#I actually drew the first four comic pages a year ago | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

lokis-army-77 · 3 years

Text

If You Please

Chapter three

Bucky Barnes x Reader

Word Count: 1994

I'm bad at writing descriptions, so this is basically a reader insert into The First Avenger and then we'll see how it goes from there.

<< Previous Next>>

Masterlist

The afternoon passed quickly and soon it was almost time to go to bed. I was sitting in a chair, reading, in the living room. Steve was sitting in the chair to my left, drawing away in his sketchbook. For as long as I could remember growing up, Steve had wanted to become a comic illustrator. When we were younger he drew small comic strips about the adventures Bucky, himself, and I would go on. They were always fun to read, but then the US entered the war 3 years ago and Steve stopped drawing all the time and focused on trying to join the fighting. He even got Bucky to help train him at the local boxing gym in the afternoons. Now he only drew when he was anxious or if something was on his mind. I knew if I asked he would just deny it and put everything away.

“I’m off to bed Stevie. Don’t stay up too late,” I yawned. I placed my bookmark in between the pages and quietly pulled myself up from my chair. Steve followed and gave me a short hug.

“I won’t, I’ll probably head to bed here in a few minutes. Thank you for helping me pack today,” he said quietly.

“You’re welcome, I’ll see you off in the morning. Goodnight.” I headed out into the small hallway and into my bedroom. I got myself ready, turned off the bedside lamp, and then crawled into bed. The day had been fast but exhausting. I let my eyes close and my mind drifted to thoughts of Bucky on the ship headed to Europe. Was he okay, did he miss me yet, was he alone? I knew he would be fine, but I prayed anyway. I prayed that he would come back to me safe and sound. I also thought of Steve and how he would be going off to training. I knew Dr. Erskine had some plan involving Steve in Project Rebirth, but I just hoped that he knew what he was doing and that Steve would be safe.

Project Rebirth wasn't something to take lightly. We were creating stronger, faster, and better soldiers. Steve had no clue what he was getting himself into and even though I couldn’t tell him I was involved with this project yet, I would be by his side each step of the way.

Finally, tiredness overtook my worried thoughts and I drifted into a deep, dreamless sleep.

The next morning started like any other, I woke up to the jarring sound of the alarm clock by my head. After stretching I got out of bed and walked to the bathroom to wash the sleep from my face. The warm water helps to wake me up. When I was through with that I made my way into the kitchen to start making breakfast for myself and Steve like always. I had just placed the bread in the toaster when Steve strolled groggily into the room. He went over to the counter where I had placed our bowls of cereal and grabbed one. Then he walked over to the table to take a seat. When the toast was ready I put the pieces on a plate and took them over to the table after grabbing my cereal bowl. Steve grabbed a piece of toast off the plate and slowly started to eat.

“You look like you’re about to pass out, did you even go to bed like I told you,” I questioned him and took a few bites of my cereal.

“Yes, I went straight to bed a few minutes after you did,” he replied while glancing up from his cereal and through his lashes.

“Well, the dark circles under your eyes prove otherwise. You won't be able to stay up late and sleep in after you move into the barracks.” He shook his head and kept eating. “Well,” I started with a sigh, “I’ve got to head off to work in a few, I can walk you as far as the subway.”

“Thanks, It would be nice if you could come with me but I know you can't take off on such short notice.” I smiled at him and we continued to eat our breakfast in peaceful silence. After we finished I went to grab the empty dishes but Steve grabbed them before I could. “Here, let me. You go get ready.” I thanked him and went on to get ready for the workday.

When walking to the subway Steve and I cut up and joked like we always did. It wasn’t until we were almost at the subway stop that we became quieter. I grabbed Steve and pulled him into a tight hug.

“I’ll see you later. Try not to get into too much trouble during training,” I joked before pulling away.

“I can’t guarantee that but I’ll try my best not to. Have a good day at work, and remember to lock the door when you get home, I know you forget to do that at times. I won't be there to lock it behind you if you forget.”

“That was one time, but I’ll remember to check it before I go to bed. Now go or you'll miss your ride.” I watched as he walked away, I waved to him when he turned around to me. I stood watching until he walked down the subway stairs. After he was gone I started on my way to the recruitment office, which was just about three blocks away.

It was a peaceful walk, the city was starting to come alive around me as I went. Women and men on their way to work and children on their way to school. The recruitment office was slowly coming into view, I could already see a line of young men standing from the door and down the sidewalk.

Once I made it to the building I maneuvered my way through the crowd of boys and headed to the back office where a short old woman sat at a desk sorting through some files. She looked up at me and smiled while she said, “Beautiful morning, do you have the time?”

I responded quickly with the other half of the code phrase, “Unfortunately my watch has stopped at 4:18.” She nodded and reached her hand under the desk to press a tiny button that would unlock a secret door that was hidden behind four large filing cabinets. I quickly headed in before anyone could come into the back room. The door closed softly behind me and locked back into place. I continued to walk down the dimly lit hallway until I found the women's locker room. Part of keeping the secret of working for the military was that I had to keep my uniform in the hidden base and change into it when I went into work.

After quickly changing into the uniform I left the locker room to go to the elevator that was directly at the end of the hall. I pressed the down button and the doors opened up. While inside I pressed the third level button and waited for the elevator to jerk to life.

As the doors slid open onto the third level basement floor I saw many people running around the yellow-lit hallways. I walked out into the hallway and was greeted by Agent Peggy Carter, who was walking towards me from the meeting room to my left. “Morning Carter, what's on the agenda today,” I questioned.

“Good morning Rogers, I believe today you and I will be going to Camp Lehigh to scout out the new recruits for Project Rebirth. We will be helping with their training starting before lunchtime today.” She kept walking as she explained the plans for today, I followed closely behind her.

“Then we should get to the car, it is almost nine,” I noted as we kept going through several corridors to the garage. “I have some things to tell you as soon as we leave.” Peggy nodded but kept quiet. After about a minute of walking, we made it to the large parking garage. It had been built under the secret base as a quick getaway escape or just a way to move discreetly in and out of the city. Some of the tunnels that were connected to the garage went on for several miles. The one we would be taking surfaced only a few miles away from Camp Lehigh.

As we reached the car, Peggy and I both opened our doors and slid into the back seat. A young army man was already in the driver's seat ready to drive us away. “What is it you wanted to tell me about earlier,” she asked.

“Do you remember me telling you about my older brother Steve?” I questioned while looking over at her.

“The one that keeps trying to enlist? I remember.” She nodded her head as she spoke.

“Yeah, that's the one. Well, yesterday he told me that he’s been recruited, and by Dr. Erskine. So that means that he is going to be one of the candidates for Project Rebirth. He has no clue what my job actually is, but with me being heavily involved in this project, will it be a problem? Are there any protocols that need to be followed?” She shook her head and let out a soft chuckle when mentioned Dr. Erskine. Then she looked out the window and seemed to think for a minute.

Turning back to me she said, “There isn’t any protocol that I can think of, other than that you have to treat him exactly like you would treat the other recruits. This is a sort of gray area because of your heavy involvement with this project over the last several years and the fact that Dr. Erskine himself chose your brother to be in this program.” I slowly nodded my head as she continued. “That being said, If we encounter him, I would give him a small explanation of why you are there without giving him any information about the project, and that while he is there in training, you are his superior, not his sister.”

“Okay, thanks. That's what I was thinking but I just wanted to ask you just in case. When I see him I’ll pull him over to the side and explain.” I paused for a second and lifted my hand up to grab at the necklace I had been wearing. Dangling from the small chain was a dainty art deco style ring, which once belonged to Bucky’s mother. I turned in between my fingers and watched as what little light there was, bounced off the small square diamond in the middle. I placed it back under my blouse. “James left yesterday with the 107th, I still haven’t said anything to Steve.”

“You’re going to have to tell him eventually, it will be better if it’s sooner than later. Since James is his friend he shouldn't be that mad. Trust me, I know from experience.” After saying this she looked out her window and for the briefest moment, I saw a look of sadness go across her face.

“I know I should tell him, but Steve has it in his head that James is someone who isn't going to settle down anytime soon.”

“That’s probably because neither of you has given Steve reason to not believe that James is that way. He’s your brother and he trusts your judgment, if it doesn't go over smoothly just give him time, he’ll come to realize that you and James love one another, and there really isn't anything he can do about it,” she stated matter-of-factly. “Here,” she handed me a small stack of manila folders, “look over these. They’re the files on all the project recruits.”

I opened the first folder and started to skim over the information and thought this was going to be a long drive.

#james buchanan barnes #bucky x y/n #bucky barnes #bucky x reader #bucky x female reader #bucky fic #bucky fanfic #bucky barnes x reader #bucky barnes x rogers!reader #winter solider x reader #marvel fic #marvel fanfiction

47 notes · View notes

clevercatchphrase · 4 years

Text

2020 Year Review~

2020. Pretty unique year, don’t you think? It’s the first year since 2002 to have only two different digits in it. After 2022, this won’t happen again until 2111. Yep. Absolutely nothing more interesting than that.

Anyway! It’s time I reflect on my 2020, look back on my yearly goals and rant about things that happened to me this year. I made a post like this last year, where I went over my 2019 goals and talked about what I accomplished and what I didn’t, and it’s only fitting I do the same again this year. Read more under the cut for a random stream of consciousness ramble!

So, first things first, let’s look at my 2019 goals;

Finish paying off that last student loan

Put more stuff on my redbubble

Illustrate my own fan fics

Sew at least one stuffed animal

Make an enamel pin

Read one new book a month

Write one page a day/Complete at least one new fan fic

Learn Python or C# for the game I want to make

Finish fully scripting Ghost Switch

Boost my patreon

Paying Off My Last Student Loan: Going down the list, I am proud to say that I FINALLY paid off all my student loans! (and not a moment too soon. The last payment I made was literally days before the first quarantine rolled out). It took me roughly 4 years on my part-time paycheck to pay off all my loans, and once I finished, I had no money to my name (literally; I had less than 1k as emergency money in case of car troubles or health issues). Heck, I’m STILL living at home as a save up for a place of my own. Finally paying off all my student loans DID activate my secret 2020 new year’s resolution, which was to adopt a cat! I did this too, literally a week later! She is the best thing that’s happened to me this entire year and I love her so much and she is the snuggliest cuddle bug I’ve ever met. I’m so happy she’s in my life now~

Put More Stuff On My Redbubble: ah ha ha ha… I thought I did this, but then I went and checked, and it turns out-! I did not. I made art I intended to go on my redbubble, but haven’t put there yet. They are all drawings of some OCs from a game I want to make, but because I haven’t progressed on making the game this year, I never got around to putting more stuff related to it on my redbubble. At the time of writing, there are 7 days left in December, so I guess I could go and put it up on my redbubble right now, but without context on where the characters are from, there wouldn’t be much point, now would there?

Illustrate My Own Fan Fics: Another goal that I was so stoked to actually do… and then just didn’t. Gee, I wonder why I couldn’t find the energy or motivation to do it this year? Truly a conundrum. (Hey, you know what? If Ghost Switch counts as a fan fiction in a visual form, then I am doing GREAT on this goal. 2.5 years in, 1 of ~4 arcs done, and still going steady~)

Sew At Least One Stuffed Animal: Okay, I have a valid excuse for not doing this one. I even knew which stuffed animal I wanted to make, and had the pattern drawn out and everything, but I had no money for materials because I had just paid off my student loans. And then, by the time I did have enough money again, quarantine was in full effect and I couldn’t go out to the fabric store. I’m still trying my best to stay out of public places even if the rules are laxer now, because I don’t want to catch the plague even if everyone in my goddamn city thinks and acts like the problem is over already. Even if they’re all wearing masks, even if they’re staying 6 feet apart, I still don’t want to risk it. I will stay inside until health experts give the all clear, and when that day comes, then I will buy some fleece and make a plush.

Make An Enamel Pin: I ACTUALLY DID THIS ONE. TWICE! Halfway through quarantine, I was feeling anxious and depressed about my job and how they were planning to have me work with the public despite climbing infection rates and positive covid cases. I didn’t quit then, but in a desperate move to try and become self-sufficient, I went to madebycooper and made two enamel pins based on some butterfly dragons I drew last year. They’re on my etsy store now! I even went out of my way to open a P.O. box just to start a small business! I haven’t sold a single pin yet, and I’m actually really nervous to sell my first because I don’t trust the efficiency of the postal system thanks to the actions of the GOP that really screwed them over this year! (If you would like to see my enamel pins, click here!)

Read One Book A Month: I did this! With dragon books I bought a couple years back! In fact, I read FOURTEEN dragon books, and still have more books for next year to read! The 14 books I read this year were:

The Hive Queen

The Poison Jungle

Wings Of Fire Legends: Dragonslayer

Dealing With Dragons

Searching For Dragons

Calling on Dragons

Talking to Dragons

The Bronze Dragon Codex

The Brass Dragon Codex

The Black Dragon Codex

The Red Dragon Codex

The Silver Dragon Codex

Dragon Strike, and

Hatching Magic

To be honest, I had read The Red Dragon Codex years ago when it first came out, but completely forgotten what it was about. I remembered liking it, and I knew the reading level was on the lower side, but the whole dragon codex series was pretty good! So far, the Silver dragon codex was my favorite, and black dragon codex was probably the worst! Hatching Magic was also really slow and bad and had plot points that went nowhere, but the book was written in the 80s, so I don’t know what I expected. The Dealing with Dragons series was very charming and great for the most part, save for one line in the last book that really rubbed me the wrong way, and all the Wings of Fire Books go above and beyond in this third arc. The second legends book could be a little tighter, though (sky and wren are the best duo and I want a book solely about them, but I honest to god do not care about leaf and ivy’s stories.)

Write one Page of any story every day/ complete at least one fic: I… did this? Okay, I kinda cheated near the end of the year. I was keeping up the one page a day thing for the first four months, but then the world went to shit and my schedule and habits got disrupted and I fell off my good track record. I completed 7 out of roughly 12 one-shots I had planned for this year (my goal WAS supposed to be one short a month, but… you know how it happens) I kept trying to catch up on this goal all year, but the days kept piling up…. Until November hit. I managed to write over 250 pages for Nanowrimo, and I consider this goal a win. 365 pages of fiction in total, which averages out to about one a day~. SHUT UP IT COUNTS.

Learn Python or C# for the game I want to make: Another goal I didn’t have the mental energy to commit to this year. Truly a mystery to where all our willpower went in 2020.

Fully Finish Scripting Ghost Switch: still haven’t done this one yet! The Snowdin arc is completely planned, but I just haven’t gotten around to getting the other areas. I’m not worried, though. I know all the major plot points I gotta hit, it’s just weaving them together in a way that flows nice is the final task. I’m not too worried though. I don’t expect to finish the Snowdin arc for another year and a half, at the bare minimum.

And my last goal of 2020, Boost My Patreon. I did this at the beginning of the year, but then very intentionally stopped about a third of the way through. It didn’t sit right with me to tell you guys to donate to me when suddenly EVERYONE was financially strained from layoffs or being furloughed. I told my patrons the same, and if you ever need to stop donating to me to take care of yourself first, then by all means, please do. I would feel much better knowing you’re using your money to see yourself fed and housed instead of given to me (where it is pretty much only used to buy gas for my car, honestly)

Welp! That was all my goals for 2020! I achieved 4 out of 10 goals plus 1 secret goal! Pretty much the same ratio as last year, but now this time I can blame all my failures on the pandemic! I don’t feel so bad about myself anymore~

ON TO 2021!

I have 11 goals for the new year, again some rolled over from this list, and some from even older years. They are, in no particular order;

Read 12 new books (roughly 1 book a month)

Finish the first draft of 2019’s Nanowrimo project and rewrite it

Script TDV

Finish Scripting Ghost Switch

Build A Comic Buffer

Sew 1 Stuffed Animal

Finish 1 Song Comic

Make another Enamel Pin

Finish 2 short original comics (this one counts as 2 goals)

Finish the 5 remaining one-shot fics

Now to go into depth on each one, more for my own sake, really. I want to know exactly what I have planned for each goal this year, and sometimes just looking at a short list doesn’t capture all the smaller details.

1)Read 12 new books. Same as last year! I The only difference is I might not be able to make it all dragon-related books. (I try my hardest not to buy from amazon anymore, but half-price-books doesn’t always have the obscure stuff I’m looking for)

2)Finish 2019’s nanowrimo project. If you read my 2019 year reflection, you’ll notice I said I wanted to do some original writing. And I did! The story I wrote for nanowrimo back then was a story I’ve been toying with since 2017, but it was only last year I finally got pen to paper. Now, you may find it odd that the keyword says “finish”. You may think, “but isn’t that what you’re supposed to do for nanowrimo?” and to that I say, WRONG! I wrote 50k words for nanowrimo, but the draft was only about halfway complete. I was kinda discouraged about what I had written last year, because I didn’t like how it was coming out, but I did manage to get it half done. Now it’s time for me to bite the bullet and just finish the thing so I can finally revise it and make it into something I DO like. (It’s still gonna be hella long, tho. That’s what I get for trying to write an epic fantasy, I guess.)

3)Script TDV. TDV is the abbreviation of the game I want to make. I… still need to do so much for this project OTL… In addition to getting the story solidified, I still need to draw art and game assets, and learn how to code for it, both of which are no small task. I keep having some sort of new year’s goal related to this on my list, and every year I just don’t hit this one. Will 2021 be different?

4)Finish Scripting Ghost Switch. (Or at the very least, get the waterfall arc completely written out). I have a plan to break this down into simpler steps, by focusing on just one arc for a month or two. Every major arc has 2 to 3 parts, broken up by flashbacks, and if I can just finish one section a month, then I should have the entire thing scripted by the end of the year. It’s not a difficult pace, but seeing if I stick with it will be the real challenge, as it is will all my goals it seems.

5)Build a Comic Buffer: I’m actually working on this one right now! Since I paid off my last loan and got a new job this year, my current Patreon goals are kind of out of date. They had all been centered around me paying off that last loan, and working towards full-time employment, but those are both completed now! So instead, I would love to get to a place where my patrons could read pages at least a week ahead, and to do that, I need to build a buffer. And since I’m working 5 full days a week now, I can’t afford to fall behind. But you can’t fall behind if you constantly stay ahead! I would like to have… a 10 to 12 page buffer. That’s roughly 3 months’ worth of pages to always have on hand in case I get swamped with work, or something. Right now I currently have a buffer of 3, which will cover me for half a January, which is better than not having anything at all, but still not the best. (ultimately, I would love to have a buffer so big, I could queue them up for the whole year. Wouldn’t that be something?)

6) Sew one stuffed animal: same as last year. ASSUMING the plague gets under control in 2021, I don’t expect to get to this goal until the summer at the earliest.

7)Finish 1 song comic: I have 7 song comics planned. One is a gift, one possibly for wandersong, one is a collab that’s currently in the works, but I’m waiting on a friend to do their part before I can continue mine, 2 are UT related, and 2 (well, technically 3, but one is the collab) are KH related. It’s one of the UT ones that will probably get finished, if I’m being honest. It’s completely story boarded, and now I just need to ink and color it. I would like to get it done for UT’s 6th birthday, since I made a song comic on the fly for the anniversary this year, and it was fun, and I’d like to do it again! So, look forward to that next september~

8) Make another enamel pin: I have a dolphin design I’d like to make because dolphins are cute, if not little murder machines. (need to save up some expendable income first, tho. THESE THINGS AIN’T CHEAP TO MAKE.)

9 and 10) start and finish 2 original short comics: I’ve got some comic ideas I want to do, but I need to get them written out first. I don’t think either would be too long. Each maybe a couple “episode’s” length, if envisioned on a website like webtoons or tapas. They’d both be heavy in allegory, but not overly drawn out (hopefully)

11)And lastly, Finish the 5 remaining one-shots I had planned for this year but never got around to. I’m going to try to write one every other month. Pure self-indulgent shipping fluff. If I finish these 5, then maybe I’ll ask other people for more prompts and ideas, which I’ve never done before. We’ll see how it goes~

Also, Like last year, I’d like to look at everything that’s happened to me this year, though to be honest, I’m not sure how much I remember/how accurate it’ll be. God, I don’t even remember what January was like. Who was I back then? Who were we all back then? I guess I’ll start my yearly retrospective in march because, heh, god we ALL know what started happening in march.

Firstly, I paid off my last student loan! Then a week later on March 18th, I drove half an hour out of my city to adopt a cat and I love her and it was the best day of this year for me. Spring break is just beginning this weekend, but the attendance at the zoo is shockingly low this year. Apparently, a lot of people watch the news, and they’re all taking precautions about social distancing. I wasn’t too disappointed. Fewer people at the zoo, the easier my job is for me. I was looking forward to getting some free overtime on spring break, since I’m broke after paying off that loan, and I’m a cat parent now and have a furry child to feed. Monday rolls around. My manager calls me and tells me that the zoo is going into lockdown until further notice. I worry for the birds I take care of, but understand it’s for everyone’s safety.

For two months I sleep in and watch way too much YouTube. I join a couple writing discords. I have nightmares about my birds escaping their enclosure and I dreamed one of the security guards I really like at the zoo gets covid and has to go to the ER. I woke up really upset.

I started and finished BBS for the first time. I also replayed and finished KH2 final mix for the first time. It had been about 5 years since I last played KH2 before my PS2 died, and it was like coming home~ I also finished tearaway, and played and beat Ryme for a second time (which I can’t remember if I did that last year, but it was a fun experience regardless)

Mid-June, and I’m allowed to start going back to work, be it on reduced hours. The zoo is still closed to the public, but I’m loving it! I get to work with full-time keepers and do full-time keeper things. It’s so much fun not having to deal with the public. August starts to creep up and there’s a rumor that the zoo will be opening to the public again, which I’m not stoked about. I don’t want to go back to standing in one exhibit all day, talking to guests who don’t listen to the rules or to me. 2 of my younger coworkers (who had both only been there a couple of months) get chosen for full-time positions, while I get passed up which really pisses me off. My other 2 coworkers quit when they think we might be reopening because they cannot risk catching the virus due to at-risk family. I am now the last keeper in the interactive bird exhibit.

I keep working, the zoo slowly opens, but with me as the only interpreter in our interactive bird exhibit, we can’t open because I can’t run the entire exhibit by myself. So my exhibit stays closed. September comes and goes, and then October starts. Now there is more serious talk of opening my exhibit before the end of the year because the zoo expects to bring in larger crowds for the Christmas lights event in November/December. I ask if I get hazard pay or health insurance since I’m doing full-time hours until they hire more staff. They say no.

I immediately start searching for a new job feeling incredibly indignant/hurt/slighted/insulted/used/abused/ALL the negative feelings at my job. I had been there for 4 years, but never got a chance to work full time, while the two newest hires who had only been there 2 months both got moved up. I can’t help but feel they were holding one mistake I made two years ago against me and never wanted to give me a chance. (that, or they knew I was reliable when it came to showing up for work in such a volatile position that sees a lot of new faces, and they didn’t want to bother going through the process of hiring someone new) I don’t want to risk my life working around guests who don’t wash their hands and don’t properly distance. I don’t want to gamble with my health when they won’t offer me health insurance because I’m part time.

Mid October, I get an interview for a full time job and get hired on the spot. I peace out at the zoo 2 weeks later, literally 3 days before they planned to open my exhibit to the public. It was a close call for me to escape before they opened to the public (and pettiness was only partially the reason I dipped out so close to opening). Sorry new hires who are now in charge of the bird feeding exhibit. I taught you the best I could in the short time I had. If the managers are struggling with what to do with one less person, I can’t say I feel bad. I can only hope they delayed opening/closed you down again for your own safety. You are not lightbulbs. I really hope the higher ups stop considering you as replaceable as one. Will I go back to the zoo to visit? Probably. But not for a year at least.

I started my new job the very next day after I quit the zoo, and have been there ever since, (which isn’t that long yet, tbh. Christmas day was my 2 month anniversary). It’s full time, but it’s also a small business, and everyone’s hours this year have been on the short side due to the plague. I understand, though. They don’t want us to work if they can’t afford to pay us. Everyone is nice enough, though some people smoke and it’s hard to avoid them with how frequently we have to go in and out, and I really don’t want to get lung cancer, sorry not sorry, please and thank you. Also, with such a small team, gossip is certainly harder to go undetected, so it’s a relief knowing people don’t talk behind one another’s backs.

I participated and beat my 4th nanowrimo in a row, I made TWO apple crisps on thanksgiving, and made baklava on Christmas and both of these recipes were my first time making them, and they both came out adequately! I voted the first day of early voting, and I did an art trade/collab with two of my friends for my birthday! (normally we would have done monthly “art days” where we get together and do art projects for fun because we’re adults and we can spend our time together however we want, but the plague said otherwise this year) We drew pokemon and it was fun! (hopefully I can show you all the results soon. At the time of writing, I’m still waiting for the last two colored parts to get back to me)

I reached 100 pages on my undertale comic, and finish the first arc out of…! (im not sure. It’s either going to be 4 or 5, I haven’t decided yet)

Over all, I managed to stay healthy as far as I know. I wasn’t as productive as I wanted to be this year, but then again, who was? (don’t answer that. I don’t need that kind of comparison in my life right now)

Will 2021be any better? Honestly? I don’t think so. Not right away, at least. Just because a new year is about to start does not mean the slate is completely wiped clean. The change of the calendar year doesn’t magically make all our current problems disappear. Covid will still be here and cases will still climb when January starts. Small business will still be strained when the month rolls over, police will still go on murdering innocent civilians and getting away scot free, amazon and disney will still be monopolizing all consumer goods and media, and I can’t help but feel like there’s an impending shit show about to go down on inauguration day. I do hope things will get better, though. It’ll be arduous and unpleasant, but I do hope things will improve, because sometimes hoping is all you can do.

Good night.

#long post #new year's resolutions #year review #year retrospective

8 notes · View notes

waltereliasmickey · 4 years

Text

MICKEY MOUSE BOOK 1930

Mickey Mouse Book

Shortly after the premiere of Steamboat Willie, Walt Disney was approached by a man offering him $300 to use Mickey’s likeness on merchandise. Walt accepted the offer and shortly thereafter Mickey appeared on the cover of a series of school notebooks. Following this first deal, Walt and Roy quickly decided revenue from merchandise could not only help their bottom line, but could also provide the company with additional publicity.

Bibo and Lang was one of the studio’s earliest licensees. In 1930, this company published the first Disney character book, which was titled simply, Mickey Mouse Book.

While some have assumed animator Ub Iwerks drew the Mickey Mouse image on the book’s front cover, a New York freelance artist named Albert Barbelle may have, in fact, been the illustrator. An invoice from Barbelle was submitted to the studio in September 1930 for his work on the book. It’s not known at this time which illustrations Barbelle may have created for the book.

In the fall of 1930, exactly 26,219 copies of the book were printed. The first were offered for sale in the November 15, 1930, Official Bulletin of the Mickey Mouse Club, and were priced between 7 and 8 ½ cents each, depending on the number ordered. The suggested retail was 15 cents each.

Copies in the first run were offered almost exclusively to theater managers as a promotional item meant for distribution amongst Mickey Mouse Club members. One Salem Oregon theater ordered 2,500 copies, which gives an indication how many members that club had. (The membership in the 1930s theater-based Mickey Mouse Club actually numbered more than the Boy Scouts and Girl Guides combined.) First run copies contain advertising on the inside front cover, inside back cover, and the bottom edge of the back cover.

In December 1930 a second run of 25,050 copies was printed. Revisions in this edition included: adding the name of Bobette Bibo, the publisher’s daughter, to the title page; a spelling correction on page three; corrections to the game board; the addition of comic strips on page eight and the back cover; and the addition of “Printed in U.S.A.” on the front cover.

Words to song lyrics found in the second edition were also changed: as Mickey gained in popularity, his image was toned down. Early shorts showed Mickey smoking and drinking. Lyrics found in the first issue of the Mickey Mouse Book included: “When little Minnie’s pursued by a big bad villain, we feel so bad, then we’re glad when you up and kill him.” This line was removed and the song’s score was also rewritten.

In March 1931 the third and fourth printings of the book rolled off the presses. A total of 46,669 copies were published that month containing no revisions.

The Mickey Mouse Book contains the one of the first recorded “histories” of Mickey Mouse. Bobette Bibo, the eleven-year old daughter of one of the book’s publishers, allegedly wrote the four-page story. According to Bobette, “Mouse number thirteen” was expelled from Fairyland because of his tricks and capers. Because of his antics, Mouse thirteen was thrown out a chimney and just happened to land “on a roof in Hollywood.”

Traversing down the chimney, the mouse happened upon one Walt Disney. The mouse proceeded to tell Disney his life story, at the end of which Disney replied, “You give me the idea for a series of comedies. I have an idea that I can make you a picture star.”

Becoming an actor meant a name change for mouse thirteen. The mouse told Walt the first thing he had done when he landed in Disney’s home was to eat green cheese. Since green is the color of Ireland, and Mickey is an Irish name, ergo, mouse thirteen was renamed Mickey Mouse.

The book also contains a game and a marching song. The prize for the winner of the “board game” was the chance to lead all the other children around the room in a march to the strains of the book’s piano arrangement. One interesting note about this book — the story contains one of the first caricatures of Walt Disney.

Despite almost 100-thousand copies of the book being printed, this book is relatively scarce. Because pages seven through ten contained the game board and playing pieces, they are usually missing, having been cut-out and discarded many decades ago. Complete copies are extremely rare and few first printings have ever been offered for sale in the collector’s market.

One final few cheesy crumbs of interest — the book’s back cover illustration was also used on the cover of a piece of Bibo and Lang sheet music which was titled, The Wedding Party of Mickey Mouse. The only difference between the book and sheet music illustrations is that on the sheet music cover Minnie wears a bridal veil. And, one of the rarest editions of this book has a message imprinted on an inside page that reads, “Merry Xmas and Happy New Year Dec. 27, 1930 from Ray A. Grombacker Big Chief Mickey Mouse.” These issues were given to Mickey Mouse Club members at an Oregon theater.

Source: Disney History Institute

#walt disney #mickeymouse #history #factsmatter

5 notes · View notes

harmonytre · 4 years

Text

Comic Plans

Current Projects:

Prismtale (Mondays): An Undertale AU involving NPCs and multiverse travelling. Multi-chapter comic and ongoing.

Mistbreak (Tuesdays): A Steven Universe AU with about 5 pages left of the comic. Then it will become an ask/drabble/design blog.

Flicker of a Neon Soul (Wednesdays): An Undertale AU where monsters have colored soul traits and humans have white soul traits. 10+ chaptered comic with many plans and plot.

Taffy and Steven (Thursdays): A Steven Universe where Steven and his gem are split into different people and Taffy is a wholesome boyo. One page left of the comic, then will become an ask/edit blog with occasional comics.

Future Fandom Projects:

Pokemon Nuzlocke Comics: Multiple regions and an overarching plot. I need to finish playing and writing the first arc before starting the comic. (long term)

Who I Am: A Pokemon comic where James from Team Rocket is a were-pokemon. I need to rewrite it first. About 7 to 8 chapters. (medium length)

Other Undertale AUs: Certain AUs will be revealed in Prismtale and turn into side blogs, and others will be one time comics. (varies)

Future Original Projects:

(One of these I want to make extremely interactive. Like the audience makes choices for the characters.)

Phantulfurs: A comic about teens with powers to see creatures no one else can. I’ve rewritten the first chapter multiple times, but I need to really write it out before starting the comic. About ten arcs. (long term)

Skryculars: A sequel to the above story. (medium length)

The Journeyers: A multi-book series with my cousin. About ten books. Involves animals, powers, and romance. Won’t give information beyond that. (long term)

Unnamed Animated Series: Still need to design the two main characters, but they’ll travel through many worlds from my dream world. (long term youtube series)

Unnamed Wings Story: Decided many many characters for a high school story with wings. Lots of diversity and LGBTQ. Problem is I don’t like writing high school stories and have no plot. ;^; (medium? short?)

Unnamed Long Term Comic: A story about a space girl with wings, a nonbinary person that can shapeshift and communicate with animals, twins with water and plant powers, and an angsty wholesome skeleton bean. No plot yet. (long term)

Short Term (below the cut, any catch your interest?)

(keep in mind many of these I wrote the descriptions for years ago or based off of dreams.)

“Orphan Dog” and “Martha’s Pack” An orphan finds out she can talk to dogs and realizes they are the key to finding her missing parents. (Wrote when I was 8, rewrote partially when I was 13. So very cheezy. Would be even cheezier if I didn’t rewrite it, but still drew quality serious art XD.)

“The Agency” A girl named Jill has secrets. Major secrets. For one, she can turn into any animal at will including extinct, Fantasy, or hybrids. Don’t forget that she can also turn invisible and do telepathy. (Not to mention she runs an entire secret animal spy community…) When her best friend and spy ally, Izabella the opossum, goes missing, she must find what it means to be a true friend and showing that it’s what’s inside that counts. (Actually liked this one too. Even if it’s also cheezy.)

1. “Moos” A boy is adopted by cows and is granted the power to understand animals and turn into a cow.

2. “Moos: Vile Meat” Hoover is back and he must defeat the evil Haystack, a human entrapping calfs in little domes for eternity.

3. “Moos: Cold Cuts” Hoover finds a new ally, one who creates...snow?

4. “Moos: Wakey Wakey Eggs and Bakey” Haystack is back and Hoover and his friends must defeat him before he turns all pigs into stone. (Cheezy series?)

“Extraordinaries” Emma, her friend, Millie, her brother, Clark, and her dog, Charlie, have to travel to a faraway land to save Emma’s mother, who has been poisoned. Along the way Emma and the team must find how to deal with their newfound powers of Imagination. (This one was also pretty good! A story from Nanowrimo a few years ago.)

“The Hummingbird Did It” A hummingbird turns a lazy boy into a dog. The boy must venture across country to find the cure. (Was kinda boring and just me having fun with google maps lol.)

“Sunshine and Rainbows” A girl is taken to another world by rainbow dust and must find her way back to Earth. (Can’t actually remember this one.)

“Nature’s Lifeforce” A boy and girl are given the power to turn into any woodland creature and talk to trees. (Also can’t remember, but sounds cool.)

“Ravens” A girl named Hannah, a boy named Billy, a boy named Cameron, a girl named Lyla, and a boy named Clark, among other students, have their wishes come true. This creates a problem as Cameron becomes a dog, Lyla becomes a cat and Hannah and Billy become ravens. They fix the problem for everyone except Hannah and Billy, but embark on an adventure to find the scientist who can help them. (Based on a dream, I think.)

“Dragon wings” Hiccup and Toothless accidentally sit down someplace weird. They switch bodies and Toothless claims to have heard someone press a button. (ASDFGHJKL WHAT?! HTTYD short story)

“Melody Dreambubble” A weird new pony arrives in Ponyville. Twilight is curious to find that she has no Cutie Mark, was raised by wolves, and bears mysterious powers. (My Little Pony, kinda self insert, short story)

“Eyes of Gold/The Tower” A Fan Fiction based on The Ever Afters series and two stories rolled into one. Rory finds that her two best friends have been poisoned by a new dragon species/As Rory is about to enter a tower to save Chase a random girl shows up out of nowhere and has a weird habit of annoying Adelaide. (Was my first ever self insert? And based on a book series unlike the rest? Cool! Oh I even wrote ten whole pages! Neat. Featuring a girl chasing a dragon with a bedpan!)

“Roadkill” A man purposely runs over a deer on a freeway. The deer’s best friend curses the man, later to regret it because he has to undo the curse himself. (Lol, this was interesting.)

“Melissa and Steven Started a Food Fight” A completely random book that takes the characters through an adventure of explosions, unicorns, and talking squirrels. (Used a random prompt generator. Very random. And funny.)

“Before it’s Gone” A snooty teen crashes in her car and finds a surprise when she wakes up. (Oh yeah, another old story. She turned into a dog and none of the other dogs believed her.)

“The Unicorn Killer” A short story about poachers and Julia. (Yep. Short story.)

1. “Feathers of Gold” A logical young bird griffin, Gabriel, wants to find a way to stop to war between bird and lion in his land, Genetica.

2. “Scales of Emerald” A shy young dragon, Emmie, tries to keep her land, Reptilia, from destruction.

3. “Hair of Crystal” A brave young unicorn, Crystal, tries to find a way to join together the leaders of the land of Equinsta.

4. “Flames of Ruby” A vain young phoenix, Flaxter, tries to capture the eyes of girls. Taken place in the land of Flamia.

5. “Gems Unite” Gabriel, Emmie, Crystal, and Flaxter find out they are The Gems, the only ones who can save their world, Animagicia, from the beings, called Humurns, that are trying to destroy it. They must come together and find who they truly are. (Might have fun with this series. I’ve always loved mythical animals.)

“The Distance from Sam” An 8 year-old St. Bernard named Barry, a 3 year-old Golden Retriever named Mick, and a 1 year-old Sheltie named Sandy set off to return to their owner Sam, after being kidnapped and sent across country. (Kinda like Homeward Bound. Came in mind when I saw these three dogs alone by a street, no humans around.)

“The Skilled” Andy and Ashley(both fifteen) and their eight year-old siblings, twins Alex and Alexa, gain powers from the sewers. All: understand animals and fly, Andy: talk to toys, Ashley: speak to plants, Alex and Alexa: psychic powers. “I used to think my toys would come to life when I was gone. I guess I was right.”-Andy. Based on a dream. (Too many “A” names, oof. Also, toy Story much?)

“The Moon’s Eye” A teenage girl named April gets trapped under a snow drift and wakes up to be a wolf. A nearby wolf pack needs her aid and calls her The Mooneye, a changeling. (Cool. Cool.)

“Unusual Forces of Omnipotence” A woman and her horse are supposedly crushed by a U.F.O. When Tanaya wakes up she finds out she has super strong senses and can run as fast as her horse. Pluto the alien knows he’s going to be in trouble if his planet finds out he crash landed and accidentally gave a human the powers of her horse. He tries to fix it. Told from Tanaya, Sunray (the horse), and Pluto’s point of view. Based on a dream. (Sounds interesting! Title came from before I knew UFO was an acronym lol.)

“The Lawn” Unknown to humans, a yard full of statues come alive at night. There is an elk, two bears, four buffalo, a wolf, an eagle, three horses, a small boy, a moose, a bighorn sheep, and a rabbit. (Based on a real lawn I’d see on the way to school.)

“Dragon Eyes” Max has an ordinary life, until his family, him, and his three friends, Alice, Peter, and Samuel, are transported to another world. His parents are then kidnapped and they have to fight against an evil Mother Nature. Based on a dream. (Interesting. The dream was freaky.)

“Sweet Treat” Emily’s dad works at a candy factory, and one day she visits him and realizes his work is not all it seems… Based on a dream. (What? I don’t remember what was different about his work???)

“The Flight of the Supernatural” Randy thinks he is mostly a normal kid. Sure, he and his dad live inside a mountain, and sure, some flying species of human killed his mother, that doesn’t mean he can’t live normal life homeschooling and watching TV. But unfortunately, Randy’s life turns around when he finds out he can fly. Is his father telling the truth? Did his own species kill his mother? Based on a dream. (Actually REALLY loved this story.)

“Whispering Willow” A girl named Willow helps 20 wolf cubs escape a pet store and then is recruited by a zoo. Pretty soon all of the animals know her as Whisper. Based on a dream. (Cool. another animal whisperer.)

“The Invasion of Our Minds” Little black aliens invade Earth and only one person can stop them: Julia. Based on a dream. (Oh RIGHT! Yeah I remember that.)

“The Marble Island(Possibly a short story?)” Julia goes on a trip to a new marble island only to find the owner turns people into stone figurines. Based on a dream. (Links to the previous story, I think.)

“Have some candy!” Violet, an expert on strange occurrences, needs to help a group of people who mysteriously turned into animals after attempting to grab candy bars from a bin in a local store. Based on a dream. (More animal transformation.)

“The Guide to Mythical Creatures I Made Up” A guide to everything from the Mystic Melody to the Gollan. (I don’t remember either of their designs! :P )

“Trying to Get Back to Mom” Michael and Annabelle meet new friends, while they frantically try to reunite with their mother. (Don’t remember.)

“Surprise of the Future” Pearl travels to the future and has to fight her now-evil brother in his stone mansion. (Not Pearl from SU. Based on a dream.)

“All for You” A man has to overcome many obstacles, such as mermaids, yellow smoke wolves, and magic maps, to save the world and his girl. (Oh yeah, this was a cool one. Based on a song, but I can’t remember which one.)

“The Stranger at the Door” Keith and Amber have lived with their grandmother for many years, but now they live alone and nobody knows. Then a strange girl arrives at the door. She claims they will have to leave town within 2 hours or risk being stuck in a quarantine zone. There will be traffic jams and other hindrances, so it's best to leave right now without taking anything with you. Unsure about everything, including this strange girl, the teenage boy disagrees to the proposal, if all this turns out to be true, this choice will seem foolish. His younger sister does agree. But what if this strange girl can't be trusted. Or what if all this is an elaborate trap. How could an ordinary teenage girl and boy end up in a situation like this. Time to find out. (Oh, a quarantine story? How long ago was this? 2017 I think.)

“The Beginning of the Hybrid Brothers” A backstory that shines a light on how Ralph the Rat-Man and Dr. Discord came to be evil. (YES, MY TWO VILLAINS NO ONE KNOWS ABOUT BUT ARE STILL DEAR TO MY HEART HNNNNNNNG.)

“Unnamed but same as the blank” A girl named, _____, lives in a family of nine. She and her mother are the only ones who aren’t “Morhumals”, or people who can turn into one animal. After the twins mess-up and send a “Morhumals” hunter after them, it is up to ___ and her sister, ____ to rescue them.

“Song of the Siren” ____ is back after her fourteenth birthday. She finally has received her animal and must follow her family to the mythed Siren hideout.

#story #comic #HarmonyTRE #comic plan

6 notes · View notes

grandhotelabyss · 4 years

Quote

Where the corporations fail literature, little magazines and small presses will emerge to fill in the gaps. Things may start to look a bit like they did one hundred years ago, and the time will be ripe for another aesthetic revolution.

Christian Lorentzen, “Literature”

(Is this true? My impression is that modernism’s small presses and little magazines were founded by eccentric independently wealthy people who had an actual interest in the arts for their own sake. I am not a sociologist of literature, though, so my cursory scan of Margaret Anderson’s and James Laughlin’s Wikipedia pages could be inadequate to the task. The “little” magazines and “small” presses that came later—see Juliana Spahr’s Du Bois’s Telegram for details—were and are funded by universities and/or by foundations that are often little better than intelligence cutouts. So the level of true independence is not going to be the same as it was in the days of Joyce and Stein.

Which leads me to a question: what are eccentric rich people doing with their money these days that they can’t throw me a few crumbs? Not that I am experimental in the requisite sense—this is the other problem with the dream of the modernist revival. Lorentzen rightly complains about Netflix-ready corporate-monopoly realist novels, but all the most strenuous gestures for resisting the realist novel—most of them born with the realist novel in the 18th century or even before—have hardened into a body of convention as rigid as such realism itself. Oh, your novel set inside the unraveling consciousness of a man without a memory wandering a nameless country that vaguely resembles Franco’s Spain doesn’t have paragraph breaks? How utterly utter. I prefer in my own fiction to present a surface you could almost think at first was conventional realism—not only do I use paragraph breaks, but I even notate dialogue with quotation marks—and then slowly unveil to you that you are in a dream or a nightmare, as fiction indeed should be, but not in a literal-minded way. Dreams and nightmares work because no matter how strange they get they feel real.

Two stray comments on the rest of the piece, for which please click.

First—pedantry alert!—but Lorentzen oddly doesn’t mention the most famous early-20th-century novel to have been touched by the 1918-19 flu pandemic, Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway, in which eponymous Clarissa’s heart was “affected, they said, by influenza,” presumably four to five years before the narrative proper, which mirrors her cross-gender, cross-class day-double Septimus Warren Smith’s traumatic time in the trenches.

Second, I enjoyed the suggestive remarks about how much of “online” to incorporate into fiction. [What’s the point? To repeat my thesis, “online” will probably be gone in some number of centuries or even decades, so we had better get onto paper whatever we want to remember. I still have a comic book I drew on loose-leaf paper when I was seven; I don’t have my college essays, which are on some floppy disk somewhere, maybe in a dump, that no machine in my possession could access even if I had them, and only about half of my 2002-2006 livejournal still lives on archive.org., not that these are items of any value.] I don’t recommend imitation—Tweeted novels and the like. We can’t reproduce the suspense of doomscrolling in fiction, because the lure of the feed is precisely that it refers to reality. Direct competition with new media never works—Updike writing “cinematically” in the present tense now seems forced and silly and generally at odds with what was valuable in his sensibility—though neither does paranoia about not being influenced by new media, as if fiction had to be punitively interior or linguistically self-involved to avoid being too flashy or fun. As long as we’re doing something interesting with language or structure, our books will probably not be wholly reducible to TV or Twitter. And if our fiction is at least realist-adjacent, as in set in the present, it’s enough to write directly about characters’ interactions with the online world and how it affects their lives offline. This changes the content, but a change in content is a change in form: now we have a different kind of narrative interest.

For example, if you’ll indulge me, in my Quarantine of St. Sebastian House, the nameless narrator meets one of his neighbors for the first time, and she alludes by way of consolation to the relatively recent death of his mother, which she’d learned about by googling him before she knocked on his door. Later, another neighbor discloses that whatever she’d found out about the mother’s death on a local newspaper’s website was a planted official cover story concealing a much more nightmarish set of facts. This second neighbor discovered these facts almost by accident through chatter on 4chan about a secret video, intolerable to watch, that surfaces briefly from time to time on various sites before being quickly removed. In other words, what used to be a fictional character’s interior secrets are now exteriorized and discoverable by a dogged enough sleuth. Characters are built not on the old model of social facades concealing hidden depths; now they are—and experience one another as—layers upon layers of searchable data that less conceal than embody some mysterious, unreachable inner core paradoxically distributed over the network. The online world has pulled us inside out like a glove. In showing us this, fiction remains itself—usually at its best when investigating character, which it does better than rival art forms older and younger—but changed from what it was by new technology, alive to its time.)

#fiction #literature #creative writing #fiction writing #modernism #experimental fiction #christian lorentzen

2 notes · View notes

kc-anathema · 4 years

Text

I’m so sorry I did another long post so soon...

So a long time ago, I received a flame on Spec Ops 98: Jazz's Interrogation at Soundwave's Pedes. I hadn’t received a flame in a long time, and I haven’t received one since (which is amazing, since this was on chapter 26 back in...dear heavens, 2015. This fic is officially an epic.)

In fact, I stopped reading the flame once I realized it was a flame, about four chunks in. 2015, five years ago, I was changing principals, changing schools, trying to figure out how to marry my Canadian then-fiance and figure out immigration. (Fun type--marry her in Vegas, wait a couple years, bring her over. Use a lawyer to make sure it’s all kosher.) So yeah, didn’t read.

And then a concerned reader mentioned to me that I didn’t deserve this awful flame and that they loved the story. And I thought...oh yeah, there was a flame on this. That was a couple months ago.

I finally decided to break the flame apart like I used to. This feels very nostalgic to me. I found out that this is really the flamer’s only claim to fame--they flame fics and troll writers. I’m not going to name them then, although you can find the easily on the ff.net review page for this fic.

My father once told me that, if anyone ever spraypainted slurs across my house...leave the slurs up. Don’t pay to remove them. Let the awful words stay up until everyone in the neighborhood is begging us to take them down again.

I think leaving the review there says more about her than me. And I’m going to enjoy clawing this apart, I think, like a cat scratching apart a lizard.

Flame begin:

We’ve got a problem if Soundwave is involved here and he’s not pulling his usual ‘Decepticons, Superior’ line. Add on a fic about perverts and we get this. Ah, well. What are you gonna do?

Remember the character Sheldon from The Big Bang Theory, and how he said “Bazinga” all the time? That kind of went from a joke to an overused character crutch. Like ‘dynomite!’ or ‘did I do that’? Is it really good to rely on a character line to the point where we can call it ‘usual’?

“I’ll take my pleasure and that sweet aft” – Sounds like a cheesy commercial for Robot Chicken. Fireflight is locked up in a dungeon and is about to be whipped by a BDSM Starscream. That’s not at all OOC. Basically it’s a fanfiction that talks about fanfiction.

I...um. Yes. Yes, it’s an OOC line modeled directly after pulp fiction zines and tijuana bibles. I literally looked up several of those on the Internet Archives and various old men’s magazines covers. It’s not fanfiction directly, although it’s certainly what fanfic evolved out of.

Do these look subtle? Low key? Classy? Tasteful? It’s cheap trash and it’s fun as hell. I don’t think readers at the time thought that these were in any way true. This is right along the lines of drawn hentai. So I think the flamer admitted despite themself that I did good.

“We’re stuck here in the middle of a war...we don’t have time for sex” – That’s right. But that fact doesn’t apply does it?

...reading trashy, porny magazines is not sex. It’s actually something you do when you can’t get sex for whatever reason. I would know. A lot of us would know. Apparently not the flamer. No one thinks that “hey, I got a chick/dude willing to bang right now...but the new issue of Men’s World is out! Can’t miss that!” Unless you have some serious fetishes that your partner is too weirded out by, I think this does indeed apply.

Then Jazz gets captured and lo and behold, Soundwave is revealed to be the Christian Grey of the story. I hope he has some maid outfits for Jazz.

...our flamer hits the sludgy bottom of the joke well and grabs their shovel. They do not try very hard for originality in their insults. And, while Grey was a jerk, Fifty Shades wasn’t quite a prisoner of war scenario. No, that was a cheap romance for chicks. I’m writing more akin to men’s...oh.

The flamer is a chick.

Their only bdsm or bad romance experience is with Fifty Shades.

I don’t think they read much.

Annnnnnnnnnnnnnnd we have a shower scene. Damn if it’ll be Carrie!

Iiiiiiiiiiiii did not write a shower scene?

Dudette, did you even do the reading you say you did?

There’s no point in adding moral ambiguity, especially in regards to Soundwave. He won’t be swayed easily, or at all, by Jazz’s speech. He’s cold hearted for a reason. He serves the Decepticon cause until the very bitter end. He’s a lot like Shockwave that way. Highly doubtful he would find meaning or even the relevance of writing pornographic fanfiction, but eh, this was never meant to be serious, was it?

...no. It’s a humor fic. The flamer is criticizing a humor fic for being humorous. Kudos for identifying the genre? I mean, the flamer is also complaining that I did not write Soundwave as a one-dimensional factionalist without examining what that means for him and how the mission creep has left the original political crusade behind. It’s not like I took pieces of Soundwave from Gen1, IDW, and the comics and blend them all together.

This reminds me of the fanboys in the TMNT fandom who keep pushing for every iteration to simply rehash their nostalgia boner for the original toon. I feel like I’m getting the Transformers version of wanting less of this:

because it isn’t the familiar characterizations of this:

“So what’s the down low?” – You, Jazz. You’re going to give the down-low to Soundwave. I can’t wait to read how shiny his robo-vagina is.

...wow. Classy there, flamer. Also I really don’t think they read anything. This whole fic is plug n’ play. There’s exchanging of cables, talk of code and positronic souls and sparks and revving engines. There isn’t a drop of sticky, spike, or fluids.

Chapter 15’s sex scenes bore me. Nothing is worse than having a guy ask to remove every bit of clothing. Just do it already! And why is Jazz a virgin? Come on!

Look--the thing about sex and fetish and whatever revs your engine is that it’s not going to rev everyone’s engine. You don’t like the type of interfacing here? Fine. I don’t like those kind of sex scenes in my porn either. But I wasn’t write that scene for porn. I wanted write warbuild Jazz dealing with violent subroutines while interfacing with Prowl. I had fun with it.

Why is Jazz a virgin? The previous 15 chapters discuss that.

I really don’t think the flamer read the fic.They scanned for anything remotely sexual, so I don’t think I’m going to take anything they say about this fic being ooc for perversion’s sake.

“Everyone here is damn pervy” – In which a character talks about the author.

“We gotta get Soundwave to finish writing his story” – Why? I mean, what’s the point? It’s not doing anything for them, unless it’s to show how castrated Soundwave is. I’ve seen him act better in Mary-Sue fics.

There is a whole plot about Starscream and Skyfire, and I thought I could trust the readers to be intelligent enough to make the leap with the parallels between Soundwave and Jazz.

This is literally the only review that questions why Jazz said that.

The Mary Sue shot just echoes the Fifty Shades swipe. I think this flamer did most of their flames roughly ten years ago--the insults are pretty dated.

The Decepticons don’t know about Ratchet? Why? I mean, he’s one of the oldest dudes there. He has a reputation. When you have a reputation, people know about you. It’s inevitable. I think your inner logic slips a lot.

At this point, I literally have 21 previous chapters of world building.

I am not surprised that the story’s logic was slipping away from one of us.

It’s funny to read the forum responses in the story. It’s like the author is trying to make fun of detractors yet ends up making fun of herself.

Okay, this part is hilarious for a reason only briefly noted in the fic. I think that the only things this can refer to are the comments from the chapter titled Flames of the M4gn1f1c3ntSkyPr1nc3--because those are literally the first flames/comments I put in the fic. And I didn’t write them!

My wife wrote them! I don’t write Starscream well but she just poured those out like water--she’s seen more of the hysterical side of fandom, particularly the earlier TF fandom, and I snipped out pieces for the fic.

So...I mean, we’re pretty happily married, so I don’t think she counts as a detractor. ^___^ Ultimately I started writing this fic for her.

“Your optics make me crazy” – Not at all a cliché.

Good thing I didn’t write that, then. Here is that little section in the Prowl/Jazz section. (Took me a bit to find it since I plugged that into the Find and couldn’t bring it up.)

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I like what you do to me. Jazz allowed him in, tilting his helm. I never really understood it, y'know? How mechs could lower their guard so much. Let someone this close.

And now? Prowl drew back, wanting to see Jazz for the answer. With a quiet ping, he warned the other mech even as he raised his hand, touching Jazz's visor.

I still think you're crazy always going on about my optics, Jazz said, venting even as he disengaged the locks and let Prowl gently remove the blue polycarbon.

Your optics are perfection, Prowl corrected him. And you let me see them. Hundreds of mechs wondering what's under that visor, but I get to see.

Still shy about letting someone else see them, Jazz turned his head, only for Prowl to touch his cheek and turn him back, coaxing his optics to open with a soft brush of his thumb.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Not bad for an asexual, I think. I mean, it’s not like I have a ton of hands on experience, being kinda broken that way. But I have read plenty of pulp magazines and pulp radio shows!

This didn’t take long. I skimmed through this work, because there was so little content. Lots of ridiculous shit, though. Soundwave writes fanfiction, the Autobots are weirded out/turned on, capture Soundwave, Soundwave realizes that his whole life was a life and decides to defect. Yeah, about that. He wouldn’t do it lickety split, let alone EVER. Hell, the reactions in the forum bits show what some would think of this, if they weren’t too busy fapping.

The funny thing is I don’t think the mechs can even fap. I don’t write them doing that. But yes, flamer, I do believe that you skimmed through the work. Particularly since you’ve recounted it backwards...Soundwave captures Jazz as the capstone to a long internal conflict within himself, but rather than go through chapters of internal monologue and Decepticon politics, I started the story as close to the inciting action as possible, not quite in media res.

I won’t hash out why Soundwave defects. I mean, I spent 22 chapters at that point explaining it. But it’s my fault the flamer skimmed, I guess?

Needless to say: the romance bored me senseless. It was poorly written, and overall there’s really no skill attached to this. You don’t grip the audience and Jazz’s virgin mode made me roll my eyes. Reads like a first-time waifu manga.

Nah.

I’ve been writing way too long and am more than self-aware enough of my own failings that I’m also pretty self-aware of my own strengths, too. And no. It’s not poorly written. I definitely feel I could improve the first few chapters a bit, but that’s because I wrote those over five years ago and I’ve improved since then, too.

Empty insults. Maybe if the flamer had gone so far as to give a critique beyond a couple of misquoted lines and their own headcanons, I might have listened, but there’s literally nothing of substance here beyond a child tantrumming that I’m stupid and bad and should feel bad.

As for the other pairings, booooooooooooooooooooooorrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrring.

Usually I have a fun time setting these fics on fire, but this one bored me senseless. Yes, it was stupid, but the author’s attempt to authenticate it are just as sloppy as anything else.

“Authenticate”?

Is this person talking about using fandom tropes as my setting?

There are 22 chapters at the time, and now 51 chapters, building up this world and using roughly 20 years of fandom background to inform the fic.

Maybe if they hadn’t skimmed, they might have found something interesting. But considering that they skimmed over anything character related and stopped for the sex scene--I don’t think that says anything about my writing and more about their own proclivities.

They were trying to read one-handed. A plug n play fic. A long meta look at fandom in war in a humor fic. And they came here for the sexy times.

I don’t have to draw the conclusion here, do I? Well, for the flamer, probably. And then they’d glance at it for a second, call it sloppy, and say I showed nothing, and what I showed was boring, and that boring stuff was ooc anyway.

One thing I am thankful for is the fact that it is not long.

51 chapters later and I’m still not done.

Nothing’s worth remembering in this and I don’t need to tell you that these characters either act like simpering imbeciles, or are virginal waifus. All I’m missing is a senpai in the bed, some tissues, and some high quality lotion.

...why do they keep referencing gay human sex? I mean, I get it, they’re saying that it’s similar to yaoi fics, but.

This is anti-yaoi with its last hurrah, isn’t it? The late 90s, early 2000s, rising from its sludgy well to try to shame the easily cowed and intimidated, the young writers easily startled by long lines of text. No wonder the citations used are so...15 years ago. I mean, who was talking about Sues even 5 years ago. That criticism kind of faded a long while ago, even then.

I think the sad thing is, even the badly written Sue sex fics end up being more interesting than this. If Ebony Darkness D’Mentia Raven Way were to come along, I think this story would get better. What with her ‘I shot him a gazillion times’ lines.

...and there’s the cherry on the top. Third cheap shot firing blanks. Sue + Fifty Shades +...shit, I can’t even remember the title for that infamous fic. It’s that old.

...this fanfic flamer is old.

Like, don’t get me wrong. We’ve got fandom moms and grandmoms who cut their teeth on fandom print zines in the earliest conventions. They’re not “old” in the same way.

This person has lost any joy, humor, or playfulness that fanfic comes from. No one should go into fanfic expecting fine art. I mean, sure, it happens sometimes, but this is a playground of pulp, experimentation and just plain childish fun.

All in all, not worth remembering. It’s makes me tired to read it. It’s not even stupid enough to make me laugh. You’ll still get a fail rating for me, especially with the shitty version of Soundwave here.

Yes, fanfic flamer. You are indeed tired.

He should be on Big Brother. He’d be great making soy lattés and purees.

Big Brother in 2015 was in its 17th season. There were roughly around 6 million viewers at the time. The demographics for the tv viewing audience were graying even by the 2000s, and by 2015-18, it was significantly older.

Granted, it’s a very tenuous conclusion to draw, but combined with the old fandom references, the anti-yaoi vibes I’m getting, and the fanboyish desire to curate their own headcanon of a character to the point of insulting writers on the internet...

Flamer grew from being a reader to a bitter, old person angry and the whipper snappers for writing stupid, trashy crap that they criticize with broad, unspecific insults.Flamer is the stereotypical mean adult in any 90s cartoon or heavy metal rock video.

A little depressing. Poor flamer. I do hope they found more creative, engaging, and positive things to do.

Me? I just wanna rock.

Thanks for coming to my ted talk on pulp fiction and bitter cultural creators.

#in a nutshell #sorry for another long post #I just wanted to finally do this #after thinking about it for awhile #felt like a loose end #fandom #fanfiction #transformers fanfic

7 notes · View notes

jowritesthingss · 4 years

Text

A (Demi)Boy and His Demon: Prologue

Fandom: Sanders Sides

Pairing(s): LoSleep (Logic | Logan + Sleep | Remy)

Rating: Teen

Content Warning(s): lots of swearing, religion mention, demons mention, injury/blood (Remy gets a papercut)

Length: 1,418 words

Brief Summary: Sleep-deprived writer Remy accidentally summons a serious-and-seriously-fed-up demon named Logan. Prologue. In Which Remy Inadvertently Summons a Demon

Fic Masterlist!

In Remy’s defense, he hadn’t exactly meant to summon a demon in the middle of a coffee shop on just another typical Tuesday.

And they most certainly hadn’t meant to bind the poor sap to them for the rest of their (presumably now-shortened and miserable) life.

But there he was.

And that was exactly what he had done.

But—erm, well. We’ll get there.

“Remy!” a familiar voice chirped as said enby pushed the door open to his favorite haunt. “Do you how do?”

“Ugh. Like, horrible.” The answer was instinctual at this point. Usually it was just sarcastic, but on a deadline like this? Satan had nothing on the wrath of an editor.

The echo of the bell ringing bright through his ears, Remy walked over to the front counter, where his good friend and caffeine addiction enabler stood. They tried in vain to pretend that they were swaggering and not at all staggering from sleep deprivation and lack of caffeine.

“So it’ll be the usual for you, then, yeah?” Emile smiled, and god, for all the years they’ve spent working as a barista themselves, Remy would never understand how Emile could stay so upbeat while on-shift.

“You know it, gurl,” Remy answered, fishing out his wallet. “Although gimme the largest size this time, hun’.”

Emile clucked sympathetically, already turning and getting started on Remy’s iced coffee. “Deadline coming up?”

“Uh-huh. Tonight.” Remy sighed, slapping a ten dollar bill onto the counter. “I’m due to get the script for chapter sixty-nine to Remus, but like, he’s been too busy giggling over the number of the upcoming chapter to finish the one we’re supposed to publish tomorrow. Virgil’s on the warpath, and I’ve been roped into designing shit to make up for Remus falling behind.” He rolled his eyes.

“Golly, that sure sounds rough.” Emile slid some ice into Remy’s coffee before popping a lid on it, swirling it a couple times, and sliding it across the counter with some verbal sound effects to accompany it. He picked up the tenner and began to punch things into the cash register, counting out change for Remy. “But I believe in you!”

“Gurl, you shouldn’t. I don’t,” Remy snickered. They reached back into their bag, groping around for their reusable straw. Pulling it out, he popped it into his cup. “There’s a reason I’m the brains behind the writing of this operation, not the art. You think I’d be working with those idiots if I had a choice?”

“Yes, I do,” Emile said mildly. He handed over Remy’s change.

“Yeah, yeah. That’s fair.” Shoving his change into the tips jar, Remy rolled his eyes. Again. They did that a lot. Which, how could he not, when he was surrounded by so many dorks?

“Anyways, I’ll be in my usual corner, I guess.” Remy jerked their head towards their usual corner table. “Lemme know if you need any help back there, babe. Or if any tea needs spilling.” They winked at Emile from behind their sunglasses before turning and heading to sit down.

Once seated, Remy pulled out his laptop and the battered spiral notebook that he kept most of his ideas for their comic in. Exchanging their sunglasses somewhat reluctantly for a pair of blue light glasses, he booted up his computer. Then, after setting everything up in its typical position and connecting to the wifi in the coffee shop, Remy allowed themself a moment to sit back and sip at their iced coffee.

The contrasting tastes of sweet white mocha and bitter coffee filled his mouth, and Remy felt his shoulders relax for what had to be the first time in twelve to twenty-four hours.

Classes earlier in the day had been an absolute nightmare of scribbling in margins and surreptitiously typing the script up on his phone when professors weren’t looking. Then the night before had been a horror-filled dream sequence of exhaustion and trying to write actual content down without falling asleep on the keyboard and waking up with the L key imprinted on their nose and sixteen pages of keysmashes.

So suffice to say, Remy was not having a good time. But the iced coffee? It warmed their gay little heart. It made things just a bit more bearable on days like this.

All too soon the buzzing of his phone reminded Remy of their subsequent impending deadline and doom, and he came crashing back down to earth.

Sipping once more at their iced coffee, Remy set it off to the side, slipping in his earbuds and focusing in on the Word document in front of him. They began to type.

Three hours and two refills later, Remy had finished chapter sixty-nine, had sent it to Virgil to look over, and had even started on chapter seventy for a good measure.

Until Virgil sent back his edits, Remy’s focus of the moment had shifted to designs for chapter sixty-six, which Remus should’ve started drawing a few days ago, but nooo, the asshat wasn’t even done shading sixty-five, which was supposed to be posted in...Remy consulted their phone...in roughly six hours now. Fuck.

Remy couldn’t draw for shit, but they could research like nobody’s business, and designing and sketching was simple enough, so he wasn’t entirely unused to getting dragged into stuff like physical character designs and the creation of symbols and outfits (Remus was far too oafish and uncoordinated when it came to fashion, anyway).

Shaky as Remy’s art was, Remus certainly knew how to pick out what he liked from Remy’s miserable excuses for sketches, at least, so their partnership worked well enough...even if Remy privately thought his similarly-named partner acted like a dolt and smelled like minute ramen (and not even the good kind! more like the shrimp kind, and what the fuck kind of imbecile eats shrimp-flavored microwave ramen).

Finally satisfied with the roughly-sketched summoning circle that they had copied from the web, Remy exited out of Google Images.

Summoning circles, Remy had to admit, were a new topic of research for him. Their story—a Good Omens-type comic centering around an angel and a demon trapped in the human world—had required plenty of research into religion and religious imagery, of which they had not been a fan, but for some reason summoning circles had never really cropped up on their radar.

Remy may not have been a fan of the concept of angels, but he certainly wasn’t a fan of the concept of demons and the occult, either, so digging through the ominously dark websites had been...interesting. Eventually they had just given up and straight-up copied a summoning circle at random. They could take that and go from there, adding their own flair to it.

Remy looked down at the shaky summoning circle he had sketched out before him. It was kinda lopsided, but it was whatever. It was also much too boring, if you asked him. When they sent Remus their final reference, they’d put a note in the margins telling him to add some of that weird gory imagery stuff he was obsessed with. “Creep would really like that, huh,” Remy muttered aloud to himself.

Scrutinizing the copied circle for a few more moments, Remy mentally listed out some of the changes they wanted to make—an extra line here, a circle there, take out that square—and they reached into their backpack for one of the random looseleaf sheets of paper he always had floating around in there. Only, they grabbed at the wrong corner of the paper.

Feeling the sheet of paper slice into their pointer finger, Remy quietly hissed out a breath. “Fuck.” He drew his finger out of the bag, pulling it up to his face to get a good look at the injury, and shit, the papercut was bad enough that it was actually bleeding.

“Goddammit,” Remy cursed as a few drops of crimson splattered onto the paper in front of them, blurring over the details of the summoning circle he had drawn.

Remy popped his finger into his mouth and sucked at the smidgen of blood leaking out. Deciding to actually look at what they were sticking their hand into this time, they turned to the left, fully intending to practically stick his head into his bag to find a napkin and that pesky sheet of paper both.

This was how they came to be aware of the person who appeared, seemingly out of nowhere, to stand to the side of their table.

Prologue || One || Two || Three || Four || Five || Six

This was supposed to be a one-shot, but Remy told Logan to hold their coffee and then bullied me into making it a prologue and six chapters’ worth of useless gays. I accept my defeat with dignity and insist that it was, in fact, actually my decision in order to get used to writing multi-chap things again before I tackle my Big Bad AUs.

Want to be added onto any of my taglists? Shoot me an ask or a message here or via my other social media!

4 notes · View notes

letterboxd · 5 years

Photo

Animated Surrealism.

“People who were going to the cinema were the bourgeoisie and they were not used to seeing these things. Buñuel put it on the screen. It was a big scandal.” We talk to filmmaker Salvador Simó about goat violence, winning the lottery, friendship and Surrealism.

��Films about filmmaking’ is a beloved genre of film obsessives. A new addition to the pool is Buñuel in the Labyrinth of the Turtles, which mixes animation with original footage to explore the making of Surrealist-cinema godfather Luis Buñuel’s hard-hitting documentary short, Las Hurdes (Land Without Bread).

Based on the graphic novel of the same name by Fermin Solís, this true-story animation is directed by Spanish animator Salvador Simó, who is known for directing kids’ show Paddle Pop, and worked on the visual effects for Passengers and The Jungle Book.

Simó’s film begins just as Buñuel’s L’Age d’Or premieres to controversy. The filmmaker has had a falling out with artist Salvador Dali despite their success with Un Chien Andalou. He’s looking for his next project, when his friend Ramón Acín promises to produce Buñuel’s next film if Acín wins the lottery. Acín does win, and Buñuel travels to Las Hurdes, a poverty-stricken town in a remote region of Spain.

Las Hurdes was banned by the government of the time for its treatment of its subjects, both human and animal (Buñuel had recreated some animal abuse scenes he had read about). Writing about the film on Letterboxd, Edgar observes that Buñuel “literally becomes exactly what he condemns… Nevertheless, like a predecessor of Resnais, the auteur finds a gorgeous balance between natural beauty and the ugliness of social injustice”. Mike writes: “I see why this film was included in the 1001 Movies You Need to See Before You Die. It’s a brilliant mockumentary that cynically defies every moral expectation in order to make its point.”

We spoke to Salvador Simó on the eve of the release of Buñuel in the Labyrinth of the Turtles in US cinemas.

Why did you decide to explore the production of Las Hurdes as a film? Salvador Simó: I discovered Luis Buñuel a long time ago when I was a child. I remember my father has always been a big fan. When I was about nine, he arrived home very excited because he just saw a movie where there were people in a room but they couldn’t get out of the room [1962’s The Exterminating Angel] and I was really fascinated while he was explaining it to me, I was like “wow!”.

When I grew up a little bit more I discovered films from Buñuel, I think he was always somehow in my family in this way. But the fact of doing this film, it was actually because [producer] Manuel Cristóbal called me and showed me the comic by Fermin Solís and he was asking me “do we think we can make a movie of that?” I started reading it and while I thought ‘I do not agree with some things…’ I did think ‘we can make a movie about that’.

What would you say was the documentary’s importance in how it changed Buñuel’s career as a filmmaker from that point forward? I think it was a turning point for him. Before Las Hurdes, the surrealism that Buñuel was working on took a big influence from [painter Salvador] Dalí. It was totally based on images and things that had not really an explanation. That’s the way they were working. The town of Las Hurdes changed his way of proceeding the making of a film and of telling a story. He became more human.

You see what happened with all his films after Las Hurdes, his surrealism is more based on the human soul. The first film that he did afterwards as an author was Los Olvidados, seventeen years later, and during all that time he learned a lot. After that, all his films that made him really famous was his way to see surrealism in the way we dictate day-by-day.

What was your creative process for the surrealistic scenes? I did sketch the whole film from the beginning to the end. What we’re calling the surrealism scenes in the film [were] also a way to see into his mind, to tell part of his behavior, his feelings, and even his past. It was in this global way to tell the story of Buñuel to people that is a little bit surrealist.

We never had the intention to copy anything of his way of making film, but we had great influence from him because we’d been working on him for all these years. For this movie I felt like Buñuel and I were walking the same paths. In Las Hurdes he was trying to find his own voice and in this film it was a little bit the same for me, so it has been doubly [influenced] by him and his way to be an artist.

What led to the decision to include footage from Buñuel’s actual films rather than recreating them in animation? Because they were there. We wanted to show that what happened was real and it was really tough. If we drew that, people would believe it was part of the animation and that we made it up. The best way to see what they were seeing at the time was from the actual footage they shot in 1932.

In Spain, for many years it has been a great controversy about what Buñuel did with his documentary—whether it was real or if he made it up—but what people don’t know is that Buñuel based [it] on an existing book he read by French-Hispanic Maurice Legendre [entitled Las Jurdes: étude de géographie humaine, English translation: Las Hurdes: Study of Human Geography, published in 1927]. He was there about ten years before and he wrote 300 to 400 pages describing what was the situation in Las Hurdes.

In that book, what Legendre was writing about is worse than what Buñuel did. What Buñuel was trying to show [was] what was happening in that place, to try to change the world. You have to think that in that time, many of the surrealists, they were trying to change the world and make it better. This was Buñuel’s way to do it. He was denouncing what was happening.

Of course the government at the time covered up all of that because they didn’t want to accept that was real, but people were actually dying and starving and they were [contracting] diseases. It was terrible. Buñuel put it on the screen when cinema was starting. People who were going to the cinema were the bourgeoisie and they were not used to seeing these things. They were used to seeing stories of high society and not used to seeing what Buñuel had to show them. It was a big scandal and they forbid this film for many years.

This film acts more as a tribute to [Buñuel’s producer and friend] Ramón Acín than to the filmmaker himself, and delivers Acín the credit he deserves. At what point in your research did you decide to switch the focus to him? When we were working on the movie I remember at the beginning thinking I need to make the end of the movie more inspiring. Then we talked with Ian Gibson, the biographer of Luis Buñuel, and he told us the story of Ramón Acín. At the beginning he just was kind of a character we were using in a way to show some part of the characteristics of Buñuel at the time.

When he told us the story we thought ‘maybe it’s a story of friendship’. He actually win the lottery after he told him “no worries, if I win the lottery I will pay for the film” and four weeks later he wins the lottery and keeps his word. I thought ‘wow, that’s amazing. He keeps his word!’. I would be surprised if anyone would nowadays.

At the end, it’s not only a tribute to Ramón Acín and Buñuel, it’s also a tribute to the good people that [are] all around the world. We’re too used to hearing about the bad people on the news, but actually we’re surrounded by very amazing people and I think the film is also a tribute to them. Somehow with Ramon, it was the good man who represented that in the film.

Acín acted as the voice of morality regarding the treatment of animals, which is what made the film controversial at the time. Did you use him in that sense to comment on Buñuel’s actions? Not exactly, to be honest, no. I know the treatment of animals is tough, and I don’t agree with it at all, but I think we need to see this. That was what was happening in 1932. We cannot be blind to that. If we just censor that, we will not be honest about what was happening in that time. Society had different rules and a totally different mentality.

At that time talking about animal rights is like talking science fiction. Why should we have to hide that, because we don’t like it now? I think we have to show it because that’s what happened, whether we like it or not. You’d be surprised at how many countries in the world keep doing these things to animals. Even in Spain, the bullfighting still happens.

Buñuel was always pushing the lines for the people and making them actually jump off their chair. That’s a little bit of what we wanted to do with this film, to make people jump off their chairs too.

We like to ask filmmakers about the film made them want to get into making movies. Which film was it for you? Actually for me, it was not a film, it was my daughter. I’ve been working 30 years in animation as an animator. Then when my daughter was born I wanted to make more short films about the things that she was interested in. I wanted to tell the stories to her.

Which is your favorite Buñuel film? A lot of them are great, but Los Olvidados is an explosion of Buñuel for me.

‘Buñuel in the Labyrinth of the Turtles’ is in US cinemas now.

#luis bunuel #salvador simo #spanish film #surrealism #surrealist cinema #las hurdos #los olvidados #letterboxd

10 notes · View notes

thetreeshavenotongues · 6 years

Text

Gajevy Week ‘19: Day 1- Music

I’ve never posted anything on tumblr so hopefully I didn’t mess anything up, this is also my first ever offering for Gajevy week, so here we go...

Sing Me A Song

“Thought you were staying at Fairy Hills tonight,” the words were thrown idly over Gajeel’s shoulder by way of greeting. The soft thump and click of the front door closing came as his response.

He had been fixing a snack in the kitchen when his apartment door creaked open, and while the arrival of his unannounced guest didn’t stop him, his hands did slow as he focused on her movement through his home. He had grown to love the little sounds she made. Of course, his favorites were more lascivious in nature, but he had a particular fondness for the sounds created when she just moved around - the light pat, pat of her bare feet on the wood, or the tap of her fingers against the table, the shuffle of pages as she read – it was all proof that she was well and truly there.

He had cataloged her little noises over the years, and without glancing he could easily track her progress through the apartment. The chuff, chuff were her feet sliding out of her flip flops, then came the thud of her bag sliding from her thin shoulder and landing on the floor. She would be rolling her neck now, as she always did when she finally put down her bag, and the contented sigh that drifted his way made him smirk at her predictability. Fabric rustled, and he knew she was pulling off her jacket - there was a pause and his smirk stretched into a grin, he had thrown his jacket over the coatrack when he arrived home earlier and he could just imagine her frowning at the small but if chaos. The heavier cloth of his jacket whooshed as she readjusted it, then came a gentle swish as her coat found its place on a hook. Soon, the light taps of her footfalls were heading his way and he wiped the grin from his face – he adored her, but he’d never go around grinning every time she was near like those two idiots who followed her around.

He didn’t turn when she came into the kitchen, bringing her scent of ink and parchment and that lavender lotion he loved with her. It wasn’t until she had hoisted herself onto the opposite counter of his galley kitchen that he finally faced her.

“You don’t seem surprised.” Her hands were pressed onto the countertop with her little fingers curled around the edges as she swung her bare feet and smiled sweetly.

His lips pulled up into a smug smirk before he took a step to the side, revealing two sandwiches on the countertop behind him. “Tch, yer predictable, Shrimp.”

Levy rolled her eyes, but happily took the plate he lifted her way. “Is that it? You’re sure it has nothing to do with an open living room window and a dragon-slayer’s nose?”

“My nose ain’t tell me you haven’t eaten since breakfast.” The words came with a frown and she blushed lightly.

“I was planning on picking something up on the way, but,” she paused and shifted uncomfortably, her fingers playing absently with a slice of bread, “I forgot about the evacuations and –“

“Yeah, yeah ,” Gajeel waved her off, “just eat, Shrimp.” Levy grinned but hid it behind a bite of sandwich, she knew him too well to be offended by his gruff tone - she actually found it pretty cute that the only way he knew to show concern was with a rude remark.

It was a little known fact that, for someone who preferred noshing on silverware, Gajeel was surprisingly adept in the kitchen, and as Levy happily munched away at the delicious sandwich she was brought back to their days at The Council and the countless nights she spent watching the crude Custody Enforcement Captain in an apron worrying over a pot of sauce. Of course, she had been sworn to secrecy about his culinary ability, not that she was in a rush to tell anyone anyway – she treasured the feeling of being one of the only people to know little tidbits like this about the iron dragon-slayer. In fact, she doubted anyone knew about his penchant for cooking outside of Juvia and –

“Where’s Lily?” She threw a cursory glance over her shoulder, as if expecting the Exceed to be lurking around the corner.

Gajeel shrugged, “told him you were on yer way and he flew off. Said somethin’ about makin’ sure the other Exceeds were outta harms way. M'surprised he didn’t sprain a wing with how fast he flew outta here.”

Levy giggled. “Not very subtle, is he?”

Gajeel snorted and continued eating his own sandwich, until “so, ya gonna tell me why you came all the way out here, Lev?”

She finished chewing and gave him a cheeky smile, “just wanted to make sure you weren’t scared.”

“Real funny, Shorty.” He rolled his eyes, “you shoulda gone home.”

Levy’s brows drew together at that, “is it a problem that I came over?”

Gajeel snorted and reached a hand for her empty plate, “ya know that ain’t it, Lev,” he moved from her for a moment to place their plates in the sink, but when he turned back his expression had rearranged into a frown, and Levy could almost feel the air get heavier from it “I’m happy to see yer key get some use, but ya shoulda gone to Fairy Hills – it’s closer to the guild. And honestly, ya look like shit.”

Levy wanted to be annoyed at the coarse words, but instead, a chuckle bubbled past her lips – she was positive that she did in fact look like absolute shit. Since returning to Magnolia she doubted she had had a single night of more than four hours of sleep, and the past month had probably been the worst of all. From running to the Council to drop off their paperwork, to catching up with Gajeel’s group then heading to Blue Pegasus and rescuing the Master, she was beat. Then, after all of that there was Mavis’ revelation, the impending war with Alvarez and the ensuing planning – which was why she had been at the guild since before daybreak researching and working with Warren and the Masters, subsisting on half of a fruit bowl and two and a half hours of sleep. All in all, she was well and truly exhausted, but even still, the thought of making her way to her empty room at Fairy Hills, knowing what would begin in the next twenty-four hours, was much less appealing than dragging her feet halfway across town to spend the night next to this man.

“I feel like shit,” she conceded before releasing a sigh that seemed to deflate her entire being.

Gajeel’s large hands came to rest on her knees, and with a gentle push he spread them enough for his body to rest between her thighs, “C’mon, Shrimp,” his fingers made their way up her legs before reaching around to lightly squeeze her bottom, “let’s get you showered and into bed.”

He lifted her easily, and she folded into his hold with a comfortable sigh. Her head found a familiar spot on his shoulder and she contented herself with placing chaste kisses on the exposed skin of his neck as he walked them across his apartment to the bathroom. He kicked the door shut behind them and untangled her legs from his waist so she could stand as he turned on the water.

She rolled her eyes when she noticed him pulling his shirt over his head, “I don’t need help showering, Gajeel.” The Slayer ignored her and hooked his fingers along the waistband of his shorts before pulling them down – an act which still caused a flare of red on her cheeks. “I’m tired and your “help” isn’t going to get me to bed any sooner.”

He pulled her towards him, his deft hands quickly sliding her shirt up and over her head. “I’m here because yer tired, ya know, just in case ya don’t have the energy to get all the nooks and crannies.” His smirk was devilish as his fingers slid along the band of her pants.

Levy rolled her eyes again, but couldn’t help the smile that pulled at the edges of her lips, “I’m serious, Gajeel, we need to get to bed.”

He mumbled a distracted “yeah, yeah,” and pushed her shorts past her hips.

“Pout all ya want, I didn’t hear any complaints in the shower.”

Levy paused from rummaging through the clothes she kept at Gajeel’s apartment to throw a half-hearted glare at the shirtless man stretched out on his bed behind her. “I wanted to be in bed an hour ago.”

Gajeel shrugged and lifted his arms behind his head - his red eyes followed the little wizard’s moves intently as she pulled on a pair of panties and a tank top. “Stop complainin’ an’ get in bed then.”

Levy feigned a glare, but when he pulled back the comforter for her, she couldn’t help but giggle – it was comical to see this man with his hard lined face and scarred, muscular body laying under the bright green, star specked blanket she had gotten for him as a joke.

She slid into the bed and pulled up the sheets, his arm snaked around her in a familiar embrace, pulling her small frame closer to his. She snuggled in, throwing her arm over his chest and placing a quick kiss on his collar bone, and attempted to fall asleep, but as the minutes ticked by in silence she found that sleep eluded her.

“Gajeel,” her voice was soft and he opened one red eye to look at her. “Will we be ok?”

“Shrimp-“

“-I know,” she interrupted, sounding almost exasperated at her own worry, “we’ve faced plenty of challenges before… but this one is so much bigger.”

Gajeel snorted, “so what if it is? This guild is made of tougher stuff than they are – hell, I don’t think anyone here even knows how to lose.” He rolled into his side to face her and even in the dim light, Levy could make out the warm glint in his red eyes. “You of all people should know how strong Fairy Tail can be. Don’t doubt yer family, Lev.”

“Yeah” she smiled, “you’re right.”

He rolled back onto his back and pulled her with him so her head rested on his chest, store grumbling “can we go to sleep now?”

Levy giggled and pushed herself up to place a chaste kiss on his lips. Her fingers came to rest on his cheek and in the momentary silence that followed the parting of their lips the weight of what was coming settled heavily over them. Her thumb brushed his warm skin and her smile slipped a fraction. “Sing me a song, Gajeel.”

His eyes widened slightly, and the arm he had slung over her waist stiffened; she was scared and those words were proof.

The first time she had said them was over a year ago, during their travels after the guild had disbanded – she was plagued with nightmares those first few nights, and had given up on sleep altogether after a while and instead spent the night time hours staring at the sky. It didn’t take long for Gajeel to notice and soon his nights were spent sitting beside her offering a quiet comfort he knew he never could with words. This went on for days, until one night, about two weeks into their travels, when she turned to him with her large, sad, honeyed eyes and asked him to sing her a song. “You’re not very good,” she had said with a grin, “but I love hearing you sing. It reminds me of those days, you know. Before Tartaros, before this. When things were simple and we were all laughing together.”

So he sang her a song, and that was the first night she slept in peace. From then it became a habit, whenever the nightmares came or sleep eluded her, she would find her way to his side and ask him to sing her a song. Things had settled after a while, they found their way to The Council and while she still sought out the comfort of his presence at night, the song requests had all but disappeared. But now she was looking at him again with those large, sad, honeyed eyes that shone with a fear he hadn’t seen in them in over a year, and he knew he couldn’t deny her.

He nodded and her hand left his cheek, her head returned to his chest. He cleared his throat and snapped his fingers.

“She’s a tiny lady,

Shoo bee doo bee

A very tiny lady

Shoo bee doo bah

So small ya gotta squint-“

“-Gajeel!” He laughed at the light slap delivered to his chest.

“But she’s a feisty little Fairy,

Strong inside and out…”

Gajeel's song continued for a while, and before long her low, even breathing drifted to his ears.

He looked down at the head of unruly blue hair on his chest and ran his fingers through the soft strands, she sighed in his sleep and a smile tugged at his lips.

“She’s my little fairy lady,

Shoo bee doo bee

And I’ll protect her with my life,

Shoo bee doo bah,

And one day, when this is over

Shoo bee doo bee

I’ll make that little fairy my wife,

Shoo bee doo bah.”

#gajevyweek #gajevy #fanfic

62 notes · View notes

franeridart · 6 years

Note

Sorry I’m still new to the Bnha anime . So have they taken a break or something? Do explain please?

Sorry, I’m not actually sure what this question means! But if you’re asking why there’s no anime airing right now, then that’s because season three ended and season four still hasn’t started!

Anon said:hey there! i love your linearts so much and i really enjoy coloring lineart/manga panels and i was wondering if you'd be okay with me coloring some of your lineart? i wouldn't repost it, i'd either just keep it to myself or i'd add it as a reblog onto the original post of yours. if the answer is yes, thank you so much! if it's no, that's okay, have a great rest of your day, and keep being talented & awesome :D

I don’t like the idea of you posting them anywhere, but if it’s just for yourself then I don’t mind at all! Thank you for liking my stuff!!!

Anon said:Have you considered… Honenuki x Kuroiro?

I guess I have now :O but I still prefer Tokoyami for Kuroiro, after all haha

Anon said:When I saw you drew something with hawks I almost passed out I love the way you draw him sksksksksksk

Thank you so much!!! He’s a lot of fun to draw!!

Anon said:That sero and Kiri with the long hair 😱😍

Glad you like them!! I’m especially fond of Sero, ngl!!

Anon said:yooo i know you don't care for the villains but i gotta say i love the way you draw dabi! i just love your style in general but i really like how you draw his scars and hair, i feel like it looks more angular than how other artists draw him if that makes sense.

Why thank you so much!!!!! I like Dabi’s design a lot so it’s cool to know I can do him justice!!

Anon said:I have a phone and no laptap and i cant see your faq,what drawing tablet and drawing program do you use?

Easy Paint Tool SAI and a very old very basic Wacom Intuos! The FAQ should be accessible by mobile too tho!!

Anon said:Can you draw more of the kiribaku kids? Please

Yes I can!! Thank you for liking them!!!!

Anon said:i am so in love w your art 🖤

Ah heck thank you so much!!

Anon said: Heeey! Your vigilantes AU is soooo cute. Are there any fic or maybe more art about it? I really love it! And your art too!! Thank you for the great art! (◠‿◠✿) || Oooo ooo and I love the way you made the relationship and interactions between Bakugou and Jirou! It's really cute. (vigilantes au anon)

A lot of people have mentioned wanting to write for it but as far as I know no one has gone through it yet! It’s a very impegnative AU isn’t it!! I should know, I’m the first who has pages full of ideas and not a comic to show yet! Maybe one day haha thank you for liking it tho!!

Anon said:Hi. You deserve the world imo. You helped me cheer up when I was feeling down. Every post of yours made my day better when I scrolled through tumblr. Thank you for everything. Bye bye 💖

TT^TT I’m so happy to hear this!! Thank you so much!!!

Anon said:Your art makes me feel warm inside, I love it!! So much!!!!

THANK YOU!!

Anon said:tumblr shows up to the 20th tag on search. just fyi.

That’s cool to know! Tho I might argue right now tumblr’s search doesn’t show jackshit! By the way using this very nice ask to let yall know that the search function on my blog isn’t currently working how it should, so if you can’t find something in the tags that’s why !!

Anon said:wow... i love your family au so much... you said you didn't like the palate you chose for mako but i couldn't disagree more!! i think she fits into the family beautifully! but anyways it's so wholesome and the best kiribaku art out there

AW THANK YOU SO MUCH!!!! I’m happy to know you like them TT^TT

Anon said:you were like the only artist that drew kiribaku like two years ago and for that you have my undying loyalty... thank you..... you gave me content for them before I became an artist.. also thank you for getting me into art :) I love your art style so much!

Was I!! :O it’s been so long I honestly can’t remember, but I’m happy yo hear you’ve been around since back then! Thank you so much!!!

Anon said:Your idea for the time swap with fantasy bakugou is so great!!! I'd love if you drew more of it

AH thank you so much!!! I’d love to draw more for it too, but I can’t promise it’ll happen sadly !

Anon said:oh my God your art is super cute!! you're one of my inspirations!

That’s so sweet and wonderful to know!!! Thank you so much!!!! ;O;

Anon said:please don’t die

This is a super omnious ask, and I got it twice too 👀👀 anon what do you know that I don’t

Anon said:hi wow i just wanted to let u know that you’re art is fucking amazing and i absolutely love your blog!! just wow you’re so talented and amazing and i love you’re style and just love all your comics and just keep up the amazing work broski!!

THANK YOU SO MUUUUCCHHHHH!!!!!!! TTOTT

Anon said:Have you considered KamiMomoJirou?

Hell yeah I have!

Anon said:Bakugou and Kirishima as mermen are so beautiful. I wonder what Todoroki and Midoriya look like as mermen...

Overly complicated and requiring more time and motivation than I currently have, for sure haha but maybe one day I’ll try my hand at it! Thank you so much for liking the krbk!!!!

#fran answers #lots of !!!!!#it's because im freezing #i can't feel my hands #im trying to use excitement to warm myself up #it's not working #h e l p #anonymous

145 notes · View notes

chiseler · 5 years

Text

An Interview With Screenwriter Louisa Rose

In 1973, Brian De Palma released Sisters, his Siamese twin mystery thriller starring Margot Kidder and Charles Durning. After a string of social satires which, to be honest, haven’t aged very well, Sisters was De Palma’s breakthrough film, the one that would cement the form and style for which he’d come to be known. A year later he released the horror/comedy/glam rock opera Phantom of the Paradise starring the great Paul Williams. Hitting theaters more than a year before Rocky Horror, Phantom combined elements from Faust, Phantom of the Opera and about a dozen other sources into a bright, fast, wicked comic book satire of the music business. The film went on to become a cult favorite.

Both films were written by screenwriter Louisa Rose, though she is rarely credited for her work on Phantom. After some reputed and proverbial creative differences, De Palma removed her name from the film and rewrote the script, taking sole screenwriting credit. Although Rose disagrees with me, I think it can be argued it was her work on these two scripts, particularly Sisters, that drew attention to De Palma as a director.

After spending the first 20 years of her adult life in New York City, she and her husband relocated first to Spokane and then to Seattle about a decade back. Not long ago, I spoke with her via phone about her career as a playwright and Hollywood screenwriter.

Jim Knipfel: How did you get started in screenwriting?

Louisa Rose: {Laughs} By accident. I was one of those kids who wrote poetry in high school. I went to college thinking I wanted to be an actress. Theater was my primary interest. I found that I really enjoyed the rehearsal process, but really did not enjoy acting for an audience. That was not a recommendation for a career on stage, so part of my theater concentration (we called our majors “concentrations” at Sarah Lawrence) was writing for the theater. And that’s what I really loved. Brian De Palma was at Columbia, and though they had extra-curricular student theater, they did not have the intensive program as part of the curriculum that SLC did, and does.

At any rate, Brian and another Columbia student came to Sarah Lawrence to do theater and some film projects, because the head of the theater department, Wilford Leach, was interested in film as well. He was a mentor for Brian. The first film project, I believe, was a short piece called The Wedding Party. I don’t know if you’ve heard of that.

JK: Oh, yes, I’ve seen it.

LR: After that Brian made Murder a la Mod and Dionysus, I think it was.

JK: You mean Dionysus in ’69?

LR: Yes, Dionysus in ’69 started out as a theater piece. Scared the shit out of me when I went to see it. It was created by an interesting experimental director, Richard Schechner, as a mass quasi-orgy experience. The venue, The Performing Garage, had stadium seating, actually more like large long shelves almost to the ceiling – and you had to climb ladders to reach them. Then the actors would climb up and invite you to “join the dance.” And I saw one coming toward me… “No, I am not joining the dance. I am an observer” {laughs}.

Brian did his Masters at Sarah Lawrence, and one of his projects was to direct my senior play. That’s how I got to know him. I then went on to get my MFA in theater. So he knew me and he was looking for someone to write a script for Sisters. He felt his idea for the film would be marketable, but he needed a script. It sounded like fun, and actually became my Master’s thesis.

JK: Really?

LR: Yeah, so that’s how I got to work on Sisters.

JK: So he came to you with the story?

LR: He had kind of an outline. He had this idea that it would be twins, one evil and one good sister…You know, it’s just so long ago it’s hard for me to remember. There were certain points, certain visual things he wanted. We worked together on the story, and then I wrote the script.

As for Phantom of the Fillmore …

JK: Um, you mean Phantom of the Paradise?

LR: That’s it, Phantom of the Fillmore. It became Paradise.

{Note: After catching wind of the film’s original title, the owners of The Fillmore filed a lawsuit, forcing the change. Another lawsuit, this one filed by Led Zeppelin, forced the name of the films central record company, Swan Song, be changed to Death Records.}

LR: I took time off from working in NYC to go to LA and write scripts for Sisters and Phantom. At that point, I was a single mother, and my daughter Alissa was two and a half. I brought her with me and had her in day care. I had a contract for a total of $80,000 for the two scripts. But when it came to getting paid, Brian delayed and delayed, told me it was not a good time and that I needed to wait. As usual, actors, director, camera persons, etc. were paid. I needed the money, had to sue to be paid, and only received a quarter of the contract money. Brian had been a friend, and it felt like a betrayal.

But back to the movie, what is your take on Sisters? What are the things you notice about it?

JK: I went back just a couple days ago and watched it again. Just in terms of De Palma’s career, it was a big turning point for him. Discounting Murder A La Mod, he’d been doing all those goofy satires like Greetings and Hi Mom! And Get to Know your Rabbit. Sisters was the first of his thrillers and the first of his Hitchcock homages, the things he’d come to be known for.

LR: Right.

JK: Ignoring the Psycho model at play, one of the things that always struck me about Sisters was that in lesser hands the big Siamese twins reveal would have been saved until the last ten or fifteen pages of the script, but here we get it about forty minutes in. Even before that, they gave it away in the poster; they gave it away in the tagline. There was no secret the killer—or killers—were Siamese twins. But then of course there’s the later twist, which brings us back to Psycho.

LR: Mm-hmm.

JK: What really sticks with me, though, is the whole final sequence from Jennifer Salt’s hypnotism to that final shot of Charles Durning staring through the binoculars at the couch. It’s so good. I love that ending so much. Also, having come to know of her only later, I was amazed to see what a good actress Margot Kidder was.

LR: I thought she was very appealing and a really good choice for the part.

JK: In the end Sisters, more so than the thrillers that would follow—Dressed to Kill, Body Double, Blow Out—is the one I always go back to, because even the Hitchcock stuff is still fairly understated at that point. So I’m wondering, how much of that final script, what made it to the screen, was yours?

LR I think I have a copy of my original script here, if I could find it. It was much longer and needed to be cut. I really don’t know. It was a long time ago and I’d need to re-read it.

There is a Blu-Ray copy of Sisters put out by Arrow that has interviews of some people who worked on the film.

I’ve got it somewhere.]

My husband keeps saying I should show it to our teenage grandchildren, but it might destroy their image of me as nice old grandma. On the other hand, some years ago, our two nephews watched it as young teenagers and looked at me with new respect—or was it fear?

Now, what is funny is that Sisters is kind of a cult film, and so is Phantom. About ten years ago, shortly after we moved to Seattle, I got a call from a young woman originally from Winnipeg.

JK: The one city where Phantom was a big hit when it came out.

LR: Yes, it was a cult film there, with a festival and now possibly a documentary about the festival. We had a visit, and she mailed me – I believe it was a production copy of the script for Sisters.

JK: So what was it like for you, a young woman writing films in the Seventies?

LR: There are things funny and not funny that happened…Nothing about the movie business appealed to me, based on my very limited experience. The people were kind of awful. I have memories of someone from the studio, a married accountant. He said, “Oh, I have to go to San Francisco to scout locations, and you could come with me.” The whole approach was making me nervous, and I said, “Well, I have a two-year-old daughter with me, so, uh, no I can’t do that.” And he said, “Well, we could bring your daughter and get baby-sitting for her, and then we could have a Really Good Time.” I thought, oh, just leave me alone—I’m not a gorgeous actress, I’m a writer.

JK: Not that long ago I interviewed an actress from the late Fifties who up and left the movie business for twenty years because she wouldn’t put up with that.

LR: Women were treated horribly in Hollywood as elsewhere. When I went to look for a job in New York after college, there were separate job listings for men and women. Men could apply for management-track jobs and women could be a “Gal Fri” or a “Secy.”

I was very taken by a piece in Ms. Magazine about a woman who worked in a factory that made plutonium pellets and who became a whistle-blower. I thought it would make a good movie.

JK: You mean Karen Silkwood?

LR: That’s it. So I met a woman who worked at New Line Cinema, who got me an interview with a producer there. I came in and I was supposed to pitch my idea. It was almost like a parody of a scene in a Hollywood movie about a Hollywood movie. The guy is sitting there with his feet up on the desk and he has these three or four male cronies sitting around, and he’s cracking jokes and they’re all laughing heartily at his jokes. Eventually he said, “So you want to write a script,” and I said “Yeah.” I started telling him about it, and he kept interrupting me. He was horrified to learn that Karen Silkwood, a single mother, had left her children with their grandparents so she could take a well-paying job at the plant. “No one would ever go to see a movie about a woman who leaves her children,” he announced. Basically, the interview was over at that point. He looked at me and asked if I knew how to type. When I said yes, he said,

“Well, you could come and be a typist here.”

JK: My god.

LR: At that point, I said, “I think you’ve really got too much going on here to pay attention, so I think this isn’t working too well.” He sprang up from his desk and stalked off, bright red, furious. He came back and said, “I have never been so insulted in my life.” That was the end of that. {Laughs.}

{Note: For what it’s worth, Rose’s instincts were good. Director Mike Nichols’ take on the Silkwood story, starring Meryl Streep and written by Nora Ephron, was released in 1983.}

LR: Then, because I’d written a horror movie, I was offered other projects. One was to be a murder film involving Debbie Harry, the lead singer with Blondie, the rock group. The only requirement as far as the potential director was concerned was that it needed to have seven or eight murders. The rest was up to me. I met Debbie Harry and talked to her to get a sense of what she could do. You just get a sense of what people can do. She had no acting background.

JK: Would this have been her first picture?

LR: It would have been, I think, but it was never made. At one point, she said “Well, I just want to play the part of a housewife in the movie.” And I thought she’d be more believable as the person she actually was. So I made it about a rock group beset by a number of murders. I think it had seven murders. Then I came back for the next meeting. She’d read the script and said, “I can’t do this movie; it’s the story of my life.” And I thought, WHAT? {Laughs.}. I mean, WHAT? So that one didn’t happen.

JK: So that was, what, around 1980?

LR: I think so, late Seventies or early Eighties. Something like that.

JK: So that was after Monique was made?

LR; {pause} So you know about that.

JK: Yes.

LR: How did you find out about that?

JK: Well, it’s listed on your filmography online, and I’ve seen it.

LR: {Sighs heavily and laughs} It has very little to do with me. Believe me, I’ve seen it also. That’s the thing about screenwriting. Who knows? You sit at home and do your writing, but who knows what will emerge?

I was hired by a French would-be feature film director who had done film work for a famous French fashion house. He wanted a story about a woman who becomes psychotic when she learns her husband is gay and proceeds to murder a bunch of gay men.

I don’t recognize the script part of it and wish I didn’t have a credit on it. It’s one of the worst things I’ve ever seen, and I think you can agree with me.

JK: I was going to hold my tongue.

LR: Well, don’t.

JK: It was pretty bad. But I will tell you, it is extremely hard to find nowadays.

LR: Good.

And then there was the time an agent called and said she had a project for me, and that I didn’t have to do my best writing; I could do my second best writing.

JK: That sounds promising.

LR: Well as a writer if someone called and said they had a project but that you’d only have to do your second-best writing, what would you say?

JK: I think I’d ask how much it paid.

LR: But what would be you’re “second-best writing”? It’s like we have it in categories. It’s like, do I want Double A grade eggs? Should they be certified, “humanely raised”? Or do you just want ordinary eggs? How do you apply that to writing? Sure. I can write bad scenes, but I don’t have a special price category for them.

There was another project that I thought was extremely funny. Somebody, God, I can’t even remember who it was anymore; a producer had bought the rights to The Sensuous Woman. Have you heard of that one?

JK: Oh, sure, yes. It was a huge bestseller back then.

LR: It was written by someone only identified as “J” at the time and was supposed to be an advice book. I think one of the funniest suggestions was supposedly made by a woman who found she could have an orgasm by leaning against the dryer when it was running—or maybe it was the washing machine during the final spin cycle. {laughs}. My job was to take the book and think of some way to dramatize it and turn it into a movie. The producer, it turned out, had a history of hiring writers and refusing to pay them by claiming that they had not given him a satisfactory script. The previous writer had been a well-known playwright.

JK: So it was around that point you decided to walk away from films?

LR: I didn’t walk away in the sense that I said, “I’m not doing film-script writing anymore.” But, I wanted to do theater, and I was also trying to bring up a daughter. The head of my college theater department, Wil Leach, had gone to work as artistic director at Joe Papp’s Shakespeare Festival. Wil decided to do an all-black version of Mother Courage. It was to be set in America at the time of the Indian Wars. Post-Civil War. Everything was recast, and he didn’t use the Brecht score. He had a composer to do a new score, and he had a black lyricist, who said, “I’m not doing this, it doesn’t pay enough.” Will knew that I had done lyrics for a couple of theatre pieces I worked on in college. So he asked if I would like to do it. It was a really interesting project, taking the Brecht lyrics in German and finding an equivalent way to do them for this production. I don’t know German, so they gave me a German professor from Wesleyan, and we went over the lyrics word by word. We talked a lot about the connotations of the words. I had a Black English dictionary, and I had all kinds of materials. I just loved doing that.

JK: Now when was this, roughly?

LR: In 1980. Before that I also did a couple of plays at La MaMa, one of which went to Off Broadway. It seems when I look back at the things I’ve done, so many of them involve really painful experiences. I think I’m not well suited to keeping my eye on the ball. I keep getting sidetracked, thinking I don’t want to lose friends, don’t want to make anybody miserable and don’t want anyone to make me miserable. Some people have been able to somehow find a home, a theatrical home. I did not. My last production was in Seattle.

JK: What was the play?

LR: It was a play about Catherine the Great. I wanted to write a reflective two-character play based on Catherine’s own writing about her life before she became an Empress. She was a teenager when she went to Russia to marry the heir to the throne, an alcoholic teenage boy from Sweden. Somehow it morphed into a much bigger deal, a costume extravaganza. I had a wonderful director, Elizabeth Huddle, who was Intiman’s Artistic Director. But, I had horrible reviews in the Seattle papers, and so that was when I gave up.

I’ve written three non-fiction books with my husband, who is a physician.

JK: What were they?

LR: The first one was for consumers about how to use healthcare, how to talk to doctors, what to do when a hospital admission was necessary. The second book was called The Too-Precious Child, and it was about parents who become so involved with their own wishes and fears about their child that they are unable to experience his or her needs. They might be very loving or not but they are unable to take the child’s actual self into account. The book was published in 1989, and the problem we discussed seems to have gotten massively worse.

We wrote the third book for Consumer Reports to help people understand the basic types of health insurance, how to choose the best plan for one’s circumstance, and how to get the most out of its coverage. My husband was CEO of a health plan and understood the issues, but I could identify with consumers who were trying to figure out how things worked. It took me two weeks and tears of frustration to understand how a family benefit works. Insurance terminology was painful, but I figured if I could be made to understand it, I could explain it to people. Maybe I could turn that into a movie {laughs}. I’ll go pitch that one.

by Jim Knipfel

6 notes · View notes

hellzyeahthewebwieldingavenger · 6 years

Text

Spider-Man Life Story #1 Thoughts

Well...this was odd.

I have profoundly mixed feelings about this story.

That is owed to this comic being a collision of so many different things.

It is a period piece. But period piece that only half uses the period.

And I mean that on two levels.

It’s a period piece in the more general sense because it is set in the 1960s. But it is also a Spider-Man period piece because it uses 1960s Spider-Man continuity.

And it only half uses both in both cases.

Basically this issue was Chip Zdarsky’s Spider-Man AU fanfic that is a giant what if deviating from the Romita era...that is also set in the 1960s.

That is honestly the only way I could sum up this story. And by the looks of it things are going to get MORE complicated next issue because we move into the 1970s which implies each issue will be set in a different decade and this is confusing because if Spider-Man’s history played out in real time starting in 1962 then modern stories would only maybe be in the early 1980s.

Basically I guess this is more a general What If series that each issue will be talking up topical issues from each decade.

Which is seriously NOT how this mini was advertised to readers so that sucks hard.

But okay AS what it actually is trying to be...is it any good.

The answer is...kind of.

There is more good than bad.

Now you all know I do not like Zdarsky’s work on Spider-Man, so when I say there is more good than bad I’m not damning with faint praise.

On a general sense, the pacing is REALLY good. A lot of story happens in one issue. Granted it’s extra length so maybe that is why. The dialogue is perfectly fine, nothing rings untrue to the characters’ voices (except Gwen but we’ll get there). There is a respectable amount of introspection and exploration on Peter’s part and this is THE best Mark Bagley art in a very long time.

IIRC Mark Bagley once said that when he did the Ultimate Clone Saga and got to draw Richard Parker, he modelled him upon Gil Kane’s take on Peter Parker from the 1970s, and felt he got closer to that than he was trying to do in his 1990s work. You can very much feel that here now that he’s drawing Peter in literally the same setting that Kane drew him in.

Okay lets talk about other things that worked.

· Flash’s characterization and Peter’s relationship with him. It felt very realistic in spite of not being how things played out in the original comics

· Norman Osborn was very much in character in being devious and frightening

What didn’t work.

· Peter’s quick assumption of Norman’s amnesia. He kind of just presumes Norman has lost his memory on the basis of little evidence. Now granted his spider sense later corroborates this, but it’s still...kind of lame. Especially compared to the original story in ASM #40 wherein Peter figured Norman lost his memories because he was referencing an event from his past that he’d just finished relaying to Peter.

· The blurb at the start of the issue says Peter was 15 when he got his powers in 1962. And then we cut to 1966 where Peter says that this happened 4 years ago. On the very next page he claims he has a year left of collage. Er...what? Maybe I’m out of the loop on the American college system (in the 1960s) but if Peter was 15 in 1962 and it’s 4 years later then he’d be 19. Collage lasts four years meaning Peter wouldn’t be graduating for another 2-3 years (depending upon how close he is to turning 20). He should be in his FIRST year of college, 1965-1966, and would be graduating in 1969, the school year beginning in 1968. WTF?

· Gwen. Zdarsky has constructed a conundrum for himself here. This is the Romita era Gwen but with shades of Ditko Gwen but also shades of more modern revisionist versions of her and Emma Stone and also he’s now taking her in a MASSIVE deviation from the established Spider-Man history. It’s all a mess, and speaks to where Zdarsky’s shipper flag is planted btw.

· Peter’s attitude to Flash at his leaving party. In the original story, ASM #47 Peter in a wonderful moment of maturity held no grudge against Flash and wished him well sincerely. There was no ‘triggering’ on his part.

· The focus upon other superheroes like

· Frankly the fact that this is not clearly either a What If deviation from established history or a true blue period piece using the established lore.

And really that is THE big dilemma with this story. It’s not really committing to being one of those things or the other and is as a result kind of compromising both things.

It’d be one thing if Spider-Man’s history was going in starkly different directions as a RESULT of Zdarsky using the historical setting, like if Peter was drafted for example.

But that isn’t what happens. Gwen finding out Peter is Spider-Man and Peter turning in Norman Osborn are things that could have happened in any contemporary What If issues (if What If was around back then).

And it’s not that these are uninteresting deviations to explore, but they feel undercooked because the book is also examining Peter’s introspection about joining up to fight in Vietnam. And THAT stuff is really interesting too, the discussion with Flash and Captain America serving as opposing arguments for Peter’s decision is REALLY good.

But again it feels undercooked because we’ve got this plot about Norman Osborn knowing Peter is Spider-Man brewing.

And the thing is I can’t decide if it’s a case of the story itself being at fault or the advertising for it being flawed.

Let’s put aside discussions about whether the story being Spider-Man’s history just presented in real time would’ve been better than this or not.

The fact is it WAS sold to readers that way so when you view it through that lens all the What If deviations seem weird and out of place, like distractions.

But hypothetically if this was just advertised as a What If mini ‘What if Peter turned in Norman Osborn and Gwen found out he was Spider-Man before she died’ then the focus upon Vietnam would’ve felt much the same.

But I don’t know if the series advertising EXACTLY what this mini seems to be would’ve mitigated this sensation from the reader. Or if the story itself is just really just two types of stories glued together.

I suspect it actually is the latter though for two big reasons.

The Vietnam plotline places a lot of focus upon Captain America and Iron Man. Their conflict is in fact the shocking cliffhanger of the entire issue. So you know...something that isn’t about Spider-Man himself. That felt more like Zdarsky trying to do Watchmen but in the Marvel universe. Which gets complicated because that opens up a whole can of worms for the relative realism of the MU, not least of which being how could the heroes ever allow things in the war to get to the point that it did.

The other reason is that the deviations from established history aren’t done the way of a traditional What If, wherein the in-universe history is identical up to a certain point then a single change sets off a new direction.

Here Zdarsky is just remixing various different elements from Romita Spider-Man to create an impression of that era and then deviating from the ‘general knowledge’ of that era.

Norman dropping Harry off at school cribs from ASM #39, Norman’s amnesia cribs from ASM #40, Flash’s party cribs from ASM #47, the Scorpion and Spider Slayer stuff treats ASM #20 and #25 as big parts of the past but the threat of Jameson’s exposure cribs from Stern’s 1980s run. Norman wanting Peter as his heir cribs from Revenge of the Green Goblin in the 2000s.

But these elements, much like Spider-Man: Blue, are not remixed in a way that chronologically line up with how things happened. They’re all jumbled together so now Norman found out who Peter was (somehow?) but kept that in his back pocket to bring it up at Flash’s party and then announced he wanted Peter as his heir.

It’s all so...weird.

Look it isn’t an uninteresting what if but it’s also like...just a fanfic basically.

Not badly written fanfiction but it’s also like...what point is there to this really besides BEING Zdarsky’s fanfiction?

Another problem is that this story, along with not fully committing to the period piece aspect, simultaneously plays things with an intrusive degree of hindsight and imposes revisionism.

I’ve already spoken about this with Gwen but it’s also true with Harry and Norman’s relationship being cribbed from the Raimi movies the incredibly obvious ‘Norman will kill Gwen!!!!!!’ foreshadowing along with the ‘Professor Warren is a bad guy’ stuff; to say nothing of how Warren’s character design is inaccurate to the period.

That stuff imposes a present day hindsight of the Romita era whilst also overlays that with truisms brought about by adaptations being in the zeitgeist.

This applies to the Vietnam war stuff too. The book frames the war in a way that we look back upon it as opposed to framing it the way people in 1966 America probably actually viewed it. The final page is the biggest example of this.

Finally...didn’t we JUST see this from Zdarsky with his time travel arc in Spec?

Like wasn’t this a very similar idea. Spider-Man’s history but deviated because Norman Osborn’s identity is exposed differently and Peter and Gwen wind up as endgame?

Over all I can’t say that I disliked this. But nor can I say I was that thrilled with it. It’s not what we were promised and honestly...what we were promised sounded a lot more compelling. Moreover there are much better examples of period piece superhero stories out there.

· Spider-Man Blue frames the early Romita issues the way they might’ve happened in the 1960s as they existed rather than Marvel universe 1960s

· ASM Annual 1996 is DeFalco, Frenz and Romita Senior presenting an untold tale so good it could be downright mistaken as being MADE in the 1960s

· Busieck’s seminal Untold Tales of Spider-Man series as a whole

· The last 2 issues of Webspinners by DeFalco and Frenz which serve as a lost arc from their 1980s era

· X-Men: Grand Design

I think this is something you just gotta pick up and taste for yourself, but again...just be aware this isn’t what it was advertised as.

#Chip Zdarsky #Spider-Man #Mark Bagley #Gwen Stacy #Peter Parker #Captain America #Iron Man #Steve Rogers #Norman Osborn #Green Goblin #John Romita Senior #John Romita Sr.#John Romita Sr

16 notes · View notes

davidcampiti · 6 years

Text

A LIFE WITHOUT STAN LEE? -- Part One

This is the first month of my life without Stan Lee alive in it.

I think it’s appropriate to post this essay today, on Stan Lee’s birthday, the first one without him actually here to celebrate it. I couldn’t bring myself to write about Stan the day he died, just shy of 96 years old, and the week and month that followed were no better. Today I can put down some thoughts.

I am a child of Stan Lee. His work with Jack Kirby and John Romita appeared in the first comic book I remember reading – the Marvel-produced America’s Best TV Comics, a 25-cent comicbook that promoted the ABC Saturday morning cartoons. It's one of the first powerful memories of childhood that have stayed with me for all this time.

Across my formative years, Stan Lee's words encouraged me to learn, to read more of everything -- not just comics. I spent much of my early years in the library and ordering Scholastic books every month through school. I read everything -- fiction, biographies, histories, science books.

Yet I grew up loving the comics that blazed brightly with his public persona and, while my parents toiled at just earning a living and staying alive, I learned much from "The Man." Stan taught me a lot about being a decent human being. It wasn't all, "With great power there must also come...great responsibility," though that was there, as well.

In recent years we corresponded a bit about the morals and messages of his words in his scripts, his Stan's Soapbox, and his many lectures and interviews. I told him we should assemble a book, Everything I Know, I learned From Stan Lee.

He wrote back -- "The paperback you suggested, 'Everything I Know I Learned from Stan Lee,' sounds like it could be funny. Especially if it consists of only one page with only one thing learned -- how to spell 'Excelsior!' Keep the faith, David. You're one of the good guys! Excelsior! Stan"

We discussed it a bit more but, soon after, Stan's eyesight worsened and he stopped answering his own mail; whoever took over had no idea what we'd been talking about. I let the idea drop.

Back when I was 12, I decided my career goal was to work with Stan Lee. Eventually, I achieved that goal but not by submitting stories in my teens and 20s but much later in my life, as an agent and book author. By the time I was 14, he'd gone from editor-in-chief to Publisher -- which meant he'd need more writers, right?

The first time I met Stan Lee and got to take a photo with him, I looked up at him and said, “Smile, and look as much like my Uncle as you can.” He laughed and gave my artist friend Scott Rockwell and me a good half-hour of his time, looking at art and answering questions. That was in 1978 – fully 40 years ago – and I remember it all as if it were yesterday. Stan was a memorable guy who could make you feel like the most important person in the room. I only wish I still had that photo; maybe Scott has it buried somewhere.

Four years later, I sold my first professional comics scripts to Pacific Comics and two years after that was writing a Superman assignment for DC with Kevin Juaire. Instead of ending up at Marvel as I’d hoped – which would’ve required moving to New York and being involved in daily office politics – I became a comics packager, then a publisher, then an agent. That’s how Stan knew me professionally, as a writer and an artist’s agent.

In early 1989, at a Capital City Distribution trade show, my Innovation Publishing was set up promoting the books we would be releasing into comics shops in a few weeks. Stan was walking by, and I suggested to my assistant Paul Curtis that we should invite Stan to dinner. He ran over, asked, and Stan said yes! He not only brought along Carol Kalish and regaled us with two hours of stories about life at Marvel, Stan insisted that Marvel pay for the meal! Nobody thought to bring a camera, but the memories stayed with us. As I recall, Steve Sullivan, Paul Curtis and his girlfriend Amy, and I were the happy Innovation team at that dinner. Kevin VanHook came on the trip but was elsewhere at that time. He made up for it later at a party by chatting on a couch with Stan and later dancing with Carol.

In the '90s, Stan and I would chat at every opportunity at conventions.

When Marvel released a limited edition hardcover reprint of his 1947 book Secrets of the Comics, I decided to give in to my fannish impulses and use its endpapers as my autograph book.

Stan, of course, was the first to sign it in 1996, and a batch of Silver Age stalwarts followed.

By then we made it a point to get photos together every year across two decades. It was a clear timeline of the both of us getting older.

As the internet blossomed, I helped Stan a little when he first joined AOL. He asked me how AOL Instant Messenger worked, how to turn it on when he wanted to communicate and off when he didn’t want to be bombarded with Messages, and so on. Another time, an article he wanted to read was behind a login/password, and he asked me help get him through that. It tickled me to help Stan “The Man” with such basic web-things.

From the mid-'90s through the early 2000s, Stan would call the Glass House offices about once a month to ask for my perspective on what was going on in the comics biz, since we dealt not only with all the Marvel editors but everyone else as well. Real conversations, not the "'Nuff said, Pilgrim!" stuff. He'd graciously take an extra few minutes to chat with my assistant Graeme, who loved talking to his childhood icon.

Around 1997, Marvel's savvy publisher asked Glass House to create two dozen project proposals for a line of second-tier titles that my company would package. We ended up over-achieving and submitted 28 of them -- one of them for the first-tier Fantastic Four that I understood we had little chance of getting, but I had to try. The art was Joe Bennett's doing a Kirbyesque style.

Stan was kind enough to read over my FF proposal/outline and fine-tune my dialogue for the pages, before I submitted.

Likely worried about how an outside packager controlling so many titles would affect his own position, the editor-in-chief buried all 28 projects until, two years later, he assigned an editor to reject every proposal outright; that editor told me my FF dialogue didn't capture the essence of the characters -- not realizing the words were Stan's.

(Sidebar: It was so ridiculous, that editor even rejected a proposal that another Marvel editor already saw, bought, and published!)

When Meryl and I got married in 2001, Stan sent us a gift -- a lemon cake and a note saying he wished he could've made it to the wedding. We still have the note; we ate the cake.

In 2006, Stan's POW! Entertainment launched Who Wants to be a Super-Hero? on The Sci-Fi Channel, and my Glass House Graphics contributed all the cover artwork for both seasons of the TV show. We even drew the comicbooks that starred both winners -- Matthew Atherton and Jarrett Crippen, both of whom became our friends.

When my friend, then-GHG artist Will Conrad, worked with him on the Dark Horse Feedback comic book, Stan took the time personally to choose Will out of our roster of artists, and to phone him in Brazil for a long talk before sending him the plot. (And yes, it was a full page-by-page plot.) They spoke several times during Will's month working on the book, each time helpful and upbeat.

The second book, with The Defuser, was more problematic. The network and producers weren't honoring their commitments to the winner, so I reached out to Stan who said, "I don't see any compelling reason to bother doing it, since we weren't renewed for a third season." I replied, "Because you said you would? Because you have the power to do it, and with great power there must also come great responsibility?" He made it happen, and Glass House Graphics's Kajo Baldissimo did the art.

We also drew the box art and insert comic books for multiple DVD animation projects that POW! released, with art by GHG's fabulous Fabio Laguna.

Stan always made time to meet privately with my artists, and my family, for which I was always grateful.

Of course when Comics Buyer’s Guide published a big feature issue for Stan’s 75th Birthday, I contributed an essay and hired the great Marie Severin to do a caricature cover for it and sent Stan a giant print of the art.

Around the time of Stan's 90th birthday celebration, I had Tina Francisco create a new birthday cover for Comics Buyer's Guide, and I penned a long article about him, too.

Of course, we sent to Stan a poster of the color art, and he sent back this card -- as always, written in his own handwriting.

TO BE CONTINUED -- IN PART TWO!

8 notes · View notes

likeawildthing · 6 years

Note

Hi, I just wanted your opinion on something. Me and a few others have noticed on tumblr that people sort of 'recycle' other peoples posts. As in, they take their ideas or actually sentences straight out of them and pretty much copy and paste, and gain lots of notes that way. Is this plagarism? I don't think it's nice to do but I'm not sure if it's actual plagarism. I just wanted your opnion if you don't mind

I’ve experienced straight up plagiarism and every shade ofgrey: people copying my fanfics to theiraccounts, hacking and making crappier versions of headcanon posts I worked on, copyingand pasting lines into standalone posts, straight up screenshotting posts fortumblr and other social media.

When I first started in fandom I’d get so riled about all ofit, but especially that questionable ‘is this intentional because it suresounds familiar’ type thing. I’d also get into heated debates over characternuances, fandom tirades, etc. In discussing both of these issues with seasonedfandom friends, I heard over and over that there’s nothing in fandom worthgetting upset about, because it’s all been said before.

I rolled my eyes, because of course there was! That personCOPIED my post! That was my idea last week/month! That character is a greasyslime ball and so is anyone who stans for him!

And then, when my one year in fandom rolled into two, three,four, five, my group of friends mostly moved on from those spirited debates and(omg) sex riots, took our discourse offline into real life stuff as friendshipsgrew, and stopped spending so much time on Tumblr.

A new batch of enthusiasts cropped up, and watching you guysblossom has been deja vu.

Even I was annoyedwhen I saw someone making a bunch of character meta posts I had already made,until I realized how silly that was, because no one was ‘copying’ my work. Youwere discovering the same things about [insert character] that I haddiscovered. It became an interesting sociology observation. Your revelation? Yourinside jokes? Your fandom tirades? All essentially the same. Your passion drovethe same enthusiastic late-night, twelve paragraph meta binges that had fueled me.

How can I begrudge people the joy of that falling into the fandomrabbit hole feeling?

This cracked podast (the only cracked podcast episode I’llever rec lol) is an interesting listen. I don’t agree with everything they say,but the crux is that there aren’t many new ideas, and that culture (what comesin) spawns divergent ideas in people all. the. time. Multiple people had the idea for harry potter at the same time. Patents are sometimes filed on the same day. That’s just how ideas work.

Fandom is an insular bubble on a good day, lovelies. It’s narrower if you are just on one site,narrower still if you’re into the same few ships or characters. Everyone’sexperience is different, yes, but there are a finite number of headcanons, ficideas, meta posts, jokes. People say “has anyone done this” on an edit or comicfor a reason: because most of them had been said before, probably dozens oftimes.

A few years ago I had an idea to draw out Tom Riddle’s diarypages, one of them being all the other anagrams Riddle could have used insteadof I am Lord Voldemort. Sound familiar? It should, because someone else had alreadycome up with the idea. Luckily I saw that comic someone else had made before I actually drew and released it. But in myhead it was a completely original idea! Now I may have seen it, forgotten aboutit, and then it popped back into my consciousness as a great idea, or we boththought of it separately. A few months ago a friend and I discovered that we’ddeveloped and written the same, very specific side-character headcanon into twoseparate fics.

I do understand your frustration, especially if those postsare more popular than yours. But memory is a fallible, fickle thing. I’d encouragethe benefit of the doubt. Perhaps they don’t realize. Perhaps they’re lonelyand are trying to make friends. Perhaps they’re struggling with mental illnessand that little bit of validation is the only thing getting through the day. It’ssuper easy to vilify someone on the other side of a screen when we don’t knowthem. Try reaching out (off anon) and just starting a conversation.

There are people who build a blog from deliberately stealingothers’ work, but the vast majority of us are here to have a good time. And soare you. If you’ve been talking to people then it sounds like you’ve gotfriends here. Commit to curating the best fandom experience for yourself thatyou can—you owe it to yourself!

You might roll your eyes at this response… Fair, but come talk to me in four years. :D Years in fandom have given me an excellent set of blinders.I come here to find what I want and ignore everything else. I don’t…owe anyoneon here anything. That anon who asked me about johnny d*pp…again? Not worth it.That person who literally screenshotted one of my posts…again? Not worth it. You’rehere to have fun, not to be miserable or get notes. If that means blockingchronic grey-area offenders, do it. Report straight up plagiarist posts if youfeel the need, but then let it go. Hang in there!

#look at me being so passionate about something I gave a twelve paragraph meta #Anonymous #fandom

23 notes · View notes