#HDM is actually my favorite book of all time

[the-real-list-of-ominous-threats]

I'm going to force you to watch a terrible adaptation of your favorite book

[thegeminisage]

This is weird of me but you said you're reading Jane eyre and it's my favorite book (it does get better in the sense that her whole upbringing is so rough and depressing) and so many people Don't Get It because they're like oh this is a weird relationship and Rochester is a dick and Jane is so meek but I feel like you'll get it, but I feel like it's worth saying that Rochester IS a HUGE DICK but Jane is NOT MEEK she's WEIRD AS SHIT, I feel like that gets lost in the historical context A LITTLE BIT but she's the kind of weird dramatic sassy bitch where most people don't know she hates them, she's a hater, but Rochester does and LOVES it and she loves that he's a dick and the whole book is SO SO much about an abuse survivor deciding what SHE wants, it's basically a female escape and power fantasy. Sorry I'm so so so not normal about Jane Eyre, if you watch an adaptation after watch the Ruth Wilson miniseries not the Fassbender movie ANYWAY I'd love to see your thoughts when you're done okay bye

this is such a funny ask to get because i am LITERALLY reading jane eyre against my will. here's what happened: i got serial reader because i felt like i should read more books (i already did p&p!!), and on my list of "read laters" was jane eyre, and when emily saw it they were like YOU'RE GONNA HATE JANE EYRE BUT YOU HAVE TO READ IT. and i was like why on earth would i read a book i'm going to hate this is over 100k long. but for some reason i am reading it. and so i''ve only JUST finished like chapter 5 which means so far mostly what i've read is poor jane getting abused by a variety of people. and i'm like WHY WOULD YOU HAVE ME READ THIS but they said the same thing that the character jane is very important. and i do get that because she's already yelling at mrs reed for being a horrible old bitch or whatever and so good for her. i am going to keep reading unless it becomes absolutely wretched.

re: the movies...i actually had seen the michael fassbender one a long time ago, but i barely remember it except i know the part about the wife in the attic and also i remember thinking it was boring and confusing. i will not WILL NOT watch the other movie because even though i kind of fell in love with ruth wilson watching HDM, i have become absolutely radicalized against the very SIGHT of toby stephens's face thanks to pjo passions, and i absolutely refuse to look upon him because the very sight of him fills me with revulsion and rage second only to b*nedict c*mberbatch. sorry. i also read an article that was like, the movies can never be good anyway because they can't break the fourth wall the way the book can in narration, they lack jane's Personality. so that's all fine i guess, i can live without adaptations. JUST for you though i will try to make another post when im finished <3

[maidenvault]

Gotta shoot 16 right back at you, and then 21 and 43 :)

Favorite trilogy

I wondered if we'd have the same answer, I have to say HDM too. :D My bestie let me borrow The Golden Compass when I was at just the right age for it to basically be for me what Harry Potter would be for lots of kids a bit later. I can vividly remember reading it the first time on a trip and being so into it I had dreams about Lyra and Iorek. TSK and TAS I remember less well (except the parts that made me extremely sad), I'm very overdue for a reread.

The book(s) on your school reading list you actually enjoyed.

I loved To Kill a Mockingbird, Beowulf, all the Shakespeare naturally, Great Expectations, The Poisonwood Bible, All the King's Men, and The Joy Luck Club. The last one I remember my teacher stressing that it's hard to keep all the characters straight supposedly, and grading us on a curve for the test on it because of that, which led to me getting such a high score she was like "So...did you like the book?" It had made me cry several times and I felt weirdly seen lol.

Title of a book you own that’s in the worst physical condition you have. Explain what happened to it. Post a picture if you want.

I'm pretty gentle with books. I lent this one to my dad looking brand new though and when he gave it back I was like "...Oh." 😂

[autumn-arcadia]

HI HI HI uh for one papyrus (because uh undertale and the correct answer is cause for concern acoustic) and for two jasmine because I am curious

OMG HI I LOVE YOU anyways

papyrus - if you put your "on repeat" playlist on shuffle what's the first song / what do you like about it

concrete by lovejoy! it's one of my favorite songs ever and i love how high energy it is, it makes me feel all pumped up and excited and it's so fun to sing in the car when i'm driving (i think you're the only person who'll understand that reference right now)

cfc acoustic actually isnt on my on repeat. i REMOVED it from the car playlist because i was so tired maybe i'll add it back someday

jasmine - do you have a movie or book you loved but will never watch/read again?

ough thats a good one,,,, i dont actually think so?? like the likelihood that i'm going to rewatch good omens or reread his dark materials is low because i have a low attention span and struggle with just. doing things for long periods of times but also god i want to re-consume both of those so fucking badly. and reread the good omens book. and watch the hdm show. ghdsghdjsdhjg

[rhaized]

I have been so MIA on this blog, but I've finally finished my PhD (!!!) and would like to make a shout out to fandom and fanfic, HDM in particular (novel incoming!).

I've always been a fangirl, before I even knew what that was. When I was little, I was obsessed with A Bug's Life and used to draw little stick figure motion books. I'd scribble the ants running around or talking to each other, rescuing someone or falling over something. As I got older, this obsession didn't really fade. I continued to become obsessed with things, like utterly and entirely obsessed with TV shows and actors and stories. Of these obsessions was one of my earliest and most favorites: His Dark Materials.

I happened upon the trilogy as a middle school teen looking for something to do after school. My local bookstore salesperson recommended I read this series because she thought I might enjoy it. Indeed, I did. There were daemons and armored bears and witches and, yes, a beautiful and mysterious woman I couldn't stop thinking about. Marisa Coulter captured me just like she captured all those children. I kept thinking about her life and her motives and her connection to Lyra. How did she become the way she was? We only got her POV in book 3. What was she thinking all that time living with Lyra? How did she view the events that happened? What if she had done even the slightest thing differently? How would that change the story and her relationship with Lyra?

To satiate my desire to know these things, I started writing little stories about her on pieces of paper in my school notebooks. I didn't know that fandom was a thing or that ao3 or ffnet existed, so I just kept to myself. I annoyed some friends and made them read my ideas, but I was alone in my obsessive pursuits.

It was like this for a long while, even into high school and then college. My dirty little secret; my strange thing nobody else would even understand. At some point, however, I *did* discover that ffnet was a thing. There was an entire site dedicated to people writing about books and TV shows! And there was even a space for HDM! So, I started to post my stories there. I did this for years, without realizing that spaces like tumblr and twitter existed as well. I was half in yet half out, here yet not. But I was happy. Sharing my thoughts and stories made me happy. It was enough for me, even though I was actually missing out.

I joined this tumblr space during the pandemic in late 2020, when I was well into my doctoral studies. Like a lot of people, I found myself displaced during this time, moving states to return home to ride out this uncertainty. I didn't see anyone except my immediate family. I couldn't access my university's library to do my research the way I wanted. I worked on my PhD qualifying exams and then my dissertation every single day in this weird isolated void, with the days bleeding into one another like bad dreams.

And then I remembered, suddenly, that HDM was returning for season 2. And I wondered if there were people out there who were talking about it.

So then I found this space. A friend encouraged me to start a tumblr, as it was a place for fans to connect and had content I'd probably like to see. I started this blog literally knowing nothing and no one. I simply wanted to talk about HDM and share my stories and read other stories. I hoped it would be a place for me. I slowly learned more about how things worked (although still hardly know and am the queen of the faux pas !), and then season 2 aired and I found myself going completely feral here with other people. At long last, I had a community of people who were just as excited as I was. I didn't feel embarrassed about my undying love for Marisa Coulter. I felt heard. I felt seen. I felt at home.

I joined a discord server and met amazing people through that. After more consideration, I made a Twitter account and met even MORE people, including an incredible woman I actually fell in love with and now have a long-term, serious relationship with. Because of fandom. Because I decided to make an account and see if other people like me were out there talking about HDM.

My PhD is finished now. After the hype of season 2 I had to buckle down and finally finish my dissertation. I had to apply for jobs, too, and somehow found one. And then I worked on another academic book and some articles, and what was once weekly fic updates and oneshots became distant memories of a freer and less inhibited time.

But I made it. I'm a whole new person now. A doctor, actually (something Marisa Coulter wasn't allowed to be). And I'm so thankful for the role fandom has played in this journey, in what it has given me and provided me not only during my PhD but for my future moving forward.

Fandom will always have a special place in my heart. I might not be as active as I used to be, during that strange pandemic era where time seemed to still. But I'm here, in the ways I can be, and I'm so excited for season 3 of HDM that my heart very well might BURST!

Thank you to those who have gone on this journey with me, be it yelling with me online or reading one of my stories or posting one that I've read. I'm so grateful for you and for this space, and I'm so excited for this next part of my life, fandom and otherwise. ❤️

[mishelleborjas]

I’m 24 and brave enough to finish reading all the secular books my fundamental Christian mother made me throw out as a child 🤫

[irrealisms]

got tagged by @vascera ! ty :D

answer 30 questions and tag 20 blogs you want to get to know better

Name: Hearts/Will/Casey/Francis/Kit/Sofia. yes i know this is complicated. im sorry. in my defense it is even worse for me

Sign: ares

Height: 5′5″ if i stand up straight 5′4″ if I slouch

Birthday: april 3

Time: 7:06pm est as of typing this

Favorite band/artists: the mountain goats. theoretically other artists too but in practice the mountain goats

Last movie: it probably says something about how often i watch movies that i genuinely cannot remember.

Last show: uh. ditto. ....prooooobably the Untamed or Hannibal.

What I post: mostly fandom content. which rn is dsmp because I have awful taste. but when i started this blog it was much more religion-heavy and I occasionally think of that in longing before going back to posting my fandom nonsense :’)

Last thing I googled: “beeduo visual novel” (ended up finding it in my tumblr likes lol. link here)

Other blogs: i have a few old blogs ( @weird-together​ , @liminaes , @creepycrawlycrazies , @daywillcomeagain , a couple old sideblogs that I made like one post on and then never used) but I don’t have any other currently active blogs

Do I get asks: occasionally? not often. this is almost definitely worsened by the fact that I reply to significantly less than half of the asks I get. talking is scary guys

Following: 1,232

Average hours of sleep: like. 9 or 10. my night meds Forcibly Knock Me Out. if i don’t take them i will do an allnighter by accident. if i do take them i will sleep like 8-12 hours. if i am woken up before 8 hours after taking my night meds i will simply go back to sleep

Instruments: none. I’m a decent singer though! not professional-level but I did allstate chorus a couple times in middle n high school

What I’m wearing: a magnus archives t-shirt, a flannel, and jeans

Dream job: when I was 4 years old I answered "what do you want to be when you grow up?” question by listing various animals and honestly that’s still true

Dream trip: visiting my internet friends 🥺

Favorite songs: Love Love Love by the Mountain Goats. Caroline by Emma Lloyd. Gasoline by Halsey.

Last book I read: (in its entirety) Spiritual Friendship by St. Aelred of Rievaulx, (in part) the Bible

3 fictional universes I’d live in: hmmm this is a tough one, a lot of my favorite fictional universes would be worse or the same as this timeline? I’d go for the His Dark Materials multiverse, which is like our world except (a) I’d have to deconvert and change my theology around (b) the seeing-your-daemon-out-of-the-corner-of-your-eye trick that I tried to do for years of my childhood would actually work. Same with Arda, except (a) I’d get to be more confident in my theology, and (b) I’d get to be confident that elves used to exist. Uhhhhh. I’d probably go for Vanda Nosseo from Silmaril (glowfic) by Lintamande, probably, which has the same (a) as HDM but makes up for it with “not only did elves exist in the past, they still do”. I think elves existing is pretty neat.

if you read all of that, consider yourself tagged! (if you want to be.)

[myriadeyed]

Day 16 (July 16th)

If you’ve read the HDM books, who’s your favorite character and why? If you have not, do you ever plan on reading them, and if not then why?

I haven’t read the books, but I’ve been keeping up with the show, and Mary Malone is one of my favorite fictional characters of all time now. I can’t articulate why. I love some very specific character archetypes sometimes. “Brave scientist gets pulled into a fantasy adventure and given an opportunity for her heroism to shine” is one of them. (I also love “bold, morally-righteous journalist goes after a bad person and ends up uncovering a conspiracy only to get in over their head and reap the consequences” and “wrong-genre savvy aka, as an example, character believes themselves to be in a sci fi story when they're actually in a fantasy” too.)

[cheeeryos]

20 questions, writer’s edition!

thanks for the tag @catboyadamparrish!

How many works do you have on AO3?

15

What’s your total AO3 word count?

123,545 

How many fandoms have you written for and what are they?

p much just trc/tdt. see below for the single exception.

What are your top 5 fics by kudos?

How to be an Ally

Combat Baby

Two Point Perspective

How to Handle Rejection

How to Ghost a Guy (omg how’d a bluesey fic sneak in there?! 💕)

Do you respond to comments, why or why not?

yeah!! I love getting and responding to comments :)

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

I don’t write a ton of angst so the only option is Ask for the Sea, the niall lynch/mór o corra breakup fic (with bonus aurora)

Do you write crossovers? If so what is the craziest one you’ve written?

I do not!

Have you ever received hate on a fic?

no, god that would be awful

Do you write smut? If so what kind?

I dooo...it’s pretty vanilla tho? is that what you’re asking?

Have you ever had a fic stolen?

nope I am not that cool or important

Have you ever had a fic translated?

nope, once again not that cool or important

Have you ever co-written a fic before?

no but I’ve co-brainstormed lots of bonkers ideas for AUs

What’s your all time favorite ship?

I mean...I have to say pynch, right?

(the actual answer would probably be lyra and will from his dark materials, which destrooooyed me as a pre-teen and I have never gotten over it. but also I’m not really in “fandom” for hdm per se, so don’t write fic or anything. so pynch.)

What’s a WIP that you want to finish but don’t think you ever will?

I guess the nino’s boys-meeting-blue-scene from ronan’s pov. but also...I’ve been writing fic less than a year so it’s not like I have things that have been languishing in my wip folder for decades or anything.

What are your writing strengths?

I think comedy dialogue is my niche?

What are your writing weaknesses?

I don’t think I’m very good at showing instead of telling. I tend toward over-explanation and love to use five words when one (or none, let’s be real) will do.

What are your thoughts on writing dialogue in other languages in a fic?

uhhh well trc kind of requires some latin every once in a while, which sucks because I don’t know any and the grammar is....complicated. no one would speak in any other languages though so it’s kind of irrelevant. for other fandoms where it makes sense, sure! I just have to do a lot of googling then.

What was the first fandom you wrote for?

I wrote a single short one-shot for a book series by meg cabot as a young teen, won a contest for it, and then retired from fic writing forever. until last year when I read trc.

What's your favorite fic you've written?

aw they’re all my weird children, don’t make me choose! but if I had to it would be Two Point Perspective because I’m proudest of it. it took a lot of effort and I’d never written something even close to that long before and I think it turned out really well.

I haven’t been on the dash all day so I truly don’t know who’s already done this so I’m just going to tag @sunset-moons and @elaboratebeauty and @kelliealtogether !

[yellowocaballero]

I just wanted to let me know that your daemon AU, is the daemon AU that made me finally check out HDM. Hope etc. hit me hard right in the emotions and now I appreciate how you combined the lore of both settings. It lives in my head enough that I'm going to be going "oh right, that was from the AU and not HDM canon" for a while, the way I do with Artemis Fowl and TGGH

 I am very sorry to say that my fic is probably better than HDM kjalsdjflaksjdf

Genuinely I remember when the tv show came out I went back and reread the first two, and...definitely parts of it still super enjoyable! I still liked a lot about it, and since my favorite style heroes are ‘guile heroes’ I liked Lyra in the first book a lot (the second book...). I think Phillip Pullman was mistaken when he thought that any of the kids reading it cared about anything other than the cool animal companions. He should have leaned into it. He didn’t lean into it. Mr. Pullman please, your book is cool animal souls, witches, and armored bears, I don’t give a shit about anything else.

So I think daemon AUs are an entirely different beast than HDM. I definitely know the vast majority of daemon au authors have not read HDM. That being said, I think a lot of daemon aus would be better if people did. The best daemon au of all time explicitly took place in a modern day setting of the HDM world, and that’s why it’s so good. It doesn’t have to be exact, and it definitely doesn’t have to be what HDM says at all, but I found it very helpful when writing Hope Etc to think of it as a genuine fantasy world, with almost no relationship to ours, and that their world would find ours very strange and off-putting. A lot of writers forget that we are alien to each other (something Pullman definitely mentioned but I think under-utilized), and once you do kind of start thinking of it as a fantasy world then I think you start writing a richer and more developed story with more immersive worldbuilding. 

I picked and chose what I wanted, and definitely made up a LOT of worldbuilding for it, but I did basically imply that this was the HDM world. A glaring omission is in the church, which I didn’t feel like engaging with. I also lent in the direction of another influential fic to me and opted for the daemon’s form based on the actual behavior of the animal, instead of symbolically. So you really, really don’t have to go with canon - but hey, it’s really cool remembering that witches and a different afterlife exist! I think specifically using the afterlife of HDM really helped my story, because it gave it kind of this soft and ethereal yet grounded feel, and provided a solid, tangible, ‘real’ afterlife, that Jon had touched himself - and I couldn’t have done that with heaven or hell. 

Sorry, you didn’t ask to hear any of this jkalsdf. In the process of writing Hope Etc (and talking with some people about daemon worldbuilding!) I began to develop actual opinions about it. Which is unfortunate, as I specifically tried to give as little thought as physically possible to the story.

(And, similarly, if you remember my AF over the actual one - good.)

[silveryinkystar]

Lyra for the ask game! Or Ahsoka

Lyra

favorite thing about them: Her lies in Northern Lights / The Golden Compass. I love how much she lies, that she lies about literally anything and everything that she can lie about, and just how wild her lies get. It's also a huge part of her character arc, which I also love!

least favorite thing about them: I kind of had to reach for this one, because it's not super present in the HDM books (as opposed to TSC), but she can get really dismissive of Pan and his anxieties despite them having a deep connection. It's really only noticeable once you set up a foil for her and Pan with other human-dæmon pairs.

favorite line: From Northern Lights / The Golden Compass -

Her dear soul, the darling companion of her heart, to be cut away and reduced to a little trotting pet?

brOTP: Roger, of course!

OTP: Will wins this one, but only by default

nOTP: Literally anyone else (although her ex? from TSC is fine I guess), especially Malcolm (looking at you, Philman)

random headcanon: I like to imagine that Lyra's ability to extrapolate the hell out of any lie is the reason she can read the alethiometer so easily - she's very malleable with her perception of reality, and genuinely clever about it too, hence why she can grasp the layers of meanings that each symbol of the alethiometer has. Where others might go, "wait that's kind of nonsense" or "what is the logic behind this", Lyra immediately jumps to the most fantastical option.

unpopular opinion: [Heavy spoilers for TAS] Dunno if this is an unpopular opinion, since I haven't actually seen people talk about it, but I don't like that the burden of spreading the "tell them true stories" thing is placed on her near the end of the book (and Will, of course) at all! There are plenty of others that Xaphania could also have told, and they could have helped spread it too, but nope, it's Lyra, a kid that only one college knows somewhat well, who maybe has friends but isn't super close to, etc etc etc. It's a lovely ending, but I had a huge bone to pick with it here.

song i associate with them: Scholastic Sanctuary from the season 1 OST! I don't know if Lorne Balfe has confirmed this, but I consider it her official theme in the series.

favorite picture of them: [ID in alt text, GIF by me]

Ahsoka

favorite thing about them: Her ability to make friends. She has Rose Tyler energy in the sense that wherever her mission takes her, if she can make friends or finds someone to sympathize with, she does it.

least favorite thing about them: Whatever the hell is going on with her live action montrals and lekku Honestly, most of the issues I do have with her are related to the general writing of the show, not her personality - I go into it a bit more with my "unpopular opinion" since I'm not actually sure it fits here. But if I had to pick one specifically, I don't like that she and Steela fall into the typical "girls rivalling for a guy's attention" trope when they could have been friends instead (especially considering they did get along well in the episodes!)

favorite line: "You don’t have to carry a sword to be powerful. Some leaders’ strength is inspiring others.” [TCW S04E02]

brOTP: Anakin and Rex, and Obi-Wan in a dad way!

OTP: Nobody! I do have some mayhaps-ships with her, but nothing I'll stand on as an OTP.

nOTP: Rex, any of the other troopers, Anakin, and Lux Bonteri.

random headcanon: I explored this in one of my fics, but I headcanon that she enjoys fabric arts in her spare time, specifically spinning yarn and weaving.

unpopular opinion: This is more of an early-TCW-seasons issue (and more on the writing than character) than a problem for season 4-7 (and Rebels) Ahsoka, but I think she gets off too lightly on the consequences to her mistakes sometimes - I get that the episodic narrative means that we can't linger on consequences of battlefield mistakes for long (not to mention TCW is a kid's series, and kids getting punished isn't necessarily something kids would enjoy watching, even if it's rightly done), but it just bothers me a little nonetheless.

song i associate with them: Ahsoka Leaves in the TCW seasons 1-6 OST being the most obvious, I think a close second is Revolting Children because of the Vibes (and also an extended au in my mind which has a fairly strange premise that I'll only write with lots of prodding lol)

favorite picture of them: [ID in alt text, GIF by me]

Badass.

Character Ask

[the--highlanders]

tagged by @penny-anna, thank you!!

How many works do you have on AO3?

142!

What’s your total AO3 word count?

473,453... hopefully I’m on track to hit 500,000 by the end of the year! like obvs it’s not really about the word count & when I’m writing I’m not thinking that I have to make things longer (tho I think my fics have been getting naturally longer lately? I think I’m spending more time on descriptions and scene-setting. which I like but which def hasn’t been a conscious choice) BUT I am using word count goals to stave off the temptation to count kudos and notes & then get anxious about that. sir that is my emotional support ao3 word count.

How many fandoms have you written for and what are they?

the only fandom I’ve properly posted stuff for is dr who... if you go back far enough in my main blog there might be like, 2 sh*rlock fics on my main blog. wouldn’t recommend it tho I was still in high school when I wrote them GFDJHS

I did write for both sh*rlock and torchwood tho. also warrior cats when I was quite a bit younger. & teeechnically my first fanfic was for the saddle club. but I was like, 3. so I didn’t know what a fanfic was. I was just writing a ‘book’ about the horses.

What are your top 5 fics by kudos?

(excluding timetracks because it’s not a fic to me, it’s a collection, I only put it in one ‘fic’ so I wouldn’t have to come up with individual titles for everything in it gjdhfks)

- stones

- tenth time lucky

- coincidences

- lucky guess

- amber

which is. an interesting selection gdfjkg

Do you respond to comments, why or why not?

I try to! I don’t get that many so it’s doable. I do need to get better at answering them quickly though jkdf I am very small and a little bit shy and people are very nice

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

oo idk maybe longing for a time that never came? (no idea why I called it that ghdfk. it’s kind of pretentious for something that never had any rhyme or reason to it). because like. are they going to survive? idk!!!

(would also like to plug this art @ettelwenailinon made for that fic because I love it and also can’t believe it’s four years old??? hello????)

more recently I think it’s the kirkyard (which is a title I actually like!! I really like this fic actually) because two can’t do any more than get jamie out of the church but jamie doesn’t KNOW and he doesn’t understand why two doesn’t even stop to talk to him & it’s painful imo

Do you write crossovers? If so what’s the craziest one you’ve written?

not really! I’ve nothing against them, I just don’t tend to write them.

I wouldn’t really class my daemon au as a crossover because like. it’s not really set in the hdm universe, just uses the concept of daemons.

on the other hand I feel like the only crossover I have /is/ pretty niche and a bit wild. lifeboat is a crossover with ark: survival evolved which is very dear to my heart & in my head sits quite nicely with the dr who universe. that fic was SO self-indulgent to write but I loved it. plus the idea of victoria’s dad having THREE scientist friends who went mad in pursuit of godhood is so incredibly funny to me that I forget it isn’t canon

(also the character being referenced in that fic is now voiced by david tennant in-game/will be in the animated series so. gift of prophecy. dfjkhsglfk)

Have you ever received hate on a fic?

nope! like I said everyone has been very nice. the only hate has been from myself gdfhlk

Do you write smut? If so what kind?

don’t read it & don’t write it. just not my thing!

Have you ever had a fic stolen?

not as far as I know o:

Have you ever had a fic translated?

yes!

What’s your all time favorite ship?

I mean it’s two/jamie. I’ve been here for like 6 years. still digging my hole.

What’s a WIP that you want to finish but don’t think you ever will?

talked about it in more detail in this ask but in terms of two-era stuff I’ve only got one that’s definitely never being finished and another that’s not got a great chance of being finished. & stuff I’ve written for other fandoms is just. look it’s gone gdjksdfdg. I don’t care about my dead sh*rlock wips it isn’t 2014 anymore

What are your writing strengths?

I honestly have no idea??? like I’m not being modest or anything, I genuinely don’t know. I think I can write some funny dialogue sometimes.

What are your writing weaknesses?

I’d really like to be better at plotting out longer fics tbh. having coherent plots and carrying through themes and details. people who can introduce an apparently inconsequential detail early in a fic and have it become relevant later in a way that makes you gasp are like, gods to me

What are your thoughts on writing dialogue in other languages in a fic?

I’m too nervous about getting stuff wrong so I wouldn’t do it unless I felt like I had enough of a grasp of the language to know what I was doing. but I am at a stage where I feel confident having some simple gàidhlig in my fics!! which is nice. I’d really like to be able to write more, and also to be able to write jamie’s dialogue with like. a sense of english as his second language/gàidhlig as his first? like in the occasional turn of phrase or way of putting something. outside of fic I’m super interested in what someone from that period who had gàidhlig as their first language and english as their second language would have sounded like and how they would have spoken.

my absolute dream would be to be able to translate all my fics completely into gàidhlig, but I’m probably years off from that, if I’ll ever be able to do it. I would really love to be able to write fiction in it, that would be a mark of proficiency in the language for me.

What was the first fandom you wrote for?

kind of answered above!

What’s your favorite fic that you’ve written?

oougkj idk!! I have so many now and honestly I forget about a lot of them.

the selkie au always has a special place in my heart, and I do love doing more historical-based ones, so I’ll say the kirkyard because I was already talking about it. if I can be a know-it-all while writing something I’m usually happy gjhklkh.

tagging @galacticlamps and anyone else who wants to do it!!

[aerielz]

I have not seen HDM materials yet and i only know it from picking up things on here, so i don’t know how daemons work, but I read about your tww AU yesterday and i CAN’T stop thinking about how josh and donna’s daemons would interact and embarress them. Also jed’s daemon as a bald eagle is funniest thing ever i am still not over that too.

GIVE ME ALL YOUR SCENARIOS AND HCs, please let's talk about this AU. And tbh i never read the books all the way to the end of the thing, so I'm going by what I saw in the show so far, which is not much at all. All I know is that daemons are supposed to be your soul, and that at first they're able to change form but later on in life they settle into one.

Oh and if you have a hc for Donna's daemon PLEASE tell me what it is, if not let's find one together, I have no idea what hers would be.

The only idea I had is one I actually saw in this fic (one of my favorites ever for the X files), so a little stolen, in which Mulder's daemon never really settled. Makes more sense in TXF than in TWW because. Like. Childhood trauma (daemons settle around puberty), but think about young Donna-- a little bit naive, changed majors and minors a gazillion times, has no idea who she wants to be yet. I love the idea of her daemon not having settled yet, but spending 99% of the time in the form of some smaller feline because Josh's is one and SHE'S HAD A GOOD TEACHER. But Donna still sees herself as small, so. Yeah. And then after Gaza it settles on something bigger and striking and elegant and imposing, because she knows who she is now. And imagine Josh being so surprised by the change, because he hasn't seen her in so so so long and it fucking kills him, because he wasn't there to see Donna finally figure out who she is- and and and her daemon's settled now and it's a feline like his so when she tells him she's had a good teacher she's pretty much telling my soul literally took form because of you.

AND YEAH JOSH AND DONNA'S DAEMONS EMBARRASSING THEM. Cuddling up together at the white house because they do not care. Like. Literally Donna's daemon sleeping on top of Josh's. Playing so much because they both are playful by nature but they're always in pretty formal places, so when Donna and Josh always find ways to joke around more silently, their daemons are both behaving like children. And Isla (Josh's daemon) is always so fun when Donna is around, I have this image of her trying to literally climb some drapes at the white house and Donna's daemons going like "Ohhhhh no" but before anyone can do anything she ruins the entire thing.

AND YEAH JED'S BEING A BALD EAGLE IMAGINE THAT. IMAGINE PEOPLE GETTING TO KNOW HIM AND THE FIRST THING THAT GETS OUT OF HIS MOUTH IS "I know." ALWAYS. And there's not a day that goes by in the oval that someone doesn't crack a joke about it. Ms. Landingham is the worst of all. She greets Jed with snark about it everyday. Toby always finds sarcasm around this fact. The press goes wild in the campaign and the tabloids never run out of material.

[thejakeformerlyknownasprince]

I saw your post on how Animorphs is written from a childist perspective where you very neatly outlined the boundary between a cast for children and one for YA. But what delineates the boundaries between YA and Adult fiction?

[OP refers to this post.]

What’s the difference between YA and Adult fiction?  In a word: Marketing.  Young Adult novels are Young Adult novels if they’re classified that way by bookstores, critics, publishing houses, and/or researchers.

People have pointed out that libraries had YA sections decades before I put the “official” inception with Twilight and Crank.  While that’s true, my local library also has sections on “Queer Paranormal Romance” and “Memoirs by Muslim Authors” (reason 491.2 that my local library is the best) but I doubt either of those genres is going to become mainstream anytime soon.  It wasn’t until Barnes & Noble (and other major gatekeepers) started incorporating YA sections that critics and scholars and publishers started considering it a “real” category worthy of study and discussion, and that didn’t happen until ~2005.

That’s also why the core of my argument about Animorphs is that it’s published by Scholastic, and Scholastic only publishes children’s books, and therefore Animorphs is a children’s series.  Genres are fairly-arbitrary marketing categories, and so are target ages of novels.

So what’s the difference between YA and Adult fiction?

Literal answer: If it’s in the YA section of a bookstore or has a “YA” sticker on the cover, it’s YA.  If it’s not, it isn’t.

Actual answer: Generally, novels that are about adolescents, focus on adolescent conflicts, written for adolescent readers, and/or concerned with the problems of adolescence are Young Adult.

There are some genres that are far more common within YA than others.  Paranormal romance is a big one.  So is “problem lit” that focuses on angst and characters’ first struggles with sex/drugs/death/finance.  (Like I said, Twilight and Crank were trend-setters.)  Period dramas are common, as are Chosen One stories, as are urban fantasies, and those three genres often overlap.  Bildungsroman, or the coming-of-age school story, is the O.G. YA genre.

There’s also a big convention around length.  YA novels tend to be physically quite large, even if publishers have to force the issue through screwing around with spacing and margins like a bunch of high schoolers whose essay has a five-page minimum.

[Image description: Side-by-side comparison of p. 112 of young adult novel Children of Blood and Bone by Tomi Adeyemi and p. 112 of adult novel Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn.  The pages are the same size, but the Gone Girl page has approximately twice as much text on it.]

The end result is this.

[Image description: Children of Blood and Bone’s spine lined up next to Gone Girl’s spine.  Gone Girl is noticeably thinner, even though it has a higher word count.]

This shit drives me BANANAS, but it speaks to the importance of this convention, and the extent to which arbitrary trends drive contents of books instead of the other way around.

Anyway, a few marginal cases that I think speak well to the YA/Adult divide:

His Dark Materials by Philip Pullman.  I used to play a game where, every time I entered a new bookstore or library, I’d guess in advance where The Golden Compass was located and then check to see if I was right.  Partially because I’m a dork with really boring ideas of fun, partially because there was no knowing in advance where it’d be classified.  I’ve seen HDM classified as children’s literature (because the main character is 10), as adult adventure (because it deals with religion and death and sex), as religious fiction (because it’s about kids who kill God), as Litératuré (because it attracted Critical Acclaim™), as adult sci-fi (because it’s in a steampunk world), as romance (because ???), as fantasy (because there are talking bears), and finally as YA.  It seems to have settled in YA, I think it belongs there, but YA didn’t really exist at the time when it was published.  It’s got adult and child themes, adult and child characters, and very adolescent character arcs about coming into one’s sexuality and becoming an independent individual... so no one knew what to do with it in 1995.

Song of the Lioness by Tamora Pierce.  Pierce herself has talked about the fact that the books were first marketed as romance (because they’re by a woman and about a woman, and publishing is full of sexist BS), they later got moved to children’s lit, then to “genre fiction.”  Now they’re YA, and they belong in YA.  Again: they’re books about adolescence, where most of the characters are adolescents, and they focus on adolescent concerns.

Crank by Ellen Hopkins.  First of all, I want to make clear that I love that book, and that I learned more about how to write poetry from Hopkins than any English teacher.  However, Crank was also the inspiration for some of my least-favorite trends in YA.  It’s a verse novel, so it has as few as 5 words per page but is also a fucking tome.  Publishers took the message that they could charge $29.99 for a novel with the same number of words but three times the pages as one going for $7.99, and acted accordingly.  It also featured Baby’s First Discussion of Serious Topics like addiction, homelessness, assault, and prejudice.  That helped launch a lot of genuinely brilliant novels whose authors took the time to do it right and/or wrote what they knew (The Hate U Give, Wintergirls, Miseducation of Cameron Post)... aaaand it helped launch a lot of condescending, ablest/sexist/problematic, “those Other People are just like us” type novels (13 Reasons Why, The Fault in Our Stars).

Anyway, people have been writing novels about adolescence for adolescents for as long as there have been novels.  Catcher in the Rye, The Outsiders, The Chocolate War, A Wrinkle in Time, Speak, Silent to the Bone, and Killing Mr. Griffin all make that patently obvious.  However, those novels all kind of wandered around homeless inside a lot of bookstores until mega-sales of books like Twilight, Harry Potter, The Book Thief, Just Listen, Crank, So Yesterday, How I Live Now, The Hunger Games, and (sigh) Looking for Alaska forced Barnes & Noble to build a home for them.

It’s interesting to look at lit crit from right around 2005, because a lot of scholars are saying “there’s this... new category? about teenagers? it’s becoming a thing?”  But in 2020 scholars can just write “YA” and not even spell it out because yeah, yeah, everybody knows.  So the category is useful if it helps people find books, obnoxious to the extent that it controls what books get published or marketed and what they look like on the shelf, and probably going to split even further into “YA - Teens” and “YA - Emerging Adulthood” if trends continue as they have been.

[rhaized]

Ao3 Writing Tag

Tagging myself from @thelonecritic 's post! I just love writing fanfic and talking about it.

Name(s): Rhaized

Fandom(s): almost exclusively HDM for like 8 years 😅 but I've also written for The 100, Luther (because Ruth obz) & Fire Emblem: Three Houses.

Where you post: mostly ao3 these days

Most popular oneshot (by kudos): Resolve Yourself, although I think my Mary/Marisa oneshots are catching up despite being written only a couple weeks ago 😅

Most popular multi-chapter (by kudos): Golden Auroras, which I started because I couldn't bear waiting a whole year before S2 and which I guess I'm gonna anxiously return to as we wait for S3!

Favorite story you've written so far: The Duty of the Old, another multi-chap fic featuring Lyra & Mrs. C. I just love the idea of Lyra and Mrs. C having a longer and more sustained relationship, even if it still is fraught with the complications that will inevitably arise between them. I also have worked really hard to write longer and more eventful chapters for this fic, whereas my tendency for multi-chaps is to write shorter scenes. So I think it's my favorite because I've put so much of my heart and effort into it.

Fic you were nervous to post: Believe it or not, Temptress, which accidentally predicted the Mary/Marisa meeting in ep 5! This ship was basically non-existent as far as I could tell, and I thought oh gosh what am I doing here. But I went with it, and after seeing their scene and just more of Simone Kirby's adaption of Mary, I am so interested in it. Writing Mary/Marisa is so fun because they're so different but also there's just something about them together that is so intriguing. I also recognize this ship isn't for everyone, so much respect. We are all so valid.

How do you choose your titles?: Not very well! Usually from a quote from the books or show, although sometimes just descriptive words. Titles are the bane of my existence.

Do you outline?: Always! I write a lot academically for my studies and the process is kind of the same where I jot out the major points/main plot events I want to happen and then I sort of fill it in. This happens over a few days for oneshots; for multi chaps, I will map out and mark up ideas/scenes for weeks as I go. I move things around a lot, too. I know multi chaps are more difficult for this reason, but somehow I can't stop writing them because I love the space they provide to really explore an idea in depth.

Complete: Oh dear 😅 my oneshots, but as of right now I'm literally still writing every single one of my multi chaps! I don't abandon them. I just take my sweet time.

In progress: Temptress, The Duty of the Old, and Golden Auroras (yes, I juggle a lot at once; yes I do the same with my academic projects and everyone thinks I'm out of my mind 😅 I just love being busy)

Coming soon/not yet started: more Mary/Marisa oneshots and Marisa & Lyra oneshots, and I'm sure I've got another multi chap in me somewhere... But I need to get a handle on these existing ones first, since I love them and they deserve my attention.

Prompts?: I've never done them before because of my already chaotic writing process, but if I see one I like/that inspires me who knows!

Upcoming work you're most excited about: Temptress updates. I actually envisioned the ending recently, and while I think we're not quite there yet, I just can't WAIT for it.

Tagging: gosh, please tag yourself and share if you'd like! I never want to pressure anyone into doing these if they don't want to :) but this was fun. I think it's neat to learn more about other fan writers and to also reflect on your own writing/process.

[docholligay]

Doc Loves His Dark Materials

If I were going to regret anything about HDM, it would be that I wasn’t in high school until I read it. If I read it when I was a child, I would have been full-tilt obsessed with it. It was precisely the sort of thing I was always looking for and could never find. 

There are a great many YA books that delve into the realm of fantasy, but few of them that inhabit such a fully realized world. Lyra’s world, as it is set up, immediately takes you in, and it manages to almost have an air of urban fantasy, a world that is clearly different from ours, but not so different that it requires a lot of jargon or that it becomes difficult to understand. It is our world, but only off a few clicks. 

Daemons are my favorite “personality sorter” of any of the YA books that have them, which is many, because everyone loves to put themselves into boxes while claiming labels are stifling. I also rarely see much discussion about daemons, and I assume this because it’s much more difficult than one’s Hogwarts house or anything like that. Your daemon’s form is intrinsically tied to who you are at your core, and Pullman is utterly unconcerned with overexplaining how they work, and how they are chosen for you, outside of that. 

Lyra Belacqua is a fantastic main character in that she has true flaws which are immediately apparent to the reader. It is not that she is plain, and put upon by life, she is not some brooding orphan looking to find herself. She is spoilt, and impetuous, and willfully ignores all the privileges of her life. She is a willful and skilled liar, and there’s a great deal about Lyra that’s not particularly likeable at all, and yet for all that, she feels more fully realized. She is a girl who must come into herself. 

And all of this, of course, ties back into the fact that Pullman does not treat his young readers as if they were incapable of handling deeper themes and ideas, or that they can’t read. The narration is often lyrical in quality, the title of the series is cribbed directly from Paradise Lost, and from time to time the book itself quotes poetry. It believes that young readers are capable of higher things. The concepts of grey morality, of desperation, of sacrifice. His Dark Materials is not afraid to question the very wisdom and usefulness of God. 

To this end, as I referenced above, Pullman does not feel the need to drill things down to the exact point. It’s actually a lot closer to adult books in this way, that it expects that young readers are also capable of drawing their own conclusions and coming to their own ends. Every time I thought it was going to put too fine a point on something, it would stop, right there. 

That is not to say it’s a perfect series, as nothing in life is perfect, and occasionally I roll my eyes at Pullman’s preachiness, but it’s few and far between. Most of the series is a deeply textured, complicated children’s series about maturity, heaven, the difficulties of one’s parents, and also there are witches. 

Spoilery below the cut

This is one of my favorite YA series of all time, and might be my favorite if we break it into age groups, being as A Series of Unfortunate Events is clearly meant for a much younger audience. Northern Lights/The Golden Compass (spicy take! The Golden Compass is a better title than the original! It fits with the pattern of The Subtle Knife and the Amber Spyglass, and also with the overarching Series Title of His Dark Materials. Why are you booing me, I’m right.) 

I think all YA series want to make their characters’ flaws into eventual strengths, but I don’t think any (that i’ve read) do it quite so well. Lyra’s stubbornness and lying, storytelling, save her ass more than once in a way that doesn’t seem coerced or cheap. I love that eventually she learns how to be less of a liar, and more of a storyteller. That her life can be as interesting as the falsehoods she used to tell, it feels very much like my own experience of becoming and adult and discovering that I had plenty of interesting things to say without telling a lie. 

Lee Scoresby is my favorite character of all of them, and I adore him, and his arc is so good, so entrenched with that classic Western sense of just wanting not to be involved, and being unable to stop yourself from getting involved. I was, of course, sad when he died, but there was literally no more fitting end for Lee than what ended up happening, that sense of sacrifice and willingness to die for the sort of idea that a person can hold, that utter loyalty. I still haven’t watched the HBO version partially because I’m not sure I can fucking handle him being played by Lin Manuel Fucking Miranda. Who also played ~the cockney lamplighter~ in the new Mary Poppins because I’m not allowed to enjoy anything. 

People are often surprised that I love HDM because it’s intensely anti-religion, and indeed, there are a handful of times that Pullman’s edgy atheist act annoys me. But in fairness, it’s MOSTLY not my religion taking the punishment, in that Pullman, like most Culturally Christian Athiests, assumes all “abrahamic” religions are the same, despite all three of them (or four, if you count protestant as its own thing) being vastly fucking different in approach and belief. So, really, I don’t get hit that much. But also rather than JUST being like “RELIGION MAKES YOU NAUGHTY” which is about as deep as it goes in The Golden Compass, it ends up taking the tack that God is nothing but a powerless old man who WANTS to die, who is being held up only by those who wish to bring war and strife. What a concept! Amazing! Not where I expected it to go at all. 

Also the fucking courage to show dissolving into the world as being preferable to some form of eternal life? FUCK ME. I was so absolutely struck by that, as a religious person who, probably 70% of the time, really can’t deal with the concept of an afterlife. It seems so overwhelming to me. I thought the whole thing was done beautifully. 

And its not as if he doesn’t punish both the religious and not alike--despite everything, Mrs. Coulter and Lord Asriel both end up hurling through the abyss because neither of them could every really move from their positions. In bringing down the Voice of God, they also must destroy themselves, built around this idea of upholding god and destroying god in equal measure, they cannot stand without him. I mean shit! You’re not gonna see that in Harry Fucking Potter, which built up the necessity of a hero’s sacrifice only to pull it out of the ass. 

The way that Lyra’s parents are both villain and hero, at turns, and how you come around to be like, ‘Wow, you are both assholes” even though they are on opposite sides, is remarkable. How many times how you read YA and it’s been like “oh my long lost and/or dead parent is wonderful!! How I love/miss them!!”? HDM does not fuck around with parents. Lyra’s parents are enemies and completely corrupt weirdos, Will’s mother needs him to take care of her in a way that is NOT made cute, and his father just fucking fucks off and dies the minute Will meets him. It’s a thing I didn’t realize I saw so little of in YA until I saw it here. 

I completely expected, braced for, and readied myself for Will and Lyra to end up together, and I was so fucking pleased that they don’t. It’s refreshing to be proven wrong, to have an author not decide that the boy and girl need to get together at the end of it. And it’s remarkably low drama.