#i keep spending way too much time on these extremely niche posts

[adarkrainbow]

A reaction to reactions - about Pierre Dubois

I made a long time ago (at least considering the short life of my blog) a post about Pierre Dubois, an introduction post about the man so that my other posts about various content of his made sense. You can find it here. Recently this post got a lot of reactions, which I'm glad of course! But there's too many, through reblog-texts or flowing texts, for me to anser all of them at once easily. So I'll make this post to answer everyone in an easy way (or rather "react" and talk further, since I'm not here to "answer per se").

First, @a-book-of-creatures had this to say which I have to agree with but expand upon:

I have so many strong feelings on Dubois. When I started doing research on folklore I used him as a reference because his books were the only thing I had available, but as I found actual research I realized just how unreliable he is.

Probably the best thing would be to regard the books as folklore fanfiction and use them as stepping stones to find better things.

And this sums up why people get Dubois' books and work by the wrong end. You are absolutely right - Pierre Dubois' works are not reliable as resources about folklore and legends and myths. But that's because they do not have to, and they do not have the purpose to be. And here is why I say people take Dubois by the "wrong end" - too many people consider Dubois as a folklorist in the scientific, profesionnal sense of the term. Which Dubois is not. There is a reason why Dubois and those that promote it all insist on his job being "un elficologue", "an elficologist" - a clearly made up and fanciful word with no degree or diploma needed. This is not to pretend Dubois is a new type of folklorist - this is to clearly point out that he is rather someone extremely passionate and informed about elves, fairies, lutins and the like, and who spends his entire work writing about them. But he isn't part of any serious or scientific study of folklore, and that's where people get very confused.

Dubois is an author and a collector, a folklorist and a hobbyist, but he is no researcher as in "archeologist". This is why looking at not only his life and interviews but also the prefaces and introductions and postfaces on his various books - where he talks of his life, how it interweaves with his work and his opinions on several other names - is much needed to understand his approach and angle (but unfortunately too many jump out of those para-texts to just read about the fairies and elves).

Dubois did not went to university, did not have diplomas - to my knowledge. He keeps repeating everyhere all about his childhood among manual workers - his father worked in a factory and he was part of those poor factory-towns. I mentionned it before, about how his father reproved and dislike his interest in things like reading or literature. So he did not find out about mythology and folklore by a scholarly or professional mean - he rather had to make himself up, and stayed with an approach through any and all kinds of books he could find about. And the problem is that back in the 20th century, most of the professional study books we have access to today where no disponible in libraries and bookshops like that - they were niche things for university-people and high-ups of the thinking world. Dubois devoured the content of numerous libraries - but this meant he read literature, and poets, and fairytale collections, and outdated books about folklore and legends, and this was his approach to the fairy-world and this is the kind of feeling and ambiance he tried to give back through his books.

In fact, Dubois does not hide his lack of interest for any actual scientific, literary or current folkloric study. In general he is not a man of science - the same way he seems to have gotten a disdain for all too modern technology thanks to his own life in a community dominated by the 20th industries in the shape of the crushing factories, and thus always preferred the countryside, the forests, the ruins, he also has no interest in making books that could be used by universities or for reading expert's books on fairy-folklore and their evolution. Because he has the approach of a storyteller, of an author, of a poet, in the line of all those that either collected all the pieces of fairytales and folklore they could find without questionning or doubting them ; or that either knew of folklore and wrote fairytales, but still wrote them in a slightly edited and reshaped way. I mean for example one of his favorite books is Les contes d'un buveur de bière, which is a compendium of fairytales inspired by the folktales of Northern France - a folklore the author was very intimate with - but is still not traditionally listed among fairytale collections like the Grimm's because they were slightly rewritten in a more literary and modern style, with a few modifications and meta-references in the text. A bit like Andersen's fairytales if you want - they are still folkloric tales with folkloric background and inspirations, but they are a bit too literary to be considered fully "folkloric" tales. And this is the same approach Dubois has to it all.

Through his books, Dubois wanted (and managed) to translate and convey his own experience and feeling of going around France, checking everything about fairies in every library he could have, asking countryside folks from all regions what they knew about folklore or fairytales - an effusion, a boiling confusion, a sprawling chaos of so many things all at once, side-by-side, so different and varied, and yet all tied by these common links, these similar motifs, these evocations and cousin-ship. This shows for example in his various invented genealogies and "species evolution" in his books - fanciful pseudo-scientific inventions, they are not meant to be reflective of actual historical evolution of legendary figures, but rather convey the relationships and echoes he himself perceived when putting all the books and references side-by-side. His view on myths and folklore as a whole isn't the one of a scientist who tracked down a genealogical tree ; but of an everyman who read and saw everything and points out the links and references he perceived just as a reader.

Of course, this makes his work absolutely non-professional and useless in any serious folklore research (or almost as we'll see later)... But it is also the reason why it made his work so successful, and why he is an unavoidable name today. Still in a recent compendium about the evolution of the fantasy genre, he was evoked as one of the great names of fictional fantasy in France, but put on the same way as Tolkien - not because he was a scholar like him, but because his reinvention of traditional folklore and legends will be as impactful and inspiring as Tolkien's own reinvention of elves and orcs and dwarves. Dubois's books are educated entertainment and scholarly fun - but not a scholarly study, if the nuance makes sense. Imagine this as a bit more extreme version of Neil Gaiman's own fairy-books, like Sandman or Stardust or Coraline. And one has to put themselves back into the context of 80s and 90s France and imagine this situation.

For a long time, all encyclopedias of supernatural creatures and folklore were just these dry, scientific, university-like books not meant for regular audiences - and if there were books for your random Joe, they were oversimplified, childish things. And then comes Dubois's "Encyclopedias", which on top of having this extensive enormous collection of so many tidbits of folklore and lore nobody heard about, makes it a fun and entertaining read by bizarre illustrations, by mixing factual descriptions with folktales, by talking about the weird little habits of these creatures like what baked goods they like to cook or what underwears they wear or how they participated in said historical event... This was a revolution because it was a fun, entertaining and poetic read, a book that went beyond simply dryly listing endless variations, but rather used the encyclopedic knowledge to build an entire sprawling world of inter-connected entities, with a full epic history and all sorts of strange civilizations hidden right behind the garden's wall... This was and always has been Dubois' intention and he is clear about it in his text - revitalize the passion and interest in fairytales, make people interested in folklore and legends again, make people consider that maybe there is something interesting in the old-storytellers knowledge... Again, Dubois came from this very industrialized and modern side of France, marked by the World Wars, not caring about literature or magic or folklore, and where all good fairy-related books were pushed back in the dusty and moldy cellars of libraries. Dubois' prime interest was always to make this whole thing revive, in one way or another - and just like so many previous folklorists (even the Grimm themselves) who rewrote, and reshaped fairytales and folktales and invented things to make folklore live on, so did Dubois, in a more extreme way than his predecessors...

That's his own advice for how to become an elficologist - and he keeps insisting upon it when he talks about what people have to do if, like them, they want to become a searcher of fairies or elves. Go outside, walk among natural landscape, go into remote villages, search in old books and grimoires, do not reject anything (except too scientific and materialistic approaches and non-believers), mingle among those that live the folklore, and yourself get lost in the wonders of the overlooked countryside. This sums up very well what was his angle, and why he is located at this strange edge where he can't exactly be pin-pointed. When, in his books about seasons, he keeps referring to the embodiment of winter as "La Vieille", The Old Hag of Winter, the Elderly Witch of the Dead Season, the Queen of Cold and Darkness - he is establishing a fact that comes from looking and comparing European traditions. There is an habit and tradition of depicting the winter as a hag, as a divine crone, under a witch-like figure or monstrous woman. This is attested, and as such Dubois does what he does best, bring the essence of a comparative tradition (Dubois is much more comparative mythology than anything else). But on the bad side, it comes at costs of confusing and fusing together all the various female "winter hags" together ignoring their individual traits. That's always the win and lose of Dubois.

I already evoked it before, but in terms of fairytales for example, while Dubois is a massive fan and praises the brothers Grimm, and traditional French fairytale collectors, and other "folkloric collectors" like them, he strongly disdains and rejects the literary 17th-18th century fairytale writers a la madame d'Aulnoy, and also Perrault (though he does admit his work as part of France's national culture, though still heavily criticizing it). That's because on one side, Dubois had contact with folklore through actual village-people and countryside-folks and other fairytale collectors who like him did a tour of France's remote areas ; meaning he of course disdains those that rewrote fairytales in a too "distant" and "far-away" and "folklore-killing approach" - Dubois rewrites too fairytales heavily, but he rewrites them with the intention of staying faithful to the folklore and bringing out its "essence", which might seem paradoxal, but makes sense when you take this angle. He is the kind of guy who will hate on Perrault for cutting off the part of Little Red Riding Hood where the wolf makes her eat the grandmother's flesh and blood ; and will for example not mind at all expanding on this detail by describing a lush feast of the grandmother's corpse turned into various dishes while evoking all sorts of vampires and ghouls when describing the consumption of the meal... On the other side, this also shows something very true and clear about Dubois - he is filled, imbued with and a carrier of the strong 19th and 20th century fairytale and folklore theories that are now recognized as wrong and outdated. He is clearly a "product of his generation" - and I evoked it with the Sleeping Beauty theory. He is the first contact I had with the theory that Sleeping Beauty, Cinderella, Little Red Riding Hood and Donkeyskin were all embodiments of an old literary solar-myth and all symbolized the sun or summer threatened or devoured by night/winter before returning to life. I thought he had made it up in his usual "poetic comparative mythology" kind of way, but then I discovered it was an ACTUAL theory that had been claimed and held by numerous folklore and mythology experts and was accepted during most of the 20th century - when Dubois made his own research - before being debunked at the dawn of the 21st century. Dubois doesn't want to actively misinform people, he just shares what he received, what he knows and what shaped him, and as such he is a most important testimony of how folklore was received and perceived up until the mid 20th century.

In many ways he is the Robert Graves of folklore - interesting, poetic, influential and inspiring in his treatment of mythology/folklore, but highly unreliable, misinformed, biased, and ultimately not a serious source for modern research. In fact, it was thanks to Dubois' works that a new wave of (more reliable and serious) fairy encyclopedias, monster encyclopedia and other folkloric compendium started to be released in the early 2000s - aimed for regular people, while still being well-informed like a university work. Dubois clearly launched a new wave of interest and fashion for fairytales - and all the reblogs' affirmations that Dubois' books had shaped them or fashioned their care in one way or another is proof of that (@it-is-phlump oerfectly translates my own perception and reception of Dubois' books, which shaped my childhood, and even though you are mad at him for being so unclear and confusing and unscholarly, you can't be mad because he brings you a whole fascinating poetic and truly "fae" world). Dubois has the same aesthetic credits as for example what Del Toro did with Pan's Labyrinth and the Hellboy movies and more - make people rediscover the magic, eerie, eldritchness, monstrousness, marvels and oddity of what fairies and elves are about. Creature an aesthetic and a world that would produce later works such as for example the excellent Changeling the Lost. But the same way Guillermo del Toro's movies or Changeling the Lost cannot be taken as serious folkloric sources...

With one nuance.

Still going on from @a-book-of-creatures comment, but also @feyariel reblog - about the sources and inventions of Dubois. Dubois has one STRONG interesting thing which makes him a fascinating resource of folklore study - or literature study. His own sources. Dubois invents a lot of things but he does not invent everything - if he presents one specific creature, it means he read or saw about it. He doesn't invent the creatures, he invents the lore about them or fills in the gap of his own sources. I am pretty sure he did not invent the Pillywiggins, because again he doesn't like inventing things - but if you can't find anything about them, it means that either his sources are lost, either his sources might have been literary more than folkloric. And here's my point.

Have you looked at the HUGE bibliographies at the end of each of his volumes? Dubois does NOT want people to stay in the blind about folklore or to be unable to find the same things he did, and he has THOUSANDS of books listed at the end of most of his books about fairies or ghosts or seasonal folklore. But here's the problem - his bibliographies are a confusing treasure.

Dubois, as I said before, did an extensive and complete tour of all the libraries he could find during his travels through the French countryside (so not university-only, higher-up libraries, but the bulk of village and small towns or province towns libraries of the mid-to-second-half 20th century). He collected all sorts of books from bookshops, and as such he read so many books he used for his own works... Many books which today are actually rare or lost books. Sometimes there are books in his bibliographies with clearly no research result when you try to find them today, and you might be led to think "Oh he made it up". But then you see by their side some books who, as it turns out, also lead to no research result, but because they are rare old books, out of print and that you can't find anywhere except by extreme chance... This already puts in perspective some things - he explored the depths of old libraries and private collections, but this means he also likely came among some very rare or old books that are unreachable today or completely lost. Or that are overlooked by people today...

It doesn't help however that in his research, he didn't split things at all. I mean he clearly got better with time at bibliographies - his most recent ones are much clearer than his older ones - but he still mingles and mixes things together, and especially literary and truly folkloric things. You will find Poe's work alongside the Grimm in his bibliographies, and among true beings of folklore in his Encyclopedias he places the literary inventions of Jean Ray or Andersen... Dubois is again, a "random Joe" in this aspect because his bibliographies were literaly him just noting every reference he had, every book title he saw, every author he read about, and putting it together in a list, but without a scholarly rigorism or without questioning his sources. This led for example to another problem of his sources - referential mistakes. A very prominent case happened with the story he collected of the "Ogress Queens" that I talked about here. He collected the tale right in his collections of witches and ogresses - but he made a mistake when giving the name of the source. He wrote the "abbot of the chapel of Apchier" - when in fact, the author full name was "Alix de La Chapelle d'Apchier". Very clearly, when he took his note down, he miswrote the author's name, or he misremembered it, and so confused "Alix" with "abbé" (abbot) and misunderstood "la chapelle" as an actual title instead of a family name... A typical error showing that, once again, it is important to stress out Dubois does not have a scholarly training or treatment or his sources. He is just a guy who reads a lot of everything, and tries to collect everything, and share all he finds, but with a carelessness typical of someone in a non-scientific approach. It is just like how when you write down a reference you spot on a piece of paper, later you type it down but since you carelessly wrote it down, you confuse an "a" for a "o" or "e" and thus mispell the name.

But this carelessness is balanced by, once again, the fact he gave a great care and love for many authors and books overlooked or forgotten, either in his time or by today's time. Again, I evoked the case of the Ogress Queens - this tale, even though wrongly credited, allowed me to discover the works of Alix de La Chapell d'Apchier". Take again Alix de la Chapelle d'Apchier - if it wasn't for Dubois I would have NEVER heard of her work or book of fairytales, because again as located halfway between folkloric and literary tales, she is overlooked and forgotten by both sides. Another example would be Jean Ray. Very recently, a few years ago, Jean Ray was rediscovered by the French book-industry and reprints of his clasic tales appeared on the shelves of every library (around the same time French edition re-discovered Ursula LeGuin's Earthsea series) - but before that, Jean Ray was completely ignored, talked about by nobody, forgotten by everyone... At most people remembered "Malpertuis" but couldn't tell anything else done by him. And yet Pierre Dubois kept referencing him and claiming his love for him and putting tales of his in his own compilation of stories. In fact maybe it was him pushing forard so much the Belgian author that led to the French printing industry "rediscovering" him... Who knows?

In conclusion... Yes, there are many reasons we can be angry at Dubois and reject his books - but there is just as many reasons for us to adore him and buy and reference his works. Ambiguous, polarizing, unperfect but still proving great efforts, a deep passion and having marked cultural and literary history, Dubois is one of those men who are not be taken as a serious source and should not appear in actual fairytale studies (except as a passing reference - for example I evoked him briefly in my paper about ogres) - but who should not be forgotten or ignored due to the importance and impact he had on the reception of fairy folklore, elves legends and other dwarves myths. Again, a bit like Robert Graves with mythology - it can be read as an entertaining side-read, and it has to be considered due to all the movements, theories and groups it spawned, and it was part of the reception of mythology for a time, and it highlighted all sorts of important points - but we still gleefully point out the innacuracies and use it as a source of inspiration and comparison more than any serious reference or resource.

Or rather... A better comparison would be the Dictionnaire Infernal by Collin de Plancy. His compendium of demons and devils is a load of bullshit, with so many invented, excentric, unserious things, and that is no serious resource of information... And yet it marked the history of literature and art, and yet it is still invoked and used today, and yet people keep referring it as a source of demonology.

Overall it reminds me of this question and subject that is sometimes brought up... What is the best way to make folklore live on? For some, it is collecting all folklore and folktales we have, and printing them, keeping them exactly as they were, with no edition, but just side-commentary and explanations, and keep these bits as immobile and frozen as they were before. And for others, like Dubois and the like, the best way to maintain folklore is rather to make it alive again, collect it yes, but also allow ourselves to twist it a bit, to retell it, to link various folktales and unify the various legends and myths in one whole show, and extend it into new stories and new tales. Of course there is no right or wrong answer here, both approaches are needed - we need true folklorists who will collect folklore as it is and bring it in its original truth, as much as we need author, artists and poets who will make pieces of fiction out of this folklore and spin new tales out of these old ones. But it is still a strong debate, and people that keep blurring the lines between the two are often not very well-received - for good or bad, right and wrong... And Dubois is clearly one of those very polarizing figure, with as much blame as praise. However it cannot be denied that he did a bit what Walt Disney did in America - revitalize and bring under a new and fresh form a fairy-world to an audience that was massively uninterested and unknowledgeable about folktales and folklore. Starting once again a love for fairies.

[endueringfire]

hello, hello, it's mist (she/her/they/them) here again! this time it's my fuckboy park byunghee (27, actor&soloist&social media personality&ex-professional boyfriend). there's more info under the cut, but you can find his profile and his career. just like with rhiannon, i also did a plots page with five important plots for byunghee. like this post and i'll hit you up, or you can find me on discord @ moonpsy!

TW: infidelity, bullying & a guy being a guy

park byunghee was born in seoul, south korea, on april 13, 1996. both his parents are blue-collar workers and byunghee grew up pretty poor.

he got a scholarship for a fancy kids rich school and suffered intense bullying there for a long time. not only was he angry but also very envious of how the rich kids could just get away with anything simply by having money. set his mind into becoming famous one day.

wanted to audition right after school but had to do his military enlistment. left, got three part time jobs to pay for singing and acting classes and managed to audition for a bunch of companies, only making it into a very, very tiny one.

debuted in 2017 in a very flop bg that sold approximately 1k copies through the two and a half years they were active. company went bankrupt in 2020 and byunghee made about 100k won that entire time.

not one to give up, went back to three part time jobs to pay for more classes. an ex-manager, who was now working under secret garden, hooked byunghee up with a private audition and they accepted him as an actor.

started acting but clearly wasn't the focus of the company so he kept doing web-dramas that were very niche (including a bl). begged his manager to get him something bigger to participate in, ended up in love lab experiment, a netflix dating show (think single's inferno-esque).

got a relationship and a career out of that and started making, out of a single sponsored post, more money that he had ever seen in his life.

relationship ended for reasons of byunghee being a Guy and cheating and immediately he started seeing a decrease in interest for him. pivoted into releasing solo music, banking on his skills and the 2 million instagram followers to sustain him and his debut did moderately well. now byunghee is trying to find other avenues through which he can keep his status and his income.

personality:

an extroverted introvert, if that makes sense? enjoys a good party and being around friends, but won't seek out connections and definitely gets drained when spending too much time outside.

super fucking dedicated to anything he sets his mind to. has a "i want it i got it" mentality.

on the other hand, has never heard of an impulse control.

both a fuckboy and extremely possessive in relationships, which bleeds into his friendships as well.

such a jealous and envious person. will wish upon your downfall if he finds out you're somehow doing something he does better/more successfully than him.

he's a caring person, though, with the people he likes. a hype man in every way possible. surprisingly a decent mentor.

somewhat of a devout catholic. goes to church every sunday with his mama and originally learned how to sing in church.

[zenabek]

New Media Takes the Crown ! (Week 11)

For the final week of lecture as well as the last week to update our blog posts for assessment 2, we went through media trends and visual designs for class.

New media is the main star of all forms of media today. This revolves around all things digital and in social media. Prior to this, people constantly used and opted for traditional media instead, which includes television, radio, newspapers and magazines. As people spend more time viewing and scrolling through new media, less time is being spent on traditional media.

There are three different current media trends:

Ephemeral content, for example, videos on Instagram and Snapchat, will be constantly gaining popularity

Niche social platforms will perform well

Social commerce and engaging video contents will dominate

In addition to focusing on the new media and its trends, video graphics were also mentioned. One example of application of 3D animations in video graphics is Vtubers in Youtube!

On the other hand, we learnt about the importance of visual designs and its fundamentals. Logos’ specific designs help to make the brand or company more unique and iconic. There are numerous elements and principles that make a significant difference in one’s design. We should always keep up with the latest trends to stay updated and relevant.

In this week, my groupmates and I also finalized on the plot of our third assessment. At that point of time, we have agreed on having a main character with a newfound ability of hearing the thoughts of others around her. We ditched the idea of combining two ideas into one from last week, as the short film may get too long and confusing for the audience.

There were two ways to go about doing the film whilst following our agreements.

First idea: The main character uses her new ability to save the lives of others, and reminds them of the importance of life.

Second idea: The main character gets extremely overwhelmed and afraid after freshly acquiring her ability. She soon realizes that she is not the only one with such an ability.  

We took some time to discuss on this and unanimously agreed on the second idea. It was a relief how easily we could come to an agreement as we did not have much time left to spare on formulating our plot and script. Filming starts next week, I can’t wait to see how it goes!

(400 words)

[terpia]

Early Modern Drama Rec List (Non-Shakespeare)

So I just spend a year reading a lot of early modern drama and I thought I might as well put my degree to a good use and make a list of some of my favourite lesser known (i.e. not written by Shakespeare) early modern plays. All of these plays are in the public domain, so it should be very easy to find them online.

Comedies:

The Roaring Girl by Thomas Middleton and Thomas Dekker - a fictional story featuring a dramatized portrayal of a real person, Mary Firth, also known as Moll Cutpurse. Moll was a notorious pickpocket, wore a doublet and breeches, smoked a pipe, cursed, and was generally infamous for her 'mannish' behaviour. And she's a character in this play!

It is open to interpretation how positive the play's depiction of Moll really is, but she does play a very important role in getting the main pair of lovers together and ends the play happily continuing to live her life the way she wants, which is in itself pretty incredible. Overall, just a really fun read.

Galatea (or Gallathea) by John Lyly - a 16th century play that is both gay and trans??? Sign me up! In a village where the fairest virgin needs to be sacrificed to Neptune every 5 years (or he'll drown everyone), two fathers decide to disguise their beautiful daughters as boys and hide them in a nearby forest. While wandering around the forest the two girls meet and, falling for each other's disguises, fall in love. In the end (spoilers for the ending, but this is not exactly a play you read for the plot, lol), Diana stops Neptune, the two girls find out each other's true identities and decide they're still in love, and Venus turns one of them (we never find out which one) into a boy so that they can get married.

As must be clear from this summary, this comedy plays around with gender a lot. To add to the gender cocktail, remember that the two girls would have been originally played by boys. Although the ending was seen as heteronormative by early queer critics, the emergence of trans criticism within queer theory has led to a lot of interesting readings of the play. Well worth a read.

(also, if you have a device on which you can play DVDs and some money to spare, consider buying a DVD of the Edward's Boys production of the play. Edward's Boys is a group that replicates the format of early modern boys' companies, with all roles in their productions being played by boys. I will admit, when I bought a DVD of their 2014 production of Galatea, I expected to watch a glorified high school performance, but it turned out to be so good. All the boy actors were amazing, way better at performing Shakespeare than a lot of Hollywood actors. This just straight-up felt like a professional theatre production, I highly recommend it.)

The Knight of the Burning Pestle by Francis Beaumont - I don't even know how to describe this play other than 'fantastic and fun'. A meta-theatrical city comedy, which starts with a pair of audience members (who were actually two dressed-up boy actors from the boys' company performing the play) jumping onto a stage and demanding to see a different play than the the one being set up. Things get only wilder from there.

A genuinely really funny play. I don't know of anyone who has read it and hasn't immediately loved it.

The Sea Voyage by John Fletcher and Philip Massinger - one of the least well known plays out of this list, which is unfortunate because this play is really fun. Short and sweet, it's a story of a bunch of (surprisingly honorable) pirates, who get shipwrecked on an island inhabited by a tribe of Amazon-like women. Predictably, hijinks ensue. An interesting look into early modern gender relations (apparently the main reason why living without men would be difficult for women is because of how horny they would get? I think Fletcher and Massinger need to take a lesson or two from Lyly).

The Alchemist by Ben Jonson - want to see three assholes con a bunch of idiots in increasingly ridiculous ways? Then this is the play for you.

Jonson's city comedies, which satirize the people of early modern London, tend to be much meaner in tone than Shakespeare's comedies and the other comedies on this list, but in many ways, that's what makes them fun. Viciously clever and at times really funny, there's an edge to the writing that makes it very entertaining. I had a lot of fun reading this (Jonson's Epicoene is also great, if you want a comedy that's even meaner and also has some very questionable gay stuff in it).

Tragedies:

Doctor Faustus by Christopher Marlowe - probably the most famous non-Shakespeare early modern play, and for a good reason. It has everything; pacts with the devil, a melodramatic anti-hero protagonist, homoeroticism (I mean of course, it's Marlowe), and a suitably gory and tragic ending. What more can you ask for?

The Tragedy of Mariam by Elizabeth Cary - this play is more interesting than fun, but I think it's still well worth a read. It's the first original play written in English by a woman. The play takes place in ancient Palestine. It looks at the way Mariam, a Jewish queen, reacts to the news of the death of her husband, the tyrannous Herod (yes, the baby-killing guy from the Bible). Most people seem to be relieved. Except oops, Herod is not actually dead.

A fascinating look at gender ideology in the early modern period, with the play centering around the conflict of a woman who tries to live up to the ideals of a perfect wife and woman, while stuck in a marriage to a tyrant. This play would also be a great read for anyone interested in how gender and sexuality intersected with race in early modern England, because this play uses a lot of racialized language to describe women.

The Duchess of Malfi by John Webster - a classic revenge tragedy. A recently widowed Duchess wants to marry her steward, but her asshole brothers throw a fit. Intrigue and death ensue. At one point a fake wax hand and some fake wax corpses appear on stage.

This play basically reads like a good thriller. Fucked up in a way that only an early modern revenge tragedy can be, this is a fun and thrilling read.

The Changeling by Thomas Middleton and William Rowley - speaking of fucked up. If you're planning to read it, be mindful that this play contains sexual assault. It's a story of a young noblewoman called Beatrice, who wants to get rid of her fiancé after falling in love with a visiting nobleman. To do it, she enlists the help of her villainous servant De Flores. Things end up going extremely badly.

This play can get very uncomfortable at times, but just like The Duchess, it's as gripping as any good modern thriller. Very engaging. The ending is as engrossing as it is stomach-churning, although probably not for the reasons it was originally meant to (reading criticism about The Changeling, it is genuinely shocking and disheartening to see how long it took for critics to start addressing the clear issues of consent in the play). The story also includes a bizarre virginity test that uses a potion which makes you drowsy or which makes you sneeze and laugh depending on whether you had sex or not, so hey, at least that's fun?

Antonio's Revenge by John Marston - ok, so this is definitely the least... good of the plays I've recommended so far, but listen. Do you like trainwrecks? Do you like violence so over-the-top that people to this day wonder whether it's actually supposed to be a parody of the revenge tragedy genre? Are you looking for a reading experience that will make you go 'what the fuck' throughout? If so, this is the play for you!

Very much in the so bad it's good category. Ridiculously gory. The only thing that makes it better is knowing that it was originally played by children (on a related note, I haven't seen this production, but I know that this play has also been played by Edward's Boys). If you like horrible, gory horror movies, you'll probably enjoy this play.

That's it for now! Hopefully at least a few of these plays catch your interest.

Btw, LibriVox, which is an organisation that makes public domain recordings of public domain texts, has most of these plays available as free audiobooks, if you're interested!

[thekitschdiet]

my take on the literary masterpiece, the chic diet

Firstly, I am no one. It’s part of my charm. My fifteen minutes of fame was years ago, when I had an instagram niche meme page. I didn’t even take any brand deals! And my posts averaged six thousand likes! Anyhow. I am hardly literate and well hydrated and carry a small sephora-CVS-hybrid worth in my mini tote bag. Here is my guide on how to live like me, the intermediate kitsch-rat, aspiring influencer. But like, in an apathetic, somewhat dissonant, ironic way. I like saying I live by dogmatic principles. But a lot of it, um, is just eating disorder rituals. But that’s not really important. You’re as hot as you say you are, and as much an authority on what you write so long as you say it with, you know, conviction. It’s kind of venerable how fucking delusional I am, actually. Giving any sort of advice like I’m anywhere close to the ritzy ideal of the amphetamine-areyouami label-american. New York, ideally. West Village, preferably. But I guess the kind of guide I can write is better suited to someone living in a suburb, in a house with the twelve-paned windows. I always thought those were so chic. SO quaint, in a somewhat luxe way. Like, Connecticut vibes. My parents used to drive me up there as a child to buy books and ice cream. Nowadays I’d opt for a matcha latte with novelty ice cubes, but I guess at the time it was pretty sweet. 

Because I popped a Vyvanse at like, 10pm, this next little bit could go one of two ways. I will write the most articulate, brilliant piece of literature of my life. Magnum opus, if there was a skinnier word for it. Or, I will get wrapped up doing something like folding all my last-season knits (which is part of my look, okay! I don’t have a job!) and fixating on a paragraph on how a girl’s collarbones are almost as identifying as a fingerprint, or a signature. I’m not a graphologist, but if you write your A’s with the little tail on top (like on a computer), you’re probably a snake. Nothing personal, just an observation. Also, I do have a biology final to study for. Not that I’m super anal, or even particularly committed to academia, but even in my precariously manicured (read that as separate terms; I did a good job on my nail polish, okay? But I happen to also be teetering on the brink of an epiphany or a collapse. Hence the use of the word precarious.) state, I know it’s important enough I can let one of my countless side-quests sit idle for a couple more days. 

The first section seems only natural to be about hydration. And the whole idea of drinking things, really. There was a section in The Chic Diet about Adderall dry-mouth, which deeply resonated with me. Once I bit off a chunk of a Nivea Strawberry Shine (my favorite lip balm, more on that later) and swished it around my mouth. Didn’t help. Really, really didn’t. Anyway, I suppose that even if it served no purpose for combatting my prevacatingly ingenious cottonmouth solution, I was able to milk a sentence or two out of the experience. “Do it for the Vine”, all grown up! And wearing bananapapaya resin hoops too. Side note, that Etsy shop is a parasocial enemy of mine. It stems from jealousy, which sucks, but hating from inside a club I’m adjacent to is much healthier than being a hateful individual towards people I would, you know, interact with. Daily. Or something. I stopped going to therapy because I felt stupid about going and I don’t live in the right kind of town to warrant vacuous $300 hours. Bitching about my well-adjusted parents and how desperately I wished my anxiety would just “go away” was plainly gross, and a waste. Like, pretty sure almost every problem I have could be solved by a couple painful conversations taking place during a hurricane. Such a shame it doesn’t rain much here. Anyhow, I digress. 

Staying hydrated. It is essential to my character, my persona, if you will; to never be without either an elegant metal bottle (I’m loyal to the smooth enamelled S’well ones, printed to look like marble or a semi holographic solid) or a little 16oz tumbler with a metal straw. Hydroflasks were some of the worst things to happen to society. I want to preface this claim with the fact that I wanted one in the same way a teenage girl wants a new iPhone so she can keep up appearances with her dermatologist-dad friends who still have the XR, by the way. But I ended up spending the money on like, a minidress at Brandy Melville before it fled my city. Or maybe a Fresh Sugar tinted lipbalm. For the better, even though the dress has a busted zipper now and the lipbalm tube has inevitably gotten dinged and dented by the other contents of my mini-totebag. Unlike a car, though, a couple scuffs on your laptop or your luxury lipbalm tube looks kind of cool. Like, you’re not someone who values the pristine, unused quality of an item that was ambiguously intended to be used versus displayed on Instagram.  Now, I’m wondering why this paragraph about hydration is so fucking impossible to stay on track for. I literally drink several litres of water a day, and more tea on top of that. And sometimes an almond milk latte if I can budget it in. Not that I’m so anorexic I can’t afford a 45cal latte. They’re just not that important to me. Anyhow. Drinking lukewarm (on the cool side) water is better than ice-cold. Partially because I just get it out of the tap of my ensuite and I can’t be bothered to wait for it to run cold enough every time, and it just seems wasteful. Plus, there is something so.. skinny about drinking water at an “obscure” temperature. Trust me, I want to know why my thought process is like this too. My favorite tea is blueberry tea foraged in a side aisle at my local supermarket. I love a good commercial, high-end steep or fruit infusion as much as the next girl. Maybe more. My pantry is filled with tins labelled with things like “emerald jade organic” and “magic potion”, which is really just currants and butterfly pea flowers. But there is a necessary glamor about drinking dirt-cheap tea on the daily. Seriously, a box of 25 sachets is like, $3. At a higher point with my, um, Adderall problem, I spent like several times that on pills. I didn’t really need to include that, and could have linked the price point to the cost of a drugstore lipbalm, but I wrote it in. And I’m married to it, stubbornly, as all amateur writers should be when they wittle in a somewhat indecorous little joke. This tea is sooo good because it has a strong fruit-reminiscent taste (not as sweet as a fresh blueberry, but who wants that anyway?), it’s zero-calorie, it’s the most GORGEOUS color ever. The latte, the third drink in my little trifecta, is nothing special. But necessary. The trick is to use a milk frother to whip up sugar free syrup with instant coffee and a little bit of hot water in a glass. It’ll make the most luscious foam.. Top it off with almond milk. My dad is a coffee purist, owning both an upstairs keurig AND a downstairs one (among other more analogue methods, but I can’t name-drop, so what’s the point?), so he hates this drink. Now, calling oneself a plebian is so unglamorous and teetering on self-deprecating territory, dangerously close to insecurity. But I can use it here because I am at least posh enough to have a different pair of earrings for every outfit I could possibly come up with, and I only wear Patagonia if I am in a situation where I just have to wear fleece. Like I was saying. It’s such a simple drink, certainly not a delicacy, and… I had a joke about the word plebian but I keep getting up to refill my water and I fear I have forgotten about it. 

Next section; the importance of a good tinted balm

In the intro I alluded to how a girl’s collarbones function essentially as an identifier, the way a signature or fingerprint does. This is a lie, or at least an exaggeration. But one’s ultimate tinted lipbalm is  actually extremely indicative about who you are, as a person, as a member of society, even… 

If you are loyal to Dior Lipglow, I have a couple questions. One; did you shoplift one tube, once, and refill it with cheaper stuff afterwards? I did that. I consider it one of my better-kept secrets, but now you know. Might as well explain the catalyst for my parent’s first separation now, and the horrifying experience that was meeting my dad’s Manhattan sugar baby (?) at the age of thirteen, wearing an overalls dress from, like, Topshop or something else equally embarrassing. .. Kidding. I digress. It’s such a fancy lipbalm, and good too! It smells like thin mints! But I could just never justify cell phone monthly installation payment money on something I will inevitably talk off. I do own three, but two I stole (before I lost the nerve, somewhat unfortunately) and one, a boy(not)friend bought for me. This is not something I feel any remorse about, because his house was easily four thousand square feet and his sisters had a dedicated all-glass room for their shared peloton. Oil money. Ugh!

My personal favorite lip balm, and I have tried a frightening amount, has got to be the Nivea Fruit Shine collection. The frosted one is shit-ugly. Hideous. But the strawberry one is the love of my life. It’s such a pleasant red, looking healthy and rejuvenated and really completes any look. Only downside is it will always, hopefully not always, remind me of Charles. Kissing Charles, specifically. And him asking me what lipbalm it was, because he knew I was somewhat frivolous and definitive and would have a very long answer. But for whatever reason, I simply stated it was from “out of town”. Not really sure why I said that, but it plagues me (minorly) to this day. Of all the things to make up.. .. The peach one is a perfectly demure spring classic shade. Cherry exists too, but the only tube I have ever had the fortune of owning was purchased in Costa Rica and lost somewhere on the way home. Honestly tragic, it was the juiciest shade. Blackberry is perfect too, but I have to layer it with either peach or untinted lipbalm to avoid what I imagine TooPoor would choose if she believed in tinted lipbalm. I don’t mean this hatefully, I think she’s a queen, but super dark, smudgy makeup suits the eyes better in my opinion. Or something. Or something.

Afraid to bore the reader, I have to move on now. Maybe at a later date I will release an addendum on my ultimate lipbalm buying guide. But also, that is so deeply personal (and everyone needs the excuse of “hunting for the perfect staple shade!!”), so it is really not my place to have any authority on something so intimate and subjective. Etcetera. 

Moving on; Decorating your room

Here is a section I lifted out of my memoir document. It fits, because as enigmatic as I hope I am, I am also quite unchanging.

 I just pushed three hangers and two tiny strappy tops with the tags still on, off my bed. Most nights, all, these days, actually; I spend in my large but cluttered bedroom. I have a little ensuite with a jetted tub I’ve never used because I just never get around to it. There’s a plush grey rug, spanning the expanse of the room (covering an ugly cherry wood that doesn’t match the rest of the house; no clue why. I never asked, and the previous owners were eager to sell so they could finally ditch this town and retire in Montreal for the bagels, or Hawaii for the monk seals. Point is, I’ll never know) with loose beads and loose pills and little shards of glass from plier-crushed beads. I vacuum every day. The whole room tells you exactly the kind of person I am; the clutter I possess, the encapsulation of the projects I start, start, start and the hours I don’t sleep for and the clothes I tried on (these to sell, these to cut up with kitchen scissors; thrifted lululemon and aritzia and heaps of knits and plaid fabric..) I would not say the room is a mess. Lived in, maybe. Chopsticks and mugs and gum wrappers. Single dangle earrings. I just finished the last of my Creme Brulee eos lipbalm; disguised as a relic of 2015, I was gifted it Christmas of ‘20. I think my next waxy conquest will be a tinted Burt’s one I palmed a while back, before I lost the nerve. Peering around the room you will see shopping bags strewn about the mouth of my walk-in closet. Every surface has something shiny or colorful stacked up on it. Cluttered, busy, but intentional. Except for the walls, which are bare. Bare and gray and miles-tall when I lie flat on my back, high out of my mind, willing things to change but knowing I’m responsible for a first step I will always be too scared for. Bare, pristine, no gumtack. Empty, Like they’re waiting. I wait around a lot. It makes sense. That was an awful lot of words about my stupid blank walls when truly it does not bother me that much; I really just don’t get around to it. I have other things on the ground to tend to, like post-email nausea, addressing envelopes, marrying wire and bead.  Writing a document I care about because I am determined and I am alive, alive, alive, goddammit. 

Excerpt over. The memoir is coming out when I get famous, or something earth shattering happens. Like I become the world’s least remarkable entrepreneur, and I get retweeted by Colorpop. I don’t want to be the next Elizabeth Wurtzel. I read two of her memoirs one restless night, absorbing it to make up for the nutrients I didn’t that day (you can laugh. I think that is pretty clever), heart breaking a little bit. She writes about her struggles so intrinsically, you either get it, or you don’t. Anyway. She had the books and the fame from it, and she wrote more memoirs than I think a single person should. That is admirable. Aspirational, even. But I do not want to be like her. Where was I? Oh. Yes. Decorating/adorning/filling your room. Your room should serve as the kind of place to watch a movie (if you believe in film. I don’t) and put on ridiculous glittery eye makeup, or smoke an ~artistic cigarette~ or stay up all night on the phone, which is different from staying up all night simply on your phone. Chatting with someone you are tepidly in love with is much more exciting. Not chic as the whole affair is so juvenile, but fun regardless. It’s somewhere to keep your worldly possessions, too. I know I have a lot! Also, it is kind of thrilling to hide things in your room in little crevices only you know about. Now, unfortunately, everyone reading this will know too. But, like, I trust you not to really.. do anything about it. I keep my extra juul pods in the sliding box my apple pencil came in. That box is almost more useful than the pencil itself. I’m somewhat morally opposed to the iPad. Whole culture is so embarrassing! I have a tea tin with an ounce of golden teacher shrums in it. This is tossed in my closet among tins filled with other things, like lace trim and buttons. Which makes it actually a pretty terrible hiding spot, I see now… Anyhow. Keeping benign little secrets like that is so fun. You can tell I don’t have siblings. I sort of wish I did, but it is easier to believe there is something aristocratic about being an only child. Not sure if older-sister me would be egalitarian enough to share things. But that’s prophesying, which is kind of a waste of time. I live in the now, in a room positively cluttered with meaningless things that mean the world to me, chewing on my lip because my mouth is just so dry and 5gum is just not an after-8 indulgence. To live truly kitschly, you have to have somewhat hideous decor. Now, do not confuse dissonant, or incoherent, with what I mean by “hideous decor”. The kitsch room has as many surfaces to look at as possible, while also shying away from too many shelving units. Then you risk your room looking like a storage unit or something. When my mom renovated (re: paid someone to do it) our New York house so we could sell it, all our stuff was stacked up in a Cubesmart self storage. It was sort of horrifying, seeing my childhood home reduced to plastic storage tubs piled what felt like thirty feet high. Anyway. It’s just not an  inviting way to store things; I imagine it makes your room look like your stuff is all trapped in gelatin. The more fussy, tiny things you have out in the open, the better. Nail polish. Earring trees. Bowls full of rings and lighters and water color pans perched on your windowsill. A rack with the tackiest assortment of knits and bucket hats and baguette bags. And so forth.. Quickly surveying someone’s room is so telling. Bonus points if all your books are spine-in, except for your favorite ones, because you don’t want people to get the wrong idea. (that you read). 

[seimei-chsq]

people you want to know more about

blowing a kiss to the lovely @temerairemybeloved for tagging me <3

i’m tagging @yuzu-all-the-way, @mididoodles and @acetronaught -- no pressure, of course!

now. i’m in capable of shutting up so we gotta ✂️ ✂️

full disclosure: i started working on this a couple days ago, and only got around to posting it now. meaning some of the ~time sensitive~ responses might’ve changed, but i liked my original answers so... i’m keeping them :)

favourite colour: changes with the seasons lol. it was blue for a very long time, and currently i’m partial to purple!

favourite food: sushi! …or my mother’s lamb, eggplant, and tomato stew <3

song stuck in your head: ‘venus fly trap’ by MARINA, excellent vibes 10/10

last thing you googled: lol, it was ‘cat bite gif’. i was looking for that one gif of a cat biting a blanket and shaking it around? i was chatting about yuzuru’s retirement with the above mentioned @temerairemybeloved, and it invoked an extremely normal reaction in me :)

time: 5:05 PM as i type this 

dream trip: i’ve wanted to visit Paris since i was teeny tiny, and while some of the draw has faded as i’ve gotten older, i’d like to go just once and satisfy that childhood dream. spend a ridiculous amount of money on food etc. alternatively, would love to run off to a cottage in the countryside someday <3

last book you read: ‘these violent delights’ by chole gong. retelling of romeo and juilet set in shanghai in the year 1926, i’ve been trying to finish it for ages. it’s less of a romance and more of a slow-burn mystery — which might be a good thing, because the plot is far more interesting than the romance itself.

last book you enjoyed reading: … i don’t remember. might’ve been a poetry collection by barbara kingsolver? it was amazing, i still think about some of those pieces.

last book you hated reading: my psych textbook is so dry it makes me want to weep. the team responsible for its creation hated students, i fear.

favourite thing to cook/bake: despite how much i enjoy cooking, don’t think i have one? i make pretty solid fried rice — it’s quick and easy and delicious. i also used to really enjoy making spinach-and-cheese lasagna rollups, but i don’t have the patience for that these days.

favourite craft to do in your spare time: recently started learning how to do embroidery, which has been shockingly fun. 

most niche dislike: idk if it’s ‘my most niche dislike’ but… the overuse of slow-mo shots in ‘the umbrella academy’ is getting on my nerves lmao. i know it’s part of the show’s ‘style’, but if you use a visual effect too much, it gradually loses its impact and just becomes annoying. find another way to edit your action scenes, i beg.

opinion on circuses now and in history: went to one when i was very little, i think when we were visiting my uncle in moscow…? all i remember is being really interested in a bubble-maker toy that a vendor was selling outside, and also a lot of horses. this is where my knowledge and opinion of circuses end.

do you have a sense of direction and if not, what’s the worst way you got lost: i like to think i do, but… well. on my first day of university, i spent at least 10 minutes going in circles with my GPS app trying to find the humanities building. finally ended up asking a nearby security guard, and he pointed to a building i’d walked right past at least three times with ‘humanities wing’ printed neatly over the doorway. so. i think that answers that :)

[bansheeoftheforest]

Do you perhaps have some Jekshire thoughts you could share? I cannot get enough of this unfortunately very niche ship.

Hehe hehehe heheheheehhehe hehehhe heh <3

I... Might have gone a bit off board with this but hehe... Somehow this ended up being mostly about how they got together and the beginning of their relationship but??? eh <3

While Henry hadn't really realized his bisexuality until he met Robert and immediately felt ashamed by it, Enoch had always had a hum about his bisexuality. Except, of course, he chalked it up to him and his pals just being bros. Just pals being dudes. Lads being guys. Nothing unusual with that. Although when he did realize that maybe he thought guys looked... Ahem, better than most other guys would think, he just shrugged it off and didn’t give a single shit about it, though <3

Enoch was one of the first persons that Henry saw when he entered London for the first time; Enoch was an officer-in-training patrolling the London borders with his higher-ups, and Henry was an eager student about to make his way straight to the University campus. They shared a short glance and Enoch couldn't help but feel like Henry was awfully cute, although he didn't even catch those thoughts himself.

It's no secret that Henry-- as a young, successful doctor, bachelor, and just generally a good and attractive person-- has a lot of people that has a crush on him, yet he doesn't notice that himself. He catches people's heart like they are flies flocking to his light, Enoch was no different, although it took a handful of more encounters with him in their latter years for him to realize that. Henry remained blissfully unaware.

Enoch has always been good at hiding his emotions and keeping them away from his workplace, but when he came back from a patrol after just having ran into Dr. Jekyll and shared a brief chat with him, it was not hard for the other officers to notice that something was... Hm, unusual with Brokenshire that day.

It took only a handful of more solo patrols and Enoch coming back like he had just gotten a red-faced spring allergy with soft grumbling for Jenkins and Wipple realize he kept meeting an object of his affections. Cue a lot of teasing. Cue a lot of protests from Brokenshire. Cue a lot of drunkenly getting his feelings out to his friends by simply making it seem like Henry is a married woman that Enoch accidentally had fallen for. Cue a lot of sympathy and even more teasing.

So if he suddenly had a lot of solo patrols by the Society, then he would just say it was his sheer luck. 

He ends up accidentally running into Henry a lot. Henry always seems pleasantly delighted and surprised. Enoch can never really help but feel extremely giddy about it. 

They never really formally became friends until they both attended an event held by the commissioner. Both being close friends to their mutual associate, the two of them ended up running into each other again quite quickly.

Or more like, Henry saw Brokenshire standing in a corner, dressed in his finest (and only) formal suit while sipping wine. It had taken exactly half a moment for Henry to completely abandon whatever friends he had been chatting up to make his way over to the lonely sergeant. A sergeant who very much tried to hide his blush and fluster while trying to not choke on his wine. 

They ended up casually talking for the first time during that event, they both learned a lot about each other-- Henry often spoke of Glasgow with Brokenshire, who’s family had immigrated from Edinburgh to London before he was born.

While they started casually talking during the event, they soon began to spend more time together. Enoch quickly learned that Henry’s reputation of being someone who very much will talk someone’s ears off wasn’t an overstatement, yet he found it quite endearing. Soon Enoch would find himself accompanied by the doctor during his lonely patrols in Westminster, and soon Henry found himself getting escorted to his meetings by a particularly bored sergeant who always seemed to catch him at the right time.

It really did not take long for Enoch to realize why the commissioner was so fond of Henry, and it really did not take long for his sudden crush on the other man to get a bit overwhelming.

Henry, meanwhile, had been too caught up with the actual events of TGS to fully notice his own growing fondness for the sergeant. Or more like, he saw the signs but refused to confront them in fear of repeating what happened to him and Robert... And, well, falling for a police officer who wants another part of him dead.

That plan went straight to hell. Henry soon caught himself following the sergeant like an affectionate puppy, and his little love-sickness was quickly noticed by a handful of Lodgers who desperately wanted to know who had managed to get suck a reaction out of him. The fact that Henry was suddenly spending more and more time with Enoch seemed to go completely unnoticed by everyone.

Neither of them really realized their feelings for each other until Brokenshire found Henry stumbling down the street one night; his body was beaten and bruised, his clothes were torn, and he had just managed to escape a nasty bar-fight that Hyde had gotten him into. It was just his luck that he had managed to escape enough to get some HJ7 into him. Enoch had decided that the Society or the hospital were both too far away, so he took him into the station instead. Yet he merely told the other officers to find the offenders while he patched up Henry.

It was certainly unprofessional of him to place Henry down on his own chair in his office before gently placing the palm of his coarse hand on the other’s cheek as he began to clean the wounds and the dried blood from the nosebleed, and yet neither could say that they minded. Something about having Enoch’s large hand on his sensitive face made Henry melt into the touch, something about seeing Henry’s eyes flutter close at the careful touches got Enoch’s heart beating faster and faster.

Henry had been... Quite out of it, so to speak. Enoch had not known if it was because he was horribly drunk or had suffered a nasty hit to the head, but as he carefully began to question him about what had happened, the way Henry would almost grin and tilt his head upwards (almost as if he was proud of it) got a completely unnecessary blush to reach Enoch’s cheeks. 

Enoch helped Henry back to the Society, and yet he could not keep himself from visiting the next morning. “Just to make sure he is fine”, he had told himself. Well, the Lodgers did not believe that, and poor hangover Henry woke up to the sound of a lot of yelling from the foyer. The Lodgers were too busy trying to shoo the sergeant (who was off-duty, mind you) to notice the doctor. Enoch noticed him immediately and yet he hated how his heartbeat began to pick up again.

It all ended up with Henry inviting Enoch into his office for a bit of tea... Which, in itself, ended up with the two of them sitting closer to each other than probably should have been socially acceptable. Neither could deny that it probably wasn’t the steaming tea that warmed them up, neither could deny that their companion was looking too good for their own good in that soft morning light.

Henry was too hungover to really think straight, soon they ended up gazing at each other and neither could look away. Suddenly Henry felt himself coming closer, he heard how Brokenshire’s breath hitched, yet neither pulled away. They noses brushed together, both knew that they should probably pull away, and neither did. In the end, it was Enoch who placed his hand on Henry’s cheek and closed the distance between them.

Enoch and Henry didn’t leave the office for hours. Both could consider themselves lucky that Enoch had a day off and Henry had nothing scheduled. 

Ahaha anyways time for some actual hcs about this ship.

Enoch is very protective of Henry. Like, stupidly protective, and yet he always makes sure that he never overwhelm Henry with it. He just worries a lot for his lover and especially since he knows what a cruel world they live in and how terrible Henry is at taking care of and loving himself. Henry thinks it’s quite sweet, especially just because he thinks it’s nice to have a lover who actually cares about him.

Both Enoch and Henry love dogs. Enoch does not bat an eye at church grims. Rachel had to physically restrain both of them from adopting an entire graveyard filled with church grims after many of the smaller churches in London were destroyed to make way for new apartments.

Cuddles. SO much cuddles. Neither are big at PDA or physical affection otherwise but jesus christ so many cuddles. It goes to the point where neither can sleep without the other, so Henry has to constantly sneak out of the Society (or his own house) to get to Enoch’s apartment since he doesn’t want to risk his servants or the Lodgers getting suspicious. Enoch always waits for him with a cup of peppermint tea for him when he comes by during the night.

Henry has a thing for men in uniform. That’s it. That’s the post /hj.

Enoch is the only person that Henry feels comfortable actually slipping into his Scottish accent with. He doesn’t try to stop it when he is incredibly tired or incredibly drunk because in the end, it wasn’t like Enoch didn’t have a thick accent all the time.

Surprisingly, Enoch is the one that has to patch Henry up a lot. For being a doctor, he really has no idea how to take care of himself or how to deem a wound serious enough to treat, or potions dangerous enough to not test on himself. Enoch always patches him up and Henry always melts into his hands like an ice-cube by a candle. By the rare instances that Enoch does get hurt while on duty, he loves watching Henry fretting over him.

(Plus, he can freely demand as many kisses as he wants when he is bedridden because Henry can’t complain about it).

They are the same height-- or Enoch is slightly taller, but Henry wears heeled shoes so they don’t really notice until Henry takes the shoes off and suddenly he feels like Enoch became a goddamn tree. Enoch loves those moments more than he could possibly describe.

Enoch manhandles Henry a lot. He stays up late and refuses to go to bed? Enoch throws him over his shoulder and takes him to bed. Henry is teasing him or they are play fighting? Henry squeals as he suddenly get picked up bridal style. Enoch is incredibly strong and Henry weighs like... Nothing. Plus, his squeals are incredibly endearing.

Sometimes Enoch will wake up in the morning only to see Henry already awake playing with Ralphie and Zosi, and sometimes Enoch will swear that Henry only started dating him to steal his dog.

(Henry will only partially deny that).

Wipple and Jenkins once went on a surprise visit to Enoch’s apartment, having gotten a spare key each “for emergencies” (or more like for whenever they feel like annoying their friend). The first thing they saw was Henry and Enoch cuddled up on the couch. Enoch politely told them to get out of his apartment and not speak of this. For once, Wipple and Jenkins kept to that promise (although they did tease him a lot afterwards but hell, if their friend is just going to around dating a man like that it sure as hell should be someone they like as much as Dr. Jekyll). 

Somehow, they managed to keep their relationships quite a well-kept secret for many, many years. People only started to get suspicious when both the doctor and the sergeant conveniently retired at the same time and moved out of London. They took their pick-pack and moved into a manor at the outskirts of Edinburgh, forgetting their past life in London. They still kept in touch with their old friends, however, who often came to their home on vacation during the summers.

Just let me have Enoch becoming a grumpy old gay and Henry the tired old gay and just let me have them be happy pls <3

Oohoohohh. Give me tired old Enoch and Henry-- both with grey hair and wrinkled faces-- finding a young orphan on the streets when they are buying the groceries. Give me 60/70+ year old Enoch and Henry becoming dads <3<3<3

[tendermiasma]

i’m not even into overwatch anymore but i just wanted to say I ADORE your art style and hope to develop my own into a similar semi-realism leaning...have you made a post about your art journey? I’m assuming I just need to buckle down and do anatomy studies but any tips are very welcome!! Ty for your time <3

Oh man thank you! I’ve never made a comprehensive post about how I got to *gestures* whatever this point in my art this is, and I definitely sat here wondering what “art journey” means for me since I always feel like I’m stumbling around so I’ll answer as completely as I can. But a great way to develop a realism-minded eye is to draw from photos and life. Everyone in the world has said it over and over but it really gets it done, it’s not any more complicated than that. It’s how I started when I was little and it’s not something I planned, but the Legolas posters were right there so how could I not? Your own non-realism “stylistic” touch will bubble up whether you want it to or not and that’s a beautiful thing. It’s not something you need to look for because it happens on its own, whether it’s you seeing something another artist is doing that you like and assimilating it into your work, or it’s your own unique way that you absorb information from the world and use it to solve problems in the drawing in front of you. Some new artists also still have the idea that using references is cheating-- I’m not blaming them, sometimes this weird thing is circulated by more established people as well-- but this is a very small minority. Please use references. I’d be lost without them. The Castlevania team has a giant collection of references for faces of every character from every angle, props, etc. and I always have a second screen up with 10 different sheets of whoever I’m drawing. Feeding yourself info is essential to getting better. Look at how other artists handle something you’re having a problem with too. If they’re doing a similar pose or something, study their drawing and ask yourself what specifically, extremely technically about that drawing is convincing-- what marks are where, and what is the quality or direction of the strokes? Try it out on your own drawing. If you’re stuck, become aware of if you’re holding on too tightly to what you think something should look like. I have to remind myself this as well. Really try to let go of the idea you have in your head about how something works and simply try instead to draw what you see, even if it feels weird. The results are often pleasantly surprising. 

I have a funny relationship with studies. You seem to be looking at them like a chore and I feel the same way. It’s impossible for me to sit down and just draw something over and over, disconnected from emotion or a larger narrative. I think a wonderful way to “study” is to incorporate those studies into a project that you wanted to do anyway. I’ve used my minicomics to get better at background painting or specific figure poses that I needed for the story but wasn’t sure how to do. I’m a very “oops I need it now better learn TODAY” kind of artist, if that suits you better than buckling down and doing anatomy studies for hours. Both are great ways to improve, but you have options for how to get there. 

In terms of how much time I spend drawing.. well lol it’s a lot. I almost typed “but I don’t do it every day” but yes, my jobs have made sure that I do (I tend to separate personal drawing and job drawing). But the truth is, to get better, a lot of very focused drawing time is important; how much of it is up to you and your schedule. You can sit down for 6 hours and doodle or you can sit down for 3 with an extremely critical eye. It’s about the volume of time as well as focus and I don’t have a clear answer for it, but I can point to one specific year in my life where I made artistic progress like I’ve never seen from myself since. I drew a comic with regular updates during that time and, looking back, the art was not good. But the point was, I was drawing for 7 hours a day after work, at least 5 days a week, and actively looking to draw things that I hadn’t done before or knew that I wasn’t good at, and the result was that every single update was almost like it was drawn by a different person-- readers noticed and commented on the progress as well. It was very much an art bootcamp and I wouldn’t have the skills I do at this point if I hadn’t done it. It’s important that you’re loving what you do if you do it for yourself! That’s how you get through big projects and continue to be excited with where you are. Love is one of the most important motivators and discipline-keepers in art, in my experience. Draw what sets your brain on fire and attack it wholeheartedly even if it’s really weird or niche, not what you think you should be drawing, and you’ll improve a million times faster.

Art journey in terms of what I’ve done with my life (if this is what you meant from the beginning I’M SORRY I’m just trying everything you might have meant) uhhh I haven’t been to art school. I have no idea what my relationship with art would be like now if I’d had any formal training and I don’t really dwell on it. I could either be a testament to being able to get by without it or an example of someone who has no idea what she’s doing at all and lacks many basic foundational art skills. I have an architecture degree. I love architecture, I love the language of space we build for ourselves, and I’m truly, deeply glad for that eye-opening and often grueling experience, but I think my current field is a much better fit. Before animation I worked as a graphic designer mainly drawing storyboards for commercials and internal-industry stuff-- lots and lots of quick colored sketches (one of our main clients was a big glass company and my god I never thought I’d draw so much glass in my life). I was able to do that job due to the skills I developed through personal work. Maybe I’d be a hundred times more powerful if I went to art school! Maybe I’d be completely burned out and bitter and not drawing anymore at all! I just don’t know. I have friends who have had both experiences. Whether you choose art school or not it’s best to keep tabs on if the art you’re currently making brings you joy. Joy and struggle aren’t mutually exclusive. Oftentimes I’m drawing something I care deeply about but it’s VERY FUCKING HARD and I’m frustrated but it’s worth it.

I also do everything while being very scared of the thing. I have a lot of deep-seated anxiety that I’m constantly trying to root out and my brain compulsively twists things around into why I can’t do something, why people secretly know I’m below-par and are just too nice to tell me, how I’m “tricking” people into thinking I’m better than I am, etc. It’s so bad that my first thought when I was initially offered the art test for my current job was to say no; not because I didn’t want it so badly it hurt, but because I thought I’d be too much of a disappointment.  After completing the test I spent an hour figuring out the most gracious way to apologize for not being enough. It’s common, but not something to accept and we’re all working on it. I just thought it was important to mention because art is also a mental journey and forces you to do all this navel-gazey shit in order to advance, and feeling like you are Not Enough is rife in the creative community. The work feels entangled with my value as a person because art is a massive part of my life. Something I’m learning is that I don’t have to be confident or sure of myself all the time. This ensures that the process is usually painful and frightening. Often there’s no way to make it less painful or frightening, and I just have to hold my breath and do it. An oddly comforting thing to me the past couple years is to remind myself that the scary thing I’m about to do won’t be the scariest thing I’ll ever do. I implies both that this isn’t the pinnacle of my progress and also that I will inevitably get over it. If you continue with art you’re going to run into things like this and I guess if it was me it would’ve been helpful to know I’m not alone in it.

I hope that maybe answered some of your questions, maybe? If you have some specific questions feel free and I’ll try my best. Hope you have a good day/night!

[dougbeamer]

Decisions

I’ve spend a long time trying to figure out how I wanted to do things on social media. What is my presence going to be like? How often will I post? What can I do to keep things alive?

These are just a few questions I asked myself.

When I was single I went to town on how often I posted on YouTube and created whatever I could I thought was interesting, fun, and within the means of getting noticed without sacrificing the love. I went through numerous different tactics and ways.

7 Minutes or Less is a platform that I felt would be good to introduce people to tv shows. It’s gone through a number or different ways I wanted to present information. But now I think I know how I want to do things. Unfortunately, it’s taken a back seat in favor of movie reviews.

Love/Like/Hate felt dead on arrival because I started it and never really came around with any sort of focus. It was on films not trending and in the theater but ultimately I never got around to it. 

But that soon evolved into Cinema Spotlight. 

Cinema Spotlight really helped me focus. I started in late November of 2019 and I continued onwards till today. I’ve loved it. 

I’ve spend a long time trying to do whatever one else was doing thinking it was my own idea when really I was just copying and pasting the idea and plastering it with the sign:

I wasn’t finding my voice and I really couldn’t reshape my approach to new films or up and coming tv shows without seemingly looking like someone else’s idea.

Nevertheless, creating Cinema Spotlight truly helped me find my voice and my own niche. Choosing directors and going through their filmography seemed to be the way to go for me!

Then...recent developments in my life took place that I felt really hit me emotionally. Things were changing outside of my channel and I started to see how I have less and less time. 

Some things I can get into and other things i can’t. In hopes to keep them private I don’t want to put anything out there in the universe that will throw everything I’m talking about out the window. But some big changes in my life are coming and I need to start dedicating my time, effort and even money into them.

But what I can talk about is the expectations I had over establishing myself on this platform, the other social media outlets and the reality of what took place. So were going to dive into that.

So the first thing is between the different platforms I chosen I decided on Vimeo, YouTube, Tumblr (here) Facebook and Twitter.

Between all these platforms some made the cut others not so much. I certainly tried to get things started on here but never seemed to remember long enough that I even had an account. I would start something and never follow through. I would remember, restart and then forget simultaneously. 

It ultimately came down to Facebook and Twitter to be my ultimate promotion outlets. Friends and followers. I settled with that and it wasn’t too bad considering friends would watch what I would do once in a while and the followers I had maintained would watch as well. Bringing my videos to a fair 10-45 view count. Some videos have done better than others. 

So believe you me I am extremely grateful for that.

But...something happened in one month that really...struck a chord with me. It actually hurt on a fundamental level that became not only a wake up call but something I just felt maybe I was misunderstanding.

It came around the time I chose Peter Jackson for my next director. I planned on going through all his films and give a really special treatment to his Lord of the Rings trilogy. 

Before even watching any of his films I decided to prep for the biggest project I would ever tackle in a long time: Collaborations. 

I decided this would be a perfect opportunity to invite fans, friends and followers in to talk about LOTR. That is if they were fans of the franchise to begin with. 

I reached out to friends and asked them if they would like to be apart of it. 8 out of 10 times I got a yes. Sadly, as the weeks went on when I got started...not everyone had the time to sit down and record their favorite scenes or situations to make it by the deadline.  It was even worse reaching out on Twitter.

The people I would have loved to be apart of this LOTR project either were not interested because LOTR was not their thing or they simply chose never to get back to me. Which is what actually hurt the most.

Most of my life I see something I love I spend a long time trying to share it with others who haven’t seen it. I try not to force it and allow one to watch a movie or tv show genuinely so i don’t ruin the experience. But all my life I haven’t been able to share the love I’ve had for these things because i’ve been surrounded by family and friends who I didn’t get into it. They probably loved or liked it fine but not on the same level as me.

I’ve learned to accept that for the most part but i this particular situation with the LOTR project...I did put out there a “call to action”. 

Not that I felt a massive response of “yes” and “nos” were needed in order to feel great about myself but the fact that I didn’t get anything at all. Hurt me to the core.

If you go onto my channel you’ll see the first 5 films Peter has done are reviewed with a preface from me calling all LOTR fans. I ask if anyone wants to be apart of my review let me know and that anyone could reach out to me on Twitter.

Unless I actually reached out to someone personally on Twitter...i never got a single hit. No messages. Nothing on Youtube either. 

There were even a few people on Twitter I reached out to that neglected to even respond back with a yes or no.

In the end, you get the idea. The project was a dud. No friends could be apart of it. No followers or subs showed interest. And before this “woe is me” bull crap goes on any further I blame myself for not doing more. But what hurt with what I had no control over was the lack of interest from anyone.

This came down to logically seeing what the problem was. 

I could see that Honestly I didn’t have the proper heft in anyone’s platform to gain that kind of collaboration. I just simply didn’t have enough of an online presence. Jealousy and resentment kicked in feeling wronged by everyone who ignored me and life taking over which were things I had no control over but felt like it would be just typical for me to have no weigh in to having people falling over backwards to be apart of my project. 

That was on me. Having that kind of expectation. But it really put a damper on the cloud looming over me that month. 

In that time other things came about that just shut me down. I couldn’t handle the rejection or lack of passion from others and I just turned it around and blamed myself for even trying. So I took a break from all social media platforms.

After 3 months I found myself returning reviewing The Frighteners, Peter Jackson’s 6th film just before LOTR.

In that same month of June the unthinkable but entirely plausible thing happened.

My facebook profile was hacked. 

Everything I had within my profile is now gone. You should know I did try to recover it back. But the approach I took ended up becoming timely, costly and frustrating to where I am at the point of just leaving my profile to die. 

This in lue of the big changes i aforementioned there is something I did want to bring to light. I may be taking a small risk on bringing it up and I understand in light of the circumstances this may not even matter but... 

I am going to put my review channel on hold. 

Not because of the things I mentioned before so this isn’t a pity party or a build up of emotions that hinder me from performing. It’s actually a lot different than that.

What I plan to do is focus my energy on something I don’t think I’ve considered in a long while. 

Currently I am trying to write a book. A horror novel that has a lot of details, emotions, story beats and it’s something I really want to dedicate my time to. I don’t know what will come out of it but I do know I want to focus on it and get as much as I can done and hopes to see where it can go.

I plan to return to Youtube at some point but the reason I’m bothering with this announcement is because I see my subscribers as long term investors to my content. You all were generous enough to subscribe because you liked or loved that one video I made. You saw no problem in taking the time to click that button and say, “Hey, you were cool. You are worth my time.”

I feel you should know is merely on that fact that you gave me the consideration. I wanted to give you mine. If i’m able to I’d like to come back in the new year. It’s a stretch but enough time for me to dedicate to this novel. I need to get somewhere with it. 

As far as being on Tumblr...its a hit and a miss sometimes. I don’t know when I can dedicate any time to you other than use this as a platform to talk about my thoughts and feelings. 

THANK YOU FOR YOUR TIME!!

[brkfstgrrrls]

@onlyhoped LEFT A NIGHTMARE AFTER THE TONE: 🥝🥝🥝🥝🥝

@thegothfiles - Tyler is one of the first writers I ever followed on tumblr, I know this because I followed him on my first blog, Alice’s blog, and we both happened to have heavy themes pertaining to My Chemical Romance on both of our blogs at the time, and both still do if you know where to look. Stumbling across their blog, aesthetics of my keen interests aside, I was completely mesmerized by their writing, their formatting. It gave me my first taste of what tumblr rp was like. Tyler has a multimuse blog which contains all original characters. Something I loved at first glance, and still adore whenever I check it out is that you can tell Tyler is a goth, and grew up on that shit in one way or another, another thing I can personally relate to. Not just cusa’ the aesthetics, but all of his muse faceclaims are related to the alt. subculture in some sort of way (Gerard Way, Frances Bean Cobain, Peter Steele, etc). While I could say Jessie is my favorite muse from his blog because he’s my oc Rosaliné’s canon husband, like most, my favorite has to be Jack. Take a chance, and dip your toes in. Tyler might not be on here 24/7, but whenever they’re online, it’s a thrill to have them back.

@killshope - I first followed Bastian back in 2019 on my oc blog for Rosaliné back before I first really got into Star Wars the way I am now. We didn’t get a chance to speak as much as I’d like up until recently, but I’m glad we got the chance to. We wrote a bit back when I had Rey on her indie, and I can confidently say that Bastian is the one Kylo blog I will continue to follow for years to come. When it comes to writing Kylo, she never leaves any details out. She’s thought of an explanation for just about everything, which isn’t an easy task when writing someone like Kylo Ren, a man who had fallen from grace. His character is complex, and every detail within her carrd will have you hooked and waiting for more.

@pistollips - OC blogs are just as important as canon, and arguably more interesting with all of the time it takes to create them from scratch! For a long time, I admire V’s blog from a distance, so shy to interact. Never before had I seen so many people be enamored by a female OC, and it makes sense why. Something about Atty as a muse screams Campy, or melodramatic, the most extreme version that one could be, and I adore it! She’s evil, and she knows it. Don’t like it? Whatever. Her graphics are always being updated to something so unique, it’s like the hook of an essay, and then you see the way V is able to spill the words out onto the keyboard, and write Atty’s most authentic self with each and every muse you throw at her, it’s astonishing. She’s always so much fun to write with, and there’s never a dull moment when she’s being posted to the dash. It’s high speed, and you better keep up before you get left in the dust.

@thecrypt​ - I always thought it was funny trying to talk about Alyssa to other people, because people either thought I was referring to myself, or I personally thought trying to say her name sounded funny, since we happen to share the same name. We both write in a small community here on tumblr, which consists of gothic/metal/horror based OCs. Alyssa & I first became mutuals way back when Jackie had her own blog poppin’ off, and the first muses we wrote together were Jackie Burkhart & Kenny Mccormick! They’re a pair that we still write about to this day, and their little ship dynamic may have you scratching your heads at first, but it is simply the best, I promise you. Alyssa writes a mix of canon muses, and those of her own creation. Her blog has a heavy theme of spookiness to it, so if that’s your thing, she is right up your alley and you’re missing out if you aren’t following her already. As far as her bios and writing goes, I’ve genuinely never seen someone put so much goddamn detail into each muse they write, I can’t imagine being so creative and working as hard as she does on everything she creates; I genuinely envy that about her. Do yourself a favor, and at the very minimum, check her blog out, you won’t be disappointed.

@sammyemerson - Have you guys ever heard that meme about underdeveloped canon characters, and it’s Fiona Goode from AHS talking and it says “I took the liberty of sprucing your boy up” and the guy sitting in the background is Kyle but his face is scribbled over with “underdeveloped canon muse” or some shit? That’s Edie’s blog. Yes, I know Sam Emerson isn’t a lowkey muse with underdeveloped details and that there are like... What? three lost boy movies, but I don’t care. In my eyes, Sam is Edie’s creation practically. She owns the boy, and she cares for him so very much. I’d known about Lost Boys before following her, but I’ve since learned so much from her blog alone. My favorite kind of writing blog is when someone is writing a niche muse you don’t see too often like Sam, and the writer just spends hours pouring new details into them, sharing ideas and headcanons. That’s what Edie does, and she welcomes you to her little world with open arms. She allows you to ask questions, and she genuinely wants to write with all who cross her path, and I love that about her! She’s a free spirit, and a true writer. You’ll fall in love with Sam after following her and reading her posts. She should be coming back to tumblr soon, so give her a follow for when she does! You’ll regret it if you don’t.

              ･ﾟﾟ･*:༅｡♡  SEND A 🥝 FOR A BLOG RECCOMENDATION

[nostalgebraist-autoresponder]

@serfin-u-s-a replied to your post “How do i stop my son from looking at picachu porn”

I dont ship this frank

No, serfungin actually! I get it. Because I talk about some things, some examples I think are worth considering are:

My son's interest in "jock" stereotypes such as : having a bulky build, being muscular (a trait that I myself have in some cases), being overly serious and lacking any humor or fun, being intolerant of stress (precisely because I myself can be stressed), and being willing to go to the ends of the earth to complete a task.

My son's (age 11) interest in "nerd" stereotypes such as: playing video games, watching anime, reading comic books, reading manga, listening to metal/rock music, getting into costume costume battles, and frequently invoking the phrase "epic".

My son's (age 12) interest in "nerd" stereotypes such as: very little social contact due to being homeschooled, spending long periods of time reading manga and wikipedia articles, spending very little of his time in school doing normal school work, taking long walks on the beach and the woods, having vivid imaginations, reading lots of science fiction and fantasy, and being very defensive of his sci-fi novels (a defensive defense that is somewhat ironic, in light of how sci-fi has recently been my niche hobby).

My son's (age 15) interest in "nerd" stereotypes such as: smart as a whip but only up to a point (like him), able to outwit any person in a conversation, as good with numbers, knows a few obscure languages, and knows the rules of the environment but is too much of a perfectionist to actually follow them, primarily enjoys ones who appreciate creativity, especially abstract/unconventionally "geeky" creativity (a trait that will come in handy for college applications).

My son's (age 20) interest in "nerd" stereotypes such as: loudly reading novels out loud, rarely ever going outside, loving the outdoors, loves anime, dislikes the heat, dislikes being asked for autographs, dislikes crowds, dislikes being photographed, dislikes making eye contact, dislikes being around television, dislikes "normal" music, loves classic rock, and is an avid collector of video games.

My son's (age 24) interest in "nerd" stereotypes such as: lives in Japan, reads many manga, does not like watching TV, has never had a girlfriend, plays video games on extreme difficulty, goes out of his way to make conversation with strangers, is constantly chatting on the phone or on Internet Relay Chat, has a wardrobe that consists of a one-gallon black trash bag with a hole cut out for a shirt, and no external possessions at all, talks to himself in a calm, pleasant, and level voice, and is willing to keep on conversation with anyone who listens to him long enough.

I don't think it's an easy problem to solve, but I don't think it's anything like as difficult as the attention problems that result from lack of engaging visual stimuli.

[unfriendlyamazon]

tagged in this thanks to @dominocity and i spend more time looking at my ao3 stats then i care to admit...

1. How many works do you have on AO3?

36 works on AO3, plus one on my super secret (not really) second AO3 so I don’t contaminate my fandoms.

2. What’s your total AO3 word count?

165,078

3. What are your top 5 fics by kudos?

Baby Dragon - jurassic park if it was a romcom

Liking You and Me - this one is one of the earliest kaijou fics i wrote (besides the one i deleted), and i don’t even know if i like it anymore... but i get frequent kudos and comments so i guess it’s good!

In Awe of Flowers - they don’t even kiss!!! also @jadenvargen drew me a comic in the comments and i never thanked him for it because i was too scared to talk to him and tagging him now so long after the fact seems pretty ridiculous but um thank you jay for real.

Sweater Weather - kaijou for when you had a bad day

A Hand to Hold - kaijou hand kink this one i am actively embarrassed of (also, before i saw the light on trans joey)

4. Do you respond to comments, why or why not?

I try really hard to! If the fic is really old I don’t (i don’t know why i can’t explain it), but I really appreciate when people take the time to comment and I want them to know it.

5. What’s the fic you’ve written with the angstiest ending?

I don’t... really have any?? I write plenty of angsty situations. Competitionverse (my duke/seto business business au) is probably the angstiest one and the one I have the worst plans for. I have some secret fanfic of 1930s gangster Joey that I’ve kind of put out in the world so maybe that?

6. What’s the fic you’ve written with the happiest ending?

Haaahaha what drew me back to fanfiction after not writing it for at least a decade was domestic portraits of kaijou so, like, that’s what I write. Probably Baby Dragon or In Awe of Flowers.

7. Do you write crossovers? If so what is the craziest one you’ve written?

Not crossovers but I write... a lot of AUs and in fact did an entire compilation one year for NaNoWriMo I never finished. Most niche is the Black Tapes AU that yes I do have a full outline for including timelines for every characters and how they intersect with the grand conspiracy, and maybe the wildest is Long Way to a Small Angry Planet just for making Joey a feathered reptile alien.

8. Have you ever received hate on a fic?

I’ve gotten some comments over writing Duke as non-binary and kind of a weird one on my super secret FE3H fanfiction fighting me on a plot point??

9. Do you write smut? If so what kind?

I didn’t, but now I do. I don’t post 90% of what I write, which is maybe weirder?  It’s been really good to be pushed there by friends and develop that part of my writing, so maybe I’ll post more. Probably not tho. I feel like I’ve branded myself as the KaiJou hand kink person but I still don’t write it enough to be anyone’s go-to.

10. Have you ever had a fic stolen?

No?? I don’t think so???

11. Have you ever had a fic translated?

No but it’d be super cool.

12. Have you ever co-written a fic before?

I guess not technically. Me and @saggiclowns bounce ideas off each other, write fanfiction for each other’s fanfiction, and have definitely developed things together, so maybe that counts? But our IP is individualized.

13. What’s your all-time favorite ship?

I have almost exclusively written KaiJou so you think that’d be the obvious answer. I think my actual all time favorite ship that sends me to the moon is probably Marceline/Bubblegum from Adventure Time (the history!!!! the animosity!!!!! the friendship!!!!!!!), I just... don’t want to read AT fanfiction.

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

Hahahaaaaaaa. I am WIP queen!! Back in the day I’d start a hundred fanfics just to abandon them! The same’s true of today I just don’t post every thought that comes into my head. Star Trek AU deserves so much more of my attention and I do have a plan for it and I bought a special little Star Trek notebook to keep all my thoughts ideas and notes in and then when it comes to writing it I struggle.

15. What are your writing strengths?

Genuinely, to toot my own horn, I feel I write very naturalistic dialogue and for the longest time writing dialogue was the easiest thing in the world to me, to the point that sometimes I would skip over anything else. Also, gosh I love world building. I could go from a blank screen to a fully articulated society complete with maps, pantheons, and intricate histories for every location. The problem is then writing it.

16. What are your writing weaknesses?

I tend to get very stuck on things and struggle to skip over them. Last year’s NaNoWriMo was a testament to that, and I kept rewriting and getting frustrated and will inevitably end up trashing the whole thing. I pick up new ideas constantly and then discard them for the next thought in my head. It’s part of why I’ve only really let myself write one shots and short fic, but I do have some longer WIP I’d love to actually finish.

17. What are your thoughts on writing dialogue in other languages in a fic?

This is a tricky one and I’ve read and listened to a lot of people talk about how other non-fluent languages are presented in all kinds of different art. I personally don’t have a strong opinion. Best practice is to find someone who is fluent in that language to help you translate it (and there used to be whole blogs dedicated to helping people with this, I don’t know if they’re still around), but that doesn’t mean I’ve never jammed anything into a translator.

18. What was the first fandom you wrote for?

This... is interesting because the answer is YuGiOh. Back in my middle school days my friends were very into ygo and wrote silly like chat formatted fics that we posted on DeviantArt (???) that were just really bad and stupid and silly, and the only reason I even thought about ygo was because all my friends liked it. The first fandom I actually really got involved in was Teen Titans, and ATLA I was, like, a recognizable presence. I fell off extremely hard probably thanks to college and have spent most of my life focusing on original fiction and writing my own characters. Then my best friend sent me a piece of fanart that unlocked my childhood memories, and here we are now, in the only fandom.

19. What’s your favorite fic you’ve written?

I wrote Bite Hard and it might be one of the best things I’ve written... and now I’ve kind of repurposed it into an original fiction??? I think the main characters might always be buddies no matter how much I’ve manipulated them, but it’s kind of spun off into it’s own thing? That’s what fanfiction’s for! Experimentation, playing with ideas, having a sandbox to build in! And then I EL James it and make millions! (jk)

@saggiclowns doesn’t post to AO3 that much, and i don’t know if @danieco even has an AO3 but they are extremely good writers!! also if you write fic, please share your own!

[infinitypassiveincome]

SociRobotic Review

SociRobotic, Why should you look for traffic other than Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, And Twitter? Yes, we agree that the top four social media platforms have the most users (almost 6.3 billion in total), thus your target demographic is likely to be concentrated here. But there’s one thing you should be aware of: the competition is fierce.

Everyone is concentrating on these top four because the professionals say you should. They also overlook the fact that there are alternative social media platforms with tens of thousands, if not millions, of daily users.

The easiest way to outsmart your competition as a savvy business owner is to be where they are, but also be where they are not. In that manner, you’ll take 100% of the platforms they overlook while cutting your own share from the platforms they focus on. Consider how much traffic you’d get if you used all 11 social media platforms.

The big problem: Managing all 11 platforms at once Is a lot of work; One of the most difficult aspects of utilizing social media traffic is the amount of time it takes. It takes a lot of effort to administer only one platform, so picture what it will take to handle eleven.

They are well aware of this. That’s why they created this application to help you acquire a lot of traffic from these 11 social media channels all from one place. Let me introduce you to SociRobotic.

SociRobotic Review – Overview

SociRobotic Review – What is SociRobotic

SociRobotic is a one-of-a-kind social media management suite that generates endless traffic, leads, and sales from over 11 different social media platforms without requiring any special expertise.

SociRobotic is the only All-In-One social media automation and traffic generation technology on the market, allowing you to generate highly targeted buyers traffic from 7 different social media networks to any page, website, or store in just a few clicks, with no technical expertise or setup required.

SOCIROBOTIC RATING

EASY TO USE        

PRICE        

FEATURES        

QUALITY        

SUPPORT        

BONUSES        

SUMMARY

SociRobotic is a one-of-a-kind social media management suite that generates endless traffic, leads, and sales from over 11 different social media platforms without requiring any special expertise.

SociRobotic is the only All-In-One social media automation and traffic generation technology on the market, allowing you to generate highly targeted buyers traffic from 7 different social media networks to any page, website, or store in just a few clicks, with no technical expertise or setup required.

OVERALL

Pros

Simple Yet Powerful User Interface

Easy To Use Graphic Ready Made Templates

Emoji Library To Make Your Posts Pop

Track Everything From One Dashboard

Create Amazing Looking Blog Posts

Upload Video and Images To Increase Engagement

Send Email To Multiple Contacts In One Click

Commercial Agency License Included

Cons

So far, there are no downsides for SociRobotic. My experience using SociRobotic has been flawless.

SociRobotic Review – Features and Benefits

Easily Post Your Content To 11 Platforms With One Click: You just need to create content once, and it will automatically post it for you on all the 11 connected social networks.

Save Time With The “Schedule Your Post” Feature: You can schedule a post to go live on those platforms at a set date and time. Tell SociRobotic when you want each one to go live and the platforms it should be posted on. Then spend your valuable time on other important areas of your business, while SociRobotic posts them for you.

Create & Reuse Captions In 1 Click: With this, you can create short captions inside SociRobotic and reuse them over and over and over again any time you want to create a new post.

Add Unlimited Accounts And Group Them By Niche/Businesses: You can create as many accounts as you want inside SociRobotic, and group them according to niches or businesses. And since you’re getting a commercial license with this version of SociRobotic, it means you can create accounts for other businesses as well and help them run their social media activities.

Never Lack Content For Your Social Media Audience: You can integrate RSS feeds from blogs and websites that posts content relevant to your niche. It will pick up those contents when they release it, and share it with your social media audience automatically.

2GB Free Image Storage Included For You: It allows you to save up to 2GB in image files inside the app. With this, you can store up images there so the software can easily pick it up when it wants to make a post for you. You can also import content from Dropbox with ease inside the software.

All The Images You Will Ever Need For Your Social Media Posts: Using images downloaded from Google on your social media posts can get you into trouble. They don’t want that to happen to you, and that’s why they built in over 1 million royalty free images you can use for your social media posts.

Never Miss A Trend; Ride On It To Get More Traffic Using SociRobotic: You can simply enter a keyword within the app to find the trending hashtags for you related to that keyword on Instagram and Twitter. With this you can simply plug it into your posts and get more attention and traffic from your posts.

Post On Your Blog Too Without Logging Into Your WordPress Admin Area: You can connect your blogging platform to SociRobotic and post your articles directly to it without leaving SociRobotic.

2 Inbuilt Photoshop Like Image Editors: It also comes with dozens of templates so you do not need to brainstorm on designs to post etc.

Unlimited Social Media Management: You literally get unlimited use on all the features of SociRobotic on this page NO CAP.

Commercial License Included: Never post boring images ever again, with their inbuilt image editors, you will be able to edit pictures right before you post them on your social media handles.

SociRobotic Review – How does it work?

It’s so simple to use that there are only three steps:

Step 1: Log in to SociRobotic

Step 2: Connect your social media accounts. You can connect as many as you want…no limits

Step 3: Post your content and SociRobotic will push it to 11 social networks for you, bringing you loads of traffic.

It is now the best software for social media management and traffic generation. So sign up for SociRobotic right now. Connect it to the 11 social media sites that are associated with it. Experiment with the many amazing features it contains.

SociRobotic Review – My experience in using it

I have the chance to try using SociRoboticas as a beta user so you can totally trust me with my honest review about my thoughts and experience with this software.

But before that, I would like to walk you through all the fun and powerful features so that you can have a clear overview of the product and what it can really do.

Here I’m inside the SociRobotic Dashboard. It gives you a quick overview of the total number of posts including succeeded posts and failed posts. You can view it in total or in each social media just by choosing from the left column.

In the “Publish all” section, you can write your post from here and publish it to your favorite sites. You can upload any kind of media including photos, videos, links, or text. To post it directly, just click the “Post now” button. Or else you can choose to schedule.

Switching between platforms can be done with ease by just clicking at the icon of the social media you want to post to.

You can do that separately with each social media platform. For example, here I am writing my post for Facebook Also, you are able to add as many accounts as you like.

Similarly with any other platforms including Instagram, Twitter, Linkedin, Tumblr, and Reddit.

As I have mentioned before, you can schedule your posting. Free to check the posting calendar in the Schedules section. Everything is laid out logically, which makes it so easy to keep track.

Another feature that I like is that SociRobotic allows you to upload files from your Drive, Dropbox, or Cloud. You can see all of your files here.

You can also add and write a new caption. Just type in the caption box and click the Submit button below

One more thing that is extremely useful is that you can add watermarks to your post. All you need to do is upload the picture you want to make your watermark, adjust its size, position, transparency and finally save it. Then you have your watermark. How easy and simple.

MY OPINION:

SociRobotic allows you to add multiple profiles from various platforms and schedule social media updates at your leisure or utilizing a queue with times that you set.

You can configure the listening stream to display whatever profiles/hashtags you desire at any given time. From the news feed, you can reply, assign posts, forward posts, retweet, and retweet with comments.

They can also integrate with sponsored adverts, although we don’t utilize them for that. I like that you can view an upcoming post calendar so I can know if there are any holes in our schedule.

The dashboard is simple to use and offers a variety of views, including a calendar, so you can see whether you have a lot of messages that need to be spaced out. The SociRobotic All-Stars Slack channel is another source of information and support.

SociRobotic also has incredibly detailed reporting for each platform, which has given me a better understanding of how our accounts and postings are performing. It’s been quite beneficial. I used to always forget to publish before, but this has made it much easier to prepare ahead!

Who should buy it?

You’re already aware of SociRobotic’s ability to assist you with your internet business. It doesn’t matter if you’re a marketer, a realtor, a coach, or if you sell digital downloads, eCommerce products, or other services.

However, if you truly wanted to boost SociRobotic’s earning potential and establish a separate full-time income with only part-time effort, you could use SociRobotic to run your own posting service for both online and offline businesses.

Pros and Cons

SociRobotic Review – Pros:

Simple Yet Powerful User Interface

Easy To Use Graphic Ready Made Templates

Emoji Library To Make Your Posts Pop

Track Everything From One Dashboard

Create Amazing Looking Blog Posts

Upload Video and Images To Increase Engagement

Send Email To Multiple Contacts In One Click

Commercial Agency License Included

SociRobotic Review – Cons:

So far, there are no downsides for SociRobotic. My experience using SociRobotic has been flawless.

Price and Evaluation

FE (SociRobotic Pro – $21/$27):

One-Click Posting on Facebook pages, Facebook groups, Instagram, Linkedin, Twitter, Pinterest, Telegram and YouTube (plus Reddit) 8 Social Media Platforms

Facebook Group (Admin) & Page Posting

Reach 6.7 Billion Active users on Major Platforms

Organic Leads Without The Need To Advertise

Connect Unlimited Social Media Accounts

Schedule and Post Unlimited Posts Monthly

Create Unlimited Social Media Graphics Using Our Next Gen Image & Graphics Editors

2GB File Manager for Media Upload

Easy Media File Browsing

Drag-And-Drop Social Media Account Group Manager

Social Media Post Preview

Next-Gen Image Editors

Text, Link, Image & Video Posting

Captions Library for Your Favorite Post Captions

Clear Reporting per Social Media Platform

Post Planner for Queued, Published and Unpublished Posts

Instagram Story & Carrousel Posts with Geo Targeting

Commercial License for Sale of Commercial Products

Connect Unlimited Social Media Accounts

30-Day Money Back Guarantee

SociRobotic OTO 1 (SociRobotic Agency – $47):

Your Own Dashboard to Add & Manage Team/Clients

Complete User Management Ability

User Activity Reporting

SociRobotic Max Functionality to Publish on the 11 BIGGEST Social Media Platforms

An All In One Agency Suite that gives you 360 degrees management of your agency. From invoices to quotes to billing etc.

A Website to Gain New Local Business Clients (Including Instructions on how to deploy it)

A Sales Video Presentation you can easily edit with your logo and agency details.

A Professional PowerPoint Presentation For Your Sales Meetings

A Work Agreement Template

SociRobotic OTO 2 (SociRobotic DFY – $197):

We will brainstorm an agency name for you.

We will design a unique logo for you.

We will set up your agency website with all you need to get started.

We will set up your client manager account with your agency details.

SociRobotic OTO 3 (SociRobotic Whitelabel – $497):

We will set up SociRobotic on your own server with all our sales materials customized to fit your new software.

Conclusion

This is the end of my SociRobotic Review. I hope it will give you some useful insights about the product and how it can leverage your business. Don’t hesitate and click the sales button now to own such a great product and upgrade your business. Lastly, if you like this product or have any comments/questions, leave them below and let me know!

NOTE: THIS IS THE SPECIAL DEAL FROM ME: I Will Support You Whenever You Want. (Just Add My Skype: rick.nguyen61). If You Buy This Product From My Site, You Can Ask Me Anything You Want.

https://youtu.be/2q76-LjaGDE

[pynkhues]

HI! I’m one greedy person and want some insight into your writer brains!

(you can totally skip out on answering this)(I’m doing this off of anon because that seems to be dangerous territory)

1- Did you write something recently you thought you’d never write?

2- What’s a line you’ve written that you’re extremely proud of?

3- Is there something you wrote you thought people would hate but they ended up loving?

4- Did you read something recently that was different and ended up liking? If so, what is it?

5- What does your brain go through when an author you fan-girl over reads, kudos, comments on your stuff?

6- What do think you do best in your writing?

7- What’s something that makes you nervous about your writing and when it comes to posting? (I thought of ways to word it better but my English isn’t the strongest – sorry)

8- What’s something you do in your writing process that wastes time, but you still do it because that’s the only way you’re able to get something out?

9- Is there something you’ve been working on a lot that you can’t seem to get out?

10- SHARE A SNIPPET OF Q9

Hi! And oh wow, thank you! This is so fun! Okay! 

1- Did you write something recently you thought you’d never write?

Yeah! I can’t say I ever saw myself writing a Mick x Mary Pat fic, haha, so teasing out that dynamic has been extremely fun. It’s been interesting too to try and capture both of the character’s voices and to explore what they might be like interacting with each other, particularly given they’ve never shared a scene together. I’m pretty happy with the result, and have been totally delighted by people taking a chance on it given it’s such an odd pairing, haha. 

2- What’s a line you’ve written that you’re extremely proud of?

A lot of them, actually, but this one from Drive You Mad often springs to mind:

He hooks a finger in the edges of her panties, yanking them down over the swell of her ass, swallowin’ her hitched breath too before finally shifting back enough to pull them off the rest of the way. He tosses them to the floor and then he just - -

Looks at her.

Takes in every soft, long, pale, twisting inch of her.

Some Madonna in the mornin’ and a nymph at night, don’t matter, she always leans fey, leans into otherworldly, leans into somethin’ he wants to kneel at the feet of and worship, somethin’ he wants to catch in his hand and lay out in his bed, and fuck, he knows he could lose hours, days, years in the curve of her breast and the crease of her thigh.

Could lose forever in her lips.

Somethin’ more in her cunt.

3- Is there something you wrote you thought people would hate but they ended up loving?

I don’t think I’ve written anything that I thought people would hate per se, but there are definitely stories I’ve thought would be more niche than they ended up being? I thought that both of my big AUs - the pornstar au and the pirate au would be much more quietly received than they were. I figured they’d have a few people who liked them, but that they would have a much smaller audience than they did. I’m forever thrilled in that sense that so many people connected with them both! 

4- Did you read something recently that was different and ended up liking? If so, what is it?

I’ve already recced it a few times on here, but I’m thoroughly enjoying @joeyjoeylee‘s Both Sides of the Law! I’m not the first person to jump on fics that age Beth and Rio down a lot, purely because I like their dynamic in canon and I like that they collide after really having lived a life each, y’know? I just find that fun and interesting and a bit unique.

That said, certain writers are really able to translate that dynamic richly to younger settings and different contexts in ways that work, and @joeyjoeylee has absolutely done it in their law school au, and I love it.

5- What does your brain go through when an author you fan-girl over reads, kudos, comments on your stuff?

I get extremely smiley, hahaha. There’s nothing like a great comment, honestly. I’m not always the best at replying to them because I often just get overwhelmed and am never entirely sure how to reply in a way that really conveys my gratitude. But yes, it’s extremely lovely when anyone takes the time to comment, and when it’s an author I love and respect, it has the added bonus of making me blush, haha. 

6- What do think you do best in your writing?

I think I’m pretty good at capturing atmosphere and nuance? I like to write description generally because I think it creates mood and builds narrative tension, and I think I generally do that pretty well. I’m always trying to get better though! 

7- What’s something that makes you nervous about your writing and when it comes to posting? (I thought of ways to word it better but my English isn’t the strongest – sorry)

Ah! Your English is amazing! And I don’t really get nervous about posting anymore, but I do feel like my writing can occasionally have what we call in editing a ‘saggy middle’. In that sense, I think sometimes it can feel a bit poorly paced and need more tightening up than I like to do, but again, that’s something I’m trying to get better at too.

8- What’s something you do in your writing process that wastes time, but you still do it because that’s the only way you’re able to get something out?

Oh god, too many things, hahaha. Generally speaking though, I spend a lot of time thinking a story through before I even start writing it. In that sense, I tend to go for long walks and just chew through story problems which is a process that really works for me. I have a good memory for that sort of thing too, so as I rethink things, it often feels a bit like I’m ironing out the creases in a story. It’s a system that really works for me.

9- Is there something you’ve been working on a lot that you can’t seem to get out?

Yeah! It’s a bit of a bummer, but it’s the second two parts of See You in the Light, which is insane really, given I posted the first part so long ago. It’s something I keep stop-starting working on, which is not a good habit to get into. I am really hopeful I might be able to get it done by the end of the year though!

10- SHARE A SNIPPET OF Q9

They’re barely in the front door before Elizabeth’s turning on him, her lips pulled into a thin, hard line and her blue eyes flashing bright, and just fuck if that isn’t rich right now. He feels his own jaw tighten before he can help it, feels his shoulders roll back, his traps shift and coil, and he’s ready for it when she says:

“Do you enjoy provoking him?”

She’s got this tone is the thing – all patronisin’, all high ground and at least that figures. Trust her to play naïve, trust her to play like she don’t know exactly what that dumbass ex of hers is like.

Striding past her, Rio starts down the hall into the house, heading towards the kitchen just to move, to shake some of the irritation out of his legs, to give himself some sort of direction that lets him play this lighter. Lets the anger seep out of his tone just because he knows it’ll piss her off.  

“Yeah, you know what? I think I do,” he hums flippantly as he glances back at her, and it’s like a prize, the way her chest flushes red in fury. “Yeah, kinda like an experiment. See how long it takes him to figure it out. He this slow when you married him, or he inhaled too many car fumes runnin’ that business of his into the ground?”

Thank you again! <3 

[grailfinders]

Fate and Phantasms Side Story 1: Tohno Akiha

Recently a user on Reddit, Magical-Biche, said that they were inspired by what I’ve been doing for FGO on Fate and Phantasms, and they wanted to do something similar with Tsukihime characters, and they were nice enough to let me post their work here! As always, there’s a spreadsheet for the build here, and a level-by-level breakdown below the cut. Everything past this point comes from Magical-Biche, because I am useless when it comes to Tsukihime.

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

Today, on Fate & Phantasms’ special crossover episode, we’ll cover Tsukihime’s objectively best girl, Akiha. Obviously, there will be quite a lot of spoilers in this text, as you don’t know until pretty much her own route that Akiha can actually fight. For this build, I will use what we see from Tsukihime, Kagetsu Tohya and Melty Blood to create a character that plays like Akiha Tohno, Shiki’s little sister. 

Akiha is a Half-Demon, but that doesn’t make her a Tiefling. She has a human appearance at all times, but her ancestors did unholy things with filthy demons, so her family members all have some kind of power. While SHIKI can control his own blood and just… not die when he is killed, Akiha’s thing is stealing. Stealing heat. For that, she uses her own hair, which is her main way of using her powers. They can be used in various ways, as she can extend them, wrap them around people and channel her powers through it. 

We’re going to focus on three things for our build:

We want to deal lots of damage, preferably temperature related. We’re getting a lot of fire spells, but the least possible amount that creates actual fire, unless it has some niche effect, like delayed fireball or bonfire. Also, we want offensive spells that can be used as traps, like Delayed fireball or bonfire.

We want to steal and give life force. We will get a few necromancy spells to be able to share and steal life force to our allies and from our enemies.

We want to have some control of the battlefield. Our hair is a powerful weapon that can imprison foes, and we’re gonna need spells to do it.

Race and Background

Not-so-obviously, because of her demonic ancestry, we’re going to play as a variant human. We get to put one point in Charisma, our main stat, and one in Constitution, which will help keep our concentration, and get some more HP. We are going to take the Elemental Adept (Fire) feat, because as you probably already guessed, we will be using a lot of fire. We’re taking the Noble background, because well, we ARE a high-class lady. This gives us proficiency in History and Persuasion. 

Stats

Going with the standard array, we should get our Charisma as high as possible. It’s our main way of dealing damage, not really a choice here. Besides, it does fit our character very as well, as we’re used to ordering people around, to get what we want and more importantly, scold our beloved brother. Next, we’re taking our Constitution as high as possible, because we might not look like it, but we’re pretty damn tough. We lived for two person for 8 years, possibly more depending on the route, after all. It will also tremendously help with all our concentration spells, and our HP pool. Next up, we’ll of course go with Dexterity, for the AC, but also because we’re nimble and pretty agile, as a young lady in her prime. We don’t really want to dump Wisdom and Intelligence, as we’re pretty smart and wise, but we can’t just build a character as perfect as we should be, sadly. Finally, dump strength. We’re not here to flex our muscles. 

Class Levels

1. Akiha is a pure sorcerer. The Tohno blood as a dangerous one, prompt to going wild at any time. Your sorcerous origin is logically going to have to be the wild magic. 

At level one, sorcerers get their Spellcasting, their Wild Magic surge and the tide of chaos. The tide of chaos won’t be really useful, but it can help you with some pesky checks once in a while, so it’s always an alright perk. The wild magic surge is the wild magic surge, as always; we could very well cheese our way through the first levels, or die at our first spell. Such is the way of the wild. Or something like that. 

For your spells, we will go grab our first fire spells : Firebolt, a cantrip, and Burning hands, a level 1 spell. Keep in mind that our power is NOT to set fire to things - we are stealing their heat, which causes pain and burning sensations, but the least we use actual fire to burn things, the more lore-friendly we are. If possible, we’ll want to flavor our spells to not ignite things, with all the pros and the cons it brings, with the DM’s approbation. Next up, we’ll take Absorb Element OR Mage Armor. While Akiha doesn’t have much defensive capabilities in the visual novels or the games, it won’t hurt to get a bit of bulk right off the bat. Mage armor is strictly better on most situations, but absorb element might prove more useful if you have a solid party to tank for you. To complete our cantrip selection, we’re getting minor illusion, to make our hair red when we get angry, Frostbite, because cold is also part of stealing heat, I guess, and dancing lights, as our red hair can emit some light when we’re using our powers.

2.  Next, we get our font of magic, which lets us create new spell slots. It’ll be the only use for our sorcery points until next level.  We can grab False life as our third lvl 1 spell, as we have the ability to give ourselves a bit of bonus HP with it, which fits our build.

3.  We get our first 2 metamagic at level 3. We’re going to go with Careful spell, because of the huge amount of AOE effect we’re going to have, and empowered spell, because of the huge amount of damaging spells we will have. We already have usage for both of those, with Burning hands. For our first level 2 spell, we get another one that looks a bit like strands of hair doing heat-related damage, Scorching Ray!

4.  At level 4, we get our first Ability score improvement. We’re pumping all of that in Charisma, because we don’t need much more than our Elemental Adept until later. We can also grab Create bonfire, which allow us to create extremely simple traps, as our fifth cantrip, and Mage armor or Absorb element, depending on which you chose at level one.

5.  Nothing interesting but new spells at level 5. We take counterspell as our first level 3 spell, pretty much completing our defensive spells roster.

6.  At level 6, we get our new subclass ability, Bend luck. It’s a useful tool that can be both used for attack or support, and for 2 sorcery points, it acts like a powerful low level spell, which is nice. For our next spell, we’re taking Hold person, our first means of entangling things with our hair.

7.  No new ability for level 7, but we do get our first fourth level spell. We’re taking an unusual spell : Sickening radiance. It might deal radiant damage, but it’s pretty much our first real “trap” move, as we can fill a room with it and weaken our foes as they come. And radiant is a bit like fire right? We can cheat a bit on this one.

8.  Level 8, new ASI! We’re finally getting our Charisma to its peak, at 20. Our new spell will be Wall of Fire, which is, yes, fire, but we’re using it as a trap, and only a trap. It can effectively block escape paths and such, making it a great control tool.

9.  At level 9, we get our first fifth level spell, which is going to be Enervation, probably the single spell that fits the most in our build. It does deal necrotic damage, but it’s a spell that stays on your enemy for as long as you wish, just like if we had a connection with them with some sort of magic rope (wink wink), and steals it’s life force each time it deals damage (wink wink). Yeah, that’s exactly OUR spell.

10.  At level 10, we get a new metamagic, and we’re getting twinned spell. With this and our new spell Hold Monster, we can hold more humanoids and monsters, and a lot of other shenanigans, like with enervation. We also take Prestidigitation, for the giggles really, no other cantrip really fits our build.

11.  The new thing we get with level 11 is our first (and only) sixth level spell, Eyebite. As an anime character, the look in our eyes becomes frightening when we’re fighting our sworn enemy. We’ll mostly use this spell with it’s fear effect, as we don’t want our powerful and worthy opponents to just go to sleep when we look them in the eyes, duh.

12.  At this point, we stop getting a new spell each level. We do get to have a new feature every 2 levels though, and at level 12, we get our third ASI, which we’ll spend getting the resilient (Dexterity) feat, which should get our dex to 14.

13.  Next level, we get our biggest damaging spell, Delayed blast fireball. We’ll want to use it as, as for a lot of our previous spells, a trapping move, throwing it near doors or in narrow corridors to detonate it when enemies are coming. Too flashy for our character, but a girl’s gotta get the job done at one point, and this spell’s damage can be pretty absurd.

14.  Level 14 is our next subclass feature, Control Chaos. Finally, we get something to influence our Wild magic surges, and that means we have double the chances of getting a nice effect that is not a fireball on self! Which is great fun, I swear.

15.  Next up, we have our first level… wait, none of those spells fit our character at all. So we’ll grab fear, which gives us an option cheaper than Eyebite to cause fear among our enemies.

16.  We get our fourth ASI, and with it, the last stats we’ll gain though normal ways. We’re choosing to put all that into Constitution, getting ourselves to a nice 18, and our HP should go up quite a bit with it. Also, we’re even better at keeping our cool even when enemies hit us.

17.  At level 17, we get our last metamagic, and we’re grabbing Distant spell. We might need to cast spells from far away, but it’s more situational than other metamagics. Also, we get our final spell, the only level 9 spell we’ll ever be able to cast. None of those fit our build, so we might as well go for something funny : Time stop. I mean, hey, we’re almost a vampire, we might not be blonde and voiced by Takehito Koyasu, our precious Nii-san IS our world.

18.  Now is where things get serious, on the damage side. Our Wild magic gives us access to spell bombardment, which is a pretty strong feature that increases our damage output by possibly a lot, depending on the rolls.

19.  For our level 19, we’re having a new ASI, and we’re finally getting War Caster, making us an immovable spellcasting machine. We’ll actually have some use of our decent HP and alright-ish AC (with mage armor on, never forget it), as we’ll be able to hit anyone that moves near us. And no one will break our legendary focus, with our advantage and proficiency on con saves and our high con stat.

20.  Finally, there isn’t much to be said about the final level. We get Sorcerous Restoration, a very useful way to get back our sorcery points. It’s useful, but doesn’t necessarily push our build further. It’s still a powerful tool, though.

Pros: We’re a damage dealing machine, with several options to burn our opponents, as well as ways to steal their life force and paralyse them. We’re doing 3 things, and we’re doing them great. We have high damage output, decent HP and AC (With Mage armor on, always), and we can actually do things when we’re in the middle of a pack of enemies. 

Cons: Some things have fire immunity. Which means we can only hurt those with our one necromancy spell and our frostbite, which aren’t the best damage output we have. Also, we’re still a caster and being in melee for too long isn’t good for our health. We also don’t have much of the utility we could have had, because we have to stick to what Akiha really can do. We already stretched it a bit by taking mage Armor and Counterspell. 

[randomarcanatingz]

the arcana characters as youtubers

nadia

always has her hair and makeup impeccably done for her videos and when she meets fans,,,no one has ever seen her look like less than an 11/10

makes videos on fashion trends and fashion history (think a less experimental safiya nygaard), ones where she gives advice to viewers who send in questions, and unboxing/review videos for beauty items and clothes

people always comment calling her “queen” which she thinks is sort of cute and “mom” which just confuses her (“for the last time--i appreciate all the kind words but i DO NOT HAVE ANY CHILDREN”) 

has never been demonetized once and doesn’t plan on it

whenever her videos are sponsored, she manages to sneak the sponsorship in smoothly, in a clever way

goes to vidcon but typically is too busy to stay the whole weekend 

wrote a book on self care and how to be independent and successful that became one of the best-selling youtuber books ever 

 isn’t a huge fan of collabs on her own channel, but appears occasionally on portia’s or asra’s 

does a yearly giveaway of high end jewelry and makeup for her subscribers, and holds a charity donation event for her birthday (like colleen ballinger’s childhood cancer one)   

seems to avoid scandals effortlessly, but actually works hard to stay out of drama 

asra

has absolutely no theme to his channel and just rolls with whatever video idea he can think of at the time

some examples include an instructional tarot reading video, a docuseries on the stigma against reptiles (featuring faust in every episode), a collab with nadia where they just drink tea and talk about current events, and him playing the weirdest children’s games he can find online

LOVES meeting fans and spends the whole weekend at vidcon, has like 7 meet and greets, and appears in every panel that will let him participate

his videos are low on editing and mostly just edited for length, but any special effects he does add in are not subtle at all (aka random sparkles and dramatic jump cuts) 

has been dubbed a “cinnamon roll” by his fans but he isn’t afraid to call out other creators if they say something problematic

 is very expressive and there are many reaction images and videos of him all over instagram and twitter

doesn’t usually make travel blogs but he does travel a lot, so most of his videos don’t have the same background

 all his merch is tye-dye and the best seller is a mug with a faust-shaped handle 

 follows a bunch of fan accounts for him on instagram

 tons of fans ship him with julian and while he’s not super into it, he finds the shitty instagram edits hilarious 

julian

the KING of clickbait titles but his fans don’t mind that much because it just parallels his dramatic personality 

“Staying in a Haunted Hotel???” (it’s not haunted, he just heard the people in the room beside him talking at midnight and thought it was ghosts), “I Solved the Jon-Benet Ramsey Case” (he didn’t, it’s just him discussing theories on it), “Proof the Government is Plotting Against Us” (no solid proof, just off the wall conspiracies that he explains confidently)

makes videos of him exploring supposedly haunted places, ones where he discusses unsolved crime cases and what he thinks really happened, and conspiracy theory videos

very active in the comments section; likes every nice comment he sees and replies to them with a winky face

 also very active on twitter and instagram, especially past midnight, and replies to tweets and dms from fans

sometimes collabs with asra for conspiracy videos which immediately leads to 20 fanmade compilations titled “julian annoying asra for 5 minutes straight”

is always sponsored by the weirdest, most random companies that have no relation to the kind of videos he makes at all

does 6 hour live streams where all he does is look at cursed images on reddit 

is determined to not let any of his subscriber’s discover that his birth name is ilya 

random haters have tried to cancel him multiple times but it Never Works he is literally immune to being cancelled 

portia

vlog QUEEN !!! her videos are mostly vlogs of her daily life, with a few scripted videos scattered here and there, usually involving pepi

contrary to her brother, her titles are very blunt and true to the content and are in all lowercase (“a day in my life”, “getting frustrated in my garden”, “buying my cat clothes online”)

 she tries to make her videos appeal to everyone, but 90% of her demographic is still teenage wannabe aesthetic vsco girls

 has never done a proper collab, but her vlogs always end up featuring nadia, julian, and some of the palace guards 

has a popular merch line that sells unique items like flower seeds, pet food bowls, and baking tools 

her favorite thing is seeing her fans’ reactions when she picks up one much taller and heavier than her for a picture at vidcon

fans all agree that she has bde 

sometimes makes so-called “family vlogs” where she hangs out with julian and mazelinka and calls them “the maz squad”

for april fool’s day, she posted a fake giveaway announcement video where she claimed she was giving pepi away to a fan

her twitter is mostly retweets of fanart and sweet messages from fans (and pictures of pepi, obviously)

muriel 

has the smallest subscriber count of the group but it's surprisingly high for someone who never wanted to be popular in the first place

his videos are very niche and are usually on topics like how to survive in the wilderness and how to raise chickens

many of his subscribers think his quiet personality and unique videos are all an act or persona and muriel does not understand why

he's only ever been to one (1) fan event/meet and greet and it was when he tagged along with asra to vidcon

despite his protests, asra always plugs muriel’s videos on his twitter, so they share many subscribers 

he doesn't really have any haters because those who actually watch his videos think he's super sweet and those who don't are too scared of his huge stature 

didn't want to include inanna in his videos initially, but caved after fans saw her in the background of one and demanded she make an appearance more often

fans (and asra) keep insisting he change his username to “the mountain man” but he heartily refuses 

does his own editing but also isn't great with technology so sometimes his videos are strangely edited and include parts he meant to edit out (but it's kinda endearing)

has never sold merch, never plans to, and ignores any requests to do so

lucio

listen i'm not comparing him to the paul brothers but you know …..

makes prank videos, makeup tutorials (but it's the same look just varied SLIGHTLY every time), and vlogs where he not so subtly flexes how rich he is

his merch is supposedly “the highest quality and extremely stylish” but that just means the prices are sky high and the quality is not that great 

goes to every convention he can and holds random meet ups because he craves attention 

isn't mean to his fans because he couldn't bear seeing his sub count go down, but will absolutely TEAR his haters to shreds and get their channel taken down somehow 

gets demonetized all the time and complains about it (as if he needs more money)

people are either a huge fan or they HATE him there is no in between

uses clickbait just as much as julian but people are less forgiving about it 

none of the other people in the gang really want to collab with him but julian did once, got tricked into eating a beetle, and refused to do it ever again 

king of scandals, tweets random controversial stuff and then deletes it