#yadda yadda yadda idk why I even wrote all this out but. there you have it

[microsuedemouse]

you know the character trope - pretty much exclusively used for villains - of the woman who possesses the power to make any and every man around her fall in love (lust) with her, and thus she builds an army of slobbering man-drones to do her bidding? I often seem to have a similar effect, except only on men maybe 20+ years my senior, and instead of inspiring sexual desire I bring out their fatherly affections.

I don’t know exactly why this happens, but it’s been pretty consistent throughout my adult life, and especially obvious when I’m working in retail (and also during my summer at the optometrist’s office). it comes up a lot at the grocery store. I can think of a couple instances of this phenomenon off the top of my head, like the time I quipped to a customer that I had to do something ‘so I don’t get in trouble.’

“Pshh, that doesn’t happen!” said the guy behind him in line, immediately.

“Yeah, I can’t really imagine it,” agreed the man in front of me.

“All she’d have to do is smile and all would be forgiven!”

“Exactly!”

(Both older gentlemen, both being utterly sweet even while joking around. 😭)

Or, as another example - if you’re working in the last hour-ish of the day, you’ll see a lot of the night crew trickling in, and many of them will do a quick shopping run before they clock in, so at cash we get to know their faces. One of the night managers, Mark, is a very pleasant guy around my parents’ age. One evening I was bagging Mark’s groceries while my coworker Colin rung him up, and Mark glanced over and commented how much he liked seeing me when he came in. “Her smile just lights everything right up, eh? Don’t you think?” he asked, looking expectantly at Colin.

Colin, who is nine years my junior and did not know me well enough yet at that point to be 100% smooth playing along, initially just grinned, with a touch of amusement (whether more at Mark or at my own mild floundering at the compliment, I’m still not sure). When he realised Mark was looking for an actual response, he just chuckled, “I’d say so, yeah.” At which point Mark nodded, pleased to be in agreement, and paid for his groceries.

I do not know how I have this effect on people at 28 years old, even taking into account the fact that I’m often mistaken for younger. When I was an adorable (plus smart and polite - killer combo with the grownups) little girl, it made sense that dads loved me. Now? Who knows! I mean, I’ll certainly take it over being hit on, which I’m extremely grateful to say has never happened to me at work. The only flirting I receive is the silly and decidedly harmless kind that comes from grandpa-type men who are, sincerely, just being playful. These interactions aren’t the untoward kind - they’re more reminiscent, to me, of the way my own dad treats my female friends: respectful, fond and sweet, caring. The vibe is like, this man would probably be happy to give me some sound advice and a lift home from the slumber party.

But yeah. I very consistently bring out the fatherly/grandfatherly affection in seemingly any man over the age of 50 or so who has an ounce of paternal kindness in him. And I do so more than many of my female friends or coworkers do. Is it because I look so young? Because I don’t wear makeup and I dress more like a kid than a ~Grown Woman~? It’s true that in my head I’m little more than an overgrown child, but does that energy actually come through - in a positive fashion, no less - to other people (and especially dad types)? Do I just exude some kind of undefinable Beloved (Grand)Daughter vibes?

I don’t actually remember what on earth got me thinking about this tonight, tbh. But I had to get my rambles out, so here you are. This is my weird tiny useless superpower: I attract fatherliness, entirely without meaning to. I feel like there must be a way to leverage this ability, but I’m not sure what it is? Also I’d be a terrible supervillain anyway.

[virgo-dream]

Flowing

based on this lovely post and @softest-punk’s ficlet on the reblogs. it scratched my brain so good I actually wrote something!!! this miracle took at least 76 lazari.

dreamling, t4t, fluff, all that good stuff. not beta’ed we die like Hob doesn’t yadda yadda yadda, idk how many words it’s 4:30am and I’m eepy and hungy wow

Dream’s fingers run over the keyboard on his laptop in a staccato rhythm. He feels his fingers clicking against each individual key clumsily, almost as if for a moment, he’d forgotten how words should be strung together. He hits the backspace, once, twice, holds it like he means to suffocate the words on the screen. Like they scare him, like his chest is being torn open by a fictional claw.

It’s not flowing, he tells himself. It hasn’t been flowing for a while now.

Still, he pushes through, typing away, forcing the words out, until a hand much warmer and steadier than his own reaches out, stopping Dream in his tracks.

“Dove, I can hear the cogs turning in your head. What’s the matter? You’ve been jumpy all day.”

Dream’s eyes stay focused on the screen, and time starts to dilate in his mind. He’s not sure why, but his chest tightens. He’s not sure if he’s ready to bring a name to that feeling either. Still, it’s impossible not to look at Hob, whose expression is full of warmth and kindness, and unlike Dream, seems to have his chest open and ready to bring his wreck of a lover into an embrace.

Hob wears the scars on his chest like a badge of honour. A body of his own making, a body Dream could sense from afar even before Hob had started growing into it.

“I… I’m not sure.” The words to describe his anxiety are there, Dream knows that. He’s trying to reach out for them, but he falls short.

Hob’s lips curl into a soft smile as he carefully reaches for the computer resting on Dream’s lap. “That’s alright. But maybe you’ve done enough writing for today. No point in frying your brain like that.”

Dream feels his heart climb up to his throat, hands gripping the sides of the laptop as if his life depended on it. “—I’ll stop. You’re right. There’s nothing more I can put on the page for now.” He shuts the laptop down, pulling it away from Hob and placing it on the nightstand.

He’s got nothing to hide from Hob. He’s got plenty to hide from himself. Dream can tell from how Hob’s eyebrows raise that whatever it is, he’s going to have to face it sooner rather than later.

“…ooookay. I wasn’t going to look, you know? I only want to read what you want to show me.”

“Yes, I know.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

Silence fills the room as Dream and Hob look at each other. He can tell Hob is not going to push, but oh, how Dream wishes he would. Maybe a push is just what he needs. Maybe Hob is the only person who can do it for him.

Dream looks at Hob’s chest once more. Open, welcoming, light. Free. At his eyes, loving, wanting, sincere. At his arms, reaching out for Dream, wanting to bring him closer, to protect him, to give him strength. “Duck, is there anything you—“

“—could you use they for me sometimes? I don’t think I’m… I don’t think I’m a he. All the time. Maybe.”

Silence now sucks the air out of Dream’s lungs. They stare at each other as his— their words move through both Dream and Hob’s brains. For a split second, Dream feels a surge of fear and shame, the horrifying possibility that everything went wrong and somehow a line was crossed. A line he cannot possibly ignore now.

Before he can dive into any more assumptions, Hob’s arms are around him in a firm embrace, almost crushing. A hand goes to rest on the back of their hair, fingers tangling with the soft, dark strands. Hob holds Dream like they are the most precious thing to ever exist. “—oh duck, I’ll call you whatever makes you feel good. Thank you for trusting me, I know how difficult this is. Thank you, Dream. I love you.”

Hob’s words feel like a soothing balm to Dream’s crumpled chest, that now opens up as they take a breath, as if the weight of the world had finally been lifted off their shoulders. Hob’s embrace feels like permission, like comprehension, like support. And love, so much love, so much that Dream doesn’t know what to do with it other than let their hands go to Hob’s softly stubbled cheeks and direct his face to meet Dream’s in the middle, lips crashing clumsily at first.

When Dream opens their eyes again, they are rimmed with tears. It’s okay, though. Hob would not denounce him for crying. Hob accepts it, celebrates their moments of emotional release.

“I know. It’s scary. You did something very big right now. I’m proud of you.” Hob presses a gentle kiss to Dream’s forehead, and doesn’t let of them. Dream is not bothered by it, in fact settling into Hob’s arms, like their bodies were always meant to rest against one another.

Dream wonders if Hob knew all along, like they somehow sensed Hob’s truth years before it came to light.

The next morning, their words are flowing again.

[nerves-nebula]

Hey hi i have a question

How do you script a comic. Like deadass idk how. I have like 30 short comics i want to make but have no idea where to start. Is it like- blocking first? Dialogue?? How

Poorly.

But no the best advice I’ve seen for this is to write it however makes sense to you. I don’t know how you’d break it into blocking and dialog when those two things happen simultaneously tho. For me, I write the story and then go through braking it up into pages (usually it’s a few things need to happen per page) which you then thumbnail yadda yadda etc.

I write the loose stitches comic script as a weird amalgamation of sparse, functional prose and notes to myself.

Its mostly dialog but I include relevant thoughts and descriptions and ideas i have for how the panels should look and what people should be doing, so I don’t forget important things like if someone needs to pick something up for a later part of the scene.

However I’ll also ignore those things later if they don’t serve me. If the notes say to pause for a panel bit I think that’s too much work and there’s no significant reason to pause then I don’t do it

I’m gonna show you parts of the loose stitches script now

In the first one I’ve written out the things reg should be feeling, even if that’s not 100% clear to the viewer, because it’s important for me to remember why I wrote him acting like that. In the second example you’ll notice a discrepancy between where the voice box is originally stated to be (off to the side) and where it ends up (in Atchkies pocket)

This is cuz I didn’t wanna draw a whole side table just for the voice box. You might also notice that it says dotty is being restrained, that’s another hold over from a previous version of the script that I am now ignoring. My point here is that it really doesn’t matter if you have vestigial writing in there as long as you can tell what’s supposed to be happening.

Anyway all of my comics start as bullet points/lists of things I want to happen, and how those things might lead into each other, which then get filled in with my dialog prose/notes writing. Sometimes I just write it inside the bullet points if I don’t think it’s going to be a long comic. That’s how I wrote all of the leo memory comic (see below)

(Also here’s some stuff in here about the memories Donnie saw that didnt make it into the final cuz they seemed too on the nose. Like I figured you guys got the point you didn’t need it spelled out. Also it didn’t work with the page design, but it’s there if you want it)

Tho for some reason I stopped at the very end? Idk. Like I said the script is for your eyes only babyyyy it works for youuu

If you were asking how to WRITE tho I don’t know how to help you with that. I just do it… and I’m only kind of ok at it :P

God this took forever to write on my phone and now my hands hurt :,)

[quintinh43]

Hi love! So I have a question… what helps you and writing your fics. I’ve been wanting to post something’s I’ve wrote, but to me they aren’t really that good, so I’m just wondering what are like your inspirations when writing because yours is so so beautiful

Hi loveee, thank you for the compliment it really warms my heart 🫶🏼🫶🏼

Ok, so the first thing I have to say is, honestly, I write for myself most of the time! For me, writing is stress relief cause I get to escape into my own little world of my creation.

That being said, I started sharing my writing because I felt it would help me improve. I can't even tell you how stressed/embarrassed I was with the first Quinn fic I posted on tumblr, even though I have been writing and posting fan fiction for yearsssss. It's pretty daunting to try something new and sometimes you just gotta close your eyes and jump.

My main thing was, it's ok if I think it's bad, I know I'll get more comfortable eventually.

With all of that in mind, here are some things I do to help me get into the flow of writing or help when I'm stuck on a scene etc. And just help me in general!

1. I need background noise!! This is different for everyone, but for me, I like background noise. If you haven't tried it, I would definitely recommend trying it, again it is different for everyone. I usually listen to instrumentals, or I'm watching Brooklyn 99 in the background. Idk why, but for some reason, Brooklyn 99 really turns my writing brain on! Maybe try a show/movie that is familiar to you!

2. I write on my phone! Everything gets written in my notes app, and when I'm done or close to done, I will copy past everything into an actual doc and then edit it on my laptop. I find that writing on my phone is less stressful. Maybe I'm traumatized from uni, but writing on my laptop just feels like a chore. Plus, if you write on your phone as soon as inspiration hits, you can write! You don't have to wait for an opportunity to get out your laptop and yadda yadda.

3. When I'm frustrated with my writing, I leave it for a little while and then come back later. In between, I'll try to look at writing prompts/scenarios on pinterest/tumblr and just think about how I would write them.

4. Write how you are comfortable! I'm big on metaphors, similes, and like flowery figurative language, so that's usually how I try to write. Another big thing for me is I want to feel when I'm reading, so I try to write in a way that mimics feeling. For example, if you're writing a scene where you wanna portray anxiety I find that in real life. When I'm anxious, my thoughts feel rapid and stunted. So I'll write short, choppy sentences. Or when I'm trying to portray the feeling of love, I'll write longer, softer, sentences, cause to me the feeling of love is something that you want to keep around.

5. Another thing I like to do, is I try not to mention something if it isn't gonna be useful/have a purpose. Don't get me wrong, sometimes I love throwing in those useless spare details cause I think they elevate the story. But when I used to write, I used to be super detailed about everything, and I found that it was a drag to read.

6. I'm not a big planner, I feel like planning limits me. Sometimes, I'll jot down a few bullet points of what I know I want to see, but other than that, I don't really plan. I also don't really write in a liner fashion. Sometimes, I'll start writing in the middle of a scene because that's what I'm most inspired to write, and then I'll go back and connect the beginning and such.

7. Don't delete your writing!! If you've written a scene and you don't like it anymore and think it doesn't fit, or it doesn't flow, font delete it! Copy paste it into an empty note/doc and then you can delete it from your main piece. I find that keeping my "bad writing" helps me grow. Plus sometimes I'll come back and use the scene later, or I'm a different fic! You never know.

8. Don't be afraid to take inspiration from your favorite writers! If you like the way someone writes descriptions, feelings, or something, try to reflect that in your own writing! Doing that really helped me to develop and flourish my own writing style!

All of that said, you know yourself best, and at the end of the day do what works for you. I hope this helped a least a little, and if you ever wanna hop in my messages and talk more I would be so so so honored 🫶🏼

And last but not least, I had to save my best writing tip for the end!

Write on the toilet - idk, but as soon as I'm on the toilet, all the ideas come flooding to my brain, and I literally can't stop writing. Judge me if you will, but hey, it works.

[foggyparadisecandy]

Once more ... no need to read this ... just me discussing personal messy stuff ...

For everyone who has been reading these catharsis posts ... I want to give a positive update.

In the end, K proved she was strong and brave as I always felt she was and she reached out to me to clear the air and give me closure.

I will forever be appreciative of this.

It would have been a hell of a lot easier for her to just bunker down and let things slide. It honestly reinforces many of the reasons why I fell for her in the first place. The strength she showed in this action is ... inspiring. God. She still stuns me.

She patiently cleared the air while I basically, straight-up interrogated her. I just don't have the words to describe how I feel about her amazing fortitude and patience throughout.

It not only cleared up a lot of things, it continued a change of perception that I had already begun before she reached out. I had started reading up on trauma and personality styles so I could better understand her pain (not that I could help her at the time but ... I still wanted to better understand ... idk why really except ... caring about her response and pain, and wanting to grow for myself) and I had come to realize how much my style of "concern and care" was most likely just creating more stress for her.

I have no excuses. I feel awful about it. She needed compassion and breathing room and I was crowding her out.

And that conclusion was correct. As she cleared the air, I saw that is exactly what I did. God does that make me ill. I didn't know any better but ... it's a weight that I need to figure out how to deal with.

I'm not saying she was perfect. I think ... the key is ... we both responded in ways that were natural to us. I had no empathy or understanding at the time because "needing space" is so foreign to me. I literally could not imagine that someone would not want my smothering blanket of love thrown over them.

I'm learning.

It is a PAINFUL lesson to understand that she was struggling and I was struggling and we weren't communicating - it all broke down on both sides.

I've said she was cruel. It's so much more complicated.

Yes, her actions cut me and hurt me but ... I understand better now. She wasn't being cruel. She was trying to survive the best she could.

As loving as I was in my style ... and I've said this many times before ... I can be "a lot" and she needed "a little" or even "none."

I was busy worrying about me and giving in to my fears that I was panicky and desperate.

IDK. In the end, it doesn't change the outcome which is what it is.

She's home and safe. My god is this such a relief for me. I have been so ... beside myself thinking she could be seriously hurt or worse and knowing how I had stepped over her troubles and hadn't picked up on. And yes ... I KNOW!!!! people keep reminding me ... I'm not a trained therapist and yadda yadda yadda but ... ugh ... it was still bothering me. If you have never been in that dynamic, you can't understand how important her well-being was to me. I'm still untangling that feeling!!

She is with someone who cares about her. This is such a relief too. Connections are so important. Anyone who reads my blog knows that I feel connections are the heart of our "best lives." This is so comforting to know she is with someone.

She is working on her stuff and getting more in tune with life and all that good stuff. I'm so happy to hear this.

She cleared up so many big and small concerns and questions I had.

I had already forgiven her. I know she read some of my catharsis posts ... where my pain was on display. Honestly I feel uncomfortable about that. I don't like her knowing how fucked up I was and am. *insert super-uncomfortable lol here*.

Plus ... although I recognized that she was in pain and I wrote about that in my posts, I never really UNDERSTOOD her style - her need to retreat from the world when facing massive stressors - until recently. I regret commenting that it was cruel of her.

If anything, her response was natural to her, and if I had paid better attention to her, I would have responded in a healthier way myself.

It's funny in life how people like me who give "too much" are generally considered healthier than people who retreat. But both styles are learned behavior and ... both styles are unhealthy in their own way.

Look ... I'm not saying this to convince anyone of anything but the truth is ... my approach was cruel TO HER as her approach was cruel TO ME.

She needed to be able to breathe. I was doing some very aggressive dom stuff with her at this time and ... fuck ... she was struggling.

And she is sorry for her approach and I am sorry for my approach. At least we both have recognized we bear mutual responsibility. God. I wish it was as easy for us to each forgive ourselves. I know her. I know me.

"FORGIVE YOURSELF" is a lovely idea but so fucking hard to execute in real life.

Even though I can't fully forgive myself ... I'm done beating myself up at least. I can't change the clock. I can't know then what I know now. Those days are done. Things are where they are. I'm growing and learning and getting better, and I'm going to do better with my next partner.

And ... very important to me ... I would love her to understand that, with the understanding and empathy I have now for her situation and style, "yes, it hurt me, but I don't blame you."

She has nothing to feel guilty about or to be sorry about. I had already forgiven her. That forgiveness has grown deeper with my new understanding and my new empathy for what she was going through.

The entire thing was a two-way street and we should have communicated better. WE. Not me. Not her. WE.

I thought we had a solid relationship and ... honestly ... we really really did. It was beautiful and lovely. I will always cherish what we had. She shared so much with me and I'm so lucky to have had that with her.

But we hadn't weathered a tough spot. We hadn't planned on a trauma point.

The truth is ... I still feel guilty for my part so she probably feels the same. My words are ... not enough. She has to get to self-forgiveness for herself just as I have to get there for myself. Forgive yourself is so fucking hard as a principle. So fucking hard.

Either way, for those of you out there who have been reading all this stuff ... and for those of you who sent her good wishes as I asked (ty ty ty!) ... she's going to be fine. And I'm going to be fine.

I am a lot stronger these days, but still fragile af. I'm still low-key depressed but ... tbh ... I've been low-key depressed my entire life. And things will probably get uglier as I dig into my childhood crap ugh.

But I'm learning so much, so fast, and, yeah, getting stronger each day.

Some days are hard. Very hard. But as she and I talked about a lot: progress is rarely a straight line. Some days you stall out and some times you even go back a bit. But that's why we keep our eye on our goal so we can re-orient and start moving forward again.

And honestly ... there are things she's working on and well ... not my business any more and ... I admit ... it's so hard for me because I'm me and feel how I feel ... it's so fucking hard to resist the urge to "help" her but the best help is to leave her be. She's strong. She's capable. She's a fighter. I've always believed in her and had faith in her.

IDK. IDK. IDK.

I'm working so hard on all areas of my life right now. It still feels like a bit of a sludge but it's picking up steam. I feel like I'm waking up to new possibliities each day and getting excited about stuff that I've had on auto-pilot for way too long.

I'm feeling this blog is reaching an end point for me. I've written hundreds of trances. Most get very little traction and ig that's ok because I write them to express a creative side.

But truthfully 90% of this blog was written for her since late April. lol. It's so crazy that a few months ago, I was going back to tag things I wrote for her and gave up because they WERE ALL FOR HER!!!! hahahaha

So I guess I need a new muse or maybe mothball this thing. Or I can post fun stories from my therapy sessions - kind of a sick vibe - but everyone could hear more about my parental damages and how dark I got in my late teens and twenties. Fun fun fun. The Foggy of today was a lot less sweet and kind and loving and caring back then.

I am not exaggerating when I say he was a dark angry monster who wanted to hurt people. Ahhhhh yeah... maybe I will share those stories.

If nothing else, they speak to how people CAN change and grow and evolve. We are not stuck by our past. Yes ... our past does shape us ... but we can adjust.

Plot summary:

I mostly used daily meditation, pride journalling, HATE journalling (not my fave but I filled notebooks and literally BURNED THOSE FUCKERS to let go of my anger, hate, and fear), vision setting, and reading two specific books each year through my 20s until the lessons soaked in.

NGL I still pretty much live with non-stop depression and a dark monster in the back of my mind who I can sense sometimes when I'm extremely frustrated. And THAT is why I'm seeing a therapist. To help deal with all this shit that I've suppressed.

To that point, K - if you are reading this ... I ran across a post from back in June that reminded me that I was thinking of ending things for myself so ... yeah ... don't blame yourself for my emotions. My pain, depression, darkness has always been in me. I am not sure what triggered it in June.

Probably the store ran out of my favorite ice cream or maybe I misplaced my car keys or some other calamity of equal measure. Depression is a fucker, dear reader, and you never know who struggles with it.

Be kind to others. Be kind to yourselves.

And btw ... I wonder how much I've learned. A very good friend told me today that I was not listening to her. I ... am such an imperfect person. I need to do better at listening.

[sugarcanehoes]

DAN BEING A BOOBS GUY VS ME BEING A PRE OP TRANSMASC WE'RE MEANT TO BE. PROBABLY. dude i want to hear all about the kinks you think he has... so easy to dom him i bet. hed laugh so nervously and get super super awkward if you started flirting with him... type of guy to moan if you playfully hit him... type of guy to start whimpering if you pushed your knee into his crotch... i NEED to fuck the shit out of this man im so glad there are like-minded people out there LMAO

- 🦠

great minds think alike 🦠 anon 🤝🤝🤝 you and me are the bearers of the truth 1!!

ngl when i first read this ask i thought you were asking about dan’s natal chart and i got all excited and wrote This Whole Thing ™ and now i reread your ask and i feel dumb LOL but i’m gonna put this here anyways with a TL;DR at the end so you can skip the astrology shit if you want :) 

mandatory disclaimer that i’m not a professional, this is just for fun, idk what i’m doing, yadda yadda 

so! usually when we don’t know someone’s birth time we just use noon to have an estimated chart, but since i like to do asteroid readings, i tried to guess his rising sign so we would have a more ~accurate~ estimative. from what i’ve read i believe he’s a sag rising bc of his easygoing, child-like, laughs at everything personality - also very tall boi with very long legs - but since i can’t know for sure i won’t be going into too much detail about it. it’s more a way to narrow down his birth time so we can be nosy lol

he has venus in leo in the 9th house. venus in leo ppl like to be the center of attention even if they’re shy so this can translate into dan liking to be the main focus of his partner’s attention during sex, also explains his raging praise kink since he wants to be worshiped and praised for doing a good job. i couldn’t find much about the 9th house but it gives off a reckless vibe so maybe he’d be into public sex ??? something like teasing him under the table while out on a date or calling him a good boy in front of his friends just to see him getting flustered lol also has to do with thighs so he might be into you sitting on his lap and/or grabbing his thighs during sex. i also read that 9th house has a ~foreigner~ thing to it so that also explains why dan is such a weeb (he 101% has jerked off to anime multiple times. he probably prefers watching hentai rather than porn)

mars in libra in the 10th house made me GIGGLE. every time i sniff out a sub they always have either libra mars or cancer mars. it’s funny bc 10th house is usually seen in a dom’s chart but mars in libra has never failed me. libra mars is all about the funny unsuspecting harmless guy that makes you laugh so much that before you know it you’re naked in his bed lol truly giving off “i’m innocent uwu” vibes to charm you. apparently 10th house also has smth to do with public sex (!) and the thrill of getting caught so dan is somewhere out there jerking off at con bathrooms silently hoping one of his friends knocks on the stall to check if he’s still alive. 10th house is all about control so for me this means he likes to be controlled i don’t take criticism !! and also orgasm control. and also maybe authority figures. 

he doesn’t have any signs in his 8th house but his chart is like precisely divided in half at his 8th house placement so he has both cancer and leo energy in his 8th house, which is the house of sex (among other stuff that we don’t care !!). 8th house in cancer also makes me giggle. tell me this man doesn’t have a mommy kink i DARE YOU. also where the boob guy thing comes in, possibly even a breeding kink, so so SO whiny and desperate it makes him look pathetic. one thing about dan is that he is Possessive, type of guy to get jealous so quickly, one (1) person looks at you in public and suddenly his mood soils and he wants to go home. again leo placements just further confirming his praise kink!!! me and you anon? we’re never wrong. 

also something something big dick something something it probably looks good something something pornstar dick something

NOW LISTEN. PLUTO IN SCORPIO 12TH HOUSE. ooooh this man is FREAKY freaky. type of dude to have a sex dungeon at home. type of dude to have a full side of his wardrobe dedicated to sex toys. type of dude to look at someone and be able to guess their kinks just by looking at them. type of dude to learn astrology just to pry into other ppl’s sex lives- oh hold on. i’m just saying he probably has a proship nsfw side acc LMAO he’s one of us fr !! pluto is the planet of sex, desires, secrets, everything that is forbidden etc and scorpio is knowingly The Sexy Sign of the zodiac so imagine my face when i saw this. literally giggling and kicking my feet. a man who likes sex so much that sometimes it might even be a little overwhelming. btw feet? 12th house thing, so i wouldn’t be surprised if he’s into that. 12th house and scorpio are also water based placements so think shower sex, sea sex, might be dedicated to make you squirt… perhaps also a piss kink that he’s ashamed of, since pluto is the secretive part of oneself… taking notes rn

idk much about aspects but he has pluto in sextile aspect with his chiron in virgo (which is about our deepest struggles and how we can heal from them), sextile is a positive aspect, and considering he has pluto in 12th house (house of the unconscious, fears, dreams, and anything relating to the psychic mind), maybe he finds refuge in sex in a way. maybe sex is (or could be) his way of letting go of fears and shame and trauma. maybe the only way he can truly feel free is by embracing his freakiness!!! [chants] one of us one of us one of us

lilith in gemini!!! quite literally speak to the mic. loves dirty talk, moans like a bitch in heat, yknow the drill. gemini also runs the hands and i read someone say “lilith in gemini might have a kink for sucking their partner’s fingers” and my heart LEGIT SKIPPED A BEAT. you know this man is on his back with 3 of your fingers in his mouth whining and looking up at you with big eyes just waiting for you to say he looks good like that. mhhmhFgNFFMHMGF i’m going INSANE i need him in ways that are concerning for society.

asteroids are my favorite part! starting off strong with eros in aries. eros is the asteroid of… well, eroticism lol typically ppl associate eros in aries with a dominant but for dan i think it’s more a case of “is so much of a sub that he would dom if his partner told him to” lmao again possessiveness and public stuff coming in, and also a very bratty attitude, type of guy that pouts when he gets jealous. aries also rules the head so pull his hair! grab him by the chin! make him look into your eyes as he sucks you off! sit on his face! there’s also a thing with casual hookups so that’s why i said he’d fuck on a 1st date asbhdgjhb (and now knowing he has pluto in scorpio this kinda ties it all together). 

ASTEROID LUST IN CANCER MADE ME SCREAAAAAAAAAMMM this asteroid’s name is self-explanatory i guess hashdj also where i got the boobs guy impression, since cancer rules the chest. just furthers the mommy kink, breeding kink narrative. read somewhere that it can also relate to mirror sex and 69 so. there’s that on that. again, very submissive, wants to be taken care of, will curl up in your lap and say please, mommy while touching your chest !

ALSO. HIS EROS IS IN 4TH HOUSE. 4TH HOUSE IS THE HOUSE OF CHEST, PARENTAL FIGURES, AND DOMESTICITY. HIS LUST IS IN THE 8TH HOUSE WHICH IS THE HOUSE OF SEX, GENITALS, SECRETS AND FEARS. HELLO??? DOES ANYONE HEAR ME???? [jay’s voice] sicko.

i pried into other asteroids as well but this is already SO FUCKING LONG OMG so i’ll leave that to another time LOL if you’ve gotten this far i applaud you and i hope you had fun reading all of it!! <3

TL;DR: praise kink, mommy kink, breeding kink, boobs guy, shower sex, public sex, jealous & possessive, can be a brat, is the freakiest among freaks, probably has an anime sex doll.

[forestlingincorporated]

FIRST IMPRESSIONS OF YOUNG JUSTICE: DARK CRISIS #3

The nice thing about #2 coming late, was I didn’t have to wait long for #3. 

Tim, you useless bisexual. 

“Sorry Bart, Conner looked at me, can’t do the smart thing today.” 

...look, I know Deathstroke shot Bart, but it really doesn’t feel like The Most Traumatizing Thing that’s ever happened to Bart. For me, this event is preceded by Bart saving Tim’s life by catching Deathstroke’s bullet like a badass, and proceeded by Bart eating a library, two very cool things that kinda overshadow Bart getting shot. It just doesn’t seem as big as facing your evil bio dad or your father’s killer. And like... Bart died. Why isn’t he facing, idk, Inertia? You know? Someone he’s fantasized about killing? Because of his traumatic death? 

lmao Tim

So... Kon’s acting like a bitch in this first half of the comic, and I’m not sure how I feel about it. His emotions have felt Understandable until now, but I’m hesitant to be harsh about it because, like Cissie, I’m not sure if Conner is meant to be fully in control of himself? Like, I BELIEVE this is Conner, where I was unsure if it was even really Cissie, but I kinda wonder... if maybe Conner’s acting up because he’s more “under the spell” of this place than the others. And I say that because the harshness of it seems out of character, but semi-aligned with the harshness from Cissue, and even from Cassie at the start of it all. This place seems to be toying with their emotions, but it’s not really doing it all at once - Cissie starts acting like a bitch when Cassie stops acting like a bitch, Conner starts acting like a bitch, then Bart - who’s been very level-headed - starts to get angry and emotional, but Tim’s emotions are still very much in check and in line.

I’m not loving what I’m seeing in Conner this comic, so I’m CAUTIOUS, but I’m still veering on the side of It’s All Part Of The Plot.  

Aw, Bart, you’re breaking my heart.....

Oof. Okay, that’s actually... I mean, it’s not FAIR, but I’m understanding Conner’s emotions again. And again, I’m speculating this “world” is probably making things worse. But it’s easy to forget that Conner getting lost in Gemworld wasn’t like when he died - even though they keep bringing up when he died. When Conner died, for him it was like taking a nap and loosing a year. When he was lost on Gemworld, he had to live a whole new life, hoping every day his friends would save him, and that hope probably dwindled as the months and years went by. And when he was rescued, they tell him they didn’t find him sooner because they forgot he existed. And when Conner’s feeling fair, he knows they couldn’t help that, it was out of their control, but it’s GOTTA sting. 

I see you. 

I am glad Tim is holding Conner accountable for his behavior, though. Future boyfriends need to not take each other’s shit. 

Ok, but seriously, it is really nice to see Tim sticking up for Bart while not completely pushing Conner away, because Bart isn’t completely wrong... they DID see Bart as more childish than they were when they were young, and Tim and Kon ARE closer to each other than they are to Bart, and it’s HARD feeling like a third wheel when your closest friends are BEST friends with each other. Tim has historically been a mediator in his civilian identity at school and the like, and he’s fought with Conner enough to know how to handle Kon when he’s being bullheaded, so it’s good to see him taking on that role when Bart and Kon fight. 

Oh, Bart, you’re such a sweetheart. Bart deserves all the good things. 

1) That’s... certainly an explination. I can see the hand of the author, lmao, and I’m not sure if it’s because she wrote this plot and then saw the continuity police on twitter and had to fix it, or if she just didn’t like how Kon finding out about Tim and Cassie (or maybe the death cult / cloning? unclear?) was origionally written, but I see we’re just taking some of Kon’s memories of the old timeline, chucking them into a shredder, and calling it a day. It’s officailly been yadda yadda handwaved.  

2) ......yeah, so, we’re building up to that conversation between Tim and Kon, right? You know... THE conversation, that was teased? ......it seems like they’re gonna Talk about When Kon Was Dead, and mayhaps how that relates to Tim’s coming out. I’m seeing where this is maybe going. 

This is why I’m suspecting bitchy!Kon is the doing of whatever fucked up being is messing with them, cause this feels... so in-character, lmao. I can’t even follow Kon’s thought process, but something in this conversation seems to have surprised some sense into him, and he suddenly feels a lot more like himself. 

Which gives me some hope for how Cissie’s been written. 

THAT is legitimately hilarious. 

You two with the tender, touches, and the eye contact, and the I Need Yous, fuck.....

[hottie0]

k so i had an idea for a chameron ao3 series of all the fics being conan gray songs but i got lazy and only wrote 1.5 stories for it so because i’m not acc gonna do it imma share the ideas i had cuz someone might find them useful so (btw these will be copied directly from notes the first time i wrote them, they can also be used for other ships if u want but i made them for chameron):

grow: a year after hs cam and charlie run into eachother in vermont and then u see a bunch of flashbacks of old nights and things at welton. they exchange numbers at the end or smth. (i did this one)

idle town: charlie can’t sleep at his new school. he reminisces and whatever. a little more focused on cam. he looks over at the other side of the room but cam isn’t there anymore. instead it’s his new roommate who he doesn’t even know the last name of. end it somehow.

generation why: pre-canon cam and charlie just talking on the roof. banter. romantics ensue on cams behalf. charlie doesn’t feel the same way. that’s why charlie treats him the way he does.

crush culture: charlie pining after cam. a bunch of little things cam does to push charlie over the edge. charlie talks to neil and neil says cam likes him too. he doesn’t. charlie kisses cam one night while studying and cam rejects him and they argue. this is the night of neils death. that’s why cam didn’t find out through charlie and everything hurt a little bit more than it should’ve.

greek god: cameron’s being made fun of all the time by charlie and he knows charlie likes him and idk tbh this one got deleted and idk what i had written

lookalike: pre-neils death cam and charlie dated in their time at welton then broke up which caused tension going into senior year. the dead poets knew. when the dps started charlie got a gf and wouldn’t stop talking about her. her name was elaine. he brought her to a meeting and she looks just like cam. damn.

the other side: falling out of love. the process.

the king: cameron accidentally reads a poem charlie had written for/about him. he stresses all day and acts weird. everyone else is like ??? at night cam decides f it and confronts him. it ends cute

comfort crowd: night time. tomorrow morning charlie was meant to leave welton so all his stuff was packed up. hed already punched cam so it was tense. to say the least. cam randomly gets up out of bed and charlie is like wtf?? cam fuddles around then he’s like “u coming” they go to the cave and have a meaningful talk and if they end up cuddling then that’s their business

wish you were sober: charlie and cameron get drunk in their dorm. cam can’t hold his alcohol well so he gets wayy more drunk. he tells charlie some personal shit. some of which includes the fact that he used to have feelings for charlie. charlie has feelings for cam. he’s sad and sends cam to bed.

maniac: short one. they’re at the same bar a few years later. not with eachother but cam knows charlie’s there. charlie is talking shit abt cam and calling him weird and blah blah. but just that night, charlie had called cam desperate after years. cam thinks abt everything. he gets up and leaves but doesn’t leave w/o saying a big ol’ f u to charlie. this ones so mean to charlie. sucks. anyways.

online love): they’re doing long distance because charlie got expelled. they break up over the phone. aw. make it depressing. maybe by them being interrupted before rly saying goodbye and shii.

checkmate: they’re playing chess idk i couldn’t think of anything better. just cute and fluffy cuz i say so.

the cut that always bleeds: cameron is in a problematic relationship w a girl he met at uni. they just went through one of their fight episodes. cam went back to his room but he needed company. he decides to go to charlie’s dorm for comfort. but they haven’t spoke since that evening years ago. charlie says “i thought i’d never see you again” yadda yadda cam tells charlie everything and they just hold eachother. the gf is like “plz take me back” so cam does and he never sees charlie ever again. cry abt it.

fight or flight: charlie has a gf but little does he know she’s cheating on him. he ends up catching her with her side piece in their apartment. it’s cameron. there’s a whole wtf moment and the gf is like “u two know eachother???”. cams like “i swear i didn’t know” the girl leaves but cam stays. they argue or whatever or just talk not sure yet. then they kiss and charlie says something dumb and it ends. also cameron is hot as shit in this btw.

affluenza: probs short. when charlie is getting ready to leave cam is like “so money can’t buy happiness” and charlie’s like tf did u say to me. they talk abt where charlie’s going and whatnot and money. “i can’t do the things you do charlie, don’t you get anything” charlie leaves feeling a bit more guilty.

(can we be friends?): cam and charlie’s life growing up together. cute moments of them falling for the other. “now charlie knows why he and cameron could never be friends.”

heather: charlie and knox are together. cameron likes charlie. one night charlie is drunk and it’s just cam and him in the dorm. charlie ends up kissing cameron as a joke and cameron doesn’t know. there’s a fic like this. after the kiss it’s never the same. knox doesn’t know what happened. cameron has to watch them be all buddy buddy and shit- even if they’re not out to the rest of the group, cam knows. cameron knows not to interfere with their relationship no matter how much he wants to. he chooses to sit and watch and keep all his feelings inside.

little league: charlie stops by a cafe one night because he has nothing else to do. it turns out it’s open mic night. someone gets up to read. that someone is cameron. cameron performs a poem called little league. charlie remembers things. he leaves before the poem is over. /OR/ Cameron is an adult, he's a doctor or smth bouj, he has a family, a house, the embodiment of the american middle aged straight white man dream life. But sometimes, in secret, he takes Welton's Yearbook out of the shelf, and he traces Charlie face, and he remembers.

the story: cameron and charlie are late-night swimming in the lake together. they’re fantasizing abt whatever and charlie says “we should run away” they continue the convo like they did the others. a few days later charlie brings it up again, seriously this time. “what? dalton are you on something?” no. they get into an argument and shit. about a week later cameron wakes up to charlie sneaking out, but this isn’t sneaking out like dps meeting sneaking out, he’s running away. cam: “charlie? what are you doing up?” charlie: “this is your last chance. you coming?” cam: *thinks* no.

fake: ratting on keating and more angsty mess

overdrive: first kiss moment. they’re meant to be studying but they got distracted and are just talking instead. charlie’s like “cam have u ever kissed sum1” cam: “i think u know the answer to that dalton” charlie: “do you want to” cam: “ha! that’s a laugh! who can i find within a mile of here that i could kiss” charlie: me. whole carpe diem whatever- “charlie are you kidding do you know what would happen if someone found out!?” “so i won’t let them” but they kiss and it’s cute

astronomy: au: cam never ratted out keating but neil still died but just that whole thing never happened. ok. ever since neil died both cam and char were different. their relationship was tense. before it had been perf and everyone was envious of them but after neil everything changed. cameron was more agressive and easily irritable. charlie was more reserved and quiet. they tried to fix it but they decided it would be best to split. they still saw eachother in hallways and stuff, but were no longer roommates. after a couple months, they were strangers.

people watching: a view on the cameron/charlie relationship from other people. they’re opposites obv. when ppl were first informed they were taken aback to say the least. but when they see how they are together they get it yk? yeah u do.

ur welcome for my genius guys u need it.

[charmspoint]

THANK YOU FOR SAYING THAT ABT THE BSD MANGA ILY THANK YOU I FEEL LIKE MY OPINION IS FINALLY VALIDATED WHICH IS: BSD has turned meh. I have become indifferent towards the plot due to the fact there are no real stakes - I feel like the OP characters like Dazai will always have a solution with a deus ex machina feel to it, making it impossible for me to care. With the recent chaos happening in the manga (I too gave up on the manga a year or so ago!), I was baffled to find out I could no longer enjoy it. My memory is poor, and I can't really pinpoint it at the moment, but BSD just... doesn't engage me as it used to. Keep in mind I was an obsessive fan of it and analyzed it to the tiniest details, but all of my great love for the series has long died, sadly. But! I am glad to hear you feel similarly about it because, yes, the potential was there, but it got terribly wasted.

Bruh don't I feel it, me and @autumn-foxfire have like monthly bitch sessions about the state of bsd at this point. I was also super invested in it in initial arcs (Up until the guild arc ended) and then slowly started petering off only to drop it the first time around the hunting dogs introduction. Then after some time i was like okay ill go give it a second shot, came to the vampire arc went 'wow this is really fuckin stupid' and dropped it again. Idk will I pick it up again, maybe I'll just stick to being an anime only, even tho I also have problems with some adaptation things but that's BESIDES THE POINT.

Please click under for The Point

The thing about Kafka is: He's really good at coming up with interesting concepts and ideas and REALLY BAD at executing them in any sort of satisfying way. Like, when I say I only like bsd until the end of the guild arc, I don't mean it was perfect. It could have handled it's female cast better, it would have been fun to see more mafia and agency team ups besides soukoku and shin soukoku, I still don't get why shin soukoku is supposed to be a replacement in training since Dazai and Chuuya still work together perfectly and even if they hate each other they hate each other less than Akutagawa and Atsushi AND have way more experience fighting together but that once again is besides the point. The point being those arcs of bsd were SATISFYING. We got introduced to two organizations, seen them butt heads and then have them forced to work together against a common enemy. It's very simple but it's effective and it's satisfying.

And then the rats struck.

While up until then bsd wasn't perfect it was fun and had lovable characters and an interesting plot and engaging dynamics. Rats arc wasn't horrible per say, the idea of the cannibalization was really fun (Though I think Kafka should have used it to get rid of Mori, nobody fuckin likes Mori) but this is where we slowly get introduced to what I think are two main failings of Kafka's writing: That he's unable to handle characters properly and that he likes writing smart things but doesn't know how to write smart things.

Kafka has a very, very bad habit of INTRODUCING TOO MANY FUCKING CHARCTERS. Every arc is a new massive group with like a bunch of members, one of who may actually end up being fleshed out before they are inventiblely replaced by another large group or maybe two why the fuck not. The mafia and the guild left lasting impressions on me and I can still name all the main members but fuck me if i know a single rat aside from Fyodor (AND ILL GET TO FYODOR). Kafka feels like someone who's idea of rising conflict is 'introduce a bigger enemy each time' and it's just so annoying. Chapters and arcs end up centering around these groups of new characters while old characters, who we loved the manga for, just fall into obscurity. He almost had me in the hunting dogs arc by giving Yosano a backstory. I was so excited! I was like!!! finally development for the agency!!! But that barely went anywhere did it. I've talked about this with Foxy but it really feels like Kafka is just BORED of the og characters and is trying to silently sideline them for his new shiny characters. When's the last time we saw Chuuya again, you know, the ex partner of one of the series protagonists? The next predicted mafia head? Is he important? Foxy tells me Dazai's been sidelined too, fUCKIN DAZAI, for a good while I was sure Kafka liked Dazai a lot better than Atsuhi for protagonist and now he's getting sidelined. I know bsd is still really popular in japan but at this point i think it would have been more merciful for Kafka to just end bsd and start a new manga with new characters instead of doing whatever weird metamorphosis this is turning out to be.

Introducing new characters isn't a bad thing of course, but bsd has become mcdonalds of new characters. They are cheap and disposable. I can't feel anything for them because I know nine times out of ten they'll barely make any impact and they'll disappear as soon as the new group slides in. When adding new characters you should do so while knowing what role those characters will play in your plot, what will they bring. If a character is just there to waffle around until they get shoved away they should probably be cut because they are wasting time and space. AND YOU SHOULDN'T SIDE LINE YOUR CORE CAST FOR UR SHINY NEW CHARACTERS YOU'LL GET BORED OF IN COUPLE OF ARCS ANYWAY, ARE YOU A TODDLER???

I still think that bsd could have been SO much better if instead of focusing on the next big evil group they just focused on shifting tension between the agency and the mafia. I mean they've had to team up for the guild and then they immediately got thrown into the cannibalization. It would have been interesting to see them pull against and pull towards those ties made during the guild arc when they are forcefully pitted against each other again (and decide that killing mori would be in everyone's best interest). Instead we got, idk I already forgot what the rats arc ended up being about, atsushi and aku team up again yadda yadda yadda, Chuuya gets done dirty and never recovers, Fyodor ruins Dazai

SO ABOUT FYODOR. As I said, Kafka strikes me as someone who REALLY likes to write geniuses and who wants people to think he's super smart but also has no idea how to show his work. At first this was okay. We had Dazai and Ranpo who were very good at pushing the plot along and sometimes you'd get explained how they got to that conclusion and sometimes you didn't but it usually wasn't a big deal. But then the writing became more and more and more of 'well he's smart so he figured it out so just trust me' without actually explaining anything and as you said, it ended up feeling boring, unengaging and very deus ex machina. You know what Kafka's writing reminds me off? That video about how Sherlock is so happy to stroke itself to how smart they look while never showing their work, you know the one. Kafka likes writing smart characters but doesn't actually know how to write smart characters so instead of giving us reasons and clues and explanations to how they come to some conclusion, how they predicted or planned or whatever, he just goes 'oh well they are super smart so they figured it out'. I don't think I need to explained why this is bad, annoying and unengaging writing. This is why i say Fyodor ruined Dazai for me, Dazai was fine as a genius but then they had to pit him against Fyodor who's another genius and things just got ridiculous. You know how in that sherlock video the guy points out the one scene that encapsulates every irritating thing about sherlocks writing. This had been it for me and BSD (thank you Foxy for helping me find the panels)

THATS NOT HOW CODES WORK, THATS NOT HOW ANYTHING WORKS, THEY WOULD JUST BE COMING UP WITH TWO DIFFERENT SETS OF CODES HERE. Even if they were both smart enough to remember every conversation in detail, how on earth are they supposed to 'guess out' what the other means. How are they supposed to confirm or deny that's what a certain word means in a way that can be understood, how can they even guess what the word the other guessed is IF THEY ARE BOTH TALKING IN CODE. KAFKA'S ANSWER: THEY'RE MONSTERS, THEY ARE JUST THAT SMART, NO NEED TO EXPLAIN IT BECAUSE THEY ARE JUST THAT SMART AND THAT'S YOUR SOLUTION AND THAT'S BULLSHIT. This scene broke bsd in half for me and honestly made me dislike Dazai for a long time (I got better), but it honestly shows so well how Kafka wanted to make his characters so smart he actually made his manga really fuckin stupid, ruining very good and interesting concept he had started with.

In the end, Kafka writes how I wrote when I was 15. With no idea where the plot is headed, adding new characters and situations whenever it strikes his fancy whether they work for the story or not, ending up just flopping around plot holes and fizzled out character arcs and boring ass writing. And that's fine for a 15yr old writing fanfiction. It's not fine for a presumably grown ass published author of a relatively popular manga.

Thank you for coming to my Ted Talk.

[the-bjd-community-confess]

Is not at all related to the blythe being called "Jap", besides the "Jap" part. But it's one of those situations I'll never forget, and maybe some of you in the doll hobby wanna hear about crazies in other hobbies. Let yourself feel a bit less "crazy". I'm in the figure collection hobby, and there's a popular store called "Big in japan". Well, the officials sites url is literally "Biginjap (dot) com", it's a Japanese store btw, handled by Japanese people, located in Tokyo. Sells anime merch. There was this one person who made a post about the store, asking specifically if "Biginjap" was legit, aka "Is this a legit store? Is it safe to buy from? What are your experiences." Very standard post/question, people have done that with loads of stores.

At least that's what I remember it being about, it certainly had something to do with the legitimacy of BiJ. Well, someone in the comments, let's call 'em CL, immediately freaked out calling the OP a racist, and how they were bad for using slurs and should be banned. A lot of people came to explain that "Hey, yeah we get it, but it's literally the sites URL, this person was just asking about the store, and it's not actually meant racist, since it literally IS the stores page URL." The URL was also linked a few times with these explanations, and people did acknowledge the awkwardness of it having "Jap" in the URL, but it's not like that's gonna change the official URL.

CL acknowledged their mistake and of course apologised Lol sike, not a snowballs chance in Hell. CL freaked out even more, and started calling the people correcting them racists, and that it's no excuse, even if it's the legit URL. I think they wrote at least 10+ responses to any comment directed at them, and even @ randoms who had nothing to do with it, but dared to use the URL in their comment. In the end, they wrote a huge comment essay which was basically a TL:DR "I'm sorry you're mad that I care about racism, and that you all are huge racists. I don't care that it's the literal stores URL, you're just excusing racism, since you didn't need to write the URL could have used the entire name "Big in Japan" or the intials "BiJ" You're just defending OP because you don't like being called out for being racist and using slurs." Yadda yadda.

-Funny a bit since you do need the full URL to ask for legitimacy for the URL though. And even if OP didn't, someone would have mentioned it, or added it in the comments, so we'd be back to sqaure one. I think the cherry on the sundae is that CL's profile pic was Kirino, from Oreimo, the infamous manga where the brother marries his biological younger sister at the end. Kirino is the sister. Idk, I think that's why it stuck to my mind.

~Anonymous

[into-september]

I was t agged by @marrys-dream-world, thanks a lot! I've never been one to ignore the chance to talk about myself. 

I think all the MLB people I know to write fic have been tagged, so I’m passing this on to @subdee and @aella-a:)

1. How many works do you have on AO3? 20

2. What’s your total AO3 word count? 55980

3. How many fandoms have you written for and what are they? 13, if you count the Digimon series separately: Pokémon, Digimon 02, Digimon Tamers, Digimon Frontier, Digimon Data Squad, Gravitation, Hikaru no Go, Cardcaptor Sakura, Fullmetal Alchemist, Hetalia, Kyo Kara Maoh, No. 6, FAKE, Miraculous Ladybug, 

4. What are your top five fics by kudos?

Vagary

I Shall Never Know That Second Death

Baking Soda

Skinless

Homeward Bound

5. Do you respond to comments, why or why not? I’m about to be politically incorrect, but here goes: Yes, I do, or at least I try my best to remember to. Sometimes because I honestly have things I want to discuss with the reader and chatting with my friends is always fun, but sometimes because I hung out at Fandomsecrets for long enough to know that there are a lot of people who get butthurt by authors who don’t appreciate the effort it took them to write a four word comment. Forgetting to reply for three weeks is bad enough; I don’t want a reputation of being an arrogant snot on top of it even though I personally don’t expect authors to reply to “omg this was so cute ^_^”

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

FUN STORY a year ago I sat down and rated the angst level of nearly every fic I’ve written, and did the stats and posted a graph and everything. 

The fic that prompted that particular embodiment of procrastination is currently the winner if we go by number of comments informing me that the reader is now crying in the middle of the night, but that has more to do with the size of the fandom and that kids these days apparently don’t go to Sunday school. 

My personal nomination is Sugar Sickness, because it is raw and desperate and hopeful and he finally understands that the person he truly wants is the boy and then bam, final line, he chose the girl anyway. (warning: I wrote that in high school and I am ESL and both kinda show, ngl)

7. What’s the fic you’ve written with the happiest ending? idk the one with the literal happy ending hur hur

Another Digimon Tamers fic with a saccharine title - Cotton Candy Kisses. ESL high school warning applies here too and the opening is super messy and I’m 98% certain that no Japanese person would get into some public kissing contest. I still really like the way I managed to take something so externally insignificant and turn it into not only a monumental narrative win, but one that twists from cynical to sincere and leaves everything changed in its wake.  

8. Do you write crossovers? If yes, what’s the craziest thing you’ve written? No amount of crazy can top Ace Attorney canon, and as of SoJ I maintain that it is completely on brand for Apollo Justice to have been adopted by a couple of intrepid Belgian journalists whose black-and-yellow fantasy monkey is innocently accused of manslaughter (no, I never finished it. Blackquill was the prosecutor because obviously Klavier was too much of a fanboy and he and Athena spent the entire investigation marveling at how Apollo never told them about his famous dads)

9. Have you ever received hate on a fic? I wouldn’t count it as hate myself, but you know. Someone who read a summary and still saw fit to read the story and comment to inform me that kink is harmful and please think of the children. On a kink meme fill. 

10. Do you write smut? If so what kind? Yes, but almost all of was for kink memes in fandoms I weirdly didn’t write other fic for. No, I’m not hunting down those links. 

11. Have you ever had a fic stolen? Not fic, to my knowledge, but I remember that there was an apprenticeshipping fic that used the same situation and narrative device a few weeks after I wrote Awake (HS ESL yadda yadda why am I linking to these stories). It was more flattering than anything, haha 

12. Have you ever had a fic translated? No

13. Have you ever co-written a fic? No

14. What’s your all time favourite ship? I can’t name just one. At the moment it’s the Love Square (four ships for the price of one!), but if history is anything to go by, there will come a day when someone else has all my attention

15. What’s a WIP you want to finish but don’t think you ever will? I geneally only write oneshots and don’t post WIP, but honestly - the epic Kyo Kara Maoh fic I wrote maybe half of for Nanowrimo a decade ago because I really wanted that 50% discount for Scrivener. It started with Conrad becoming the king of Big Cimaron and went on to have Yuri kicked off the Demon King Throne because he never got his powers back, Wolfram reluctantly taking over, plotting to have Saralegui take over BC so Conrad could go home, and it ended with an epic display of brotherly love during the epic final battle. 

The real fun part was that I just added characters from other anime into the sizeable background cast. There was The Demon Queen from Maoyu as an intrepid academic, Rosette Christopher as a hypocrically demon-hating noble, The Samezuka High School relay swimming team as Conrad’s personal guard, Oscar Francois de Jarjayes as Wolfram’s right hand woman and Juliet Fiamatta Ars di Capulet as a Blue Wind copycat and his star-crossed love of which nobody ever spoke (not to worry, Romeo Candore van di Montague was the noble son driven to patricide of the story’s big bad). Also including: Kanba, Shouma and Himari Takakura as the victims of someone’s evil magical scheeming and Ed and Al Elric as the kids who escaped it but not unscarred. 

The funnies part was that I got to give all these characters German names thanks to the setting. Shouma Takakura became Johannes Habicht, because Shouma --> Shaun --> Jean --> Jehan, which in German is “Johannes”. 

It was years later that I learned that Shouma and Kanba are allusions to a children’s story wherein the two main characters are Giovanni and Campanella. 

“Giovanni” is the Italian version of Johannes, and I’m still not over that. 

So yeah. I put a lot of work and love into that fic, and the main reason I’m not putting any more is that there’se like five people left on the internet who would be interested in reading it. 

16. What’s your writing strengths? The irony is that I’m really great at smut, if I dare say so myself. (note: the above happy ending is not smut by my standards). I’ve als got a knack for capturing characters’ voices, though for some reason I struggle with this with MLB

17. What’s your writing weaknesses? Plot. I’m very good at having characters talk at each other and carry out lengthy introspective. Having them interacting with their environment and making decisions with consequences? no please

18. What are your thoughts on writing dialogue in other languages in fic? You don’t look clever doing it, so cut it out. Using honorifics for Japanese dialogue is okay. 

19. What was the first fandom you wrote for? Pokémon

20. What’s your favourite fic you’ve written? Here’s a story: 

I am not a fan of FAKE. It’s an okay manga - very trash, much garbage, but the chemistry between Ryo and Dee is REAL even though the rest of it is utterly useless. I could have forgiven that if I wasn’t alive in a time where people were misreading Gravitation in tragic attempts at what we later would call “performing woke”. I was very much a fan of Gravitation, and the way people would accuse it of ew evil uke seme and rape glorification and whatnot while simultaneously praising FAKE for not being that (sure jan) and also for having “great female characters” (uh huh) and everything else that was good and sacred in 2005...

yeah, I had very little patience with FAKE. 

That did not stop me from writing one thousand words of quiet, life-changing epiphany set in that universe. 

It’s not the best story I’ve written, but that epiphany feels like the most important thing I’ve told yet. 

[trophywifejimgordon]

okay so, oswald’s stupid aliases meta? oswald’s stupid aliases meta. 

after returning to gotham in 1x3, oswald fairly quickly takes on a few false titles, first when confronted by a fish mooney lackey in an alley who recognizes him as the ex umbrella boy (in a panic, he tells the man that he must be confused, his name is dmitri... yeah, no), then when trying to endear himself to don maroni (trying to claim italian heritage, he calls himself paolo), and finally, in 1x4, when introducing himself to barbara (”i’m peter. peter... humboldt.”). 

so.

of these, and i’m separating the last one into two parts, i pretty much have the least to say about dmitri. while oswald has some time off screen to think about the other names, the confrontation with the mook forces him to come up with that one on the spot, so imo it’s the least likely to have heavy significance; likely he just chose it because it’s a very slavic name to fit the very slavic accent he’s not fooling anyone with. if i were really pressed about it, i might point out that dmitri is derived from demeter, the greek goddess of the harvest (among other things). demeter is responsible for the growth of the crops, but also presides over the cycle of life and death and the sacred law; one of her titles is “law-bringer,” referring to the idea that idea that law and order formed in agricultural society. the interaction oswald has here with this mook is notable in that--before he kills the guy--oswald insists that “gotham needs him! [he is] its future!” oswald aligning himself, consciously or not, with being responsible for gotham’s fertility, its health, and most of all its structure, would not be out of character for him, and is in fact directly supported by his interactions with the man to whom he gives the fake name. 

but that’s all pretty tenuous. 

next up, paolo! this one, i had fun with. see, i had a somewhat classical education. i read the inferno. that being so, my immediate connection with the name paolo (and, indeed, the only major literary connection i could find) was to the story of paolo malatesta and francesca da rimini. they’re condemned to the second circle of hell for their lust, yadda yadda, whatever. i’m mostly just concerned with the man himself; one source (from the owlcation page on paolo and francesca) describes him as “a romantic sort, a man not really interested in the world around him.” (emphasis mine.) which is fun, because guess what oswald’s doing at the time that he gives this name? he’s almost just been hired as a dishwasher at bamonte’s, maroni’s favorite restaurant. given the job, he’s warned that he hears nothing, sees nothing, says nothing. in all likelihood, oswald gives maroni this name mainly for its obvious italian origin, attempting (successfully) to endear himself to the obviously italian don by claiming “his mother’s” italian ancestry. however, there are a lot of italian names he could have chosen from. i don’t see why his choice of this one couldn’t also be a subtle way of reaffirming that he’s following the rules set out for him. paolo malatesta’s wikipedia page (and like, wikipedia as a source, i know, i know, but) takes this a little further, recounting that paolo is traditionally portrayed as a man “not very inclined to aspirations for power.” very NOT oswald, obviously. at the same time, very appropriate for his meek act as he slowly endears himself to maroni. even spicier, though, is this: “recent investigations, however, reveal [paolo] as a young man very attentive to politics and immersed in the political intrigue of the time.” so, could this mean that his fake name is not only a reaffirmation of his lowly position, but also a very, very veiled hint that he’s more than he seems? it would feel appropriate, in this case, that the traditional interpretation of malatesta is the one that oswald is banking on to facilitate his squirm into maroni’s inner circle, while the contemporary reading is the one he actually identifies with. that’s oswald all over; in touch with the old ways, yet in a class all his own.

a little less dramatically, paolo, like the anglicized “paul,” has roots meaning “small” or “humble.” so, in more ways than one, the name can be seen as oswald bending at the knee to maroni’s apparent superiority... and beginning to bide his time.

now, peter humboldt. 

you know, i really never did like this name? i’ve watched 1x4 at least six or seven times, and it always kind of made me go :/ when he offered it, because it’s just kind of... ugly, i guess. i have to say though (while i still think it’s ugly on sound alone), i’m fully obsessed with it now. 

like i said, i’m breaking this down into two parts. my analysis of the “peter” half, as with my analysis of “dmitri,” is a little more tenuous, just because it’s a fairly plain, common name. however, the low hanging fruit is the apostle peter, and never let it be said that i don’t take the low hanging fruit. so... peter. on the surface, oswald doesn’t have a whole lot in common with the story of peter the apostle, and that kind of threw a wrench in my analysis for a while. being inclined to fit that particular square block into this particular round hole, though, i got there. don’t worry, y’all. my penchant for bullshit knows no bounds.

first thing’s first, it bears note that “peter” was an alias of sorts for the apostle, too, since his given name was simon/simeon. he was jesus’s first disciple, and went from that to eventually heading up the church after the crucifixion and all following, becoming the “first pope.” such an ascension is a little reminiscent of oswald’s from umbrella boy to the head of the gotham underworld, i guess. and that’s cool. But We Can Go Deeper. i think it’s always kind of useful to keep in mind who the alias is for at the time; who oswald is trying to fool. in this case, the recipient of his bullshit is barbara kean, with an audience of an already in-the-know jim gordon. before his ascension, and furthermore, before either of them joined with christ, peter was already affiliated with a few other disciples: andrew (his brother), john, and james. (neither here nor there, but st. james was the first of the disciples to be martyred. jim...) peter and james--and the others, but i’m talking about peter and james--worked together; they were fishermen. in light of his audience, i think that it’s not entirely inconceivable that oswald is affirming his pre-ascent connection to james gordon (who he does exclusively refer to as james for the duration of the scene, rather than the ‘jim’ we get a lot more later on). not to mention, you know, the whole nautical theme. it’s not a particularly inspired link, but it does kind of work for him. additionally, while i still admit this is not the strongest meta i’ve ever written, oz choosing this name for these reasons would pair nicely with a running theme later in the season (that gets more or less dropped off by season 2, disappointingly), wherein oswald is repeatedly implied to have at least a tenuous christian background and some possible lingering expression of faith... think about the season finale, when falcone tells him he’ll burn in hell and oswald is momentarily taken aback, admitting, “i do worry about that.” 

(while i’m on this particular bullshit, one other thing that peter is known for is denying jesus three times after his death, but ultimately being forgiven and heading jesus’s church anyway. because i am a lover of Increasingly Tenuous Connections, i kind of see this as foreshadowing of the twist in 1x7. oswald’s protests to fish in the pilot that he would never betray her are reminiscent of peter’s insistence that even if every other disciple renounced jesus, he would not. naturally, he did betray her, and implicitly falcone through her. he continues renouncing his falcone ties, first by secretly joining maroni and then by openly joining maroni and threatening to spark a gang war... but at the end of it all, we learn that his “loyalties” (such as they are) never actually changed--he’s still falcone’s man. just. idk. idk. i’m Thinking About It.) 

aaaaand, finally, humboldt. 

so :) 

this is the part that i honestly wrote this whole thing to explore. because the thing is? i looooooove that he chose the name humboldt, now that i feel like i know why he chose it. i still think it sounds like a stupid name, but the subtext? the implications? UGH! 

right off the bat, my first impression was just that it sounds like the word “humble,” which goes back to the thing with paolo. neat enough. but, this name isn’t given to don maroni--it’s given to barbara. and remember, that’s important. so, what does humboldt mean, other than that? well, the one person with that name famous enough to bear mentioning is apparently alexander von humboldt. i’m certain that the name is, one way or another, a reference to him... and i’ll get to why in a second. he was a prussian (so, eastern european--check) polymath, as well as a naturalist, romantic philosopher, explorer, etc, and raised mainly by a single mother to boot. not all of his hats are directly related to oswald’s interests and skillsets, i’ll grant you, but the fact that he was a naturalist does have direct implications for why i think oswald choosing this name was a deliberate reference to this person by the writers of the show, because see, the thing is, there were quite a few animals named after him... including Spheniscus humboldti.

the humboldt penguin.

given that it’s gotham, i do have to acknowledge the possibility (probability) that that’s as deep as it goes. the writers were looking for a clever way to slip another penguin reference in there (they’re not. exactly. subtle, especially in season one, with the way that the characters are going to turn out), they looked up breeds of penguins, found this one, that’s it. but, on the other hand, there are other breeds of penguins that they could have chosen, and they chose this one. whether it was deliberate or only an accident, the decision was made, and i am running with it. 

because, like, another fun thing about humboldt: he was gay. 

(side note 2: you know tfw you’re on someone’s wikipedia page and there’s a ton of information about them and their life and their contributions to science but you’re like outta my way i ONLY want to know this man’s sexuality? ah, the personal life tab. where would we be without you.)

well, it’s one of those situations where you have to decide if you’re going to try to ascribe modern sexuality labels to historical figures, and at the end of the day, i won’t really get into it. however, though there is some scholarly discourse that cites him as a largely asexual figure (and while i’m definitely not getting into it and do not intend this as an attack on the asexual community in any way, i have to say an obviously gay man being desexualized to make him more palatable feels... familiar), the facts seem undeniable that he experienced same-sex attraction, whether or not you want to define this as exclusive. it is speculated that he had notable affairs with or at least vehement attraction toward wilhelm gabriel wegener, reinhardt von haeften, françois arago, and possibly his valet seifret, among others. maybe gotham writers didn’t intend for this little throwaway alias to be read as an announcement of oswald’s sexuality (although, even if “humboldt” wasn’t, the exchange he has with barbara--“i never get to meet any of jim’s friends, because he doesn’t tell me anything” “men.” “don’t i know!”--sure was... something), but as i am not a coward, i am perfectly content to read it as one anyway. and don’t forget what i said--this is the alias he gives to barbara. barbara, about whom he knows a possibly suspicious amount, given that she’s almost irrelevant to his political schemes. barbara, whose apartment he went to for jim gordon. barbara, who is, perhaps, his perceived romantic rival. 

look, it’s probably just a name and a penguin joke. but what’s the point of metatextual analysis if you can’t be like “he showed up and told barb his name was peter humboldt because he wanted to affirm that his origins are tied to saint jim’s and let it be known that the two of them are in competition for jim’s attention all in the most dramatic way possible and while smugly congratulating himself on being so clever and subtle”?? this isn’t really a threat--in contrast to how creepy he is with women he is threatening, namely fish and liza, oswald is downright courteous to barbara--so much as it is an indulgent expression of petty jealousy. i think he wants jim but perhaps doesn’t even realize the extent or in which way yet; he just wants barbara to know, on some level, that she’s sharing, and jim to know (because jim is just as much an audience to his performance here, and he knows that the alias is fake, might be driven to consider, with that detective brain of his, why he chose what he chose...), on some level, that they’re tied. 

oof. ok. that was a lot, but one last thing. since i’m already indulging in gratuitous oswald parallels with humboldt anyway, i might as well point out this line from a letter he wrote to reinhardt von haeften, after von haeften’s engagement to a woman: “Even if you must refuse me, treat me coldly with disdain, I should still want to be with you... the love I have for you is not just friendship or brotherly love, it is veneration.”

i’m on my bullshit, but... you can hear it in his voice, right?

[madokasoratsugu]

cinderella au meta notes

or: the plotline that never happened because i was so caught up in the euphoria of writing Fritz/Lucette Cinderella AU, i forgot that i had to have a plot

also: a bunch of bonus facts i guess !

this basically spoils the whole fic (that you can read here) which contains Fritz and Rumpel route spoilers, so read with caution ! under the cut bc it got Long :”))

this meta was initially written on a tumblr post bc it was meant to be a short ~2k thing (HAHAHA). then it got so long my computer started crashing and i had to move to google docs. 

i wrote this with disney live action remake osts AND six the musical in the background. it was a wildin’ experience listening to ‘dont lost ur head’ while writing Fritz be a chaotic mess in the beginning, then listening to ‘how does a moment last forever’ when writing the Fritz/Lucette garden scenes.

Karma and Fritz are childhood friends ! both boys who were more interested in being a knight than inheriting a kingdom, but learnt their responsibilities along the way.

on that note: none of the characters were exactly...planned to appear. the initial tweet thread idea only had Fritz, Lucette and Alcaster casted - the other characters just kinda wrote themselves in this meta. 

im pretty sure it started with Karma barging his way into the fic in act one, then i had to have someone balance him (Waltz), then i needed someone to play the music for their waltz (obvs that had to be Rod), and then i got sad thinking Rumpel would be left out, but Lucette’s broken glass slipper scene conveniently needed someone. the Widdensovs just kinda came into the picture by virtue of Lucette just needing someone to interact with when she wasnt at the ball LMAO 

everyone else just didnt make it in the natural progression of the fic, and i didnt want to shoehorn them in just for the sake of having them appear.

however: Parfait was initially going to make an appearance as a duchess who snuck Lucette out to her father when she came to the castle for help when her manor burnt down. here’s a lil snippet of her scene:

(no one had, the last time she came; the smell of smoke still clinging on her, her head slamming a cacophony - surviving only thanks to the bravery of a certain court lady now disappeared, who heralded her to a servant’s exit, gave her gold and directions to her father, told her, run, told her im sorry, and cried, tears dripping endlessly from her pale pink lashes.)

Parfait is well and alive in this AU btw ! she’s just ‘disappeared’ bc she’s living somewhere secret with her goth wife Delora.

(side note: i realise Rumpel seems a lot like Lucette’s fairy godmother in the act thirteen. not intended, but i liked the imagery enough to let it stand :”)) bippity boppoty chevalier ! )

Varg and Lilja are both Swedish words. ancient Angiellian is partially Swedish. there’s probably ikea in this AU. let that sink in.

the swan mask Lucette was wearing was meant to allude to Odette and Odile from Swan Lake (because Fritz and Varg, white and black, swans are pretty yadda yadda), and i was going to write some really neat symbolism about that but i forgot lol ! 

(also the idea just never worked for me bc Odette and Odile aren’t the same people like Fritz/Varg but i wanted to reference Barbie Swan Lake (2003) ok let me live)

pour one out for our man Fritz who got rejected on his birthday. f. 

Emelaigne is the MVP. older sisters, no matter how truly Head Empty they are, always pull through when you need them. 

“isn’t the moon beautiful tonight” is a direct reference to an anecdote (which may or may not be true) about Natsume Souseki, a famous japanese writer, who translated ‘i love you’ to that phrase in order to account for the indirect characteristics of japanese speech.

Rumpel is the royal doctor, and has been apprenticing in the castle since Fritz was a child, before taking over the position as an adult ! so yes, Rumpel definitely rubbed off on Fritz in terms of values and morals.

with regards to Fritz and Lucette’s curses: i never really gave it much thought, but the vague idea i had was Lucette being cursed by Hildyr for disobedience (manipulative parenting say eye), then Hildyr dies lol and Lucette breaks her curse eventually.

with Fritz, he was likely cursed out of political reasons/jealousy and Varg was the result. works bc either way the curse meant for Fritz to be 1) inconvenienced or 2) dead/taken out of consideration for succession so like...a pain in the ass replacement who behaves the exact opposite of a prince works too.

this was hinted at vaguely in the fic, but Fritz became very secluded and hid himself in the castle for the years it took him to come to terms with his curse and break it. even then, because there was no one around him to really affirm his identity or accept him, he remained very withdrawn and a shell of his former self. 

i reckon it took him about 5-6 years to break the curse. so that’s a lot of time alone. Fritz was basically a NEET.

all jokes aside: Lucette and Fritz each broke their curses with their own willpower and effort, but remain the mostly the same because there was no one around them to truly understand or accept them for who they were, or who they became.

(until they met each other, of course)

also, idk if it was hinted well enough but Lucette and Fritz actually were in an engagement once, when they were children/early teens ! i intended to allude to this more with Hildyr giving Fritz Lucette’s portrait, which results in him recognising her, but it just never fit in anywhere. so yeah ! that’s another reason how/why Fritz knew who Lucette was at first glance. 

i figured the previous engagement would also help ease the court into their eventual marriage despite the whole ~*disgraced noble*~ thing. idk. i know nothing about western history and how it worked except for ALEXANDER HAMILTON (america sings for yooouuu) and divorced, beheaded, died, divorced, beheaded, survived.

however, Alcaster broke the engagement, as stated in act thirteen. the reason was basically: Angielle in this AU works not by a hereditary monarchy, but rather the previous monarch getting to choose whomever the fuck the want to succeed them. Hildyr and Alcaster were both in line for the throne, and Hildyr wanted to ensure that even if she couldn’t get the throne now, she still had a chance in the future if her daughter married Alcaster’s (who would then be king) son. Alcaster was like lol fuck off because he wanted power all to his family and took things into his own hands to ensure that would never happen (which involved: inciting public hatred against witches/Hildyr, breaking Lucette and Fritz’s engagement, and generally being a dick.

that’s about as plot heavy as it gets yall. the rest is just dumb idiots falling in love !

...............except for the political usurp that happens later, with Fritz’s faction forcefully taking the throne away from Alcaster’s tyrannical rule, which leads to a dramatic sway of public favour to Fritz and Lucette.

and then they live happily ever, ever after. 

(carrie underwood. yes i am planning an Enchanted AU dont look at me.)

the end !

[theteaisaddictive]

It just hit me in a flash that i never asked for your thoughts/rankings of the Cats 2019 soundtrack. Please forgive my ignorance and bestow the gift of your wisdom upon us

i have been caught in a whirlwind of events, which is why i have not responded sooner, but i’m currently home sick so what better excuse is there to wax evangelical (evan . . . jellicle??) about the cats movie soundtrack than this precise moment

i. jellicle songs for jellicle cats

i mean. well. first things first, it was recorded in advance (i assume that the 90s version was a live recording, but i could be wrong here) so of course it is going to sound awkward and stilted. this is nothing compared to how awkward and unnatural it is to see a bunch of actors naked save for cgi fur and ken-doll-like crotches singing and . . . uh, i think they’re dancing? -- around the white cat victoria, who did not have nearly so big a part from what i can digest of the 90s youtube clips. my favourite part has to be the fucking techno beat though. god damn. party on, you funky little abominations.

ii. the naming of cats/the invitation to the jellicle ball

yes, i will be smushing the exposition-related songs together unless i feel like separating them. this is my life, these are my choices. idk, it was fine?? i guess? munkustrap (aka The Main Cat Who Isn’t Victoria or Judi Dench and Quite Frankly Deserved Better Because He Was Giving This Performance His All) kind of just says the naming instead of it being a company-wide thing. they did not include bombalurina or demeter’s names in the naming, and this was the point at which i realised that the big name stars were not, in fact, going to lounge around in the background for the entirety of the play like they do in the musical. :(

the invitation also sees my Sweet Boy mr mistoffelees get his first solo line, which is good bc i fell in love with his sweet little face over the course of the film, and bad bc it marks the start of the absurd victoria/mr mistoffelees subplot which i am convinced was put in because of course a plotless weirdmageddon like cats needs a romantic subplot

iii. the old gumbie cat

something that needs mentioning is that idris elba shows up as macavity at various points in-between songs. i’m pretty sure he shows up for the first time here and like, tries to lure victoria away?? i think?? anyway it obviously does not work bc unfortunately we are stuck with victoria for the entire film, so onto the gumbie cat song we go.

what can i say about the rebel wilson song that hasn’t already been said. she unzips her skin. the cockroaches are uncanny in the extreme. there are slater-sized mice played by children. there is no funky tap routine, or if there is it was erased from my mind by the frequent awkward gaps in which rebel wilson attempted to be funny. dear god. 

iv. the rum tum tugger

miiiiilllllkk

ok, ok, fine. jason derulo gave a fun, lively performance and didn’t even have the decency to do a bad english accent, which means there is at least one song which i have to genuinely like and can’t just like ironically. but also miiiiillllkkk why is there a milk bar in london which is perfectly cat-sized whyyyy. 

v. grizabella

i am going to be honest. i think that this song appeared later in the movie, but the soundtrack only lists ‘highlights’ so it doesn’t appear in the track list. idk what to say. there are some girl cats (unnamed, although i think they have names in the stage version) who are mean to grizabella and then they say that she started working for macavity?? i’m not sure if this does or does not imply that he became her pimp, although he certainly has the coat and hat for it, which only raises more questions which i dare not put voice to.

vi. bustopher jones

fuck james corden. what the fuck did he do to the refined, fat old cat who frequents gentleman’s clubs and only dines on the finest stuff?? he made him dig around in the rubbish bins and interrupt the song twice to make ‘jokes’ about how fat he is. god i cannot fuckign stand james corden and i do not think he’s funny so i’m aware i may be biased but still. god. 

oh yes and then at the end macavity lures him over to a giant bin (in full view of the other cats, might i add) and thanos snaps him out of existence, but sadly not out of the movie. rebel wilson also got thanos-snapped earlier i just forgot to mention it.

vii. mungojerrie and rumpleteazer

i understand that this melody is the original melody and that the melody used in the 90s recording was a change made for broadway; however, this was the most boring fucking song in the movie and they should have used the broadway version, good night. also victoria is there while they burgle the house, for some reason, bc having an audience surrogate means she needs to be in Every Fucking Scene, so that was a Choice.

viii. old deuteronomy

a nice, sweet song introducing judi dench, sung by munkustrap in such a manner that i began to wonder if he was like, her boytoy or something. also the nuzzling is, like, out of control. i know there’s nuzzling in the stage version, but onstage they're also all crawling around on all fours and stuff whereas here they’re bipedal most of the time. it makes it look like everyone is constantly going in for a kiss when they’re actually just being sociable, and it is fucking disorienting.

ix. the jellicle ball

by the way, the jellicle ball itself takes place in some sort of cat-friendly dilapidated theatre, and it is both the weirdest and least weird thing about this whole movie. 

idk, it was fine?? oh wait, i actually forgot -- so waaaaay back at the start, victoria has a famous solo which wasn’t actually a solo in this version but danced with munkustrap, which . . . .was a Choice. so now she dances with like five different male cats, and it gets frantic, and Every Single Cat is just tearing it up on the dance floor, seriously the dancers in this are incredible, and then i think they all collapse on the floor in a heap, and it was at this point that i learned to be thankful i was not subjected to watching a cgi cat orgy while sitting next to my horrified sister

x. grizabella the glamour cat/memory (prelude)

like i said, i can’t remember what order this happens on the movie, so i’m taking the tracklist from the olc on genius. anyway victoria sneaks out for . . . reasons, and she sees grizabella. and grizabella is sad, and sings her song in the first person, because demeter got cut, because fuck demeter, i guess. oh yeah, and tom hooper, he of the masterful subtlety, had jennifer hudson sitting at a lamppost with withered leaves collected at her feet which she pointed to at the relevant lines. i’m surprised he didn’t add a sound effect of a moaning wind.

xi. beautiful ghosts

this was the song that taylor swift wrote for the movie and by god can you tell. it is incredibly jarring and serves no purpose (beyond, i guess, the purpose of deepening the nothing character of victoria), and -- ugh. look, it’s a pretty little song, and both victoria and taylor swift sing it well, but it’s thoroughly unnecessary. it’s like ‘suddenly’ in 2012 les mis -- why is this here??

xii. gus the theatre cat

i am not ashamed to admit that ian mckellen ‘singing’ gus the theatre cat was enough to bring a tear to my eye. because, well. the man may not have sung, but by god he acted. i challenge anyone with a heart to sit through all of cats and not even feel the slightest tug at their heartstrings when gus’s song plays. not even judi dench lifting one leg in appreciation could completely break the mood. oh wait. it did. (also gus got thanos-snapped by macavity immediately after exiting the stage)

xiii. skimbleshanks the railway cat

oooooh fuck YESSSSSS this is the single best song in the whole damn film. skimbleshanks himself?? wonderful. iconic. beautiful. his tap routine?? inspired. he’s skimbleshanks the railway cat -- the cat on the railway train! he inexplicably is wearing red dungarees, making him the fourth cat to be wearing clothes for no reason, and at the very end he spins like a top all the way into the air, before being thanes-snapped out of existence (but happily, not out of the movie) by.....

xiv. macavity the mystery cat

taylor swift is there. she’s undressed except for her cgi fur and a pair of stage heels. she starts tapping her little container of catnip over the collective of cats, causing munkustrap to make the sort of face you see reeve!superman make when he’s being poisoned by kryptonite, except that he is a cat being drugged with catnip and it is hard to take him seriously as a result. the song itself is a perfect guilty pleasure. taylor swift’s accent is shitty enough that you can enjoy the ridiculousness of the entire situation. idris elba cuts in to join the final chorus on ‘the Napoleon of criiiiiimmme’ and then he takes off his pimp coat and is . . . distressingly nude for the rest of the film. he dances briefly with taylor swift. it’s a thing.

anyway they thanos-snap judi dench to a boat on the thames bc she won’t let him go to cat heaven and the rest of the cats are left discombobulated. this is when Local Sadboy mr mistoffelees is uh, peer-pressured into attempting to magic judi dench back to the cats. bc mr mistoffelees has an arc now, you guys. and his arc?? is about getting his mojo back.

xv. mister mistoffelees

this song is also sung in first person by mistoffelees, which makes less sense when you get to the second verse, but whatever the movie only has about twenty minutes left let's just do it. it’s a solid song, but they keep pausing after every chorus to see if he can get judi dench back yet, which really dampens the groove that they have going on. anyway, they get her back, mr mistoffelees believes in himself now, yadda yadda yadda. meawhile back on the boat, this dickhead apparently didn’t bother to teleport the other cats back, so they fight their way out and rebel willson unzips her skin again. at this point in the cinema i was praying for mercy.

xvi. memory

memory was a song. it was clearly sung with a lot of emotion. for me, personally?? that emotion did not connect. sorry jennifer hudson. oh yeah also victoria has a verse in this song and i mentally wanted to s c r e am because this is not your fucking moment victoria, let the sad jennifer hudson cat belt her lungs out in peace

xvii. the ad-dressing of cats

god. let it end. let it end. this last ‘song’ was dragged out minute after minute after minute. judi dench looked into my very soul when she told me a cat was not a dog, and i still don’t know what she found there. when she started talking about cream and pie i could see munkustrap, he of the Giving This Performance His All, continue his impeccable acting by making faces of delight at her words. oh, munkustrap. even now, at the very end, you brought me joy. thank you, dear cat. thank you. 

[valtharr]

Wait wait I just saw an ask you replied to, and I want to make sure—you don’t support people fantasizing about kids or shipping them with adults, right? I thought it was a given, but idk anymore

Do I support (adult) people having sexual fantasies about minors? Easy answer: Of course not.

Do I support people shipping fictional underage characters with adult characters? Honestly, I think that question requires more nuance.

Why do I say that? For one, because I think it should be obvious that a real adult person fantasizing about actually physically molesting real, actual kids is a bigger problem than someone thinking that a completely fictional adult and a completely fictional child would make a good couple. Don’t get me wrong, I’d still find that icky and not quite right, and if they actually phantasized/drew/wrote about those characters in explicit sexual situations, it’d be even worse, but I’d probably still take that person over the actual child molester any day. Just as I would prefer a person who’s a bit too obsessed with Mortal Kombat and slasher movies over an actual violent serial killer.

The second reason why I think that question is more nuanced, especially when we’re operating in anonymous online space? Let me tell you a story.

Do you know the movie “Scott Pilgrim vs The World”? If you don’t, I’ll spare you all the details, but I’ll talk about the parts of the plot that are relevant here:

The main character, Scott, is a 23 year old NEET, who at the beginning of story has just gone through a brutal break up and is now in a rebound relationship. With a 17 year old girl called Knives.

Everyone in the story calls Scott out on this. It’s clearly displayed as something bad. Anyway, he soon meets Ramona, a girl his age, and falls in love with her. Yadda yadda yadda, Scott learns a lesson, breaks up with his underage girlfriend and gets together with Ramona.

When I first saw that movie, I didn’t get the ending. I genuinely didn’t understand why Scott got with Ramona, and why the movie seemed to portray that as the only good way to end it. Because I genuinely thought that 23 year old Scott and 17 year old Knives had better chemistry. As for the age gap, I genuinely didn’t think it was a big deal. She was almost 18, and my parents are 5 years apart, so what’s the problem? Those were my genuine thoughts.

I was 16 when I saw that movie. Even younger than Knives.

Now I’m 25, even older than Scott, and I realize how - at best - icky it would be for a guy Scott’s age to date a girl who’s still in school. Because I’ve grown, because I’ve matured, because I understand power dynamics better than I did back then.

Now, what would have happened if I had posted about wanting Knives to end up with Scott on Tumblr back then? What would have happened if someone had stumbled upon that post, not looked into how old I was (I didn’t actually have a Tumblr back then, but if I did, I probably wouldn’t have put my age in the description) and then went around telling everyone I was a pedophile, or pedophile supporter? Wouldn’t that have been great for a teenager who just a few years later would be diagnosed with depression?

Am I saying everyone who ships minors with adults is just a child who doesn’t know better? No, obviously not. Some are real, actual pedophiles, some maybe just have that one ship, some might “ship” it in a “minor has a one-sided crush” way, hell, some might not even realize there’s a major age difference between the characters, because they’re new, and age hasn’t come up in the episodes they watched, or whatever.

And also, in regards to that other ask, I can only repeat myself: Just because it’s about shipping doesn’t automatically mean it’s about pedophilia.

[flockdynamics]

WRITING TIPS: Dialogue tags

OKAY I realize this is a bird blog and not a writing blog, so probably this post will not get a lot of traction (if any). But I am, outside of my bird-blogging life, a professional editor, and I just needed to rant real quick about some of my biggest writing pet peeves, which can translate into TIPS FOR WRITERS, and I have no other venue for this. So here goes.

I don’t generally read much (any) fan fiction, but I’m trash for a ship right now so I’ve been delving into the world a bit. And a problem I am coming across CONSTANTLY on otherwise pretty decent fics is one that was also my biggest pet peeve back when I was an intern at a literary agency going through the slush pile of submissions of novels (I’m now a children’s book editor and don’t work with long novels anymore, which is why this doesn’t apply as much to my current job). I actually wrote a couple of blog posts about it back in that internship, but that agency has since closed down so idk if their blog still exists (and even if it does, it was years ago and ain’t nobody got time to find those).

So here it goes: DIALOGUE. Specifically, DIALOGUE TAGS. Specifically specifically: JUST DON’T.

By which I obviously don’t mean “never use any dialogue tags ever,” but DO mean DEAR GOD CALM DOWN. Dialogue tags are meant to be INVISIBLE. But an EXTREMELY common thing for budding writers to do is to try to avoid saying “said” all the time. They don’t want to say “’yadda yadda,’ he said. ‘yadda yadda,’ she said. ‘etc. etc.,’ he said.” Which is understandable. But they overcorrect and NEVER say “said,” and it is TERRIBLE. Nothing takes me out of a story more than dialogue that doesn’t flow (my other biggest pet peeve is when the way people are actually talking isn’t realistic, but right now I’m just ranting about the tags because that’s the biggest problem in the current fic I’m reading).

I’m reading a fic (THAT WAS ON A LIST OF RECOMMENDED BEST FICS, and IS otherwise pretty good--not perfect but pretty good) where there is LITERALLY a whole span of multiple conversations where they NEVER say “said.” It goes, AND I QUOTE: “sneered,” ”shyly smiled,”  “responded,” “probed,”  “warned,”  “rasped,” “commented,” “offered,” “inquired,”  “divulged,” “concluded,” “teased,” “cautioned,” “trilled,” “answered,” “murmured,” “chirped,” “asked,” “trailed off,” “queried,” “gulped,” “challenged,” “scolded,”  “questioned,” “hissed,” “exclaimed,” “huskily whispered,” OH MY GOD I WAS TRYING TO GO UNTIL I HIT A “SAID” BUT THERE LITERALLY ARE NONE “pleaded,” “teased,” “objected,” “begged,” “muttered,” “trailed off,” “quietly disclosed,” “rasped,” “asked,” “confessed” IM LITERALLY DYING OVER HERE. 

Here’s the thing about “said.” It’s invisible. Yeah, if you have seven “he said, she said”s in a row, it’s less invisible. And you should avoid that. But you know what’s EVEN LESS invisible? All the other stupid dialogue tags. Literally all of them. In general, use “said.” [This is not new advice--I learned it somewhere and have definitely seen it multiple other places since. But I still see this issue A LOT, so I’m putting this advice out there again, because I figure the more it’s out there, the better.]  When appropriate, use a few others, like “responded,” “answered,” “asked,” etc. Use very specific ones like “murmured,” “whispered,” “challenged,” only when necessary and appropriate. SPARINGLY. Dialogue tags that are not “said” should ONLY be used to convey information that cannot be conveyed with “said” (or would be incorrect with “said,” like if they’re asking a question). And for the love of god learn what a quip actually is. For some reason that is one of the biggest offenders. People love to use “quipped” and 80% of the time, it is not a quip. And also for the love of god unless there is a very specific REASON for it, do not ever use things like “trilled” and “chirped.” Like, if your character is a bird. Then I guess go for it. (Or, more realistically, if you’re just meeting them and you’re trying to convey that they are upbeat and plucky and probably a little naive, and they said like one quick word, you might use “chirped” LIKE ONCE.) Also “stated” is a super annoying dialogue tag, at least to me, because it LITERALLY just means “said” and is very clearly just the author trying to not say said.

That’s the biggest issue with dialogue tags, and what it all boils down to: When it is excessive like this, it is very obviously the author trying to avoid saying “said.” And whenever you can see the author’s hand, it really interrupts the flow of the story.

My biggest piece of advice, for people sitting around now going “but I DON’T want to use “said” over and over, so what do I do??” is: Find other ways to shift the readers’ attention. You don’t HAVE to use a tag after every piece of dialogue. It’s pretty easy to direct focus to make it clear who’s saying what. Sometimes you don’t need anything at all, especially if it’s just two people talking. But if/when you do need to remind readers who’s talking, you can do it by, for instance, describing what they’re doing AS they say this thing. 

She bit her lip. “But what if it doesn’t work?”

“It will.”

“But what if it doesn’t?”

He sighed, standing up and coming to stand in front of her. “It will.”

And also--just use said. It’s invisible. Just use it.

Anyways. That’s about it. This was a rant-y and caps-lock-y post, for which I apologize. If anyone has any questions or wants clarification or more tips in a less-rant-y way or whatever I promise I am actually very nice and will not criticize or yell at you. This rant is largely born out of frustration at seeing otherwise good writers fall into this trap. And I want to help.

Also, avoid adverbs generally. Not totally, I mean, adverbs are not the devil, as they are sometimes made out to be. But they ARE overused A LOT, and it is especially frustrating when they are used to modify a verb that already does all the scene-setting we need. You don’t need to say he “huskily whispered” something, we can pretty much get that from what’s happening, what he’s saying, and the fact that he’s whispering in the first place. He doesn’t have to “confess truthfully,” the fact that he’s confessing in the first place tells us he’s being truthful.

Ok that’s all. </rant>