#embarrassing... why was my writing in the past like that its got like a needlessly mysterious air to it like gurl what are you doing

[aria0fgold]

AO3 Tag Game!

Thank you for the tag @misty-wisp :D This looks so fun!

How many works do you have on AO3?

12! And it's steadily increasing as I get more (and randomly) ideas to write fics bout >:3c

What's your total AO3 word count?

126,004! Whoooaaa... That's a lot :o Ngl, I barely visit the statistics of my ao3 account so I didn't expect that one.

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

Okay, so... it's 5? I think. On my main ao3 account it's 2 though! OMORI and Mahoyaku! Buuuut! I've written for Persona 5 (with Magic Kaito) but I'm... too shy to put it in my ao3 account so it's just in my tumblr. The other 2 is somewhere else... (I've written a oneshot for Genshin Impact in an old ao3 account that I don't wanna open up again cuz it's so embarrassing for me... I don't even wanna read that oneshot, I'd die of embarrassment. And the other one is Honkai Impact 3rd, I forgot where I put that one but I do know I wrote a oneshot with Bronya and Seele for it).

Top five fics by kudos:

It's all from OMORI!

Once again, from the beginning - I did not really expect this one to have as much kudos as it has now, like, tbf yea it's my most well planned one but it's still so crazy to see the kudos on it-- wai when did it pass that number-- I never really check the kudos but wtf happened here.

The Tune of the New Morning - How did this one get that many kudos too??? This is my very first OMORI fic and ngl, whenever I look at it I get the very strong urge to rewrite everything from the beginning cuz of how badly planned it is. If OAFB is well planned, this one is terribly planned. I literally make things up as I go.

Magician in the Mirror - Is in the top 3!!! Lookit!!! :D The work I'm proudest in cuz this is my 2nd fic and also the one I just went ham on! I wanted it out during anni and it was all a last minute thing but I'm so glad it turned out well despite that!

The Pawn and the Bishops - I didn't expect to see this one here but alas... it is... I quite like this one though! It's the first one I've written with a fairly heavy and gloomy atmosphere and I think I did pretty good on it!

And thus, the snake ate no more - I see you're here too... This one is actually like a mix of my planning between OAFB and TNM in which that it's in the middle of well planned and terribly planned. Think of it as the middle child of my longfics. With OAFB being the spoiled youngest and TNM the unplanned first child.

Do you respond to comments?

YES! As much as I can! I like receiving comments and I like responding to them as best as I can but I also get pretty nervous bout it... so I end up barely responding anyway oh boooooo.

What's the fic with the angstiest ending you've ever written?

I??? Don't think? I have written any with an angsty ending yet? I'm a sucker for hurt/comfort so most of the fics I've written so far always had a happy ending so! Maybe in the future 👀 Maybe.

Do you write crossovers?

Is the Kaito Kuroba from Magic Kaito in Persona 5 now as Akiren and Co.'s friend stuff I've written considered crossover? If so then yes! It's actually pretty fun to write one! :D

Have you ever gotten hate on a fic?

I don't think so? Pretty happy that I haven't yet, thank goodness!

Do you write smut?

Nope! I don't know if I would though, truth be told I don't have much knowledge with writing smut, I barely read any stories (novel wise) with it as a guideline cuz I... I can't visualize it well enough, my brain is not equipped for it (I try to read smut and spend the next few minutes figuring out the characters' positions. Yall smut writers out there impressive with it cuz honestly how).

Have you ever had a fic stolen?

Nope and thank god for that!

Have you ever had a fic translated?

I HAVE!!! AM SO HAPPY BOUT IT!!! :D Someone translated Magician in the Mirror to Chinese and it's so cool!!! I think there's only a Chapter 1 of it but it's so cool and nice and sweet and awwwwww.

What’s your all-time favorite ship?

Alright, sit down. This is very important. I need you to listen closely, attentively, and carefully... I Love CaiOwe/OweCai. I LOVE CAIN/OWEN!!! OWEN/CAIN!!! CAIN&OWEN I LOOOOOVVVEEE ANYTHING WITH CAIN AND OWEN!!! It's my all-time favourite ship, nothing can compare to Cain and Owen from the hit japanese game, Mahoutsukai no Yakusoku aka Mahoyaku aka mhyk aka Promise of Wizard. They're my most favourite ship I'd go to war for em, I love em so so much, I adore em sooooooo much, I see any fanart of em and my day gets better immediately. They're my lifeblood, my ambrosia, my everything. I love caiowe/owecai with all my heart...

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

Looks at oafb, tnm, and attsanm... I'd like to believe that regardless of how much time had passed, I would be able to finish any of those three though. Hyperfixation gone or not, I wanna finish em!

What are your writing strengths?

I think it'd be monologue? Inner monologue? What do you call that thing where it's just the narrator focusing on the characters' thoughts and feelings and their overall view on the situation??? I think I'm pretty good at that, maybe. And somehow I'm good at accidentally setting things up, I don't know how but I just accidentally do things that connects stuff.

What are your writing weaknesses?

Dialogues... I'm so bad with dialogues most of the time I spend in writing is getting the dialogues right. I'm also really bad at descriptors, I'm bad at describing things so I just try to either describe something as best as I can with the help of searching through the internet or get around that part by just being poetic.

What are your thoughts on writing dialogue in another language in fics?

I think it's pretty neat! :o I feel like I've seen fics like that before but can't really remember though I did think it added detail to the story of it!

What was the first fandom you ever wrote for?

Uhhh, I think it waaaaass Honkai Impact 3rd? I think it was the Bronya and Seele fic I've written somewhere that or it was the Genshin Impact fic instead. It was either of those two.

What’s your favorite fic you’ve written so far?

Magician in the Mirror!!! It's my favourite I've written so far and the one I'm proudest of! And a lil biased, but the latest favourite one that I've just recently written is Look back, Orpheus which is a fic for caiowe from mhyk! Once again, from the beginning is the 2nd favourite though :3

Thank you again for the tag! Dunno who to tag though but for anyone that sees this, feel free to do it! :D

[ciarawritesmarvel]

adjustment - steve rogers x reader

Pairing: Steve Rogers x Reader

Word Count: 1.7k

Warnings: Some language because our beautiful reader wants to, okay? Other than that this is clearly just a fluff-fest

A/N: Yet another instalment in The Univer5e! I couldn’t help myself, I love writing this reader and Steve together too damn much. Again, this is super early on in their timeline. I’m currently writing ‘Teaming Up’, the next oneshot here, but its at 6k words and not nearly finished so that could be a while - haha! Hope you like this one in the meantime my lovelies :)

masterlist is in my bio, tags are in a reblog… please drop an ask to be tagged in steve/number five/all works! <3

---

“Steve? Are you decent?”

You were stood in the living room, midi skirt dancing around your shins and denim jacket to protect you from the light spring breeze that you’d had to face on the walk here. It was still early spring and the warmth hadn’t quite set it yet, the world appearing to be in that strange stage of not asleep but not nearly awake either.

Which just happened to be the state of Steve Rogers that morning.

“It’s the weekend, Y/L/N, no waking me up before nine,” he rubbed his eyes as he wandered out to you, in a white T-shirt and sweats. You tsked. That simply wouldn’t do.

“Yeah I know,” you gnawed on your bottom lip and Steve seemed to wake up a little at your uncharacteristic nerves, “You wanna go somewhere?”

“Where are we going?” he asked, genuine curiosity seeping in and you smiled shyly at the thought of him refusing to go anywhere with you not six months ago.

“For a walk. And a talk. If you’re up for it?”

It made him smile to think of a time when you definitely wouldn’t bother asking him what he wanted to do.

As it was now, though, he told you to make yourself at home and that he’d be less than ten minutes. He was true to his word, emerging just seven minutes later in button up and jeans, his lovely brown leather jacket that he wore almost everywhere on top. You smiled. Beckoned for him to grab his keys and follow you out. He did so happily.

“I was thinking Martha’s? But if you’d rather-“

“Martha’s is perfect. I could murder a muffin right now,” Steve replied, mouth watering and you chuckled at him, taking the necessary directions to arrive at the cafe you two frequented together, but stayed well away from when apart. Which was no longer very often.

Once drinks and muffins were set in place in front of you, Steve leaned across, ignoring his delicacies and spoke.

“Okay, something is definitely wrong and it’s starting to scare me.”

You paused, which only confirmed his theory.

“Why would you say that?” you asked, not entirely convincing of your confusion but that was probably because he was completely and embarrassingly right.

“Well let’s see: you haven’t called me Spangles yet. You haven’t needlessly sworn at me yet. You barely spoke to me on the way over here. The bags under your eyes are worse than usual,” he listed them off on his fingers until you had buried your face in your hands, “Oh, and the real giveaway? You’re picking at your muffin like a chipmunk.”

You chuckled despite yourself, rolling your eyes fondly and returning your gaze to his to see his concerned eyes staring back at you, waiting for an explanation.

You sighed.

“I’ve done my job really well,” you say unhappily with the hint of a pout and Steve tilts his head, confused, “You’ve been deemed ‘Adjusted’. You don’t...You don’t need me anymore.”

The final sentence was so alien a concept to you that it came out as almost a whisper, like you didn’t want to say it, didn’t want to believe it. It had been nice to be needed in a different way for a little while. Really nice.

Steve, on the other hand, was taken aback.

“But I’m not adjusted. I know I’m trained up and I’ve been cleared for combat but, but-“ he was getting panicked and you cursed yourself for doing this in a public place, “-but I’ve not adjusted Y/N. You have to ask Fury for more time, I need to adjust more, I haven’t adjusted.”

You placed your hand on his on the table and took a few slow and deliberate breaths until he was matching your breathing. You smiled.

“We’ve come a long way,” you thought back to the day you’d got the assignment, how much you hated it and how much you hated him for it. You’d thought it would take you out of the field, out of the extraordinary and into the mundane. But soon, after just a couple of months, you had learned that life with Steve in tow was anything but mundane.

And fighting back to back with Captain America was pretty damn cool too.

“Not far enough.”

“You do know that I haven’t been your Adjustment Officer for about three months now, right?” you said and Steve furrowed his brow, “I mean I have, on paper, but we’ve not been doing any adjusting. You did that quickly. It’s just been dinner because I wanted to have it with you and cinema visits to show you some of my favourites because I wanted to see what you thought of them. It’s just been friendship, Steve. Pure, unbridled, uncomplicated friendship.”

That was maybe, just maybe, a little white lie. Sometimes you thought your feelings surrounding Steve were quite complicated indeed.

“But if you’re not assigned to me, then when will I see you?” he was such a little puppy, you thought as you looked at his shining eyes. You couldn’t help but be overjoyed by his hurt reaction to this news, however selfish that was.

“Well that was the second thing I wanted to talk to you about.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah,” you wet your lips and noticed for the first time that your hand was still resting on Steve’s but he’d turned his over and was holding yours now, thumb rubbing knuckles and subconsciously calming you, “Well, I know we got off to a rough start-“

“You listen here, sweetheart,” he said, imitating your voice from the day you had met and you laughed at the sound.

“-and I certainly don’t want you,” you countered, imitating him now and the dismissal he had shown you then. It seemed oh so insignificant now after so many shared secrets and careless chatter, the late nights and the early mornings in the training room, the confiding and the bickering. The bickering was never going to go away.

“Touché,” he sounded slightly guilty and you winked at him to prove you were joking in your impression, “Continue.”

“I know we got off to a rough start,” you continued, obligingly, “but now I consider you one of my...no, my closest friend. And we’re a team.”

“A good team,” Steve affirmed, already grinning and you hadn’t even asked him yet. You hadn’t even asked him.

“A good team, yeah. Anyway, what I’m trying to say is, we work really well together and I was wondering if…”

A lengthy pause. Too lengthy for Steve.

“If what?!”

His impatience reminded you of something.

“I wondered if you wanted to become partners, you know, for assignments and stuff. It means we’d still see each other and work together and - well I don’t know. I just thought-“

“God, you think too much,” Steve said and you barked out a laugh and wrenched your hand from his hold, giving his palm a lighthearted slap, “Stop thinking. Just do.”

You took those words to your heart and held them close.

“Will you be my partner?”

“Yes,” Steve grinned, then clearly had an idea and stood from the table, rounding it to stand beside you and suddenly his arms were around your waist and you were being wildly twirled and you let out a cry, “Yes, yes, a million times yes!”

You heard the whole cafe burst into a hearty round of applause as he set you down on your feet again and you fell back into your chair.

“Oh no, we’re not...we’re not getting...I-I was just asking…”

Steve looked so smug as he returned to his seat that you wanted to revoke your partnership offer then and there. He was so infuriating in the soft glow of the cafe in the early morning, his hair more golden than ever and his lips upturned ever so slightly in a smirk.

“When do we start, partner?” he wiggles his eyebrows and you audibly groaned.

“I should never have showed you what Youtube was, you’ve been watching cheesy proposal videos again,” you accuse him and he tries not to blush but fails miserably, “You’re such an ass.”

He was still smiling as he sat back in his chair triumphantly, but now it was a genuine smile, bordering on a grin and you cracked and raised an eyebrow in question.

“You swore at me,” he explained simply, like it was the most obvious thing in the world, “My girl’s back.”

And-

Your heart stopped.

Did a somersault. Did a triple toe loop and double salchow before returning to its rightful place in your chest, pounding against your ribs.

If Steve saw the look in your eye then he had made no physical indication that he did, no sudden embarrassment, no worries. He just took a sip of his drink and then got to work on his muffin, only stopping to murmur something muffled with a full mouth about how good it tasted.

You found yourself still semi-frozen. Eyes darting around the room for someone to confirm what you’d just heard and finding no one. Eventually, what felt like hours later but was really just seconds, you forced yourself to defrost, just as Steve once had to, and took a shaky bite of your muffin distract you from some new and altogether unwanted thoughts.

You were Captain America’s girl. That would have made any woman jealous. Made any mother proud. Made any father sleep safe at night.

But you didn’t care so much about that bit.

Being Steve Rogers’ girl? Now that was something you felt like writing home about, in whichever way he had meant it.

And thus, on the 8th March 2012 at approximately a quarter past eight in the morning, you developed a full blown, can’t-stop-thinking-about-you, wanna-rip-your-clothes-off-but-also-wanna-cuddle-you-to-death, spine-tingling, mind-numbing, heart-wrenching crush on Steve Rogers.

If only you knew about the year that was to come.

[akisazame]

“Okay, weird pillow talk.”

The DVD commentary meme got me thinking about cut content, which reminded me of this huge swath of words I had to bulldoze out of Greg’s chapter of solutions because they were just not going the way I needed them to. What really bummed me out about this is that my personal favorite bits of Greg/Rebecca dialogue that I wrote happened to be in there, and at the time I wasn’t using tumblr so I figured it’d all just sit in my slush file until the end of time because there was such a slim chance I’d ever write a fic where I could reincorporate it. WELL NOW I’M BACK ON THIS BAD WEBSITE SO HERE IT IS.

This text is obviously kinda rough since it never went through my probably-too-rigorous revisions wringer, so that and an absurd amount of commentary are behind the Read More.

The first draft of Greg’s chapter went swimmingly right up until the necessary conflict of Rebecca and Greg hashing out all the weird bullshit inherent in 104′s plot. My first tactic had Rebecca swinging wildly for the fences, really cashing in on the theme of Greg identifying himself as a runner-up and Rebecca’s inability to stop thinking about the other guys (but like, come on, Nathaniel is clearly a better kisser than Greg). This picks up directly after their post-kiss “I know I’m just some dalliance to you” argument, but instead of Rebecca softening in the face of Greg’s “I bet you say that to all the guys” comment, she bristles and drops a truth bomb.

She hates this, she hates this so much, and she panics. "I moved to West Covina for Josh Chan," Rebecca blurts out. She hadn't meant to say it, has no idea why she said it. It's absurd, after the excessive word mincing she did when she actually was trying to say it to Josh, to just casually drop it now as a non-sequitur. She slaps both her hands over her mouth and stares at Greg, wide-eyed.

And that’s exactly what Greg has been waiting to hear.

There's a long beat where Greg just stares right back at her. Then he scrubs both hands over his face and sighs. "Thank you."

Rebecca blinks. "What?"

"For being honest," Greg says. He shrugs and sticks his hands into his pockets, nonchalant. "I'll just be going then? Great. Have a nice life, Rebecca."

He's halfway to the door before Rebecca fully processes what's happening. It can't happen like this. She can't fuck this up again. "Can you please just hear me out?"

For a half second she thinks he'll ignore her and keep walking, out the door and out of her life. But he doesn't. He stops, turns, looks back at her. She can't interpret the expression on his face.

In a way this all rings true, but at the same time it doesn’t feel earned, and a dramatic storm-out definitely wasn’t the way to go with a time travel redo of a scene that ends with Greg dramatically storming out.

She finds her way to the couch and sits, elbows resting on her knees, chin cupped in her palms. "I moved to West Covina for Josh Chan," she repeats, the thesis statement of her whole goddamn life. "And when I did it, I thought that Josh Chan was the only person who could possibly make me happy. But that's not true at all." Those damned emotions are back again, and she takes a deep breath, swallows them down. "I haven't been fair or even nice to you since the moment we met."

I really liked the “thesis statement of her whole goddamn life” line. “I haven’t been fair or even nice to you since the moment we met” was luckily resurrected for Rebecca’s post-coital crisis.

As she spoke, Greg had been slowly making his way back through the apartment, and now he lowers himself down next to her on the couch. "I'd say that's accurate."

Rebecca tilts her head in her hands to look at him. "But, uh, don't take this the wrong way? You haven't been especially fair or nice to me, either."

Here’s where the published chapter dipped back in for a hot second: Rebecca asked what the purpose of their date was, except instead of “Why waste your time, if you didn’t think it could go anywhere?” she said “It’s pretty clear you never believed any of my lies about Josh.” Then they had the whole “maybe liked or maybe past tense” back-and-forth, leading into the kiss. But instead of really going to town on Greg’s face, Rebecca softballs it (can you tell I did a surgical 180 on “It's the type of kiss that Rebecca, who's never learned how to modulate her feelings of affection, truly excels in”? because I fuckin forgot I did that), and then realizes she has more shit to say because first draft Rebecca was massively self-destructive.

She slides her hands down to his shoulders and breaks the kiss, but she doesn't move away, instead pressing her forehead to his, noses touching. "Hey," she says, breathless, "I need to tell you something." Before it's too late, she doesn't add.

"Lot of things you have to tell me today," Greg teases. He tries to pull away, maybe to silence her with another kiss, but she holds firm, arms encircling his neck to keep him in place.

I thought Greg’s reply was really cute (I imagined it in the same cadence as “Long name I have, what is that, Polish?”), but I’m sure he liked getting a blowjob better.

I have to tell you today because we might not get another chance, she thinks frantically. Rebecca's allergy to honesty poisoned so many of her relationships, but it manifested at its worst with Greg, who almost seemed as though he wanted to be lied to. When she told him he wasn't second place, he wanted to believe it. Even today he'd admitted that he wanted to pretend she could love him best. As much as she wants to tell him that again, it's not healthy. It's never been healthy.

Part of the reason all this had to go was that the drama overstayed its welcome. By this point it felt like the whole thing was needlessly treading water.

She closes her eyes and swallows, choking back her doubts. None of this is real anyway, Greg had said. He's wrong, at least for right now, but he could be right. If she really screws this up, she can throw it all away. Maybe that's cowardly, but it's the only thing giving her courage. "The truth is, I've spent a truly embarrassing amount of today thinking about other guys."

"Okay, weird pillow talk," Greg mutters.

GREG IS SO FUNNY IN THIS DRAFT OH MY GOD. I’m sorry, Greg. But, again, you got that blowjob you’d been waiting for, so.

"You thanked me for being honest," Rebecca shoots back, leaning back just a bit so she can glare at him, "so I'm gonna keep being honest. When I woke up this morning, I was thinking about another guy. Right before you picked me up, I was thinking about two other guys. When we were at the taco festival, talking about stuff, sometimes I was thinking about other guys." She presses her lips together, exhales through her nose. "When you were kissing me in the kitchen, I was thinking about another guy."

I don’t know why I thought I had to give Rebecca’s inner monologue its due diligence, because it’s so completely unnecessary. At this point I’d been noodling away at this chapter for a month and a half (for whatever reason, the Homeland Security Advisory System section when Greg and Rebecca get back to her apartment was the very first thing in the document) and I was coming off of having mostly finalized Josh’s chapter, so I guess I thought complete reckless honesty was Rebecca’s natural evolution.

Greg has clearly had enough of whatever he thinks she's trying to do, because he reaches up and unhooks her arms from around his neck. "Okay, stop..."

"What I'm trying to say is," Rebecca says, wriggling free from his grasp and reversing it, grabbing hold of his wrists, "I'm not gonna, like, never be thinking about anyone else when I'm with you, because I don't have one of those Men In Black memory erasers, despite the fact that I could really use one sometimes, and also because I'm a person, who interacts with other people, and has feelings about other people." He's just staring at her, incredulous, and part of her wishes she hadn't done this, that she had just played along with him from the moment they stepped into the apartment, but how would that have changed anything apart from not having to waste half a year hating each other? "But that doesn't mean I'm not capable of putting you first. I know I can. I'm sorry I've done such a terrible job of proving it."

NOW WE’RE IN IT. This is the part I hated cutting, the part I tried really desperately to fit back in somehow. Rebecca loves other people so fiercely that she can’t ever detach herself from any of them, even in situations when she should, and her taking a constant interest in other people is completely incompatible with season 1 Greg’s inferiority complex and self-deprecation. (Also I’m definitely laughing at how I had Rebecca break off mid-monologue to question what the fuck her writer is even doing.)

There's a moment where Greg doesn't say anything, just continuing to stare at her like she's a complicated puzzle to solve. Rebecca forces herself to keep breathing, to keep calm despite the fluttering of her heart in her chest.

Then, just when she thinks she's about to pass out from anxiety, Greg says, "Neuralyzer."

Rebecca blinks. "What?"

He leans back a bit, just the hint of a smile on his face. "A neuralyzer. The Men In Black memory eraser. That's what it's called."

"Oh my god." She lets go of his wrists so she can swipe at his arm, which he skillfully dodges. "You are such a nerd."

"For knowing a fact about a classic film from our childhood? Please." She swings for him again, still annoyed, but this time he catches her hand, pulling her off-balance so she sways towards him. Then his other arm is around her waist, catching her, pulling her close. They fall into this kiss as naturally as breathing, his lips parting beneath hers as he begins to really smile now, and she finds herself smiling too, helpless.

This is way cuter and funnier than anything that actually made it into the chapter and I’M SAD ABOUT IT, STILL, TO THIS DAY.

When they break apart again, this time she's the one who doesn't want to move away. She tries to chase after him but he ducks his head, pressing a kiss to her jawline instead. "I want to believe you, Rebecca..." he breathes against her skin.

She must be broken, she thinks, because for some reason her body has decided that Greg's whispered admission of mistrust is what's gonna flip her switch from amorous to ravenous. Or maybe it's some weird time travel brain chemistry thing, because this is right about the time she would've been getting laid by the rando guacamole vegan. Whatever the reason, her eyes flutter closed and she tips her head back slightly, wordlessly encouraging him to keep kissing her; he takes the hint and continues, trailing down her neck to the hollow of her throat. "It's okay," she says, wrapping both arms around his neck so she can pull herself closer, pressing her body against his. "You don't have to yet. Just..."

Honestly I think at this point I STILL hadn’t decided if they were going to fuck at the end of this chapter, which is ABSURD. That indecision definitely contributed to the circling the drain feeling that this draft had. At least I got to mine out the “weird time travel brain chemistry” bit and double down with “the transitive property of getting fucked in another timeline” because I feel like I’d lived my whole life up to that point just to write that sentence.

She doesn't get to finish her sentence because he's moving her, pressing her down on the couch beneath him, sliding his hands up under her shirt. A quiet voice in Rebecca's brain points out that this is weird, going from her strange confessions directly into a hot and heavy makeout sesh, but the rest of her brain reminds her that at least this time she's hooking up with her actual date. Besides, her body is wholeheartedly consenting to this activity, and who is she to judge?

This inner monologue is still pretty funny, but this is the point where I stopped, stared at the draft, and muttered “what are you doing?” like Rebecca to the Hitler documentary. I had basically 1300 words that, while occasionally funny and insightful, barely propelled the narrative. I still fought for some of it for a while (similarly, I had a joke that I fought tooth and nail for in revisions for Nathaniel’s chapter), but in the end Greg’s chapter was better without all that weird random baggage.

[dukeofriven]

Hussie, Hitler, And Boy I’m Tired

I said earlier that I didn’t want to put on my hip waders and muck about in the Homestuck tags. *pulls off hip waders* I went anyways. I went even though I was feeling pretty good because I had a nice dinner and got to watch the New Years Bake-Off special. I went anyways, and I did it for you, my eight followers who aren’t pornbots. It turns out the Homestuck fandom of Tumblr is as scary and hyperbolic as ever, and has taken one lousy bit of badly written crap and extrapolated that backwards into ‘Homestuck has always been a racist anti-semetic pile of garbage and everything about it is terrible and Andrew Hussie needs to die.” I’m not paraphrasing, by the way. Someone out there is chanting ‘die Andrew Hussie die,’ because he had the gall to... clumsily dunk on Hitler like a fifteen year old trying to impress his English teacher with edgy comedy? This new stuff is too dumb to be offensive, especially in an era with, y’know, Hitler-praising alt-right Neo Nazis actually being mainstream media figures.  Hey Tumblr fandom? Can you... mm not chill, chill’s not the word I’m looking for what is it... oh yes. Can y’all fuck off for once?

Tumblr doesn’t deserve to enjoy things because it doesn’t know how to enjoy things responsibly. It lurches from adoration to hatred without pause, and as a writer it gives me nothing but an anxiety. I cannot produce anything imperfect, I cannot ever write crap because if I do then all my work will be tainted by it forever. On Tumblr you are always judged by your worst effort, which is a fucking god-awful standard for large media franchises of any kind. You know who one of the greatest, most thoughtful, socially-driven authors of the twentieth century was? Terry Pratchett. You know what’s kind of sexist and lazy and awful? The Colour of Magic. You know what’s weirdly colonialist and smug and all-around shit? Snuff! Neither of those shitty books invalidate the forty other Discworld novels. The existence of Anchorman’s bloviating nothingness doesn’t erase Will Ferrel’s warm and desperately human performance in Stranger Than Fiction. The Forced Kiss Equal Romance kiss in Blade Runner doesn’t erase the rest of the movie piercing question on the nature of what it means to be human. And on and on and on. Andrew Hussie’s sneeze-shart dogshit history rewrite that was so embarrassingly bad it got pulled from the internet didn’t erase Rose/Kanaya, or gay Dave, or Joey Claire tap-dancing her little heart out to try and defeat a monster. And even if Andrew Hussie does a JK Rowling and produces nothing but ill-thought-out crap from here until the day we all die in the great Disney Final Merger of 2023, it still won’t invalidate the good moments that made you happy. I mean if Andrew Hussie toddles out of retirement onto a talk show in a bathrobe to discuss his new revelations on the Puppetgrandmasters of Scion who all have worryingly Semetic names, I’m not going to be so naive as to pretend that his earlier media can be consumed in some kind of vacuum, that the future cannot affect the past. but I am saying that the good that happened in it - the things that affected you in positive ways - are not ethereal. It mattered to you then, and that’s okay. Tumblr’s hyperbolic responses seem to be rooted in embarrassment and self-flagellation. People seem so terrified by the thought that anyone might associate them as a fan of something - gasp - linked to controversy that they... well, they say shit like “die andrew hussie die.” Hey dude. Hey. You need to redirect that anger, my friend. There’s actual Neo-Nazis in the streets. On the TV. In the US government. I guess what I’m trying to say is... Woof. Okay. You know, to give Andrew Hussie partial credit here, its nice to see someone actually write Adolf Hitler the way he really was - a pant-shitting constantly whiny toddler of a human being who endlessly threw tantrums and got to where he was largely on the strength of other people’s bad decisions. Remember kids: the biggest myth Neo-Nazis have ever perpetrated is that Germany under Hitler was well-run, well-organized, and anything other than a collection of squabbling dysfunctional fiefdoms run by party hacks propped up by a bureaucracy and military too bound by inertia, ego, and cultural racism to do anything to stop a lunatic from ripping their country to shreds. That whole ‘trains running on time’ thing? It’s nonsense. Go study the conduct of the war once Germany had exhausted all its pre-war stockpiled resources and ran out of useful shit to loot, once it had to start relying on its leadership for the things that make wars winnable - supplies, reinforcements, fuel, winter clothing. Watch the way from 1942 onwards Germany stumbled from one disaster to the next, as Hitler fired more and more generals and drew more and more authority to himself and his fellow party cronies. Hitler should not be feared as a man of competence or skill - he was a buffoon, a clown of a human being fuelled entirely by petty, vindictive spite and an unlimited capacity for cruelty. And before anyone goes ‘well if he was so objectively pathetic how the fuck did he take over Germany’ I direct you to google the last two years of American politics and the words ‘Donald Fucking Trump.’ [I recommend, on these war subjects particularly, Sir Antony Beevor’s bleak and sobering works, particularly Stalingrad, Berlin: The Downfall 1945, and Ardennes 1944: Hitler's Last Gamble.]  Sorry this... kind of got away from me somewhat, but I really hate it when people get mad that someone didn’t take Hitler seriously (and, to be strictly fair, this is not what everyone is mad about in regards to Andrew Hussie, either). You should never take Hitler seriously. Take hate seriously - take violent words, and calls for purity, take his ideas of superiority and racial preeminence and anti-semitism seriously as the evils, the horrors as they are. But the man himself? He literally stank - a combination of his halitosis, chronic flatulence, and was constant diarrhea. [I am not exaggerating] He was a sad pathetic clown, and Andrew Hussie chose to write him as such. He just... went too far. It happens. It’s not good writing. It’s fucking shit, to be honest. Boring shit. The Minions movie decided to have the Minions sit out the entirety of WWII by having them get stuck in a cave or some such. Honestly that’s a better option than what Andrew Hussie went with - and ‘be more like the Minions movie’ isn’t advice I give that often. You want to be disgruntled that an author wrote something this bafflingly tone deaf and tedious? Sure. I know I am. But to chant for his death? Are you fucking kidding me? Look! Look out your window at those marching Neo-Nazis trying to establish a white supremacist state? What the ever-loving fuck are you people doing in here getting ready to string-up a man whose crime was making Adolf Friggen Hitler too petty???????? Tumblr. Tumblr, for the love of god this has to stop. This ‘Ceasar’s wife must be above reproach’ shit has to stop - it’s killing fandom, it’s killing good media critique, it’s burying proportional fan response, and its just exhausting. Why can’t you ever just let something be lousy without it being literal death warrant? There’s real demons out there - I can see them out the window, and every time I turn on the TV. Maybe - just bloody maybe - not every single crime deserves the exact same level of disapprobation and punishment? Maybe we could read some content and say “boy that sure had some lousy implications and also was just really poorly written” and then... stop there? Wouldn’t that be nice, for a change? We could dislike something without feeling like it required activism on our part. We could say ‘this piece of media was shit, but it didn’t advocate for a white ethno-state, so I will continue to think of it only until the end of this sentence.’ I am not advocating for an end to media criticism for anything that isn’t openly hate speech (but if you think that I am I am going to assume you’re already so needlessly enraged about this whole matter that I’m a bit puzzled why you’ve bothered to read this far since its obvious we don’t agree on many fundamental issues.) What I am calling for is the end to death threats against people who don’t mean you harm. Because that’s lunacy. That’s beyond the pale, actually, that’s really disturbing and sickening and you should seriously reconsider your relationship with media. Because there are people out there who do want to hurt you. Their lives are fuelled by hate, their philosophies are driven by it, as are their politics. I assure you that when a time traveller steps through a portal trying to prevent the rise of ‘the great Trump War of 2020′ the inciting incident will not be ‘Andrew Hussie trivialized the holocaust by citing its origins as a grudge Adolf Hitler bore Albert Einstein over a rivalry in secret clown ninja school before being taken on as an agent of a baking-obsessed alien space witch and bumped into power by the Peters principle.’ Because just by writing that sentence I have already reaffirmed a very simple truth: this is way, way too stupid to give the slightest shit about. So let’s tell Andrew Hussie that his new work is... mmm.... kind of like a shit if a shit had a shit that was itself shat out by a shit and then vomited on by another shit who had eaten nothing but shit since Sunday. Let’s tel lhim “hey dude, your clownish work summoned the spectre of anti-semetism, and you can do better.” Frankly, I think that message was already sent, since in the two hours between me going to make and eat dinner and then coming back to my computer, the new material was discovered, read, disseminated, and removed. Two hours. Sure, maybe a bit of lag due to what does and does not hit my feed but come on - this all took place in an afternoon. It’s already down. Our voices were heard - we didn’t think this was very good, and apparently Whatpumpkin agrees enough that they didn’t mount a defence of it. Rather than take the next logical step, though - which seems to be calling for the death of Andrew Hussie and removing all of Homestuck from the internet and maybe nuking Toby Fox from orbit just to be extra-sure? - we could do... something else. Talk about the release date for Stranger Things, maybe. Track down some local Neo-Nazis and punch them. Read some Antony Beevor books and really educate ourselves on what a smelly fuck-up Hitler was so we can chant that at Neo Nazis at their next rally. Or you could watch the New Years Bake-Off special. It was pretty good.

[andrewuttaro]

Alternative History: The Rhinos made it to Major League Soccer!

I used to have a blog called Rhinos Outsider. This post is meant to be a more fun one harkening back to those days… earlier this year. Back then I wrote these pointed think pieces on the Rhinos past, present and future. I beat the MLS Push phase of the club’s history into the ground including a whole blog post asking if the Rhinos should even want MLS anymore. If you want that material feel free to go back and read it, once I get the blog in order again they should be easier to find. This post will only be like those in format. Part of the fun of those posts were that they involved some speculation and deep thinking about this club. As I try to be a more cerebral blogger these days I thought some good old speculation would be a fun break.

What if the Rochester Rhinos made Major League Soccer? What if the big 2000s MLS push that bankrupt the club’s original owners was somehow successful? I’ll be taking some creative liberties and changing history to imagine how it might have happened. I know it didn’t and this is not me continuing to beat the dead horse. No, as you read on you’ll see why this is not a frantic love letter to this country’s top-flight. In fact, this piece maybe a cautionary tale about how MLS has grown and does business. What could have actually happened if a few things were different? Maybe not as much as we think. I’ll change some turning points in the real story and once we diverge to Rochester reaching Major League Soccer I’m going to go off to the races! It’s speculation of course but its also supposed to be a little fun if you know the real story… or if you just know Major League Soccer.

With no further ado, let’s get to the fun!

Where it all went wrong…

The stadium building delay still happens. PAETEC Park is still funded with a large aid package from New York State and the original owners still go financially insolvent, it just plays out differently. First things first, that fateful night when Don Garber and the Major League Soccer bigwigs demanded a full payment of the expansion fee goes differently. Our OG owners don’t get cold feet: they take out yet another loan, this time from a different bank, and pay them their money. That decisive night goes Rochester’s way instead. That payment turned out to be everything the league needed! Even after the 2006 opening of PAETEC Park went just as haphazardly as it did in our timeline MLS and the National Federation granted the organization a three-year waiver period from the stadium standards they were not yet up to.

The first of those waiver years in Major League Soccer is the 2007 season. From the very get go it is clear all is not well in Rochester. After a very underwhelming MLS season the team does not even come close to the playoffs: the first time the team misses’ their league’s playoffs in club history. The Rhinos also suffer their worst loss in club history losing a spectacular 9-0 decision to New England Revolution. Off field things are worse as the contractors the club enlists to upgrade the new stadium to MLS standards suddenly pull out of the job the week of Halloween. The issue peaks the League Office’s interest and an internal investigation reveals the Rhinos owners are in deep debt overborrowing from three different banks. The scandal embarrasses MLS and Rochester. The club’s owners file for bankruptcy a year earlier than our timeline and the league takes over the team on December 1st, 2007.

With the embarrassment of the league contracting two Florida teams in recent memory Don Garber and MLS resolve to find an owner even after the initial search proves very difficult. Eventually the league turns ownership over to trusted ally Philip Anschutz, a founder of the league with ownership stakes in several teams. Seeking the stability of the league he insists on only holding onto the franchise until its two remaining years of the waiver period is over after the 2009 season. He helps pay for the necessary stadium upgrades and enlists the help of the City of Rochester in finding a new owner in a revamped 2008 owners search. Local grocery store magnate Danny Wegman buys the Rochester Rhinos that year after much insistence from Major League Soccer. Wegman’s purchase corresponds pleasantly with the Rhinos clinching their first MLS Playoff appearance with a comeback victory over downstate rival New York Red Bulls on September 28th, 2008. For a brief moment at the end of the 2008 season it looks like all maybe well with Rochester Rhinos SC.

The Dream Dies

While the Wegman Era starts out with a bang, it trails off from there. The Rochester Rhinos are eliminated in the 2008 Conference Semifinals by Houston Dynamo and fail to qualify for the playoffs in the following season in 2009. By 2012 Major League Soccer is fully in its 2.0 stage; downtown Soccer specific stadiums are the impetus along with spending on foreign talent. The Wegman family becomes notoriously cheap with spending and refuses to take an active role in the franchise as the years go on. Wegman infamously states at an industry conference that the supermarket chain’s expansion into the south is being slowed by “some god-forsaken kickball team”. Wegman’s frustration may have arisen from construction costs. Although his investment allowed the downtown stadium to get up to MLS standards by the end of 2009, by summer 2011 the Rhinos stadium is still undergoing piecemeal projects that needlessly frustrate match attendees.

For the third straight year attendance declines. Average attendance at Rhinos games falls to 10,000 in 2011 before almost cutting in half in 2012 to 5,560. After a local petition to change the team’s name to Rochester Lancers led by local pizza magnate Soccer Sam Fantauzzo fails he exclaims the club is not the same one that won the Open Cup in 1999. Fantauzzo starts a budget team in the amateur ranks by the name Rochester Lancers. The club’s first game in the summer of 2013 draws 3000 fans and turns into a protest of the Rhinos after the conclusion of the match. Meanwhile season ticket holders and box seat purchases at Wegmans Soccer Stadium hit an all-time low and general attendance collapses to a 3200 average in 2013.

For a brief time in the Fall of 2013 there is speculation the owners of the Buffalo Sabres, Terry and Kim Pegula, have interest in buying the MLS organization. While sources deny the rumors it gets out they considered it if they could move the team to Buffalo. Apparently Don Garber was ready to finalize the deal before the Pegulas got distracted by the opportunity to buy the NFL Buffalo Bills. MLS wanted to move the club and switch owners but had no good pretext to do so beyond attendance numbers. Then they got their way. The Wegman family’s growing disinterest in owning the team leads them to default on the lease agreement with the City of Rochester. Knowing the owners do in fact have the money to pay, Rochester moves on MLS in a lawsuit. The suit is settled out of court, but the MLS removes the Wegmans from ownership of the team five years to the day they took over. The league rallies interested ownership groups in other cities and manages to move the club to St. Louis just ahead of the 2014 season.

The City of Rochester is relieved at the departure of the troubled franchise while supporters cry foul. The NPSL Rochester Lancers move into the downtown soccer stadium which is now renamed Salvatore’s Pizza Stadium. After the 2014 NPSL season concludes Sam Fantauzzo announces his club will move to the USL PDL in 2015. After the Lancer’s 2015 season in the PDL the City of Rochester takes over full control of the stadium and kicks the PDL squad out. Ironically, the Rochester Lancers fold after failing to secure another home field due to a perceived connection to the MLS Rhinos. After three years abandoned by the City, the downtown soccer stadium burns to the ground in June 2018 after a mysterious explosion. After gunning for MLS for most of a decade, the Rochester Rhinos are gone from Rochester after only six seasons in that top-flight.

Conclusion

Ha Ha: the first priority here is to laugh. If you’re an avid follower of MLS expansion or lower league soccer you may find some humor in parts of this… or not, I’m no comedian. So why did I write such a nasty alternative history if I am supposedly a Rochester Rhinos supporter? Part of why the Rhinos went downhill in our timeline was the result of a hasty buildup in the MLS push. The financial reality of MLS in the 2000s means that push would only have continued after making the league. Moreover, after David Beckham arrived MLS changed. MLS changed even more as Portland, Seattle and similarly transformative clubs entered the league with plans to make money by actually winning. Rochester, a City still rebounding from decades of diaspora, would simply not have survived in Major League Soccer.

I feel like I should say sorry but no, I’m not sorry. Why our timeline’s Rochester Rhinos are in the situation they are right now has less to do with MLS and more to do with Rochester itself. Sometimes the dreams we think we need are the poison pill that fate saves us from. I truly believe the Rhinos would’ve floundered in MLS and would’ve been a relocation candidate from the word go. In our timeline we have stadium truthers who tell you how they called into sports radio in 2004 warning about the stadium as if that’s not the most obvious flex ever. In the alternative timeline we have St. Louis Soccer fans in Rochester boycotting Wegmans supermarkets because they’re too thick to see the bigger picture.

Soccer in America is still a “pick your poison” affair. If you go with lower league/non-league soccer you have short ass amateur seasons. You go USL, you have all the academy players and none of the prestige. You go MLS… while then you better be a top 50 City population wise with a pretty attentive sugar daddy. I don’t want my team to be on hiatus, and they may only just barely exist now, but they’re here. That’s what I have that alternative history MLS Rochester Rhinos fans don’t have: a club to support in 2019. Well… sorta.

Thanks for reading.

[san-bika]

Old Habits Die Hard - Lance-Voltron fic

Bring on the Langst ficlets!! Many plot bunnies were had over the holidays.

***Trigger Warning - EDNOS; disordered eating in general***

****This is a paid comission, meaning someone asked for me to write this, worked with me while writing it, and paid me for it. Please see the notes regarding this fic below from the person who requested it.****

NOTA BENE - I, figandmelon, appreciate the concern for my health but the italicized text below is not mine, as I wrote above, but is the sweet girl’s who commissioned the story. She had written a rough outline and gave a me a few paragraphs to start with. I don’t have food issues and this story is not meant to promote or romanticize disordered eating. I have written a follow-up story to this to prevent any idea that this is a good thing or that I approve this. That story was not commissioned by the girl but I felt I needed to write it. Also see the unedited text below - I had fixed the grammar but my patron has asked me to revise it to what she actually wrote! Sorry!

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I am working out some food issues. Please dont take this as any kind of endorsment of disordered eating.

Food is delicious, Good, important, and healthy. Food is one of the necissities of life and it is amazing how many ways food is prepared tasty healthy, inventive good for the environment, etc. Food makes us strong and can heal us and is tied to our all culture and heritage and family.

If you start to feel diffrently about food or struggle wth eating, get help as soon as you can and avoid a long &dangerous road.

Please know this isn’t realy a headcanon I have for Lance. I see him feeling like this, yes. But I had these feelings when I was a kid and my last years in school when I had no money to buy food and just ate whatever we threw out at work. This is my way of letting go of that. Thanks.

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Rating: T - disordered eating, anxiety

Pairings: Klance (ish)

Length: 1585 words

Tags: angst, disordered eating, OCD, anxiety

Lance glanced down at a large bowl of space gelatin, blocky and trembling from the movements around the table.

It wasn’t ideal given its green coloring or gel consistency. It tasted vaguely like a sweet chicken broth, off-putting but you got over it. It wasn’t tostones or yuca or black beans and rice but you played the hand you were dealt. Lance knew that all too well.

For all of its drawbacks, the goo sure was plentiful. It was dispensed from hoses, for quiznak’s sake. And it doubled as a hydration source.

Food was a spartan necessity for Alteans; their pleasures tended to indulge their senses of touch (shape shifting in micro and macro ways was both a talent and physically enjoyable, which Lance occasionally liked to daydream about…alone if you catch the drift) and superior sight (apparently double pupils and triple retinas and lenses gave them something like super mega HD vision and millions of colors to delight in) rather than taste. Allura and Coran usually ate the goo quickly and with oh-so-perfect manners.

Everyone was eating and chatting. He lifted the spoon and licked it but felt his throat seize before dropping it into the bowl. This wasn’t going to work. And if that was the case Lance was going to do what he did best. Make a scene.

“Princess, aren’t you feeling tired?”

Allura looked up at Lance’s raised voice interrupting her quiet interlude with Shiro. “No Lance,” she said slowly, “are you? I thought the training session had an appropriate difficulty level. Perhaps you-”

“Well you should be cuz you’ve been running through my mind all day.” Finger guns. Wink. Lecherous smile. Ugh, he was the worst.

The silence was actually painful and the brunette felt all kinds of first and secondhand embarrassment for himself. But it was worth it not to worry the others needlessly.

“LANCE, why?!”

“Really, why though?”

“Come on buddy, you’re still on this?”

Allura was speechless but the twitch in her eye spoke volumes. Coran looked torn between laughing at the pun (he loved puns, dad jokes, basically anything that would make the average person or alien groan) and shaking his finger at the disrespect.

Pidge stood up with her bowl and laptop balanced in some unholy manner, her nose curled in disgust. “Well.. I’m off to my room. If I stay here for another of Lance’s pick up fails, I’ll lose my appetite and I’m a growing teen.” She hurried off still muttering. So quick to judge, Pidge?

Lance felt the red flush of shame creep up his neck. But if this was going to work, he’d need to go all in.

“Aww come on guys! I can’t be the only who sees that Allura and I are soulmates. I mean she’s like my catnip! Uhh, lion nip?”

A chorus of groans and complaints was his response. Allura was aghast, forming words without speaking, clearly ready to unleash fury on the unfortunate paladin.

But with perfect timing Coran escorted her away, clearing their perfectly clean bowls and sending an apologetic half-smile to the blue paladin. “This way, Allura, some space will do us all a world of good so we can come back and practice our flight drills in excellent form tomorrow. Space will clear our heads, isn’t that right Lance?”

The pilot wanted to laugh at the redhead’s twitching mustache but couldn’t. He just summoned an awkward smile/grimace and turned to see how well his plan was working.

Keith had started in on his second bowl of goop, eating so quickly that Lance had to look away before his stomach turned. Guess that desert shack didn’t have an etiquette book after all.

Hunk had scooted off to start dishes in the kitchen. He didn’t handle conflict too well. Man, Lance would have to do something really nice for him to make up for this ridiculousness. Maybe he could work with Pidge to set up some solo interspace video chat time with his alien rock girlfriend….

Shiro was already gone. Huh. He must actually have a crush on Allura and truly not be able to hear even the lamest of pick-up lines meant for her with any modicum of dignity. Or he must have wanted to kill Lance for the sheer audacity of hitting on the last known survivor of her species while aware it was an unrequited crush.

Yeah, Lance didn’t feel great about that either but he didn’t exactly want to tell the other Paladins that he couldn’t eat sometimes.

After Keith had downed the last of his food, he pushed his chair back and strode off with that permanent aggression to clean his bowl.

Lance noticed the faint eye roll and scoff as he walked past him and added that to all the other chips on the shoulder. Well, he was sitting with his spoon up and mouth open like some elementary school kid. He tried to adopt a more effortlessly cool pose but the hothead had crossed the room already and had his back to him.

That went well. Lance McClain, ruiner of dinner parties and cargo pilot extraordinaire.

He wilted a little as he felt the exertion of the day’s exercises. He hadn’t managed much that morning either. He needed to eat but he just… couldn’t.

Every time he lifted that spoon, he wondered if Javier had eaten dinner yet. Or if he’d gone to bed after drinking a cup of water so the little ones, Yany and cousin Carlito could. If Uncle Jorge had found a workplace that would hire him despite his disability. If Mama was taking care of herself.

Had Elisa managed to find a summer job to help Mama stretch her stamps? Were the food pantries any good this summer? Pidge and Hunk had figured out that it was sometime in July, Lance couldn’t remember. All he knew was his siblings didn’t get supplemental meals from school in July. In summer, they were on their own.

He lifted the spoon again but his growling stomach started roiling with nausea. He lowered the spoon. Of course he could have food whenever he wanted. Of course it would be like that.

Despite being the shittiest person in his family, he had found a nice cushy place where food was so plentiful, it wasn’t even a thought. People could complain about it. And even if he hadn’t found Blue, if he had been at the Garrison, he would have had three perfectly rationed, calculated, and healthy if tasteless meals plus snacks whenever he wanted.

Getting into the Garrison had been a promise. He would make it out and provide for his whole family. Even those teasing cousins who gave him a hard time about how tall and lanky he was.

They all had sacrificed enough that his absence was a loss. Mama and Papa had needed to work so hard just to pay for the testing. Now that he had effectively dropped out, all his studying and scholarships, all of his family’s money, stretched so thin with so many needs, it was all for nothing.

If he at least had dropped out and gone home, he could work. He could contribute. He could make Javier and Mama eat at least. Here his destiny was to save the world or die trying but at his family’s expense.

Always at his family’s expense.

Lance slammed the table with his closed fist, willing his frustration and other more painful things to dry up. He swallowed to prevent the nausea from making him sicker but feelings of bitterness and shame drew more tears out of him.

He dropped his head over the full, jiggling bowl. Twisting his hair between his fingers, he imagined it with cartoon eyes and a smile but it didn’t help.

He was a Paladin of Voltron. He needed to be strong to defeat Zarkon and help his family. He needed to eat.

Lance lifted the spoon from the table. He choked down a bite and clamped long brown fingers over his wide mouth. He managed to keep it down but it was a close thing.

Rather than better, he felt worse, like he had run a marathon without water. His throat burned as if the space goo was stuck in it. A headache came on around his temples. His eyes watered.

Had Mama even eaten today? Would she? Could she? Was there even food in the house?

Lance rose quickly. Thick emotion warped the air around him and he swallowed hard against his sadness. He threw the space goo in a trash receptacle and left the bowl on the table. It was a dick move but would throw off any suspicions for now. And Hunk, bless his sweet angelic nature, wouldn’t hold it against him.

Normally he would share his food with the mice but they were too damn chummy with Allura and if they told her that he skipped a whole meal, he’d definitely be questioned.

And at this point he wasn’t sure what would help him, if anything even could.

He loped off towards Blue in a haze, one hand firmly clenched around his mouth and the other around his aching stomach. He missed his mother terribly and his lion was the closest thing to her. Just sitting next to her was all he wanted.

Lance didn’t see Keith walk out from the kitchen doorway and pick up his bowl. The red paladin’s face was neutral but his keen eyes were lit with worry and disbelief.

[swampflix]

Once or twice a year I make zines versions of movie reviews we’ve written for Swampflix to distribute at local festivals & events (with immense help from CC in printing & tabling them). So far, we’ve never sold zines outside the festival environment, so they’re a kind of special-occasion treat for the site – a natural extension of our low-fi, high-effort movie blogging aesthetic. I was inspired to start this ritual when I attended the very first New Orleans Comics and Zines festival at the New Orleans Public Library in our own early stirrings as a blogging collective. Surveying dozens of tables of amateur & semi-professional art in the library was an inspiring, communal experience that really helped put into perspective what Swampflix was even doing as a lowly, localized movie blog. We will never be a legitimate, lucrative film criticism website (or even a self-sustaining one, to be frank; this is a money-losing hobby of an operation), so I sensed an instant kinship with the amateur art-for-art’s-sake vibe of the event. Our high-contrast black Sharpie illustrations that accompany our movie reviews even already looked like classic Xeroxed zines, something that came naturally to me from self-promoting ancient punk shows in hand-drawn flyers for long-dead bands I was in over a decade ago. That first NOCAZ had the ideal D.I.Y. punk effect on me, the exact spirit you hope to be infected with at any punk community event: it made me want to make art. We’ve been tabling handmade Swampflix zines at every NOCAZ festival since (and even branched out to distribute zines at other book fairs & library events); it’s one of the more energizing highlights of our calendar. That’s why it’s so sad that this year’s NOCAZ will be the last.

The fifth & final NOCAZ fest will be staged at the Main Branch of the New Orleans Public Library on Saturday April 6th and Sunday April 7th, 2019. I’ve already been preparing for the festival for months, making zines & buttons in my free time between writing movie reviews, producing The Swampflix Podcast, and just trying to live a normal life besides. It takes a lot of work to finish the zines on-time every year, not least of all because I make it hard on myself for no reason at all. Instead of merely printing the text & images we’ve already posted on the site, I transcribe that work by hand in careful, but microscopic Sharpie lettering. I also make sure to include bonus illustrations beyond the ones we’ve already published. It’s a needlessly labor-intensive task. Not only does it require weeks of manual labor to produce every new zine, but my handwriting is so small, uneven, and littered with delirious typos that the end result is a bit of an eyesore. I could be wrong, but I highly doubt anyone’s ever successfully read a Swampflix zine from cover to cover, no matter their level of interest in what we’re writing about. That doesn’t mean that there’s no point in making them, though, as delusional as that may sound. I get so much out of tabling at NOCAZ every year. One of the main reasons we review movies for the site is because we love to discuss & recommend films to people, which NOCAZ allows us to do tangibly, in person. It’s also the world’s most ineffective, labor-intensive form of self-promotion, but I like to think that it does make at last a new handful of locals aware that we exist every year, which is a plus. Mostly, though, the zines are worthwhile just because it feels good to make anything. The act of amateur art creation is its own reward.

According to their About page, “NOCAZ is an attempt to make a space for self-published artists and thinkers to put their work out in the public sphere and be able to reach each other without the constraints and expense of the commercial publishing industry. Zines are a participatory format and [they] hope bringing multiple perspectives together under one roof can create dialogue and inspire more people to express themselves though print.” I can report that, for us at least, the short-lived festival was a resounding success on these terms. I also suspect we were far from the only attendees who started making zines for the first time after attending the fest.

I don’t think there’s a more appropriate note to end our time with NOCAZ on than the new zine we’ve printed for this year’s fest: a collection of movie reviews I wrote about backyard filmmaker Matt Farley last summer. For the last two decades, Farley has been making microbudget horror comedies and recording tens of thousands of novelty songs with his family & friends around his New England neighborhoods to little outside fanfare. There’s nothing especially “punk” about his work or his demeanor, but Farley’s Motern Media brand is still a microcosmic D.I.Y. operation that feels entirely in-spirit with the NOCAZ tabling experience. I was thinking a lot about Matt Farley last summer when exhibiting Swampflix zines at the American Library Association’s national conference. I spent four consecutive days in a massive convention hall peddling zines to librarians from all over the country. Out of every dozen or so people who actually stopped to talk to us about our zines (or to learn about zine culture in general), there were only one or two who enthusiastically got what we were doing and found great joy in talking about movies with a stranger. It was the exact high-effort, low-payoff amateur art lifestyle Farley details in our current Movie of the Month, 2013’s Local Legends. Tripling as a narrative comedy, a documentary, and an infomercial selling Farley’s various CDs & DVDs, Local Legends is a stunningly bullshit-free, self-aware summation of the minor joys & embarrassments of amateur art production in the self-publishing digital hellscape of the 2010s. It’s Farley’s masterpiece, and I see so much of my own experiences blogging, podcasting, and making zines in its cruel self-satire. Just as much as NOCAZ opened my eyes to Swampflix already being a kind of online zine before we were ever in print, Local Legends helped clarify exactly what I was feeling putting all this effort into go-nowhere art projects with no clear goal beyond the act of their own production.

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I initially wrote a Motern Media fanzine to help spread the word that Matt Farley exists out there, making amateur art for his own amusement (and minor, self-sustaining profit). Since printing the first few copies, NOCAZ has announced that this year’s festival will be the last, which already makes me feel like I’m living out the opening scenes of a Local Legends sequel. I can’t think of a more appropriate note to close our NOCAZ experience on than trying to convince strangers to purchase a zine about a microbudget filmmaker they’ve never heard of before, so that more people might experience the amateur joys of Motern classics like Local Legends, Don’t Let the Riverbeast Get You!, and Monsters, Marriage, and Murder in Manchvegas. In true Local Legends sprit, we’ll also be selling older zines we printed far too many copies of years ago and could never fully get rid of at past festivals. Still, distributing the Matt Farley fanzine will be our top priority. NOCAZ & Motern are easily the two most revelatory influences I’ve had in understanding exactly what I’ve been doing with Swampflix over the last five years, so I’m glad I could find an opportunity to experience them in tandem before that window closes forever.

For more on April’s Movie of the Month, Matt Farley’s satirical self-portrait Local Legends (2013), check out our Swampchat discussion of the film.

-Brandon Ledet

Spreading Motern Awareness at the Final NOCAZ; The fifth & final NOCAZ fest will be staged at the Main Branch of the New Orleans Public Library on Saturday April 6th and Sunday April 7th, 2019. Once or twice a year I make zines versions of movie reviews we’ve written for Swampflix to distribute at local festivals & events (with immense help from…