#we don't often scrap things entirely but that one's definitely A Lot

[ghostflowerhotpotch]

Ghosftflower: The Artbook Cut

Okay guys, sorry for not doing much lately, holidays aside my laptop died so I am using something else in the meantime, so I had been a tad busy lately.

That being said, the Art Book arrived today! There wasn't a lot of ghostflower sadly, but I wanted to bring something regardless, so let's dig in!

Honestly while I don't consider myself an expert on these types of book, I own a few, and this one is...strange to say the least.

The formatting is off in a few parts, some things that don't make sense with what we are told in the movies, sections of the art book that assume we saw something on the movie that we didn't- I may do a post about it because looking at this book somehow gave me more questions than answers.

But that's a story for another post, let's go!

(Sorry for the quality of the pics, my phone isn't the best and I am not a good photographer myself.)

This one is right at the end, as part of the decoration between the walls of the book and the pages itself; it shows the entire city, but I focused on them for obvious reasons.

Also because the ending shot of this particular scene is one of my favourites in all the movie and seeing it in it's concert art form means a lot to me.

These two were in between pages at the beginning, the text talks more about the general process on the movie than them, so not a lot we can say.

Still lovely, I honestly wish we had more of Gwen and Miles swinging across New York, there is something beautiful and enchanting not only in them moving around in a way only a spider-hero can do, but also almost like a dance between these two.

Not so much ghostfloweer, but I still liked this pic of them together in Hobie's world.

The book acts as if we were suppose to see this world so one of those crazy things about this art book is seeing the stuff that was in the movie before it was cut.

Honestly the making-of this movie would either be insane or extremely edited because this is nuts.

Oh ho ho, we are getting to the MEAT.

Okay, I don't read Scripts very often, but the times I had has been interesting, specially since a lot of times it can reveal some small gags that either got cut on the movie, or that things that were in plain sight that you didn't notice. DEFINITELY will be reading the Script for this movie once I get my hands on it.

In this pic, it shows a deleted joke, either this was going to be in the cut of the movie when the book was in development, or it was left there but was already planned on being scrapped.

What I like about this deleted dialogue is that it shows, once again, that Gwen isn't always at the top of her game. As cool as she can be, she is still a teen who hasn't figured everything out.

I honestly find her more endearing trying to stick the landing and failing that just being cool and collected all the time.

Sorry for the long box of text, wasn't sure where to cut. There are two parts in this I want to highlight.

"They're both trying to impress each other,"

I found this extremely cute because while Miles trying to keep up with her and impress her is obvious (Just like everything else with Miles, as a said, the boy wears his heart in his sleeve and we love him for it,) but to be honest I didn't think Gwen was trying to do the same.

Now I imagine Gwen looking around this New York and trying to see what she could do to impress Miles- I love these earnest dorks.

The awkward gazelle part is also pretty much present in the movie; however I do like the comparison on how Miles himself knows now more than ever what he is capable of, which really shows in the rest on the movie, including in the train chase scene.

(Not really Ghostflower, but I LOVE how Miles never doubt on himself despite what he heard, need to talk about that eventually.)

More art of this beautiful scene, which was sparkled around these notes.

There is not much I want to analyze here as much as to, emphasize it?

Analyzing this movie so much and so often has really gotten to appreciate it to a whole new level, even if during said process I was able to see more of the mistakes and issues underneath.

This scene is really this and more, and what is astonishing is that is not that they are capturing the essence of the scene in some words, but rather come with the concept and create said scene, which is a lot more complicated.

And yet they pulled it off beautifully.

I really liked to highlight this part because 1) I and everyone else may need to start paying close attention to lighting because wow that detail is extremely cool, and 2) It really highlights a whole new layer to this scene.

They are getting close, both physically and emotionally, yet all the things they hide, how they hide themselves in a way, gets in the way of what they truly want. Is amazing because is a struggle that in the details is very much Spiderman, but below it is so human. Which honestly, part of the reason Spiderman as a whole as become so beloved over the years.

(Side note: Stan Lee decided to make Peter Parker in a era where superheroes were adults who basically could do anything, so coming with a teen who would also had teen issues was something that got people calling Stan nuts. Crazy how things how it worked out I'm right?)

Different stages development of this scene because of course I needed to include this, even if i can't say much of it really.

Not much to say here, except that this brief goes beautifully with the next excerpt of the book that I enjoyed.

"At that moment, anything is possible for the two of them." Isn't all of this phrased so beautifully?

While not telling us anything new, I want to relish in this little bits that just makes the scene feel so much whole as you read this.

How both Gwen and Miles don't want this to end, to keep the warmth between them going, to just linger because neither of them want to let the other one go. Frozen in place unable to move forwards for thall the unsaid things, yet refusing to move back.

They are lovely.

And that's all I have for them sadly! This book was extremely odd, it was very much lacking a lot of Miles and Gwen (Which kind of tracks, art books go mostly about design and their design's haven't change much,) but the fact that most of this information was at the end, alongside other things, makes me curious about what the heck went down while making this.

Or other stuff because is not the first time we see the remnants of the other versions of this movie peaking by.

[extraneousdominomask]

What I did on my summer vacation

As you've no doubt gathered by now, for the last two years I've been playing various old games with my wife. I often used to post about that adventure here, and then I kinda stopped. I feel bad about that, especially when it comes to the two excellent, free indie games I had fully intended to spotlight. So here's a quick rundown!

Celeste, OJONMRAG, Double Cross

Three great indies I got in the same bundle. Celeste needs no introduction, and I've spoken about it before. I don't know if I ever mentioned Oh Jeez Oh No My Rabbits Are Gone!!!, but it's a fun puzzle game with cute visuals and surprisingly catchy music. And speaking of those two things, Double Cross is a hidden gem of a game. We really enjoyed its eclectic cast, and still sometimes quote the zany catgirl in particular. ("All cats are tyrants, Zahra.")

Manic Miners

Lego Rock Raiders was a toy line in the 1990s, which earned its own video game tie-in. I remember it fondly... as did one absolute hero, who remastered the dang thing as a non-profit passion project. Manic Miners is available via Itch for free - because it's a fan game! He had to ask very nicely to do this at all! - and it completely revitalizes what was an engaging but flawed fuzzy memory from my childhood. As well as adding several quality of life improvements to make the game flow better, cut content is restored and entirely new features are added in, such as a character creator. If you want an accessible game that can provide the sweet, sweet satisfaction of collecting every scrap of resources from a initially messy environment, I highly recommend this.

inFamous 2: Festival of Blood

An important thing to know about me is that I hate vampires. I don't like 'em and I don't like looking at 'em, so I usually avoid and and all vampiric media, even if they're getting slaughtered. For that reason, despite loving inFamous 2, I never checked out its DLC side-adventure Festival of Blood... until now. (Making a new purchase on the PS3 digital store was hard, but not impossible. Thanks for complaining every time they try to shut it down, everybody!) It's a short experience, but a lot of fun, thanks to the wise decision to let Zeke narrate the whole bullshit stor- I mean, thrilling tale of true heroism. I found Bloody Mary to be an entertainingly nasty villain, despite my biases.

Psychonauts 2

Psychonauts is one of the video games ever, no question. Expectations were lofty for its much-delayed sequel. If anything, I think I prefer this one! The core (the gameplay, visuals, hilarious writing, and Peter McConnell's consistently excellent music) all remain unchanged, with new mechanics, some quality of life improvements, and an impressive voice cast all added on top. Jack Black and Elijah Wood are both in this game, and they're both great!

Pokémon White

this one kinda sucked ngl

Halo: Combat Evolved

Mostly, I'm showing my wife a game and not the other way around. There was one major franchise that I had almost entirely missed, however - aside from a few free-form skirmishes at parties - that she fondly remembers. This summer, we both experienced the first Halo together, and in short: yeah, I can see why this changed the course of the industry singlehandedly. It still feels great to play, even with my wife assuring me that the sequel is a big improvement from these already solid bones. I frankly don't relish slaughtering the fleeing, crying Grunts, since we as a society have moved on considerably when it comes to the rights of funny little guys. But it feels great to shoot aleins and Cortana is my friend. Exactly as advertised.

Jak II: Renegade

this one definitely sucked, holy shit. I remember this being a good game. I remembered incorrectly.

Shantae (2002)

I've played two of the more recent Shantae games, and I found them charming. But how does the original hold up? Pretty well, honestly! It's far from perfect - the day and night cycle really adds nothing beyond referencing Castlevania - but the music and visuals are truly impressive for the original GameBoy. I'm gonna be thinking about Shantae's cute little 8-bit dances for a while.

Undertale Yellow

Like anyone who listens to a lot of Toby Fox's music over YouTube, I've seen my fair share of dubious OCs and "epic fights" floating at the corner of my vision. With that in mind, I went into UY with managed expectations, despite the positive buzz. Could a fangame really match the unique energy and charm of one of the greatest independent games of our generation?

Uh... yeah! I'm as surprised as anyone else, but everything from the music to the gameplay to the writing was really bang-on. It's not a flawless experience - the El Bailador fight needed reworking, it was WAY harder than other, more impactful fights - but the eight years of passion very much shine through. If you're a fan of UT/DR and need something to tide you over as we all wait for Chapters 3+, I fully recommend this. It's free!!!!

Spyro the Dragon (1998)

Finished this just yesterday! I got the remaster when it came out, but - no offense - nothing beats the blocky low-poly charm of the original. This was my first time replaying it in several years, and for the first time, it felt small. Levels I remember struggling with posed no challenge any more. But I think that only speaks to how many times I replayed this lovely little adventure. Also, did you know that of the, like, four voice actors in this game, one of them is Clancy goddamn Brown? He plays like 30 of these polygonal dragons!

...I would normally try to end a post this long on a more climactic note, but, uh... yeah.

[lighthouseborn]

⭐️⭐️ i changed my mind i don’t wanna switch blogs but this one is for henrina :D

Every ⭐️ exchanges for a headcanon (or we-haven't-plotted-yet theory / plot bunny) about our characters' (potential) dynamic.

This is so hard I feel like I have simply sprinted to the dms every time I have a thought s;dkfjg;ldkfjg - if I repeat something I've said before it's because I forgot I said it

They are such a book couple to me actually it's unreal. I think they probably just sort of do their own thing a lot of the time, read their own books in silence at the same time, but like while sitting near to each other or touching or one person laying on the other kind of thing. Every now and then -if they come across something the other will find interesting they might trade books for a paragraph, or just read the part of it out loud if they in a more let's-argue-with-this-writer kind of mood. And they also are book people in a way that would stress a 'books must be pristine' person the hell out because I'm 100% sure they both write in the margins and leave notes and stuffed inside the books (which is bad for the binding btw, even bookmarks can mess with books sometimes) and they both always have done that almost just in a thinking-aloud fashion but now when they write inside the books it's almost always to each other. Even if it's not directly addressed it's the kind of thing where they write it thinking about the other person. So sometimes they open a book and get a surprise little conversation-of-sorts from the other. Of the two of them, Henry's the more likely to leave in little scraps of other things that, at first glance, don't seem to relate to the book at all, as well as separate little notes that really don't have anything to do with the text but are just notes to her. Sometimes sketches, too. Carina's left entire essays either disproving or further expanding on certain topics. They've both wandered out of their previous genre-staples through all of this, reading things they might never have picked up otherwise.

I don't think she's much of a fighter (at least not in a wants-to-study-the-sword kind of way) but I do think there's been a little bit of teaching, on this front. Because she's got the spirit for it and is not afraid to throw down to defend herself, you know? So I doubt it's anything quite as swashbuckling as a dancing sword but Henry's definitely taught her a thing or two to give someone who might try to mess with her a really hard time of it. A nice solid punch, to go with that slap. Probably she never has to use it because she's just never really alone in those kinds of situations he is always right there but. It's nice to know she can, if there's ever a call for it. I'm very certain she also kicks really hard, which probably has nothing to do with Henry and everything to do with growing up in a children's home, but this is also nice to know (and maybe something he found out the hard way, while being an ass.)

I feel like this is one we've said something about but I think about him thinking about her every time he comes across hair ribbons and good hair pins, and bringing her new ones when she's lost one or just because. They're all, always, at risk of disappearing, whether she loses them for mundane reasons or in the midst of adventuring (so many hair pins lost and broken in locks, may they rest in pieces) but this isn't really a problem? Like even though he gave them to her it's not like 'oh you lost the one I got you?' it's just. The whole part where she uses them and they often get lost is very endearing to him and what makes him think to pick them up to begin with. Her ribbons get sacrificed as book marks and as charting tools and the pins go to locks and even -sparingly- as defensive tools and Henry thinks it's the best. And the next time he sees a pretty ribbon or a good sturdy pin, he's bringing it home.

[memurfevur-archive]

I can tell you, as a non Jewish person, some of the hurtful things you did just from looking at it

-You put their hemospectrum in pyramid

-Their "figure head government'

-Pure white bloods at the top of the food chain

-Mutants are sent to "the farm" and then recycled into goods and resources

-They live.. Under bridges?

- The Homestuck hemospectrum is in a line, but there is still a pyramid scheme going with Fuchsias being on top and Reds and Browns and Yellows on bottom. While I will take this into consideration I would like to ask why the normal Hemospectrum is acceptable but reshaping it into a pyramid shape is not? I might be reading this bullet point wrong, and there's likely a big chance I am (it happens often with me) so if there is a point I am missing here please feel free to let me know, because if it's a hierarchy thing I don't think it really matters what shape it is when it tells the same information?? I really feel like I'm missing something here, I'm so sorry.

-I can understand the figure head government thing. In the context of the story where Trolls are the oppressors this had made sense to me, but yeeah I'll definitely rework that.

-To give clarification on my end: Whitebloods to me do not represent white people, but rather in the context of the worldbuild: the light spectrum, and in context of trolls on my blog (matild): white blood cells. Just.. literally the color white. The Whiteblood monarchy is a hindsight detail, and one I did not think through very well through the lens of others who may not be as familiar with my headcanons or lore, or may have their own associations that are much broader than my own. It does sound like a white-supremacy symbolism when paired with the other stuff, so yeah I'll add that to the list to rework.

-Ya know... I had this entire thing typed out about how I'm confused about this point when even in fanon Mutants are treated poorly and killed but um... remembering this is about antisemitism stuff, it just occurred to me that it might've been seen as like.. a holocaust camp thing... and... wow yikes holy shit yeah no. Good eye there, thank you.

-The race's homes were called Bridges, much like Trolls call their homes Hives, despite neither actually being a bridge or a beehive. It was a word play type of thing, especially since we had been thinking of underground tunnels and canyon walks and stuff. But that will be scrapped when we revamp things about the planet and how organisms have adapted there.

I do genuinely appreciate you taking your time to send me this ask to point out some of the wrongs I have made for the worldbuild. I will take all of this into account and talk with my project partner on this. If there was something I missed with these points, feel free to bop me with a newspaper and tell me more about it. I misunderstand things A LOT, some of my friends can attest to that lol. It means a lot that you guys are willing to help me out here. I do genuinely feel bad about hurting people and not even realizing that these themes were in the project the whole time. It was definitely not something we had considered at the time of conception, because simply we did not intend for any of these messages to pop up. Additionally this was a project that was put on hiatus for years, and then the opportunity came up for me to talk about it and it just went Very Down Hill. It's a big yikes, and I can't thank yall enough.

[chocolatepot]

chocopot, first of all: i followed you on tumblr bc I found your Howl's Moving Castle fics so incredibly charming. <3 Thank you for writing those.

I've been in fandom long enough that I've seen major fan wanks come and go, enough that i've gone from "oh no, fan wank! can't we all just get along?" to "omg this has all happened before why can't you fools see" to just leaving to go outside and smoke a cigarette til it's over, a la that meme of ben affleck.

I enjoyed the OFMD show, of course. I found it so charming, and it was such a wish fulfillment for me personally to have the perfect delicious dynamics that fandom eats like a full course meal, with the additional surprise of the canon supporting those pairings. I also appreciated the canon approaching this with a light touch, enough to leave room for fandom and also eschewing the usual ham-handed After School Special style way queer rep often is.

(I am of course not dismissing those representation efforts in any way, but those storylines don't always have the forward momentum that leads to the creation of fanworks. Sometimes the non-canon character dynamics lead to MORE fanworks because of more ambiguity to play with, funny enough)

I've been living vicariously through ofmd fanwank from you (thanks for being out there in the field, haha). So much of the Discourse with a capital D just seems so wild to me. The best way I can think to describe it is, instead of the "YesAnd" of most fandoms that feed off each other's energy, it's instead more of a "NoBut."

I was wondering if you think there's something different about this particular flavor of wank and what factors you think contribute to it.

Thanks for reading my long ask, and all the best!

Thank you! I'm glad you liked them. I gave up on DoMAYstic after like a week but I think I wrote some cute fluff during that week.

I started writing a response to this ages ago, but I think I need to scrap it and start over because I was getting too into the weeds.

On one level, I don't find the fandom that wanky at all. The amount of fic, art, gifsets, and vids created for OFMD after just one season is incredible, and while it's slowed down since last summer, it's still pretty intense. I see loads and loads of "Yes And" posts like "imagine ed and stede going to bed on the revenge after they reunite. imagine stede wrapping ed in one of his nightshirts" on Tumblr, and people posting their fic updates and other people reblogging and liking them. There is also discussion of representation in the show and how it's interpreted in fandom, and sometimes the latter is more of a "No But," but it's all in earnest and I think it's productive even when I disagree with people and quietly scroll past.

Now, Twitter? Twitter is an entirely different beast. Twitter as a website is designed to stimulate wank, making people express stupidly brash opinions for attention and then making other people feel the need to amplify that or dunk on it. Every time I spend a day doing Twitter on my fannish account, it's so draining and makes me feel like there's no hope for the fandom because it does the same thing. From my perspective it looks like there's a lot of clout chasing, people becoming semi-BNFs and attacking each other and getting hoist by their own petard when their tactics get used against them.

It's a microcosm, though. Almost none of it seems to escape the group of OFMD fans on Twitter who seem to really care about the drama, so I just kind of ignore it, or enjoy hearing about it secondhand.

The fandom is mostly a "Yes And" place. Sometimes in a good way (feverishly making excellent content), sometimes in a bad way (passing around flawed fanon as Definitely True). The AO3 category is bursting with creativity, thousands of canon and setting AUs, fusions, new ways to have the reunion happen, takes on backstory, and more. There's an incredible amount of fanart that does the same things. The fact that the slash juggernaut is also the main canon ship seems to have produced a fandom with a high degree of unity. While there's lots of discourse over Izzy stans, judging by AO3 that's actually a pretty small faction of the fandom as a whole.

[anonil88]

Dead To Me, S3 thoughts

🍸Spoilers ahead🍸

I was only going to watch one episode and then as soon as we got Judy diagnosis I decided to binge watch it in one sitting. I appreciate being made aware of the bad early so I can prep or speed through it. Am I sad? Yes. Am I glad I got to see my fave bestie wives? Also yes.

Season 3 feels detached from the other two and very clunky, but the reasons why make it a little more bareable. There are parts that could have been dropped and or cleaned up way better on that many if can agree. The policies storylines were just so all over and i didn't really care about them as much as i did previously. Before it felt very tangled into the story as a mystery comedy who dun it, but this one just was like oh wait we have these cops that need to be here too. The focus this season was on Jen and Judy as it should be, but not having the characters able to leave their home without saying why is a bit in your face. Theres a lot of short moments that mean so much stitched together but, nothing that connects any of that to their crimes and the police. Random characters have to make cameos and they can't be done inside a closed space so they are outside for 2 minutes and then we never see them again. Except Jen's co realtor whom I love.

But knowing the reasons it does feel this way makes me go "I'm happy we at least got a final season". It was filmed in the middle of the height of the pandemic when things were shut down but productions were starting to get an idea of how to keep going. Christina was diagnosed with MS a short while into the start of filming and production took a break so she could get some help and everyone figure out the next moce. Also, let's not forget the cancer storyline is heavy as shit and she is a literal cancer survivor. She gave fans what she could instead of saying let's just scrap the show with 2 seasons. None of the gripes about season 3 have anything to do with anyone's acting at all. Everyone did great.

I just do wish at moments that the writing of certain elements had been better and tied loose threads together a bit better. I'm really sad that my fav is......sigh but I can't be livid. People unfortunately get cancer and some people die. Often the good ones and its heartbreaking. It is reality and it sucks and we always wish there had been more time.

That being said i am definitely looking forward to the fix it fanfics because I wish that this is not the reality a literal angel got in a show. I get this is a more realistic ending but I would like happiness for everyone. Happiness for Judy and a chance to be a mom for a 3rd time. They could have spun it to be like heck lots of people downgrade from stage 4 to stage 3 and live quite a few more years if not a long ass time. Them on their trip and the doctor saying it's a miracle, the police throwing out Jen and Judy's files, and then them getting to raise a sweet baby, named in some way after a living angel. In a beautiful home with her moms, brothers, and dad. Maybe end with them all watching one of "Boop's" choral performances, even if it would have been very very cheesy. I think that would have been nice to see.

But, the finale was the best written episode of the entire last season. It felt like season 1 again, even if you don't like the outcome. The comedy, the girls, and their time together.

[tesria]

I also love doing this, and IKEA is the easiest flat pack furniture of a few different kinds I've done. Tips I find help with flat pack building: (this got longer than planned, sorry about that)

Before you start building, separate all the parts into piles. Only put pieces together if they're truly identical, sides of drawers for example might look the same but have holes drilled in different places. IKEA is better than other brands at not making things 99% identical and difficult to see the difference, but it can happen. Other brands can be worse for this.

Check each item against the instructions and count to be sure you have everything.

Next the screws and dowels etc. Definitely shut any pets or small kids out at this stage, where possible. If you have a tray, bowls, ramekins, or whatever, use them here. Empty all the little bags into separate piles.

Again count and check against the instructions. Counting and checking are vital steps, both so you're not frustratingly unable to continue when you've already halfway built a wardrobe because you're missing the screws for the door or one of the sides, and to familiarise yourself with everything to make it easy to find and grab. (IKEA in particular often gives 1 or 2 extra dowels or screws, this is fine, just as long as you have the minimum of each type! Don't panic about having a couple of extras!)

If you think you'll have trouble identifying either similar furniture pieces, or screws or whatever during the build, don't be afraid to get some scrap paper and label pieces or piles that look similar with their ID number/letter from the instructions before you start. This might seem like extra work, but if you know you get confused between sizes of screw when you're holding panels in place, two minutes prep now will save you 20 minutes of pulling apart and rebuilding later.

Look through the instructions before you start and try to see how it all goes together. You're not trying to learn how to do it blindfolded here, just get a feel for what you're about to do. Understanding helps confidence in my experience.

Make sure you have the tools you need, with IKEA they'll usually give you any hex keys you need, but you might need a screwdriver (or two, or interchangable heads) or a hammer.

When you start building, don't be afraid to take it slow, double check fixings are the right way around, and check each step as you finish it against the instructions and any in progress pictures or diagrams. Oh, and never try to make a piece fit that doesn't seem to work well without double and triple checking it's the right way around or that you didn't already use the piece you needed in the wrong place. It can happen to the best of us. If you're very sure it's just not well made (very unlikely with IKEA, but something from Wayfair might have this issue) do the best you can, ask for help from someone who might know, or if it's really bad don't be afraid to return it as a faulty item. (IKEA has a helpline you can call for advice too.)

None of this is secret skill or magic, but I suspect I find flat pack easy because the first few times I built stuff it was with other people who found it easy and saw how they did it and absorbed their relaxed confidence. When we try to learn entirely from scratch or from other people who find it hard, sometimes we're just not aware of something that seems obvious once we do know it. That's not our fault! Things are only obvious based on experience and understanding.

Also, things get a lot harder when we expect them to be hard and lack confidence, so this post is also permission to go at your own pace, to check your work, and let yourself get more comfortable with it.

Lastly, even when you're good at it, building with someone else requires a lot of patience and good communication. If you build with someone else and find it a stressful nightmare, it might be that your frustrations and anxiety are creating a feedback loop. Sometimes you need a second person, but in my experience most things can be done with one. I did need a second pair of hands to help hold things in place with a large wardrobe, but I've made big sets of drawers and sideboards by myself with no issue. Two people can make it faster, but only if you're not arguing constantly. Having one person directing and one following can help, or working on different parts (eg one making drawers, one building the frame), but again, both people need patience and good communication.

Seeing people say it's easy when you don't think it is can be a reassurance to try again, or sometimes be more off-putting because you have no idea how it's so easy for them and you feel worse. I hope this helps some of the people who see an IKEA box and get a sense of panic or dread, because it doesn't have to be terrible! It can even be relaxing, I promise, just don't pressure yourself and give yourself at least as much time to do it as the instructions suggest (many have a time estimate!).

rip to you guys but i love assembling ikea furniture its so fun its like legos

[squarebill]

so, how did you and your Ford get together?

IT'S A LONG STORY WITH MANY TWISTS AND TURNS. I'LL TRY TO SUMMARIZE. FIRST, A LITTLE BACKGROUND: IN ONE OF MY FAVORITE DIMENSIONS - ALSO KNOWN AS MY FORDSY'S DIMENSION, I GOT BANISHED FROM THAT UNIVERSE'S ENTIRE EARTH FOR COMPLETELY UNFAIR REASONS. I PRACTICALLY ELEVATED THE HUMAN RACE DUE TO ALL THE THINGS I SOLD THEM, AND THAT WAS THE THANKS I GOT? TERRIBLE. ANYWAY, IN MY FORDSY'S DIMENSION, A LOT OF THINGS HAPPENED DIFFERENTLY THAN IT DOES IN MOST DIMENSIONS WITH A STANFORD PINES; THOUGH, SOME THINGS ARE ALSO SIMILAR. FORDSY AND STANLEY'S RELATIONSHIP BROKE APART IN THEIR YOUNG ADULTHOOD, BUT IT WASN'T DUE TO A SABOTAGED SCIENCE PROJECT. STANLEY BECOMES A WANTED CRIMINAL AND CON ARTIST BUT ONLY AFTER HE DESERTED IN THE WAR BETWEEN THE BRITISH EMPIRE AND CHINA. FORDSY BECOMES A SCIENTIST, BUT... SEE, HE DOES END UP BREAKING MY BANISHMENT SPELL AND SUMMONING ME VIA ONE OF MY "BUSINESS CARDS"! I KNEW RIGHT AWAY I WAS DEALING WITH A GENIUS. IT WAS PERFECT! GENIUSES LOVE FANCY TECH AND MAGICAL DOODADS. YOU CAN HAWK SO MUCH JUNK TO THEM, IT'S INSANE. THEY EVEN LIKE SCRAP METAL! BUT I HAD NO INTEREST IN BUILDING A PORTAL TO THE NIGHTMARE REALM - I DON'T LIKE OTHER BILLS MUSCLING IN ON AREAS I CONSIDER "MY TURF." PLUS HAVING A BASE OF OPERATIONS IN THE RETAIL DIMENSION COMES WITH PERKS. SURE, THERE ARE A FEW "RULES" THAT I HAVE TO "FOLLOW" BUT I FEEL LIKE I HAVE A LOT MORE FREE REIGN THAN BILLS THAT ARE REGULATED TO THE NIGHTMARE REALM. SO, FORDSY WAS UP TO A DIFFERENT PROJECT ENTIRELY. FOR A WHILE, I DIDN'T REALLY CARE WHAT HE WAS UP TO AS LONG AS HE KEPT COMING TO ME FOR STUFF AND SELLING HIS VALUABLES - PREVIOUS BIRTHDAY PRESENTS, A SIGNED COPY OF ONE OF HIS FAVORITE BOOKS, HOMEWORK WITH NOTES OF PRAISE WRITTEN IN THE MARGINS BY HIS PROFESSORS - MAN, I LOVE HIM BUT WHAT A NERD! I EVEN GOT HIS LEFT KIDNEY! BUT THERE WAS JUST SOMETHING ABOUT HIM. WHEN I FIRST SHOOK HIS HAND AND DISCOVERED HE HAD SIX FINGERS INSTEAD OF FIVE. HIS WONDER OF ME. HIS ADORATION. HOW DETERMINED HE WAS TO PROVE HIMSELF. I DUNNO. IT ALL CAME TO A HEAD WHEN I GOT CURIOUS AND LOOKED AT WHAT HE WAS BUILDING WITH HIS FRIEND WHO HAD RESERVATIONS ABOUT THE PROJECT. IT WAS A MACHINE SPECIFICALLY DESIGNED TO GENERATE ANOMALIES. FUN STUFF! EXCEPT AT THE RATE HE WAS GOING, THAT MACHINE WAS PROBABLY GOING TO CAUSE HIS DIMENSION TO COLLAPSE LIKE CARDBOARD. IT FELT KIND OF FAMILIAR FOR SOME REASON.

HUH. KIND OF BLACKED OUT A MINUTE THERE. WHERE WAS I? OH, RIGHT. FORDSY ASKED ME FOR ONE LAST PIECE OF EQUIPMENT TO FINISH HIS PROJECT. AND I HAD JUST WHAT HE NEEDED, BUT IT WAS GOING TO COST HIM A LOT. WHAT HE HAD ON OFFER? A PHOTOGRAPH OF HIM AND HIS BROTHER WHEN THEY WERE KIDS. WELL-WORN. CARRIED FOR YEARS NEXT TO ONE OF HIS MOST VITAL AND OFTEN ROMANTICIZED ORGANS: HIS HEART. IT WAS WORTH A FORTUNE. I COULD'VE GOTTEN A RAISE MAYBE WITH THAT KIND OF SALE! MAYBE. IT'S ALWAYS A BIT IFFY WHEN YOU'RE DEALING WITH ELDRITCH AI OVERLORDS IN A CAPITALISTIC HELLSCAPE KNOWN AS RETAIL. SO, YOU KNOW, I ASKED IF WE COULD TALK. JUST TALK. AHAHAHAHA! ABOUT BUSINESS, OF COURSE! DEFINITELY NOT ABOUT... LONELINESS OR FEELINGS OR OR OR... WE TALKED FOR DAYS. LOOK, I TRIED MY BEST TO GET THAT PHOTOGRAPH, BUT IN THE END, FORDSY DECIDED TO KEEP IT AFTER ALL AND SHUT DOWN HIS PROJECT. A GOOD THING, TOO! COULD YOU IMAGINE THE LOSS OF THE CUSTOMER BASE? I HAD NOTHING TO DO WITH THAT DECISION HE MADE. HE MADE IT ON HIS OWN. IT WASN'T MY FAULT! SURE, AFTERWARDS, I MADE SURE TO PUT IN A REQUEST FOR TIME OFF THAT I HADN'T ASKED FOR IN BILLIONS UPON BILLIONS OF YEARS BECAUSE THE BOSSES GET TOUCHY ABOUT PERSONAL STUFF ON COMPANY TIME. BUT THAT WAS FOR UNRELATED REASONS THAT STILL INVOLVED FORDSY. THERE WAS NO CATALYZING EVENT. IT WAS ALL THOSE INTERDIMENSIONAL CHESS GAMES WE PLAYED! I SOLD HIM ONE OF THOSE, TOO! NOW, DO YOU WANNA BUY SOMETHING OR NOT?

[aurore-parle-de-ses-idees]

i am, unfortunately, still thinking about the bad au

[alexanderflowerbird]

Hey again! 6, 15, and 18 for the OC WIP ask game? 😊

Hello hello! Oh god, idk which OC ask game this is referring to cuz I've reblogged so many in the time since you asked this. I am A FOOL. But I'll pick one and make it interesting of course <3-- OH WAIT I THINK I FOUND IT lol.

6.Have any of your OCs had name changes? If so, why? LMAOOOOO Okay, so, Scythaline was originally called Scythilis. I bet you can guess why that shit HAD TO GO and it is still embarrassing and hilarious to me that I did not realize that this name I'd chosen, which I'd been so focused on getting a like... 'Scythe' related name? Sounds very much like a certain STI lmao. Needless to say when I did realize, I had to change it- but I'm happy with the chance, Scythaline's name is dope.

15. Who is your oldest OC in terms of when you created them? Oh man... There's a lot of OCs that I don't use anymore that are utterly ANCIENT, like... made when I was 10 ancient, but the oldest one I still have in use for my work is Alluna-- She's a bad ass, she got more and more bad ass the longer I wrote her because at first she had sort of a helpless damsel who is secretly a wise, gentle lady vibe and more than that she has always had this magical element where she is so terribly poisonous that even touching her will kill a person. It's very cool, and long ago when we were first starting the The Bishop of Black with an almost entirely different cast of characters, we'd begun with her and another character, a Rook who Harrow wrote who was so in love with her he created an antidote for her poison. The war was about to get back on, and she and the Rook had met to discuss terms they knew they'd never agree with each other on, and as a like... last chance to do this sort of thing, he confessed his feelings to her. It was... SO GAY. 10/10- we have similar ships in TBOB but they're spoilery so I will not discuss them lol, but Alluna was one of the main characters in our first time playing AND our second time playing. She was scrapped for the third time and final time because we really wanted some fresh folks to play in this realm with, but I have no regrets cuz now the Queen of White is Setsulin and she's also a bad ass babe.

18.Do any of your ocs have any scars? A couple of them do actually! So, Dreigas has a lot of scars- you wouldn't think so when his whole aesthetic is like 'The Pristine Kingom of White' but in fashion terms, but it's kinda fitting in that way that you get rid of his sari and his long sleeves and you'll find LOADS of scars from before he was medically modified. The magic used to crystalize his bones bleached the hell out of his skin, but it didn't take away all of the damage that had been done from his youth, both after working in mines as a young child and being raised by a mentor that thought a good beating would solidify any lesson for Dreigas. Dreigas wasn't ever a rebellious child, but he wasn't always the right the first time every time person he became as an adult, so he's got lots of scars from when he was young.

Tajorinen has several scars because he's a close contact fighter- being a jaguar folk means he's kinda gotta leap in there and start bitin and scratchin, and that lends itself to getting torn up every now and then. His most prominent scar is a starburst shaped scar on his pectoral where at some point, he was shot clean through by magic that should have killed him. It didn't. For reasons. No spoilers lol. But the scar remains even if the effects of the magic were nullified and he lived through the encounter.

Setsulin has scarification that is cultural, it's on her left hip and down the outside of her thigh and it's not an uncommon thing for scarification to be done where she's from. Erato has a bunch of scars too (Erato is Harrow's character and Setsulin's older sister) but hers are on her face and neck and across her shoulders, so you see those more often than you get to see Setsulin's. She'd definitely show off more skin than she does if she wasn't the Queen of White, but there's an expectation of modesty and fully-dressed-ness to the position that requires her to cover a lot of her skin up and even veil her face. She's gotten around this by being intensely fashionable lol, all of her skin is covered, but the clothes are tight fitting and show off her shape- rather than wearing a classical veil, she tends to wear huge, dramatic hats with fringe or veils attached to the rim. She only allows herself to be caged by tradition because being as rowdy as she wants to be would look back on Cynevor-- it's bad enough as it is that they ran away and eloped when Cynevor was supposed to marry someone else lol.

[emotionallychargedtowel]

Warning, this gets rambly! This topic just connects to a number of things I find interesting and to some personal experiences of mine.

Also I haven't seen the new episode yet! I'm only caught up to episode 9.

I loved @wen-kexing-apologist's work on the original post here. There were a lot of points where I wanted to say, "but--" or "what about--" but I think even if you favor a different interpretation of this relationship, you can't argue with the fact that WKA has lots of evidence to marshal in favor of this argument. In the end, if Ray does have a shred of meaningful feelings for Sand (or anything scrap of something that could become meaningful) or any sincere concern for Sand, it's a very damning commentary on his behavior that WKA's interpretation is so convincing. I like what @porridgefeast added here. I think the central point I took from what she had to say here is that Ray is a bundle of contradictions and ambivalence and almost entirely bereft of self-awareness and that kind of widens out the scope of reasonable interpretations of the things he does because of the uncertainty that comes with that. If I can use a stats metaphor, any data we get from Ray is riddled with measurement error and we have to apply a gigantic confidence interval to any conclusions we draw from it. Personally, I think part of what makes this discussion, and similar ones about Sand and Ray, confusing is that it gets into a gray area about what the meaning of love is. And that's both as profound and as pointlessly semantic as it sounds. Because this gray area is connected to some really important questions but where we stand on them can be really dependent on where we happen to draw boundaries around different words. The main issue I'm thinking of here is exactly the kind of connections between people that we're seeing with Sand and Ray--do we still call it love when the feelings someone has for the other person are shallow, selfish, objectifying, or otherwise associated with the basest, most corrupt parts of human nature? This is actually something I have given a lot of thought to as a survivor of intimate partner violence. Do I call the way my abuser felt about me "love"? It definitely had some attributes we often associate with love, albeit only the worst kind (obsession, possessiveness). It also lacked some of the most central ones (for example, sincerely caring about my feelings and well-being). It seems both deeply true and like an oversimplification to say, "he never really loved me." One way I sometimes try to reconcile this confusion is to look for other words I can use that might clarify things. One extremely nerdy, old-fashioned psychology term I find useful here is "cathexis." From what I understand, bell hooks uses it to good effect in All About Love: New Visions, but while I've read portions of it, I'm not very familiar with that book so I can't summarize what she said about it on the fly. It's kind of embarrassing, actually, because I've owned the book for quite a while and used a passage from it in my wedding! Maybe this is my cue to pick it back up. In the meantime, I'll talk about what this term means and the distinction between cathexis and love using my background knowledge of psychoanalytic theory and related material.

Cathexis was coined by James Strachey, who did a lot of the first translations of Freud into English, came up with that term as an equivalent to one of Freud’s. Strachey tended to make things more esoteric and fancy-sounding than they needed to be, and cathexis is a perfect example. (He also came up with "vicissitudes." A favorite professor of mine used to always make fun of him for that one.) Freud apparently wasn't a fan of "cathexis." But I like it. Something about the sound of it seems appropriate to what it means. And its weirdness means we don't have to say "I'm using this term in a psychoanalytic sense" because nobody uses this term in any other way.

Basically, cathexis is the state of having a sizable emotional investment in someone or something. The verb form is "to cathect." I find it useful because it’s an accurate word for those things that aren’t love in the strict sense but have a related degree of obsession, desire, affiliation, and so on. It has a broader meaning as well (you can cathect with a security blanket, a football team, a religious figure, etc. etc.), but when applied to someone's feelings about a person who is a partner or potential partner, the word captures a lot of the things that come with loving someone without presupposing the selfless, giving, putting someone else before yourself part.

The thing about cathexis is that it can happen on its own, it can be a precursor to love, and it can coexist with love. Some theorists--I think bell hooks might take this tack--think the honeymoon phase of any relationship is always cathexis and actual love only comes later. I think this point is important because cathexis isn't some kind of fake love or un-love or anti-love. It's just a way of thinking and feeling that overlaps with love in some places but not in others--and where it overlaps can depend on the person doing the cathecting and how they think and feel about the person they're cathecting to. It can be a precursor to a real, profound kind of love or it can stagnate, never deepening even if it's very intense.

This time factor is the reason why our interpretations of these kinds of feelings are riddled with hindsight bias. Well, at a certain point it stops even being a bias and becomes just a convention of how we talk about things. When we first get really into a person we might say, “I’m in love with X.,” but when things go badly we can say, “I thought I was in love with X but I really wasn’t.” We might add other labels in retrospect like if I said, "I thought I was in love but I was just infatuated."

Love gets defined by how it turns out. I’m this way about my spouse. I can remember times when I had a crushy or lustful thought about him when we first met and I think, “that was the beginning of me falling in love.” But I had similar thoughts about other people at that time whose names I don’t even remember now. I had a whole other (brief but intense) relationship and a weird casual thing between our first meeting and starting to date each other. I wasn't thinking about him that way during that time, much less pining for him or something. But when I look back now, I attend to all of the details that pointed toward our getting together in a way I wouldn't if things hadn't turned out this way. But I don't think it's just bias and there's nothing real there, either. It's valid to look at a thing differently because of what resulted from it down the line.

I've digressed a lot at this point, so I'm going to bring it back to what this has to do with Sand and Ray. These two started out attracted to each other and determined not to get emotionally involved. They started bonding, partly because they were hanging out in other ways, partly because sleeping with someone tends to lead to getting at least a little bit attached to them. (This is the reason people regularly go from being friends with benefits to dating and more. It's hardly inevitable, but it happens.) They started making bigger emotional investments in each other. Sand's investment was greater, but Ray was getting significantly invested without admitting it to himself. Sand was more infatuated but was clearly trying to be realistic about his claims on Ray.

Ray was on the complete other end of the scale--he started to feel entitled to Sand's time, attention, and esteem, not to mention sexual access to Sand, without stopping to give the slightest thought to whether this was realistic or reasonable. But he barely stopped to think about Sand long enough to figure out what he thought of him or how he felt about him. If anything, I think that entitled, objectifying tendency began to act as a defense against getting cathected with Sand. But it's not an effective defense. Just telling himself that Sand is a commodity--and telling Sand as well--doesn't preclude him from building a different kind of emotional investment in Sand. I don't think it's possible for him to compartmentalize and choose to have one kind of investment in Sand and not another.

None of this means that the investment he has in Sand is good, or honest, or selfless, or that he sees Sand as a real human being, or understands or knows him in any serious way. In other words, none of this means that he loves Sand at all in the strict sense. But if we followed the usual conventions, if Ray's cathexis shifts to actually loving Sand, we'd retroactively label this unhealthy, selfish cathexis as love or a precursor to it. Maybe we shouldn't do that, but it's how things are typically thought about and talked about. If we resolve to be more precise about these things, we could say that this isn't love, but that the kind of cathexis Ray has toward Sand is something that can become love.

The question becomes, then, is it realistic to think that someone who cathects with another person in an incredibly objectifying, selfish, hurtful way could shift to actually loving that person in a real sense? I would say that there are people, like partner abusers, who have habitually refused to treat others as human beings in a way that precludes really loving someone else unless they make big changes in their life. That's probably the most effective way to compartmentalize possessiveness and entitlement and keep them separate from the-kind-of-investment-that-could-become-love: being a full-on abuser. It worked for my ex.

Maybe Ray is too close to that at this point to, like, be a real person with a soul again and not just a husk of a human being. But I'm pretty sure the writers of Only Friends plan to rehabilitate this character and pair him up with Sand in the end, and they're the final authority in that universe. They may put Ray through the ringer to get us to the point where we can possibly root for him again. Part of that may well involve him having to live with the fact that he doesn't own Sand, even having to see him with someone else. Honestly, I think it'd have to include that part of things, and would have to involve a pretty huge shift in his perspective, for me and a lot of other viewers to be able to root for that relationship at all.

You're Mine No Matter What: The Commodification of Sand

I have been thinking a lot in the last couple weeks about the dynamic between Ray and Sand, namely the significant imbalance between Sand and Ray in their relationship to one another that has been at the very least, fun to watch, even as I have been slightly miffed at Sand being so much of a simp for Ray when Ray does not reciprocate these feelings. 

Now, @emotionallychargedtowel had a brilliant write up about Sand’s possible parentification and resulting need to play the caretaker for the people around him, which everyone should read. I loved it a lot because it puts Sand in to perspective, that he can be jerked around and insulted and still have care and still want to help the person who is actively and intentionally trying to insult him. Sand likes Ray, that much has been clear from the moment Ray rested his head on Sand’s shoulder after puking in Episode 1, but Ray? Ray does not see Sand the same way, as much as his puppy dog eyes may lead Sand to believe. 

To Ray, who is rich, and difficult to manage, and holds on so tightly to the belief he is a burden, Sand is a commodity, something Ray owns. And it is absolutely hilarious to me that I was thinking about trying to do this write up and drop it before Episode 8, and decided I should wait. AND I AM SO GLAD I DID BECAUSE RAY LITERALLY SAID AS MUCH TO SAND THIS EPISODE. 

Listen, I love First and I love Khao and I love FirstKhao’s chemistry, but in no way, shape, or form do I want Ray and Sand to end up together, they are terrible for each other, and Sand’s lack of self respect at this point is a motherfucking tragedy. I mean, think about it, what care has Ray given to Sand?

Drove Sand to his apartment after the party (and then ditched him in the middle of a make out)

Offered to buy him a guitar

What care has Sand given to Ray? 

Driven him home and taken care of him when he was blackout drunk 

Hung out with him when no one else was around to care: Paid

Hung out with him when no one else was around to care: For Free

Cooked food for Ray 

Changed his work schedule to play at the hostel party

Cooked breakfast for Ray 

Let Ray use him as an excuse to not go to work and instead spending the day with him on Sand’s birthday 

Helped Ray change his clothes 

Followed after Ray and tried to stop him from drunk driving after Ray called him a whore 

Saved Ray from his car accident

(Most likely) agreed to something from Ray’s dad 

Took care of Ray when he was injured including helping him shave and bathe.

Tried to save Ray from getting caught with drugs by the cops after Ray interrupted his time with another guy and kissed him without consent

Tried to fight the cops to get them to let Ray go after Ray essentially said that he owned Sand.

Sand is poor, he’s booked and busy, he’s barely got time of his own to spend on the things he enjoys, he is fundamentally a caretaker, juggling school, multiple jobs, and his mother’s health. We see how much of grind Sand’s life is in the montage at the beginning of Episode 5, he does not have room to slip another person in to his life, hell, the boy barely has any friends. He’s never hanging out with anyone unless it’s Nick and he’s at home. So it is very important to keep in mind that Sand is making time for Ray. Sand has a life that is jam packed and stressful, and Ray keeps asking for more and more of Sand’s time. Time Sand cannot really afford to give and gives it anyway. 

Sand is a caretaker, Sand has a crush on Ray, Sand cannot say no to Ray’s puppy dog eyes and chronic need for help. And the tragedy here is that there is a world where I can see how Sand convinced himself that he and Ray were maybe moving in the same direction. Because Ray couldn’t let go. They fucked once, and Sand said that Ray was going to keep wanting him, and he was right. From the very beginning of their relationship to one another, Ray has been the one constantly asking for and initiating physical intimacy with Sand. The first time we see Sand initiate anything really isn’t until Episode 5 when he goes slack jawed looking at Ray before they kiss and even then Ray is the one that leans in to meet him. Ray is the pursuer here, Ray is the one that stalks Sand, Ray is the one that interrupts Sand’s next one night stand, Ray is the one that is always asking if he can stay over, that is asking for help, that is asking for sex. So of course Sand is going to start thinking some type of way about what he and Ray are to each other, even if they haven’t had any conversations about the nature of their relationship. 

But I think Sand is so used to taking care of other people that he hasn’t really gotten it through his head that Ray doesn’t not feel the same. We see every twist of the knife in Sand’s face in Episode 5 whenever he is reminded of that fact. But I think that despite the shit that Ray has put him through, Sand hasn’t fully realized, or at least, he is refusing to admit it to himself that there is no scenario where Ray falls in love with him, because to Ray, Sand is a commodity. 

Sand is something to be bought. 

Sand is someone Ray can go to when he wants to be serviced. 

Sand is his favorite toy. 

Ray doesn’t like Sand, Ray likes the attention, Ray likes being noticed, Ray likes being cared for, because in his life, his friends mostly ignore him, his father mostly ignores him, his mother is dead and he grew up knowing that she hated him. Ray fell in love with Mew because Mew gave him attention and care, because Ray held him in the bathtub while he sobbed, and Ray has never been able to let go of that idea. But so too, has Ray not been able to let go of the other person who is providing happiness on tap. 

favorite photo ever, courtesy of @liyazaki

There are two critical details to remember about Ray. One- Ray is rich, Two- Ray has substance use disorder. Which means that Ray is constantly looking for the next thing that will make him feel good. He drinks to forget, he does cocaine, Ray by nature of his substance dependency does not have a concept of delayed gratification. Ray is extremely rooted in the present, in whatever dopamine hit is within the closest reach. And Sand and his natural tendency to give everything he has is one of the easiest things for him to reach for. Every time that Sand has tried to set a boundary, Ray has crossed it because he knows Sand has feelings for him, he knows he can manipulate that if he just begs cute enough. When he wants sex, he can get sex, when he wants adventure, he can get adventure, when he wants care, he can get care quick, easy, and cheap. Ray paid Sand once for his time, and learned he could be bought, and he has held on to that one time subscription fee extremely tightly. 

When it comes to Ray and Sand, there is no winning for Sand that is not defined by the two of them never seeing each other again. Because the second that Ray paid Sand for his time, Sand became Ray’s property, and Ray has never stopped thinking of Sand as such. And we know this is true because of everything Ray does and says related to Sand showing any level of autonomy that runs counter to Ray’s vested interests. 

Ray pays for Sand to hang out with him, and soon afterwards, Sand tries to bring a girl home from the bar for a one night stand, only for Ray to interrupt them. Sand ends up going home with Ray instead. Ray convinces Sand to keep making out with him in the car, and then casts Sand aside the second that Mew calls. Sand tries to put up a barrier and Ray is like “yeah sure I’ll care about your feelings, why don’t I buy you a guitar?” because Ray is rich, and so his first solution to conflict is to throw money at the problem, but Sand is easily sated by a little bit of crossed thumbs. 

Sand tries to set another boundary in Episode 6 after he learns that Ray has a crush on Mew, and Ray blows right through that boundary by as @emotionallychargedtowel calls it, “aggressively falling apart”. Ray, to be fair to him is not getting drunk and falling to pieces to intentionally rope Sand back in to his gravity, but Sand’s long held tendencies to help people are going to send him back to Ray every time, because Ray is desperately in need of help and no one else can really be fucked. 

If we weren’t already aware of Ray’s tendency to think of Sand as property, we get another great indication of Ray’s mentality around Sand in the same episode. When Ray is going off on everyone at the bar on Mew’s birthday, Sand tries to step in to stop Ray’s escalation. Ray does not take kindly to this, and says to Sand’s face, in public “You don’t wanna be a singer. You just want to make money. If you want it so much, why don’t you sleep with me?” thus associating Sand’s moments of physical intimacy and sex with Ray as purchasable, as commodities. Why? Because Sand could be bought once, and thus can be bought again. Ray doesn’t think about Sand as a suitor, he thinks of Sand as a whore, and again he says as much when Sand runs after Ray to try to stop him from drunk driving. 

Sand: “Stop thinking about Mew and focus on me for once. Can’t you really see that I care about you?”

Ray: “Why would you poke your nose in my business? What are we to each other? What are we?” 

Sand: “Right. We are nothing to each other, but at least I am your fellow human. I don’t want you to drive when drunk. You can risk your life all you want. But don’t you dare risk other people’s lives too.” 

Ray: “Let go of me you shit. Let go. Or I need to pay you, whore?” 

And thus we have our answer to Ray’s initial question, “What are we to each other?” “whore”. When Ray is wasted, and pissed, and Sand is showing active defiance over Ray’s behavior, Ray reverts immediately back in to the mindset that Sand is owned, that his behavior, his choices, his morals can be changed if enough money is handed to him. Because Ray has bought Sand before, because Sand is poor, and Ray is rich, and Ray thinks that the only thing that Sand could possibly want is more money. 

Sand will commit crimes for money (making and selling plum wine). Sand will hang out with Ray for money. Sand will sing for money. Ray comes from a world with money, it is not absent struggle, but Ray’s struggles are more internal, engrained in his family dynamics. He has never had to worry about making enough money for rent, he has never had to worry about violence being done to him or a loved one from debtors when they can’t pay their interest on time, Ray has never had to live in a world without money, and it is clear from the first episode that Ray is someone that looks down on  poor people, the way he immediately accuses Sand of stealing from him when he wakes up in Sand’s apartment. 

And again, to be fair to Ray, he is not the only one. A couple of the other rich boys look down on Sand the same way. Mew wants Ray to lower his standards and settle for Sand, as if a relationship with Sand would somehow be lesser, when Sand is a good person who cares about and takes good care of Ray, he’s just poor. Top, similar looks down on Sand, he stole his boyfriend, he thinks absolutely nothing of Sand. 

Ray gets in a car accident, Sand saves his life, and then Ray’s expectation from there is that Sand will take care of him. Sand (who has very limited funds compared to Ray) buys him a drink, he helps him strip, he helps him shave, he waits hand and foot on Ray. And how does Ray repay him? By jumping in to a relationship with Mew the very second an opportunity presents itself, leaving Sand once again in the dust. Because Ray doesn’t ever actually take Sand’s feelings in to consideration when he is making decisions. Sand is a plaything to Ray, and Ray has a shinier new offer dangling in front of him. 

Sand, once again, tries to set a boundary, establish a barrier, remind himself and remind Ray that they aren’t friends, they haven’t been friends, and Sand is trying to be the bigger, better person by letting Ray go, by telling him he is happy for Ray to have finally gotten what he wanted in his relationship with Mew. And throughout the entire exchange, Ray keeps looking so confused when he hears Sand’s consistent rejection of Ray’s wishes about how he and Sand will move forward in their relationship to one another now that Ray is dating Mew.  

“So what’s up with Mew? I heard he broke up with Top” Sand asks, and Ray swallows hard, in a way that I personally read as guilty. 

“Good, you can finally end the secret crush. Such a waste of time, right?” a confession from Sand that Ray picks up on. 

“Are you okay?” Ray asks, this is the second time that Ray has tried to check in on Sand after his relationship to Mew got in the way of his relationship to Sand. 

“Why wouldn’t I be? You’re seeing someone you always loved. It’s a dream come true.” Sand once again is not acknowledging out loud or honestly his own feelings, but he is putting his own feelings aside to acknowledge Ray’s feelings. To try to, even still, even after how shittily Ray has treated him, even after how much Ray has taken Sand’s care for granted, spare Ray from feeling bad about fucking with his feelings. 

“Can we still be friends?” Ray asks, because he hasn’t ever had actual consequences for his behavior before. 

“Friends? You and I have never been friends from the get-go. We have nothing in common. Besides, I don’t know why I should be friends with you.” Sand replies, again trying to create a barrier between him and Ray that allows him to be free from Ray’s gravity. 

“But, when I’m with you, I’m so damn happy.” Ray says, because shit like that has always worked with Sand in the past: “Can we hang out together?”, “jerking off feels so good when you’re hungover”, “can you help me?”, and for the first time it really seems like Sand is sticking to his guns. 

*deep breath from Sand, who seems like he is fighting back tears he is so upset at hearing that Ray is happy with him and yet having Ray deny that in favor of chasing his next piece of ass* “You will be too when you spend time with Mew. What you did with me, you will get to do it with him. You might even be happier.”

Sand tries to walk away and Ray grabs him by the arm, because Ray has never once let Sand maintain a boundary, “Sand.”

gif from @liyazaki

“Let me go already.” Sand replies, and Sand here is begging Ray not only to literally let him go, but metaphorically, emotionally, to free Sand of this back and forth. To release him from this existence as someone to be jerked around, whose feelings can be trifled with because Ray isn’t fully capable of seeing Sand as a person with his own feelings that are impacted by the choices that Ray makes. 

And because Ray cannot let it go, cannot just let his precious toys leave him, he remains adamant about blowing past barriers as often as possible when it comes to his interactions with Sand. Sand literally asks Ray to let him go, and not long after that Ray is wandering back in to the study room where Sand is, trying to get them back on good terms. But again, to point out that Ray commodifies Sand, what is it that Ray is asks him for? Is it to go out to dinner with him? Is it to just hang out and chill? To go to the bar? Is it to apologize for his behavior? 

No. 

Ray asks Sand to come with him to do social work, to come with him to play music for children. Why? Because Sand knows how to play guitar, and Ray knows that he can wear Sand down eventually. But it bears reminding that Ray’s social work is court ordered, he is literally asking Sand to suffer the (very minimal) consequences of Ray’s drunk driving with him, and he’s trying to pick the social work option that is the least miserable, the least amount of work, and he is trying to rope in the only person he knows who can get him out of the types of social work that involve manual labor. Because Ray cannot play an instrument, so he would not be able to play music for children without Sand’s presence. 

Once again, Ray proves that he is not capable of associating Sand with anything other than a service provider. 

Or, as we see later on in the episode, as property. 

Because here Ray is, fucking with Sand’s feelings, dating Mew, making out with Mew at the party and there Sand is, not wanting to be at this party in the least but going anyway because he feels bad about what he did to Nick by stealing and sharing that TopBoston audio file, trying to move on, trying to kiss a random stranger with mutual interests at this party, only to have…

Ray interrupt them before they can kiss, squeeze himself physically in between Sand and Freddie #2, and asking if the two of them have slept together. 

“Did you sleep with him?” 

“Damn it, Ray. Are you high? How about you go to sleep?”

“I want to sleep with you. Or what, should we invite Mr. Freddie here to sleep with us? Let’s do it, I’ll go first,” 

AND THEN RAY GRABS SAND AND KISSES HIM WITHOUT HIS CONSENT (which I am pretty certain Mew would consider cheating especially after the whole ordeal with Top) when Sand was just about to consensually kiss someone who wasn’t Ray (again, Ray is unable to let Sand ever exhibit his own autonomy). Until Freddie #2 leaves them alone, assuming they are in a relationship, and not wanting to get involved with “someone else’s boyfriend”

“What the fuck is this. You have Mew now. What do you want from me? Go guard your boyfriend,” 

“I can have feelings for as many people as I want,” 

“But you can’t do this to me,” 

“Stop fooling yourself, Sand. You like me,” Ray points “You love me. You can’t walk away from me. You’re mine no matter what.”

gif by @moonkhao

and there is a reason why they put Ray in the fucking Joker’s costume for this episode, cause that boy is acting toxic as all hell. So even now, Ray isn’t sated, Ray made his choices, Ray picked Mew, Ray left Sand in the dust, but Ray cannot separate Sand’s autonomy out from Ray’s possession of him. I love Only Friends for the level of hypocrisy they allow their characters to have. Ray is allowed to date and have feelings for Mew, and to want Sand, but Sand is not allowed to move on from Ray, Sand is not allowed to have feelings for other people, let alone just make out with a stranger or fuck somebody else without any feelings involved. 

And I cannot stress enough that this is shitty behavior on Ray’s part, this isn’t cute, this isn’t funny, the extent to which Ray is possessive over a person he has no right to act that way towards is inconsiderate, rude, and objectifying. Sand is not allowed to have his own thoughts, Ray must put words in his mouth. Sand is not allowed to move on from Ray, Ray will keep pushing Sand’s boundaries until Sand relents because Ray knows he can manipulate Sand’s feelings for him, Sand will always be a caretaker and Ray will always need taking care of. Sand is maybe waking up to this fact, or maybe the horror in his eyes when Ray is yelling at him is Sand realizing at the very least that Ray knows how Sand feels about him, and Sand is admitting to himself in this moment that like Nick, he can’t help but love this person who has treated him poorly. 

Because Sand is a caretaker, and caretakers, at least in my own experience, are used to having their own wants and needs trampled over. No boundary withstands first contact with someone in need of help. I have tried to reach out and give support to people that I know didn’t like me after they went through hard times together, I don’t talk to my friends about shit that is actually and actively impactful to my mental health and wellbeing, many of the people I am friends with frequently only reach out when they need something from me. If they needed homework answers, or if they needed observation, or if they needed to be picked up early in the morning from the airport and otherwise they never really talked to me. Like, I get a lot of where Sand is coming from with his need to take care of Ray because Ray is a young adult, going through a lot, in need of a lot of professional help he isn’t getting, and Sand can’t not be compelled to help him as much as he can. 

And listen, in my opinion some of Sand’s actions with Ray are justified from a safety perspective, Sand is a caretaker, Sand knows Ray is willing to drink and drive, Sand puts his pride aside to try and ensure that Ray doesn’t leave in his car, and then follows him to make sure that he doesn’t get in to an accident. Those actions make sense to me.

gif from @bird-inacage

Sand doesn’t want Ray to get in to any more legal trouble, so tries to hide the evidence of drugs and get Ray out of the party, which in a normal circumstance I would generally be in support of, but crucially, as @neuroticbookworm and @lurkingshan have touched on in some of their posts Sand cannot afford a run in with police.  Not in the same way that Ray can. Ray is rich, Ray says he can handle the cops, and he can because he can buy them off, the way that Top bought them off. But Sand doesn’t come from a world where he can skirt consequences. 

But there are many places where Sand lets himself get trampled over because he has legitimate feelings for Ray, and Ray won’t let Sand make his own choices long enough to wake up, look around, and realize that Ray has literally given him nothing of substance in return.

[johaerys-writes]

Fic Writer’s Round Up: 2020

I was tagged by wonderful friendos @in-arlathan, @noire-pandora, @faerieavalon, @pinkfadespirit, @tevivinter, and @serial-chillr! Thank you so much, it was so interesting to see what you've been up to this year <3 

2020 was a ride from start to finish and I considered not doing this at first because frankly, I wasn't particularly happy with my output this year, but I decided to give it a go and I was pleasantly surprised! This year has had a lot of ups and downs for me and there were plenty of times when I had a hard time putting words on the page, while others I couldn't stop. I've written primarily for Dragon Age and The Song of Achilles, and a little bit of Castlevania. In the below breakdown I've included all the fics I’ve written solo, both my published stuff as well as those that I plan on publishing in the near future  (for my lengthier works, I’ve only included the chapters written in 2020):

Aran belongs to @oftachancer!

I don't know if you noticed the ~50k words of deleted stuff, but that was an entire arc that I wrote for A World With You, but decided it wasn't good enough so I scrapped and rewrote it. Those long gaps between updates this year? Yeah. That was it. I normally don't include deleted scenes in my overall wordcount but I decided to add this out of spite because it was a lot of hard work and it may or may not have had me sobbing into my coffee once or twice. Anyway. MOVING ON.

I also co-wrote A LOT with my friendo @oftachancer this year! It all started with a Modern AU one-shot of Aran and Tristan as college roommates, which then derailed into an epic adventure of about 250,000 words (placeholder title: Never Let Me Go) as well as a prequel of about 180,000 words of the boys before they went to college, which is currently being published on AO3 (Playground Love). We also published a smutty one-shot for Kinktober (Tea and Corsets). I love those boys so much, and I’m excited to write more of them. I have also co-written a few scenes for the Band!AU @oftachancer and @midnightprelude have been working on, which has been so much fun and I look forward to writing more! So, total wordcount for co-written stuff is approximately 445,000 words,  not including a couple one-shots that we’ve written and posted on Tumblr and I’m too lazy to track down now, or others that haven’t been published yet but will soon!

New Things I Tried This Year: 

Co-writing two massive, novel length fics was definitely a first, I had a lot of fun world-building with @oftachancer​, and it gave me the opportunity to develop some of my OCs that had been lurking in my mind for a really long time. I also started writing for a new fandom, TSOA, and that has definitely been a highlight in my year. I grew up reading the Iliad and ancient greek myths, and to see them brought to life was very rewarding. It has also been a lot of fun finding ways to integrate ancient greek lore in my works, I really love it!

Fic I spent the most time on: A World With You, although Playground Love and Never Let Me Go are close seconds!   

Fic I spent the least time on: To Build A Home. I wrote it in only a couple sittings after finishing Season 3 of Castlevania because I had so many feels! Chapters 1 and 2 of High-Flying Birds were also written on my phone in less than an hour, because again I was overwhelmed with feels after finishing The Song of Achilles.  

Favourite things I wrote: I am really proud of everything I’ve written this year, especially since it was such a stressful year and writing gave me a much needed escape! But I'm going to choose a few highlights, purely based on the satisfaction they gave me while writing, and how often I've gone back to reread them (does anyone else do that?? Lol): Viper in Tall Grass, because I enjoyed the heck out of writing in the Witcher Universe. Chapter 2: Thorn, from High Flying Birds, which was one of those scenes that practically wrote themselves and I still like the way it turned out. Lastly, Chapter 28: The Prodigal Son and Chapter 29: In Water Waist Deep from AWWY. They were both really challenging to write but in the end they were worth it and I personally feel it’s some of my best writing yet. I always get emotional when I go back to reread them.  

Favourite Things I Read: I’ve read a lot of published fiction this year, but not near as much fanfiction as I would have liked! I mentioned some of the fics I’m currently reading and loving in this post, but I’m going to make a more detailed fic rec post soon, so keep an eye out for that! 

Writing Goals for next year: My primary goals for 2021 are to finish AWWY and High-Flying Birds so I can start working on some projects I’ve been wanting to post forever, but apart from that, I have no goals other than to have fun writing, and perhaps participate in more fic exchanges and challenges! 

This post is terribly long (I’m usually rather quiet unless someone asks me to talk about my fics, and then I can’t shut up lol), but I want to thank every single person that has liked, reblogged and commented on my work, you guys are the best and there’s nothing like a comment or a thoughtful tag to make me want to create more! 

I also want to give a special shoutout to @solas-disapproves, @in-arlathan, @midnightprelude, @tessa1972 and @oftachancer​ for being the lovely, inspiring people that they are, and for gifting me with wonderful fanart or fanfic this year that made me want to melt in a puddle, as well as to @tenmeooo-thefangirltrash​ for translating High Flying Birds to Vietnamese! (Check it out here) Thank you all so much, your friendship and support has meant the world to me ;w;

I’m sure that everyone has done this already, but I’m still going to tag @pikapeppa, @schoute​, @schattengerissen, @zuendwinkel​, @elveny​, @fandomn00blr​, @dafan7711​, @dalish-rogue​, @jeannedarcprice​, @nug-juggler​, @kittimau​ and @lavellanvibes​ for art or writing, because I always love seeing what you’ve been up to! If you’ve made it to the end of this humongous post, please consider yourself tagged, and tag me back so I can see your work too!

CHEERS, AND ON TO 2021!! <3

[tigerwolfproductions]

To save my followers from an onslaught of separate pics, I’ve decided to compile my miscellaneous Phantom Phoenix works into a single post because A Lot happened. =P

(Info about each pic is under the readmore)

1+2- Top ten photos taken before disaster (aka, Danny didn’t know he needed to tell Phoenix that it’s not a free for all game where the last one standing “wins”).

3- A scrapped title card idea for the plot where Danny and Joker fuse. I decided that while I really like the body horror angle, there were a couple of problems with this version. Them being things like how it wasn’t “actiony” enough to work (the title cards often featured something “happening”, such as a character outreaching their arm or Danny running away from a figure). I’m not sure how I could make it so that both Joker and Danny face towards the screen (another staple; I’ve only found one title card with a character facing backwards and it was Livin’ Large) and have it feel like there was movement at the same time. That and I felt it wasn’t nearly horrific enough; some of the actual show’s title cards are just freaky man.

4- just some practice on Akai/Phoenix bird nerd

5- I recalled @shinyspooks​ and some others coming up with a plot (though not necessarily for the Phantom Phoenix AU but ya know) in which Danny’s parents have found a dangerous artifact/treasure from the Ghost Zone that they plan on studying- one that multiple phantom thieves have set their eyes on. So in order to keep himself from going mad in trying to stop a dozen thieves from breaking into his house to take it, Danny decides to take it first. The one issue being that because his parents are ghost hunters, it’s entirely too dangerous to do as Phantom with all the anti-ghost measures up and running. So Danny enlists the help of Joker (who gets something in return for helping; and if not the treasure, perhaps some Fenton tech?) to learn how to become a phantom thief ASAP in order to take it first. They mentioned Danny picking a terrible name to use and I was wondering what he’d pick that would make for a goofy reference to his being Danny Phantom. And then I remembered… Invisobill    As for the design, I went with Danny’s non-inverted jumpsuit because he probably has spares to use as a human, he was on short notice, and orange would have been too suspicious. He’s added some tech both for the heist, and Just In Case ghosts happen, as well as some goggles and a bandanna to hide that it’s him (he was also asked about “being obsessed with jumpsuits” by Joker, to which Danny responded, “You got a problem with jumpsuits?”)    (Sam made him the logo btw)

6- The Box Ghost gets on both Danny’s and Akai’s nerves with far too many appearances. Even taking turns shoving him into the thermos isn’t doing much for their tolerance levels.

7- I remembered Dani existed a while back and instantly began debating just what might happen with her in the Phantom Phoenix AU. I’m not sure if having her become an apprentice for adopted by Joker is the best move, but it was certainly the one that gave me the most warm fuzzies!      (Joker gets super attached to the smol sassy ghost girl, Hachi gives her lots of food, and Danny doesn’t exactly know if he should feel okay with Dani learning how to become a Phantom Thief. Akai wasn’t around when Dani first showed up, and Danny forgot to tell him about her, so when Akai discovers another human/ghost hybrid is living with Joker he just HAS to show Danny because “wow that’s so cool and Danny would think so too!”)

    (Joker and Hachi found her on the Sky Joker after a heist. She had taken a rest unknowingly on the airship, was discovered, and it was a rude suggestion from Joker to just kick her off over the ocean that got him berated by Hachi (Joker would have regretted it later anyway)).

8- The double edged sword that was the definitely-not-adoption. Because Dani is using less of her energy and getting plenty of food, she destabilizes a lot less quickly. Unfortunately when she does start melting, she tries to hide it for as long as she can so she doesn’t worry Joker and Hachi… which just makes things worse. Eventually she winds up collapsing in front of them and both can’t figure out what’s wrong with her so they agree that Danny would be the best help they could get (poor beans felt so bad). Of course Vlad still attempted to get his clone back and the Valerie stuff still happened too. But now there’s an addition to the event in which Joker publicly embarrasses human Vlad at a conference with a completely over the top prank after the fact (Hachi fully supported this decision, for once).

9- I for one, am split on whether or not I like Danny having ice powers or not. They feel a tad more gimmicky than his other powers, but at the same time. They’re just so cool. Regardless, if he were to develop them in the Phantom Phoenix AU (maybe it’d just be without the Undergrowth ordeal), Akai wouldn’t be very happy with the sudden amount of clinging Danny would do to the Nearest Warmest Object (him).

10- Phoenix may not be a ghost, but his species carries enough similarities for ecto weapons to affect him. The Fenton Thermos just kinda sticks to him though (he doesn’t like it, Tucker took a video, and now the group teases Phoenix over the assorted bird noises he made).

[vixenofthemist]

I JUST WOKE UP FROM A NAP AND CHARACTER PROFILES ARE OUT AHHHH

Im gonna mostly talk about the Golden Deer bc I've been waiting for forever for SOMETHING about them and now I have it I'm gonna run.

But some of my thoughts on the other houses:

Black Eagles: Nothing really caught my attention other then they have the most people without crests, and Dorothea hates herself :<

Blue Lions: Well... that certainly confirms the theory that the Childhood Friends don't accept Dedue very well aosjsj Sylvain is the only one who doesn't seem to have a problem with Dimitri no wonder he's so willing to work on his womanizing he's the only friend who isn't judging him (bc Ingrid HAS to not like that Dimitri has Dedue as a retainer and even if it didn't sour their relationship completely it had to have put some strain on it. No wonder she and Felix are seen together so often aksjsj). ALSO ANNETTES A SWEET ANGEL.

OK Now Onto the Golden Deer akjsjs (I'm on mobile or else I'd put a read more sorry akdjsj)

FIRST OF ALL- THIS???

DOESN'T SHE MENTION AN OLDER BROTHER IN THE ADVICE BOX??? I could be remembering it wrong but I SWEAR she was like "i have to write my brother but I dont know what to write him about so tell me". Someone please explain is my memory bad or is Hilda submitting false facts to the ask box for fun?

Hilda is definitely that girl who said "um excuse me we're having a conversation. Rude." To a teacher when they tried to stop her talking in class aksjaj

I love how persuasion is right in the middle of her otherwise totally normal likes lol i can just hear her listing off her likes and just saying that aloud so casually and the person she's talking to is just like "excuse me- wait what was that one in the middle??" "Fashion :>"

RAPHAEL HAS A BABY SISTER!!!!!!!!!!! I REPEAT RAPHAEL HAS A BABY SISTER AHHHHHHHH HE MUST BE SUCH A GOOD BIG BRO!! PLEASE LET NOTHING HAPPEN TO HER IF SOMEONE EVEN LOOKS AT HER FUNNY I WILL DELETE THEM

ASSJSHAJS Lorenz likes Monitering Claude LMAO, its his #1 hobby. Also we finally have a reason to have a rivalry with Black Eagles- Lorenz hates coffee but Hubert loves it. (Also he hates vulgarity lmao bet there was at least 1 time where Leonie and Claude just swore constantly around him for an entire day alsjsj)

Also what is a worthy women and how much do you wanna bet he's been slapped in the face for phrasing it like that bc he absolutely has to have been socked at least once.

Ignatz hates lightning and there better be some good found family fics of the Golden Deer helping him distract himself during storms!!

(Also he seems to really like the church so wonder how that goes with Claude aksjs)

Lysithea still adorable, loves sweets and cute things and hates bitter food aksjjss also hates anything physcially laborious what a gigantic mood

Ashe also hates ghost and as someone who thinks they'd be adorable together I love the idea that they're the couple that go see a disney movie while the others go watch horror (but they still get scared by the wind that night and call Mercedes to come take care of the ghost aksjjs).

Leonie's is exactly how I thought it'd be aksjsj don't have a lot to say except she's the big sister of the group and has for sure punched Lorenz in the face

Marianne and Claude are at the bottom bc they're my favorites and I have a lot to say about them akshshs

Ladakdjsj why does "long rides" make me think of a dating profile?? "Hi my name is Claude Von Riegan, I love long rides on the beach and tactically scheming as the sunsets. Pick me and I'll let you grasp any part of me you want."

Anyway SO pumped to finally have stuff coming out about Claude aksjsjs after what feels like years of just getting scraps we're finally getting some gosh dang FOOD and we DESERVE IT

His dislikes are interesting, like its so clear he doesn't trust the gods at ALL kasjjs and he clearly has a reason for that which I'm sure will come out in the main plot since its all about the church who are just a bunch of people blindly following Seiros akdjs

(Also who's gonna tell him he's in a fire emblem game and is just as subject to the rng gods as the rest of us? Leaving things to chance is the underlying tagline of the combat system cause sure you have a 95% to hit but there's still a chance you won't 🙃)

Love that he likes poetry, he is the guy who can rehearse shakespear by heart but mostly just spouts the existential stuff but will whip out a real romantic verse when the moments right (unlike Lorenz who only remembers the romantic stuff). Definitely is the guy who writes haiku jokes using haiku's and it drives everyone else crazy. Also I hc that he means long rides on his wyvern and not a horse bc ever since I saw that he can become a wyvern rider I can't not think of him as one akssj (I'm calling the wyvern Goldy the Golden Good Boy of the Von Riegans, Goldy for short, becauze it makes me laugh akdjsj.)

Also wtf does planning feasts mean??? What does planning a feast entail?? Is this just a medieval way to say he likes to party??

MARIANNE'S #1 DISLIKE IS HERSELF NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

WHO DID THIS TO HER WHERE ARE THEY AND HOW PREPARED ARE THEY FOR THESE HANDS???

PLEASE LET ME BE ABLE TO GIVE HER A HUG INTSYS!!!

Ok calming down I am SO fascinated by Marianne, cause she clearly has so much story to her and I for one can't wait to find it all out. Cause she's so different from the other nobles, all of them are quite confident and loud (in personality and color) but shes the exact opposite, and we don't even know what her crest is so we can't figure out who her birth family are and what happened to them that made her get fostered by the Edmunds. And the Edmunds themselves are just another hole because how do they treat her? I cant imagine its good? But perhaps it is and whatever happened to her birth family is why she's so depressed and lacks self confidence? Akjdkss Ok I'm just rambling now I'll stop but long story short I'm hyped to play Golden Deer and see what her relationship is with the rest of the house xD (especially Claude bc they have such different viewpoints on the gods and the church so their supports are gonna be interesting aksjjs)

[sharpestsatire]

Weird questions for writers: 7, 8, 15, 21, 25, and 27?

Thank you so much for the questions! :D

7. What is your deepest joy about writing?

I love exploring concepts and morals. I like pitting them against each other and working at issues that way. Usually the issue is a pet peeve I have that society holds to or I see too often in media.

I also love when I'm writing and it clicks. The scene just springs onto the page almost too fast to catch but it all works and makes sense. Everyone is in character and the plot is perfect without effort. It's a heady feeling seeing everything pull together seamlessly.

8. If you had to write an entire story without either action or dialogue, which would you choose and how would it go?

It would be a metaphor for loss. Use a lot of desolate imagery.

15. Do you write in the margins of your books? Dog-ear your pages? Read in the bath? Why or why not? Do you judge people who do these things? Can we still be friends?

I write in the margins of my books in pencil so I can erase spelling mistakes or accidental scribbles I make when I write notes and underline passages. I dog ear pages until I can go back and underline whatever line caught my eye. Dog ears are for coming back to lines. Scraps of paper are bookmarks. I don't take baths so.... That's why I don't read in the bath. I don’t judge people about any of the things above because that would be hypocritical lol. We can definitely be friends still!

21. Could you ever quit writing? Do you ever wish you could? Why or why not?

Well, I unintentionally quit writing for... Eh, two ish years a bit ago. Just got busy with life and relationships and metamorphosing. As one does. Been writing on and off for the past two years tho. More recently with my writing group back in session.

25. What is a weird, hyper-specific detail you know about one of your characters that is completely irrelevant to the story?

I realize this may sound egotistical but my main character is based on me. However she's got some of my vices amplified to make her a specific way to force her to become something better. The story is more personal and what I want to read.

Anyway her being based on me makes her easier to write. As a result I know a lot about her that's completely useless to the plot just because she's based off me. So she... dog ears books.

27. Who is the most stressful character you’ve ever written? Why?

Hmmm I haven't written any stressful characters per se but I have written difficult characters in how I have to write tensely to make sure they don't slip out of character. It's like trying on a dress that's just a little too big. It almost fits but it slides off your shoulder if you're not careful and adjusting everything every few steps.

Two come to mind. One was a character I wrote who was a space captain. Cold and distant and barked orders but her actions, even tho rough, spoke of how deeply she cared for her crew and family. I found it difficult to write her at times as every time she spoke or interacted she was very reserved and didn't show any affection which is not how I write characters usually. Normally my characters are active and react off each other, like a normal conversation, but it's hard to have characters talk to each other when one gives off absolutely NO vibes. So it's like writing one character talking to a monotone wall. I wanted to write a story around honor and sacrifice, without the characters being dramatic. So she made a deal that kept her from separate her siblings who she loved desperately but they were taken care of in the end if she kept her deal. The point was to try and show that despite how reserved and distant she seemed she cared deeply and sacrificed a lot. It was about what love looks like and how deep it runs etc

The other was a fanfiction. Writing Thor (Thor 2001, Thor: TDW era) was difficult because he spoke slowly and carefully and there were freaking LAYERS I had to work into nearly every conversation because of the plot I had revolved around Loki coming back to earth. And Thor loves his brother so.... It was slow going.

[kd-holloman]

For the 'new ask game for writers'! 1-5, 8, 9, 14, 15, 30, 37, 42, 54. (Just pick a couple if you don't wanna do them all, I got a little carried away. :D)

Sorry this took me literally all week to complete, I just haven’t had time to sit down at my computer this week!

1. Favorite place to write: Currently, it’s at my desk while I’m work and not busy (hence why I haven’t had any time to write this week). I’m looking to convert half of my spare bedroom into an office (because my shift at work will possibly be changing) and I’ll write from there. 

2. Favorite part of writing: This is actually really hard. I have to say that the part after your draft is done and you go back in and reconstruct things, make it flow better, and find the perfect line/paragraph to put right there is my favorite part!

3. Least favorite part of writing: This also a hard question. Starting a new project is definitely the hardest part. Plotting, getting to know your new characters, and everything about starting over is hard. 

4. Do you have writing habits or rituals? Music must be on. Coffee or tea is also acceptable. 

5. Books or authors that have influenced your style most. I’d have to say Maggie Stiefvater is a big one. I love her prose. Also, Stephen King (even if I think he gets kind of wordy for my taste) because I like his description. Leigh Bardugo is one I really appreciate for her character creating. There’s, like a bajillion more, but we would definitely be here all night. 

8. Favorite trope to write: ENEMIES, TO RELUCTANT ALLIES, TO FRIENDS, TO “OH SHIT I HAVE FEELINGS”, TO LOVERS. 

9. Least Favorite trope to write: Love triangles.

14. What’s the most research you’ve ever put into a book? So, for The Traveler’s Gift I’ve had to research a lot of the culture and life of people in the 1920′s, to money laundering, to mobsters. 

15. Where does your inspiration come from? My characters! I often get a hint of a character backstory, a line of dialogue, and build the rest from there. Then, I hold onto these characters until I find a story to fit them. Also, having readers that give me feedback (good or bad) really helps me want to improve. 

30. Favorite line you’ve ever written: (I’ll have you know that I just wrote “writting”, so it definitely wasn’t that one.) This was so hard! So, have a few of my favorites!

“The Reaper?” He asked, surprised. “Why do they call him The Reaper?”

“In the lore, The Reaper does the devil’s bidding and gathers the souls of the damned. Which, from what I heard, isn’t entirely too different from what O’Shea’s guy does. Word has it, that he can kill a man just by looking at him. Do me a favor if you get mixed up in that mess, kid.”

“What?”

“If The Reaper finds you, stay the hell away from me.”

...

The dark silence of the night pressed heavily around him. The flickering of the votive and tea light candles were the only source of light in the church. It made the shadows seem darker, more ominous, alive. They made the watchful eye of Christ behind the pulpit seemed even more damning.

...

Slater’s smile was a mouthful of needles, pointed and toxic. “I heard,” he turned away from the window to look at Korzhakov, “that The Reaper is a ginger.”

...

Louis stepped onto the asphalt of the parking lot and swept the beam of the flashlight beneath the parked cars sitting on the lot. There were only two of them, the SUV they’d arrived in, and the rusty white clunker the evening maintenance man had parked next to it. Still, there was enough room between them for somebody to hide. “What happened?” 

“Ah-ah-ah, pillow talk, remember?” Slater tipped the cup back and took a drink of its contents. He nearly spit it out but managed to swallow it with minimal gagging. “What the hell is this? Wet fertilizer? Louie, when are you going to start loving yourself enough to put a sugar packet or two in your coffee?” 

Louis smiled and let out a soft laugh before taking the coffee cup back. “I knew you weren’t going to like it.” 

“Oh, so you were trying to poison me?” 

“Well, if you’re inviting me to your bed, I may hold off on going through with my plans to get rid of you.” 

Slater grinned at him and kicked a rock. He watched it skip across the parking lot. 

Louis ran his tongue along his chipped tooth before he worked up the nerve to ask, “Are you?” 

“What?” 

“Inviting me to your bed?” 

“You know where it is.”

37. Most inspirational quote you’ve ever heard or is still important to you: I don’t really have one? I do have a piece of paper taped to my laptop that says, “Just write the damned thing!” So, probably that. 

42. How do you figure out your characters looks, personality, etc? Honestly, I imagine them and then once their personality makes sense to me it’s easier for me to determine their style. 

54. Any writing advice you want to share? I’m not to keen on writing advice because much of it can be taken with a grain of salt. So, with that being said, feel free to salt the rim of your margarita with this advice.

The big baddie, writer’s block, is something that I tend to notice happens to me whenever I’m not prepared enough. Do not be afraid to scrap everything you have and start from square one. Keep what you’ve written! You can always find a way to work it in if you truly love it that much! You wrote it once you can write it again!