#on the level of rosencrantz and guildenstern are dead

[desos-records]

suddenly struck with thoughts about the devastating concept of Jason Todd

because he was good. because he had a bleeding heart despite every reason not to. he loved school and was good at it. he was the first to be adopted, with little pretense of guardianship. he did everything he could to be a perfect Robin and live up to an impossible ideal. he only ever wanted Bruce and Dick to like him.

because he met Bruce in the same place and on the same day that Bruce's parents died--the single defining moment of Batman's existence. and he made Batman laugh. he hit the Dark Knight, Terror of Gotham, with a tire iron. he wasn't afraid of the man who turned fear into a weapon.

because he couldn't save his mother from herself, but he tried. because he was too good not to try and save the woman who gave him up. too good to play the Joker's game. the crowbar didn't kill him, the bomb did. he died knowing he wouldn't make it and tried anyway. he died a hero.

because other Robins have died, but none of them put an irrevocable tear in the mythos of Batman. because Jason Todd always dies, in every universe. he dies for the sins of his father. he was put to death by popular vote, sacrificed by the crowd. doomed by the narrative and doomed by the audience. the boy who only ever tried to prove he was good enough--wasn't good enough.

because he has every reason to be angry. because he didn't ask to be murdered, didn't ask to be brought back, and when he did everyone acted like he was better off dead. Bruce tried to kill him and nearly succeeded. he's blamed for his own death and blamed for his resurrection. he can never come home because the house is haunted by his own ghost.

because he's been the hero, the victim, and the villain. because his family and his writers and his universe don't know what to make of him. they don't know how to look his tragedy in the eye. and how can you?

it hurts to look at the hero who cannot be good enough, the victim who will only ever be angry, the villain who can sometimes be right. the audience hates to feel complicit and, in this exceptional case, they are.

[imabiscuitinthousandworlds]

guildenstern still scared of at least the act of dying closing his eyes bracing himself and rosencrantz looking to him for guidance and copying him without truly understanding that fear. i'm going to throw up

[galactic-aesir]

once im no longer dying from school i can be insane and contemplate making a Kagerou Daze mv for Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are dead

[agentravensong]

how do i enjoy rosencrantz & guildenstern are dead? is there a good way to experience it

IMO, if you're entirely new to the play, the best first impression you can have of it is the 2017 National Theater Live production, viewable here. That link also has a copy of the script, though I'd recommend waiting until after you've watched the play to read it. Because it's an absurdist work, if you're just reading the script as your first exposure to the story, it can be hard to follow or connect with. Watching a performance of it, watching two people embody Ros and Guil and seeing their chemistry, it's much more likely to hit emotionally. Even if you're just as lost as the protagonists, when you're watching and hearing it, you can latch onto the Vibe and get it on that level, you know?

If you end up enjoying the show, my next recommendation would be to check out the 1990 film version. I love that Ros and Guil just as much as NTL's, and it features my favorite version of the main player/tragedian. A lot of small things get changed because of the different medium and it's interesting to compare back to the play.

And if you're still hungry for more after that, a) congrats on getting bit by the RAGAD bug, b) sorry, c) check out this post for more tumblr peer-reviewed productions!

One extra note: Because the play is about two side characters from Shakespeare's Hamlet, knowing at least the basic outline of what happens in Hamlet will fill in some gaps and make the show easier to follow. If you don't have that knowledge already, I wouldn't say you're required to look it up before watching this show; like I implied earlier, it is a kind of special experience to watch it while being just as out of the loop as the protagonists. But for further delving into the play, the more you know about Hamlet, the more allusions and such you'll find in RAGAD that make it all the deeper. Maybe look into it in between watching the NTL and movie versions? Up to you.

[cainightfics]

Do u have any favourite books? And do u hv any preference for a specific genre?

ooo this question is so hard lol. as some of u may know i was in grad school for literature, but my focus of study wasnt really on literature particularly. my actual "field" ig u would say was rhetoric and critical theory. i have read a ton of literary fiction, but i honestly prefer nonfiction, lol.

im guessing you mean fiction, tho, so ill answer with that in mind. my fave genre is probably metafiction and ergodic literature. the thing about those tho is you usually need to have read a bunch of other stuff to know wtf theyre referencing. like if youve ever read ts eliot's the waste land, it (purposefully) sounds like gibberish unless you have read the vast swathes of other authors it's collapsing into one another (dante, shakespeare, milton, baudelaire, etc). "these fragments i have shored against my ruins" is one of my fave poetic lines of all time for that reason lol—i love to be met with a broken thing, a puzzle, and then piece it back together. you can probably see why i like mr robot so much.

the other thing i like about meta/ergodic fiction, paradoxically, is that it's aware of how pretentious and demanding it is, and harps on this internal irony all the time. pale fire by nabokov and rosencrantz and guildenstern are dead are both great for this. same with basically anything by pynchon—the crying of lot 49 is the typical example, but i actually prefer gravity's rainbow.

another example that goes extremely hard on its critique of academia is hesse's the glass bead game, which is basically about a group of academics high in an ivory tower playing a game where the goal is to make as many connections between subjects—math, history, physics, literature—as possible, and requires years of "training" in the form of studying and reading. all of this is occurring while outside the ivory tower, the world is going to ruin. its all about how useless academics are outside of masturbatory exercises in proving knowledge.

another example, and one i really, really love, is danielewski's house of leaves. like imagine a horror story about a house that measures larger on the inside than the outside, but communicated to the reader through a bunch of random people typing on a google doc to the point where the cacophony literally becomes a mess to work through in order to pick out the story. i liveeee for this shit

and all that being said, my favourite fanfic of all time is detective pony. don't even get me started on this because i won't stop.

in terms of less demanding and pretentious stuff i like, i have always had a soft spot for cormac mccarthy. terrible guy, interesting books. he writes novels in a latinate syntax and people loveeee to argue about whether its grammatically correct or not, which i think is so stupid but whatever. like even just at the level of sentence-prose his writing is very fun to read. for example, from blood meridian:

The flames sawed in the wind and the embers paled and deepened and paled and deepened like the bloodbeat of some living thing eviscerate upon the ground before them and they watched the fire which does contain within it something of men themselves inasmuch as they are less without it and are divided from their origins and are exiles. For each fire is all fires, and the first fire and the last ever to be.

compare it to something with overt latinate syntax like milton's paradise lost:

Him the Almighty Power Hurld headlong flaming from th' Ethereal Skie With hideous ruine and combustion down To bottomless perdition, there to dwell In Adamantine Chains and penal Fire, Who durst defie th' Omnipotent to Arms. Nine times the Space that measures Day and Night To mortal men, he with his horrid crew Lay vanquisht

idk i just think its fun to use this epic poetic form a) in prose and b) while writing novels that are anti-epic, in that his main characters tend to die horrible meaningless deaths in universes where evil always wins. even just the epilogue about the construction of the cross-american railway at the end of blood meridian and its relation to colonial violence is something i could talk at length about. but i won't, because i'm already being annoying.

another writer i like is dostoevsky, but this is not exactly a rare opinion lol. i think dostoevsky gets very close to reaching an agreement with me on a lot of things. i'm reading the brother's karamazov right now and there are a lot of things in it that resonate with me. but our difference is that he turns from the hellish question of life's suffering towards christianity, and i honestly despise religion. like i can see why it exists and why it's important to many people, but it's much more complicated than that.

and ON THAT NOTE... thomas ligotti. i like his fiction, which is lovecraftian in a way that imo improves on lovecraft's very tropey form (not to mention the very obviously racist fears of miscegenation running through all lovecraft's work, lol) and also comes from a lets say more philosophical bend. i think teatro grottesco is a good place to start with him, if you ever feel the urge. its a very mundane sort of horror, one that some people find boring, but it scratches my brain the right way. i think his nonfiction philosophy book the conspiracy against the human race expands on what makes his fiction great by laying bare, and in great detail, his conceptualization of horror as a fundamentally regular and boring thing. like dostoevsky, he's concerned with the inherent suffering of life; unlike dostoevsky (and like me) he thinks turning to religion to deal with it is a lazy cope. i also think ligotti is extremely funny lol which not a lot of critics really clock because they're so busy calling him relentlessly depressing and pessimistic. like i have so many personal memes i say to myself constantly that i got from conspiracy, especially MALIGNANTLY USELESS!!!! and HUNKS OF SPOILING FLESH ON DISINTEGRATING BONES!!

while im back on the topic of nonfiction, even though i said in the beginning of this very long answer that i doubted that was what you were hoping for, i think its no secret to anyone who somehow cares enough about what i think in order to read this blog that i like marx. i dont agree with everything he says, but you cant deny the man is a good thinker. if you've already read stuff like capital, the grundrisse, etc i would recommend the 18th brumaire of louis bonaparte. it's essentially a very long essay that sketches out his concept of historical materialism as applied to actual historical events. i also think it speaks a lot to our current moment, where nostalgia is the prime operating mode of the rise of fascism. make america great again, but what is that again? its a signifier with no concrete referent. first it was the post-ww2 period, now its becoming the becoming the gilded age. as hamlet (and derrida, later) would say, in political rhetoric, time is out of joint. the opening to the 18th brumaire is particularly great:

Men make their own history, but they do not make it as they please; they do not make it under self-selected circumstances, but under circumstances existing already, given and transmitted from the past. The tradition of all dead generations weighs like a nightmare on the brains of the living. And just as they seem to be occupied with revolutionizing themselves and things, creating something that did not exist before, precisely in such epochs of revolutionary crisis they anxiously conjure up the spirits of the past to their service, borrowing from them names, battle slogans, and costumes in order to present this new scene in world history in time-honored disguise and borrowed language.

other random nonfiction books i think are really great include bevins' the jakarta method, schull's addiction by design, and tu's experiments in skin. all of them take what we might think of as small or mundane instances—usa involvement in cambodia during the cold war, the design of gambling slot machines, and the invention of retinol—and apply them to wider patterns of world history and individual consumption.

okay i'm gonna stop now lol. I COULD GO ON... but i won't. i read a lot; i used to have a reading tracker that told me i read about 60k words a day, on average. and i'm also currently invigilating ap exams so i have like 5 hrs a day of nothing during which to answer tumblr asks. so im going on and on.

but thanks for the ask and i hope this was in some way interesting for you, lol

[hauntedwizardmoment]

PLEASE talk more about the clones' various genres and the points of friction and overlap with that, I'm so here for this (I famously can't hear the words "Shakespearean tragedy" without going absolutely nuts, so seeing that for j3.....ough)

!!! YAY there's SO much drama here

so like. with jace and j2, because jace is in a horror movie vs. j2 who is in a bodice ripper. jace is constantly saying creepy ominous shit about how porter doesnt really care about j2 and like, vaguely implying that porter's gonna kill him the same way he killed jace. and j2 is like. not heeding these warnings at all. j2 is able to put jace in the category of a bodice ripper heroine's well-meaning yet extremely wrong friend who is telling her to NOT follow her heart and instead settle for safety and comfort. and to jace, j2's unwavering, almost naive love of porter makes him read as the ditzy cheerleader who dies first in a slasher.

and j2 and j3 have a similar level of conflict bc j3 is like rosencrantz from rosencrantz and guildenstern are dead. he's a bit character who's become aware that he's a bit character and is trying to eke out any semblance of joy and meaning with his small role in life. and j2 is ophelia, and he can't save j2 from his tragic fate, he can't save anyone, not even himself. meanwhile to j2 (bodice ripper) j3 is literally a side character who's like, technically important, but come on. he's not worried about j3, why would he bother? j3 is like the legislative assembly in all of those romance novels about royalty. taxation rates? public infrastructure? foreign policy??? who fucking cares about all of that. porter got j2 flowers, thats whats REALLy important.

and jace and j3 are like. theyre both genre-aware. they both know how terrible things are. but jace is surviving the horror movie (or at least dying last) and j3's suffering and death is a foregone conclusion that gets ramped over on the way to the main storyline. and j3 is somehow both thankful he doesnt have that spotlight on him but also eternally vying for it and trying to prove himself worthy of it.

j4 and jace are in SEVERE conflict because j4 is like "you know the torment nexus wouldnt exist if it wasnt for you, right? you realize it's your fault we're all stuck like this?" because she's the audience in the horror movie thats like "why the fuck did you idiots go into the woods where the serial killer's cabin is??" and jace is like "yes but i'm winning the torment nexus, or if i don't win, at least all of you lose" which j4 views as so insanely petty and cruel that she honestly doesnt even want to waste her breath on it

but i think the worst conflict is j4 and j2 because j4 is like. j2. you do not need or want a booktok boyfriend. you DO NOT. that is BAD. porter is BAD. and j2 is like "you dont get him like i do" and is convinced j4 is just jealous or bitter that she can't get porter's attention like he can. j2 was written by a lonely, angry man whose wish fulfillment fantasy is that a guy like j2 might be charmed by him and date him (porter).

lastly j3 and j4... i cant even look directly at this. j4 sees how lovely and important j3 is when even the text itself doesnt. j3 is the only one able to break the fourth wall and see j4. despite everything, they found each other. oh god theyre in love...

[robotnuts]

are there any rvb fics you still think about all the time? like i dont think a week goes by without thinking abt qed and how it def changed me on a molecular level, do you have any fics like that?

oooh good question. the most important fic is at the bottom of this post so just scroll to the final paragraph if you only want one, true recommendation of the only rvb fic that really matters.

QED is fantastic though its more of @shotgunslap's thing than mine. the partner to that is also obviously QoQ, the only rvb fic ive been able to make almost all my friends read. i think about the south/north characterization every day of my life. caboose and carolina mean so much to me, etc etc. thats a pretty easy pick though so im cracking into my ao3 bookmarks to look for more niche picks.

i know there was actually a lot of rvb fic that was just posted to tumblr that i think ive gone back and tried to reblog at some points but i never organized it, i should have archived it, people who wrote good femslash and rvb women liked to just post it under a readmore on their tumblrlog and you have to go digging through decades old tags to find it now

okay. the big one i actually do still think about all the time forever and ever is saltsanford's stuff about epsilon/wash's relationship. this is the big one i still think about that centers on their backstory, but also, put my guns in the ground, which is one of the Big fandom tuckington longfics, also has such good washpilon stuff in it and they're so fucking juicy. when tucker asks wash how many times he's broken his ribs and he says four and epsilon says "actually it was five" before realizing How Bad of a Move that would be. Hello? Hello?????? i want them to be forced to reimplant and have weird mind brain trauma sex SO BAD sorry im normal. this is another one that takes place during/after the chorus era

on the spectrum of fics that i actually dont yet feel ashamed reccomending, primtheamazing, who wrote QoQ, also wrote some other good stuff. i am a HUGE fan of this fusion fic, the punchline to the tucker/caboose fusion is HYSTERICAL. this one where grif forgets who simmons is due to temple shennanigans and flirts with him is also very like. trope-y but i like that shit so this goes here too

ok. now onto the stuff that it is actively embarrassing for me to be recommending. but. prim's logrimmons fic is hysterical and was the stepping stone to creating the lolixgrimmons mind palaces with my friends so its worth it just for that. but also its really fucking funny. so is the one where locus has to listen to them have sex and gets himself caught

the truly embarrassing one for me to have here is the piece of softboy grimmons content i participate in. sadly i do enjoy s15 content sometimes for the softboy grif sensitive emotions exploration i will admit to being a hypocrite there and i really liked that one and reread it frequently (just realized this is written by the QED person so! you might already know of it)

and then finally. the most important red vs blue fanfiction of all time, guns are for shooting. it has it all. sarge. washington. sarge again. kismesisitude. grif and simmons acting like rosencrantz and guildenstern (are dead). locus being invisible and getting caught by lopez with a bag of flour. it's written by the person who wrote QED. You want to read it right now. Read it right now. READ IT RIGHT N

wait no the cute bit about sarge declaring war on gravity and upending a bag of flour onto lopez isnt in guns for shooting. what fic is that from

[thealogie]

hi thea, live from chicago you're not gonna believe this. saw the production of rosencrantz and guildenstern are dead at the court theater tonight and my buddy erik, who played hastings in chicago shakes richard iii, played guildenstern with such aziraphaleisms it was absurd. levels of accuracy that had me confused as to when the edible hit. and then they ended the song with everyone holding hands and singing rolling stone by bob dylan

Everyone is seeing life changing r&g productions without me!!

[wawamouse]

Fanfic ask game but I answer all the questions on my own because I can and I want to lol (and you can too 😌)

What was your first fic and could you stand to reread it today? My first fanfic was a Harry Potter fanfic I wrote in 3rd grade from the POV of James Potter going to Hogwarts (I had read books 1-6 in 2nd grade). I thought I was a genius for this because I had no idea fanfic was already a real thing.

What’s your most recent fic and how far do you think you’ve come? My most recent fic was "Riptide", answered for a kiss prompt. I've come very far! I wrote a bit of fanfic throughout high school years ago but didn't get heavy back into it until 4 years ago, during the height of the pandemic.

In your opinion, what’s your best fic? Honestly can't judge this. I have my most kudosed fic, but it definitely isn't my best. I think I would have pick one of my shorter Miguel/Chico fics, or else one of my longer rongzhi fics.

In your opinion and without looking at any numbers, what’s your most popular fic? It would have to be one of my HxH fics. I wrote a series for it in high school or college (idr). The show had seen a resurgence in popularity at the time, I think, because it was around when the remake anime was released on Netflix. I think it must be "We Who Have the Souls" that is my most kudosed fic.

Is there any fic that makes you super happy to reread and remember you wrote that? Off the top of my head: "For Nothing Tender About it" (MiguelChico), "At Rise" (M/C), "Exit Wound" (Sui Zhou/Wan Tong), and "A Dying Eye" (Ding Rong/Wang Zhi)... I've been re-reading a lot of my shorter fics lately. I really like "Alibi" lately...

Is there any fic that makes you super embarrassed to reread and remember you wrote that? Probably if I reread one of the ones I orphaned or one of the ones I wrote in my early days which only exists on a thumb drive now lol.

What’s the fic you most want to continue (unfinished or no)? "The Nineteenth Year of Chenghua". Zombie apocalypse fic. Someday….

What’s the oldest (longest since last update) fic you most want to continue (unfinished or no)? Out of Nowhere, I guess. But I don't remember anything to finish it. Next oldest is The Nineteenth Year of Chenghua.

Have you ever written for a fandom without watching/reading/playing the source material? No.

Have you ever written for a fandom without reading other fanfic for it? Yeah, The Sleuth of Ming Dynasty (I started the tag), Hamlet (wrote fanfic for a class), Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead. I also think I wrote Need For Speed (movie) fanfic before there were any other fics to read, but I might be wrong about that.

Have you ever written a fic for a concept you know someone else has done before? How did it impact your writing process or feelings after posting? I don't think so? Not if 'concept' means 'same plot premise'. Yeah, no, I don't think so. There are some stories where something necessarily has to be written to cross canon point A to B to get to where you want to be in the fanfic, but… no? Maybe "Collision Course"? I wrote the in the car talking concept originally as what was going to be a remix of @/merelyafigment's tumblr snippet.

Have you ever written a fic and decided never to publish it? Why? I write really trashy smut and wattpad level indulgence in my notes app as a fun activity before bed sometimes. But those are never really meant to be published, though they're there for me to steal bits and pieces from for actual fics. Actually, a good chunk of "For Nothing Tender About It" and "Countdown" and probably smaller portions of some other fics I'm forgetting came from that notes app. Sometimes I'll read back stuff and be like "hey, that's actually not that bad" and polish it up, chop off the trashier bits, and then turn it into a oneshot.

What’s the biggest change between your style when you started in fandom and today? I'm a better writer? Lol. Idk, punctuation, probably. I used to write X-men fic exclusively (the comics) so I had a horrible habit of writing out accents (think Gambit, Rogue, Wolverine, etc). I've shaken off a lot of that style, though I still like capturing some of a character's voice.

What’s the biggest change in your taste between when you started in fandom and today? I don't think I had much taste in the past… There was a point where I was very undiscerning about what I read.

Have you ever purposefully written one fandom/fic idea over another because you knew it’d be more popular? No, I don't think like that. For the longest time, I didn't engage in fandom or actually make friends in the fandom. I just posted stuff and if someone read it, nice. I was more free 😂

Have you ever stopped writing a fic/for a fandom because it wasn’t receiving enough attention? I have a fanfic for a ship I am the sole writer of that has exactly 2 kudos.

In your opinion, what’s your most overrated fic? One of my most kudosed fic (496 wtf, just checked) is a Glenn/Daryl fic for the Walking Dead. It's not particularly good. But the fandom is big, I guess, so even rarepairs thrive there.

What’s your most underrated fic? I would point to any number of my Miguel/Chico fics, except that all eyes looking for that pair at a given time have likely already read the fic, so it wouldn't really be correct to call any of them underrated. Underrated, maybe, in the sense of wOULD You LiKE tO TaLk AboUt IT PerHAPS?! MaY I wOrd VoMIT AbouT It?? HeLLo?

If you had to pick one fic/scene/chapter of your work to describe your entire portfolio to a stranger, which would you pick? What a funny question…

Well. He could feel quite senseless sometimes. Idle-minded, it had been said of him; and if not idle-minded, then fixating on idle pleasures. That was all it was.

—Surpassing Corridors

Have/Would you ever rewrite a fic? If yes, would you take the original down? No way. That's too much work. I just make changes directly into the fic lol.

If someone starts kudosing and commenting your fics in a spree and has a few works of their own, would you go look through theirs? I'll often go to their profile and see what other fics they're into or what fandoms they've written for, if they have. If they write a fic later for the pairing, I'll make sure to read their fic and comment.

Has there ever been anyone who’s made you freak out because they read your work and followed/favorited/reviewed? I have a mutual who me and a friend always refer to as "AO3 User [Full URL]" because her fanfic was amazing. Even to this day, I don't like to bother her too much 😂

What’s the nicest review you’ve ever gotten? There's a couple of people who've read my fics or have gotten friends to read my fics despite not being in the fandom, and I really treasure that. Of course the long comments are always the best :D <3 But I also really like short comments, and this one was really touching (commented on a (sort of) vampire AU I wrote): "What a great premise - totally unexpected (which after 25 years of fic, hard to find) and beautifully written."

What’s the meanest review you’ve ever gotten? Do you think the reviewer intended it? Someone flamed me on an Xmen fic I wrote years ago on ff.net, criticising the plot and my grammar. I didn't really care, though; my response upon reading it was like "Dude I am literally 12 years old" LOL.

What constructive criticism, however well-meaning, always makes you feel bad when you see it in a review? Never gotten any reviews like this, except maybe the one I mentioned above. I don't think I get enough comments to have seen the breadth of the type of negative reviews people leave.

What aspect of your writing do you most enjoy to see praised? Uhhh… When there was a nice thing in the plot or the dialogue and people say Wow or when they say they could imagine the character saying it or something… (< imagine I said that in a weird low voice like Eeyore)

If you could only ever write crossovers or single-fandom fics ever again, which would you pick? Single fandom fics. I'm really picky about crossovers and don't read them often.

if you could only ever write for a single crossover or a single fandom again, which would you pick? I'm gonna say Oz because that's my current interest right now LOL.

Does the division of your writing across fandoms line up with your reading? What’s the biggest discrepancy? I don't know what this means. No? I've written nearly 60 fics for both TSOMD and Oz for pairings that don't have that many fics to read if you subtract my contribution lol. There's some fandoms I've read an enormous amount of fic for (especially in the past) that I've never written for, too.

Do you continue to write for a fandom after you’ve moved on or do you focus solely on the new one? I'll still write for the past fandom when inspiration strikes, but I have a small brain so I forget plot stuff and can't capture the tone as well, I feel like.

Who’s the one character you’ve just never managed to get perfectly right? Can't say. A character I've never written, probably. I'm delusional in a way so I feel like all my characterisations are valid, even if on the surface, I wring my hands and go "sorry for the OOCness!" Also, once I get into the groove of writing a certain character, it comes easier. But I guess there are still moments where I freak out and think I've not been writing them properly. I still think I write Miguel as too nice or something.

Who’s the one character who shines without you even trying? Omar White…?

Is there any particular character whose scenes always wind up being longer/more frequent than you expected? Does the quality hold up? Hmm. Hm… Sister Peter Marie, maybe? Got her in some unpublished wips as well as "In the Blink of an Eye". She's useful as a therapist character lol.

Was there any fic that you wrote that really surprised you in the fandom reaction? Was it just by the numbers or did they take it an entirely different way? Nope. I don't have stats like that.

Have you ever written a ship into a fic without meaning to? No? I've added ships into wips as they've gone along and things developed. Is that the question? Then yes, I guess.

Have you ever sincerely written a ship you do not support into a fic? I wrote a fanfic for a ship that I don't really like for a fic donation drive event, if that counts. Oh wait, yeah, I've written two other ships I don't like into fics before. For the angst.

Have you ever purposefully bashed a character/ship in a fic? Only if it's in character for a character to shit on another one. I don't insert my meta author opinion like that, though. Kind of tasteless as well as pointless.

Have you ever purposefully written something you know your readers would find uncomfortable/would not enjoy? If yes, why? I don't think so? I don't assume anything about potential readers like that.

Do you consider yourself to have a readership? Yeah, in a sense. It's easier to identify the repeat readers when there's only like 5 of them, plus guests. I don't really consider all of you guys readership tho because I feel like that implies some kind of interaction between author and audience.

Do you feel like you put out enough content? 🤣🤣🤣 I probably put out TOO much content. "Readership", as they say, has dwindled. But by god, I'm still going.

If you cross-post your fics on multiple sites, do you have a favorite? Are there certain fics you would only post on certain site? I sometimes post to Tumblr (ask memes) or Dreamwidth (community prompts) but I prefer AO3, especially because for the rare comment that I do get, I can find it again easily. I don't really like posting fic directly to Tumblr because if someone comments on it the fic or post or whatever, I can't find it easily. And I have a really really bad memory 😭 I like things in one place.

How many views has your most popular fic gotten? Highest hit count is 12,026 hits on "We Who Have the Souls," which is my top kudosed fic (751).

Your least popular? My fic with the least kudos, "Prey Animal" (2), has 47 hits, but my fic with the lowest hits is tied between "Movie Time" and "Sore Spot" with 10 hits.

Do you follow/favorite/kudos/comment/review more stories than you have received? Yeah, I've been trying to leave kudos/comments on every story I've read since like two years ago? Sometimes if I really have no energy, I don't comment, but then I feel guilty. I'm only subscribed to one fic, though, and I'm not super into bookmarking.

If you had to call yourself an author of a single genre (besides fanfic) what label would you give yourself? I wanna say Action/Adventure, but the more accurate would be that broader genre, Drama.

Do you consider yourself a diverse author? Idk what this means. I'm a gay chinese dude, is that what this is asking? lol

If someone you know in real life who isn’t involved in fandoms asked to read your work, would you let them? If yes, what would you recommend they read first? I would give them my Hamlet or RAGAD fics bc they are the most respectable ones by virtue of proximity to Shakespeare lol.

Does anyone you know from outside of fandom know you write fanfic? Are they involved in the same fandom too? My IRL friends from high school (now internet friends :') ) and my sister. No to HS friends (not anymore, anyway). And my sister isn't in fandom.

Has anyone in your life ever read your fanfic just because you wrote it? :D Yes <3

Has writing fanfic had a significant impact on your life? Would you say it’s entirely positive? Yes and yes. I think fanfic has made me a better writer. I've made friends through fanfiction, and it's pretty much the only think in my life, besides other fandom creating, that keeps me creative and not wanting to slam my head into a wall <3

[starbuck]

Obligatory disclaimer that folks can have any interpretation they want and I’m not here to take that away but, to ME, The Narrative absolutely is distinct from the “free” choices of the characters.

The Narrative is the overarching narrative force that dictates the outcome of a story from before it even begins and controls the actions of the characters forced to play it out. It is the story, the author, God, destiny, necessity, all of the above. 

While every story has an author, some are more open-ended than others. Prequels tend to have unusually high levels of The Narrative since we already know how their stories end (Black Sails, Better Call Saul), as do re-told versions of well-known stories (Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead, Robert Icke’s Oresteia, Jesus Christ Superstar). 

Could the characters have made different decisions and averted their terrible ends? I mean, I guess? Sometimes? I’m not saying that there are NO “free” choices in any of these stories but, for some characters, it does very much feel like their ending was inevitable no matter what choices they made. They were well and truly trapped.

When I made the post about tragedies with less focus on The Narrative and more on the individual decisions of characters, I meant something very specific which is that occasionally there are stories where it feels like the characters actually could have made better decisions, but chose not to, not because The Narrative was forcing their hand, but because they simply didn’t feel like it.

The Narrative is ALWAYS at play, to some degree (hence my scare quotes around “free”), but sometimes its influence is stronger than others, even within the same story.

But yeah, anyway, that’s just my thoughts. This is definitely all very subjective and up for interpretation tho, so feel free to disagree! 

[queeenpersephone]

is writing a darklina fic with waiting for godot/rosencrantz and guildenstern are dead vibes a crazy idea? would anyone read it? like idea: after the battle in the last ep of s1, alina and aleksander wake together in the fold. they stay there because alina can't kill him yet and she's afraid that he'll try to control her once they're out of the fold and he no longer needs her little sphere of light to stay alive. they eventually talk about the futility of their situation. probably ends tragically.

anyways these are the vibes:

“Merzost is tearing through my body.”

“Is there a cure?”

“Not one that is known, I’m afraid. Once I leave here, that will not stop me from searching. There is much more I need to do.”

It’s the first time he’s talked of leaving.

“So there’s an end to this?” she says, ignoring the way he tells her that he’s dying. There’s nothing she can do about that. After all, she needs to work herself up to killing him. It seems pointless to wonder about his health.

“What is an end?” He muses. “Is it you killing me? Is it you, your precious Tracker dead at my feet, giving into me?”

“An end is one of us winning,” she offers.

He shakes his head. “If you win, you will still live for an eternity alone. I’ve lived that. It’s not an end. It’s endless, a torture worse than death. If I win, you will fight me until I break you. Then I will be alone until I can put you back together.”

Alina tries to muster up disgust for the way he speaks of suppressing her sense of self, but she can’t. Despite his actions with the Stag, she can’t picture what terrible things he would have to do to her to make her give up. That kind of cruelty would be on another level. Her brain says he’s capable, but her heart denies such claims. “If you break me, it won’t be like traveling through time,” she says instead of disputing his ability to hurt her. She does not want to know the intricacies of his future plans. Not when they concern how he will keep her at his side. “You can’t have the me that existed before I learned the truth. I don’t know what you’ll put together, but it won’t be me.”

“Perhaps not.” He sounds thoughtful.

“And if it is me, I’ll stab you to death in your sleep,” she adds. No pretenses. That is what they have agreed to in this mist of nothingness.

So what you are saying is that, if you exist, my death is nigh.”

Alina shrugs. “I think I was meant to kill you. I knew it when you killed the Stag.”

“And before the Stag?”

Alina just looks at him. Her gaze is unreadable. “I suppose we’ll never know.”

-

“Do you hate me?” He asks.

“No,” Alina says. She knows that much.

“But it’s not enough.”

“No,” she agrees. She is apologetic, which is a bit of a surprise. She doesn’t want to feel sorry for him, for them, but she does.

“And once we step out, we take our places.”

She doesn’t answer this time. It is a pointless question. Over the past long hours, they have asked enough of those.

He pauses. “Do you love me?” He whispers.

She takes his hand. “Will love save you?” She whispers back.

[vaguely-concerned]

me, a norwegian, at the end of hamlet: what do you mean, 'tragedy'

[rosethornewrites]

I’m going to follow through before my high goes away and my anxiety decides this is a bad idea.

Behold, my Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead academic paper for a drama literature class 13 years ago:

The Idle Hands of Rosencrantz

​It is rare to find any work that, in a translation to a different medium, stays exactly the same. This is especially true of movies, which have a blueprint designed to hold an audience’s attention. In the film version of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead, one of the more interesting changes involves spectacle. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are essentially incapable of acting in any real manner, because their fate is laid out for them. They are merely waiting, as men whose roles were written by the gods, for the story to write them as dead so that they may disappear. Because they are idle except when directly involved in the plot of Shakespeare’s Hamlet, they spend much of their time pondering their existence or, especially in the case of Rosencrantz, playing with random items. Although much of Rosencrantz’s fiddling is amusing to the audience—as the laughter in class indicated—its purpose is not solely humor. In fiddling around with things that are inevitably destroyed and making background noises that ultimately have no meaning, the spectacle of their actions comments on the fact that they are trapped in the background that they are a part of, incapable of effecting their own play just as they were incapable of effecting Hamlet. This serves to reinforce the point of the play: that Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are incapable of effecting the world around them in a lasting way because their fate, as the Player comments upon, is “written…there is no choice involved” (Stoppard 80).

​For Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, the play is already written, and its sheets fall on them in the beginning when they meet the players in the forest, and precede them through the rest of the film. These sheets of paper, the lines of their own play, are what Rosencrantz plays with, trying to turn them into something different. He turns one, for example, into a boat in the bath, which fascinates him as it rises and falls with the water level until it tips and begins to sink. Later, he creates a paper airplane, which he launches and which flies through the entire play, passing Ophelia and Hamlet and Claudius and Polonius before returning to him. That paper airplane, gliding through what is already there without effecting it, is what Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are—and is ultimately why Rosencrantz’s attempt to change it into something more elaborate must be destroyed before it can fly. To let the bi-plane, made of torn pieces of script, launch would be to change the Bard’s script and fate. Everything that Rosencrantz makes that could potentially change the course of the play must be destroyed, from the bi-plane to apple-core-and-script pinwheel that could potentially clue them in on which direction the wind is blowing and thus Hamlet’s state of mind. If these potentially-altering versions of the script are not destroyed incidentally, they are destroyed by either Rosencrantz (accidentally) or Guildenstern (carelessly or maliciously).

​Similarly, although it doesn’t involve the script imagery that is throughout the film, there are various scenes that act as a similar sort of metacommentary about their situation. Before playing the word game on the badminton court, Rosencrantz attempts to juggle a birdie, two rings, two balls, and a bowling pin and winds up dropping all of them. Although he was able to juggle the two balls—himself and Guildenstern—when he added the others objects he lost everything. When Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are inserted into a situation where they must handle not only themselves but various other characters with various individual agendas, they cannot succeed. When Rosencrantz then tries to demonstrate the law of gravity to Guildenstern with a feather and one of the balls, it similarly fails. The rest of the play will fall more slowly than they will. Further on, when Rosencrantz is fiddling with hanging pots in the garden, he notices that it is a Newton’s cradle and attempts to show Guildenstern. However, recognizing gravity and momentum would make the characters self-aware and thus able to make the choices that might save them. It would threaten the fate laid out for them as “victims of the gods” (Stoppard 82), and thus the pot must be destroyed before that can occur.

​Shortly after the question game on the badminton court and the observed arrival of the players, Guildenstern listens to Polonius read the love letter Hamlet sent to Ophelia to Claudius and Gertrude. Meanwhile, Rosencrantz makes background noises. Although they are at first unobtrusive birdcalls and ignored by Guildenstern, they slowly become louder and less natural. Guildenstern stops him in the middle of a duck call, and then glares at him for making a completely unnatural sound. When they approach the window again to hear the continuation of Polonius’ discussion, Guildenstern shushes Rosencrantz when he threatens to begin the noises again, as even birdcalls are not acceptable so close to the action. They must be silent observers and listeners or risk changing everything, as they very nearly do when Hamlet stabs Polonius behind the tapestry. They must fade into the background, and then fate moves them to a new location without transition for them.

​Every time Rosencrantz and Guildenstern could conceivably change their fate either by accident or by becoming self-aware, they are prevented. The humor doesn’t lie only in the actions being unusual, but in the commentary on their inability to affect their surroundings. The film version allows for this to be presented in a more visual way, utilizing spectacle to refer to the fact that they are trapped by the script within the script—that which was written by the Bard and cannot be altered, and which they are, at the end, bound to continue to repeat. This endless cycle of their lives is shuttered inside the wagon that the players tote them around in, leaving them as sleeping tabula rasas until it is time for them to be woken by a messenger and put on the road to Denmark all over again.

[guardevoir]

Also, fun fact: We read Tom Stoppard’s play Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead at uni a few semesters ago.

The general reaction to it was ‘what kind of incomprehensible bullshit is this?’

And then, there was me. I basically did the lesson on my own, giving insightful (!?) analyses and answering questions and whatnot. 

I pretty much hadn’t said a word all semester.

The teacher was incredibly impressed. 

I didn’t have the heart to tell her that I got aggressively into this play because I shipped the two titular characters so much and it gave me Feels. 

What’s the point of this post? I don’t know. Fandom culture comes in handy sometimes? Assuming that two characters are a couple and rooting for them can be a valid way to build a connection with university reading material?

[bridewhiskey]

I've read through most of the trigun fic on Ao3, and so many comics and art on Twitter and Tumblr, and I just have to say that it's some of the most consistently high quality across the entire Fandom I've ever encountered. I'm not even joking. I've been reading fic since I was 11, well over a decade and I've never seen quality this consistent. (I'm mostly talking about Canon compliant and Canon divergence fic. I tend to not particularly enjoy full AU's personally) but it's all just so well done. They tend to be based as character studies/introspection, and they're all such strong characters (especially Vash & Wolfwood) that they can fuel tens of thousands of words of fic and it's so hard hitting and emotional every time.

It's incredible how consistent the quality is. And I'm talking Fandom wide, from fic to individual art pieces to comics. So many different creators just absolutely connect with the themes and motifs, and the emotional maturity of Canon as well. It's all amazing and packed with symbolism, and with the internal guilt from many of the characters, and the looming tragedy of Canon; it just takes the work to another level.

The one downside of this is cycling back to other Fandoms that I love and having Much higher standards. Legitimately, Trigun fic as a whole is LEAGUES ahead of damn near every other Fandom I've been immersed in, some of them for many years.

I recognize that this pertains mostly to my preferences in what I want from a fic, but I cannot stress enough how good it is.

Honestly it perfectly caters to my love of "Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are dead" narratives. But that's like, an entire essay on the genre so I won't go into it too deep.

The number of times I've been reading a fic or comic, or looking at a singular piece of art, and it makes me feel so much I just want to cram my phone into my mouth and eat it; is frankly embarrassing.

[vintage1981]

Celebrating Caroline John

Caroline Frances John (19 September 1940 - 5 June 2012) was an English actress who played companion Liz Shaw in Doctor Who during its seventh season. She revived the character for the BBV P.R.O.B.E. video series, as well as the Big Finish Companion Chronicles line of audios.

John was the third of eight children born to Vera (née Winckworth), an actress and singer, and Alexander John, a theatre director. She was educated at St. Joseph's convent school, Crackley Hall in Kenilworth.

After training at the Central School of Speech and Drama, she worked in theatre and toured with the Royal Shakespeare Company and the National Theatre Company. She appeared in Juno and the Paycock in a 1966 production directed by Laurence Olivier, King Lear, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead, The Merchant of Venice and as Hero in Franco Zeffirelli's production of Much Ado About Nothing.

John played the role of the Doctor's companion in 1970 opposite Jon Pertwee's Third Doctor. John was recommended to then Doctor Who producer Peter Bryant by another BBC producer, James Cellan Jones, who sent Bryant and his associate Derrick Sherwin photographs of her. Unlike most of the preceding and subsequent female companions of the Doctor, Shaw was a brilliant scientist and understood much of the Doctor's technobabble. Shaw and the Doctor discussed things on a more equitable level of intelligence, and the Doctor respected and rarely patronised her. New series producer Barry Letts believed the character was too intellectual to be a suitable companion to the Doctor and decided against renewing her contract for the next season.

During her final story, Inferno, John also played the part of Section Leader Elizabeth Shaw, an alter ego of her regular character that the Doctor encounters in an alternative time stream. John reprised the role of Shaw, albeit as a phantom, in the anniversary episode The Five Doctors, and also appeared in the special episode Dimensions in Time (1993), part of the BBC's annual Children in Need appeal. In the 1990s she appeared in a series of straight-to-video releases including The Stranger: Breach of the Peace, and as Liz Shaw in the P.R.O.B.E. stories written by Mark Gatiss. In these stories made by the production company BBV, a pipe-smoking Shaw works as an investigator (for the P.R.O.B.E. organisation).

John later appeared in two Big Finish Productions' audio dramas based on Doctor Who; Dust Breeding (2001), although playing a character other than Liz Shaw, and The Blue Tooth (2007) where, as Liz, she recounts in narrative form an adventure she once had with the Doctor and UNIT. After The Blue Tooth she played Liz in four more Companion Chronicle audio plays; Binary, The Sentinels of the New Dawn and Shadow of the Past. Her final audio play, The Last Post, which she recorded on 26 January 2012, was released after her death.

In addition to her role as Liz Shaw, Caroline John appeared as Laura Lyons in a 1982 televised version of The Hound of the Baskervilles, starring Tom Baker as Sherlock Holmes. She also appeared in episodes of Z-Cars, Casualty, The House of Elliot, and EastEnders.

John read most of the audiobook of Elisabeth Sladen's posthumously-released autobiography, with David Tennant, Brian Miller and Sadie Miller reading their contributions.

John was married to actor Geoffrey Beevers. The couple had three children: a daughter, Daisy, and sons Ben and Tom. She died on 5 June 2012 from cancer.