#way to type

[marlynnofmany]

“Oh, you write books?”

Yup! And I love it.

Here’s the published list so far, with relevant tags for all the extra content and ramblings that inevitably end up here.

“If you set Dirty Jobs in outer space, mixed in some Mythbusters, and gave Buster the crash-test dummy the ability to sass back like a cross between Bender and Murderbot… you’d get something like this book.”

“Spectacular Silver Earthling” is available wherever books are sold!

Relevant tags: Hubcap the robot Hubcap the Egomaniacal Sassmaster (there’s some crossover there) Spectacular Silver Earthling

“When space poachers release Earth animals on an alien world, threatening a fragile new alliance, they anger the wrong people. A veterinarian, an accountant, and a furious sign-language-fluent gorilla are coming for them.”

“A Swift Kick to the Thorax” is also available everywhere!

This is the one I’ve been posting backstory snippets for weekly, from when the main character was traveling the galaxy working on a courier ship.

There are also comic strips, which take place between the stories and the book. I should really draw more of those. They’re fun.

Relevant tags: A Swift Kick to the Thorax The Token Human (series name; originally just the comics) Robin Bennett (the main character)

Do you long to write fascinating fiction, but struggle to find a concept that feels worthy?

Do you have piles of unfinished stories, and eagerly await the next shiny new idea?

Do you have writer friends to inflict assistance/benevolent torment on?

Good news! I have precisely one bazillion ideas for stories that someone ought to write, and I’ve selected 100 of them to collect in this book. You may recognize some from my old posts here, but not all.

"Story Seeds for Fantastical Trees" promises to grow you a forest of compelling ideas, ranging from wizards both wise and foolish, to aliens seeking dinosaurs, to a robot that lets a vampire into the house (possibly on purpose).

Relevant tag: writing prompts (buckle in; this one is A Lot)

“In science fiction, humans are usually boring compared to other races: small, weak, no claws or tentacles, and no special abilities to speak of. What if instead, we were talked about by the other aliens? 28 authors have contributed to make sure you never think of humans as boring again!”

“We’re the Weird Aliens” is the “humans are weird / humans are space orcs” collection that had everyone excited in 2020.

Relevant tags: humans are weird humans are space orcs (and a bunch of others, but mostly that first one) (and you'll find the Token Human stuff tagged here too)

“An old street sweeper takes on the shadowy invaders responsible for a plague of amnesia, while saddled with a dodgy memory, a mysterious past, and a reflection that talks back and makes fun of him.”

My first published book! I still love it. Magic, memory problems, and walloping ruffians with a broom. What’s not to love?

Relevant tags: Sweeping Changes

And that’s everything so far, as of August 2023!

Not counting the anthologies that other people put together, which I have stories in. (I’ll point you to my website for those.)

I am definitely working on more books. So many more. I write as a way of going on adventures, and I will happily take you with me.

[chloesimaginationthings]

Who’s ready for the FNAF Ethan winters..

[atompalace-official]

Sweetheart Sylveon 🌈💌🎀✨ Happy Valentine’s Day!!! 🩵💕

[bonehearts]

bad ending

[arcanegifs]

Kudos to Joséphine Meis for her Annie Awards nomination, Best Storyboard (TV/Series) category. Such an incredible achievement and well-deserved recognition for this beautiful work. Don’t miss out on Josephine’s masterful work✨ (video source)

[stargirl230]

ghost of you

super quick Sua screencap redraw to celebrate the new video release - no I was not expecting it to be Like That and yes I was devastated

(no reposts; reblogs appreciated)

[soliadiaz]

shut UP he has a pic of 118 with "we'll miss you" in a big picture frame 😭😭

they made him a goodbye gift and scribbled some wishes 🥹 and that is a pic from henren's wedding. and in each number we got a pair: buddie in 1, bathena in another 1 and henren in 8 🥹🫶

also a small pic with his father right beside it is vicious 💀

[the-crooked-library]

Nosferatu (2024) is unquestionably a multifaceted work, but what I personally consider to be the unifying idea behind its facets is that, for Ellen, Orlok represents validation.

Her fears are dismissed and called childish?.. He's a nightmarish manifestation of them.

She is consistently disrespected by everyone around her?.. He considers her his only equal. She never uses his title, it's permitted.

She is told to fix herself, misunderstood, and always isolated?.. He knows all the darkest parts of her and is delighted by them. He wants her just as she is, so much that he will lie, kill, and cross the ocean to find her.

The scene in their death/wedding bed is a direct parallel to the scene of her waking in that bed at the beginning of the film. She complains to Thomas that the "honeymoon is yet too short" and tries to pull him down with a kiss - however, he is worried about being late for work, and so he extricates himself and leaves. Cut forward to her sharing the same bed with Orlok, similarly early in the morning; he is startled by cock-crow and begins to rise, but she guides his head back down - and, even though he knows that he will die, he stays. He is her sexual and emotional desire, realized.

Given that there is a plethora of emotions Ellen is forced to suppress on daily basis, there is no singular correct interpretation of her relationship with Orlok. To erase any one of them is to render it shallower than it actually is; but there is no doubt as to why their attachment is mutual. To each, the other is something they’ve never had before.

[hiding-under-the-willow]

About nothing in particular.

[chiropteracupola]

everybody say THANK YOU MUSEUMS WHO PUT THEIR COLLECTIONS ONLINE so that we can DRAW THE THINGS WITHOUT BEING IN LONDON

[donutdrawsthings]

Can we talk about this? I feel like not enough people talk about this happening in the movie

[browneyesenjoyer]

IMANE KHELIF × d la Reppublica

[tuherrus]

a kiss

[chimerafeathers]

i really love how intensely Mirabelle reacts to act 5 Siffrin botched friendquest.

Isabeau is mostly operating out of concern and, eventually, hurt. he already knows something’s up before Siffrin gets to him. he knows something truly awful must be wrong for Siffrin to be lashing out like they are, and as soon as he can’t handle the situation anymore, he leaves and asks (with strained cheer) for time apart to cool off.

most of Bonnie’s anger comes from being upset and afraid that Siffrin would willingly put themself in danger for no reason, when that’s exactly why they’ve been so unsettled since the eye incident. they hate that Siffrin values their own life so little, they hate that they’re the cause of any pain or loss for him, and here he is, putting himself in that situation AGAIN. on purpose. it’s loud and explosive, but it’s familiar, too, being “hated” by Bonnie for this reason.

Odile pushes, and keeps pushing, until her concern overwhelms Siffrin and they strike where they know she’s most vulnerable. she gets physical, just for a moment, grabbing his collar before controlling herself and letting go. her fury shuts down into cold detachment, and she walks away.

but Mirabelle—dear, sweet, gentle, loving Mirabelle, “the most wonderful being on earth,” with her secret “ruthless side” that largely involves lightly badmouthing people behind their backs and then apologizing—slaps them. immediately.

and then COMPLETELY RENOUNCES THEIR FRIENDSHIP.

not just “we’re not friends anymore,” but “we were never friends in the first place.”

that’s!!! pretty extreme!!!!

of course, she ALSO starts by asking what’s wrong. something must have happened for him to act like this. but as soon as Siffrin brushes her off, she jumps past that line of questioning and dives headfirst into re-evaluating everything she thought she knew about them as a a person.

if he could say something like that to her and not see anything wrong with it, then she was wrong to treat him as a friend, wrong to read camaraderie into his teasing, wrong to think they must care about them all under their aloof demeanor.

that’s how Mirabelle phrases it—“I was wrong about you”—but i think that there’s a hidden layer of I was right about you, too.

she talks about the way they tease her like she had to convince herself that he was doing it in a friendly way. she says they talk like they “know better than her” like that’s a thought she’s had for a LONG time.

“Always soooo mysterious, Siffrin, always talking as if you're better than me! As if you know me!!! But you don't, Siffrin!!! You're just as lost and useless as I am!!! So stop!!! Talking!!! As if you know me!!!!!!”

none of this comes across as a new, sudden way to view Siffrin for her. it doesn’t shock or confuse her. it makes her angry, defensive, almost like she was waiting for something like this to happen at some point. the feeling of resentment, frustration, jealousy, being patronized and condescended to—this is something she’s been actively pushing down and rejecting this entire time, but they’ve given her ample reason for it all to boil to the surface. violently.

Mirabelle’s kindness is not inherent or easy. it’s a choice she’s making. she treats Siffrin warmly because she gives him the benefit of the doubt—refusing to act based on anxiety-fueled, cynical speculation, and reassuring herself that his actions are driven by care and friendship even if she can’t quite see it.

“I was wrong about you” doesn’t mean she always and without question believed them to be a fundamentally kind, caring person from the beginning—it’s that her first, colder instincts were right, and she was wrong to convince herself otherwise.

never mind that she asked what was wrong at first. she barely gives them time to speak in their own defense, to explain what they really meant by what they said. all of her suppressed doubts and frustrations are getting aired out now, now that all the trust she’d so deliberately placed in him has been betrayed. her pain feels bigger than this singular moment, so when she hurts him back, she makes sure it extends back through the entirety of their relationship for him, too.

“You're awful. You're not my friend, not my ally, not anything. You never were.”

like the others, she goes back to the clocktower and tells Siffrin not to come back until later. but there’s a finality to the way she ends this confrontation that isn’t quite there with the others. Isabeau and Odile reach their breaking point and remove themselves from the situation, asking for space to cool off but still somewhat leaving the door open for Siffrin to tell them what’s really going on at some point. Mirabelle is the only one who tries to fully cut ties—after everything else she says, her “I don’t want to see you until tonight” reads to me somewhat as “I don’t want to see you anymore unless I have to.”

I can’t wait to never see you again.

even back at the clocktower, Mirabelle doesn’t really defend Siffrin’s place in the party when Odile suggests leaving them behind out of concern for their trustworthiness on the most important day of the journey. Isabeau and Bonnie protest out of sentimentality and faith in Siffrin’s abilities and connection to them, and Mirabelle agrees, but…

“I agree, but... B-But would he even agree to come with us, still? Maybe they won't even come back tonight...”

she doesn’t say much outside of that. maybe the stutter and hesitation here are signs of regret about how things happened, but she lacks Isabeau and Bonnie’s confidence that Siffrin even wants to come back to them in the first place. she doesn’t trust that their bond was real anymore. maybe it never was in the first place, or maybe she broke whatever was there herself.

and she’s still mad when they finally catch up to Siffrin at the King! and she makes sure Siffrin knows that—after saving them, assuring him that he no longer needs to fight, that they’re all there for him. she still cares, of course she still cares—she’s still hurt, too, but they can figure that part out once there’s less world-ending stuff going on.

she’s the first to say that they all reserve the right to still be angry at Siffrin later—and that they’ve already forgiven him.

she’s also the first to say we want to stay with you, too. it’s not just you.

she was wrong! she thought they didn’t care but they care so much, it’s overwhelming, it’s world-ending.

i think she’s gonna be wallowing in guilt post-canon the moment she remembers what she said and did TO SIFFRIN and not just what Siffrin said to her. especially now that she knows Siffrin’s exact hangups, and especially especially if she figures out what Siffrin was trying to say.

they put themself through hell out of loneliness and fear that none of the others cared about him the way he cared about them, he was going insane from repetition and exhaustion and hunger and trying to keep them all safe and together, and all they did in the midst of all that was say something kind of mean to her one time (that turned out to not even be MEANT to be mean it was supposed to be HELPFUL they just SAID IT ALL WRONG) and she SLAPPED THEM? and told him that they WEREN’T FRIENDS AT ALL??? how could she!!! she should have known better!! what they said hurt a lot but still!!!

so when they eventually manage to try to talk about it, they end up almost in, like, a guilt competition.

Mirabelle apologizing for how she reacted, that she shouldn’t have yelled or hit him, that she doesn’t want to be the kind of person who acts that way out of anger and she’s sorry that she made Siffrin expect that reaction from her, she should have known better and believed in him more and they only messed up like that because they were losing their mind in a time loop but what’s HER excuse—

and Siffrin going nononono stop I deserved it—(HUH DON’T SAY THAT NO YOU DIDN’T)—and that he should never have said such awful things to her, ever, and she was under so much pressure already with the weight of the country and everyone’s lives and futures and her religion and their whole party counting on her to do this impossible task because she’s the only one who can, all this unbearable expectation and hope crushing her, and they KNEW that but they thought they could skip to the ending as though her feelings didn’t matter at all, like helping her wasn’t as important as saving a little time—

until they’re just. in tears together, apologizing for all the horrible things they did in between complimenting each other’s strength and kindness and resilience and how much they admire each other and saying that no, everything you did was completely understandable, actually, the only one who sucks here is me. which neither of them will accept coming from the other!!

they’re so similar, in ways they couldn’t really understand, before.

warm, affectionate, perfect Mirabelle, the resolute hero, a beacon of compassion and hope for all those around her, who wears her heart on her sleeve, her fear making her courage shine all the brighter—nothing like the insignificant, forgettable Siffrin, too terrified to be known, too fragile to touch, too selfish and disgusting to bear letting go.

cool, mysterious, unflappable Siffrin, the worldly traveler, as charming and silly as they are confident and skilled, who brushed off losing an eye like it was nothing, accepting the risks of this journey with barely more than a shrug—nothing like the anxious, stagnant, undeserving Mirabelle, a fraud and a nobody crumbling under the weight of a mission too important to be entrusted to someone like her, doubting herself, doubting her friends, doubting her mentor, doubting her faith, too weak and brittle to bend and change the way the world needs her to without breaking.

not worth bothering others with their problems. they should be able to handle this alone. stay positive, stay calm. breathe in, and out.

they’ll struggle with it, still—the hiding, the minimizing—but now, they understand each other a little better. they can hold each other accountable for what they leave unsaid.

it’ll get easier, eventually. they have plenty of time.

[reinvent-and-believe]

[arcanegifs]

Stromae, Pomme - “Ma Meilleure Ennemie” (from Arcane Season 2) [Official Music Video]