#aside from some rewriting and doing suggested edits...

[battleshipgarcy]

I just wrote the last line in the final chapter of TRLT, and...

[the-nocturnal-writer]

Dev Log 5

By goodness, it’s been a while since I could just sit down and post about any progression. Life is still keeping me busy thanks to personal matters. However, I’ve been chipping away and doing stuff when I can. I’ve been more or less creating stuff here and there that I can post, though most of the free time I managed to get went into writing and completing tasks. 

Finally have some time to get a dev log written out, I’m hoping to update everybody on what I’ve been up to and have planned since my radio silence (and here’s to hoping the next dev log isn’t forever away…)

One of the bigger changes I’ve planned is turning Evenfall Grove into a Choicescript game rather then Twine. This decision was made to help shorten the time a bit, I don’t get as often as hoped to do what I like, so using Choicescript was a good workaround due to it being a little more simple to use. 

I still hope to make a game with Twine, maybe in the future when i have more financial stability and time to just still and put my full heart into it, but until then, I can say that making Evenfall Grove using Choicescript won’t change anything story or choice wise. I do need to figure out how to work the whole “you can die or get injured when exploring at night” thing, but I’m sure I’ll figure it out…

Next on my list of things to update everyone about is a few changes to my profile, I wanted to make it easier to access information and stuff, as well as easier to read. I might need to tinker with the colouring, but so far I think it’s better. Which leads to me saying that RO profiles have been taken down for the moment. 

I’ve been writing A LOT whenever I could. A lot of rewrites since the ending became more and more clear as I wrote, and a bunch of short stories about the characters. Thanks to this, my brain is forcing me to do another redesign to make them all feel… Well, more them. 

Constantin is the first (and only one even close to done) and has gotten a lot of love, I brought back some stuff from both his older design drafts and made him feel and look more like a man who has been beaten down by life over and over. Exactly what I’m going for.

Another change is the title banner! I still have a few more things to mess with, but for now it less of a priority over writing. I love it more though and the font is real pretty!

Aside from more redesigns, I mentioned character short stories, I might edit and post them if the need calls for it, but it did really help develop each of their backgrounds and helps decide how I want them to be and act, especially around MC! 

It has made me need to rewrite a lot and pace out how MC will first meet each of the characters (as well as how romancing them will go about), in the end it’s helped me decide how I want the ending to go and how I want each character to end up by the end. It’s not just MC going on a journey of power and character development. Each romance option has their own unique way of growing throughout the story.

While I’m mentioning characters, MC’s Familiar has been narrowed down to four animals; Squirrel, Owl, Badger or Fox. Feel free to make more suggestions, my only tip is smaller forest dwelling animals, since familiars size and shape are based on the power of their witch and the environment they're in! MC isn’t the powerhouse they are capable of becoming quite yet.

That is all for now, not as much as I hoped to update everyone with, but I like to try and get a word out when I can so no one is left wondering if this interactive fiction is no longer being made. Still fully intend to make Evenfall, it’s just at a busy snails pace.

Thank you all again for sticking around and having such patience with me, you’re all lovely and I couldn’t ask for better readers! (I need to get to answering asks, I apologise so much for the delay and I'll do my best to dedicate some point next week to answering them!)

Have a good day/evening, witches!

-Red

[snowdice]

Folds in Paper: Book 2 (Chapter 1: Reprieve) [Folds in Time Universe]

Fandom: Sander Sides

Relationships: Janus/Patton, Remus & Roman, Logan/Virgil, Roman & Patton & Logan

Characters: Janus, Patton, Emile, Remus, Roman, Logan, Virgil, Remy

Summary: Janus is trying. After spending months trapped in time with his enemy turned... something else, Janus is trying to find meaning in a world where he or anyone else could rewrite history with one simple mistake.

During his leave from the Time Preservation Initiative, the time distortions that have been causing disastrous ripples in time have not gone anywhere. His partner's past is more mysterious than ever and old and new alliances are shifting. Can Janus figure out what is going wrong with time before that time is up?

The problem with time travel… you never how long you have before the clock strikes 12.

Chapter Summary:

Things are harder, better, but harder.

Notes: Time travel AU, mystery, enemies to lovers, alcohol, sexual innuendo, character with depression, character with ptsd

This is a fic I’ve been writing on study breaks that you have probably all already seen at this point. I’ve slightly edited it for wording and grammar, but not for content from my previous posts. Feel free to send in asks to direct it because I’m not 100% sure where this is going and you can help decide if you feel so inclined! You can see the process I went through to build this at this link.

I also have a playlist on youtube (because Spotify didn’t have one of the songs I wanted).

This is Book 2, Check out Book 1 and the other part of this series here.

“What’s this?” Janus asked when a giant bowl was set on the coffee table in front of him.

“We’re eating on the couch tonight,” Emile said cheerfully.

Janus raised an eyebrow and switched off the tablet he’d been using. “Why?” he asked, setting the device aside.

Emile shrugged and set a second huge bowl down next to Janus’s. “For fun,” Emile said. He turned back towards the kitchen and Janus leaned forward to look in the bowl. It was spaghetti with some sort of creamy sauce and a few different vegetables mixed in along with some shrimp.

“I made green tea too,” Emile said, coming back into the room with two mugs.

“Thanks,” Janus said, taking one of the mugs with a small smile.

“What were you doing?” Emile asked as he took a seat beside Janus. He nodded at the deactivated screen now sitting on the end table.

“Just playing some puzzle games,” Janus said.

“That sounds fun,” Emile said with a smile.

“Head doctor said they might be a good thing to do to pass the time when I told him to fuck off after suggesting reading.”

Emile sighed. “Dr. Figueroa is my colleague. You could try to be polite.”

“I thought I was supposed to be my authentic self in therapy,” Janus replied.

Emile just huffed and rolled his eyes. Janus couldn’t help but smile as he picked up his mug of green tea.

The last few months had been…different. In a lot of ways, Janus’s life had become harder than it had been before. It had been easy to do nothing but eat pre-prepared meals, go to work, and pass out in his empty house every day. It wasn’t good for him. He’d known it even then, but it had been easy. This was not.

Emile had offered, insisted really, that Janus move into his house for a bit just to get back on his feet. He’d taken time off of the TPI which would have been given to him anyway since he’d spent so long trapped in the past. He’d had to give a report of what had happened, and he’d mentioned Patton, but he hadn’t mentioned everything. They’d offered him a shrink when he’d asked.

Janus had told Emile he needed to tell him something about why he’d been distant, so he wouldn’t end up chickening out, but he’d asked for a bit of time to figure out what to say. He’d finally worked up the courage to talk about it with Dr. Figueroa two weeks ago. Much like with Patton, it was easier to talk to someone who hadn’t been involved in Janus’s mistake, but it still wasn’t easy.

He was running up on the deadline he’d given Emile for having that talk. It had to happen soon, and they both knew it, but Emile was just patiently waiting for him to suck it up. It felt… wrong to use his kindness without him knowing the truth, but it was also nice to get to spend time with his brother. He didn’t even dare to hope that he’d still have the chance once he told him.

He was moving back into his own house in less than a week. He’d tell him then so if Emile ended up kicking him out of his life, he wouldn’t have to kick him out of his home too.

For now though, everything was fine. Harder, more complicated, and in threat of imploding at any moment, but fine. Fine wasn’t something he’d really felt in a long time. Or at least, fine while in his own time wasn’t something he’d felt in a long time. There’d been a few moments with Patton sitting next to the fire outside the hole in the ground they’d slept in for those few months where the man would turn to look at him and he’d felt fine. Yet, Patton had been right. Those moments were unsustainable with how Janus was actually feeling deep down.

“This is good,” Janus said, after taking a couple of bites of the pasta in front of him.

“Well, I always was the only one in the house that could cook,” Emile said, and that was true. “It was either learn to fend for myself or eat a cheeseburger for every meal.”

“Hey, I had a good burger seasoning.”

“Not for every meal, Janus.”

“Meat, dairy, bread. What more could you want?”

“Vegetables, Janus.”

“You could have put pickles on them!”

“I don’t like pickles.”

“That sounds like your problem, not mine,” Janus argued.

Emile shook his head, turning his eyes to the ceiling. “How have you been surviving on your own?”

“Well, I mean,” Janus said. “Badly.”

“Right…” Emile said. He leaned over to bump their shoulders together. Janus flashed him a smile.

“Speaking of,” said Janus. “Could you physically force me to pack tonight? I meant to do it today and instead I ended up playing puzzles games.”

Emile chucked. “Sure, I’ll help you after dinner.”

“You don’t have to help me,” said Janus. “Just make me do it.”

“Maybe I want to help,” said Emile.

“Oh, yes, packing. The most entertaining of Thursday night activities.”

Emile hummed and then glanced at him. “Remember when you helped me pack for college?” he asked.

“Mmm, I do,” Janus replied.

“I was so stressed about going somewhere new,” Emile said, “that I avoided packing for weeks. Every time Mom would ask me how packing was going, I’d tell her it was going fine but in reality, I hadn’t even started. You came home two days before I had to leave because you were going to help me move into my dorm. It’s like you could sense no packing had been done the moment you stepped through the front door.”

“You were doing your ‘hiding the broken horse statue from mom’ shuffle,” Janus said with a smirk.

“Well, you walked me straight to my room and we packed everything up in those two days,” Emile said. “You made it so much easier.”

“Yeah, because I hovered over you until you did it and did half of it for you,” Janus snorted.

“It wasn’t just that,” Emile said. “You also found the music streaming station run by the university and put that on and talked about what your freshman year was like. You also had tips on what things I should and shouldn’t pack when moving into the dorm.”

“You still took all of the cartoon character stuffed animals despite my advice.”

“I thought there’d be more space on the bed,” Emile frowned.

Janus snorted.

“But anyway, just having someone else around made me happier. It wasn’t just about the workload being halved either. You being there made me feel less lonely and reminded me I’d always have someone to come back to.”

Janus internally winced. He was sure Emile hadn’t meant to make him feel guilty in any way. In fact, he probably was trying to do the opposite, but him saying that just reminded Janus that it hadn’t been true. Janus had abandoned him for literal years and hadn’t been someone he could always come back to.

The last few months, Emile had proven himself to be at least close to who he was before Janus had messed with time. There were a couple of differences here and there, and Janus could not be sure if they were from him changing time or from him avoiding his brother for the past three years and him naturally changing. Most memories they shared that Janus cautiously brought up or Emile mentioned on his own were consistent with what Janus remembered, but he hadn’t pushed too hard or dug too deep. It just made him feel more guilty about avoiding the man for so long.

It made him want to ignore the man more, because it seemed every choice Janus ever made only hurt him.

…

Well, perhaps not the college radio station when helping an anxious 18-year-old pack up his childhood bedroom.

He should probably tell Emile that his words made him feel guilty because that was obviously not the intention and he’d want to know. He should probably apologize properly for leaving him alone for three years without an explanation. He should probably provide an explanation for those three years.

He should probably go see the head doctor again soon.

(He should probably stop calling Emile’s colleague who was in the same field as him a head doctor derogatorily in his head.)

For now, he just glanced at Emile. “You’re trying to bully me into letting you help pack with logic, aren’t you?”

“I am,” Emile confirmed without remorse.

“Fine,” Janus sighed, “but only if you let me do the dishes for you.”

Emile took a long moment to consider the offer. “You drive a hard bargain,” he said, “but okay.”

“And no doing anything sneaky like getting bags ready for me on your own while I’m doing it or the deal is off,” Janus said.

“You always think of all possible loopholes, Janus,” Emile sighed.

There was a long silence.

“Agree, you prick,” said Janus.

“No promises,” Emile replied cheekily with laughter in his eyes, and things were good for a moment more.

[sam-keeper]

Put out a new article on my Patreon

It's about some old articles entitled "Classics of Fantasy" that were published on the Wizards of the Coast book publishing hub site, back when that was a thing in, uh, 2003. Here's a cut from the piece about why I find these articles so interesting to revisit 20 years later:

Personal significance aside, I think the articles have a notable place in the history of Wizards of the Coast: they're from a period when Wizards harbored bold plans for the future of their publishing line, plans that ultimately fell through. With all the author interviews, craft discussion, and inside scoops into the industry, the articles from this period radiate a sense that WotC hoped to cultivate new authors. This makes sense: they were putting out calls for original fantasy fiction at the time and clearly aspired to be a "legitimate" publisher. They even published some original young adult fiction, though unfortunately I haven't been able to track down evidence they ever published independent fantasy fiction for adults. (On the Magic side too optimism reigned about the future of Magic's fiction--optimism that then head of Creative Brady Dommermuth would later tell us, after the cancellation of the entire novel line, was never backed up with solid sales numbers.)

I think we can see this series as fitting within the logic of cultivation that WotC has since abandoned. Their belief at the time was that things like the Open Game License would ultimately drive more players to their monopoly on Dungeons & Dragons, would further D&D as THE table top role playing game, and marginalize non OGL systems like World of Darkness. Their recent attempt to simply retroactively rewrite the OGL out of existence suggests they've long since abandoned this perspective. But the Classics of Fantasy series attempts to use older and often public domain works to broaden the horizons of their player base and indeed reader base, under I suppose the presumption that a rising tide raises all ships.

It's this spirit that feels bygone to me, much more so than any individual website. A loyal fan base with broad interests can't give you meteoric exponential growth.

The articles are weird, too, because while most have that tip section for Dungeon Masters, encouraging them to incorporate these books into their game, those sections can get pretty vestigial and half-hearted. Evidently, it was hard to imagine how to turn the fairy story Hobberdy Dick into a Dungeons & Dragons campaign. Others, even more weirdly, don't bother with the pretext that "your game" is going to be D&D at all. One early article freely and confidently argues that "any MR James [ghost] story is a top-notch ready-made Call of Cthulhu scenario focusing on conventional horrors rather than the Mythos (thereby confounding those who see a Great Old One behind every mystery)." Not only is he reccing the work of Chaosium, WotC's competitor, he's got enough familiarity with the game to suggest ways of subverting player expectations! In fact, in the Unknown Kadath article he exclusively points DMs to Chaosium's products. Interestingly, in the MR James article he offers another suitable system: Gaslight, which as far as I can tell was a third-party, Open Game License powered Victorian setting. The setting apparently is still going, with a 5th edition D&D compatible OGL book released last year. The primary interest, though, seems to be in cultivating tabletop roleplaying *for its own sake* and as an artform unto itself.

This makes some sense given the author. John D Rateliff apparently is a doctor of literary studies, with a focus on Tolkien and the other "Inklings" that Tolkien hung out with. What do you do with a degree like that? Apparently, write a bunch of stuff for Dungeons & Dragons books. It feels like maybe someone at WotC had the thought, hey, we've got a literal doctor of fantasy fiction here, maybe we should get him to just write about books for us for a while. imagine that! a company actually utilizing its talent pool instead of squandering and burning it out!

Read More On Patreon

[theroseempress]

Weaving and Finger Painting for the ask meme!

(Weaving: are your works typically similar to one another? Pick two works, and share one similarity and one difference between them.)

I don't know if I'd say my works are similar per se, but there's most definitely themes I gravitate towards, and as such most of my works have said themes in common.

As to what said themes are... I'm honestly not entirely sure, to be honest. I definitely like writing character interactions, so I guess most of my works have strong inter-character relationships? I also really like exploring platonic love (and in general find exploring various types of love/relationships fun) so there's that as well.

As to the two works, I'll pick The Golden City and Mercy City (placeholder title) since they're the two I've been recently working on. Similarity- the main protagonist of TGC's name is Felix and the main protagonist of MC's name is Felice Aside from their names, Felix and Felice are pretty similar in some aspects. Also each of these stories currently has City in the title. Difference- Well, the first thing that comes to mind is that MC has a magic system and TGC does not, just average humans. There's also a lot more groups of people up to their own agendas in MC than TGC.

(Finger Painting: share a small snippet from your earliest work (or the earliest that you can get back to). How would you rewrite it today? Either share the rewrite itself or just describe how you'd do it.)

Oh wow, my earliest work... Actually, hang on, I might be able to get that. One moment... Yeah, couldn't find my actual earliest work. It's hypothetically somewhere in my email, but I emailed it to someone when I was like 11 or something, so yeah.

My actual earliest work was a fantasy book where the main characters were horses, believe it or not. I called it Isles of the Endless Sea (which is honestly a very cool name) and it had like 3 or 4 books before I got bored halfway through the ending of one and just. stopped writing them haha.

IotES was honestly quite a good series despite the rather clunky writing (not blaming my past self, she did her best), I reread it recently and there's quite a few moments where I was like 'huh that's actually a really cool concept/line'. The first book's title was 'Night of Shadows' and I honestly can't figure out if that's a bit too dramatic or if it's actually a very cool title.

I'd like to try rewriting it someday, to be honest. If I did, the biggest change I'd make would be changing the characters to humans. I'd also adjust the plot a bit so it's less convoluted, and definitely change how ALL THE CHARACTERS are somehow related. (I'd just discovered the concept of 'secret evil sibling' and was very enamoured with it).

There's a snippet (the first book's prologue) under the cut! Notes specifically on the snippet... not that bad honestly. Formatting could definitely use some work. If I were to edit it now, I'd probably rewrite some of the lines, but overall quite good, especially for what was basically my first time writing.

“She will see you now.”

The white attendant stepped out of the way, and Reikan strode past him, into the throne room. The mare who waited there was beautiful, a deadly kind of beauty, however.

She was the color of polished black ebony, and had striped hooves. Her face was neatly structured, suggesting a hint of Arabian. The only flaw was a long scar,running down her jawline. It was not a ugly thing, merely a line where there was no hair. However, it served as a reminder of who she was to her legions. That and the sabre, that deadly curved sword, that hung in a sheath at her side. It had emeralds studded down the handle, and a blade many suspected was dipped in poison.

It was, in fact. A narrow tube ran down the blade, feeding from the tip, to a reservoir set in the handle, that was filled with adders venom! It had a plug at the tip, so that when it stabbed something , that plug would give leeway for a thin trickle of venom. If you felt the tip, you could feel a slight bump, the plug. However, no-horse felt the tip, as Ziara made most of her kills without using the poison at all.

But perhaps her most recognizable feature was her eyes. They were black, which was not a strange thing. But the kind of black..ah, that was strange. They were a deep black that if you stared into, you felt almost as if you were being sucked into a vacuum. When she was angry, the black gained a strange gleam to it. She was also a master of stares, and could make almost any horse feel the way she wanted them to.

Ziara was studying a map when Reikan entered. However, she greeted him before the door had even closed

“Reikan.”

Somewhat astonished at how she had know it was him, he bowed, and replied. “Milady”

Eyes spitting fire, she turned around.

“Reikan! How many times must I remind you? Do. Not. Call. Me. Milady!” “Apologies General. It was a slip of the tongue.”

The lethal mare returned to her previous state, one so charming it was impossible not to be awed by her beauty.

“Your report?”

[onlyjaeyun]

Zadie, Zadie, Zadie I know you said Poison bonus chapter, but may I recommend something even better, Hype Boy bonus chapter just in time for the one and only Jake Sim's birthday.

The feminine urge to write a fic for Jake's birthday is just too much, like my heart says do it, but my brain says finish your Sunghoon fic it's already at 51k and so close to being done.

I'm out of plot ideas for the moment, which like I've sent so many, instead just enjoy some thoughts for the moment.

Once they start dating y/n is quick to realize when Jay gets mad, rather than possibly yell and all at her, he'd just invite Sunghoon to go workout, getting his anger out that way rather than possibly hurting anyone with his words.

Jay is the type that once him and y/n start dating, he won't let either of them go to bed angry, it would hurt his ego, but he'd put himself aside and apologize for the argument even if it wasn't his fault. He'd apologize and just confuse y/n, since she's be just be like 'but I started the argument' and Jay's just like 'well I'm sorry I let you start an argument'. They definitely talk through everything, and Jay takes each and every word y/n says to heart. The boys definitely send that one picture that says 'me and bitch don't argue she tells me shut up and I do' to their gc and are all 'that's u Jay'.

Once y/n and Jay are dating, Sunghoon would find a reason to be at Jay's penthouse every night, just because he wants the good food. Jay would cook all the good food while y/n bakes all the amazing treats, Sunghoon calls them his parents at least once, probably in the gc at some point asking Jay 'what's for dinner', and when Jay's like 'why', he's like 'ur my parents and I'm hungry'; this interaction gets him uninvited from Jay's penthouse for like a week, until y/n ask why Sunghoon hasn't been over to raid their freshly baked goods and Jay lets him back in, but limits his visits to once a week.

Jay said y/n can personalize her area, but she refrains from it, not wanting to possibly put something out Jay does not like. Jay however notices that she does not personalize her desk like he said she can, despite how much he hates it and it hurts him, he puts a few personalized items on his own desk, seeing those makes y/n feel more comfortable about personalizing her own desk. While he might hate the items he put on his desk, he enjoys seeing the joy in y/n's face as she personalizes her own desk.

Jay isn't one for personalizing anything, but once him and y/n are dating, he has a picture of her in one of his desk drawers and whenever he can't just look at her, say he's stressed or just missing her beautiful face, he just opens up the desk drawer and stares at the photo. The boys definitely catch him smiling into his desk drawer at some point, and then clown him about how down bad he is.

Jay officially goes to therapy and stops using his notes app as a therapist after he overhears y/n say guys that take care of their mental health are sexy.

urgh bestie when have you ever MISSED with these? i'm afraid NEVER. i literally cant post your other hcs because they're too similar to my ideas and would be HUGE spoilers but these are too cute not to and i just :( thank you so much for taking the time out of your day to send me these k love you sm

pls ive been thinking about writing a jake fic for WEEKS but life keeps getting in my way i hate it here sm 😭😭😭 might just edit and rewrite an old fic bc i cant not post on his birthday as his gf like come on 🫣

also: FIFTYONETHOUSAND WORDS THATS FUCKING CRAZY AND I SHALL RESPECT YOU FOR THAT FOREVER THATS MADDDD

And to add to the last part: he actually goes to therapy and his therapist suggested him the notes app part bc he knew jay wouldnt do physical journaling but needed to let out his thoughts 😭😭😭

[soraka-in-warhammer40k]

@commanderflameafanofthemoth reply didn't fit into the notes my rambling got once again out fo control.

Usually I would never suggest seeing planning where incompetence might just be another, more simple explanation. However, especially compared to all the other Index-books this feels somewhat... deliberate. Like, they managed to go out of their way to give everyone baller mechanics and datasheet abilities that played WITH said mechanics, and then you look at T'au and it is just... nothing. Some minor reroll 1s from Stealth Suits and that's it really.

Don't get me wrong I like the concept of the whole "spotter"/"shooter" unit, but it feels like that was their easy grab for the theme and then they went on to do absolutely nothing with it. It feels very much like everything changed for 10th edition, but somehow T'au got stuck on 9th with nerfs piled on top. Imagine everyone's lord of war going from T8 to T12/T13, but for some weird reason the Stormsurge goes to T11 only. OUR LORD OF WAR HAS LESS TOUGHNESS THAN A LAND RAIDER, WHICH IS A BEEFED UP RHINO FFS!

Oh and to make up for that they also decreased its hitpoints when compared to 9th edition. Just... why?

One explanation would be that they would be utterly scared of how a "simple" to plan army like T'au (all shooting) would dominate the game in an edition that shakes up everything, but that flies out of the window when you do some basic math. You can't just straight up remove 90% of AP from a faction's arsenal that was defined by being AP-1, half the number of shots from those guns, nerf the range of those guns, refuse to rewrite them for the new toughness scale, and then somehow expect them to be good.

I know that doing an Index for a faction that by design relied heavily on subfactions to make their units even useable would not be easy but this...

T'au was once an army that was the #1 at shooting. Now I am not sure if they can even make a Top 5 spot, the random odd high-rolling casino-railgun aside. To straight up remove the only thing a faction has, I am not sure if anyone could be this utterly incompetent.

But if it is not incompetence, why would you do this? It really can't be "muh GW greedy manipulating balance to sell models" because who the fuck buys into the second-lowest winrate faction of the game aside the people already here wanting to expand their collection a little? Nothing about this makes any darn sense.

[candycoatedanxiety]

How to write a fanfic with the help of AI

Nowadays, with the advent of ChatGPT and its retinue of AI chatbots, asking AI about anything seems easier compared to doing a web search. Googling produces a lot of noise that hinders you from finding the data you’re looking for. Searching for recipes for me took me a long time. What if I needed a recipe that consists of specific ingredients? ChatGPT solved that problem for me. Recently I’ve relied on ChatGPT on recipes --- give it a prompt like which ingredients you have on hand and which dish. It works like a charm every. Damn. Time. I recommend you try it. 

Anyway, one day I was reading two fanfics off the Arashi fandom and had a lightbulb moment. What about contributing another fanfic to the fandom? I actually have a WIP novel that I’ve decided to set aside for the meantime. Now the question is: should I enlist the help of ChatGPT? 

Why did I talk to it like a human being? Because I knew it can respond in an almost human-like manner. 

So I gave it my idea: I wanted to write something about Nino being the troubled person who witnessed the death of his best friend, Sho. Jun becomes his therapist, and Ohno was Sho’s boyfriend whose aim was to investigate the death of his boyfriend. Aiba is Nino’s other best friend who was also close to Sho from childhood.

A few seconds later, it responded, praising my idea and even offered a working title. But that’s not all...

It also produced a possible synopsis...

...character descriptions...

...and laid down the basic outline of the story, complete with highlights per stage. I was completely impressed with what ChatGPT can do, and I was intrigued with what it can still offer. 

I offered a location idea for the story, and it came back with a list of possible areas where the characters hang out or where the story can happen, all within the city of Düsseldorf. 

Wow. The list it came up with --- back then you’d pore over maps, do a web search on blogs, or even visit the areas mentioned, but now ChatGPT delivered. 

Now with the basic parts laid down, you might be asking: “Did you ask it how to write the actual story?”

The answer is I did ask it to write a sample first chapter. 

It looks great from the get-go, but it reads a bit stiff. If you have been reading the fic on AO3, you will notice I made some changes and added a bit of imagery, especially at the end of the chapter.

Now I realised that ChatGPT can, in fact, write a decent chapter. Rule of thumb is never rely on ChatGPT when writing the final draft 100%. So at every chapter that I pitch to it, it writes a sample chapter first, then I proofread and edit on Google Docs, adding embellishments that only human writers can do. Asking ChatGPT to make a portion of a chapter conversational is just as decent; you will still need to rewrite to perfect it. 

Whenever I ask a question, it will give me multiple angles to my answer, like this one below: 

ChatGPT provides you something to ponder, not just giving answers outright, which helps me as a writer imagine possibilIties and move the story forward.

Throughout the process, ChatGPT is my beta reader: I throw ideas to it and it will give suggestions, hints, and helpful reminders. It being a beta reader works only up to a point, because it changes the voice whenever I asked it to proofread a paragraph. While ChatGPT seems to be a capable and supportive beta reader, you will still need to rewrite and/or make changes to the text to make it read like you envisioned it. 

To end this article, I will present its version of the 13th Chapter side by side with the one I wrote. 

Here’s ChatGPT’s version: 

And the published version, which you can read here. 

I understand that there are many people who view AI as an instrument that will soon take over many human jobs, particularly the arts. While the fears and doubts are somewhat valid, I recommend that we all take both opinions and AI with a grain of salt and exercise caution. It is true that AI can definitely be a tool that will help you accomplish your tasks, and it has helped me write my fanfic in ways that I haven’t been able to in many years. Right now it helped me foster my love for writing and improving upon it. 

Take all the time you need to think about how AI can help you with everyday tasks. There are tons of first-person accounts on how ChatGPT assisted them in their jobs and everyday life (even ADHD patients swear by it!) and I hope you all keep an open mind on it.

Good luck!

[z-h-i-e]

New Year Fanfic Asks (3/5)

11. Would you like to try any new fanfic genres or tropes this year?

It will be difficult to find something I haven’t done. However, there are many things I have written in the key of two Imladris Advisers, that I have not tried out with the Bling Kings, so perhaps that.

12. Will you change anything about the way you edit or rewrite this year?

Nope, I’ll still be a chaotic buttercup who posts in the middle of the night and sometimes has someone look over my shoulder and make suggestions while I’m writing, but unless there’s a ‘use a beta’ notation, these stories get posted as they are, we die like Men of Gondor, and then like fifteen years later I’ll do a revision and correct the additional typos then.

13. Aside from fanfic, are there any other fan works you’d like to try creating? Fanart, or fanvids, gifsets, or podfic? 

I’ve done fanart, will probably do more. (As of last year, I have publicly displayed artwork with one of those fancy engraved nameplates and the description of the work attached to the wall next to it, so I think more art will happen in more than one way.) Videos, unsure. I unearthed some old animations I did for the fandom a long while ago; if you’re in a discord with me you may have seen those shares. Unlikely on gifsets. Podfic – I’m working through logistics.  I do a fair amount of live reading, and I have a good microphone (with pretty colors) now, so I really should. I need people to poke me about those. 

14. Have you ever lost large chunks of your work in the past, due to not backing up your work? Will you change your methods this year?

The year was…well, it had to be either 2002 or 2003. I’m working part time, and I carry my disks with me (yes disks) that have fanfics on them. And I’ve got a few of them, including the one with the original Little Balrog with me at work.  And a student worker picked them up from the desk and set them onto the desensitiser unit–the one that demagnetizes things.  And I immediately said, ‘Well, you just ruined all of my disks,’ and we had a lesson on why one does not move things that are not theirs, and why they absolutely put nothing but books on the desensitizer (we had a different unit for the VHS tapes, because it could mess those up, too).  So I did rewrite Little Balrog, and it turned out a little different, there’s a whole part in the beginning with Elrond, Erestor, and Glorfindel having a long discussion that I just skipped rewriting.  However, that means I have been a backup the backup of the backup person since then – I have so many flash drives of everything, and paper copies, and copies in the cloud, and I don’t trust technology since then, so it’s been a good 20 year run of tech not failing.  Now, whether I can FIND the flashdrive, the disk, the CD… >.> They’re around here somewhere… I also did a fair amount of sending fics to Yahoo!Groups and then not archiving them, so that is what I’m working on, is getting things archived on AO3. 

15. Do you foresee any personal or professional obstacles this year, that would keep you from creating fanworks? 

Yeah, I’m currently trying to make a huge decision between staying in the librarian & professor camp or shifting into management. Pros and cons to both.  I have about 11 years left in my plans of how long I anticipate working before retirement (I have been in the workforce since 1995; 40 years of working seems like a fair amount in my opinion). I waffle on this on a daily basis, whether I want to continue what I’m doing for the duration, or to try one more adventure. Strangely enough, I think the latter would actually mean more free time, because what I do now is work a full time job plus a part time job, and that can be 60 or more hours a week, especially during midterms and finals.

[foxgloveprincess]

Pillow Fort and Pizza

Word Count: 410

Warnings: Barely Any Editing, Mildly Suggestive Themes, So Much Fluff (you might barf). Minors do not interact (18+).

Divider by @firefly-graphics.

I love feedback, so go ahead and reblog if you want. No permission given to copy, translate, rewrite or post my work, at all. I cross-post to my AO3 account (FoxglovePrincess). Seeing this anywhere else means it’s been stolen/plagiarized.

Please DO NOT click ‘Keep Reading’ if you are not 18+ years of age. Thank you.

“Don’t come in here yet!” he yelps through the door, voice panicky even though you immediately released the doorknob from your grip.

“Alright,” you reply, startled. You take two giant steps back and try not to fumble the pizza and soda, no matter how precarious they are in your grip.

Your toe taps as you wait, confused as to what’s taking so long. “Jake?” you call through the door, “the pizza’s gonna get cold and soda’s gonna get warm. You almost ready for me?”

The only response you get is a booming thump.

The door’s open before you even have a chance to think, standing and gaping at the structure before you.

“Aw, angel, you ruined the surprise,” he whines, tangled in a pile of blankets on the floor.

But you’re too busy trying not to devolve into hysterical laughter. You nearly fumble the pizza again, but he’s already popped up and holding onto it for you.

“You’ve gotta be fucking kidding me,” you breathe, unable to look away from giant blanket and pillow fort, strung with lights, boxes of board games tucked off to the side, with the laptop hooked up right there and ready for the most epic of Netflix dates. It’s magnificent. You nearly start to tear up.

But he deflates as soon as the words leave your lips. “You don’t like it?”

You blink, grab the soda and pizza from his hands, and set them aside. Carefully and far away from the entrance to the fort. Jake stands confused as you do, furrowing his brows in question. His lips part on some thought, but you don’t get to hear it. Instead, you’re too busy tackling him into the cushions and planting effusive kisses across every little sliver of skin you can find. All while he’s grinning like an idiot and laughing himself silly.

“I love it, I love it,” you repeat before placing one last searing kiss to his lips and whispering, “I love you.”

“Ditto,” he replies with a dazed and sappy glaze over his features.

You snort and sit up, pulling his stolen shirt down over your tummy. He follows after you, finding comfort in the pillow of your chest and snuggling close. Mouse in hand, he clicks through titles on Netflix until he settles on the show you’ve been binging. The title credits roll, you wrap him in your arms, and settle in for what the day holds. Heart full, happy and whole.

[carawenfiction]

Hi. Big fan! Love the worldbuilding you have going with tss, imo the concept is very refreshing! Anyways, I noticed you said you're rewriting book 1 on top of writing its sequel- it must be exhausting. Do you work with an editor? Having a pair of fresh eyes on your projects early on could save you from some gnarly writer's block and burnout. Unprompted suggestion aside, good luck!! I'm excited to see where the story goes next ❤

I don't work with an editor, no. It's definitely something I'd be interested in sometime in the future because although I'm currently writing and editing myself with a VERY critical eye when it comes to pretty much every sequence I add to the book 1 rewrite and other writings as well, there will always be things I could miss myself that someone else might notice. So yeah, it's something I'm considering, and something I'll probably look into once I'm done with the rewrite. Thank you so much for the kind words <3

[dustedmagazine]

Listening Pest: The Worst of 2021

None of us got into music writing to hate the music.  No, we’re appreciators mostly. We choose our own records, and so, rarely come into contact with albums that truly irritate us. When it happens, it’s easy enough to set them aside. Why focus on the negative?

That said, however, when list season comes around, we often find ourselves confronted with highly-regarded records that—well, let’s just put it bluntly: they piss us off. And because of that and because nothing is more satisfying than a good slam, we present the worst of 2021. We even provide audio clips, but take our advice. Don’t use them.

Contributors include Ray Garraty, Jennifer Kelly, Bill Meyer, Jonathan Shaw, Ian Mathers, Patrick Masterson and Andrew Forell.

Babyface Ray — Unfuckwitable (Deluxe Edition) (Wavy Gang)

The deluxe version is an expansion of the Unfuckwitable EP which means a double amount of mediocre music. Yet Babyface Ray remains among the artists people name first when asked about Detroit rap scene. It’s a curious paradox: the more he recycles his own music, the more he’s liked. And there is nothing much to recycle to begin with. Babyface Ray never released a stone cold Michigan classic. His only solid release, Ghetto Wave with Peezy, was recorded almost five years ago, and since then it’s all been downhill.

Babyface Ray on Unfuckwitable tries to stay on the chill side and be as casual as possible but can’t hide his inability to freestyle. If there was a rhyming exam, he’d never pass. Usually he is good with the flow and keeps things short (one verse is more than enough) which saves a lot of his tracks (“Like Daisy Lane” is a good example).

The bitter irony of this tape is that on his song “Real Niggas Don’t Rap” he says: “I know some real killers don't rap \ Ayy, I'm a real nigga, no rap.” Yet he continues rapping. Either he’s not a real one or what he makes is not rap. It’s a wonder how it even passes for music.

Ray Garraty

 Courtney Barnett — Things Take Time, Take Time (Mom + Pop)

Things Take Time, Take Time by courtney barnett

No question that the pandemic brought the bougie out in people, as otherwise hip, interesting types took to baking sourdough bread and starting kitchen gardens. How else can you explain Courtney Barnett, once the sharpest tool in the Aussie rock-pop box, now singing earnestly, affectionately, a la Mr. Rogers, about the people in her neighborhood. It’s not just that Barnett has developed a disconcerting interest in real estate. She’s also slowed down, pulled the claws in and settled into a drawling stasis, as if the only thing she picked up from working with Kurt Vile was his slacking, drifting pace. And the writer who surgically eviscerated cubicle life in “Elevator Operator,” has turned her pen into a blunted instrument, inexact and uninteresting, using the word “thing” and its variant repeatedly, in nearly every song, to stand in for a blah, featureless non-specificity. (I had an English teacher who would make you rewrite the whole paper if you used the word “thing.” Paging Mrs. Langdon.) “Write a List of Things You Look Forward To,” the songwriter suggests. How about a sharper, better, less soporific Courtney Barnett album?

Jennifer Kelly

 Floating Points, Pharoah Sanders & The London Symphony Orchestra — Promises (Luaka Bop)

Promises by Floating Points, Pharoah Sanders & The London Symphony Orchestra

Maybe it’s a tad harsh to discuss this album in a worst of 2021 retrospective; in a year when the outgoing president of the USA tried to drown democracy in the bathtub and over three million people around the world died from a pandemic, nothing musical, not even a Bush Cabinet reunion doing a dance party on a palette of the most wretched LPs on earth, moves the needle on the scale of cosmic badness. Most undeservedly praised? That’s another matter. Promises was relentlessly feted in record reviews, best of the year polls and social media show and tell pages, and why? The billing sequence tells you what you’re getting; a contemporary ambient artist bulking up his mildly sparkly electronics with the sounds of an orchestra supplying the same thing here as it did on the Moody Blues’ Days of Future Passed (deep upholstery) and some solos by an aging free/spiritual jazz saxophonist. Pharoah Sanders does play with dignity and gentle soul, but that does not make this one of the best records of the year. There are many better places to hear what made him matter in the first place. One suspects that the praise heaped on this record is like a late-career, victory-lap Oscar given to some film figure whose best work never got an award. Put it on if you need some nice background sounds, it’ll do the trick, but best of the year? Don’t put me on.

Bill Meyer

  200 Stab Wounds — Slave to the Scalpel (Maggot Stomp)

Slave to the Scalpel by 200 STAB WOUNDS

Perhaps it’s a bit unfair to pick on 200 Stab Wounds. Slave to the Scalpel is just another record emerging from the sophomoric and tumid space of overlap between brutal death metal and knuckle-dragger goregrind. Song titles will reveal what’s likely already obvious: “Drilling Your Head,” “Phallic Filth,” “Itty Bitty Pieces.” And it’s equally obvious that I am feeding the trolls here: the reactionary types that make records like Slave to the Scalpel likely thump their meaty chests in triumph whenever someone is provoked, or grossed out, or takes issue with the music on moral or aesthetic grounds. Enjoy yourselves, dudes. Job done, I guess.

The more expedient response would be no response at all, simply to ignore the record and let it seep back into a moist slough of obscurity. But 200 Stab Wounds generated a bit of buzz late in 2021, scoring a positive Pitchfork review and an appreciative shout-out from horror culture website Bloody Disgusting, which doesn’t often venture into music criticism. The buzz irritated me, mostly because the record is insufferable. But it’s also the case that I really like horror movies, and I listen to a fair amount of death metal. So, what’s the deal? Why do I find Slave to the Scalpel so irretrievably noxious, but Wharflurch’s Psychedelic Realms ov Hell so much fun, or Cryptae’s Nightmare Traversal so compelling? Probably for the same reasons that I find Angst (1983) a significant film, Dead Snow (2009) enormously entertaining and Terrifier (2016) a cynical piece of crap. I can connect with the cinema of cruelty if it’s coupled to thoughtful rigor, and I can have a good time with bloody gross-outs if they aren’t operating unfairly at someone’s real, material expense. Even nihilism can be interesting and invigorating — see much of Michael Haneke’s stuff. But small-minded representations of gratuitous violence that take an obtuse sort of pride in their putative transgressions are a different matter. The problem with a movie like Terrifier or a record like Slave to the Scalpel is that they are so glibly diligent in their efforts to offend; it’s their whole reason for existing.

Things used to be different. When Carcass recorded Symphonies of Sickness (1989), the Video Nasties list commanded force of law in Britain, and the PMRC still wielded considerable power in the States. Carcass wasn’t seeking aesthetic apotheosis, and they likely weren’t operating all that ideologically. But there was a degree of interest and a sort of danger in what the band was doing. Official Culture sought forcefully to police bloody violence in music and film. Carcass presented that Official Culture with “Ruptured in Purulence.” Whole genres of heavy music emerged from the confrontation. That was then. Now you can pony up five bucks or so and stream Bloodsucking Freaks (1976) or Martyrs (2008) on Amazon Prime Video, whenever. Alternatively, you can navigate from the aforementioned Pitchfork review to Maggot Stomp’s Bandcamp and exchange 10 USD for Slave to the Scalpel, if you must. To refashion the Dead Kennedys’ trenchant irony: Give us convenience, and give us death. Whatever used to be transgressive about this sort of music, and thus resistant to the dominant logic of the commodity, has now been fully embraced by Official Culture and the market’s endless desire to expand. Those gagging sounds in “Phallic Filth”? That’s just capital doing what it does best: swallowing subcultures whole.

Jonathan Shaw

 Van Morrison — Latest Record Project Volume 1 (BMG)

Look, we don’t have to litigate all the unhinged COVID stuff here; yes, the crap Van Morrison has been spewing both in and out of his recent songs is a dangerous, irresponsible contribution to current miseries, but even if you agreed with Morrison on all of that, it is exceedingly hard to imagine you’d then sit down with all 28 songs and over two hours here, the collection titled and with cover art like it’s some fly-by-night collection of public domain works, and actually enjoy it. It would also be easy to say it’s not worth engaging with at all, but Morrison is still enough of a draw that combined with the ‘controversy’ this farrago went top ten in something like seven countries (and it’s not just him being in the news for anti-lockdown stuff and other ranting, given that 2019’s Three Chords and the Truth (sigh) managed some similar placements), and this one got at least some good reviews out there. Even some noticeably negative ones note that his voice and the music are decent, which is only kind of technically true in the sense that you’d rather have a tidal wave of pablum swamp your house than the same amount of lava. If anything, the extremely toothless “tasteful” “chops” here just make songs like “Thank God for the Blues” and “Where Have All the Rebels Gone” with its evocations of rock and roll somehow even more annoying than more obviously poisonous likes of “Western Man” and “They Own the Media” (sequenced directly together near the end of the second disc, followed directly by “Why Are You on Facebook?” like Morrison is trying to parody himself). Somehow the bland professionalism of the music makes everything worse, as if you’d gone to see a movie that promised to be absolutely batshit awful and it’s just kind of limp, competently executed on technical grounds but devoid of any kind of spark in either positive or negative senses. The absolute best-case scenario for listening to this is that someone wants two hours of vaguely Van Morrison-flavored pap playing in the background and they don’t care that every time you do start paying attention to the lyrics it just sounds like you’re listening to someone extremely bitter about support payments or something. Van Morrison is beset on these songs, constantly talking about what a brave champion of the world he is for not giving into “them” and their “system,” constantly being spied on and stolen from and disrespected. Most songs linger close to or go over the five-minute mark (they all feel more like ten) and get there mainly through aimless repetition. And then of course the whole thing ends with “Jealousy,” where he dismisses any possible criticisms of himself and his work with, well, you know exactly what. One hopes for a long and healthy life for all our fellow human beings, even ones pumping out records this rancid, but it’s worth considering Latest Record Project Volume 1 as the dark corollary to all the times an artist dies young and we lament the work they still might have made. It’s not better to be dead than to be making art like this, but it would be better to shut the hell up. 

Ian Mathers

 The War on Drugs — I Don’t Live Here Anymore (Atlantic)

The War on Drugs have always been inadvertently divisive, riding the finest of lines between ascendent classic rock (“Comin’ Through,” Lost in the Dream) and a musical touch of gray too anonymous to address (A Deeper Understanding). To say I hate I Don’t Live Here Anymore, then, is a bit dramatic — I knew the possibility of losing 52 minutes of my life was always on the table. But like Lucy Dacus’ Home Video, the novelty of more synths smacks of a cheap trick masking lackluster songwriting. Calling it a fangless Grateful Dead rip-off or dead-eyed Dylan impression is doing Jerry and Bob respective disservices; this doesn’t even pass muster as a convincing War on Drugs record. Worse, it seems to have emboldened older fans and critics who thought this was the best 2021 had to offer — a youthless, nostalgic desperation reminiscent of McSweeney’s “humor” (no guesses which band leads the list off!) or Wilco dads during that band’s heyday. Intolerable. Falling back on the attention economy as an excuse to not like something is lazy, but you’ll have to forgive me if my mortal awareness has been heightened in the last three years and my patience for an hour of listlessly strummed schlock is lower than ever. It’s a tainted orb we live on too briefly to hear I Don’t Live Here Anymore once, let alone twice.

Patrick Masterson

 Wolf Alice — Blue Weekend (Dirty Hit)

Porridge eh? Even with the warm milk, honey, almonds, raisins and other tidbits we add to make it palatable, it’s still porridge; a bowl of sludge that sticks to the roof of your mouth and dries hard and crusty. Blue Weekend is well made, attractively packaged, artisanal but porridge nonetheless. Yes, there are tasty morsels but they are trapped within an insipid slurry that seems calculated to offend few as much as appeal to many. It’s a pity because Wolf Alice have done good work, and there was a thrum of anticipation about this next step, but they sound unconvinced and in Markus Dravs they have a producer responsible for the some of the most underwhelmingly Jim Steinman moments inflicted upon the innocent by Arcade Fire, Coldplay, Mumford & Sons and other purveyors of the grand gesture. Too often their swings for Manic Street Preachers like catharsis are blunted by vocal multi-tracking, compression and a studio sheen that makes many of the songs performative rather than performed. This doesn’t make Blue Weekend a bad album so much as an algorithm of affect. If that is the point then well done but I’m still scrubbing my bowl.

Andrew Forell

[memento-morri-writes]

happy sts morri!

What is your writing process like?

Are you a planner or a pantser or a bit of both? If you do outline, how in depth are your plans? What is your drafting vs revision vs editing process? Do you have any writing tricks that you stand by?  Basically share anything you’d like about your process!

[@rodentwrites]

Hi Harrison!! Happy STS, but on a Sunday!

My writing process is a bit of a mess. I tend to write things when they interest me, rather than in chronological order. In fact, the first scene I ever wrote for ATQH was The Incident, which happens about halfway through the book! I have almost all of the 2nd half (basically everything after The Incident) planned out, but very little of the first half. Which is where I'm struggling, trying to figure out how to get to the second half.

I'm a little bit of both, a planner and a pantser, but mainly a planner. I like to have things well planned out before I write, but sometimes that winds up making me write myself into a corner, or feeling stuck. But usually I know who's in a scene, and the gist of what's happening at minimum before I start writing.

I tend to write a scene whenever I have the inspiration for it, which might be at any time. Literally, any time. I wrote the first two drafts of The Incident back-to-back between 3 and 5 am in early January. After I finish writing a scene once, I tend to set it aside for a little while. Then I'll go back and re-read it. If there's just small tweaks to make, I'll make them then, but if I still hate it, I'll take a blank document and start over. I might do that 3 or 4 times before I have a result I'm happy with. With some of the scenes from ATQH, I sent them to a friend to edit, and that was very helpful. I pasted the scenes into a google doc, and she made suggestions there. After that, I retyped the scenes, with the changes that I agreed with, or new ones I thought up after seeing her comments. By retyping, I still had the old versions, and I also had to think about it more, as I went line-by-line, rather than just copy + pasting and only worrying about the bits that she had suggested edits for. Sadly, I haven't talked to her since I got done with school, so idk that I'll be able to continue with that set-up. It was so very helpful, though, and she was a good editor.

The writing tip I swear by is: if a scene isn't working, rewrite it from memory. I mean it. Open a new doc, and start writing the scene from scratch. Your brain will remember the parts you liked, maybe even word for word, and put them back in, but gloss over the bad bits, and let you try again. This has made me SO much happier with my scenes than just trying to tweak what I already had. I think I wrote The Incident 4 times or so? And I love the final result.

Oh, also I have my planning and notes all done in Milanote, and do my actual writing in Scrivener. But none of that is necessary, at all!! I just tend to be over-organized and like making ridiculous layers of folders and stuff.

[outofangband]

For @pepperonyscience !

Melkor temporarily puts aside his desire to keep Maedhros’s appearance in tact for his own sinister purposes so he can allow another indignity to be inflicted

Or, Maedhros has his hair shaved off

masterlist 

I actually mentioned this in my extended musings on Maedhros’s capture but I can’t believe I haven’t written this yet! 

For some reason I’m not feeling very confident in this so I’ll probably rewrite it but please do let me know if you all have any feedback/suggestions!

Tag list: @tears-and-lilies @much-ado-about-whumping @oswaldinator3000 @elarinya-nailo @iwenttomordor @mozart-the-meerkitten

Edit: wait I forgot the content warnings

Public humiliation, enforced nudity, Melkor being himself

Takes place around the same time of this

The ragged though sharp blade was raised to his head as one of the captains grabbed roughly at a fistful of his his hair, pulling it up to get a better angle to cut. The metallic ring locked into his mouth prevented Maitimo from screaming insults as he would have liked. (Despite the inevitable punishment, this reckless anger was his only escape from the near unbearable tension he felt as he was faced with a fresh day’s worth of torments and humiliations.  A sizable lock of hair was chopped off, causing not a small amount of pain as more was pulled, forcing him to move his head with it. 

“All of it,” the Vala orders smoothly before returning his gaze to his prisoner, “Not to worry, Maitimo. It will grow back in due time. I would not have thy lovely form more permanently marred without far greater cause.” Two fingers of the burnt hand reached out to take a strand of the red hair, rubbing it between them, at the same time feeling the heat rising to the shackled elf’s cheeks. The orc holding another fistful of his hair prevented him from trying to throw off the horrid touch. 

Melkor only withdrew when the next lock was cut off and Maedhros was made to move his head again. This process went on for some time, the eyes of the Vala never leaving his furious prisoner. 

Finally the blade was set down and another guard picked up a bucket which Maedhros eyed warily. The orc grinned at him, raising it above his bound hands. He spluttered like an angry cat as cold water was unceremoniously dumped over his head, cascading over his aching body. 

The laughter of the Moringotto was a significant enough event that the orcish guards did not indulge in chortling themselves, despite their love of seeing the Noldor king naked, soaking and shivering as he was. They were clearly amused however, it showed on their faces as the captain was handed another blade, smoother looking. It was brought to the top of his head and used to practically sheer off remaining clumps of his uneven hair. This stuck to his wet skin, irritating and often painful when it was brushed over and the job was so poorly done he ended up with a number of cuts and scratches over his head and neck.

But evidently neatness was not apart of the Enemy’s orders because He was actually smiling, an awful thing to witness under the light from the crown of stolen jewels. 

The feeling of the fingers upon the thin remains of hair upon his scalp was bizarre and he could not hide the shiver that ran through him. This time the Dark Lord’s laughter was softer as he brought his hand down to his captive’s chest before gripping his chin. 

“I have stripped thee bare, little elf. In more ways than one,” his skin was so cold but he felt the ache in his jaw as the Vala’s fingers dug into his flesh, “Soon, thy hair will grow back and with it, a fragment or two of the dignity you had before you fell into my clutches. On that day I will gladly strip it from you again.” 

Proto author’s note: so I was going to have ALL of Maedhros’s hair removed but I wasn’t sure how the requester would feel about that so maybe another time

First author’s note: Melkor isn’t *quite* arrogant enough to think that cutting off Maedhros’s hair will completely break him but there’s no denying that this public shaving is humiliating and not fun. What IS fun (for Melkor) is how conflicted Maedhros is currently feeling about his appearance and especially his hair. It’s constantly being touched and stroked and praised in creepy ways so he kind of hates it (and ends up cutting it post rescue) but also having it removed like this by the enemy’s hand is undeniably a violation and very debasing. 

(second author’s note: this theme of Melkor kind of breaking Maedhros down only to allow him to regain some semblance of dignity so the process can begin again is extremely important to me. I have like a hundred posts about it but I won’t link them all because they should all be in the “In the Iron Hell” tag but feel free to ask any questions!)

[illumiru]

oh it was about titans dont worry

so I guess my question is how necessary do you think Dick being retconned to have been brainwashed by brother blood is (yes this is brought up by the titans 0 braincell brainwashing post :P)

Anyway I feel like there were some instances where he was definitely OOCly a jerk in that plotline, but also there was some conflict that he could have had without being brainwashed (I think at this stage in his character development, him having conflict with Kory over her feeling its okay to kill people is realistic, but also Woflman handled this in a terrible way).

I also feel like a lot of other characters were not necessarily at their best at this time like Donna was acting a bit weird and really on a hair trigger and seemed a lot more callous to the other titans than she normally does (blowing off looking for... whoever Garfield was looking for i already forget i think mento?) because terry needed help with a book.

So part of me feels kind of like it's "unfair" if dick's jerkiness is retconned out due to brainwashing when eveyrone was at a disastery time, part of me feels like if you want to keep his character interactiosn EXACTLY as they went down rather than rewriting some yeah he does need to have been brainwashed... so I'm curious your take as you've read a lot more titans than me

Okay, tbh, I found him being brainwashed this whole time to be absolutely hilarious so I like to keep it in. With it being a retcon, it just gets to me that in that sense nobody noticed it at all until it got really bad (ie him running off) because everyone else was doing their own thing. fhjbef

BUT, my take is that I think it's not that noticeable because the brainwashing was more like a suggestion than a total mind takeover. I think it just made his handle on his own anger less easier to control so he was more likely to seek out fights than withdraw when he normally would.

Otherwise, to me, it doesn't mean though the all the thoughts and feelings he had then weren't his own at all.

Brushing all of the conflicts he had during his brainwashing aside just because he was brainwashed is boring to me. They could have used this as an opportunity to like talk about whether or not the brainwashing actually revealed some honest feelings he had that he would have expressed in a more healthier manner normally perhaps.

Then, maybe work from there and actually talk about it. I think it would be at this point that I would have Dick and Kory take a longer break from each other. They could try dating other people around this time, who knows. (Okay, here's where I insert my agenda where dickjoey and starrae (or donnakory if terry is out of the picture) happens for a bit. Shhh)

Like yes, there were definitely times he acted out of the line but like even without it, I don't think Dick would react that well to some of the events that happened during this time either way.

Also for example, like with the Dick and Donna fight, I do think Dick was being an asshole with how he said it to Donna but that doesn't mean he wasn't somehow right about Donna either? I wish they talked about it afterwards.

Plus, if I had it my way, this could be the gateway conversation about how much of a creep Terry is too and what Dick's true thoughts about Terry are. (While yes, they were seen sort of getting along sometimes, I really don't think Dick thought much of Terry at all. If he had any positive thoughts, I'm calling out that it's just Marv Wolfman's bs.)

hope this makes sense jhfbsje

edited: changed the part about donna, bc i meant that dick was right about some things he said about donna esp the part about being too concerned about helping terry write his stupid ass book

[thenardiers]

Hi do u…by any chance..have any les mis fic recs

uuuhhh oh lord oh boy, anon I'm not the best person to ask because I don't have time to read a lot of fanfic these days, but after some consideration I have a few to recommend! since you've come to my blog I'm assuming you're here for valvert/general old men content because that's all you're going to find in this list :p all of these fics are sfw, as far as I remember, but remember to heed any warnings and tags etc. thank you for the ask and I hope you find some gems here! <3

Unraveling by Ias: greek mythology au where javert is a minotaur freshly rescued from the labyrinth by valjean. I have no interest in greek mythology, but the soft, slow unwinding and gentle development of the characters here sure did interest me! also please look at this related art by milf-feral-opress. monster soup genuinely lives in my head rent free

All the Effects of Intoxication by Cinaed: javert gets horribly drunk for several days instead of jumping. much bickering and pining ensues. (full disclosure: I haven't actually finished this one because my attention span is a horror, but the first 2-3 chapters were some of the most wonderful dysfunctional javert I've had the pleasure of reading, and it's been highly recommended by multiple people whose taste I trust)

Valjean, Javert, and the Great Heist of 1820something! by Secretmellowblog: mellow's usual delightful mix of insightful, heartbreaking meta combined with the most surreal, silly, but in-character plots imaginable. I'm pre-recommending her entire ao3 even though I haven't read her two latest fics because horror attention span etc etc

tête-à-tête by thelawsofdaylight: some good old valjean and cosette content from cosette's POV, set just after he takes her away from the thénardiers. it's stayed with me since it was first posted. short, sweet, soft, touching, go read it!

By the Gentlest Touch of All by thenardiers: some shameless self-promotion here while I recommend my own work, but I'm proud of it! I thought it would be fun to channel mann's wildly emotional, overdramatic, deeply weird javert and throw him into a post-seine environment to see how badly he would cope. people seem to like it! I promise it's going to be completed at some point, I poke at the draft almost daily, I'm just very meticulous about editing and revising and rewriting and then real life happens and oh god why is this so difficult can't I write about javert having a total mental breakdown in peace I promise it'll be finished at some point

wildcard recs: my friend Astruc compiled their own list of fic recs recently, so if you're looking for more I'd suggest checking it out! admittedly I haven't read any of these aside from the fics that already appeared on my list, but I trust their taste!

I've absolutely forgotten something and will probably kick myself in the morning when I remember the One Glorious Fic I didn't think of while writing this post. I'll reblog with an addendum when/if I do remember something else!