#fins reads

[salamispots]

wanted to do a couple more examples for the commission sheet

[ao3-crack]

(x)

[creativesplat]

I would also like to see some miphlink, if that's okay!

I was really struggling with what to draw, and then I remembered your ask from ages ago (dang ADHD brain...) anyway, sorry its such a late answer, but Miphlink inspired by Dicksee's La Belle Dame

[formereldestdaughter]

ok wait i need to hear more of your thoughts on peeta owning a bakery....

This is one of those rare times where I’m pretty sure this anon isn’t someone I know personally bc I’ve subjected anyone who will listen to my rant about the Peeta Bakery Headcanon. Anyway, you’re gonna regret asking this anon bc there are fucking Layers here.

I know this is probably a controversial take based on the number of fics where I’ve seen it, but I simply do not think that Peeta would open a commercial bakery after Mockingjay!! Like on a metatextual level, I don’t think it really fits with the point of the ending of the series. It actually sort of fascinates me that it’s just such a common headcanon because the ending of Mockingjay is exceedingly vague. I think that vagueness invites us, as readers, to imagine a better world post-revolution. A world where Katniss would feel confident that her children would be safe from injustice, where she’d feel confident that her children would never know want the way she did as a child. A just world. A kinder world. Can a capitalist society ever be just? Is a capitalist society where a disabled teenager has no other means to subsist himself (or feels like there’s no other way he can be a contributing member of his community) really the post-revolution world we dream of? Is that really the best we can imagine?

(This got so insanely long I’m adding a read more lmao)

I get that showing a better world is not always the point of post-mockingjay headcanons/fics. Like there are plenty of really great post-mockingjay fics I’ve seen where, yeah, part of the fic is that society like ISN’T all that different or all that much better. I’ve seen that really well done! Hell, I’ve written them myself! It’s easy to imagine how a lot of aspects of society would not get an overhaul, a lot of the same structural inequalities would continue to exist. One headcanon that really stuck with me (I can’t remember which fic it was from) was that Peeta sells basically mail order baked goods to people on the Capitol, sending them iced cakes and pastries by train, because there are still people who were “fans” of theirs during the Games. And idk this doesn’t actually have much to do with my point lol but I liked it because it’s kind of fucked up and like! Yeah! It makes sense! If he needed money that would be a good way to make it! War often makes people rich, often for horrible reasons, and often it’s people who already have capital in the first place.

Anyway, more about the hypothetical bakery because alright. I bring up the fact that “yeah society not being all that different post-revolution and still being an unjust capitalist hellscape” could be a reason why Peeta re-opens a bakery because that’s actually never the types of fics where I see the bakery headcanon. Fics where Peeta opens a bakery are usually trying to make the exact opposite point. Like. Things are getting better, now he can open a bakery! Look at how much better the world is now, plus he’s got a bakery! Peeta is healing, that’s why he can open a bakery now! And I am so, so sorry to inform everyone who’s never had the grave misfortune of owning a family business, but there is truly nothing further from the truth lmao. Like just putting aside the immense amount of emotional baggage that Peeta has about his family, running a small business is an insane amount of work in any context and being a baker especially is physically grueling and involves early hours (and long hours) that aren’t really the best fit with the multiple ways that Peeta is disabled now. (I could go into this more because I have a lot of thoughts. But I will spare you.). I also think it’s seen throughout the books that Peeta is someone who needs time to pursue creative outlets to process his feelings and someone who values leisure and values quality time with his loved ones. And having grown up in his family’s bakery, I think he’d understand the reality that running a bakery wouldn’t leave much space of those pursuits and wouldn’t leave much space for him to have the things that keep him healthy and stable. I think he’d know that the way he is now— after two Games and the war and unspeakable torture at the hands of a dictator—isn’t compatible with the lifestyle necessary for running a commercial bakery.

And tbh with that in mind, I don’t think he’d push himself to re-open a business (one that would be a constant reminder of his dead family and his complicated relationships with them that got no closure) that would require him to sacrifice his physical and emotional well-being. Like I think he might look into the possibility, I think he might even start trying to open a bakery out of a sense of obligation/duty, maybe harboring some idea that this is who he was supposed to be, who he would've been without the Games, or that it’s this last piece of his family that can live on, or that it’s this last connection to his family so he can’t let it die too. But ultimately, I think any attempt to open a bakery wouldn’t get very far. Maybe he'd start wading into the logistical nightmare that is small business ownership and realize it's not for him (because it's probably also true that as much as him and his brothers were involved in the business, there's almost certainly parts they weren't involved with and didn't see, i.e., filing taxes). Or maybe looking into opening a bakery— how triggering it is, the stress of it— causes a downward spiral. Maybe he hates how much he's worrying everyone by unraveling. Maybe having a breakdown from the stress of just trying to open a bakery makes him realize, yeah, maybe in another life he would have ran his family’s bakery but the way he is now just doesn’t work with running a bakery, not without great sacrifices he's not willing to make. I just can’t see a bakery coming to fruition.

I know a lot of fics include Peeta deciding to reopen a bakery as a big step in his healing or include him rebuilding a bakery as part of his healing process but honestly, I think the opposite would be more true: I think Peeta either trying/failing to open a bakery or ultimately deciding not to open a bakery would be hugely healing for him. I think it would be a huge part of him accepting the way he is now as a person, his new limitations but also his strengths. I think it would be a huge part of him accepting the way his life his now and accepting that he likes his life the way it is, that he’s satisfied with his life without needing to own a bakery. I think it would be an important part of him coming to terms with the loss of his family. I think he knows he can never have things back as they were and I don’t think he would try to recreate them, especially because his family’s legacy isn’t a business. I think he’s emotionally intelligent enough and self reflective enough to realize that what mattered to him about the bakery— taking care of others by feeding them, being integrated into his community and being actively involved in it, brightening people’s days with delightful things whether that’s beautiful cakes or hearty food or delicious treats— and the things he learned from his family through the bakery, are things that he can carry on in other meaningful ways.

(Do you regret sending this ask yet, anon? Because if not, you will soon. I’m not done yet. There’s more.)

I wasn’t really sure where to put this next part in what is rapidly becoming an essay because it sort of combines the points about like “what do we imagine a post-mockingjay society to look like” with the practical difficulties of starting this bakery but here’s another thing: do people really think that the Mellarks owned the land the bakery was on?? Like, sure, the merchants are the petit bourgeois of Twelve but I still don’t imagine they really own anything. In a society where houses are assigned to people upon marriage, where property ownership and capital are so closely interconnected with citizenship (as shown by the Plinths who, by having immense capital, are able to leave their District and become citizens of the Capitol) do people really think the Mellarks would be allowed to own the land their bakery is on?? I always imagined it sort of like a tenant farming situation: the Capitol gives them the raw materials for the bakery and in return the bakery give them some absurdly high portion of their profits, or the Capitol sells them a year’s supply of raw materials at a premium on credit and at the end of the year the Mellarks have to use the money they made with those materials to pay it back, except it’s never enough to turn a profit so they always have to buy next year’s materials on credit and the cycle continues.

We (understandably) get a really skewed view of the merchant class through Katniss’s perspective so I can see why people come to the conclusion that his family owned the property and, as the last surviving member, he would’ve inherited it. I’ve seen the inheritance thing in fics a lot or a hand wavey “well Twelve was decimated to no one owns anything anymore so it can be his” or even like an almost sort of reparations type situation where he’s entitled to the land as a surviving refugee of Twelve. But I don’t know. I guess I don’t think it fits with everything else we know about Panem that the Mellarks would’ve owned that land and I think the question of whether the government would’ve let him take ownership of the land post-revolution brings up a lot of issues about the structure of society post-Mockingjay that I find more interesting to explore in other ways, especially when, from an emotional perspective, 1) I find the idea of Peeta not opening a bakery more compelling and 2) I don’t think it really fits his character arc by the end of Mockingjay to reopen a bakery, as I went on about at length above lol.

On the flip side: literally who cares!! Do whatever you want!! Headcanon whatever you want!! I get why people go for the bakery!! It’s fun, it’s wholesome, it’s a built in bakery AU that isn’t even an AU. It doesn’t matter if it’s practical or realistic!! It doesn’t need to be practical or realistic!! It’s fanfic of a dystopian YA series!! My unfortunate affliction is that I grew up in a family that owned a restaurant and that I have multiple degrees in the social sciences so I can’t see the bakery without being like “What about the overheard? What about the start up costs? Who’s spending long nights balancing the books? Is Peeta covering shifts when an employee calls in sick? Is Peeta the sole person working there until the bakery is open long enough (often a year or more) to start turning a profit? How does that sleep schedule work with his nightmares? How does that work with Katniss’s nightmares? What happens when he has an episode and suddenly needs to take the day off before he has any employees? Does the bakery just remain closed for the day? Can the profit margins withstand regular unexpected closures? Can the supplies withstand regular unexpected closures?” And if the answer is “Elliott none of those things matter he’s not doing the bakery because he needs the money but because he wants to”, then my question is why does he want to? Does he not get the same sort of satisfaction out of feeding his loved ones? Doesn’t Peeta seem like someone who would rather give away baked goods than sell them?? Doesn’t Peeta seem like someone who would prefer to make cakes for people’s special occasions upon and then when they insist on paying him for it, he only lets them “pay for the ingredients” which actually cost significantly more than he says they did??

So yeah my point is that it’s a matter of personal taste! It doesn’t fit the way I see the series but that doesn’t mean it’s like wrong, I’m not an authority on Peeta lmao.

It’s also a matter of personal taste in the sense that I find the themes that most resonate with me at the end of Mockingjay (and the end of Peeta’s arc specifically) more interesting to explore in other ways. Grief, living with loss, relearning yourself, finding hope, figuring out your place in a dramatically different world when you don’t even know who you are anymore, healing, building a new life after such complete and total destruction of your old life— those are all things I find compelling about the end of Mockingjay but for me the bakery isn’t the most compelling way to explore them.

Not to say I find the concept of the bakery totally uninteresting. I have this fic about Johanna that I’ll probably never finish where the point sort of is that, yeah, her life really isn’t all that much better after the war. It’s been years at this point and she’s still miserable and she doesn’t know how to be a person but by the end she’s trying to figure it out. And towards the end, Peeta tells her that he’s spent years sort of passively, half-heartedly trying to figure out how to inherit the land his family’s bakery was on, only to find out it was never theirs in the first place. They’d been renting it the whole time and he’d never even known as a kid. So he sort of passively, half-heartedly went on another wild goose chase to find the owner and now, finally, after years of writing to various government agencies and being sent in circles and things being barely functional, he’s managed to track down the owner. Now it’s owned by the daughter of the man who owned it when he was a kid because the original owner (who was likely up to some sketchy war crime shit) died during the war and she inherited it (the irony…). He got in contact with her and asked how much it would take for her to sell it and she told him she’s not interested in selling but in light of the situation, in light of the fact that he’d have to build a new building in order to operate a bakery, that she’d cut him a deal— she’d only require 50% of the bakery’s profits as rent instead of the 80% his family used to pay. And of course Johanna is outraged, that’s not right, the owner shouldn’t be allowed to do that, they should do something about it, they should fight back. And Peeta is like. Not interested. He was actually sort of relieved that opening wasn’t very feasible. Getting the answer was a lightbulb moment where he saw that over the years of trying to look into this, he’s built a life that he likes— one where he’s stable, where his loved ones are stable, where he’s cared for and can care for others— and he doesn’t really want to change it drastically by opening a bakery anyway. He just needed an answer, one way or another, before he could get some closure and move on. (And the point of the conversation is Johanna is having her own lightbulb moment that it’s okay to move on, it’s okay to change, it’s not a betrayal of the people and things she’s lost but that’s not my point here!!).

But anyway. That’s obviously not about running the bakery— it’s about the choice to not run one.

Anyway!! Anyway… are you satisfied anon? Is this what you wanted?

Lastly, here is my most important qualm with the bakery headcanon: must Peeta be gainfully employed? Is it not enough for him to be Katniss’s boytoy? Can’t he just paint and garden and bake and hang out with his girlfriend all day? Is that really too much to ask?

[beaft]

the other thing i forgot to mention about stephen king's writing is the goop. there is so much goop. can't even go a chapter without there being some kind of goop

[prince-liest]

TIL you guys also like fish!!!! please let me introduce you to the rest of my fishy community!

first of all, these are my fish tanks:

this is a 20 gallon tall tank that I will be upgrading to a 37 long next year when I find out where I’m going for residency. the 5lb pressurized cannister is a CO2 tank that I use to inject carbon dioxide into the water (on a timer)! CO2 is the limiting “nutrient” for plant growth underwater in a tank like mine (with bright light and fertilizers added), so it helps encourage plant growth and more vibrant colors in plants with red and orange tones, as well as carpeting plants.

this is a 6.4 gallon tank that also has CO2 injection, and currently no fish because it is cycling (and will be for about 4 weeks). it will be her highness the betta fish’s new home once it is cycled, because she keeps murdering my shrimp in the community tank. once she is moved, I will probably get a pair of honey gouramis for the community tank.

this is one of the shrimp in question! she is pregnant. (eggnant, you might say.) I love her.

these are my kuhli loaches! I have 6 black and 6 banded. they are technically different species and the banded ones are much more shy. they spend a lot of time swimming circles along the glass and draping themselves over plants upside-down to make me think they are dead. they get very offended when you poke them to make sure they’re not dead.

I have 8 neon tetras. they’re all fat and extremely hard to take non-blurry photos of.

I also have 3 hillstream loaches, which are one of my favorite fish of all time. they’re juveniles that bred from a friend’s tank, and they look like tiny little stingrays that are frequently stuck to the side of the glass. they are aufwuchs-eaters which means they scrape algae and biofilm off the surfaces of things, but they also like sifting through sand and need sufficient protein (aka. not pure algae eaters).

here’s what they look like from the bottom:

I also have snails:

this is the biggest of my three nerite snails! I like nerites because they have bright colors and they don’t reproduce in fresh water. however, if you get a female (like this one), they WILL lay tiny white little sesame seed eggs everywhere, even though they can’t hatch. I used to have “pest” snails in the form of bladder snails and freshwater limpets but, uh, I have a total of 15 loaches in the tank, so. I no longer have pest snails and my loaches are all well-fed. :”)

thank u for coming to my ted talk. I love fish. I love my fish. please come talk to me about fish. I leave u with one last photo of her highness in all her glory:

[greencheekconure27]

Herbert Beerbohm Tree as Gringoire in 'The Ballad Monger', c.1912

Charles A. Buchel (1872–1950)

University of Bristol Theatre Collection

[swan2swan]

Ariel: the Strongest Disney Princess

[butchhansolo]

in-universe "logistics" aside, i think it's good that echo has the permanent scomp arm instead of a hand for like. real-world representation reasons.

in star wars sure they have fully articulated replacement prosthetics but we very much don't have that in real life, and i feel like echo with the scomp is good rep for that. he's one of the most competent characters and i think it's good to show that he can do All That as he is, especially with how irl people with only one hand usually are very capable, even more if they've been living with it for a long time, and very rarely do we see that in media.

like, mark hamill once said he talked to a kid for a make a wish thing who was about to have his arm amputated, and the kid said that he wasn't worried because luke did it too. i think that's important

[moontale-official]

IVIS (from the UNDERTALE AU MOONTALE) - PART 27 - COMIC FINALE (pages 118-123)

START

PREV

NEXT (CHAPTER 5)

Two years. Man. It was long, and late 2022 hit me especially hard in both the best and worst ways possible. It started becoming a question of whether I could even finish this frankly over-ambitious project at all. Which, I realized I couldn't realistically finish it. Not even close.

But the last thing I wanted was to cancel it and disappoint not only everyone supporting the comic... but mostly myself. I wanted to get the story out there in a state I was proud of. No matter what.

So... what did I do?

I scaled down the ambition. I threw my ego to the side, looked at the project with a more practical lens and then came the decision to end the comic here. Think of this comic as a sort of glorified opener/ introduction for the story that ties a neat bow on the premise. The hook. The narrative this whole au sort of exists around.

I see this as the best place to end off the comic in a way that was most satisfying for me, in a way that didn't sacrifice quality.

With this comic, I reached to the end of Chapter 4, about 15% of the full story. Since starting to translate the story into a fanfic seven months ago, I have approximately 40% of the story written out. So it's safe to say, even in the worst case scenario, I should be able to finish the story before university next year.

Even though the official comic is coming to a close, there is still the Ao3 fic I'm doing my best to upload consistently on. And, if I have the time/energy to do so, I'll made tidbit comics of certain scenes or moments in the au. Small scale stuff like that.

So... yeah. Thank you for reading. If you liked the comic, go read the Ao3 fic for chapter 5, 6, and the updates to come in the future.

[finduilasclln]

This fandom seems to have collectively decided to age Lou Ferrigno Jr by about 10 years and I’m… so confused by it??

[hiraeth-blr]

ー Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray

[missewoodhouse]

“New Women” and Stoker’s Theatre Job

Given Bram’s “New Woman” rant at the end of Mina’s 10 August diary entry, now seems like a good time to discuss two of the great actresses of the Fin de Siècle stage! First of all, we have Ellen Terry -- onstage partner to (you guessed it) our pal Henry Irving, and probably most widely recognizable in this John Singer Sargent painting of her as Lady Macbeth.

While the beetle-wing green dress deserved to be immortalized in all its stately glory, the tone of the portrait is actually very different from that of Terry’s Lady M -- she never crowned herself onstage, and the character was played with a much more “fragile” brand of late-Victorian femininity.  Despite a scandalous private life (including two children born out of wedlock, gasp!) Terry’s public persona was aligned with a series of “virtuous” Shakespeare heroines (Ophelia, Cordelia, Desdemona, Portia, Beatrice, Imogen).

In 1878, when Henry Irving became manager of the Lyceum theatre (where Bram Stoker soon became business manager), he convinced Ellen Terry to join the company as his leading lady.  Both actors were separated from their spouses (Terry from her second husband) at this point, so their partnership publicly mirrored that of earlier husband-wife leading pairs.  At least officially, Irving dictated the company’s artistic choices, the casting, and Terry’s (record breaking) salary, and onstage, Lady M may have been evil, but she was also Macbeth’s perfectly loyal wife.

Ellen Terry’s Imogen (see the colorized edit of a publicity photograph above), opposite Henry Irving’s villainous Iachimo in 1896 is regarded by some as a key inspiration for Lucy Westenra (interesting article/abstract here and book chapter/summary here, apologies for the paywalls).  Given that Iachimo creeps on Imogen while she’s asleep and then uses this encounter to threaten her life / accuse her of promiscuity, there are certainly some parallels to be had if you go looking for them.

Interestingly enough, however, when Stoker produced a staged reading of Dracula at the Lyceum in 1897 (in order to claim copyright over any future stage adaptation), Ellen Terry’s daughter, Edith Craig, played Mina.  And Edith was very definitely a card-carrying, suffrage-supporting, queer and polyamorous New Woman. Fun fact: in the post-Lyceum phase of her career, Ellen Terry was actually a pretty active suffrage campaigner / fundraiser too. (And I suspect, if we were to carry Mina and Lucy forward to their hypothetical Dracula-free, untouched by Bram Stoker’s authorial misogyny futures, both of our heroines eventually would be too).

While we’re on the subject of the scandalous New Woman, however, the other late Victorian actress I cannot go without mentioning is the French sensation Sarah Bernhardt (who by the time Dracula was published had a substantial performance history in England and the US as well).  A rough contemporary of Ellen Terry, Bernhardt, by contrast, cultivated her own reputation for the scandalous.  Bernhardt quite intentionally broke gendered boundaries left right and center.

Visually, Bernhardt is perhaps most strongly associated with the art nouveau posters she commissioned (from artist Alphonse Mucha) for her theatre company in Paris - examples of 1899′s Hamlet and La Tosca are above.  While there are also plenty of photographs of her as Hamlet (although far from the first woman to play the role, Bernhardt’s performance is one of the most famous) and in other promotional images, the photo I’d rather draw your attention to is this one:

Yes, that is a young Sarah Bernhardt lying asleep in a coffin -- a coffin which she is said to have traveled with and claimed to sleep in regularly.  Quite the publicity stunt (and pre-Dracula too)!  Other features of her eccentric public persona included traveling with a menagerie of wild animals -- including an alligator, at least one variety of big cat, and a number of lizards and/or chameleons.

Bernhardt was also a sculptor, and her Self-Portrait as a Chimera (circa 1880, below) notably features bat-like wings, instead of more traditionally feathered, bird-like ones.

Which is to say, I think we’ve found another vampire!

[sublecturas]

"El fin de semana, de Bernhard Schlink y "Una historia sencilla" de @leilaguerriero2 en la #LíneaA @AnagramaEditor @RiversideAgency

[newtafterdark]

Shout-out to the FinFin discord for being incredibly kind and welcoming! 💙

We might've already figured out a way to get "The Book of FinFin" to you all exactly how it was originally intended in terms of looks! There are folks on there who are wizards with HTML and I bow before them!

That and I'll even edit images that have German text on them to be in English but retain their original charm for the translation!

An example, the original:

the edit:

I am so excited to get to work on this with the team behind the homepage & gift us all a bit more FinFin in our lives! :>

[spw-art]

experimenting with my drawing tablet, challenging myself to only do shading or lighting with blue :)

if he's low quality it's because i have not worked out how to save a cropped area of canvas using my tablet (i do not need help knowing i am fine screenshotting)