#i never once actually wrote a review but this time I hit my limit

[sparkles-oflight]

how I'll sleep today knowing I just wrote a bad review of my sociology teacher to the university higher-ups

[ktchewy]

A comparison of some pens I'm currently using and some new pens I acquired

Pens used:

- Uni-ball One P 0.38mm - LAMY Safari <EF> - TWSBI Eco <F> - Pilot Capless/Vanishing Point <F> - Pilot Kakuno <EF> - Ancora Ginza custom pen <MF> - Sailor Hocoro <M, F, fude> - Kakimori brass nib dip pen - Matsubokkuri glass pen

Lengthy review under the read more 🙈

The Uni-ball One P is sort of like the control for the comparisons? Idk LOL we know for sure it's 0.38mm so we can estimate how much thinner/thicker the other pens are. This pen is my go-to for quickly jotting things down, I highly recommend the Uni-ball One series of pens to anyone looking for a gel ink pen! It writes super smooth and has never smudged for me, the way the pens from the P series (P for pocket!) look is also super cute. After using the Uni-ball One pens, other non-fountain pens just don't hit the same. When I was filling out forms during check-in at one of the hotels in Japan, the staff gave me a regular ol' ballpoint pen and after one stroke, I went "nah I'm not writing with this" and grabbed my own pen from my backpack.

The LAMY Safari and TWSBI Eco are both a constant for me, they're always filled and hanging out in my pen case. I know some people don't like LAMY Safaris or TWSBI Eco's because of inconsistent nib qualities from the former and cracking issues from the latter but both of these pens have been pretty solid for me, never had any issues with them (knock on wood! 😳) I included them in this just to compare them with the new pens I got.

I am super in love with the Pilot Capless/Vanishing Point, probably my most favourite purchase of the trip! I used to think my TWSBI Eco wrote smoothly but the Capless straight up gliiiides across the paper. I picked this up in Itoya Ginza and had the chance to try out the EF as well and I think because that one was so thin, there was a bit of feedback so I didn't like it as much. I love writing with this pen so much, it sparks joy!! The retractable mechanism is very convenient for quickly putting the pen down and picking it back up again. Super recommend it to people who are looking to try a higher budget pen. For comparison, this matte black version sells for $275 CAD locally and I got this at Itoya for ¥18,540 (tax free hehe), which equals to about $175-180 CAD.

I actually already have a Pilot Kakuno with an M and F nib in my collection and I wanted to try a thinner nib but for some reason, just the EF Kakuno was super hard to find locally. I forgot to write on my sheet that it's currently filled with Sailor Shikiori Yamadori, because of the thinness though it's hard to see the turquoise colour of the ink haha. I think this size would be perfect for writing in the condensed space of my Hobonichi Weeks, I'll have to test it out in the weekly pages once the proper dates roll around.

The Ancora Ginza pen is also another pen I was looking forward to get, only because it was almost like going to Build-a-Bear but for pens LOL If you want to search more about it, you can try the official Japanese name of it: アンコーラMy万年筆. The model of the pen is a Sailor Profit Jr. and cost ¥4,400, I did research prior going on my trip it used to be ¥3,800 at some point 🥲 You can pick between a regular steel MF nib or a fude nib but I already have a fude Profit Jr so I picked the MF instead. My friend also commented that she thought I would be making multiple pens but I'll be saving my second custom pen for another time just so I have an excuse to go back to Ancora again >:) This nib also feels really nice to write with; no feedback, very smooth. I'm trying to limit my number of inked pens so this comparison was only done by dipping the nib in ink, I do want to fill this pen properly and try journaling with it soon! The only complain I have for this pen is that the cap or body feels a bit squeaky scratchy when I screw them back together, it's most likely just the part I grabbed but the quality might be hit or miss with them. The pen that my friend made is completely fine though! I think it's worth it to get your own pen made because it's such a unique experience.

If you're looking for a dip pen to play around or swatch multiple inks at once, then you'd have to try the Sailor Hocoro dip pen. I previously ordered the fude nib one online and I loved how convenient a dip pen is in general. But because of the nature of a fude nib, it took some time to get used and having to write at a specific angle to get the line width I wanted would sometimes give me wrist pain lmao :') Then not too long ago, Sailor announced that they were releasing a M nib so I added that to my mental list of things to buy, and then seeing how cheap stationery were in Japan, I picked up an F nib (no pen body) and the extra "feed" parts too. The feed isn't necessary but I like that I can write for way longer as opposed to not having it (check out this demo from Yoseka) In hindsight, I wish I had gotten the grey body in Japan. I do like the white body but I just want to keep the bodies with their respective nibs that I got them with and I feel like I might have mixed them up while swatching inks the other day LMAO

The Kakimori dip pen has been in my wishlist for a super long time and I'm very glad I held off from buying it locally in Vancouver or ordering it online. The sakura wood nib holder and the brass nib are listed on a local shop's site for $49.95 and $64.95 CAD respectively, on Kakimori's online shop they're ¥4,520 for the nib holder and ¥7,430 for the nib. In Kakimori's physical store, I got the nib holder for ¥2,970 and the nib for ¥4,950, with the conversion rate, that's like $27-28 for the nib holder and $46-48 CAD for the brass nib!!! 🥴 Price aside, this dip pen is another tool you can use for swatch inks or just drawing/doodling with it, I love the super thick line you can get when you hold it at a low angle, it's how I swatched all those lines in my Hobonichi Weeks. I've always read about how the stainless steel nib is harder and feels scratchier than the brass nib and after having tried both in stores, I do prefer the brass nib a lot more. The stainless steel nib felt like it didn't want to be written with, it just didn't feel pleasant imo. Some people might like feedback in their pens so I do recommend testing the pens out if you're able to before buying them.

This glass pen by Glass Studio Matsubokkuri ガラス工房まつぼっくり is my very first glass pen and I only chose this one because 1) the body is simple and short, I don't like the crazy swirly glass pens I commonly see 2) the triangular body means it's less likely to roll off the table 3) it was easily found at Ancora Ginza LOL I first discovered it when I was watching this youtube channel doodle/swatch inks with it. On Matsubokkuri's own website, they have F, M, and broad listed but there was only one size available at Ancora. I think mine is a F nib but I don't have any other glass pen to compare with so it's totally a guess, I'm just comparing it with my F fountain pens 🤔 The staff at Ancora gave me two pens to test out before purchasing since glass pens will have slight differences between them. They both wrote fine, I only picked the second pen I tried because the swirls in the nib of the first pen looked wonky to me.

If you made it this far down the post, thank you! I just wanted to share my thoughts on the pens that I have and hopefully this can give a little insight and help someone on their own pen journey!! 🫶

[blazehedgehog]

Morio Kishimoto leading development on Frontiers has me VERY worried. He strikes me as having no understanding of what makes Sonic games fun. I’m skeptical that he will give Sonic the momentum physics needed for an open world game. Is there any reason I should be optimistic? Do any of his non-Sonic games demonstrate talent that he could apply to Frontiers? Additionally why is Morio still being chosen as the director of Sonic games when only 2 of his 5 (Rings and Colors)sonic games reviewed well?

I think it's easy to get worried and want to find someone to blame. I would question how much we actually knew was Kishimoto's fault. Now, I'll admit, interviews with him are a little bit of a blind spot for me, but I also know how fans can whip themselves up in to a frenzy over nothing and get the wrong impression.

Also, the sad part is, reviews matter less than ever in today's society. Media distrust is everywhere and I've had people tell me to my face that they don't trust any game critics about anything at all. Reviews don't carry the sway they once did, because the peanut gallery is convinced that every review is either part of a lie or an agenda. Or, at the very least, the person who wrote the review is a mouth-breathing monster.

Sonic games can bomb in reviews and it doesn't matter. Technically it's never mattered, because Sonic games have been bombing in reviews before Kishimoto even got the job.

What matters are sales.

Sega of America launched a campaign around 2011 or 2012 where they were trying to delist bad Sonic games in the hopes of erasing some of Sonic's bad reputation. This is why it's impossible to buy a digital copy of Sonic 06 these days, because Sega of America tried to pretend that game did not exist.

But, obviously, Sonic games keep referencing Sonic 06. Silver keeps coming back, we just got merchandise of Mephiles not that long ago, those characters have turned up in the mobile games, and so on.

Sonic 06 also sold insanely well. Enough to be inducted in to Microsoft's "Platinum Hits" line, which usually denotes a large volume of sales in a short period of time. Its believed that Sonic 06 sold well over a million units.

Sega of America might erase Sonic 06 to clean up Sonic's reputation, but Sonic Team and Sega of Japan have a vested financial interest to continue a legacy of profitable software. Sales matter more than critical reputation. If Silver the Hedgehog existing makes more people buy Sonic games, then he's never going to go away.

This is the absolute mess the Sonic franchise finds itself in. If bad games still sell, do you try to make games better? Or do you simply try to remain profitable? I imagine it becomes very difficult to know which direction is up.

Using that as a basis, you can make up any kind of wild assumptions on why Kishimoto might still be around. Literally, the sky is the limit.

Only Sega knows the truth.

[palimpsessed]

So @captain-aralias​ did one of these and invited other writers to do the same. And I wasn't really going to because it feels a bit late now and also I've done quite a few other year in review posts for 2020. But then I got to thinking that it would be really nice to have one of these for each year to look back on and compare, which convinced me. So, here we go!

If you’re a writer, I’d also encourage you to steal this. Tag me on your post so I can see your thoughts! 🥰

List of Complete Fics for 2020 1. At the Top of a Tower, With You- General, 900 words 2. Use Your Words- Teen, 16k 3. A Man of Letters, or Five Times Baz Retreats and the One Time He Doesn’t- Teen, 54k 4. To the Manor Borne- Teen, 43k

Total: 4 fics, 113k words

Every one of these fics was written for an event, which, realistically, is the only reason they got finished. I have so many ideas I'm working on all at once, and I came into fandom with a focus on making art, so to actually find the motivation to sit down and write/finish/post a fic was entirely deadline based. And it's a technique I'm sure I will also employ in 2021.

Best/Worst Title?

Well, I've mentioned a few times before that I usually have a title before I have much in the way of a fic concept. I don't really dislike any of the my titles, because they all did exactly what I needed them to do, which was help me focus on what I wanted to accomplish in the fic. Comparatively speaking, though, I can answer this.

Best: Use Your Words - succinct, idiomatic, a book quote/motif that also has the potential to be a spell, does what it says on the tin, is probably what all of us are constantly yelling at Baz and Simon to do throughout the books and the fic itself

(Honorable mention to A Man of Letters because that title forms a perfect heart shape when viewed on mobile on AO3. ❤️)

Worst: At the Top of a Tower, With You - this is also a quote and it fits the fic perfectly, but it is a bit of a mouthful and it has a comma in the middle of it, which, while I love commas, feels a bit off-putting in terms of a title - also, it's always kind of bothered me that it's a Baz WS quote used for a CO-era Lucy POV

Best/worst summary?

Again, I don't really dislike any of my summaries.

Best:

To the Manor Borne: The gang decides to spend Christmas together at Pitch Manor. Romance, hijinks, and holiday cheer ensue.

Anything that lets me use the word hijinks is always good! - it's short and sweet - it does a fair job of setting up the premise for the fic and giving highlights, without giving anything away

Worst: A Man of Letters

I'm not going to include this one because it's so long, I had to cut down the version I posted on tumblr to fit in the AO3 field, which is really why I rank it below my others - it effectively sets up the world of Simon and Baz in Regency England prior to where the story starts, but it is prohibitively long - and it's set up, not summary, so it also loses points for not doing what it purports to do - I could have said exactly what this fic was in one sentence: "Simon and Baz meet at several Regency-appropriate venues over the course of a London season and reflect on their acquaintance in letters", but instead I did the full book jacket version because it was more interesting to me.

Best/Worst First Line?

Oh, this is interesting. I can honestly say that I have no idea where this will go. Going to pull up my docs and find out! Okay, since I only have four fics to consider, and I'm feeling split, I'm going to do two for each. I feel good about my words, but I will say that half of my first lines actually provide information, and the other half are incomplete thoughts. Those were stylistic decisions I made, but when taken alone, it does somewhat limit the effectivness of a sentence when it can't stand without the rest of the paragraph. Perhaps that decision will lure readers in for more?

Best:

In the end, we wind up at Pitch Manor. (To the Manor Borne)

I know that you won't be surprised when I tell you that I do not like writing letters. (A Man of Letters)

Kind of interesting that these both contain key words from the titles 🤔

Worst:

I'm not sure how I'm supposed to do this. (Use Your Words)

I love how the title seems to be answering Baz's question when the two are put together like this 😂

Strange that it should end here, where it all started. (At the Top of a Tower, With You)

The title also seems to complete the first line in this one, too. I'm learning about my writing as this goes on, so that's cool!

Best/Worst Last Line?

Hmm. Okay, again, no idea. Also, a little leery of including last lines for anyone who hasn't read the fics they're from yet. (Tho I guess it's unlikely those people would be reading this😆) But let's see what we've got.

Use Your Words and A Man of Letters have very similar final lines, and both are somewhat spoilery.

Best: The ending of A Man of Letters felt risky to me, in the way that it is formatted and changes tone from the rest of the story. It was something that happened as I wrote it and I loved it. I had no idea if readers would like it, if they would feel like it worked as an ending, but I felt strongly enough about it to let the entire fic hinge on that and I think it really paid off. So, without giving you the actual last line, which is only one word, I'm going to say that one is my best ending.

Worst:

To the Manor Borne: "Carry on, Simon."

It's not bad, it's just not mine.

Looking back, did you write more fics than you thought you would this year, fewer than you thought, or about what you predicted?

I did not set out to write any fics in 2020. I was supposed to be taking a break from writing. I've been an aspiring novelist for half my life now, and have been going through major ups and downs with my writing. I decided I needed to re-evaluate and figure out if writing was something that was even going to be able to make me happy anymore. The answer is: YES! Just…not original fiction. At the moment. I'm happiest when I can write for the sake of writing and not have to DO something with that writing. Which is why discovering fan fiction was AMAZING!!!! 🥰🥰🥰

To actually answer the question, yes, I wrote more than I thought I would. I also wrote exactly as much as I thought I would, simply because these were all things I signed up for (with the exception of my Countdown fic, but I committed to it as if it were something that required a sign up).

I have a lot more ideas for 2021, but I don't know how many of them will come to fruition. I'm not putting pressure on myself to have to do anything beyond what I sign up for again, because it did work out so well for me starting off.

What pairing/genre/fandom did you write that you would never have predicted last year?

I mean, the pairing and the fandom were in no way a surprise. 😆 They're my only ones, so those were both a given. The genre is also not surprising.

What's your favorite story this year? Not the most popular, but the one that makes you the happiest?

A Man of Letters, without any hesitation. I adore it so much. It's the kind of fic I know I will unabashedly sit down to read over and over, even if I'm the one who wrote it. I had one reader to please and it was ME. By far, my most self-indulgent fic.

Okay, NOW your most popular story?

That depends on the metric.

To the Manor Borne leads in Comments (107), Kudos (153), and Hits (1992), and Use Your Words leads in Bookmarks (26).

But since To the Manor Borne is top in 3 out of 4 metrics, I'll say that one.

Story most upderappreciated by the universe?

I mean, the least popular by a wide margin is At the Top of a Tower, With You, but I don't know if I'd call it underappreciated. It's short, it's angsty, it's got a very unusual style, it's Lucy POV, it's the first fic I wrote and posted. I didn't really go into it with high performance expectations. I'm proud of it, I just didn't expect it to be popular. It would be nice if more people read it, but I'm not broken up over it.

Story that could have been better?

I'm not even going to touch this one. Everything can always be improved upon, but if I go down that route, nothing will ever be done. This is one of the things I have come to appreciate about traditional art versus digital. With traditional, there is only so much you can do before something is permanent and you have to live with it. It's an exercise in letting go and acceptance. Digital is flashier and more flexible, but I could (and have) spend months on a single piece and never feel satisfied, never stop tweaking. I think that's also the reason I started to hate my novels.

Sexiest story?

Based purely on overall vibes, I find the understated tension of the Regency the most appealing, so I'm going to say A Man of Letters. I didn't actually stray into sex territory in any of my fics (though Simon and Baz have had sex by the time To the Manor Borne starts, and refer to it, and probably do it "offscreen"), but A Man of Letters is the one that feels sexiest to me. Lots of thirsting!Baz and feral!Simon and sensual hand touching (how risqué!) - and YEARNING. That, to me, is the sexiest vibe of all. So. Much. Yearning.

Saddest story?

At the Top of a Tower, With You - for this one, I tagged "angst without plot" and I stand by that. It's Lucy losing her connection to Simon at the end of CO and trying to find a way to reconcile herself to leaving him alone again. I gave it as much of a hopeful bent as I could, with the refrain of Baz's spoken "love" to cling to, but it's very sad.

Most fun?

To the Manor Borne - All of my fics have their fair share of angst, but this one also has some good, silly, holiday fluff thrown in. Since I wrote it for the Countdown, each chapter was based on a different prompt, which led to this one going in all sorts of directions no single fic probably ever should. Plus, it has the most Shepard, and Shepard always makes things more fun.

Story with the single sweetest moment?

Oh my god. I don't know. No, never mind. I do. It's To the Manor Borne, but it's split between the two gift giving scenes, the Constellations and Secret Santa/Gift Giving prompts. These were private moments between Simon and Baz, sharing themselves with each other, being vulnerable, and communicating. It's the gifts they give each other, yes, but it's more so the reasons they chose those gifts, and how they show part of themselves and share their love for each other, through those gifts, that had me in tears writing those two scenes. I'm super proud of them.

Hardest story to write?

Use Your Words - it was written for an exchange and that made it really hard to write it knowing there was this pressure of making my gift-ee happy with the fic. I'm proud of it, and they really liked it, but the anxiety was too much for me.

Easiest/most fun story to write?

A Man of Letters - if there is a fic better suited to me as a writer, I haven't met it. I started writing after reading Pride and Prejudice in high school, so I started out writing Regency and I spent years and years and years of my life obsessed. When I transferred into college, an administrator I had never met before heard my name during orientation and said, "Oh, you're the Austen scholar." (It is a small, private college, and I was a transfer, so the pool of students was even smaller. But still. Many years later, I'm clearly not over it.) I also did my senior thesis on an epistolary novel (Frances Burney’s Evelina), and my English Lit emphasis was for that time period. So, I felt like I had been preparing for this fic my entire adult life. 😂

Did any stories shift your perceptions of the characters?

I don't think so. I tend to let my writing be dictated by the characters, so I'm always following their lead. Sometimes they'll do or say something that surprises me and takes me down a route I didn't necessarily foresee, but I don't think there was ever a point where one of them did something that made me rethink who they are as a character.

Most overdue story?

I will say A Man of Letters, since that one felt like a culmination of my seventeen-year-old self's wildest writing dreams. But I should probably say the Scooby Doo AU I still haven't managed to finish, because that one has been a WIP since I joined the fandom. Oops. (I'm hoping when I look over this in a year, I can feel smug that it's finally done.)

Did you take any writing risks this year? What did you learn from them?

Writing at all was a risk for me! And writing fan fic for the very first time! Writing an entire fic told only through letters. And then ending it in a completely different style from the rest of the fic. Doing a multi-chaptered fic for the Countdown, using a different prompt for each chapter, and publishing a chapter every single day for thirty days (with the exception of two days that had art). Signing up for fandom events in the first place!

What I learned from taking risks in my writing is the same thing I learned when I took risks in my art this year. I have a much better appreciation for what I've done when I push myself, I feel better about the end product, and I like it longer. I think it's really good for me to challenge myself creatively.

This year's theme and the story that demonstrates it most?

Oh boy. Um. Therapy! Both Use Your Words and To the Manor Borne had their big HEA moments built around sending Simon and Baz to therapy. I don't think that's likely to change for future fics, either. I feel like therapy as the theme for 2020 seems very fitting. (Also, I think I keep sending the boys to therapy because I'm trying to get myself there…)

What are your fic writing goals for next year?

Just to write what I want to write, have fun, not put any pressure on myself, and to take risks in my writing and my art because it will help me to grow.

[missdaviswrites]

MissDavis 2020 Fic Year in Review

I was tagged by @loveismyrevolution, @hubblegleeflower, @blogstandbygo and @notesoflore. Thank you all!

Total number of completed stories: 11

Total word count: 108,368 (minus 9,125 on a WIP from previous years, so 99,243 is the actual number of new posted words)

Fandoms written in: BBC Sherlock

Looking back, did you write more fic than you thought you would this year, less, or about what you’d expected? More! My goal was to finish Better Off Together and write all of Hold You Like a Weapon, which I did, and they ended up being about as long as I expected. But I didn't expect to write the 9 shorter fics. I thought I might do 3 or 4 for 221B Consolation Fest, as I have for a few years now, but I also ended up with 4 short fics inspired by the quarantine, plus In Extremis, the Eurus-prompted Fuck or Die fic. I also didn’t think I was going to write a Christmas ficlet series this year, but I did end up with Put a Little Love in Your Heart.

What’s your own favorite story of the year?  Hold You Like a Weapon: I wasn't sure if this story would work out, especially with the pacing, but I'm happy with the way it ended up. (Thanks to @totallysilvergirl and @persian-slipper for all the beta help, offered through @fandomtrumpshate!) It's a Johnlock friends-to-lovers story, 52K, explicit, told from John's POV after he receives a frantic phone call from Sherlock, asking him to help because Eurus has just shown up at the flat and is about to give birth.

Did you take any writing risks this year? Yes! Alone Together! From a prompt by @theemptyquarto, this was a challenging story to write, combining two of my favorite things to write in ways I never would have thought possible. At 8355 words, it's my longest smutty story ever and I'm very proud of it, even though the audience for it has been pretty limited.

Do you have any fanfic or profic goals for the new year? I'd like to try to write an original novel, because although I tried to do that many times before I started writing fic in 2014, I never managed to finish anything. I'm hoping that having a few novel-length works of fic under my belt means I now know how to finish, though I'm afraid I won't have the motivation to write when I don't have AO3 readers waiting for the next chapter.

Most popular story of the year?  Hold You Like a Weapon has the most hits, kudos, bookmarks, etc. Not surprising, since it was a multi-chaptered fic posted over nine months. I was happy to see that people did not avoid the fic even though Eurus was central to the premise. I don't write fix-it fics, so it's canon-compliant, but I tried to make Eurus into somewhat of a more realistic character. (Though it's a Johnlock story and she is far from the main character, just the catalyst for everything else.)

Story of mine most under-appreciated by the universe, in my opinion: I would say Alone Together, but I didn't expect that to get many readers (you're missing out—it's some of my better smut, plus John now has both nipples pierced.) But I guess I was surprised that Comforts of Love didn't get many readers, especially in relation to other quarantine stories I wrote this year. It's got some porny times set in my Breakable universe. Everyone always tells me how much they like Breakable, but then very few people want to read anything else in the series, it seems.

Most fun story to write: Hm. The long ones are never the most fun, just because they're a lot more work. Better Off Together has traditionally been my happy place for writing, and I was really glad to come back to that fic and finish it off this year. And I admit to having fun with In Extremis, having Eurus force John and Sherlock together as a final test at Sherrinford. And Skin, Touch, Feel was a really easy to write bit of fluff, so that was fun, too.

Most unintentionally telling story: I don't know. Most of what I write has little to do with me personally. BUT I did realize I wrote numerous stories this year featuring Sherlock giving John a shoulder massage, and that's 100% me, because I have a bulging disc in my neck and it messes with my shoulder. I usually get a massage for it about every 6 weeks, but my massage therapist has been closed most of the year, so I've only been able to go once since February and OW.

Biggest disappointment: I knew it was coming, but just a few days ago, Chaperones overtook Breakable as my fic with the most kudos. I like both of the stories, but Breakable will always be my favorite. I guess people prefer fluff to hurt/comfort??? As for things I wrote this year, I wasn't happy with the final chapter of Put a Little Love in Your Heart, because I wanted to end with more wacky hijinks as Mummy and her co-conspirators tried to force Sherlock and John to admit their love, but when the time came to write it, I just didn't have the time or energy this year, so it ended up being only a suggestion of what I wanted it to be.

Biggest surprise: Well, the whole concept for Alone Together was a big surprise, but I think the other surprising thing was that there seemed to be a lot less interest in the Advent Ficlet Challenge this year, at least here on Tumblr. My own fic did fine on AO3, but I thought more people would be reading and reblogging fluffy holiday fic this year. None of my ficlets posted here got anywhere near the attention that some of my previous years' postings have, and the masterlist of everyone who participated got far fewer notes than the lists from the last few years, which makes me feel bad for all the other writers who participated. For a happier surprise, I would say that I was surprised at how much I wrote beyond my goals, and that I still had new ideas for short fics. Thanks to @sherlockedcarmilla for the inspiration from the Isolated Johnlock Collection, which got me to write a few things I wouldn't have otherwise.

I know a lot of people have already been tagged, so I’m tagging any other fic writers out there who would like to share their 2020 work!

[ddagent]

A Year in Review - Writers Version

Rules: pick your favourite sentence from a work you posted / wrote during a month of 2020! if you didn’t write anything in any particular month, don’t worry! tell us what you were doing or use it as free space for runner-up sentences. after that, tag 8 people or more to do the meme!

I know I am hideously late but I’m battling this sinus infection and only just now catching up. I was tagged by the amazing @aviss, and I am tagging anyone who wishes to do it! <3

January: Head, Hand, Heart (Chapter 15)

Brienne kissed Jaime in the spot where they had first met, where they had first embraced. Where they would stand as Queen and Prince Consort to preside over the kingdoms. Where they would present their first child to the Court. Where Jaime would tell their three children for the umpteenth time how he thought their mother the Maiden when she entered this very room. Brienne kissed Jaime in that spot until they both decided to return to their bedchambers and satisfy their hunger. They left the ghosts behind them as they went and began their new life together.

The Lion and the Beauty. Oathkeeper and Stormbreaker. The Golden Prince and the Warrior Queen.

February: I Can’t Get No Satisfaction 

“How gallant of you. Let us see how long it lasts before all you think about is your want; your need to touch your clit, fill that cunt of yours.” His teeth toyed with his bottom lip. Brienne loosened her grip. “You think I want to fuck you? I have no desire to bed anyone other than my sister, but I equally have no desire to walk all the way to the capital with my cock stiff and my balls blue. I am merely suggesting, my Lady, that we give each other a helping hand to take the edge off.”

“I won’t untie you.”

“There are other ways I can touch you, my Lady. You can straddle my face; let my tongue give you the orgasm you so desperately need.”

March: Sugar

Jaime’s forehead furrowed, and those beautiful lips fell into a frown. “Can you give us a minute?” he said to the waitress and, after she took her leave, leant across to Brienne once again. “You’re not used to asking for the things you want, are you?”

She bristled at his tone. “And I bet you never have to ask; they’re just given to you.”

He grinned. “Most of the time. I was lucky enough to be born into a family with more wealth than I can ever spend. My sister’s bought vineyards; my brother a boat or three. I’d like to buy your time and your company.”

“Why me?”

April: Table for One

As she completed the last table of appetisers, Podrick returned. He was smiling. “Table fourteen said to give his compliments to the chef.”

Brienne frowned. “He hasn’t even eaten it yet.”

“He said if you cook steak as well as your scallops, he’s in for a good meal.” Podrick closed the distance between them, so the rest of the kitchen couldn’t hear what else he had to say. “He also said that if he’s lucky enough to get a third course, he’d like the chef to bring it out herself.”

“Oh.” Her cheeks flushed. “I see.”

May: Chariot

Jaime pulled his car up in front of the Tarth Limited building; the blue-tinted windows shining in the King’s Landing sun. “We’re here.”

“Thank you,” said one of his passengers; a tall, striking woman with the bluest eyes Jaime had ever seen. Her companion, a shorter, plain-looking man whose face Jaime wouldn’t be able to pick out of a line-up, said nothing. “Have a good day.”

The woman went to open the rear door, only to find the handle stuck. Not wanting yet another comment about kidnapping passengers and holding them in his back seat, Jaime flung himself out of the driver’s side and opened Widow’s back door. While some (his mother, for example) found calling his car Widow’s Wail macabre, Jaime found it suited the faulty door, rusted exhaust, and the tendency for the radio to splutter to life at the oddest moments.

“Sorry about the door,” he offered, allowing the young woman to make her escape. “Have a–have a good day.”

June: Pride

Cat grinned, and Jaime just sat, watching his daughter smile his smile. She had her mother’s eyes and nose; both of their desire to wave around a stick at other people carrying sticks. But that smile was all him. She grinned at her lion cub, who had her mistress’ eyes, and Jaime knew the exact moment his daughter settled on the perfect name.

“Sapphire,” she said; the cub sneezing in response. “Saffie for short.”

“I love it. And your mother will love it, too.” He stroked his daughter’s head, earning a content smile from his child and a bop of the head from the newest addition to the family. “Now, will my little lions finally go to bed?”

July: Sparkline

“Nineteen Reasons why Hand Jaime Lannister is the sexiest politician in Westeros,” Brienne teased as Jaime entered her office. The Sparkline article was open in her browser; a topless photograph found on his brother’s social media reason number one. “And then there’s the one about your beard.”

Jaime ran a hand over his face as he slumped into his familiar seat beside Brienne’s desk. “Ah, yes. I saw that article.”

“They suggested you should call it Ovary Killer.” A clear riff on Oathkeeper, the ancient Valyrian sword that hung in the Queen’s office. It’s sister blade hung in his own. He’d like to take it to his laptop most days. Over her screen, Brienne caught Jaime’s eye and grinned. “The press is rather fond of you.”

“As they are of you, Your Grace. You and…Renly.”

August: Score

“Touché, Ms Tarth,” Jaime said; his smile fixed in place as he chatted with her. “Manager of the Evenstar and so desperate to meet me that you did a job one of your staff could have easily done.”

Brienne snorted. “I don’t believe in hiding in my office, Mister Lannister, especially during a busy weekend. Believe me, the highlight of my day will be watching you lose, not seeing you in a small towel.”

“Oh, so you did see me in that towel?” Jaime Lannister teased his bottom lip with his teeth, and her traitorous stomach somersaulted. “I should thank you again, Ms Tarth. My lucky gloves were in my room; without that key, who knows how many of your goals I would have nearly let in.”

“I don’t think your hands are nearly as good as you think they are.”

September: Mixed Doubles

The half-penny dropped, and Jaime had the sudden urge to throw himself in front of a fire-breathing dragon. Anything other than face this realisation. As Jason re-joined Brienne and Melara in the living room, Jaime gripped the kitchen island and tried not to scream. “Oh, Gods!”

“Now, Jaime, this isn’t something to get worked up about,” his father declared; a wry smile forming on his features. “In actuality, it’s rather amusing.”

“We’re not even on the same continent as amusing! Tyrion told me to wait a day.” Jaime turned sharply towards his brother. “Wait a day, you said. Ask her then if you think it’s right, you said. Well during that day, Brienne fell for the direct-to-DVD version of me!”

Tyrion held out his hands; trying to placate his brother. “Jaime, I know you’re angry—”

“—angry; I’m not angry. I just want to hit you, wait a day, and take you to the maester then!”

October: N/A

[I didn’t write anything in October. Not even headcanons :( ]

November: Not Marriage Material

“Is she presentable?”

From behind the handmaiden, a choked snort of derision echoed out into the hallway. Jaime, Lord of Casterly Rock, just smiled. The handmaiden, short of stature but sweet of face, merely nodded and allowed him entry. Her gaze lingered on his crimson tunic and golden curls before the girl took her leave; no doubt to return to the kitchens and wax poetic about the Golden Lion. Jaime took a moment to bask in the admiration before he entered his oldest friend’s chambers.

Brienne was sat in front of the looking glass, staring unhappily at her reflection. Jaime crossed the room and pressed his lips to her freckled cheek. “Lady Evenstar.”

“My Lord.” Brienne sighed as he perched himself atop the dresser. “Who is it today?”

December: A Sevenmas Carol

“I don’t deserve this.”

“Did I deserve my end, Kingslayer? Did my husband and sons? Does your sister, after all she’s done, deserve to die in your arms like lovers from a song?” Lady Stark blinked away a tear. “Life is not given to the deserving. It is not a case of what you deserve. What do you want, Ser Jaime?”

He did not even have to think. “Her.”

[lexosaurus]

What would the Danny Phantom Title Theme sound like if I were hired to score a reboot, and couldn’t use any of the copyrighted music?

This was made using entirely FREE music scoring software. And if you follow me, you may have heard me mention it before!

Of course, I’m talking about the famous Musescore.

So what do I actually think about this program? Do I recommend people interested in music download this? Is it easy to learn? Is it, like many free music programs, too limited to even use properly? Or is it worth the time and effort to learn?

Here is my 100% honest review of Musescore 3:

To start off, I will say Musescore does know I am making this review. However, they are not paying me money, and little do they know, I’ve actually been using their software since they were still on Musescore 1. 

So yeah, I know this software inside and out.

And even though I’m not a professional composer and I barely have a grasp on my music theory rules (I just found out how polyrhythms work like two weeks ago), Musescore is actually the reason I got into music writing at all. And that’s because their product is for people like you and me, just casual music fans or aspiring music professionals who maybe wanna try their hand at writing something cool.

Musescore is designed for people who are interested in writing music and don’t want to be babied by these basic softwares that genuinely barely sound listenable, or the “free” softwares that only allow 1-3 instruments at a time. That doesn’t mean that Musescore doesn’t have its flaws, which I will get into, but it is a serious software designed to be easy to use for the beginner, and still entertaining and useful for the advanced user.

And for those who are worried about not being able to read sheet music, let me tell you a little secret: ear/listening skills are just as, if not more important than reading skills are! If you can’t read sheet music yet, that’s fine! Trust your ears, and your eyes will follow!

Opening up this software can seem intimidating. But once you break it down, it’s not so hard! 

In fact, here is a really awesome tutorial for new users on how to use these tools!

Like any software, there is a learning curve. But I HIGHLY recommend you learn some keyboard shortcuts because those will be your friend! 

My absolute favorite thing about this is how Musescore allows users to add and delete an unlimited amount of instruments (well, as many as your CPU will allow). You can adjust your viewing mode from “page view” to “continuous view” if you end up with more instruments than can fit on the page. Which I do a lot. You can also go into “page settings” to adjust this as well.

And the Palettes sidebar organization tool is really great because it allows you to drag-and-drop your different tools in whichever order you want. You can also hide different tools you never use. Like I personally never use guitar tabs, so I have them hidden.

One useful feature I recommend all users get familiar with is the mixer which is located under “view.”

Basically, this allows fine-tuning for instrument volume levels, allows you to adjust the master gain to avoid clipping (aka when your audio hits 0 decibels and then makes a cracking noise), and allows you to pan your audio to one ear and another, so as to allow instruments to “get out of the way” of each other.

Another super cool thing with this is the ability to load in different sounds onto the instruments.

Because while Musescore’s default sounds are pretty impressive given the price of $0, there are other sound packs out there that independent creators in the Musescore community have made.

This is where I’ve gotten a bunch of mine.

Now for criticisms! I’ll put my three biggest constructive feedback on the software here:

1) The reverb and chorus sliders have been in the mixer there for years, but they’ve never seemed to do anything? I know I’m not the first person to be confused by their function, and I’ve tried poking around the forums to see if I’m missing something, but I haven’t found an answer.

2) When you have an instrument, say a violin, playing a whole note, you can’t actually crescendo or decrescendo through that whole note. This posed an obstacle for my colligate music group because I would send people mp3′s of their parts as written for easier learning, but the dynamic markings wouldn’t play back correctly on held notes. I know Musescore is aware of this, and I thought I saw something in a patch a bit ago saying they had fixed it or were working on it, but as of today (11/19/19), it is still an issue.

3) With any sort of line such as a crescendo or 8va marker, it would be really great if we were able to drag the line out past one measure. We currently can aesthetically for the PDF, but in the physical score itself in order to playback correctly, you have to place in a line on each measure, make them invisible (pressing ‘V’ on the keyboard), and then drag the first one out for the desired length. You can probably see how this might be a little slow and cluttered.

Overall, my criticisms of the software don’t devalue how much I love it and how much I enjoy using it as a casual user. Pretty much 90% of the music theory knowledge I have now is just through playing around with Musescore, testing out different instrument combos, and actually downloading other people’s scores online (which you can do if you make a free account on their website). 

Just for kicks, here is the VERY FIRST score I ever wrote. Which I called “Bottled Water” because I guess young me wanted to be quirky?

I love the community around the software, I love how everyone’s just in it to learn as much as they can, and I genuinely recommend this product to anyone, regardless of composition ability, who wants to get into writing music.

And if you want an audio editing software to pair it with, I highly recommend Audacity, which is actually the program I used when editing this audio to make it a bit brighter and compress it a little! It’s also a free program, and I think these two softwares really pair well together.

This was a pretty long post, but I hope for those of my followers who have been wanting to get into music writing, or if you’ve downloaded the software but haven’t really gotten into it yet, I definitely recommend you try it out. 

And here is my DP Title Card Theme score if you want to check it out or download it for your own use!

[secretgamergirl]

How not to Write a Campaign

I have been playing RPGs for a very long time. Back in the day, I avoided any and all pre-written adventures of any sort because my limited experience with them was... just frankly terrible. Weird inconsistencies in tone, unfair encounter setups, too many assumptions about PCs’ motives and actions, etc. Then much later I discovered a group of writers who actually got it, wrote things perfectly in line with how my friends like a game to go, and we’ve been all in on those for a decade and change. But I just finished running a ROUGH one, and I want something good to come of it.

I don’t want to make this a specific review, because... I’m in the industry, I know the people who wrote this campaign, I can guess at some of the problems involved, and I don’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings or reputation, so let me just refer to the offending prewritten campaign here as the Amnesia Campaign. It’s for a big fantasy RPG, it riffs of a particular author’s work, you can probably guess what it is from that, but, I’m trying.

The first problem I need to bring up with the Amnesia Campaign is that it just commits the cardinal sin of long term RPG campaign writing- The mustache-twirling villain who always manages to escape from the PCs at the last minute. I cannot convey just how important it is that you never, ever do this. The worst sort of example is when you plan around the PCs actually confronting your villain multiple times, and failing to kill them, which is a terrible idea because there really is no way to ever stack the deck and account for every contingency to make an unwinnable fight, or even one where escape is always possible, and especially if you’re publishing adventures, some number of groups will kill the villain too early, either shorting things out or forcing a handwave to keep an ineffectual villain in play and pretend they’re still a threat.

The Amnesia Campaign doesn’t quite go there. Having an actual chance to go toe to toe with the villain is reserved for the very end, but it does use another variant, where no matter what happens, the PCs arrive just after the villain they’re chasing has left. Now... there’s a way you can make that work. If you have a villain who cannot be reached in practical fashion, and can launch attacks anywhere within a huge region, you can build a whole campaign out of characters reacting to the aftermath of evil actions they could not be expected to even learn about until the villain has left the scene. Here, meanwhile, we have a villain with a big elaborate plot that requires traveling all over the world gathering things, based on research he does at the very start which the PCs can, and indeed are expected to do, quickly pick up on these research notes, and basically know everything the villain plans to do from nearly the start of a very long campaign. And... frankly, the villain has no real edge to keep him believably one step ahead. He is a mildly wealthy man hiring goons, mundane forms of transportation, and having to negotiate and fight his way through to various sub-objectives needed for his plan, and it is at least strongly implied that he doesn’t have a lot of lead time. When presented with a scenario about someone needing to be chased down and stopped, PCs can pretty reliably be counted on to constantly be rushing forward, coming up with clever ways to accomplish what they need to in less time, and cut down if not completely nullify their travel time. But, like with battles the villain somehow keeps escaping from, I am forced to continuously state to my players in running this that no, somehow even after avoiding this whole side quest by reading the mind of the person with important information, and directly teleporting to where the villain left for by riverboat, he somehow beat them there, and once again, just left. It’s frustrating, and implausible. We end up with a villain who seems overwhelmingly outmatched, but keeps succeeding because... well, he has plot armor so we’re railroading this.

Admittedly, having a good villain when writing a full campaign in advance can be tricky. The safe and tested formula is generally to start off with minions of your main villain, starting with some who don’t even know who they’re ultimately working for, gradually build up to who’s calling the shots and to what end, have a big side trip to prepare for the final confrontation not directly involving the villains, than cap it with a big showdown. If the PCs know who the main villain is from the very start and where to find them, it becomes hard to rationalize anything between. Sometimes you can pull it off if they’re leading an army or ruling a country, but even then, you want to work up a food chain to them.

A similar problem, which crops up a bit towards the end of the Amnesia Campaign, is making too many assumptions about how the PCs react, and who they befriend. In RPG writing, you need to make as few assumptions as possible about the specifics of what the PCs will do in any situation. You can count on the real broad strokes. The party will investigate the situation described in the adventure, they’ll explore the area, find the villains, fight them, win, learn something to keep the larger plot growing, but that’s it. You can’t assume they’re going to team up with this NPC, enter this room from that direction, or otherwise reenact what you’d imagine you’d do in their place, or what happened in your test play of your adventure. This is particularly important when you include a little sidequest unconnected to their primary goal, or you’re presenting an open-ended investigation.

Ideally, you just have a sensible location, have some villains in it with clear goals and personalities laid out, and you scatter around some things to enable various clever tricks if players think to try them, without mandating any of them. Mention where windows are, and chandeliers, and holes just too small for the average human to fit through, but don’t, as part of the Amnesia Campaign does, invest heavily in the assumption that the PCs will start investigating a sewer system when investigating how a cult gets around a city and go sparse on other possible clues. Also don’t waste adventure background note space on thousands of years of history at the expense of what the actual current problem in the area is and who or what is behind it.

The next problem is one that, were I the average consumer just buying this book would bother me a hell of a lot more than it does as someone who knows how the sausage gets made. Put mildly... you do not want to play a rogue in the Amnesia Campaign. Nor do you want to play a swashbuckler, a critical-hit focused character of any stripe, really any class out of the... roughly 25% of all classes who rely on knowledge of where to make a hit count the most to do the full amount of damage with their attacks, because practically everything is immune.

Now, again. I partly understand how this happens. We have several different authors writing different chapters of the campaign, simultaneously, in pretty unforgiving crunchy conditions, with just a rough outline to go off. Nobody really has a chance to confirm notes and say “hey, did your chapter totally invalidate one of the foundational character archetypes, because I was thinking of doing that and having two of those back to back would be a bit much.” And while the publisher of the Amnesia Campaign does throw out little booklets of tips for players on what sort of character concepts will/won’t work, they’re not written last, so this sort of tip is missing there too. On the other hand, it’s a huge problem within nearly any given chapter just on its own. If you’re making the call on what all monsters to include in a multi-level stretch of a campaign, you should generally avoid choosing nothing but monsters immune to one of the most common bread and butter class features. And honestly, given how the subject matter naturally lends to the deployment of a particular monster type, erring on the side of assuming everyone else is heavily deploying them wouldn’t be a bad assumption for any author to make.

This though, unlike the rest of my gripes, is ultimately a high level problem that needs a high level solution. When you’re publishing a whole campaign, and you’re doing it in a game where several foundational character concepts kinda live or die based on things like whether things are properly harmed by particular flavors of damage, or whether a decent percentage of enemies fall under a certain classification, that really shouldn’t be a double-blind. Coordinating to get all authors to use a decent spread, or include outline notes like “it’d make sense for about half the enemies in this chapter to be fire elemental themed in various ways, but keep a good variety otherwise,” and/or trying to get a rough handle on emergent themes to adjust for/warn about in player-facing pitch material. Even the best-written campaigns are prone to rude awakenings or hilarious reductions in challenge as turns out, say, going all in on cold damage does indeed pay off for the one with Fire in the title.

Meanwhile, on the other side of that coin, more or less, huge swaths of the Amnesia Campaign really just completely break down by failing to account for some basic standard issue capabilities of a typical party. Particularly the fact that past a certain point, you need to account for the fact that the PCs are almost certainly capable of flight. It’s a thing that happens. If you are really keen on writing adventures where local warlords are chilling out on the open-air rooftop patios of their otherwise heavily fortified fortresses, or melee-oriented monsters plan an ambush in a canyon in a vast wasteland, or a dangerous leapfrog between a series of elevated platforms over something dangerous, you want to make those low-level adventures, or else a typical party, possibly even accidentally, will just completely circumvent the whole thing. There is a whole lot of that in the back of the Amnesia Campaign. My group... literally skipped giant swaths. Heck, there was a whole side quest in the last book where the PCs are rewarded with the location of a giant obelisk which I had to cut because... it was in the middle of a big open outdoor space, and they flew over the city on the way in. They definitely had a view over those hedges.

This sort of dovetails into the next issue, consistently escalating threats. The whole fantasy RPG gimmick is that at level 1, you’re a helpless peasant barely capable of doing anything remarkable, and by level 20 you’re literally punching gods in the face and have more money in your pocket than everyone else in your home country combined (with the obvious exception of the other people in your party). Now, mechanically, balancing around that is a very easy math problem. Characters of level X are meant to deal with threats of level Y, either pull a Y level monster out of the book, or slap levels on something lower to bring it to that point, or spread that out over more enemies, then they drop Z amount of fancy loot. Easiest thing in the world. But you also need things to fit together thematically. You can absolutely throw fighter levels onto the local chicken-stealing goblins to make them mechanically as threatening as a demigod bursting through from another plane of reality, but when a group of characters is at a level where they can be expected to handle the former, it’s just plain weird for them to end up dealing with the latter. Like, yes, these particular goblins have 200 HP instead of the usual 4, so the local town guard can’t handle them, but that should never be true of chicken-stealing goblins. You don’t get that tough stealing chickens, and once you’ve gotten that tough, you should have your sights set a good deal higher than that. At least be stealing rocs or something.

The 4th chapter of the Amnesia Campaign is a particularly blatant example of not getting this, featuring a large number of “please be aware the party can fly at this level” moments mentioned above, and also just demanding the PCs deal with problems that really are beneath them at that point. Seeking out local guides, impressing petty local warlords, getting challenged by giants they must impress to rest safely when crossing a huge desert. These are... not appropriate speed bumps at a point in the narrative where the party is traveling to a location where they are going to literally fight a god, weakened or otherwise. The whole setup would be wonderful as the first chapter of a campaign, but that far in, it just doesn’t work. Particularly when the actual opening of the Amnesia Campaign sets the tension very high right off the bat, with extradimensional threats, shapeshifters, an evil cult, things that typically come later as things start to escalate.

This isn’t to say you can’t mix things up a little. Dealing with threats well below a party’s capabilities can be really nice as a chance to just sort of flex, and get some perspective on how much more capable they’ve grown over time, but you have to do it in a low-tension point of the narrative, and a little self-awareness about it doesn’t hurt.

Finally, while I really kinda hate modern wealth-by-level assumptions, they are baked into the design of the game, so if you’re running with it, you really need to make sure you’re really giving the players something they can use. The Amnesia Campaign really leans heavy on treasure being weird oddities that may be of value to a collector... while also being set, generally, in places so totally removed from civilization that shopping trips aren’t really practical. Much less those needing the party to really find the right sort of buyer.

Really, you want to give out entirely practical loot (really hard to do without knowing the party makeup, but variety can work), big piles of cash/sellables along with sufficiently large cities along the way for viable shopping, or raw materials suitable for crafting plus ample time to really do something with them.

Anyway, hopefully this has come across more as practical constructive advice for anyone writing a campaign, either as a printed product or just for your home game, not just me tearing into the Amnesia Campaign at length.

[bestsongby]

New Thoughts on Old Classics:

Hotel California, by the Eagles. 1976

Is it Essential? 

The Eagles (or, more specifically, Henley and Frey) were often viewed as cocaine-fueled El Lay misogynists. I think the cocaine-fueled and El Lay are indisputable, but is the misogynist tag a little unfair? Could be.

I’ve always been fascinated by Hotel California, the Eagles’ bazillion selling magnum opus, and how it plays with that perception in mind. 

Hotel California is the Eagles stretching their powers as far as the rubber band will allow before it snaps or loses its shape forever, which probably explains why their only subsequent release as an active band was the lackluster The Long Run, a collection of half-assed disco shuffles and by-the-numbers rockers. (aside from barely an Eagle Timothy B. Schmidt’s heartfelt soft rock gem “I Can’t Tell You Why,” and barely upright Eagle Joe Walsh’s catchy as fuck guitar rocker “In the City.”)

For what it’s worth, the stretched rubber band theory is one I apply to most great rock acts who spend any time working under the Album as Art theory of record making. (acknowledging that there have been many, many Not Great bands operating under this theory) The Beatles wisely realized they’d reached that point with Abbey Road, and packed it in before the slope slipped. The Stones began that climb with Beggar’s Banquet, and went from strength to strength until they reached their apex by plunging back down through the depths with Exile on Main St. The Kinks bucked the trend to some degree by releasing one pretty brilliant and one almost pretty brilliant album after their ultimate statement of intent, The Village Green Preservation Society. The Who…well, the Who never really got there. They fooled the world into believing Tommy was their Everest flag-planting, but the truth is Quadrophenia was a better album. All of which obscures the fact that the Who’s greatest album is Meaty, Beaty, Big and Bouncy, a perfect collection of classic singles, few of which managed to tickle the U.S. charts. 

And then there are the Loves (Forever Changes) and Zombies (Odessey & Oracle), who strayed outside their comfort zones long enough to produce single discs that stand up to the greatest of the Greatest, despite neither band ever really being truly among the Greatest. (and, yes, both bands were otherwise very, very good at times)

Whew. I digress.

Let’s start with this: Is Hotel California a great album?

I’d like to say it is, but it might not even be the Eagles’ best album. I think, assuming assessing a “best” of anything Eagles-related doesn’t make your stomach clench, an argument could be made for One of These Nights (the album that immediately preceded this one – which easily wins the battle of cover art, anyway). But Hotel California is the most Eagles of Eagles albums, and stands as the best summation of their moment in the sun. And, it marks that moment when tuneful music produced by strong personalities could dominate the American pop culture landscape like no other medium.

In hindsight, Hotel California, riding shotgun with Fleetwood Mac’s equally mammoth Rumours, stands as a signpost in a pivotal moment in pop culture’s de-evolution from artist-controlled playground to complete corporate takeover. The suits always knew there was money in the music, but, holy shit, this much money?

Hotel California is an arrogant, confident, pretentious, calculated work of fiction, and you can hum along to it. It’s dominated by Don Henley, but it’s the input of the other band members that prevents it from completely collapsing under its own weight.

So, in review, let’s start with the title track, which can almost definitely be tuned in somewhere on your terrestrial radio dial at this very moment.

“Hotel California” started as a killer guitar riff by lead guitarist Don Felder. (Fittingly, Felder, who primarily kept his head down and played the shit out of his guitar throughout the Eagles’ history, eventually became estranged from the band) Once Don Henley grafted his lyrics to the music, the song became the ultimate distillation of the Eagles’ Desert Cocaine Tableau. Most of the group’s biggest hits were pretty direct, lyrically. A woman either pissed them off, or a woman was invited to lay down in the desert with them. Or sometimes the women were left behind while the band wrote their own desperado inspired mythology. But the fragmented imagery in “Hotel California” could only really make sense if the listener has a straw permanently lodged up his nose. The Witchy Woman of the past becomes the hostess of a demonic hostel where pink champagne replaces wine and pretty boys dance endlessly in sweat drenched courtyards. It seems as if the Hotel California is a place to run to and to run from, and we’re pretty sure Henley is only lamenting the “mirrors on ceiling” because all of his coke is now going to wind up on the floor.

With all of that said, the interplay between the guitars is deathless, and even vague descriptions of driving through the desert at night are enough to conjure up personal imagery for anyone confused as to what “colitas” is (are?). (The fact that the Eagles played an acoustic version of this live is either proof that they’re assholes, or that, like Eric Clapton’s tedious acoustic return to “Layla,” they just don’t quite understand the reasons for their own success – Felder trumps Henley here, and that’s that)

With that out of the way, we catch our breath and listen to the gang take it down a notch (with the help of JD Souther – the Eagles were never lacking for talented SoCal co-conspirators, starting at the beginning with Jackson Browne) with “New Kid in Town,” which, damn it, is pretty unassailable, musically. It’s got hooks for days, lush production that never swamps the tune, and a sincere, understated vocal performance from Glenn Frey, backed by great group harmonies. What? The lyrics? Well, okay. The woman is doing him wrong (in the third person, for some reason – maybe it’s not manly to admit you’re the one being cuckolded?), and she’s not living up to her end of the bargain, and…

Okay, you get the point. It’s a Henley/Frey lyric.

“Life in the Fast Lane” (It’s interesting to note the band led the album off with Hotel California’s only three single releases – all smash hits, of course) kicks in next, and we’re reminded overtly of the cocaine. It’s a great radio rocker – guitar licks weaving in and out, featuring maybe the slickest production on the album, and Henley doesn’t spare the dude in the equation this time, letting us know that both parties are feeding each other’s sinful excesses (sex and drugs). It’s a tale as old as Los Angeles, and the spoken “are you with me so far” dropped in by Henley manages to insult the listener almost by accident. (yeah, we’re with you, Don! Sex and drugs go hand-in-hand with rock and roll, brother! Revelation!)

And then we roll into “Wasted Time.” In which Henley (boy, so far, this is really a Don disc more than a Glenn disc) strains to let the poor dumb broad who left him know that she’s done nothing but fuck up her love life by fucking the wrong dudes, and, most importantly, by leaving Henley. It’s definitely this type of sentiment that allows critics to glue the MYSOGYNY label on our heroes. It never occurs to Don that this girl might have made the right choice in leaving a dude who not only plods through an orchestrated piano ballad about the terrible decisions she’s made, but backs it up with an orchestral reprise to hammer the point home. (the reprise actually originally opened side two, just to make sure you couldn’t escape the sentiment by flipping over the album – the fucking Eagles led off side two of their biggest album with an orchestral reprise. Admire their balls)

The sequencing of Hotel California comes across as pretty messy in the era of the compact disc/digital album, with the “Wasted Time(s)” dropped right smack into the middle of things, and “Life in the Fast Lane” book-ending the song(s) with the next track up…

And it’s another Henley rocker (what demons was Frey battling in 1976 that allowed him to take such a backseat to his his white ‘fro-sporting partner?), “Victim of Love.” It’s a catchy rocker about…some poor dumb broad. I hate to harp on the cocaine, but how much of it was Stevie Nicks doing to think Henley was a fun dude to party with? Anyway, this one is another radio staple, despite never being released as a single. Truthfully, all the album really needed was “Life in the Fast Lane” to remind us the boys could rock a little. But here they slowed it down a notch in case you had trouble keeping up with them the first time. 

And then, out of nowhere, we’re dropped into Joe Walsh’s melancholy reflection on life, “Pretty Maids All in a Row.” I can’t say exactly what the Eagles were thinking when they pulled Walsh into the band (”Hey – this dude makes us look sober!”), but I’d be hard-pressed to believe they anticipated his first recorded contribution would be such a beautiful, naked sentiment, punctuated not with his trademark guitar rips, but by piano and synthesizer. It’s a jarring shift in tone, helping the album achieve an eclectic vibe it was struggling to achieve with Henley dominating the proceedings, and all the more powerful for it.

Anyway, great track. And it’s followed by another great track.

Backing up “Pretty Maids” is, for my money, the best track on the album, and one of the most overlooked songs in the band’s catalog. No coincidence it’s a Randy Meisner song. “Try and Love Again” is a soaring, hopeful rocker, punctuated by Meisner’s upper register, and some truly uplifting guitar soloing. It’s a mystery why this track wasn’t released as a single, unless Henley and Frey were still annoyed that Meisner’s “Take It to the Limit” was the band’s first number one single. But it’s the one track from the album I find myself revisiting most often, without apology. It’s also worth noting that while Meisner’s lyric is treading on self-pity, he’s not blaming a chick for his problems. 

At this point we’ve wound our way through a collection of hit singles, timeless riffs, and a couple of contributions from lesser used band members that stand up to the hits. It’s hard to say there’s a definite theme at play here, although California and Los Angeles are definite players on the scene. So it’s up to Henley, again, to hammer things home with the most pretentious track in the Eagles’ entire catalog.

“The Last Resort” answers the question, “What if Randy Newman didn’t have a sense of humor?” A confused history of California (and over seven minutes long, to punctuate its importance as a statement), complete with references to the “Red Man” and Malibu and all of those bright lights that sullied the landscape, presented by a group that pretty actively moved closer and closer to the neon the further their hitmaking prowess ascended. The song starts as a literal travelogue about a girl from Providence (”The one in Rhode Island”), and then slips into a reminder that California has really succeeded at excess, which is evidently a bad thing.

In the end, it’s all the preacher’s fault, anyway. One suspects that Henley (and Frey?) realized he wasn’t really headed toward any logical conclusions with this one, and the lesson we’re left with is that the missionaries traded the Red Man’s peace of mind and started us on the path toward…well…all of that cocaine and colitas, I guess. (it is a pretty tune, though)

And that’s it. Nine songs (split into ten tracks), three hit singles, and 38 million copies sold.

Is Hotel California essential? In terms of understanding the “evolution” of pop culture, it’s an essential landing point for those curious how Los Angeles went from acoustic canyon-dwelling hippie haven to the paranoid personal driveway for limos filled with coke-addled celebrities wearing sunglasses at midnight because the lights fuck with what’s left of their peripheral vision.

But in the battle of juggernaut Los Angeles pop albums, Rumours creams Hotel California because Fleetwood Mac can be heard shutting out the world and wrestling with their relationships while coincidentally at the peak of their songwriting and performing abilities, whereas the Eagles were trying to make statements without much to state. Rumours is essential. Hotel California sounds good when you’re not paying attention too closely. 

[lolli4587]

Hey everyone!! Man, when was the last time I wrote a review. I hope everyone is doing okay and staying “socially distant.” We can combat this together!! So in this difficult time, I was so glad this episode happened, it got me so hyped up and made me forget the grim reality. So let's dive in!!

So about this episode, Ash wants to enter into the World’s Championship Tournament. He wants to compete so he can have his chance to battle with Leon, the current world champion. There are over 10,000 participants, and Ash needs to battle trainers with a high ranking in order to move up. With this in mind, he finds someone in the area with a high ranking, Visquez. She is currently the Vermillion gym leader and subbing for Surge while he is away.

Ash and Gou go to the Vermillion gym. On their way, Gou encounters a Spearow and wants to catch it. He and Raboot runs offscreen. Meanwhile at the Vermillion gym, we get our first look of Visquez and her Raichu against a trainer with a Hypno. She makes quick work of this trainer and notes he lacks “spirit.” She had Raichu to finish with Volt Tackle and easily won the battle. She was hoping to have a challenger that was participating in the World Tourney. Within seconds she got her wish and heard Ash and Pikachu outside!

Ash comes, introduces himself to her and wants to battle! She and the lackeys are taken back when they hear his name. This gets everyone excited. Visquez tells Ash that he is well known. She explains Lt. Surge had told them about their spectacular battle. She says she wanted to meet him and Pikachu. She was very honored to be his first opponent. Gou came back on time and was able to catch the Spearow!

The first battle takes place, Pikachu vs Raichu (classic). They both ordered a thunderbolt which was even. Visquez orders Raichu for Volt Tackle which then Ash orders Pikachu to counter it with Iron Tail and use it as a grounder. Visquez and her Raichu proved to be more formidable opponent then Ash realized and was able to overcome easily. Raichu was able to use his tail to stop Pikachu in its tracks. Ash tried several techniques to land a hit on Raichu, but couldn’t come up on top. He notices Pikachu is getting tired, and calls him back (smart).

Next Ash switches for Gengar. Ash starts off Gengar with Night Shade and Visquez has Raichu use thunderbolt. Gengar proves to be faster and easily overtakes Raichu. Visquez has her Raichu uses its tail to grip Gengar, but Gengar can easily make itself disappear. Ash has Gengar use Psychic and was able to finish Raichu off! 1 down, 1 to go.

Visquez sends her ace Pokemon, Electrode. She and Electrode had their own tricks up in their sleeve. Electrode uses Magnet Rise and uses the field to resist the ground. With the debris of the battlefield, bounces off and picks up speed. This combo overtakes Gengar and finishes off with discharge. Now Ash is down to Pikachu.

The final battle takes place on the ground and Visquez orders Electrode to use Rollout. At first Pikachu had trouble keeping up with Electrode, but Ash was able to regain control. Pikachu slowed and stopped Electrode by using Iron Tail. Pikachu got in several hits before Electrode reached it’s limit and activated its ability Aftermath. Ash orders Pikachu to use Electroweb as a shield and wins the battle.

Visquez smiles at Ash with defeat and promises to contact Lt. Surge about their battle. She thinks he would love a rematch against Ash one day. Ash gets his new rank of 3763 from 10,000, ending this episode.

Thoughts

Omg, where can I start?! This episode delivered a lot more than I ever anticipated. I went into the episode with very low expectations because I was bummed that Lt. Surge wasn’t making an appearance originally. The summary preview didn’t explain a whole lot. But I am glad I was wrong and it delivered beautifully. So let's talk about the humans first!!

Visquez

So when I heard about her, I have to admit, I was expecting to be a guy. When I first saw the preview, I was like okay, I am getting more so guy vibes. It wasn’t until I saw Rohanite twitter’s post, I read she was a woman. This was where I started to re-evaluate her. I noticed she has a plug as her hairstyle.  After watching the episode, I ended up loving her. For one, she does have a killer design. I want to say her design was definitely inspired from Lt. Surge OG anime design. And she has a killer body, I can’t recall if other women in the Pokemon anime with muscles have appeared before, so huge props to Pokemon. I think the reason I love her look, she gave me instagram vibes. There are women I follow on Instagram who have beautiful athletic bodies and I wouldn’t be surprised if inspiration was taken from there.

Her personality was very likeable. She has a very tough exterior. She is very serious and aggressive when in battle, but passionate for spirit. This was pointed out when she was first introduced. Her personality slightly mimics from Lt. Surge, except she commends her opponents for their hard work. She loves to workout with her Pokemon and train with them. Both her Pokemon, Raichu and Electrode share the same vibes as her which I will mention more in detail. She does have a soft side and cares about her Pokemon a lot.  

One thing I did not expect to hear from her was wanting to meet Ash in person. Lt. Surge told her about his battle with Ash. I really loved this callback and was my favorite moment in the episode. Ash was considered an inspiration to Surge, and everyone in the gym. They started to train harder and it shows through Visquez. The tactics Ash used originally against Surge did not work with her Raichu. She had some great counters and brought out unique strategies from her Pokemon. She proved to be a very formidable opponent.    

Ash

Ash surprised me in the episode. For one, he remembered Lt. Surge, so continuity!!! And he actually made a huge impact on Lt. Surge that he was a mini celebrity to Visquez and her lackeys. When I was younger, I used to write fanfiction. One of my fanfics, I did have Lt. Surge as a support character while Ash was abroad in America! I would picture Surge admiring Ash out of box battling style. Ash’s influence would push Surge to be a better trainer. Never in a million years this would happen in the actual anime which gave me goosebumps. From the original episode Electric Shock Showdown, this was a beginning of Ash getting more confidence in battling and a milestone for winning his first legit badge. Surge did give Ash a standing ovation.

Anyways back to the episode, it made me smile how confident Ash was going into this battle. He seems so confident in his abilities, and he still has these creative strategies to take control of the battle. He is able to quickly analyze the current situation and think quickly on his feet. I was glad Ash battled smart in this episode. All honestly, if he didn’t switch Pikachu with Gengar, he would have lost the battle. Gengar vs Raichu was my favorite battle in the episode, and will get to the Pokemon soon.

Plus, Ash’s smile is so contagious. I just love the energy he brought into the battle.

Gou and Raboot

Gou did take a backseat in this episode. He was super adorable cheering for Ash in battle. I wouldn’t be surprised if he took pics of Ash -shot-. I loved Gou’s reactions throughout the episode. He did say at one point, “That’s insane Satoshi” with the ehhhe.. look. One thing I did notice was that Raboot stuck around with Gou. In the last episode, Gou completely ignored Scorbunny when it was learning his fire move, which made Scobunny upset. Both Gou and Raboot have different ideals and goals. After Raboot evolved, it ignored Gou. This carried over to the following episode. Raboot acts like a moody teenager, and it acts like it doesn’t care. 

But during the battle, Raboot couldn’t resist, especially if it involved with Pikachu. Raboot cares so much about Pikachu and shows its support. Raboot is very interested in battling more vs Gou who at the moment not sure if he wants to stab at it. We will see in the future.

Pokemon

Raichu

Visquez’s Raichu is super adorable. I literally died how he got to shine in this episode. I loved how it had this admiration to train and battle hard. I found it super cute when it was training it’s tail with the dumbbells (my favorite part). This Raichu is no slouch either. Visquez revealed that it was trained under Surge. Apparently he did not make the same mistake with Visquez’s Raichu as he did with his own Raichu, and this showed in battle. This Raichu was able to counter Ash’s past strategies with so much ease. It did throw in some callbacks. One was utilizing it’s tail which was a callback from Pika and Goliath. The breaking of the glass when using Volt Tackle, throwback to ESS. It was nice this Raichu had the upper hand for once and it was a major threat!

Electrode  

This Pokemon over here, the anime made it look cute and threatening. This was the first time I have seen Electrode to be an actual threat. With that said, it broke out of the typical mold it was stuck for 20 years. Throughout the episode, they hinted quite literally the dents on the walls. This was all due to her Electrode. I really loved the Magnet Rise and how it uses that to it’s advantage. When using magnet rise, debris was lifted as well. It used the debris as pillars and gave Gengar such a hard time. At the same time, utilizing the speed Electrode has, it was super difficult to slow it down. Electrode vs Gengar was my 2nd favorite battle for that reason.

Pikachu

Pikachu had some great moments in this episode. For once, Pikachu didn’t have the rivalry with Raichu. He was level headed in this battle, and I was happy he was able to switch off. There were many callbacks. Ash has Pikachu use Iron Tail to ground himself just like ESS. The spinning Iron Tail was from Pika and Goliath. During the Electrode battle, Pikachu went on top of Electrode and used his iron tail to stop Electrode which was very clever, and then run in reverse like a hamster. This was a throwback from Pokemon snap where Pikachu was on top of Electrode. There was a callback how Pikachu used ElectroWeb as a shield from Sun and Moon.

Gengar

Wow, Gengar was able to shine. I didn’t think I would love Gengar in this episode. It was able to shine, highlighting all it’s strengths against Raichu, and he looked like he was having so much fun. Ash was able to use Gengar intangibility to overwhelm Raichu and it’s tail. Psychic to finish it off to show such display of raw power! Kinda bummed it lost over Electrode, but I can’t wait for more battles for Gengar in the future.

Battles

Wow, the battles did not disappoint at all. I was pretty much hooked on every battle. If I had to rank, my favorite out of the bunch was Gengar vs Raichu, and the least would be Electrode vs Pikachu. Pikachu vs Raichu and Electrode vs Gengar were in the middle for me. The reason I loved Gengar vs Raichu, it was so much fun to watch, the BGM was killer, and it ended on a hilarious display of Raichu getting smushed in midair and then getting smashed into the wall.

Pikachu vs Raichu battle is always a joy to watch. I already highlighted them, but I enjoyed seeing for once Raichu giving Pikachu a hard time.

Electrode vs Gengar was such a joy to watch as well. I really loved the Magnet Rise strategy that Visquez and her Electrode displayed. She was able to utilize all of Electrode’s strengths and I thought it was pretty genius and was able to overwhelm Gengar. I wished she did the same with Pikachu

Electrode vs Pikachu would be my least favorite, but I did enjoy the battle, it was smart for Pikachu to slow down Electrode which was a feat itself. I didn’t think rolling Electrode in a different direction would mess its vibe up, but who knew. I love when Electrode tried to use it’s ability Aftermath, it tried to take Pikachu down with it. This was quickly countered with Electroweb thanks to Ash’s quick thinking.

References

There were many ref and callbacks in this episode, I mentioned a couple in the Pokemon themselves so I won’t highlight here. So here are some major ones.

Lt. Surge

I had very little expectations he was going to be mentioned or even make a cameo, thank you episode for proving me wrong. He was one my favorite gym leaders growing up and he was one the reasons why I got into Pokemon thanks to Electric Shock Showdown. Also his cute Raichu. I always believed Surge was one the reasons that he shaped Ash into who he is today. Ash and Pikachu had to dive in deeper to draw out Pikachu’s strengths, and of course help from Brock. (Plus Ash more likely wouldn't be able get a pity badge from him if he tried. So he made Ash work for it). So I was so happy he was referenced and made the highlight for me. He wasn’t in the episode but he was referenced several times. The first time referenced was from Ash, and then when Gou asked Ash if he got the thunderbadge from him. Later Visquez retells the story of Surge and their fantastic battle.

One thing for sure, his design has changed. Lt. Surge definitely is not the 8 ft, tan, and super ripped compared to his update. In a way, I wasn’t surprised that they decided to go more with his game design. He is more white and normal sized in the games. My only complaint, I wished he had a bit more subtle skin color, like he could be a similar color as Ash or a happy medium, but ehh you can’t have it all. But his redesign isn’t too bad. Pokemon has been shying away the real world references, so it was inevitable that Surge would be getting a design change. He is no longer the Lightning American, he is now referred to as Lightning Lieutenant. And his most recent appearances, he has been shown in his game design more often..

I loved that Ash was able to influence Lt. Surge. Who would've thought that Ash was able to do that at someone. He was mentioned training to master the electric type more and trained Visquez’s Raichu. It was hinted that he might come back in the near future since Visquez was going to let Surge know about the battle. **Please, please, please, make this happen** One my dreams battle literally is a rematch in this current artstyle.

The other gym leaders were all shown in silhouettes.

The badges

The breaking of the glass. Both Raichu and Electrode did this.

Also towards the end, when Electrode destroys all the windows and smoke. Pikachu protects itself from huge attack. Callback to ESS when Raichu destroys the gym and Pikachu blocks the attack.

Final thoughts

This episode has given me a lot of hope of possibly bringing back old characters from the past. I love the World Tournament that regardless of class, everyone starts in the bottom. It’s still early into the series, but if they could bring back Surge for a cameo, I would love to see the other gym leaders from other regions, and some past rivals, such as Gary or Paul. I am not going to hold my breath of pokeani keeping this promise. The subtle callbacks were so great to see. Ash and Pikachu were mini celebrities in Surge’s gym,  it was almost a perfect episode for me which is rare. I didn’t think I would enjoy it so much especially the corona crisis going on that kept my mind off of it.  If I would rate this episode, I would give a solid 9.75 out of 10 and my favorite of this PM series. Maybe top 5 all time favorite episodes… (wait what!!)

[whaq]

Fuck You, Animu (1/4)

A dumbass’ war of heart and mind A few months ago, I hit a creative block. Despite considering myself a jack of many mediums, I couldn’t for the life of me bring myself to make--well... anything. While I do have a Google Keep of creative ideas I’ve come up with over the years, I was unable to find the drive (pun shoehorned) to get started on any of them. This sent me into a bit of a spiral. A lot of creatives probably empathize: you find yourself lacking the motivation to create so it starts to negatively affect your self-worth, which is tied to your ability to make things, and this lack of confidence compels you to just succumb to melancholy, finding yourself the victim of a self-fulfilling prophecy to become a slacker because you think you already ARE one.

I was a couple months into this when a buddy of mine hit me up asking if I heard about a call for local anime reviewers. At that moment, it almost felt like divine intervention from God, who I only ever felt in the burning sensation radiating through me whenever I was within 10 feet of a church. An anime news site, let’s call em Animu, with a relatively large following, was searching for writers who would join their staff to review anime being released in the winter season with a salary to boot. As an avid anime fan myself, who just so happened to have honed his critiquing skills over years of media consumption {that has since ruined my viewing experience for the foreseeable future (I legitimately suck the joy out of every piece of media I consume now)}, I saw this as my opportunity to be able to use my skills for some form of monetary gain; which was always a concern of mine throughout my life. Growing up, I was never really good at anything that could easily become a profession later in life. I was too awful at biology to become a doctor, not smart enough at maths to be the next Pythagoras, nor was I athletic enough to shoot a basketball, let alone make it in the NBA. I was good at talking in, and understanding, English... and that was it. At the time, I didn’t realize I had a knack for writing and oration, but even once I did, I found that the trajectory towards being a professional for either of those fields wasn’t so simple. Most people still have the childish idea that “Oh, writers write books and speakers do… speaking things!” but it waters down such a wide yet closed off section of the professional world. Writing alone has so many different specializations: journalism, screenwriting, book authoring, all such niches that don’t have as established a path as scoring high on the Bar exam or being scouted on varsity; it’s difficult to find a place in this world with that skill set, a fear that a majority of creatives have. So I needed some form of validation, an instance of acceptance that’ll allow me to finally believe that my work is worth something and, most importantly, enjoyed by someone. So I started working on my application for Animu by selecting three different series that I was interested in tackling: Re:Zero, Cells at Work, and Kaguya-Sama: Love is War. Starting from zero The posts after this contain these reviews in the state I submitted to Animu. I spent about a month working on these. Re:Zero’s review was close to my usual style of critique, which focuses on the technical aspects and their execution as well as commentary on any relevant subtext, minus the subtext. I wanted to seem as professional as possible with the first one and tried to keep to the proposed 1200 word word limit. With Cells At Work, however, I tried to have a bit of fun. There were many rumblings around the community about the series’ cancer episode which I was eager to capitalize on. That said, upon rewatching the episode, I came across some potentially problematic scenarios that could’ve been blown out of proportion by some headline-chasing media outlet; so that’s exactly what I did. No, I wouldn’t in my right mind compare chibified blood cells to Nazi sympathizers (then again, I’m never in my right mind). Lastly, was Kaguya-Sama, which became my favorite anime of the past couple years. This series was the first anime that got me to actively follow the source material as it hit two of my most identifying traits, being a cinephile and humor academic, as well as a side I’m slightly embarrassed by, my interest in romantic comedies. I wanted to attempt a review that was just hype-hype-hype as it was what the series sparked within me. Oh, and you SHOULD read Kaguya-Sama. Bleeding out After a modicum of proofreading, as well as some peer review from my closest confidants, I sent over my application and I waited. As my heart raced on the day of the announcement, my name was nowhere to be found. To add insult to injury, I was informed that I scored absolutely horribly by Animu’s criteria, my highest grade being one that’d flunk in the most forgiving of schools. While you’d expect me to be crestfallen, I was actually ecstatic to know that the community I’ve been a part of, a local one no less, had people with an even larger passion and greater skills than even I. As someone who went through childhood being made fun of for my interests that have somehow developed into geek chic and gone mainstream (something that, contrary to most of the community, I’m happy to see), I was glad to see how much people like me had developed from waifu worshipping weaboos to outstandingly ornate otaku. Hell, I was content to have made some content. I was looking forward to seeing the fruits of labor from those who were more deserving than me. So imagine my surprise when what I found posted a month later was absolute garbage. I’m not going to get into detail, seeing as said details could lead to someone getting doxxed just because they didn’t meet MY oh so high standards (/s), but what I will say was that the quality of the content indicated something more telling about the whole ordeal. I have taken part in two completely different student publications in my time, and I can say with utmost certainty that THE GRADE SCHOOLERS I MENTORED WROTE BETTER, AND THEY WEREN’T EVEN PAID. Still, it was nice to know I still had it in me to make something of substance. And on this commemorative day, I open up my blog by making public my entries for all to ridicule. As much as I talked down the winning entries, I don’t believe mine were perfect. Like most of my work, it’s rushed and rambly, full of tangents and misnomers. But, it’s very me, and I’m quite happy to see something from me see the light of day.

I hope you find some amusement in my bemusement.

p.s. Yes, the headers are attempts at relating to the three shows p.p.s.s. Yes, they’re BAD attempts at relating to the three shows

[sandalaris]

For the writer asks: 5, 10, 17, 22, 23, 30, 45, & 54!! :D

Finally getting around to answering these XD

5. Books or authors that influenced your style the most.

I read so much I feel like I can’t narrow it down. My favorite author is Ilona Andrews but they write almost exclusively in first person and have their fair share of action in their novels that I don’t think they’re that much of an influence on me. I’m trying to think of who I read that did the whole “people usually feel a mix of emotions over just one” thing that I know I’ve adopted, but I can’t think of who it is. (I can think of an author, who I do love the books of, who did the opposite and I found myself always confused about a character was supposed to be feeling/thinking and they probably influenced me to not do that, but I do like their books and that seems too much like I’m trying to be negative about them.)

10. Pick a writer to co-write a book with and tell us what you’d write about.

If I got to pick anyone, it’d be Marissa Meyer who wrote the Lunar Chronicles. It would be for one novel/novella, because I feel like the Lunar Chronicles has one more sort of side story in it and would want so badly for it to fit what the author has already written. If you haven’t read the series, it’s basically a retelling of various fairy tales just set in the future, like Cinderella has a metal prosthetic foot that keeps falling off and Rapunzel is a hacker living in a satellite orbiting earth. Everything is set up to perfectly fit a Beauty and the Beast side-story. Genetically altered super soldiers who are big and hairy and given animal aggression and had all their teeth surgically replaced with fangs for failing to pass a test as a child? Check! Now all we need is to write a story about the bookish daughter of a geneticist who gets blackmailed into staying with the “beast” and slowly learns that there’s a man inside of the monster and ends up figuring out how to reverse some of the alterations (because we already got the “I love him just as he is, fangs and all” thing from Scarlet and Wolf so we can have a little “curse breaking” this time around.) It can be set post-series, when some of the wolf-soldiers ran off and disappeared into various countries.

I once co-write a novel with my best friend about an evil warlock who fell in insta-love with a ditzy elf and spent the rest of the novel trying to avoid her so he could dodge his fate of retiring from villainy like his father and grandfather before him. He was determined to be the one villain in his family who actually went through with his evil master plan, dammit! It was a comedy, and kind of a spoof since we were at that age where romance novels were the thing to make fun of, but it still ended with him deciding he could do evil masterminding later and running off with the elf. What can I say, we were like twelve.

17. On average, how much writing do you get done in a day?

Eek, the problem with averages is that any sort of outlier knocks everything else off, and I have a lot of outliers, lol. I go through writing spurts, sitting down and all but knocking out an entire chapter/one-shot in one sitting followed by days where I won’t even open a word document. And then there’s sort of my inbetween times where I’m usually typing away on something, but it’s more editing than actual writing, so maybe 100 or so new words might get written, but what I’ve previously written looks better by the end, lol. This has been the norm especially lately with school and work taking up the majority of my time. And then it hits me and I just need to let the story flow out of me? Between 2k-5k a sit down session.

22. How many drafts do you need until you’re satisfied and a project is ultimately done for you?

I don’t really do true drafts. I write, I edit, I post, and then I suddenly see all my typos. On the rare occasion editing doesn’t fix the issue, I might cut the scene into chunks and sort of look for the line(s) that don’t fit and start branching off from there (like maybe someone’s acting out of character *glares at current chapter* and I just needed to look at it in smaller incriments to see where they started to veer off). Only once have I ever just completely reworked the extremely extremely rough draft I had written, but that was an original work I did for Nano and so was more concern with getting words on a page than editing as I go.

I suppose editing could count as a second draft, so two? Maybe three? What is considered One Editing? If I leave off and come back, is it an all new edit/draft, or am I picking up where I left off?

23. Single or multi POV, and why?

Nine times out of ten I seem to veer towards single, although I’ve had some fun with multiple POVs before.

Not really sure why. Maybe I just find it easier to burrow into one person’s headspace and go from there? I know there are times when I want to jump to another character for one specific scene, but I always feel like I’m already committed to telling things from the one character’s POV. Or maybe I just like the limited narrator thing.

30. Favorite line you’ve ever written.

Err.. I don’t know that I have one. How about a line I rather like? This is from a kind of Amaru/Brasa fic (kinda sorta. He’s got that whole mix of love and hate and resentment and worship thing going on, and she has her own twisted attachment to him) set in those six months between seasons. These lines are from a moment where Kate surfaces and Brasa fantasizes about taking out some of his resentment of Amaru on Kate. (He never actually physically harms her, Amaru would never allow someone to mark her vessel simply because its hers, but he likes to imagine.)

He thinks about wide green eyes looking up at him with fear, filling with tears as she whimpers out a “Please.” Imagines pressing a hand to her shoulder, pressing down down down until she’s kneeling before him, trembling as he cups her jaw, forcing her head back. He wants to press his thumb to the plump swell of her bottom lip, dig his nail in until the blood, her soul, comes to the surface. Filling the flesh with color until it spill across her chin in a vibrant slash.

and to give you an idea of how Kate is handling Brasa’s attempts to take his issues out on her...

He can see the muscle at the hinge of her jaw tighten, hear the harsh edge of every exhale, as she turns to look up at him mere inches away.  

“My name,” she clips, “is Kate.” She bites off the last, harsh sound, almost snapping her teeth at him.

45. Worst piece of feedback you’ve ever gotten.

I’m trying to think of actual feedback and not just like angry comments/reviews from people who didn’t like my fics (which tbh I haven’t gotten that much of because people aren’t generally that big of a dick to leave flames on fics these days.)

Someone tried to tell me that a character dropping the f-bomb was unnecessary and jarring and I should remove it from one of my fics. And hey, to each their own, but I personally felt it fit both the character (who cursed in canon) and the story and so kept it in. People certainly can write great literature without every putting down a single curse word, but there’s also great stories that wouldn’t be the same without a bit of foul language. What bugged me most about it was their insistence I should remove it.

Besides that the only other bad feedback I’ve gotten (besides obvious flames and people not liking the direction I’m going/have gone with a story), was someone who said that my clearly labeled unhealthy relationship fic was romanticizing abuse and they didn’t appreciate the one character manipulating the other character like that. They were actually fairly nice about it (if a bit of an anti about the whole thing), I just remember being a little bugged at the time because I had already tagged it as unhealthy/manipulative.

54. Any writing advice you want to share?

Don’t be afraid to experiment! And in that same vein, try out writing rules and discard them just as quickly if they aren’t for you, because there’s no set in stone way to doing things. Break all the rules if you want, the point is just to write. XD

Thanks!!

[wickedrum]

Better late than never?! ;)

Hey all,

I thought I’d post this here, since quite a few of the posts seem to be about a shared love of fanfic - particularly of the whump variety.

So…as usual, I’m late to the party - but better late than never, I guess?

Anyway, in case anybody actually cares…I have FINALLY hopped on board the whump fanfiction train.

My desire to get a ticket started off when I was about twelve or so, I guess, and my family decided to introduce me to the marvel that is ‘50s-'60s western series: chiefly 'Bonanza’ and 'Rawhide’. It took less than five minutes for the whump to hit me (brace yourselves for a cringeworthy simile!) …you guessed it, like a train. I mean - cutiepie Michael Landon as Little Joe Cartwright everytime he got hurt/shot/beaten up?

And a young Clint Eastwood as ramrod Rowdy Yates (who knew he had such a baby face?!?!) that time everyone thought he’d contracted anthrax?

Fanfic emerged as a matter of course - first as something confined solely to the boundaries of my imagination, and then, gradually, as hasty, half-formed scribblings stashed away in the bottom drawer of my desk - seemingly fated never to see the light of day. I’d never heard of online sites where people just like me put up these thoughts and stories for others to read - and then, one fateful day in Grade 8, my best friend told me about a little thing called 'fanfiction.net’.

It was like the world opened up (not at all an overdramatic statement, I assure you!). All of a sudden, here was an entire virtual library of stories - ranging from pointed paragraphs to full novels - about my beloved characters…which not only included the Cartwright family and the Gil Favor drive, to my delight, but also Sherlock Holmes…Napoleon Solo and Illya Kuryakin…the entire IMF team (original Mission: Impossible, anyone?)…David Janssen’s Dr. Richard Kimble ('The Fugitive’)…Obi-Wan Kenobi…Captain Jack Sparrow…and so many others.

At first I gravitated to fics that contained only characters I knew…but I soon branched out by browsing through the works and favorited stories/authors of my favorite writers. For example, I discovered a heretofore unknown love for LOTR through fanfiction - for which I must thank the very talented writing team of Cassia and Siobhan - and along with it, a passion for the previously-ignored Legolas:

As I matured, so did the nature of the fanworks I sought to read…and here I faced my first real quandary - my own writing wasn’t good enough! Fanfiction wasn’t merely a frivolous pastime, I had realized - for the serious authors, there was a drive to achieve a certain realism, an emotional depth, that I had erroneously thought could only be found in classic published literature. And things didn’t always have to get physical, either. Writers like geekmama, honorat (Pirates of the Caribbean), librophile, ruth baulding (Star Wars), St. Crispins (Man from U.N.C.L.E.), Thundera Tiger, telemachus and consumptive_sphinx from AO3, which I discovered only a few years ago (LOTR and Tolkien’s writings), and many, many more could torture and turn their characters into wrecks without laying a figurative finger on them…

These were people who wrote whump with style.

For several years, as a result, I was a silent participant in fanfic - remaining a reader only. The scant few works that I’d begun posting I either took down or left unfinished…

And then, in November of 2014, inspiration hit. In fifteen minutes I typed up what I understand is called a 'drabble’…and posted my first ever complete fanwork. It was for the 'Star Wars’ prequel trilogy, and I called it 'Travels’ (https://www.fanfiction.net/s/10811942/1/Travels). I asked for reviews - and got them! People actually liked what I had to say!

I tried writing again - and again, and again. My first attempts turned into the beginnings of novel-length stories that were destined never to be completed.

I grew discouraged…until I went back to basics. What had made 'Travels’ successful? Its simplicity - a focus on a single, overarching concept, and a setting limited to a brief moment in time. With that in mind, I sallied forth once more - and came up with 'Prima Facie’ (https://www.fanfiction.net/s/11637656/1/Prima-Facie-The-Scarlet-And-The-Ivory) and 'Rift’ (https://www.fanfiction.net/s/10897388/1/Rift). Much later, after discovering Tim Burton’s films, came a fic for 'Sleepy Hollow’ called 'Before the Half-Shut Eye’ (https://www.fanfiction.net/s/12900323/1/Before-The-Half-Shut-Eye).

I had discovered my strengths as a writer - character study and introspection - rather than extensive plot development…as always, it goes without saying, grounded in whump.

And then, last year…I finally watched 'The Hobbit’…

The rest, as they say…is history.

Move over, Legolas - I want more of pretty elf-boy’s prettier dad!

And did I get it…watching the behind the scenes videos on YouTube, I wound my way to:

ALL ABOARD FOR LEE PACE! 

What’s not to love? The drop-dead gorgeousness…the versatility…

…And, oh my sweet LORD - the potential for whump:

Consider this: I’ve written the same complete fanfics just from December 2018 that I wrote over the course of four years - every single one of them for Lee Pace characters. Two are for 'The Fall’ - 'Scraps of Orange Peel’ (https://www.fanfiction.net/s/13220805/1/Scraps-of-Orange-Peel) and 'Persephone’ (https://www.fanfiction.net/s/13151538/1/Persephone), one is for 'Halt and Catch Fire’ - 'Logic Error’ (https://www.fanfiction.net/s/13269415/1/Logic-Error), and one is a (rather dark?) reworking of another author’s fantastically sad 'Pushing Daisies’ all-normal AU - 'Baker’s Dozen or Life in Twenty-Six Parts’ (https://www.fanfiction.net/s/13199725/1/Baker-s-Dozen-or-Life-in-Twenty-Six-Parts)…which also happens to be, hands-down, the longest piece I’ve ever attempted.

And, if my brain has anything to say about it, there seem to be plenty more to come.

Hey, what can I say? Lee makes for the perfect muse.

Besides…how can you say no to this smile?

[ladyartemesia]

A Live Reaction to Heart of the Storm (+review at the end)

"A lone pair of Chuck Taylors in a sea of Jimmy Choos" I felt that in my heart. Also what masterful writing though

"He'd seen you flip a linebacker over your shoulder like a pancake" ahahahahaha *falls off chair*

"Moldy spiders" my godddd that would totally work for me ☠️ why are you so good at this miss viola

"You yawned and he was forced to freeze in a bizarre half dismounted position with his left leg dangling precariously in mid-air." oh my the imagery made me cackle- and after the thought of moldy spiders, this is a great feat

asjdakhaskdfhskdf SHE REMEMBERS is this gonna be a problem for you JK

akdffhkshakfsdjfh poor Hayden

Aghhhh the pain I feel that pain and broken-heartedness, and the confusion as to why something so trivial would ever cause that...this got me feeling hollow in the chest cavity and my throat wanted to clench                                                                              “I know I shouldn’t remember these things - I never mean to… But they don’t leave.”  I'm dead that's it I'm dead goodbye at least it was a great way to die- why can't we all have such nice people in our lives This might be weird but please tell me he fixed the door and like actually closed it behind them please

I never know how to properly react to smut but wow that was hot 

Damn I empathize with how JK is feeling...where are you parents I will fight you how dare you ignore the existence of YOUR CHILD uwu this is the cutest ending! He looks at her every time a storm happens to check up on her   T T  ahhh the warm fuzzies what a nice epilogue and ending! Take my heart please

Written review: This fic really hit my emotions. I haven't been around for a while because of this summer course I'm taking and life + finals just hit me, so once I got back on my feet, I read this fic to relax. But the literal agony that panic attacks cause, and the pain the MC felt when she thought she would have to give up on hoping JK wanted to remember what happened the night before...that resonated so much with what I'd been feeling over the weeks I was gone. This fic was a beautiful moment of catharsis for me, so thank you for that. Personal stuff aside, I am absolutely floored by the writing as always. Miss Viola, you're one of the best out there! I loved the way you wrote the characters' inner thoughts and the way you used physical action to show emotion. I think my favorite moment in this fic was when JK grabs MC's t-shirt and tells her those random little details he notices about her. It created this little warm bubble moment between them that was just so charming to read. -colors anon (curse the freakin word limit for asks *shakes fist*)

P.S.: thank you so much for opening your submissions for me! This was a rather messy post, so sorry for any format inconsistencies :)

[firstagent]

Fanfic Authors Tag Game

I was tagged by @ahiddenpath and I’m actually going to do this! If nothing else to take inventory.

AO3 name(s): I’m arpulver there and FFN. Fandoms: Been Digimon for the longest time, although I did have an original webnovel for a time, a couple crossover fics, and in a previous century had a website archiving and reviewing Simpsons fanfic. Number of fics:  9, not counting song parodies or script-format stuff I did back in the day.

1. Fic I spent the most time on:

Taken as an entire trilogy, The Connection took roughly five years. As individual stories, it’s a tossup between Level 3: Experiments and Neverworld at about 2.5 years. Nexusworld will surely pass those, but it’s going to be the longest.

2. Fic I spent the least time on:

Imaginary Girlfriend, written for the Dandan zine, took a couple weeks, not counting editing.

3. Longest fic: 

Currently Neverworld at about 256,000 words!

4. Shortest fic:

The Dandan zine had a 2,500 word limit. The posted version of Imaginary Girlfriend is only a teeny bit longer.

5. Most hits:

According to the FFN legacy stats, Neverworld edges out Level 1: Worlds and Odaiba Memorial Day, although it’s possible those two predate FFN’s hit tracking. Not saying I’m old, but my FFN account number is only four digits!

6. Most kudos:

Resumption, the uncomfortably prescient tale of the 02 kids post-tri. (written before its halfway point, is currently beating Neverworld 125-104!

7. Most comment threads:

Including FFN, Odaiba Memorial Day, my first proper Digimon fic, has 252 reviews.

8. Favorite fic I wrote:

For as much fame and attention I’ve gotten for my older stuff, it’s really a tossup between Neverworld and Nexusworld.

Neverworld was planned out before tri. was announced and while it gave me pause about writing the Adventure kids six years older at the same time canon was about to unveil something showing them in the same time frame, the idea of aging the characters of all (then) six seasons and throwing them into their very own Digital World playground to have interpersonal drama with each other was too enticing to pass up. And for as many curveballs as tri. threw at me, everything lined up neatly to incorporate its ideas and character interpretations into my story along with the way I had been portraying them. We ended up with the same Taichi and Mimi even! And for as easy as it is for long fics to go off the rails and become unmanageable, I’m proudest of the fact that it wrapped up every significant plotline and ended in a sensible place with a powerful climax.

Nexusworld, its sequel, came about because as much as I adored tri. and Appmon, they and Hunters left a lot of unfinished baggage that I wanted to address. The world gave me a chance to take Maki and Daigo, well before any of their misdeeds in tri., and put them next to two characters going through very similar problems: Haru and his desperate quest to bring back a lost loved one, and Tagiru, trying to recapture some of the glory from a victory that carried a big asterisk next to it. They also have to deal directly with Meiko, still reeling from her loss, the international kids and their organization post-tri., and a host of other new arrivals and old favorites. The emphasis on less popular seasons has made it harder to find an audience, but I’m finding the writing more direct and more meaningful than what I’ve put out before.

9. Fic you want to re-write:

Many years ago I actually did rewrite Level 1! The plan was to edit the trilogy, clean up some of the wonkier bits, fix some timeline issues, and put out an edition I’m prouder of, but I never got around to working on Level 2 or Level 3. While tri. thematically lines up nicely with The Connection trilogy, both it and Kizuna have poked enough holes in my timeline that such an edit doesn’t feel necessary anymore.

Despite its popularity, I’m not at all happy with the writing or character work in Odaiba Memorial Day, but I loved the format and I wonder if it might be neat to try it again using the canon time period between Kizuna and the epilogue (OMD gives everyone a different future because, shockingly, it was planned out before the Zero Two epilogue existed!).

10. Share bit of a WIP or a story idea you’re planning on:

All of my Digimon ideas are worming their way into Nexusworld right now and I’m not sure if I’m doing another Digimon project once it’s done. So you’re getting a future Nexusworld scene with Meiko and Mimi!

[Meiko] dropped her bag next to the extended and unmade futon. After some hesitation, she removed her shoes and stretched out on the bed. At some point she’d have to go back out there and figure out what to say to Eri. With Mimi still taking care of her job, she could afford a few minutes to ponder, and even dozing off didn’t sound terrible. Only a minute of staring at the ceiling passed before the bed rustled. Mimi sprawled out next to her, narrow eyes probing back. “What’s wrong? Come on, no bottling it.” With a huff, she added, “What did Tai do? Do I need to make Yolei beat him up?” Meiko let a chuckle escape. As well as she thought she had been doing before, having Mimi back as a regular part of her life was pure delight. “It isn’t Tai. He was great. Actually it’s, um… Eri.” “Eri?!” Mimi’s eyes flared. “What did Eri do?! I don’t think Yolei could beat her up.”

[yeoldontknow]

3, 21, and 18 👀😂

lmaooo hello. i see you trying to expose me and i still need to go count so this will be fun

3. favorite line/scene you wrote this year?

i have two actually~

the scene in empty vessels when yixing and jun are talking about OC and bonding over a bottle of whiskey and yixing reads him to filth:

Arching his brow, Yixing takes the bottle from the center of the table and pours him another glass. ‘I think the question, Jun,’ he says, holding his gaze fiercely rather than watch the volume of the glass, 'is when was the last time you let yourself feel.’ Bringing the bottle to his lips, he takes a quick drink before setting it down, posture straight and austere. ‘You’ve been running.’

‘I’ve been leading,’ Junmyeon snaps, ‘protecting. Holding us together.’

‘But you haven’t held yourself.’ The whiskey in his throat has set Yixing’s words ablaze, tongue unafraid of cutting him down. ‘Not together, not in one piece, just not at all. It’s like you’re in a constant place of triage. You can’t blame yourself for a choice he made, for a thing we all did. We knew, and we know - that will never change. What matters is how you experience it.’

Junmyeon laughs, cold and frustrated in bewilderment. ‘So what are you saying? That I’ve watched death and walked away unscathed? That I shut down and felt nothing at all?’

‘Not at all,’ he says, voice like a thunderclap. ‘I’m saying you’ve watched death, and never walked away again. You’ve put yourself in a grave and called it a life.’

and from light sakura, when chanyeol and oc are at teamlab and he makes artificial rain out of light:

From the distance, you hear Chanyeol’s voice and the noise of delight he releases, a sound that says he found what he’s looking for. You almost see his shadow, the length of him mirrored and rendered into an iridescent form behind the lights, a luminous mirage in an oasis of illusions.

‘Y/N,’ he calls, voice rippling through the room with some restraint, his efforts of being polite likely going unnoticed by those around you. ‘Watch this.’

At once, the lights change from soft hues of green and pink and purple to white, pure and endless white, the room igniting in a flash before turning blue and blue and blue, the sound of rain consuming the room. All at once and all over again, you feel weightless, as if the limits of nature and the limits of physics could no longer root you to the earth.

But then, you suppose, that is the point.

Limits don’t exist, likely never existed at all, your own mind creating the borders just to give structure and rules to things never meant to be thought through, only felt. Always felt and touched and bent by your hands and no one else’s, and you find you thrive when there are no rules, just light and sound and art and Chanyeol; always Chanyeol, leading you into the light and ensuring you feel it.

The light hits you like a flood, shimmering in all the ways you wish you could. Your clothes and skin and hands become kindling for alchemy, granting you permission to glow, still differently than the holy way Chanyeol seems to smolder within the magic. On you, it attaches and pulls at you, breaking the boundaries of your flesh until you stand, palms up and regarding the ceiling, feeling a mist the sound of rain surely did not bring with it. But still, you are wet, wet with tears and relief and memory, emptying yourself of the things you keep buried within, letting them run free simply because Chanyeol gave you the aural, cosmic permission to do so.

18. current number of wips

lmaooo *laughs and then cries* 37 :)

21. most memorable comment/review

the tags and comments @stolenjendeukie and @kyungseokie leave on my fics constantly and permanently makes me verklempt like i look forward to reading them. your howling on empty vessels was a delight i still relive lmao @iq-biased left some remarkable feedback on my namjoon fic brooklyn is burning and i think about it often. @dark-muse-iris read all of time runner and then reblogged the masterlist and praised it in a way that has fueled my desire to have it done by may 2020. an anon left me a four part message about hero that made my heart sing. there were also a few anons who sent messages about all quiet that made me so emo. that feeling and fear of being alone and being afraid and realizing your life was built around a person. yeah these are the ones i think about a lot. there's been so many others too. everyone who read enough this year and @btssavedmylifeblr who left some wonderful comments in the body through time. like i can't pick a fave you know?

ask me some end of year fanfic questions 💕