tell somebody now and also get abundant as well as famous.

  2. Should you also trouble or is Organics nothing greater than a buzzword for my much richer neighbour?

  Honestly, I'm going to place my foot in it since it is one of my leading 3 abilities on my return to.

  Though I am virtually accountable (when my daddy isn't enjoying) of a Certified Organic/Organic/Organic based lasting organisation situated in a little picturesque town that makes it hard not to be encouraged to live as closely to nature, the reality is that there is no extensive proof that natural is really better for you.

  But ... due to the fact that you know there's constantly a however, many individuals who advocate Organic Products will never tire of informing you that you can't put a price on sound judgment, or as my mum claim's, sound judgment is not an asset cost the local veggie market. You have no idea how much making use of that claiming pained me because it was the eccentric reaction I would certainly usually get when I returned residence as well as informed her concerning something silly I did (which till today, remains to be often).

  It makes sense to use what Earth has produced so bountifully for us viewing as we're simply one of the numerous productions of Mother earth. It's fascinating just how every continent has actually managed ahead up with something beneficial naturally for its residents. India has Neem (The Tree of the 21st Century as stated by the United Nations), Australia has Tea Tree Oil, the United States has Echinacea while Europe has Geranium ... you obtain it. Nature's made it so there's something for every person.

  What this signals to Organic fanatics is that the atmosphere understands ideal. There's a reason why certain plants and also natural herbs are native to the locations that they are, they're made up of things that your body requires due to where you live. Ineloquent, I understand, but you've got it down-pat.

  What does this mean for All-natural Product fans? They want to put their buck where their mouth is and also pay for what they believe is going to maintain them and their families healthy and balanced because it's only mosting likely to save them a great deal of moolah and distress on healthcare facility expenses later on in life. Simply saying.

  3. Okay, whatever. But why are Organic Products so much extra costly?

  I obtain it. They really are.

  As well as while it doesn't truly cost you an arm as well as a leg to live organically (no a few of our clients, it actually does not), they do cost greater than their non-organic, chemical loaded alternatives.

  Individuals can't typically wrap their head around why this is specifically so I believed I would certainly offer you my two cents, naturally!

  I can not inform you how difficult it is to get Qualified Organic Products status due to the fact that this is a PG write-up as well as my key-board is most likely to break after I make it through all the vow words ... from every language on earth as well as Uranus. Primarily, it's as difficult as um, nails.

  As you can visualize, it is difficult to make sure that your field of fruit and vegetables is entirely, 100% all-natural. This is because mainly, fields are frequently clumped together as well as not all areas in a location are declaring to be organic. Which means that chemicals utilized on one field can extremely naturally (because of weather conditions such as wind changes and also rainfall) land up on a "Qualified Organic" area.

  Certified Organic farmers are usually incredibly stressed out undoubtedly. Imagine needing to make sure that the climate listened to your impulses as well as fantasizes. Don't think me, have a look at this (what some would certainly refer to as ridiculous) newspaper article. It is becoming increasingly expensive for cultivators of natural produce (as well as difficult) to fulfil the needs of natural qualification which is verifying to be a substantial burden on farmers who (generally) are attempting in earnest to do the ideal point.

  Sure, organic fruit and vegetables is quick obtaining appeal however the headaches surrounding the promo and growth around it makes qualified chemical-free farming more of a labour of love than anything else. Organic farmers truly do count on the principle of collaborating with Mother earth instead of versus it. They count on permitting the Planet to care for its create the way it was constantly planned, with all-natural resistances to parasites and permitting foods to grow when they're meant to.

  Organic farmers need to pass a little bit of the expenditure of expanding their produce onto the customer to make certain that every person is getting the best, most all-natural product possible.

  4. Do I actually need Organics?

  Well, do you actually require those brand-new set of Louis Vuitton shoes or that Versace match you have actually had your eye on for the past six months. Possibilities are no. However that does not transform you desiring them, right?

  It's practically the same for Health food, other than as opposed to advancing from our somewhat (attempt I say) vain area, the need for health foods is possibly coming from our gut and taste buds.

  Your body wants natural and also normally made and expanded produce and though there is no main proof that you need it, I would personally rather count on my internal organs understanding what's good for them than what some scientist (perhaps financed or lined up to some huge international) is teaching to me.

  Though I am sceptical of my taste the majority of the time (particularly when they crave hot french fries as well as some sour lotion as well as chives dip so they do not get lonesome), when they inform me a particular organically expanded tomato needs to get on the food selection tonight, I pay attention a bit much more diligently (primarily due to the fact that they appear to be acting themselves - which is rare).

  So, to cut a lengthy story (or in this situation short article) short, though I may not require organics, I absolutely want them. Similar to my next pair of Louis Vuitton's so hands off!

  5. Seasonal Foods are much better for you?

  Genuinely Organic Foods are seasonal by their very meaning. Due to the fact that they're grown the way nature intends, they grow when they're supposed to which commonly suggests that your body is obtaining the nutrients it's meant to when it requires them one of the most.

  They also have less of an influence on the atmosphere which has reached be an advantage, right? Not only do consuming seasonal fruits make certain that regional farmers have even more of a possibility when battling versus big multinationals and less expensive rates from overseas, it also ensures that the produce you take in is most likely to be fresher and also therefore healthier.

  Organic generate that is likewise locally generated is the very best alternative as it implies that you're assisting to send your tough made money back right into your priceless community which will just offer to make everybody around you happier as well as much more solvent, which has got to be a benefit, right? You enjoy, you're neighbour's satisfied, the canine's delighted ... you understand. I bet you're currently really feeling better, am I right?

  However however, frequently regional farmers can not manage to end up being certified natural, nonetheless numerous regional farmers may already be using organic techniques (without the certification to prove it). See your neighborhood farmers market and also talk to the farmers marketing their produce, you might simply locate that what they're doing is already natural anyway. Want some even more information on why every person should be bonkers regarding in your area expanded food? We hear you.

  6. There is a recurring promote Organic Foods to be much more Fairtrade

  Organic generate is not assured to be Fairtrade, allow me simply placed that available prior to you spam me with hate mail. I'm more of an enthusiast, you see.

  There is a basic consensus that Organic as well as Fairtrade need to be joined together to far better offer the atmosphere and community. Nevertheless, as severe as it might seem, people have a tendency to be much less worried about their setting when the more pressing issues of getting food on the table for their family members is at the center of their mind which is why there is such a push for natural fruit and vegetables to additionally be Fairtrade, especially in developing countries.

  Let's be completely truthful right here, it's not rocket science, is it? Every person's (no matter society or territories) primary priority is attending to their family members. Fairtrade techniques make sure that farmers have the ability to maintain a suitable way of life which makes it much easier and also profitable for them to guarantee that the produce reaching your dining tables are as natural and also all-natural as possible. It's a win-win solution for everyone as well as considering just how far and also couple of in between they remain in general life, I claim get it with both hands when we can.

  7. Organic Foods last much longer

  In 2015 I was so stunned to see how fresh my organically grown plums (from my yard) looked almost four weeks after being chosen. I think I have my stunning plum tree (I have actually nicknamed her Plumpilicious) to say thanks to for piquing my rate of interest in the wonder of generate grown the way Mother earth meant (and also the scrumptious fruit my neighbors, officemateses and also I obtained as well from Plumpilicious's stunning bounty).

  As it turns out, organic fruit and vegetables truly does last longer than their more traditionally grown peers.

  Which makes you ask yourself, doesn't it? What do un-organic items have in them, that also after all the preservatives and also chemicals in them, they rot quicker? I have absolutely no idea yet short articles similar to this one certainly dropped a lot more light on the subject.

  So, in the end, I would certainly suggest that it depends upon the kind of fruit and vegetables with regards to whether organic or their non-organic counterparts last much longer. Or it could just be that Plumpilicious is one of a kind, I always had a hint.

  To cover this all up ... Are you sold on Organics or otherwise?

  I hope that this rather comprehensive overview has actually aided get rid of some of the mistaken beliefs and also confusion around the whole Organic idea for you. If nothing much more, I wish it exists you with some great write-ups for you to sink your teeth into around the rapid ending up being popular Organic space.

  Many of our consumers are uncertain as well as unsure of what the purposes of Organic products are as well as whether they're deserving of all the hype they're accessing the minute. After operating in an Organically geared organisation, I can't tell you to go out and also swap all your non-organic items with natural since that would look suspicious. Yet, I would highly advise you to try the idea out after educating yourself on the whole ball of wax.

  I can present you with numerous truths as well as numbers (as well as study and also testimonials) on why you need to go the Organic path but in the end, human beings like to try before they buy. It's this remarkable curious mind we have actually all been talented (or cursed - whatever you favor) with.