#I'd love to hear from you! ^_^

[aquietwritingcorner]

Thank you all for a wonderful Whumptober!

I enjoyed writing all the stories I put out, and it made me quite happy to see you all enjoy them! I loved every reblog, comment, tag, and like here, and every kudos, bookmark and review over on AO3 and ff.net! Believe me, I look at and read every one of them! They make me quite happy! I promise, I'm slowly getting around to responding to everything!

For the next month, don't expect to see a lot out of me. November is always NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) and I'm throwing myself into making that 50k word count! It's my 13th year, and I don't plan to make this year the one I lose!

But I do have some questions for you that you can help me answer during this month. So far all I've posted on this blog are stories and snipets of things I've written on rp blogs. But I would like to interact with you all more.

So. Here's my first question to you. What other things would you like to see on this blog?

Do you want to see headcanons? Analysis of characters, scenes, episodes, etc? Thoughts and ramblings? Small silly scenes that pop in my head? Would you like it if I posted memes where you could ask me questions? Prompt memes? Let you give me ideas? What other things would you like to see?

I would very much like to interact with all of you more. My ask and submit are open, and anon is on for all of you shy people out there. What would you like to see more of that might help with that?

My second question is: Are there any of my stories that you'd like to see more of?

Any you want me to do follow ups on? Any you'd like to see me revisit in an expanded way, with more detail? Any verses you'd like to see me do more writing in?

I can't promise that they'll happen or happen quickly, but interest in them does help fuel the desire to write them!

And, lastly and purely hypothetically at this point: Would you like to see things besides writing from me?

I haven't drawn in forever, but would you like to see art from me? Would you like to see just new art? Would you like to see old art? If I did something else, like, say, if I learned to sew and did something, or painted or something, would you like to see that?

These are questions I've been pondering for a bit. You don't have to have answers to them all, or opinions on them all. You don't have to like any or all of these ideas. I just want to know what you think. Anon is on, and I'd appreciate some feedback.

Thank you! I can't wait to hear from you, and to, hopefully, provide you with more stories! ^_^

--AllyKatie

[datcravat]

It seems there's a new lawyer in town!!!

[moomoorare]

Finally, Cleo as Spring inspired by Mucha's 1896 painting!! 🩵🌿 Couldn't choose a version so you're having both <3

[demaparbat-hp]

Oh, Lala...

[hey-heigo]

damon's father drops him off at the station

[marlynnofmany]

In further adventures of "Hollywood should have just asked us," here are a couple ideas that would make for a decent new version of Snow White. Stone and I came up with them last night. 

First off, the dwarves are just normal people for that region. By that I mean dwarfism is commonplace in the kingdom, which we see from various side characters and background extras. These seven are normal folks, not Fantasy Creatures. 

Also, they're a family living and working together. Our first thought was seven brothers, but why stop there? Doc is old enough to be the dad. Grumpy can be the uncle. Re-envision some of the others to be the mom and a sister or two. Dopey is the youngest kid, still figuring his way around a pickaxe. 

And the other idea is about the kiss. If that magic leads to a "time is paused while we have an adventure elsewhere" kind of otherworldly journey, then Snow White and the Prince can get to know each other properly. They can rescue each other from various dangers in whatever dreamland this is, find out they can actually work together pretty well, and only then does the spell release. 

You've got to be drift compatible to take down a sorceress and rule a kingdom. The dwarves will help. There are probably magical gemstones from those mines, not to mention lots of muscles from swinging a pickaxe all day. Hi-ho! 

[basket-of-radiants]

Why were you so disappointed by Rhythm of War?

This has been sitting in my askbox for years. I've taken several cracks at answering, only to get frustrated with the subject matter and burn myself out every time. I didn't like Rhythm of War. More than that, I didn't like it in a way that tainted my enjoyment of the entire series. And despite what it may seem, I don't actually enjoy discussing things which I don't like. I always want to talk from a place of good faith. Which is why now that my feelings towards the series are a little more positive, I think I can finally answer this.

I'm going to try to stay away from specific plotpoints and story beats for this post, because my goal isn't to nitpick (if for no other reason than it would take a week to write this post), I'm just looking to talk about my overall impressions. I think that might mean the only spoilers here will be structural? idk, if you haven't read Rhythm of War yourself then you should probably do that before looking for other people's opinions anyway. 

I liked Way of Kings when I first read it. I didn't love it at the time, but I liked it. Certainly enough to keep reading once I'd finished. One thing that made me a bit uncomfy, however, was the war against the Parshendi. They were this unknowable enemy which the book was not interested in knowing. An inhuman army. Their main purpose was to kill Kaladin's friends, or else be killed by Dalinar's armies. And yet the Parshendi, and the parshmen in the form of Shen, did show hints of personhood. And so it bothered me how Dalinar spoke so casually about how the Alethi had decimated their numbers, how the others used the war as a means to amass wealth and power. (It didn't bother me in a "this is a bad book" way but in a "these characters are bad people" way.)

One of my foibles as a reader is that when a book is very clearly treating one side of a conflict with more humanity, I tend to be a bit predisposed towards the other to account for that. And with the Alethi clearly being the invading party and superior military force, there was also some underdog favoritism. I didn't really like how the book treated the Parshendi. This is to say that going forward, the singers would be more important to me than any other through line.

So imagine my delight at reading Words of Radiance and meeting Eshonai, one of the Parshendi, who even gets her own point of view sections! They were no longer being treated as a faceless mass, we were getting to see things from their perspective as well. And it became plain to see the damage the Alethi had done to them. I couldn't really bring myself to root for Dalinar or really any of the humans against the listeners. I couldn't even bring myself to like most of these characters. I still enjoyed the book but once it became clear there wouldn't be a peaceful conclusion, let's just say that I wouldn't have wept for Dalinar and Adolin if Szeth had managed to off them. Like everyone in the book, I assumed that going forward all the parshmen would be turned into evil voidbringers in the everstorm and that the listeners were mostly dead. Except for Rlain, and Eshonai because I'd read or been told that book 4 would be Eshonai's book and thus had assumed she was fine. (Oathbringer spoilers, she was not fine.) So ultimately it was still a bit of a downer way to end the book. 

So imagine my delight at reading Oathbringer, where for the first time singers were being treated as people, full and real people, and where the human characters could no longer ignore or dismiss them. We met Khen and the others, common singers who were sympathetic and just wanted freedom from bondage. We see Venli grapple with the loss of her home. We see Leshwi and Moash connecting with and understanding one another. We learn of a history where singers were the original inhabitants of the planet. Parallel to this, Dalinar is having a truly excellent character arc about confronting one's past actions and acknowledging them to move forward and do better. I loved Oathbringer, for some years it was my favorite book, and I was excited as hell to see what came next. At the time, it seemed to me that there is a clear direction the story is going. Two books about needless war, and then a third where the main cast is forced to acknowledge the personhood of their enemies. This was so cool, all of my feelings from the previous installments were being validated, the characters were going to have to face what they've done in the past and outgrow their militaristic mindsets, I was so sure of that.

Imagine my disappointment when that does not even remotely resemble the direction the story went in Rhythm of War. RoW presented a clear, straightforward “us vs. them" narrative, where every character was totally fine with killing singers. Characters aligned with the singers were either flattened into wholly evil versions of themselves (Moash) or were expected to turn on their side in favor of the humans (Venli.) Because clearly there was no reason good people would be on the side that's all former slaves trying to stay free. Maybe there's some sort of accord or understanding between Navani and Raboniel that I might have found meaningful if the seeds of mutual understanding weren't already there in Oathbringer and then apparently ignored for a year by all the characters.

I have a lot of issues with how the listeners are handled in these books. (Here's some elaboration.) Following OB, I had thought that all my concerns were going to be addressed. Following RoW, I knew they never would be. 

Which is my main complaint, because that's the thread that matters most to me in this series.

I have a lot of other Things as well. Gonna just talk about a few big ones. 

One outsized source of disappointment that may seem a little petty, and which probably is, is that I felt mislead by the premise of the book. It had been announced that this book would center Venli and Eshonai, and I was unbelievably hyped for that. That did not really turn out to be the case. The purpose for their backstory chapters felt less about exploring them as people and contextualizing their arcs, and more about filling in gaps of world history. In the main plot, Venli was a POV character and she certainly played a role, but honestly not a very important one overall. To me she felt like a side character in her own book. I don't think it's controversial to say that the main character of RoW was Navani. A lot of people really like Navani and are happy about that. Unfortunately I'm not one of those people, and I found it all the more difficult to enjoy her when it felt like it was coming at the expense of some of my favorite characters. 

This particular gripe somewhat comes down to preference, obviously everyone prefers to read about characters they like more than those they don't, and it can go both ways. (For instance, on a craft/technical level RoW is probably the superior book to W&T, but I liked the latter a lot more because of my stupidly outsized attachment to Szeth and Nale.) But I do think there's something of a real criticism in how the book would rather focus on the feelings of a queen rather than those of a genocide survivor, and how the former's are given significantly more weight and import. It ties in with my main criticism, I think. 

And then there's how human/human racism had also been wholly cast aside as a plot point. Jasnah fixed slavery so that's resolved, and the only person who still cares about structural racism is the evil bad bad evil villain Moash/Vyre, who is now wholly irredeemable and who you're allowed to totally write off because he's sold his soul to Odium. I've already talked a lot about this. Other people have already talked about this, probably better than me. The writing was actually on the wall for me in OB, but again, RoW was when I fully accepted that this was never going to be addressed. 

There's something else that probably deserves its own discussion rather than being quickly tacked on at the end here, but here we are. This book changed how the series approaches war. 

In WoK, war was very clearly portrayed as a bad and inglorious thing. It was brutal, it was painful, those at the bottom died cruelly and unceremoniously and pointlessly while those at the top turned a profit. Every day was a new horror. The enemy were never evil, they were always just more people forced to go through the same thing. Through the next couple books, it felt to me that even if the characters had accepted war as necessary, there was still a tragedy to it. Conversely, in RoW (and W&T) war is basically a series of boss battles, in between which our protagonists can kill dozens of footsoldiers with barely a thought in the same way WoK had criticized.

Final note on all this, it sucks how we have no perspectives from the former-slaves-singers demographic. Those guys are really thrown under the bus, and seemingly get no self-determination now or ever. It was a glaring problem to me in RoW. Conscripted and enslaved humans and singers probably have just as much ground to form mutual understanding as a fused and a queen. (In fact they already had. In Oathbringer.)

In essence, RoW disappointed me because it left me with the distinct impression that none of the series's most important through lines (well, most important to me) were going to be resolved well. I liked W&T, but I haven't revised my opinion very much about the overall handling of these topics across the series. Maybe one of the reasons I was able to enjoy W&T so much more was because I no longer had such high expectations.

[tritoch]

7.2 minor wol characterization spoilers (cutscenes after MSQ trial)

spoilers below

when you call the team via linkpearl to give them the download on everything that has happened with sphene and the simulant and calyx and preservation, y'shtola, alisaie, and erenville respond in ways that suggest the warrior of light is not the kind of person who usually initiates calls, to the point where getting an unexpected call from the WoL might be cause for some alarm. alphinaud's response doesn't suggest the same thing, but that might just be because he's the only one in the group with sufficient tact not to immediately point out when someone does something uncharacteristic. alternately, maybe it's because he just assumes that he's always managing to catch the warrior of light just before they would've called him for the post-mission linkpearl update call (a type of call alphinaud initiates with the wol fairly often), instead of the others' assumption that the wol simply wouldn't call of their own accord.

that said the idea that the warrior of light almost never calls anyone but somehow manages to carry on a socially normal phone correspondence with alphinaud is pretty funny to me so i am immediately adopting it

[its-a-me-mango]

I freaking love having OC's I can do anything I want with them.

[fizzytoo]

the next location on the sibling-bonding roadtrip takes us to an airbnb campsite in plumbite cove, copperdale!

[picayunearts]

Hey everyone! Long time no see!

Breaking hiatus with some bad news: my first-ever artist alley was canceled a week before I was set to table there. I've been working towards this event since last year, and my hotel deposit is non-refundable, so I've opened my shop to recoup some costs.

Bigcartel | Etsy

💝Stickers, charms, postcards

💝MLB, TOH, Studio Ghibli, Kirby, misc. video games (Hades, Ace Attorney, SDV), pride, original designs

💝 Many of my fandom items, especially for Miraculous, can't be listed on Etsy for policy reasons. They'll be in my Bigcartel shop until it closes on July 12.

Reblogs and shares are greatly appreciated, thank you!

[askgardenerwoods]

hi Emma! Who do you consider your friends do you have a crush on anybody?

" For crushes... "

[cappybawa106]

👿💉"This might hurt a bit..."

✉️🩹"...I'll put the band-aid on for you... if that's ok."

I've been wanting to draw Kurode and Willmesh in their lords Vitamin Puro outfits ever since they were first shown!

Close ups + Alt ver+ ref

Since Kuromi and Mell's outfit can also glow in the dark, I wanted to do something similar by using some neon color pencils. And I used the Vivid filter on my camera to make those colors pop! (Hopefully their bright enough to see)

THEY'RE SO CUTE AND PRETTY OMG I WANT MELL TO GIVE ME A CHECK UP LIKE IMAGINE IF THAT WAS POSSIBLE I WOULD BE GOING TO THE DOCTORS ALL THE TIME

[gingermintpepper]

As upset as I am about the erasure of Apollo in greek myth media (and trust me, I am always upset about it) at least I can take solace in the fact that there won't ever be a 'modern, feminist' retelling of stories like Apollo/Melia, Apollo/Evadne or Apollo/Branchus because that would require those sorts of authors to do more than a single google search to find summaries of their tales to fuck up.

[charlesemersonwinchesteriii]

When dave "don't read too much into it" chella was first announced I would have said there's no way the Irving playlist would ever contain anything with "heaven" or "angel" in the title. Way too on the nose, right? This is supposed to be serious. However now that he put The Secret Marriage on the Bridgens playlist all bets are off. I'm almost certain there will be one put there specifically to harm and torment us.

But what exactly will it be I wonder. Tears In Heaven? Angel Of The Morning? Will he throw us a curveball with a Stairway To Heaven?? HALO BY BEYONCE??? If Spirit In The Sky is on there I'm legally allowed to throw myself into the ocean.

[madabapf]

guess who just finished writing rough drafts for the chapters B) that's right, actually doing some prep work instead of adjusting the whole thing as i go ✨

i started getting more detailed with the last chapters bc those are the only one's i have more of a finished story in mind and not just key points, so that's why they're longer-

my working title atm is "what's in the past" but i'm not sure i like it-

also at this point i probably need a name for the whole au but i have no idea what to call it- if i don't come up with anything i'm just gonna call it the Bapf AU or something 😭 /hj