#allthefilmsiveseenforfree

[radiojamming]

I just saw a trailer for Twisters and immediately thought of you. Thoughts on the new movie and original?

Twister was cheesy and wonderful. I can quote it in its entirety (and so can @allthefilmsiveseenforfree who got me in the habit of watching it during the first tornado watch of every year). It got me into storm chasing at the tender age of nine. Is it accurate? Absolutely not. Is it poetique cinema? Nope. But is it entertaining? YEAH BUD.

And will I be the first in line to see Twisters in the hope that it's just as weird and wonderful as its mother film? Of goddamn course. I have a date with the suck zone and it's July 19th.

[joycecarolnotes]

Which Loki variant is your fave?

I feel pretty loyal to the like, main one but... alligator loki 4ever

[retrauxpunk]

I'm loving these dark academia posts - wanna giv Rachel + Oklahoma + English Literature a shot? 💙

for sure, i’m loving doing them! :)

confident smiles, soft linen skirts, fountain pens spilling dark blue ink, boots crunching on gravel, shared looks and comfortable silences, sunset across sprawling skies, books with worn spines and faded covers, long drives, fireflies

[doctorcolubra]

How about Eleanora or the Fall of the House of Usher for Jarrich? (Fluffy or no, I'm interested in what you do with these!!)

I say that I want to write drabbles or ficlets and then end up with almost 3K, typical. I really want to get better at short-form stuff (still taking prompts if anyone wants to send more). 

I’m in a haunted house mood for fall so here’s Fall of the House of Usher! 

_____________

Richard doesn’t like driving, or at least he doesn’t like traffic. The hostility, the birds flipped, the goddamn honking. He’s doing okay out here in the country, on empty roads where no one can take offense at his speed, his signalling, his sloppy lane changes or his occasional hasty U-turns. Jared’s in the passenger’s seat, asleep. Collar askew, hair windblown, lips parted—keep your eyes on the road, Hendricks.They’re driving back to Palo Alto from the Central Sierra Audobon Society Birders’ Convention. “I was going to be Muriel’s plus-one,” Jared had said one day last week. “But I suppose I can go alone. I have my safety whistle.”“For what, bears?”

“Of course. With black bears, your best strategy is to stand your ground, if you’ll forgive an expression sadly tainted by the legal system. You make yourself look as big as you can.” Jared held his arms out wide, hands in his raincoat pockets to make his skinny frame broader. “And that’s where the whistle comes in. Noise frightens the bear off. Those same tactics would probably get you killed if you ever met a grizzly, though,” he added. “But you won’t. In spite of what the state flag would have you believe, the last grizzly bear in California was shot in the ‘20s.”

“Where is this place?” Richard said, and then: “Don’t go alone, for fuck’s sake. Can I go? With you, I mean?”

“Richard…” Jared lit up. “Oh, I would love to take you. But I couldn’t possibly take you away from—you have so many things to think of…”Even Jared couldn’t quite pretend that Richard is still a busy CEO.So they did BirdCon. Richard was wondering if he needed glasses or whether he was just bad at this hobby, because Jared and the other birders kept losing their minds over woodpeckers, warblers, flycatchers, sparrows, raptors and vireos. Richard, once, correctly identified a squirrel. Jared drove here, anyway, so Richard’s returning the favour on the way home.And he’s not lost. He’s not. He’s supposed to be in some town called Confidence on the edge of Yosemite Park, and follow the highway from there to Modesto, and from there he can figure his business out.The Google Maps lady has been giving suspicious instructions for awhile now, though, and Richard doesn’t think he’s anywhere close to Confidence. Which, ha ha, super funny. He’s on a stretch of road that’s…well, not desolate. It’s pretty. Hills, grass, trees. Whatever. But he’s trying to figure out if Google Maps Lady is on the level, and the land around them doesn’t hold any clues.When a cop car rolls up behind him, he’s almost relieved. (Almost. He’s sweating a lot.) Jared jerks awake while Richard fumbles with the window switch.The stocky, brown-skinned cop bends to the window. “You boys looking for the casino?”“Wh—no,” Richard says. They couldn’t have blundered into Nevada somehow. Right? No, absolutely not. “We’re…are we near Confidence? The town, I mean?”“You’re on Miwok tribal land,” says the cop. “Tuolumne Rancheria.”“Oh.” Richard has no clue where that is in relation to Confidence, Yosemite, Modesto, or Palo Alto. Fucking Google. “Um, sorry. Are we allowed to—we shouldn’t be here, right?”The cop avoids a complicated question of colonialism. “You’re not in trouble, just thought you might be lost. Casino’s down that way. Where you coming from, Jamestown?”“We were up in Yosemite, for—for BirdCon—and we were supposed to pass through Sugarpine and then Confidence,” Richard says, disconnecting his phone from the cord and showing the officer the screen. “The GPS voice kept saying to stay on 108, and I was doing that, and then the road turned into the E17…”The cop looks at Richard’s phone and chuckles. “You’re real lost, wow. I don’t even know how you did that.”Between the two of them, they determine that Richard had made some catastrophic error while typing the address into GPS, and Maps is now trying to send them to Confidence, New Mexico. Richard is indignant—the one thing he wouldn’t fuck up is data entry—and blames Google’s shoddy user interface and aggressive auto-correct.“Yeah, maybe,” says the cop with a shrug. “But you’re still going the wrong way.”“Oh,” Jared says suddenly, softly, looking ahead. He’s been quiet and bleary from taking an extra allergy pill, but now the haze has lifted. “Oh, no, I know just where we are.”Richard turns back to look at him. “You do?”“I used to live near here. For awhile. Not on the reservation, naturally. But I know this road. Thank you, officer, we’ll be fine from here,” says Jared to the tribal cop, who wishes them goodnight and heads back to his truck.“You don’t have to drive,” Richard says, plugging his phone back in. “My fuck-up, I got it taken care of.”“No, not at all—I’m so sorry I fell asleep on you, Richard.” Jared is straightening his collar, brushing his dark hair back into place with his fingers. “I should have stayed awake to navigate—”“Come on. It’s the end of the day, it’s my turn.”“Okay. But could we…no, that’s self-indulgent of me…”“What?”“I think—I think I might like to drive past the house. If it wouldn’t take us too far out of our way. We don’t have to stop, even, but…” Jared trails off, looking out the window at the hills. “Only if there’s time. I’m sure there’s not.”“There’s lots of time, now that we’re not…going to fuckin’ New Mexico. Just—point me where we’re going, it’s okay,” Richard says. Muriel would have stopped for Jared. “We’ll take a look.”The house is low and white and dead, like a broken eggshell lying amid the trees. Peeling paint, windows boarded, a child’s plastic car lying sun-bleached on its side, no cars in the gravel driveway. Jared doesn’t seem disappointed—in fact, he’s quietly elated. “It’s empty,” he says in wonder, staring out the window. “It’s all empty.”“That’s…too bad,” Richard says, but he’s guessing. “Is it? Did you like this place?”“No,” Jared says, the way he always says these things. Light, soft, without rancour. He hasn’t looked away from the shabby house in the trees. “I didn’t at all. Could we—no, I’ve already taken us out of our way…”“You want to get a closer look?”“Maybe. Yes. For a minute or two, Richard, not long.”The grass is knee-high around the front yard, where the trees clear, and Richard can see glimpses of weeds out back that would come up to his shoulders. He’s picking his way carefully toward the door, convinced that he’ll step on a snake at any minute. Poisonous snakes. He’ll get bitten. Richard is not mentally or spiritually equipped to be bitten by a snake, it’s haunted his nightmares ever since he was a reluctant Boy Scout in Tulsa. He’ll end up in the hospital being laughed at by that goddamn doctor. Then a painful death, then—“The door’s off its hinges,” Jared says. “We could go inside.”“Is that safe?” Part of Richard wants to shake Jared out of this reverie: don’t look at this, don’t remember, don’t get lost. But he knows that if he did, Jared would apologise profusely and never mention the house again. And that’s bad, Richard knows. Because something bad must have happened here. “Are you okay with this, man? We don’t have to go in. I mean, I will. I know you came to check out Peter Gregory’s stuff with me, so. Fair’s fair. But…I’m not trying to—to talk you out of it, unless…like, unless you want me to talk you out of it?”Jared has opened his backpack (practical, pristine, everything tucked in orderly pockets) to get out his flashlight. But he looks back at Richard and smiles. “It’s funny,” he says. “I barely remember the year I lived here. The brain is an amazing organ—there we are…” The flashlight’s blue-white glow shivers over the front hall of the house. “Hello? Anyone here?”Silence. The flashlight’s a necessity, but there’s still some sunlight streaming in from outside, and that’s all that’s holding Richard together. It’s not dark yet, but as Bob Dylan said, it’s getting there. Everything’s dusty. Good thing Jared’s already popped an allergy pill.Richard follows Jared, using his phone for more light, looking at the time capsule of a house. Harvest gold and avocado kitchen, landline phone on the wall with its cord a cramped spiral tangle. Warped bookshelves disgorging hoarded piles of magazines. Someone must have tried to clean the place before giving up: there are garbage bags and boxes everywhere, Pine-Sol and Febreze bottles, mops and brooms at rest in the corners. The ceilings are water-stained and in places the paint has buckled away from the wall, bubbling outward in layers that Richard instinctively wants to peel away.“What are we looking for?” he asks Jared.“Nothing,” Jared says, tentatively pushing open a half-closed bedroom door. A teenage girl’s room, walls papered with Tiger Beat and Big Bopper pages. Jonathan Brandis, the Hanson boys, Leo in his salad days, young and green. (Richard knows too much about magazines from this era. But that’s another story.) “Nothing special—oh, Richard, don’t look so frightened, please. We can go back to the car.”“No,” Richard says, stubborn now. “Not until you’re done with…this. Closure. Right? That’s what this is. Isn’t it?”“Maybe part of the process of closure, yes.” Jared moves to the next bedroom door. “This wasn’t the worst place I ever lived. I think I was relieved to get here. It felt safe, safer. Back then. The Alguires were strict, but they didn’t hurt me. Just…I’ve forgotten so much about living here. If you’d asked me yesterday to list all the homes I’ve ever had, I would’ve left this one off the list. But I was here for almost a year. Eleven months, I think.”“How old were you?”“Ten.”“I don’t remember ten either, really,” says Richard, staying in the teen girl’s room and raising his voice a little to be heard. “I mean I know where I was and what I was doing. We never moved, same house in Tulsa all my life. But I don’t remember being ten. It sucked, I know that.”“How come?”“School.” Richard used to rage over this, why did they do it, what was wrong with me, but in Palo Alto everyone else had a similar story, and he got over it. Kinda. “Everyone hated me.”“They just weren’t ready for you,” comes Jared’s voice from the other room, as inexplicably fond as always. “The solitary genius.”Sometimes Richard’s not sure if Jared’s making fun of him or not. Who could actually believe this stuff? What would it even be like to be so earnest? Terrifying, Richard thinks.He’s afraid that somewhere in this house they’ll find something really dark: chains and shackles on a radiator, or a potty chair in a locked closet. The house is depressing, but in an ordinary way. The former inhabitants must have verged on clinical hoarding, but the situation wasn’t bad enough to get on TLC. Just a particularly good archaeological record of the early ‘90s.Richard makes his way further down the hall, still on the lookout for snakes. It’s darker, and then, suddenly, brighter—the back door is gone, open to the audience of Sonora pines. Shafts of slow gold afternoon sunlight break through into the dark little house, nurturing a tidepool of vegetation. Moss is spreading across the rotting wooden floorboards, with leggy weeds crowding in the brightest spots. Tiny green tendrils trace paths from the shadows into the light, breaking into full leaf where the sun hits. The air smells damp, fresh, alive when everything else in this house seems dead. Flourishing.He wanders back to find Jared in the other bedroom. Jared’s poking through a big Rubbermaid tub that seems to be full of toys: headless Barbies and uncanny baby dolls, loose Lego, die-cast cars, green plastic army men, neon water pistols empty of their charges.But then a look of recognition breaks over his face and he reaches in to pull out a recorder, still in its blue plastic sleeve, a sheet of music folded inside.“Mrs. Alguire hated noise,” Jared says. “This was her house, the year I lived here. She used to confiscate inappropriate toys. I don’t mean to say she was unkind—she was a step up from my aunt’s place. But she did like silence. And I…” He slides the recorder out of its plastic sleeve. “I always wanted to play an instrument, or—when I got to Vassar I was allowed to sing. I liked that. But one day I found this in the inappropriate toys box. Even if I couldn’t make music, I thought…I thought I could make noise. Maybe somebody would notice if I was loud. I don’t know what I wanted them to notice. I was already getting as much help as anyone could give me.”“Not enough.” Richard is beside him, digging through the Rubbermaid tub too, examining the Barbies and the Hot Wheels and all the other miscellanea in the pile. “I had one of those plastic recorders for about three days,” he says. “My parents took it away too. Not that—I mean, it’s not the same as your thing.”“Well, some adult reactions become more sympathetic as we get older.” Jared polishes the dust off the recorder with a clean tissue from his pocket. “But the recorder was a very important part of early music, you know. Some beautiful airs were written for it. No instrument sounds very pleasant when it’s made of plastic and costs a dollar.”“Yeah, true.” Richard fishes the sheet music out of the recorder’s sleeve and unfurls it, skimming the notes. He has no talent himself, something he discovered from the childhood piano lessons that he got and Jared didn’t. “‘Early One Morning’—oh, I remember this from an episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer…”Jared laughs. “You’re so cultured, Richard.”“Okay, that, right there, that was making fun of me,” Richard says—he’s grinning, not even mad, just relieved that he finally caught Jared just teasing him for being an idiot, the way a normal person would. “You know goddamn well that’s not cultured.”“I would never judge you for—”“You should, though, Jared. You should judge the hell out of me. For everything.” Richard bumps his arm gently against Jared’s, one of the few tactile gestures of friendliness that he’s learned how to use properly. “You’re gonna blast some ‘Early One Morning’ right now, aren’t you?”“I shouldn’t.”“It’s your moment, c’mon.” Richard likes to tempt Jared—sometimes to make him do things he needs to do for his own good, sometimes for more selfish reasons. To enjoy Jared’s purity, and to feel it crumble. “We’re a million miles away from anything. You’re not gonna bother anybody.”“Well…” Jared looks down at the recorder in his hands and smiles. “A little bit. Okay.”They walk out into the sprouting back hall, over the crumbling floors, where the weeds are winning in the sun. Richard gets his phone earbuds out of his pocket and puts them in as makeshift earplugs.Jared takes a deep breath and blows the recorder like a shofar, a raucous high-pitched whistle. Not playing any note in particular, just blasting it as loud as he possibly can, with all the air in his lungs. Not music, only noise. Serious noise. Richard can hear it even through his earbuds. It echoes through the pines, loud enough to frighten off a black bear.It’s a silly, childish sound—it brings back memories for Richard too. He used to annoy his parents with plastic recorders and cheap harmonicas and the repetitive sounds of Bach’s French Suite No. 3 by way of Tetris on his GameBoy. He’d had the freedom to bug people without having to worry about whether he might lose the roof over his head for it.When Jared stops, he looks satisfied for a brief moment, then guilty. “I feel so foolish,” he says. “I don’t know what I was expecting. We came so far out of our way just for that.”“You were trying to remember and you did. And we’d already gone out of our way, right?” Richard smiles at him. “I was trying to take us to Confidence, New Mexico. I’m the foolish one here, I’m Boo Boo the Fool.”“Never.” Jared reaches out for Richard, almost aimless: straightening one of the strings on his hoodie, fingers brushing over Richard’s shoulder.Jared starts to say something, and Richard is afraid that it’s thank you, which is bullshit—I’ve given him nothing, I’ve done nothing but take—so he leans in to wrap an arm awkwardly around Jared’s waist. “Let’s go home.

[allthefilmsiveseenforfree]

Let’s try that again...

So that sure was a year, huh?

You may have noticed (or not noticed, we were all just a little busy in 2020 trying to stay alive) that I've been MIA the past few months. And kind of sporadic the few months before that. I'll be honest with you - 2020 kicked my ass. You know those goats that get so overwhelmed when they get startled or stressed out that they just faint? Yeah, that was me. Emotionally, I mean. I wasn't fainting all over the place or anything, but trust me I COULD HAVE.

Anyway.

I stopped writing. I stopped reaching toward a goal. I stopped doing anything but surviving because it was all just too big and too much and too hard to hold. I had to hold myself and my loved ones and my job and I just didn't have room for anything else. I know a lot of people were in the same boat this year, but it doesn't make the guilt I feel any less, knowing that there were people who were paying me to do a job I wasn't doing. For that, I truly and deeply apologize. I owe you a debt and I hope you'll allow me to repay it.

The first thing I'm going to do is - try. I'm going to start trying again, to catch up, to be present, to put something into the world that other people seem to like. I miss writing about movies, I miss talking about movies, and if you want to come talk to me about them, I would love it.

The second thing I'm going to do is open access. Post everything everywhere. That's here, my Wordpress page (I See Films For Free), my tumblr (allthefilmsiveseenforfree) and my Facebook page (I See Films For Free). Let everyone read all the stuff I make, and if you like it and want to continue supporting my Patreon, I would love that. But if you don't, or you have to take care of yourself and your family instead, I understand that too.

The last thing I'm going to do is thank you. Thank you all for being here, sharing some laughs with me, reading what I write, and just generally being kind and supportive friends and family to me. You're the reason I want to get back to having these goals and putting my writing into the world.

Here's to #121in2021 and more importantly, here's to you!

Love,

Rachel

[svexchange2k19]

exchange participants... so far!

Here’s everyone who’s signed up so far!

A_bit_not_good_yeah / @allthefilmsiveseenforfree​ /  AO3: A_bit_not_good_yeah

Ariana / @ariana-paris​

Marthy / @curlyricho​

joycecarol notes / @joycecarolnotes​

Ken / @lucifers-lawyer​ / IambicKentameter

Ladieslovedurandruan / @ladiesloveduranduran​ / AO3: Beefmaster

Programasaurus Rex / @programasaurusrex​

possibly me, @retrauxpunk / AO3: retrauxpunk

You’ve got two more days left to sign up :) I’m closing sign-ups at the end of 6 Dec (Pacific Time / UTC -8:00) and assignments will be sent out on 8 Dec!

[mizgrownnonsense]

Someone ( @allthefilmsiveseenforfree ) just described “Sorry to bother you” as:

“Like ‘Being John Malkovich’ had a baby with ‘Get Out’ and that one scene in ‘RENT’ where Idina Menzel is doing the mooing”

And that is IT! That is exactly right! Holy shit. Thank you

[joycecarolnotes]

I need a kind word today so 🍓

okay YOU are the actual nicest - supportive, generous, a good listener, thoughtful, caring, wise. you're a great writer, have very funny and on-point movie opinions, and are impressively accomplished when it comes to career/education type stuff as well as dedicated to the things you do for fun. how much you love your wife makes me feel hopeful about the world in general - like, there's this light radiating from you and your love for each other that I am happy to be near enough to pick up so much as a single virtual ray of

[joycecarolnotes]

For the writing asks: 3, 15, 21, 24!

3. favorite line/scene you wrote this year

I am fond of the scene where Richard and Jared look at the stars together, in Four Walls and An Entire Universe. Particularly this:

"Swans mate for life," Jared muses. "And certain widowed swans have been known to die of heartbreak."

"Um, yeah. You know," Richard says, moving fast to change the subject, "matter cannot be created or destroyed, right? So like, nothing ever really dies. It's all the same electrons and neutrons and protons."

"Richard." Jared smiles. If Richard could see, he thinks, he might even describe the smile as flirtatious. "Are you saying that I'm stardust?"

"I mean, yeah, I am I guess."

Gosh, Jared thinks, how awfully romantic!

He practically bursts with gratitude to Richard, for making him a part of the world again. For building an entire universe with him, here within the confines of their bedroom's four, spare walls. He feels less and less like a prisoner than he ever has before. Jared looks into the stars. The universe, he thinks, is so overwhelmingly infinite. Vastly dark, too, but isn't that what makes the stars stand out? The point is that you focus on the spots of light within it.

15. something you learned this year

Talking to someone in real life about my writing won’t kill me! And will actually feel, like, really good!

21. most memorable comment/review

Anyone who said The Heart Is a Caged Bird changed the way they saw sv season 6 meant a lot to me! More than any other fic I’ve written, that one was meant for myself and to help me understand and empathize with and continue to love the characters; I’m so glad it resonated with other people, too. And in particular @iamtheremin‘s comment that the fic should come as an extra on the S6 DVD makes me smile :)

24. favorite fic you read this year

There was only one fic I loved so much I basically cyber-bullied its creator with friendship and aggressive encouragement until they wrote more of it and that was your very own Red Right Hand ❤️

[joycecarolnotes]

You're under no obligation obviously, but for the writing prompt thing (I love ambiguously slutty prompts that could be lascivious or tame): "Richard, I...oh dear, I'm really just not sure it's going to fit."

Okay this is dumb but it exists and has words in it and that's a start! Thank you for such a fun prompt.

--

"Richard, I... oh dear," Jared's muffled voice came through his bedroom door. "I'm really just not sure it's going to fit."

Richard pressed his ear to the door. On the other side, he heard what sounded like a struggle. Heavy breathing. Was that - maybe - panting? Tearing? Definitely tearing. A single, solitary, desparately sad sob.

"Do you need me," Richard offered, wincing. "Need me to come in there?"

"Oh please. Richard, would you?"

It wasn't that he hadn't been in Jared's bedroom before (Richard had spent plenty of time there; he'd slept in Jared's room for chrissakes), but the sight he saw there was so arresting and vulnerable, Richard could hardly catch his breath. Jared, stood at the foot of his bed, wearing nothing but a full-body blush and his underwear, arms over his head, the polyester rat suit he'd rented caught somewhere around his oversized ears.

He was even skinnier than Richard had imagined, which was an odd enough realization itself: the fact that he had been imagining it.

"So foolish," Jared muttered, with a little, muffled laugh. "I'm so embarrassed. I didn't want you to be the only one dressed up today."

[joycecarolnotes]

I would love to know more about any of your fics that you'd like to talk about! I think maybe the one that I am the most fascinated by that isn't mentioned as often is "Riches and Wonders" but I also bet you have lots to say about "Pipe Down" which might be my actual favorite. AAH it's so hard to choose!

Hey I'll do both! So. Riches and Wonders. This is my longest fic and I still kind of can't believe I finished it! It went through a lot of revisions. In an early draft, Richard never told Jared that they'd been in sort-of-a-relationship, but I decided it was unfair to keep that from him. And gave him less to fight for.

A more subtle theme in this fic that I find really interesting is the contrast between Jared's life as an adult and the expectations he had for himself when he was younger. He's ashamed to still be relying on others, but also bowled over with gratitude and shock that he has such kind people in his life to rely on. A lot of that is summed up in a line I love, which is Richard telling him "you were happier in the garage."

The Jared flashbacks are mostly bits and pieces and details from backstory stuff I've written for him (most of which isn't posted online anywhere). Some of this fic is also drawn from life: Richard's parents are kinda sorta loosely based on my partner's parents, and the teeth grinding story is real!

Lastly, fun fact: every time I've typed the name of this fic, I've typoed it as "Richard and Wonders," including right now while writing this response.

Pipe Down was born out of a dreadfully bad mood I was in one day, as an exercise in expelling negativity. It worked! Bleak as it is, I cheered way up after finishing it.

It's a little odd talking about these two fics together: they're such wildly different interpretations of Richard and I don't think either is necessarily invalid. I do honestly believe he's a better person than who he is in Pipe Down, but I also don't think he was far off - at times, and especially in the "Uncle Jerry's game" scene the fic references - from going down a path like this! I feel like Richard would get extremely possessive of Jared, and this is a dark take on that (in Riches and Wonders, it manifests as protectiveness). He wants him on his side, and is resentful that he can't seem to manipulate him quite the easy way other people have. Until he figures out exactly how to do it.

A lot of this fic is about the intoxication of sharing secrets, and the betrayal of having that craving for intimacy used against you. And gosh, I do love writing Jared's sort of self-annihilating desire. He knows at every step that he's being manipulated but he wants Richard so badly he allows it to happen.

Thank you for asking! 💛

[retrauxpunk]

Please tell me any and everything you want to about any of your works - obviously for fic, I'm thinking "Embers" but if you want to talk about one of your favorite drawings that would be neat too!

oh man this makes me so happy to read ;___;

Embers (click here to read)

when i started writing it, i didn’t have many details planned for how this story would pan out other than the broad emotions of the ending and it’s kind of wild writing it without a big detailed plan?

the last piece of prose writing i’d completed before i started this was a one-shot jarrich fic that i did in one sitting and the last two pieces before that were my nanowrimo first drafts for 2018 and 2017, which were both 60K+ words. before that? my Year 12 4 unit English major work, a 7K short story. eight years ago. before that? a 50K story I wrote when I was twelve years old.

WHAT I’M SAYING is that Embers is the first sustained effort of long-form writing i’ve done of my own free will in OVER A DECADE and holy shit it makes me. happy. proud of myself.

silicon valley is the first fandom i’ve ever written fic for (unless you count that one time i did one of those 3-sentence fic prompts where friends submitted ships/fandoms and i did 3 sentences of drabble for each) and MY GOD. the first few weeks (i.e. the honeymoon period) it was the first time in a decade i’d felt that drive to write prose purely for the joy of writing – not for the joy of achievement/hitting a goal (which was most of NaNoWriMo for me) but just for the process! the writing itself! golly.

and it wasn’t even hard! it was so easy and delightful.

(if you were following me then you may have seen me rhapsodising about this already oops)

now it’s hard though. the writing, that is. BUT it nonetheless brings me joy.

i think this is the first story in which i’ve ever convincingly written romance HAHAHAH.

drunken banter is really fun to write

i also enjoy writing physical (and to a slightly less extent mental) distress e.g. richard hungover and throwing up, richard getting locked in the toilet. like it’s not so much that I’m a sadist, I don’t enjoy reading about characters in pain and just the concept of a character in pain doesn’t do much for me, but it is fun to write. if that makes sense :p

I am determined to finish this and i’m sorry for the big gaps between updates, my life and emotions and so on have been getting in the way! but i just scrolled through the work on AO3 to see if there was anything else I wanted to mention and just skimming over my own writing has made me more motivated to get back to it so yeah that’s nice

Mirrors, illustrated (here)

inspired by this fic on AO3

the image of Richard and Jared accidentally copying each other’s style/outfits was just amazing and so fun so i decided to draw it. i’m a sucker for outfit/style swaps (maybe related to my love of AUs -- familiar people/situations but recontextualised/with a twist)

zach woods’ likeness is really hard to get right? hmm

the way i did the flat colours was by colouring it all in by hand with a tiny brush (i.e. not a big brush, not by selecting with magic wand and filling). this takes fucking ages BUT it’s really nice for getting that textured effect you get when it’s not perfectly filled in and bits of the background still show through

and then gradient overlays for depth because this is a great shortcut hahah

[joycecarolnotes]

allthefilmsiveseenforfree replied to your post: Smut prompt: Rimming! The tongue belongs to...

JCN you MINX this is INCREDIBLLLLLLLLE oh pls crosspost to AO3 so I can keep it foreverrrrrr

thank you!!! :) I actually used to have all my little explicit tumblr prompt fills on ao3 but I got embarrassed seeing them all in one place like that and deleted. but if I put them up again, is that something that would be, idk, useful? to people?

[retrauxpunk]

2, 6, and 30 for the art asks 💙

2. How long have you been drawing?

depending on how you count it … since before I can remember? my first memories of drawing frequently were when I was 7 or so, while watching TV with my parents. I think it’s been pretty consistent since then, so at least 18 years HAHA I started being more serious about learning more and improving and so on from when I was about 15 though.

6. What’s your least favorite thing to draw?

of the things that I still regularly draw … I don’t really enjoy drawing bare limbs/bodies. because I’m not great at it! if I expand this to include things I don’t draw regularly … I’m not a huge fan of backgrounds (I suspect I’d enjoy it more if I actually … did it more and improved) or architecture.

30. What inspires you to not just make art, but to be a better artist?

honestly seeing other people’s amazing gorgeous art inspires me to be better! I see something sick and it makes me want to get that good. also, to an extent, the dream of being able to make a living off of art / get massive amounts of recognition for it.

send me a question about my art