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fortheloveofexy · 2 years

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Top 5 vs Personal 5

List your top 5 fics ranked by kudos on AO3. are you surprised by what's most popular to your readers? then provide your ranking of your personal top 5 fics, and tag a few fellow writers!

Thanks for the tag @mostlymaudlin ! tagging @jingerhead @paradoxolotl @exy-shmexy @storiesnstardust

Top 5 (by Kudos):

1. Call Me By Your Name (3.9k, andreil)

Basically, Neil calls Andrew “baby” in his sleep once, so Andrew gets flustered and then secretly tries out different pet names for Neil.

This one... honestly really surprised me with how popular it got. It’s my most kudos’d fic by a long shot (2,378 kudos??? insanity). It’s a short little thing, entirely focused around andreil and pet names. To be honest, I have mixed feelings about this one being the top fic, because it’s one of my oldest fics and I don’t really love the prose now. I don’t really understand why it got so popular out of everything I wrote bc it’s never anyone’s favorite fic when I ask, but I’m glad so many enjoyed it!

2. Sweet Enough To Eat (3.1k, andreil)

Andrew experiencing cute aggression. That’s basically the whole premise lol.

Anyway, this one is my oldest fic, so I assume that’s why it’s so popular. It’s cute, sweet even! I still like it to this day. Not much else to say about it though.

3. May We Meet Again (10.7k, andreil)

The first installment of the Artist Neil AU.

To be honest, I don’t like it anymore. That whole AU has problems with pacing, and some characterization issues too. Plus, looking back at the art now makes me cringe so hard. The only reason it’s still up is bc I know a lot of people really like it. Sometimes I think about revising the whole thing but I still remember how big of an undertaking it was when I first wrote it and made all the art for it, so I probably won’t.

4. The Marks We Make (41.3k, andreil)

A (mostly) canon rewrite from Andrew’s POV with a soulmate AU twist.

This the first multichapter fic I ever wrote, and one of the earliest fics I ever published, so I’m not surprised it’s high on the list. There are some things I like about this one, and some I would do differently. Writing this fic helped me make some of my first friends in the fandom though, so it was very much worth it.

5. Yes Or No? (35.5k, andreil)

sub andrew & Dom Neil pwp - need I say more?.

This one truly surprised me. It was meant to be a one-shot experiment, something I wrote as an exploration of my own boundaries and limits. BDSM fics are often triggering for me, so I generally avoid them, but I wanted to write a BDSM fic that I would be able to enjoy and to explore BDSM from a safe distance.

However, given how much the fandom seemed to be against Andrew submitting (and sometimes even just bottoming) at the time, I worried I might end up getting hate for writing it. To my surprise, I did not, and so many commenters asked that I continue it that I ended up turning it into a whole series.

I’m quite proud of it still - it might just be a smut fic to most people, but it will always be more than just a smut fic to me.

I do hate the last 3 paragraphs of the main fic though. I was on a kick where I thought incorporating references to fic titles and canon lines into my writing was clever and fun, but now I just cringe when I look at it. Ahh well, maybe someday I’ll change it and tell nobody. Create a little Berenstein/Berenstain Bears moment :)

Top 5 (Personal Ranking):

1. More Than Words (32.9k, ongoing, neon friendship)

Neil and Aaron meet as kids and become best friends, long before Aaron learns his mother’s secret - he has a long lost twin brother.

I cannot gush enough about the love I have for this fic, this whole story. I can’t talk about it here because I have some insane twists planned (iykyk) but just know this fic is my baby and this story will be my magnum opus once it’s done. I love writing Neil and Aaron’s friendship, I love writing Aaron’s POV, I love the plans I have these boys. It’s still ongoing so I understand why it’s not higher up in the kudos ranking, but I’m hopeful that will change once I actually finish it.

2. A Quiet Self-Destruction (2.6k, andreil)

A character study on Andrew’s experience with depression, and how Neil helps him through his bad days.

I wrote this to comfort myself during one of my own depression spells. It still brings me a bit of hope on dark days. For that, I will always love it.

3. Scribbles and Sticky Notes (11.7k, andreil)

Neil retires from Exy, with heaps of fluff, soft Andreil, wholesome Twinyards, hurt/comfort, MCD and angst.

Hands down, this is the saddest fic I’ve ever written, and I’m quite proud of that fact. I think the pacing is really good, and the gut punches are quite successful (while being foreshadowed quite nicely). The characterization is also spot on, I think. It’s got MCD though, which I think is probably why it’s not more popular.

4. The Past, Stained Red (4.4k, andreil)

Part 3 of the Artist Neil AU. Andrew has a surprise run-in with a ghost from his past, and finally gets some closure.

This is the only fic of the Artist Neil AU that I actually still like. It’s well-paced, well-characterized, and I still like the art. Mostly, though, I viciously loved writing Andrew getting to close the door on Cass, and I loved writing him acknowledging the harm she did to him as a foster parent. He couldn’t see it as a child, but as an adult? He sees her clearly, in all her failure. It was extremely cathartic to write that.

5. Catdrew Meowyard (1.4k, andreil)

Andrew suddenly has cat ears and a tail. Nobody questions it. Shenanigans ensue.

This is such a silly little fic. I wrote it as a joke and I still love it dearly, even though it’s very dumb. It’s just very fun to write and to read, and it’s perfect for when I want to blow off steam and write some crack.

#aftg #andreil #all for the game #the foxhole court #aftg fics #aftg fanfics #andrew minyard #neil josten #fic recs #aftg fanfic #andreil fanfic #andreil fic #aftg fic #fanfic

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sylvan-librarian · 1 year

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The Last of the Animists: Exploring the Concept of Animism and How it Defines Nissa Revane

Prologue

Since the characterization of Nissa in the Kaladesh block is such a massive undertaking due to the density and quality of material therein, I decided at first to take a little break from my regularly scheduled programming (i.e. - having a public, frenzied, and unhinged obsession with my favorite Magic the Gathering character). However, I couldn’t stay away from the topic entirely, so here we are.

Introduction

The source of Nissa’s magic, its manifestation within Magic’s lore, and how it is represented mechanically on cards has intrigued me to no end over the years. Mechanically, I always felt that Nissa’s cards stood out more than the other two regularly-printed green planeswalkers (Garruk and Vivien). Garruk and Vivien cards often do what you would imagine a green planeswalker would do: create 3/3 green beast creature tokens, tutor creatures from your library, give overrun effects to your board, etc. The design space across these two characters’ cards always felt limited and uninspired to me. One of the things that intrigued me about Nissa, Worldwaker (read about my love for that card here) when I first encountered it in 2014 was the fact that it played around with lands rather than creatures: it animated lands into beaters, it untapped lands, it fetched lands from its owner’s library. This struck me as a unique, inspired design at the time, and it made me feel excited to use the card.

However, while yes, I have always found Nissa’s skillset a unique design for green planeswalkers – a fact that makes the desparkening all that much more disappointing to me – my primary interest in Nissa’s magic as a deranged Vorthos is how it is described in and displayed throughout the stories.

Nissa, as we are often told in post-“Nissa, Worldwaker” stories, is the last of the animists, a rare type of mage on Zendikar who can hear the voice of the world itself, but the plane of Zendikar rarely had anything nice to say; in “Nissa's Origin: Home,” Nissa’s mother, Meroe says that the soul of the land, which so often is a source of terrible nightmares for Nissa, “was never after anything other than random destruction.” Animism, we learn, is a taboo brand of magic to the Joraga (the tribe Nissa belongs to), and Numa, the Joraga chieftain, exiles Nissa because he, like many others, believes that the inherent anger of the land is due to some untold, unknown blasphemy enacted on the world by the animists. He tells Meroe, “[y]our people angered Zendikar and they paid the price. There is a reason that you are the last of the animists.” We come to understand that the reason for the plane of Zendikar’s anger is due to the Eldrazi Titans’ imprisonment on it. The world recoils in disgust at the eldritch monstrosities who eternally strive to break free of their imprisonment and consume and pervert every living thing in their way; the plane’s anger feels justified in this light, but almost no one on Zendikar understands this, not even Nissa or her mother.

So in short, animism in Magic the Gathering is the ability to connect with the soul of the world itself which allows animists like Nissa to (among other things) animate the land itself into living creatures that can fight alongside them.

However, the concept of animism has meaning beyond the lore of Magic; why did Magic’s designers label Nissa’s powers this way, and how can a real world understanding of animism help us understand Nissa in a new way?

Part I: The Animation of All Nature

Animism is a term developed all the way back in the 1870’s by British anthropologist Sir Edward Tylor as a method to describe similarities in “primitive” religions. Let’s take a quick moment to acknowledge that Tylor was a bearded white man living in colonial-era Britain using words like “primitive” to describe the religions and philosophies of people he will never meet, many of whom were currently unwilling subjects of his own government. This is an unfortunate commonality in academic studies. That aside, Tylor’s description of animism gives us our first understanding of this term. He writes in his 1871 anthropological treatise Primitive Culture that “[f]irst and foremost among the causes which transfigure into myths the facts of daily experience, is the belief in the animation of all nature, rising at its highest pitch to personification” (emphasis mine). In other, simpler words, animists personify the natural world, assigning traditionally human traits to immobile objects. The root of the current English word animate, after all, comes from the Latin animus, which means “soul, spirit, mind.” The “animation of all nature,” then, refers to the belief that what we might call objects of the natural world have their own interiority. Tylor writes elsewhere that animism is

[a]n idea of pervading life and will in nature far outside modern limits, a belief in personal souls animating even what we call inanimate bodies, a theory of transmigration of souls as well in life as after death, a sense of crowds of spiritual beings sometimes flitting through the air, but sometimes also inhabiting trees and rocks and waterfalls, and so lending their own personality to such material objects.

Humanity’s relationship to nature, then, becomes that of subject-subject rather than that of subject-object.

What does this say about Nissa, though? If you’re thinking that the above description is frighteningly similar to how Nissa views the world, you’d be right. While what Tylor argued back in the 1870’s was that animism is a crude belief system that would eventually evolve to the rise of world religions and later on the rejection of religion in rational society, Nissa’s practice of animism is very much alive and vibrant. It is hammered home often that Nissa deeply respects the personhood of objects, whether they be trees, animals, or even the ground itself. We see this very clearly in this long selection from the beginning of the Battle for Zendikar story “The Silent Cry”:

Every day there was something new, something Zendikar taught Nissa that surprised and delighted her. The land had hundreds of magnificent secrets, and it was sharing them with her. She would never have guessed that the giant mantises secreted a scent meant to simulate the odor of fresh worms and thus attract small song birds—but not for the mantises to prey on, rather for the purpose of enjoying the birds' melodies. The songs were one of the few things capable of lulling the mantises into an easy sleep. Nor would she have known that the vines draped between the close-growing, towering heart trees of the Vastwood Forest were more like arms than vines—arms that were holding hands. Each vine grew out of the trunks of two trees; it did not belong to one tree more than the other, it was shared equally between them, a tether that bound the trees. The vines connected one heart tree with its chosen companion, and allowed the two to share memories, feelings, and dreams. These trees were linked forever; they mated for life. And the gnarlids, the silly, beastly, sneaky gnarlids; they had a ritual that they managed to keep hidden from most everyone else on Zendikar. On the darkest nights, when there was no moon but the skies were clear, the gnarlids scaled the tallest trees, poking their heads above the canopies, and they laughed at the stars. Little breathy snickers that to anyone else listening sounded like nothing more than the leaves of the highest branches rustling in the wind. It was an inside joke meant only for them. Equally as impressive was the tribe of humans who lived in the lowest canopy of the Vastwood's trees—not in a central encampment, but spread out through the expanse of the forest. Five or six humans shared each treehouse hamlet, and there were over a dozen hamlets. The tribe was able to stay well informed of each other's movements and needs thanks to their ancestors, who had closely studied the language of the chatter sloths. The people sent messages to each other by speaking to the nearest chatter sloth. It was only a matter of minutes before the sloth would relate the gossip to its neighbors, who would pass it along through the network of tree dwellers. Soon all humans in the tribe would know of the hamlet's news thanks to the little gossipmongers.

It’s important here that Nissa shares equal amazement with the goings on of plants and animals as she does with the ingenuity of her fellow sentient mortals; to her, they are no different. To Nissa, the “animation of all nature” is not some crude, outdated philosophy that has been surpassed by rationality. It is her everyday reality.

Of course, however, Magic the Gathering is a game of wizards battling each other, and its worlds and characters are full of wonder and, well, magic. The “animation of all nature” has another meaning to Nissa in that she can call out to the interior soul of immobile objects and, in a non-metaphorical way, personify them … as in, she can “animate” objects into living, walking, thinking, fighting creatures with a will of their own. In the first story of the Zendikar Rising arc, “In the Heart of the Skyclave,” Nissa and Nahiri, looking for a specific object of interest, are at a loss at which place to begin hunting for it in a giant, city-sized airborne dungeon when Nissa spots a lone fern:

Nissa crouched down to one of the ferns. Its leaves were as large as she was, but its flowers were tiny, delicate, and blue. "How is it possible for plants to thrive here?" Nahiri asked, coming up behind her. Nissa smiled. "You'd be surprised at how many things thrive in unlikely places on this plane." "How—" Nahiri began to speak again, but Nissa tuned her out. She rested a hand on the top of the fern, like a parent's hand on the head of a child. She closed her eyes and felt its life under her fingers, felt its struggle and its pride in surviving in such a foreboding place. Nissa smiled at that strength and that pride. And she called it forth. She heard Nahiri give a gasp as the elemental emerged into existence. It was a tall thing, twice her height, green and vibrant as its life force, its head a mass of fronds with small chains of blue flowers entwining its arms and neck.

The dual meaning of the “animation of all nature” is on display here. Nissa very clearly acknowledges the personhood of the fern, using terms usually reserved for descriptions of the lives of people like struggle and pride, and at the same time she animates the stationary fern into a creature, a person with a will of its own and strength to match. In the end, many elements of the Zendikar Rising arc were lacking, but I always found this particular scene to be a wonderful marriage of the best parts of Magic story: great character moments tied together with a childlike wonder at the beauty and power of magic.

Part II: Infinite Possibilities

Anthropology, however, has moved far beyond its Victorian, colonialist roots. On the same note, Nissa has grown and expanded far beyond the borders of what she previously was.

In 2006, anthropologist Tim Ingold published an essay titled Rethinking the Animate, Re-Animating Thought that reevaluates the concept of animism (there are, of course, many evolutionary steps between the philosophies of 1871 and those of 2006, but for the purposes of this piece, suffice it to say that things have changed). Ingold’s primary thesis is that animism should be considered less of a primitive branch of religious thought and more of an ontological philosophy, an experience of being present in the world. In his research, Ingold provides this anecdote:

One man from among the Wemindji Cree, native hunters of northern Canada, offered the following meaning to the ethnographer Colin Scott. Life, he said, is ‘continuous birth.’ I want to nail that to my door! It goes to the heart of the matter. To elaborate: life in the animic ontology is not an emanation but a generation of being, in a world that is not pre-ordained but incipient, forever on the verge of the actual. One is continually present as witness to that moment, always moving like the crest of a wave, at which the world is about to disclose itself for what it is.

This is a lot to unpack, but let’s use this to point out the similarities and differences between the previous 1871 understanding of animism. Like Tylor’s initial exploration of the concept, Ingold’s animists still treat the world around them with same respect and reverence; they still, in other words, still interact with the world with a subject-subject relationship instead of a more rational subject-object relationship. However, instead of fixating on the spiritual aspects of animism (i.e. - the inherent soul of inanimate objects), this modern take is more of a state of being, a practice of actively engaging with the world around you.

Ingold, in other places, argues that, while yes, animism intentionally blurs the line between what is considered ‘alive’ and what is not, the true cornerstone of an animist ontology is the process of change:

Wherever there is life there is movement … The movement of life is specifically of becoming rather than being, of renewal along a path rather than displacement in space. Every creature, as it ‘issues forth’ and trails behind, moves in its characteristic way. The sun is alive because of the way it moves through the firmament, but so too are the trees because of the particular ways their boughs sway or their leaves flutter in the wind, and because of the sounds they make in doing so.

An animist, then, in this ontology is in a responsive, conversational relationship with the world around them. They wouldn’t fixate, for example, on the personhood of a tree, but they would know how to have a positive, symbiotic relationship with the tree.

What does this new way of looking at animism have to do with Nissa Revane, though? It seemed like Tylor’s outdated definition of animism already had both Nissa’s worldview and the manifestation of her magic pegged down. What could be added? Well, like the definition of animism, like this “world that is not pre-ordained but incipient, forever on the verge of the actual,” Nissa herself has changed drastically in recent years.

If I had the time and bandwidth, I might set out to argue that, of all Magic’s heroes in the last decade, Nissa has gone through the most character growth of any of them; she has shifted through the most colors and she has gone through the most development of any other planeswalker. However, for the purposes of this piece, I’m going to focus on the most recent story (to date) that Nissa has appeared in: Grace P. Fong’s “She Who Breaks the World.” Now, I’ve made it no secret that this is my favorite piece of Magic fiction since the Ixalan days, so I’m certainly biased here, but the narrative meat in this text is rich and vibrant.

When we pick back up with Nissa in “She Who Breaks the World,” we find her at likely the lowest point we have ever seen her at. Her agonies are manyfold at this point. To start, she is still reeling from the unbearable trauma of what the Phyrexians did to her. She had set out with a strike team of her planeswalker allies to stop the Phyrexian invasion of the multiverse, but upon their failure, Nissa, along with many of the others, were captured. Her mind was chemically altered against her will to be utterly, completely submissive to the will of Elesh Norn (the Phyrexian leader, if this essay somehow reaches beyond the MTG sphere). Similarly, her body (again, against her will) was then chemically and mechanically altered to be more in line with the Phyrexian understanding of perfection. Then, Norn used Nissa’s body, mind, and animist powers to launch an invasion of the entire multiverse; Nissa ended up being instrumental in this process because it was her animist abilities that allowed Norn to directly control the Invasion Tree.

Nissa was eventually freed from the Phyrexians’ control in the aftermath of the war, her mind given back to her, and as much of the grafted metal removed from her body as could safely be removed. However, no level of healing could “cleanse the memories of what she had done” while her mind was under the domination of Phyrexia. She understandably has trouble forgiving herself for what she did, whether she had agency in the act or not.

Secondly, if that wasn’t bad enough, after she woke up with her mind intact, she discovered that she had lost her planeswalker spark. While she is not alone in this (all of the other planeswalkers currently on Zhalfir aside from Chandra lost theirs as well), it hits Nissa particularly hard because, for one Nissa has always had a deep connection to her home world of Zendikar, and secondly, Zhalfir is full of people she tried to ruthlessly kill while under the influence of Phyrexia. She cut down in cold blood dozens, if not hundreds, of these survivors’ friends and family. While the surviving Mirrans and Zhalfrins understand that she did not have control of herself during this time and forgave her, Nissa does not feel incredibly comfortable living around people she so directly harmed. She is restlessly homesick with no feasible way to get home and stuck with people she doesn’t feel worthy enough to be around. Furthermore, Nissa’s planeswalker powers are integral to the identity she has created for herself. This sense of self is just one more thing she has lost.

And lastly, there is the issue with Chandra. While they were technically a romantic couple after they kissed at the end of the previous March of the Machines story, “The Rhythms of Life,” things are still far from well between them. Apart from the tremendous guilt and shame Nissa feels from what she did to Chandra during the Phyrexian story arc (Nissa almost killed Chandra multiple times, one time even impaling her), both of them are still dealing with the fallout of their breakup as described in War of the Spark: Forsaken (even typing the name of that book makes me feel ill). Nissa wonders if Chandra can ever love her the way she needs and if that is even a reasonable thing to ask of her after all the two of them have recently gone through.

While this was a long, drawn-out summary, I think it was necessary to show what Nissa is going through on the cusp of her metamorphosis. The depression she is feeling along with what could probably be described as PTSD has left her stuck in the past. She laments the fact that she no longer hears the voice of nature. The leyline songs are completely silent, and when she calls out to the soul she knows dwells in all the objects in the world around her, nothing answers. She assumes this is punishment for what the Phyrexians made her do.

She’s wrong, however. Nissa and Chandra finally have a moment of understanding between the two of them, and as a part of this intimate moment, Nissa finally admits that her animist power no longer work; when Chandra expresses surprise at this, Nissa responds,

"They won't listen to me. I tried. Many times. But when I call out to them, it's like my voice isn't my own. Like it belongs to Phyrexia instead, like everything I've ever connected to is drowning me out." For once, Chandra pauses. "You know," she concludes. "You have good connections, too." "What do you mean?" "It's true—you did bad things while they had you. But everyone you've connected with over the years with the Gatewatch, we're just happy you're still here. With us." Chandra sets fire to a chunk of moist dirt that was about to fall on Nissa, turning it into a soft rain of ash. "With me." For the first time since she awoke in Zhalfir, Nissa smiles. Chandra, sweet Chandra, even if she doesn't realize it, has always understood and explained emotions better than Nissa ever could. Chandra continues, "Your connections aren't drowning your voice, Nissa. They're changing it into something new, maybe something even more powerful. Infinite voices, infinite possibilities, right?" Infinite possibilities. Nissa offers her hand to Chandra. "All right, let's try." Gripping Chandra's fingers in hers, Nissa closes her eyes. She retreats inward and listens for her inner voice. It's hard, much harder than before, but Chandra is dutifully helping her concentrate, blasting the falling rock away before it can reach her.

Nissa is greeted by ringing deep in her ears, but she refuses to be deterred. With her connections in mind, she picks the static apart into unique melodies, the individual songs she picked up from all around the Multiverse. She arranges them, harmonizes them, and this time, when she calls to Zhalfir, her voice is amplified in chorus. She offers an apology. The plane answers. It too was cut off from everything it knew, from the connections it had made. It, too, was scarred by Phyrexia and is growing into something new. It forgives her, and Nissa can finally forgive herself. Magic floods her flesh, her blood, her bone. She hears Chandra laugh, delighted by their success.

I could literally talk forever about this scene, how it is also a marriage of everything I love about Magic Story, but let’s zero in on how Nissa’s change in perspective is similar to how animism has changed meanings over the past one-hundred and fifty years.

In the same way that Tylor was fixated on how “primitive” he felt animism was, how it was just a cultural stepping stone on the way to enlightenment, Nissa remained fixated on her animist powers. To her, the voices of the natural world were oftentimes more real to her than the voices of her friends. The songs of the leylines, the elementals she could animate with a whisper, the power she wielded in defense of the worldsoul … To Nissa, these were all in all.

However, what Nissa learns from Chandra in the climax of “She Who Breaks the World'' is to accept that life is exactly what Ingold calls a “continuous birth.” Nissa embraces this conversational relationship with the world around her, and nature is no longer all in all to her. Hand in hand with Chandra, Nissa now lives “in a world that is not pre-ordained but incipient, forever on the verge of the actual,” as Ingold puts it, and a world of “infinite possibilities,” as Fong puts it.

As the definition of real-world animism has shifted over the years, so too has Nissa’s magical animism. She used to obsess over her connection with nature with religious fervor, and even though Nissa worshiped no gods, her devotion to the soul of the world around her was stronger than many devout worshippers on Theros. However, in “She Who Breaks the World,” Nissa learns to recognize that she, and the rest of the world around her, is alive because she moves in her own “characteristic way.”

Epilogue

While I have certainly been burned by WotC’s treatment of Nissa in the past, I am cautiously excited for the stories that can now be told about her. Nissa is currently set up to grow and expand in interesting ways, and I hope (beyond hope) that future Magic stories starring Nissa will continue on the path that Fong set her on.

Nissa may be the last of the animists, but that doesn’t mean she can’t be the first of something else. I’m excited to see what that “something else” will be.

Bibliography

Every source quoted in this essay is linked directly before the quote in question. I was too lazy to create a reference page today. Sorry! 😬

#magic the gathering #nissa revane #vorthos #animism #media analysis #chandra nalaar

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impossiblepackage · 10 months

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say, i heard you reblog a post about role playing games. do you happen to know of any ones that i, a beginner, could feasibly get into in this day and age? i tried DnD but a combination of not having anybody to play with (whether irl or online) and a dissatisfaction with low level boringness kind of made it fizzle out for me

oh hey an ask from 3 months ago that I didn't even see. hi.

ANYWAY. First things first, i cannot recommend @theresattrpgforthat enough. Ain't nobody better at recommending rpgs than that blog right there. Now, on to my thoughts.

If you want a DnD-like rpg, Pathfinder 2nd Edition is gonna be my first recommendation. It's harder to find games for on account of being significantly less popular than dnd5e but it's probably the 2nd most popular game. It's also completely free, with everything being hosted on https://2e.aonprd.com/. It's got everything except adventures, those ya gotta buy. For the next 10 days, there's a humble bundle that includes PDFs of lots of the pre-remaster legacy books, and includes a couple adventures, including a whole adventure path going from level 1 to 20. As a whole, the game is different to dnd but it's recognizable. Big fan myself, and paizo isn't a bunch of pricks. The setting is also super gay. There's a potion of trans your gender, and one of the main religions in the world is the worship of 3 gods in lesbian polycule.

Ironsworn: probably my favorite RPG, period. (also has a space version, that works the same way). It is narrative focused, and designed for solo play or in groups with no GM. Works just as well by yourself, as a duo, in a small group, or in a traditional way with a few players and a GM. It's structured around it's vow system. Your character makes a vow, you decide how difficult that vow should be to accomplish, and as you do things that advance it, you mark progress. Eventually, you make a roll to try and fulfill the vow, with the difficulty determined by how much progress you've made. If you fail that roll, it's bad. Cool thing is that just about everything works that way. Undertaking a journey, delving a dungeon, fighting a dude, it's all handled with the same system. It's a game about perseverance and struggle and relationships, both with people and with places. also very fun to play for writing practice. It's mechanics are rooted in it's setting, but there's no reason you couldn't play it in basically any setting. the youtube channel Me, Myself, And Die is, essentially, Critical Role But It's Solo RPGs, and he did a great season where he played Ironsworn, check it out. Also, Basement Fort on youtube did a duo playthrough. I've only seen the first episode but it seems like a fun watch, as well as showing off duo gameplay.

the Witcher RPG: i haven't played this myself or even looked at the books yet, but everything I've heard about this game has me super excited about it. the general consesus seems to be "yo this is wayyyy better than I thought it would be, why aren't more people playing this, what the fuck". If somebody more familiar wants to talk about it, that'd be dope.

gonna ramble about the rest much less, LIGHTNING ROUND OF RECOMMENDATIONS

Dungeon World: same genre as dnd, but much less crunchy gameplay. Much easier to learn.

Kids On Bikes: it's Stranger Things but as a ttrpg.

Call of Cthulhu: get spooky, idiot. The players are investigators unraveling some mystery or another, and trying to keep their sanity in the face of some cosmic bullshit.

Lancer: it's about mechs! closer to anime-style mechs than battletech style, from what I can tell. I've heard good things.

Vampire: The Masquerade: you will NEVER guess what this is about. It's a classic, it's great, it pretty much redefined the way I think vampires should work. The new version of Werewolf: The Apocalypse is coming soon, and I'm real hyped for that, too.

Shadow Of The Demon Lord: my understanding is that this game is basically "DnD 5e, but good".

#ttrpg #ironsworn #pathfinder #dnd #pf2e #dungeon world #kids on bikes #call of cthulhu #lancer #vampire the masquerade #shadow of the demon lord #witcher ttrpg

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inkblot22 · 8 months

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The Infection I Don't Want

I don't have any words. Don't look at me. In all seriousness, I definitely love the savior trope. I tried to give it a cute little twist. Idia feels funny in this one too. Also sorry if the formatting is weird. I write these in Docs and then I transfer them to tumblr and for some reason in this fic's document I used Amatic SC and I have bad vision to begin with. No clue why I love torturing myself. Dividers by @/cafekitsune. This fic gets a little heavy. If you start feeling unwell, stop reading. I won't take it personal, promise.

This fic is aimed towards afab readers, but uses they/them pronouns. Mentions of periods and wombs. I may have been a bit less impersonal with this one, but the reader doesn't go on my weird love rant that I have in my self-insert Idia fic so there is that.

This fic is DEAD DOVE, DO NOT EAT. TW for mentions of pregnancy, pregnancy symptoms, DIY abortion which could also be read as miscarriage, I guess, abortion, Idia is incredibly mean in this and possibly OOC, Ortho being unintentionally creepy, parasites, sort of misogyny relating to periods, shock collars, electric shocks, captivity, implied forced marriage, implied forced medical procedures. PSA: don't try anything the reader does in this fic. It's an excellent way to get sepsis, and you don't want that, I promise.

Part 5 of the Pants on Fire series.

You don’t want to admit it, but a bit too much has changed about you. In the past few weeks, you’ve noticed plenty of things, but the largest and most blaring was that your period never came. Before when you would have it, Idia would sulk and pout, acting like you were bleeding on purpose, throwing a heating pad and a blanket and a pillow and the necessary products at you so you’d be comfortable in your distress. He kept talking about figuring out some technology to rid you of that pesky trait, and you really can’t think of anyone who likes having a period, so if he had, you wouldn’t have fought him on it,

It’s too late for that now. For the last few days, you’ve been waking up early and vomiting. The smell of Idia’s favorite noodles makes it worse. Your poor tummy is constantly roiling, and you can hardly keep anything down. Ortho has been staring at you incessantly. You think he’s being annoying, really, and Idia’s been getting on your last nerves as well.

Today, you woke up, vomited, and just sat in the bathroom for a moment, coming to terms with the fact that you could very well be pregnant. You feel conflicted. On one hand, you don’t want to talk or think about this. You’re stressed enough as it is. On the other hand, you absolutely don’t want this. You don’t want this creature in your stomach. You know it's there. You can’t feel it, but how often can you feel something before everything goes absolutely wrong? You can’t.

But it’s unimportant. A knock comes at the door and you scramble to your feet, flushing the toilet and rinsing out your mouth before opening the door. It’s Idia. He gives you a look and starts stripping, turning on the shower and handing you a hair tie.

“You look sick. What’s wrong with you?”

“O-oh, I… I don’t know. I feel fine.” You’re not sure how to tell him, so you lie. Maybe you won’t have to tell him. You pull his hair into a bun and he hops into the shower.

You stand there for a moment and he peeks his head around the door at you, “What are you doing? You want to join me?”

“Huh? Oh, no. Just thinking.”

“Go see if Ortho can get you some aspirin or something so you can start acting normal again.” He mutters.

You leave. It’s fine. Idia’s dorm room is always cold. He keeps it like that on purpose. If you’re cold and he doesn’t provide much more than these stupid skimpy pajama sets that are cute but are also thin, so you’re more likely to cuddle up to him or wear his hoodies. At least he has good taste in that.

You don’t really feel like undertaking the task of looking through his closet, so you take a seat in Idia’s gaming chair, which is still warm from him sitting in it, and sigh, laying a hand over your belly. He said that Ortho was here, but he must be out getting breakfast, since you didn’t immediately hear his high voice shrilling in your ears, “Good morning!”

You like Ortho just fine. He’s not your ally, but being around him is better than being around Idia. You wished he’d been gone for longer. You sigh and your head begins to hurt, “Hi, Ortho.”

He giggles a little and puts down the takeout bag, smiling as he turns back to face you. And then he just stares, chartruse eyes boring into you.

“Ortho, is there a problem?” You can’t hold your tongue about this any longer. You have a headache and honestly you just want to take a fat nap and let the world, small as it has become for you, deal with itself.

Before he can respond, Idia strolls out of the bathroom, lazily greeting Ortho, “Hey, Ortho.”

“Hello!” His voice is just so grating. You want to throw something.

“Mmm.” Idia glances at you, walking over and nudging your shoulder with the back of his hand, like he’s shooing an animal, “Go lay down.”

“I don’t-”

“Did you ask Ortho for-”

“Would you stop interrupting me?” You snarl, turning to look at him.

He stiffens ever so slightly, then hunches down and digs through the takeout bag Ortho brought in, “Are you acting like this because you’re on your period?”

“Did you really just ask me-”

This time, it’s Ortho, not Idia, who interrupts you, “Oh, they won’t be having a period for a while.”

Idia freezes. You freeze. Ortho goes back to what he was doing, humming as he makes the bed. Idia turns to narrow his eyes at you, his eyes sliding down to look at your midsection and feet, and his eyes roll back into his head and he’s hitting the ground. Maybe if you cared more about him, you’d check to make sure that he was fine, but as it is now, you don’t really have the energy or wherewithal to do so. You rush into the bathroom and cower near the toilet, like there’s a tornado or something outside. You’re distressed.

He doesn’t know it, but Ortho just vocalized the actualization of all your fears, the culmination of your meager existent, all rolled up into this… this parasite in your stomach. You swallow your incoming hysteria and make a decision. You’re going to get up. You’re going to get a change of clothes. You’re going to take a shower. And you’ll be fine. You’ll figure this out. You always have before. You’ll do it again.

When you exit the bathroom, Ortho is blowing air into Idia’s pallid face, and Idia is groaning. You ignore the pair and go to the closet. You grab a change of clothes, the rabbit-themed set of pajamas, you walk into the bathroom, you turn on the water. About as soon as the stream hits your back, you’re screaming. Sobs break from your chest like a hammer going into ice, smashing its way out despite every effort you make to keep it together. You’ve barely got the peace of mind to quickly wash yourself, and when you exit- the water is cold, too cold for comfort- you dry. You feel twitchy, after crying so hard. You tug on the spaghetti strap shirt, the bunny face stretching against your skin, and then you’re staring at the hanger.

You remember reading something, a long, long time ago. You were far too young to be reading this type of thing, the gorier parts of feminism and women’s rights, but… you remember a passage. The wire twists apart easily as you remember the story. A woman, desperate to be rid of the parasitic growth in her womb, just as desperate as you are now, used a wire coat hanger to remove it. It’s been so long that you can’t remember how it ended for her, but you remember the rest very clearly. The bent end, no longer crooked after you bent it, slips into your opening so easily. You can barely feel it. then the door opens, you freeze, and you hear Ortho scream.

“Idia!” He yells, and there are footsteps and a moment of silence.

You look up at Idia’s honey-colored eyes that are glued to the wire hanger sticking out of your body, see the way both of the Shroud boys are looking at your current unfinished action, see the slow spread of crimson into Idia’s long hair, starting at the tips and spreading like, well, like fire, to the roots. There’s that familiar three-tap warning, and then you drop the hanger, clutching at the collar as the strongest shock you’ve ever felt hits you like a truck. It’s worse than the time you didn’t want to hang out with him, worse than the times you’d stray too close to the door. It forces you to your knees, sets your body into convulsions that shake the twisted hanger out of you, makes you foam at the mouth.

Somewhere under your anguish, you think you hear Ortho robotically say, “BPM reaching critical levels.”

The current stops and your body stops convulsing, relaxing so hard that your world, small as it has become, goes black. When you awake, you’re reliving a distant memory: you’re bound, hands and ankles, on the bed. You’re dressed again, one of Idia’s hoodies draped over you like a blanket, and Idia is just staring at you, holding your collar. He looks pissed, but his hair isn’t red, at least. He’s noticed you’re awake, but he’s not saying anything. He turns slightly in his gaming chair and throws the strap of leather on his desk, the wiring fried. There are holes burnt into the leather, and Idia stares at it blankly before he starts typing away on his tablet, his own voice coming through the device.

It sounds about as burnt out as the shock collar looks, “I bet you feel pretty bad, huh?”

You don’t dignify that with a response. It doesn’t matter to him, since his fingers fly as he keeps typing away.

“You’re a fucking moron. Only someone stupid would try to-” He doesn’t finish the sentence and hits the desk, standing up and pacing. You can’t see him, but you can hear him panting.

You try to de-escalate, sort of. The shock collar isn’t around your neck anymore, but you really don’t need him to work himself up again, “The word is ‘desperate.’ I don’t want… I don’t want this. This thing growing inside of me, I don’t-”

“You’re not the only one with a parasite.” His voice is quiet but seething. It breathily cuts through the air like a knife, aiming for your soft parts, “You just have the privilege of being able to get rid of yours comfortably.”

“Really? So you putting this thing in me isn’t as bad as I think it is?”

He paces back into view and you notice something missing. Someone missing. You lift your head a bit to look around and Idia takes a heavy seat at his desk again. This state is rare. It takes him a while to relax when he gets like this, but you’ve only seen it aimed at others, like that time his account got temporarily banned because one of his party members was hacking. At least that had an easy solution for him- you’ve never seen him grin as much as when he had the poor guy swatted and watched through the CCTV cameras around the poor fool's house.

“We’re going home. I’ll fix your little problem twofold, since I’m the only competent one between the two of us.” He types out, his recorded voice not lagging once.

“What? And what do you mean you have a parasite?”

He doesn’t look at you, but you think you see him wipe his cheek with his sleeve, typing with only one hand, “Ortho is gonna come back with some burn cream. I lost my temper and you got hurt. Not that you didn’t deserve it.”

“I didn’t deserve any of this. I asked you if you had a condom.”

He doesn’t respond to that statement, instead typing, “I don’t love you. You know that, right? Love is for the idealistic masses, those who aren’t capable of keeping their feet on the ground. You’re just someone who has taken up a space in my mind. So the solution to yours won’t be permanent. Seven knows my parents will be getting on my case about providing them an heir eventually.”

“So I’m just here for eventual marriage security?”

Idia doesn’t respond. Ortho strolls in, placing a tube on Idia’s desk and goes out of your line of sight, seemingly to tidy or something. You don’t really care. He’s not your ally. He’s never been.

Idia sighs, then goes back to working on something on his desk. You don’t know how much time passes, but he loops it around your throat and unties you. It’s sitting a bit lower on your neck, just against your collarbones. There’s a three-tap warning, but no shock afterward. Just the flat look on Idia’s face.

“I should start calling you ‘baby’, kitten. It’d be so much easier for you to understand your position.”

“That’s not funny.” You say, “I never asked you to bring me here.”

Idia shrugs, “Well, I don’t think of you as a pet. With the way you act, you might as well be a pest.” He grins, sharp teeth on display, “Maybe I should put out some glue traps… or start dosing you with raw garlic and ivermectin.”

He starts laughing, and you feel your eyes well with tears. You tell yourself it's the pregnancy hormones. Idia laughs harder at your expression.

“Aw, kitten, I’m just teasing. Come sit with me.”

“But I-” That three-tap warning from your new collar cuts you off. You stand up and start walking the two steps between the bed and Idia’s desk. When you reach your hands towards the collar, it zaps you. It’s quick and not too painful, but it gets you moving towards Idia. When you take a seat on his lap, he leans to bury his nose in your hair, a thrilled noise escaping him. He drops the burn cream in your lap.

He just watches you as you unscrew the lid and reach for your neck. There’s a three-tap warning again- bzz bzz bzz- but you ignore it. The second your fingers barely graze your throat with the cream, you get zapped, short and swift, but uncomfortable enough. You drop your hand and it goes away. When you look up at Idia, he takes the cream from your other hand and presses a soft kiss to your cheek, using his free hand to click into one of his many tabs for some anime streaming site.

“Good. It works.” Is all he says.

As he dabs the cream onto the electrical burns on your neck, you have to blink away the despair again. It’s settled over you like a blanket, eaten holey by moths and worms. Every move you make is accompanied by tentative fear, a worry that Idia will do something awful if you do certain things. You never once considered it would go this far, though. Ortho drops something onto Idia’s bed, a hefty-looking luggage set, and Idia pays him no mind as he tucks away some clothes. You don’t want to admit it, but you don’t want to be around any more people under Idia’s thumb, whether they know it or not.

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anthropologyruinseverything · 3 months

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For all my crossover interest folks -

Who is your all time favorite WWE superstar?

Which tarot card do you feel represents them and why?

I’m gonna go the easy route because while I love the whole bloodline (past & current), Damian priest and a few others, The Undertaker is and will always be my all time favorite. Follow closely by Raven, it was hard to choose between the two. But here goes.

The Undertaker gets the Death card not only for the obvious reasons but also because he is kind of the “consequences” of the WWE. Like at WM 40 - the rock had mucked up enough and so he pushed back.

#wwe #the undertaker #undertaker #tarot cards #the bloodline #funny stuff #creative inspiration #get creative #wrestling #pro wrestling #wwe raw #wwe smackdown

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shoppingforbl00d · 2 months

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Your Othello headcanons, please!

I don’t have too many, but I’ll share what I have! A lot of my headcanons are inspired by the Shakespeare tragedy of the same name (which so happens to be my favorite work of The Bard!).

Othello has Italian roots on his mother’s side. He can speak Italian, and spent much of his early childhood in Venice.

When he was alive, I believe that Othello lived during the Tudor period (1485-1603). I don’t have a set death date for him, but I like to think he died in the early 1500s before Henry VIII took the throne.

Speaking of his death, I believe he poisoned himself. I do not have a set reason as to why he did so yet, however, unlike the Shakespearean tragedy, he did not commit a murder-suicide against any sort of lover. I’ve reserved that headcanon for another reaper (hmmm wonder who…).

Had he not committed suicide, Othello hoped to become a physician at the Hospital of Santa Maria Nuova in Florence. He was a medical student in his mid-twenties.

Othello dyes his hair dark green (I think we knew this lol) but his natural hair color is black.

Aside from Grelle, I’d see him getting along rather well with Ronald and Sascha.

I have no set idea of the extent of Undertaker and Othello’s relationship aside from them becoming reapers around the same time. I don’t particularly believe they had any sort of romantic relationship.

Out of all the reapers we’ve seen in the series, I believe Othello would be the most likely to betray the dispatch. I don’t know what the rest of the series holds, but I do not get entirely trustworthy vibes from him. I think a betrayal arc would be pretty neat ngl. Maybe I’ll dive into this at a later date.

Thanks for reading! Feel free to tell me what you think or ask any more questions. As a bonus, here’s a few songs from the playlist I made for him :)

Weird Science by Oingo Boingo

Laplace’s Angel by Will Wood

Evil Eye by Franz Ferdinand

#jagoda.txt #kuroshitsuji #black butler #othello black butler #ronald knox #sascha black butler

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emojellyace08 · 10 months

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Lookism Random Headcannons (Because why not?)

Read the recent chapter recently and I am excited about the King of Soul's entrance (if ever)

Daniel watches anime since he thinks it's more entertaining than dramas. At some point he also wanted to become a manga artist but quickly gave up on it. His favorite is probably the classics (Naruto, One Piece, One Punch Man, DBZ, and he also likes the recent ones.)

Zack and Johan used to watch WWE matches together while Mira scolds them that they scream too loud when they're watching Royal Rumble lmao.

Undertaker was Johan's favorite WWE wrestler but thinking about it makes Johan embarrassed since he doesn't want to be seen as an edge lord or "emo or a goth" lol. Zack Lee's favorites are probably Edge, Brock Lesnar, and Randy Orton (idk I watch a little bit of WWE in my free time don't blame me).

Since Jay lived mostly alone in his apartment for who knows how long, he was thought by his butler to cook his own food since he doesn't really want to depend on them fully and make them exhausted. (Plus he's mostly bored, so why not cook and bake?) He almost burned his apartment once trying to fry an egg at first.

Hudson might not admit it but he also binges anime like Daniel. He believes that Makima sucks and the ones who defends her are simps (I mean she's a well written antagonist but her personality is a no).

Goo Kim = Cat Girl/ Cat Boy enthusiast (likes wearing low-budgeted cosplays A LOT for his own entertainment).

Goo Kim had stolen Gun's credit cards for his own shopping spree. Not once, not twice, but MANY TIMES.

Samuel might not admit it but he actually likes Jake and Big Deal. He just keeps denying it because of his ego issues.

Jerry had once owned a winter dwarf pet hamster. He properly took care for it for like 2 years and named her Bisky. But since hamsters have short lifespans, it died later on and he cried and didn't sleep well the following days since he missed her deeply. The shrine of it is still staying still on his backyard and he mostly replaces the flowers everyday or i he's not busy to pay tribute to her.

Daniel wanted to learn how to play the guitar or a ukulele but since his mom was struggling with their budget he cannot ask her to buy him one.

Jay can play drums (and teaches Daniel when having sleep overs!)

Mary can play bass and a little bit of guitar. And she secretly listens to rock, metal, and the alternative style of music since she doesn't want to be teased as emo by Vin the asshole lmao.

Avril Lavigne is the reason why Mary dyed her hair blonde you can't change my mind (not forcing you but listen to her music IT'S SO GOOD). She would like to have a friend (if not a girl friend not a girlfriend) who shares the same music taste with her to start a band.

Zack and Vin Jin used to bully kids on Roblox to boost their ego (Zack stopped because of his character development but probably Vin still does it lol).

Younger Kouji had once ate lots of candies and sweets to be "smart like L" from Death Note but almost got diabetes.

Gun and DG wears lip balms to keep their lips plump and smooth. DG had once teased Gun about being a model while Gun just smirks about it.

Mira SECRETLY LIKES Ayesha Erotica's music because of the edits on TikTok but since it's mostly explicit she's refraining to add her compositions on her Spotify playlists.

Since Vasco is mostly hardworking, there are times that he passes the exams (with the help of Jace and other Burn Knuckle members). But he just cannot push himself more to pass the Mathematics exams.

Eli had once tried to kiss Warren after their fight because of his innocence and curiosity before all the Hostel Drama. (I personally don't ship them but I just feel like it's something past Eli would do). They both cringe when they both remember it.

Doo Lee was once a Twitter influencer but because of his past dramas he was cancelled in social media.

Jibeom accidentally smashed Jihan's face when they were little when they are trying to imitate WWE stunts. Jichang was surprised to see his little brother's teeth getting cracked and falling off and he just didn't cried (it was Jibeom who shed tears because of guilt lol).

Crystal is a big fan of "vintage-core" or everything around the older eras because she believes that it doesn't only represents the beauty and evolution of human pop-culture but it also represents history. She always won on auctions to buy antique stuff and mostly donate it on museums to preserve it's structure while she kept some on her room. She almost got canceled by bidding on an authentic Marilyn Monroe's lipstick but she later on posted on Twitter that she donated it on a museum (which is not a fake news).

Gun doesn't eat too much fast-food products because he believes it's unhealthy and has chemicals to make the customers' crave for more (Goo teases him about this by dramatically eating an order of a large McDonald's French Fries in front of his annoyed face).

Ryuhei never kissed a woman in his life because of his nervousness. He secretly was weirded out by it so he lies that he had slept with many women to not be bullied by other people.

Vasco doesn't know how to properly wear a watch and a belt (ngl same I'm that stupid). He also doesn't know how to tie his shoe lace.

Jace prefers dark-chocolate rather than milk or white chocolate. Because he believes that since it has more cocoa content it can boost more of his energy and sharpen his mind and focus especially when taking his exams and quizzes.

Sally's favorite color was purple as she planned to dye her hair with her color of choice with a mix of indigo. But since she's afraid that it won't suit her, she changed her plans and went on to dye her hair with strawberry pink. She didn't expected it to look magnificent on her since Warren complimented her, so after that her favorite color was switched to baby or strawberry pink.

Mitsuki thinks that K-Pop music is cringe but she secretly has BTS, Twice, and Blackpink on her Spotify playlists. Ryuhei found out about this and she was pissed off up until this day lol.

Doo Lee once had a girlfriend who uses him for the money. She later on cheated with a new "handsome and charming" guy and when Doo found out he was FURIOUS. He later on was captured on camera beating the dude and when people found out he was canceled again on social media (pretty privileges never ends). He later on begged Daniel and Duke to make an apology video for him which looks so weird and scripted since Doo was pushing them. But luckily the drama heated down.

Magami Kenta's favorite vape flavors are watermelon, strawberry, and coffee.

Joy is very talented and skilled with nail art and she sells her products in a decent price even if it's REALLY DETAILED and well-crafted.

Sinu Han is a COMIC BOY FAN. Whether it's DC Comics, Marvel Comics, or even manga he's going to buy it. He later on posted on Twitter about how Gojo shouldn't have died since he relates to him so much (he was later on bullied by Samuel that he sounds like a weeb lmao).

#lookism fic #lookism headcanons

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roomwithanopenfire · 6 months

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fic writer ask game: 1, 2 (and why), 4 (if you have any, otherwise you can just tell me who your favourite character is), 5, 9 (and why), and 15! :D

Thanks for the ask!!

1. What is your favorite line in the last fic you wrote? Okay this was really hard because all of the lines feel so tied up in their scenes but I really like this line from Chapter 2 of Proof of Life

“Of course, all magic resides inside you, but this is much more raw. More dense. Before humans ever had enough words to create spells, they could still use magic like this.” The fire on her palm blazed brighter. “There have always been fire mages.”

2. What fic was the hardest to write? Probably a tie between not hard enough (but it isn't easy) and Proof of Life for completely different reasons. Not Hard Enough was difficult because it was definitely an emotional fic to write and I had to tap into experiences I've had and try to translate them into something readable. Proof of Life is difficult for the sole reason in that it's the most ambitious fic I've tried so far. I only have six fics (5 for Snowbaz) in total and each one feels more like an undertaking than the last.

4. Who is your favorite OC character? Besides Simon and Baz, it's Fiona Pitch. I'm in love with Fiona.

5. What's a ship you like but haven't written yet? I really like Agatha/Niamh and I have a few ideas bouncing around here that one day will be written. Also like Fiona/Ebb has been in my mind too lately idk

9. What is your favorite part of your most popular fic? My most popular fic is Do As You're Told and really I'm just so proud of that whole thing, it was the first multi-chapter I'd ever written and I had so much fun. My absolute favorite part is the love confession/first kiss scene at the very very end.

15. What's your favorite fic of all time? What an impossible question. Uhhh, let me check my bookmarks. The problem is I started reading Snowbaz before I had an ao3 account and then I didn't start using bookmarks right away so many of the fics I've loved are lost to the corners of my foggy memory. I love Woundrous and Mystical by philaetos though, so I can share that one. But there's so many fics that I love take a look at my public bookmarks I'm sorry most of them are stranger things fics it took me a while to discover bookmarks.

from this ask game

#this was so fun #thanks for the ask!#lily answers asks #ask game #carry on #snowbaz

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freebooter4ever · 8 months

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Geno collection part 2: quick doodles version. I’ve been holding off on posting this one because i wanted to write my usual yearly blurb summary underneath but i’ve been struggling to put it into words which is a new one for loquacious me. What to say about geno…

Normally i’m very logical about my favorites - i know exactly why i picked them and there's a list of reasons. This time left me confused. One minute i’m insisting i’m not going to root for pittsburgh, even though its my city, and i'll only do ONE drawing of sid as a homage. But then there's this photo of some dude sitting on the boards in a blue jersey - you can’t even see his face it’s all about the Attitude and his posture - and it’s the most compelling hockey photo i’ve seen yet. Who is this guy, how the fuck is he so sexy, he's just SITTING, he's not even skating? And then i find out his name (and whoops it’s that guy i already decided to hate, guess i have to rethink my snap decision), and then i start noticing things. And noticing more things, and reading old blogs, and more, and more…

And next thing i know ive got over 271 doodles in my sketchesdone folder, and a favorite that was never supposed to be a favorite, and also a new sculpting project.

So. Why? his expressions are a joy to draw. he looks like he escaped from an animated film. He's got that elusive quality where half of what i want to draw is physical and the other half is in his movements, and body language, and personality. It drives me crazy because i am terrible at capturing that second half so i’m never fully happy with any of my doodles. That glow of personality, the look in his eyes - how the fuck do you draw that? I don’t know.

His body alone is also interesting - unique proportions. He's long, with lots of muscle, but also soft? I could cry over it probably. Actually i just study, and study, and want to throw my computer at the wall when i get it wrong in my art yet again for the thousandth time.

He's funny. But he's sneaky about it. If you dont pay much attention he seems like this kind of slapstick guy. But underneath the surface goofball he almost miserly keeps to himself how sly his humor can be. You get the feeling that he doesn't miss much, even if he doesn't comment on it. Yet even that's hilarious - how in some interviews it's obvious he's mentally checked out. All so you're thrown for a loop when in other interviews he's the most vivacious guy in the room. Which is the real evgeni? only he knows. :P well, and obviously the lucky few who know him personally.

I have a small confession. I’ve been sending him art. Look - the missing the playoffs thing happened - and i was suddenly overcome with concern that they might not get as much fanmail as usual. And that was so sad. And then i realized i had all these drawings. And a printer. I could send fanmail. (i have only sent famail once before. this was a very anxiety inducing undertaking) Normally i don’t like the subject of my art seeing my art, it’s just supposed to be for us. But i carefully picked out each drawing - mostly the ones that were more badass or powerful in the traditionally masculine sports sense. I definitely avoided any of the thirsty ones (duh) and tried not to use any of the more personal ones of his face where it was obvious i was just drawing him instead of him as a hockey star. And tried to be respectful and desperately hoping my art wouldn’t accidentally insult him somehow or be inappropriate. i have zero idea if i succeeded and it only worries me sometimes.

So there you go. The year of geno. \o/ nothing in this list has any logic to it

#really i have no other excuse it must be magic #this is the gas leak year except it's just me discovering evgeni malkin for the first time despite living in the same city for a decade #2023 #seriously i had SO MANY drawings to choose from this year #and it's all of his face #im gonna get into hockey i said #im gonna use hockey action shots to practice anatomy and gesture i said #and then i go and draw genos face 100 times just so i can learn things like the exact angle of his cheekbones #so useful #his bottom lip is my kryptonite

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katnissdoesnotfollowback · 5 months

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Which of your stories features your favorite Katniss?

Oooooh @mollywog I love you and I hate you for asking this. I don’t think anyone’s ever asked me specifically about Katniss in my stories. I’ve been asked about the stories overall and which is my favorite Peeta or favorite Everlark, but not Katniss??

Okay so. It’s hard for me to narrow it down to one single favorite, which is why I say I hate you. But these are the versions of Katniss that, to me, took on a life of their own. I’ve argued with every single one of them and changed the path the story is taking because they feel alive when I’m writing them.

Unmasked Katniss. She was so much fun to write, even if she is a little historically anachronistic. What I loved about writing her was figuring out how her father still being alive, although he’s near fatally injured, when she’s an adult no less, changes her core personality. How does the shifting of her responsibilities and the pressures of her timeframe to marry alter how she responds and how she falls in love with Peeta.

Also I had way too much fun crafting her voice when she’s thirsty for Peeta basically from chapter one but can’t admit it to herself, let alone him, until much later and in the meantime she just doesn’t know what to do with those feelings. And THEN oh lord after she figured it out, you have no idea how many times I’d just be writing along and suddenly they’re in bed naked AGAIN or going at it in a scandalous place and I’d just stop and literally say out loud… how the fuck did we wind up here again, Katniss?!?!?!

There were a lot of deleted smut scenes… 🫣

Spellbound Katniss. For the same reasons kind of??? her voice is just so much fun to dive into and I’d been wanting to write a witch!Katniss fic for several years before I got this one off the ground. I don’t want to say too much because I don’t want to spoil it, yeah. I love her.

9000 rpm Katniss. I would murder for her. She’s an oblivious idiot when it comes to her feelings but that is very much a self-preservation/protective instinct after losing her dad, her mom, and Gale as people she can rely on, all in quick order. But she kinda stepped onto the page as a fully fledged character with an arc that I just kinda followed through on, and I hope she has readers rooting for her as much as I do, despite her bone headed mistakes.

Outside Chance Katniss. *waves hands at the epic undertaking that is the OC universe* I will take no notes on this.

Thanks for the ask, love!

❤️ kdnfb

#mollywog #ten years of fanfiction mania #look at that ask

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scribefindegil · 1 year

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authors self rec! When you get this, reply with your favorite five fics that you've written, then pass on to at least five other writers. Let’s spread the self-love❤

Yayy! Thanks Mary! <3 After agonizing it for a while, my top 5:

The Real World (Mob Psycho 100, post-Mogami arc) is absolutely my favorite fic I've ever written. It's some of my best prose, I'm really pleased with how concise and focused I was able to keep it despite touching on so many characters, and it let me distill down a lot of my thoughts on the themes of the show and why it's so important to me. And I wrote it during the absolute worst stretch of the curse, painstaking sentence by painstaking sentence over the course of half a year. I am so so so proud of it.

Fisherman's Knot (Gravity Falls, post-canon fic focusing on the Stans, their deeply-entrenched mental health issues, and their eventual recovery. Also there are selkies.) At 104k words, the longest piece of writing I've ever finished. Writing it was a journey; I took a long break but I'm so happy and proud that I managed to come back and finish it and that there were still people who were as excited as I was to get to the end. The response to this fic blew me away; it started out largely as a coping mechanism to deal with my own poorly-treated mental illness and I feel really honored that my writing resonated with so many people dealing with similar things. I grew so much as a writer over the course of it. Both the big moments of catharsis--Stan's glitter and Ford's realization by the harbor--were things that were so powerful and electric in my head that I worried I wouldn't be able to put them down in words that did the feelings justice, but I did!

Bloom (Discworld, a Glorious 25th of May fic set a few years after Night Watch) Everyone who sets out to write a Discworld fic is undertaking an extreme act of hubris, because not only are you trying to emulate a specific writing style, you're trying to write like Terry Pratchett, which as we all know is basically impossible. Still, I think I hit some good resonant Discworldy notes in this little piece and really nailed the Themes I was going for. Periodically the Tumblr post version gets a little burst of notes and it always makes me really happy that people are enjoying it.

First And Final Orders (Mob Psycho 100, Dimple character study) Hi. Have you heard of ring composition? I love ring composition. It is my single favorite literary device (and I love a LOT of literary devices), so I had to include one of my fics that makes heavy use of it. I also love pointing at a piece of media and going "Hey. Hey have you thought about how there's kind of some Discworld themes here? What if we thought about the Discworld themes together?" And ALSO i love DIMPLE!!! I hope this fic helps explain why.

Casualties (Gravity Falls, missing scene from the finale) So the reason this fic makes this list isn't so much its quality (though I do still really like it!) but the fact that it was my first-ever completed fanfiction. I'd idly poked at the idea of writing fic a couple times before but never made much progress. I hadn't actually done any creative writing for years at that point. I came to fandom late due to a combination of being scared of the internet and, when I did check out my real-life friends' fandom blogs, feeling like everything was so focused on shipping that there would be no place for me and the kinds of stories I cared about. Gravity Falls changed that. I'd made friends and felt like part of a community for the first time. I'd read fanfic that I loved and that focused on the sorts of relationships I really cared about. And so finally I decided that even though it still felt really scary, maybe I would try my hand at actually writing and posting a fic of my own.

360,000 words and 54 works later, I still think it was a pretty good idea.

#memeses #scribe writes #this is SO SAPPY bc that is just who i am as a person #also i limited this list to completed fics but #*flutters mine eyelashes*#have you heard of The Brassica Heresy?#I am very excited about The Brassica Heresy

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paladin-of-nerd-fandom65 · 9 months

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Thanks for the answers, you & spider-jay are the reasons why I created that small blog post about the young titans group; details about that and more are coming soon ;)

1: I think you said this already butt what is something they get extremely jealous of?

2: Chris, Jon, & Kons outfits are based on the original designs from the comics, what new & original outfits would you give them? I can see Chris wearing a purple & black version of Zods outfit since his lightsaber color is purple; the Z on the outfit stands for despair & Chris changes it to his own version of hope instead (in my Headcanon)

3: what’s the duos reaction to undertaker losing his wrestle mania streak? If they dislike Brock lesnar, who would they choose to end undertakers streak?

4: what’s your favorite alternative universes of the duo?

5: based on questions in the past from me & others, how do you come up with them? Is it based on your likes or is it you look at the characters & decide “this” is their character?

6: any “fluffy” headcanons of the duo? Like Chris using his shadow powers to cuddle & hug his brothers or Jake.

Apologies for the delays my friend @pin-crusher2000

That being said…..

1) While extreme jealousy is way too harsh to describe it overall as the two are quite accepting and courteous as much as kids their age can be; Chris would have an absolute tiny issue with Conner being the premier and most popular of the junior Supers between him, himself and Jon. Meanwhile, Jake would have a tiny bit of comprehension issues with the fact that his powers, whether he actually wanted them at first or not, came in much later in his life while Mar’i was basically and almost literally born with hers.

2) Conner: A White T Shirt with a Black and Red S Shield, a new leather trench coat with a red underside and a golden S Shield on the back, black pants with a two belts and finally brown workman’s boots. Also, he can keep his trademark shades

Chris: (Don’t get me wrong, your idea sounds great in an off itself. Major kudos. Here’s just my idea for a custom suit) A Light Purple and bright Blue Shirt sleeved shirt with gold trimmings around the collar and sleeve holes, at the center of it a Blue and Yellow version of S Shield only the outer part of it modified to resemble a dragon akin to his canon logo, a yellow cape with a blue underside, a light purple and blue pair of pants coupled with a gold belt plus golden boots which have dark blue soles and his S logo on them, and of course his gold headband.

Jon: A Long sleeved shirt that follows the pattern closely to his canonical suit only it’s an actual shirt and not a sweatshirt, a red cape with a blue underside, dark red fingerless gloves, blue pants with yellow trimmings around the belt area and pockets, and finally some extra high top Converse sneakers.

3) Well…..very similar if anything to that guy from that very Mania, the ‘Just Say Yes’ shirt fella. Once they’re able to actually comprehend their thoughts and emotions for their opinions….they both, while liking Lesnar enough as a performer, agree that it really should’ve been Cena or even better Cesaro who should’ve broke the Streak. And if there had been an older talent given those honors, they could probably vouched instead for Sting or even Goldberg to do it.

4) So far, there are some examples that I can think off the top of my head.

Firstly, there’s what @spider-jaysart and I formulated together based on her ideas for an AU featuring gothic monsters and creatures. Here Chris is a ghost while Jake is a vampire. We call it the ‘Dark Monster Adventure Universe’

One other would be based on Pacific Rim, a movie in which alien kaiju invading the Earth are actively fought back by humanity constructing gigantic Mechas that are piloted by two people who are bound and linked together by their thoughts and feelings for each other, platonic, familial or whichever. The better the pilots bond, the better they fight. In a Pacific Rim AU, it’s a no capes type, but Chris and Jake do pilot one of these mechs, a Jarger, together.

Finally and probably cliches for an comic fan but why not; an AU where Chris is firmly Lor Zod and not only aided his father to take over the Earth and terraform it as a New Krypton with the House of Zod at the helm but also the ruling house makes an alliance of sorts with the Earth based Court of Owls, offering their services for assassinating any human politicians and challengers to the Zods’ rule in exchange for that House to allow them to operate under their protection and with access to Kryptonian tech. It’s through the Court we meet up with their version of Jake as the entirety of the Grayson family are made part of the Owls. Kory and Mar’i are ambassadors of sorts to other alien races that comes across Earth while Dick is firmly in command of the Court’s Talons. Jake would be among the Talons, already having the electrum working in his bloodstream as for Tamaraneans, hybrid or purebred, has a tendency to activate immediately whether the person is still actually alive or undead. Jake in particular serves as Lor’s personal bodyguard, their own adventures usually centering on taking down any rival supervillains or alien warlords who wish to upset this status quo

Sooooo…ironically like that Sinister Sons book in a way….hopefully this is would be better than that one lol

5) I base the characterizations and interactions with these characters with what hopefully is a healthy blend of both their canonical appearances and personalities and admittedly also some of my own interests and tastes influencing them as well. If only really to fill in the gaps their canonical depictions otherwise left out or weren’t explored as much. For instance, given we mainly saw Chris as a six year old and later a teenager, how would a twelve year old version of him who adapted fully to life on Earth would be like or how would Jake’s behavior be like if he not only grew up in a world where his Dad didn’t use a device from Apokolips to end an all out war between metahumans, didn’t follow it up with being the face of an authoritarian regime that makes being meta human illegal and also didn’t have Kory leave the family to establish a resistance force against said regime. All that plus having an older sister.

Yeah as one can tell, wish fulfillment with these guys is a thing for me at least. Though I try my best being consistent with their characterizations within canonical depictions and even in this very AU itself. Keyword try though, I’m sure there’s times I messed it up. I’ll be more than happy if someone points them out. No problem

- When asleep, Jake is probably the second biggest cuddle bug of the entire family, only surpassed by his Mother. It’s almost completely involuntary and an act of pure instinct when it happens as it can be in nearly any place that’s cozy and safe, including but not limited to the couch and his bedroom. It especially kicks in if it’s next to family members but none of them mind it at all. It’s warms their mood up and it literally also warms them up as like with other Tamaraneans, Jake has a pretty warm body temperature even when he’s not directly cuddling anyone

- Also yes, Chris’ shadow constructs can be used to hug those closest to him, especially if they feel down but politely request for their personal space. Shadow constructs though don’t count as breaking that personal space so they allow it.

- Finally, the Duo regularly on some days if the time is right and doable, can visit local children’s hospitals and cancer wards throughout both Bludhaven and Metropolis. They’d spend a good amount of time talking to the many patients there, offering comfort to those who are scared and fearful of their illnesses and injuries, play around the place with those who want to do so whether the doctors are okay with it or not, taking small photos with those patients and their families, and generally just be an uplifting presence for the patients, a lot of them being around their age range or younger.

#chris kent #jake grayson #starburst duo #mari grayson #connor kent #jonathan samuel kent #wwe #undertaker #au #pacific rim #lor zod #court of owls #talon #dick grayson #koriand'r #general zod

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blizzardsuplex · 1 year

Text

“like watching art in motion” (an essay on ZSJ and wrestling)

CW: discussions of gatekeeping

I didn’t have internet for over three days, and so in my total boredom I opened up my Microsoft Word and began tinkering with a “casual essay” on my favorite wrestler, Zack Sabre Jr. But I can’t talk about Zack without talking about how I feel about and my experiences with pro wrestling as a whole, so over 3.2k words later, here we are.

(I didn’t mean it to get so long...nor, in truth, get so personal. I’ve been carrying this with me for a long time, though, so I guess it had to come out eventually. Things like that always do.)

Title from a comment I saw on Reddit about Zack in 2016. Content under the cut. Special thanks to @heartsinablender/Izzy, who encouraged me to write and eventually post this in semi-public. :)

~~~~

My absolute earliest memories of professional wrestling are of reading next to my favorite uncle while he watched early to mid-2000s era Smackdown on one of those old, boxy TVs, but my first formative memory related to it is talking to one of my classmates, an enthusiastic prowres fan in the way children can be, on the stands by the soccer field during P.E. I don’t remember how the conversation started, but eventually (as it usually did) it landed on the object of his interest.

“I watch wrestling, sometimes,” I threw out, having at that point probably paid attention to a grand total of less than an hour of WWE. His eyes grew wide, then narrowed.

“Yeah?” he said. “Name ten wrestlers.”

He’d said it in a way that felt final, like he was sure that I wouldn’t be able to answer his challenge. It lit a fire under me, and I said “The Undertaker” as quick as a slap. He was unfazed, however, and all too soon I faltered: “The Great Khali, John Cena, Triple H, Booker T…uh. The Great Khali—“

“You said him twice,” my classmate said smugly. He turned away from me, back to the soccer game.

I don’t remember what I replied to the side of his face or what I did immediately after; it didn’t matter. I’d already failed the test, and no matter how biased its giver was, the fact I’d proven him right sucked.

~~~~

This is an essay about how I feel about the professional wrestler Zack Sabre Jr. This is also, if the above hasn’t clued you in, an essay about my personal history and relationship with professional wrestling. These ideas are not only closely related but intertwined, two vines. As with anything alive, both have their periods of growth and withering, fecundity and barrenness, somewhat independent of each other but in the end—as with any ecosystem—affecting the very same, sometimes in dramatic ways.

But even the strongest vines need something to wrap around if they ever hope to reach the sun. Where did these find their base?—my very body, frail as it is compared to the kinds of people who take up the path of the wrestler. That’s the funny thing about entertainment, I’ve found: the people you watch, whether on stage or in ring or on a screen, seem like invincible titans…as long as you’re watching them. The minute you turn your eyes away, they start to wilt; when you turn your back, they wither. With enough lack of care (in every sense), anyone could tear off the leaves and stems and just leave.

I could leave. I’ve almost left. Certainly I’ve drifted away from it on occasion. But so far I’ve always come back, or maybe more precisely I’ve let those vines wind and wind and wind ‘round me again, and more often than not ZSJ—what he represents to my conception of wrestling—is to blame.

~~~~

After I had tried and failed at the task of naming ten wrestlers, I remember feeling embarrassed. Now—though for a completely different reason—I feel outright ashamed. Now, I know too intimately what eight-year-old me could only barely comprehend: why he had issued that challenge in the first place. I was a girl, and I was an unathletic twig, and I was the most bookish of nerds, and while one or even two of those traits might have been acceptable in a “real fan”…all three of those things? Never. A classic example of gatekeeping—and for a while mentally that one interaction was successful at keeping me out.

But at the time it was “just” embarrassment, and as much as I hate to admit it that feeling followed me even after I began actually watching WWE with my uncle and cousin. Dipping your toes into any new activity or hobby, especially one with the amount of layers pro wrestling does, is daunting enough without the constant fear of somehow being discovered and kicked out of that space before my time, though of course my family wouldn’t do that—or, worse, laughed at, which they might’ve. The fact that my cousin was a year younger than me but, at least at first, knew more than I did didn’t really help: she never gatekept, but how she took every chair shot and dick kick we watched in stride (it was during Christian’s feud with Randy Orton) while I was left scratching my head a bit made me feel, as with my classmate, like a poser.

Well, I didn’t want to be a poser anymore, so I went to that great well of information: the internet. Specifically, I went on TV Tropes (yeah, I know) and read the pages on professional wrestling and WWE; while I was aware that there were other promotions, especially after reading the former—I remember the promotion name Ring of Honor getting a cool! from me—I wasn’t interested in anything but the “basics” at that point. What was a heel, a face, a tweener? What did it mean when someone did a shoot on another? What even was the Attitude Era, and why did people like it so much (a question that to this day I’m not sure I can answer)?

I got those down in a reasonable amount of time. Then, something interesting began to happen: I felt compelled to keep reading more about it. I honestly don’t remember the specifics—which names, memes, and tragedies (always in a WWF/WWE context) my brain absorbed like a sponge. All I know is that, after a couple of months, I ended up quite a bit like a smark. So I did get what I wanted: no longer did I feel like a fake fan, even if it came at the cost of somewhat alienating my cousin (who was beginning to lose interest in wrestling) and my uncle.

That wasn’t the most interesting thing I got out of my wiki walking days, though. Because of my (in truth middling-depth) dive into (a very narrow slice of) the prowres ocean, 12 to 13-year-old me thought I had figured this whole professional wrestling thing out: it was bright, it was flashy, it was written like a soap opera. It was entertaining, sometimes off of sheer cringe-inducing antics and sometimes out of sheer spectacle. What counted as spectacle, meanwhile?—the flippiest of flips, dramatic kickouts, muscled people billed at two whole feet taller than me hollering at each other in the ring. It was violent (but not too much, for the sponsors’ sake) and it was slickly produced and it had the best kind of nonsensical internal logic.

Of course, that is what wrestling is…sometimes. There’s nothing wrong with that, or anything wrong with watching wrestling like that, either. My mistake as a child was putting it in a box, thinking that everything I just said was everything it could and can be. I was lukewarm on the idea of prowres presented more sport-like, didn’t know how it could be entertaining without a writer’s room’s worth of storylines. As for pro wrestling being art, or even just beautiful—those two concepts seemed so far apart that to use the word never even crossed my mind.

~~~~

So stayed my thoughts on it until, when I was maybe 13 or 14, I fell head-first into hipsterdom (in the “wanting to like things before they were cool” sense). It happened with music, it happened with video games, and it happened with wrestling. Though I still watched WWE, I began to look beyond its borders—which is to say I began paying attention to trope examples by wrestlers I wasn’t familiar with. Those entries, along with a few well-placed links to 240p YouTube videos, were how I found my first favorite wrestler…who was, of all people, Chuck Taylor (who I still love, don’t get me wrong).

But wrestling news moves fast—even faster than the editors at early 2010s TV Tropes, and especially those editors who cared about keeping an independent wrestler’s page up to date. I knew that, if I wanted to know more about Chuckie T and his Gentleman’s Club, I would have to look elsewhere.

I found two places: a wrestling forum literally just called Wrestling Forum, and a newish subreddit called /r/squaredcircle. I proceeded to lurk on both, but it was on Reddit a year or so later that I found the post that ended up being the catalyst for my wrestling fandom from that point forward—a mention that Chuck Taylor wrestled at this supposedly really cool promotion called Pro Wrestling Guerrilla during their yearly Battle of Los Angeles, and that the footage of that show was finally out.

I don’t know when I found the time to look for it. When I think back to that Saturday afternoon, navigating with no adblock to a sketchy wrestling stream archive on a desktop already considered ancient, all I remember is how curious I was when—after giving it a couple of minutes to buffer—I finally pressed play.

~~~~

The match, if you want to find it yourself, is the Friends of Low Moral Fiber (Kenny Omega, Chuck Taylor, and Zack Sabre Jr.) versus the Young Bucks and Adam Cole from BOLA 2014 Night 1. Back then, every single one of those names were established or rising players in the independent scene; now, of course, they’ve all been in multiple top-level promotions around the world. For this and several other reasons, I haven’t been able to watch that contest back before, just last year, I found it in its entirety on YouTube. The channel quickly got taken down, but not before I snagged a copy for myself; in fact, I made the effort to get it as soon as I saw it was the real deal. As someone once told me, pro wrestling is one of the most ephemeral of entertainment forms—and also I don’t have the money for both a DVD player and to ship from the US to watch it legitimately.

But I wasn’t thinking about that when I was 14 or 15 years old. At the time, the only person I really knew or cared about in that match was Chuck, and so as the introductions happened I eagerly awaited his time in the ring (even back then, I held the opinion that he was an underrated worker). Instead, his team first fielded the skinny man with the Union Jack jacket, the one who’d gotten right into the other side’s faces. Zack Sabre Jr., I recalled as everyone got into their corners. A cool name, if a little overwrought.

The bell rang. Twenty-four minutes later, I paused the video and spent hours searching that “overwrought” name everywhere, looking for more clips of him, more discussion on him—more of his wrestling.

~~~~

What can I say about Zack Sabre Jr. in the context of wrestling that probably hasn’t already been said a million times? He has an atypical build for a wrestler, especially before his recent bulk up: tall but very lean—or outright skinny if you’re feeling uncharitable. His promo style is one I have seen called “extremely British” and “hilariously unhinged” (which, considering everything happening in the UK, maybe mean the same thing). He has some pretty sick taste in indie entrance themes. And, of course, he is considered one of the best technical wrestlers in the world—maybe of all time, and certainly in this generation.

To me, though, he is (simply, encompassingly) my favorite wrestler, and upon watching that BOLA match back it isn’t necessarily because I was wowed by the smoothness of his technique (though I was) or impressed by his underrated speed (though I was) or even in awe of his flexibility (though I definitely was—and here I shout out Adam Cole for helping make Zack’s first in-ring impression such a memorable one). No; it was because, for the very first time, I realized professional wrestling wasn’t cut and dry, contained within the box I had tried to place it in.

Read what I described my younger self’s conception of prowres to be…or, if you prefer, think back to the height of PG era WWE. To my mind, wrestling was supposed to almost overwhelm, saturate the senses. Wrestling was bright, flashy, melodramatic, violent—loud.

The footage I watched that day was loud, too; even through the shitty speakers and video quality, it was clear that the Reseda faithful knew how to have a good fucking time. But whenever Zack was in the ring, it was quiet—sometimes literally, but I more mean in movement, in intent. He convinced me from the first lock up that he was absolutely focused on how he could twist his body and how he could turn his opponent’s, that he aware of and could manipulate every single joint and muscle and ligament offered to him. He convinced me that it was, at that moment, all he cared about. It was still violence, of course; all his graceful movements were in service of hurting another. But it was an elegant violence, a quiet violence.

Pro wrestling, the profession of machismo and posturing, could be quiet. Who knew? Before I saw Zack wrestle, I didn’t, and nor did I ever consider the logical question to ask after: if it could be quiet—the complete opposite of what I thought it was—what else was it? What else might it become?

Beautiful, maybe?

I didn’t know then and I don’t know now. Whether wrestling is art is a discussion I leave to people with far more time and far more knowledge of aesthetics than I do. What I do know is this: I not only put it in the wrong box, I was wrong to put it in a box. Professional wrestling is no dead thing, no solved problem—it was, and is, alive, and at its best exists as a creative medium with so many possibilities. Sure, we all have our preferences, and prowres has space for loudness, almost deafening; but it has space for the quiet as well.

~~~~

It would be one thing if ZSJ was a flash in the pan, someone who rose in the business just far enough to get a handful of PWG bookings before fizzling out. If that were the case, I suppose I could expound on the point about prowres being ephemeral, say something that would amount to “the world may have moved on from him, but I’ll never forget how he opened my eyes all those years ago”. But that would be both extremely disingenuous and, to be honest, make a worse narrative. That one match made me understand wrestling more; following Zack’s career afterwards made me love it.

A not insignificant part to this is the fact I hitched my cart to a damn good horse—if Zack was good in 2014, he got even better as the years went by. While he was always a joy to see work, once he improved at selling in particular (which I never thought he was horrible at, mind, but watching early tapes back you can tell the difference), his matches went from baseline good to great; who doesn’t enjoy watching ZSJ crumple and ragdoll around the ring these days? Yet another big reason I am genuinely grateful for his wrestling is far beyond him: ZSJ was my passport to the rest of the wrestling world. Through him, I discovered so many promotions, so many other amazing wrestlers. There was PWG, of course—tying Mike Bailey into knots in the finals of a BOLA, making Chris Hero’s finger bleed, going to war with Roderick Strong over the belt. There was him countering Will Ospreay’s top rope move into a triangle choke that one Wrestlemania weekend. It was him who put me on to European wrestling, with WxW and RevPro and everyone else. His fight with Negro Casas was the first time I’d seen a mat-based lucha match. And, of course, without him I wouldn’t have started watching New Japan, and without New Japan I would’ve never seen any of the amazing people that make up the puro and/or joshi scene.

I always, always come back to Zack himself, though, it’s true. And maybe, some might suggest, it’s at least partly out of a mix of nostalgia and novelty—he was the first wrestler I paid attention to that looked different and wrestled different from what I considered the norm. When I’m put in a hyperfocused trance by the quiet of his matches, past and present, perhaps it’s just my subconscious, somehow, paying respect to how he made that young teen feel.

My answer to that is…well, maybe a little. But ZSJ doesn’t coast by on that alone—he is continually improving, continually striving to improve, and I couldn’t be happier that he’s getting his due. And, like with professional wrestling itself, I find happiness in that match from 2014 (almost a decade ago, now!) not only out of a sense of nostalgia, or even its own sake, but because it’s proof of what Zack Sabre Jr. was and has now become.

~~~~

A trio of ZSJ-related anecdotes to round things off:

1.) When I was in late high school, I did a school project on professional wrestling. The local guy I interviewed was honestly pretty gracious, but something he said nagged at me. “Pro wrestling,” he tried to explain to me, even before I said anything about what I watched, “isn’t just like WWE.” I know, I wanted to reply. My favorite wrestler is Zack Sabre Jr. I watch mostly American indies. Why are you assuming that I don’t know that?—but it would have come across indignant, and so I held my tongue.

2.) A few months later, I wrote a post on Facebook on why I liked pro wrestling, inspired by my discovery of Barthes’ essay on it in his Mythologies. My old classmate, the one who gatekept me when we were both eight, saw it—and he not only liked it, not only commented positively on it, but even DMed me. “Who’s your favorite wrestler?” he asked me. “Zack Sabre Jr.,” I said. He then proceeded to approve, saying that he was great in the Cruiserweight Classic; he was then surprised when I said I’d been following his career for a while even before that.

3.) When my older sister and I were in the women’s section of the Tokyo Dome during Wrestle Kingdom 14 Night 1, we ended up sitting next to and chatting with an Australian lady who got into NJPW because of her boyfriend (they both really liked Ospreay). When ZSJ came down to the ring, I heard her say encouragingly to me “that’s your Zack”. I’m not sure if I’d ever say he’s mine, but that was the night, maybe even the moment, that the very beginnings of this essay were born: when I realized how much he’d influenced at least this part of my life. Suddenly, I wanted nothing more than to jump down fifteen rows of seats and shake his hand, tell him even a little what his performances meant to me.

But that was not the time for that; three years later I still haven’t found the time for it, living where I do. Instead, I ended up, and end up, just sitting in my chair, screaming wordlessly at the top of my lungs, and watching him wrestle.

#mel's writing tag #zack sabre jr #man if anyone reads this whole super self-indulgent thing...thanks!#and even if not...#thanks to my mutuals who've made tumblr a safe place to post this

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beepborpdoodledorp · 1 year

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The ritual is complete. Now cast judgement upon me.

Also read below for some explanations-turned-culinary-discussion idk

- So in general I tend to flip-flop between being open to trying new dishes and flavors and having the palate of a 7-year-old. There are definitely some foods out there that I know I don’t like and won’t eat but depending on my mood I’m interested in trying new things, hence the entire ‘if I’m feeling adventurous’ tier. Maybe I will, maybe I won’t, kinda just depends.

- As can probably be inferred from the top tier, my two favorite dessert flavors are chocolate and coffee. Espresso is in the ‘pretty aight’ tier because the lack of cream and sweetness could probably throw me off a bit and Dark Cacao is lower for the same reason. Mint Choco is in the ‘feeling adventurous’ tier because I usually don’t like mint but have had desserts that incorporate a nice minty kick to them without being overwhelming. Also I’m one of the few people on planet Earth that actually likes mint chip ice cream.

- I’m neutral to positive on most fruits, aside from a lot of tropical fruits, which I happen to really love (pineapple and mango are my two favorite fruits and yes, I am fully aware I’m a freak). That being said, I’m kinda iffy on whether or not I’d like them baked into a cookie. I like things like blueberry muffins but on a textural level that’s hardly the same, so I don’t really know. Hence why most of the fruit-based Cookies are in either the ‘pretty aight’ or ‘feeling adventurous’ tier. Strawberry Crepe’s in the top tier simply because of the inclusion of cream and waffles because they’re, y’know...a crepe-based cookie.

- Flavor explanations for the first tier: For those who don’t know, it’s been stated that Wizard has ice cream in his dough and his hair and scarf are probably ice cream. I like ice cream. I like cookies. That’s about it. The rest of the Cookies (and donut) are pretty self-explanatory, they’re just flavors or desserts I really like.

- Flavor explanations for the second tier: I’m *fairly* certain that Muscle’s mask and armor are supposed to be chocolate syrup, so I put him in the tier with the notion of him being a chocolatey cookie. Devil is based on soda, and I like soda - that’s about all there is there. As for Kumiho and Cream Unicorn, the former is explicitly stated to be marshmallow based and as for the latter I’m pretty sure they’re based on those weird marshmallow unicorn horn things? I forgot the official name, but hey, marshmallows are cool. Once again, the rest is pretty self-explanatory. Also I know Vampire and Sparkling are coded as being based on alcoholic beverages but it’s never been admitted to because the devs are cowards so they’re just being treated as being based on juice and hey I like juice so why not up there

- Flavor explanations for the third tier: I’m sorry but is there genuinely a fortune cookie out there that doesn’t taste like a slightly sweetened piece of cardboard? Have I just gotten all the worst ones throughout my lifetime?

- Flavor explanations for the fourth tier: Knight seems to be based on white chocolate (I don’t really like white chocolate but eh I’ll eat it), Alchemist is widely known to be based on grapes and considering Princess is of Hollyberrian descent I’m certainly operating with the belief she has a berry-based dough. She’s lower than the rest of the berry-based just because I don’t know what type of berry she’s based on, considering her name doesn’t exactly reveal a whole lot. Also, literally all of the flower-based Cookies are in this tier, and while making this I searched up ‘is <x flower> edible’ on Google for each one of them. Turns out, they are, at least in small doses. Google’s now probably convinced I’m planning on undertaking a flower-devouring rampage soon, but oh well.

- Flavor explanations for the fifth tier: I know I probably look weird putting Gingerbrave so low on the list but the truth is that I...just don’t like plain gingerbread cookies lmao. Also I don’t like gumballs, hence why both Gumball and Candy Diver are on this tier. I dunno much about beets, don’t really care to find out. Don’t like licorice, that’s why both Licorice and Twizzly Gummy are here. Royal Margarine has to have a shitton of that stuff in his dough for it to be his namesake, and while I do like buttery desserts I definitely don’t like it being the dominant flavor. Everything else is pretty self-explanatory - either savory foods or condiments that don’t really belong in your everyday gingerbread cookie or something just outright inedible.

- Flavor explanations for the sixth tier: Out of all the Cookies in CRK these guys are the only ones who I legitimately don’t know what they would taste like. Angel might be based on angel food cake? Maybe? Which if that were the case I’d probably move them up to the second tier, but I can’t remember it ever being stated or even inferred so they’re just going down here. Milky Way’s probably based on something really obvious and I’m just stupid for thinking she has a mystery flavor but I’m putting her down here because I can’t think of anything she’d be based off of (except star jellies? an in-universe consumable? maybe?).

- Flavor explanations for the seventh tier: It’s...what it says. They’re poisonous. Berries from holly won’t kill you as far as I know, unless you take a pretty big quantity of them - pretty sure they just cause nausea in small doses - but in the other case, I mean...Poison Mushroom. Their name is Poison Mushroom. Also I probably should’ve just made an ‘inedible’ tier list and put some of the guys from the sixth tier like Cotton in there but idk man I don’t want to research if cotton balls can actually kill you if you eat them

- Flavor explanations for the eighth tier: it’s what it says on the tin

#crk #cookie run #cookie run kingdom #crk tier list #cookie run tier list

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