#it did things with its storytelling i had no idea were possible

[vexwerewolf]

Should I read homestuck

tl;dr: no

actual answer: yes, but with some extremely important caveats.

Firstly, because Adobe shitcanned Flash, you can now no longer experience Homestuck in the form it was intended upon release... unless you download the Unofficial Homestuck Collection. This act of unbelievable, nay, saintly generosity by Homestuck's most dedicated fans allows you to experience Homestuck as it was intended - as close as is humanly possible.

"As close as is humanly possible" is the key phrase here. One indelible part of the original Homestuck experience was UPDATE! Homestuck would sometimes go weeks or even months (and later, years) between updates. I wasn't on Tumblr back in the day, but at the peak of Homestuck, even if you knew nothing else about it, you'd know when an update dropped because Tumblr's net traffic would increase something like three to fourfold. People would go apeshit bananas about whatever new revelations the Huss would drop on us.

You also need to realise that Homestuck is a product of its time and while its takes on sexuality and gender identity was pretty progressive (for its time), Huss did use the r-slur a bunch.

While we're on the subject of the author, Andrew Hussie (of whom my current understanding is that they have not changed name but go by they/them nowadays) is, in the most diplomatic possible terms, a very unique person. They are, at times, a visionary storyteller with genuinely fascinating ideas. At other times, they come off as kinda spiteful towards their readers.

Without meaning to dip into spoilers, some story beats seem (in my opinion) almost intentionally calculated to upset, irritate or mock certain fans. It never rises to the sheer vicious contempt that Steven Moffat had towards Sherlock's fanbase, but it does leave a bad taste in my mouth whenever I go back.

Additionally, and this is where a sort of birds-eye-view spoiler is unavoidable, the story suffers from the Game of Thrones pitfall of repeatedly increasing its own complexity by adding new plot threads without resolving existing ones, eventually leading to fatigue on the part of both the reader and the author. The arcs of a lot of characters just straight up get abandoned, while a couple of characters take an unnecessarily large amount of screen time.

There's one character in particular that the author openly states within the narrative (the author exists within the world of the story. It's... a whole thing) that they favour, and whose behaviour the story is warped to accommodate. You'll know exactly who I'm talking about almost the moment they show up.

Another reason I say that it's not really possible to read Homestuck as it was originally intended is because a lot of the shit that happens in it fits into the zeitgeist of the internet at the time any individual update was written. There's a whole section in the late middle third that is inextricably and very specifically tied to how it was like to use Tumblr in 2012.

Additionally, a lot of things have soured with time. There was the whole Hiveswap debacle (it was first announced in 2012. We got the first act in 2017. We got the second act in 2020. We do not even know if the third act will ever come out.). There were the legal threats. There were the Epilogues and Homestuck 2, which were... how do I put this? Not universally liked. There's been nearly a decade of discourse since Homestuck ended, and a lot of things haven't grown better with age.

All of that being said.

You should read it.

I cannot express to you just how big an impact Homestuck has had on internet culture. Even people who claim to hate Homestuck unconsciously use slang that it invented. Its unique ideas on storytelling, character design and narrative chronology have, in both subtle and unsubtle ways, changed the way millennials and Gen Z tell stories.

A lot of people were inspired to tell stories because of Homestuck - one example I always give to Lancer players is that Kill Six Billion Demons started as a comic on the MSPA forums (before it was homestuck.com, it was MS Paint Adventures), so Homestuck is in an indirect but demonstrable way responsible for the existence of Lancer. The sunglasses that Gideon Nav from the Locked Tomb wears have been explicitly stated by Tamsyn Muir to be Dave Strider's. Toby Fox made music for Homestuck, and worked on large parts of Undertale while living in Andrew Hussie's basement.

We also know someone in the Bluey creative team is a Homestuck, because...

There are subtle but direct references in Bojack Horseman, Hazbin Hotel, Steven Universe, Adventure Time - and those are just the ones that it's easy to prove! In a more general sense, I think there's a lot of cartoon series, movies, games, etc. that would either be very different or wouldn't exist if Homestuck hadn't happened.

It's certainly influenced my work.

I think, being very cautious to manage your expectations, that you should read Homestuck. At the very least, a lot of things people say on Tumblr will start to make, if not sense, a different kind of nonsense.

[netflix]

Spotlight: Adam Stockhausen

Production Designer, The Wonderful Story Henry Sugar

Oscar winning production designer Adam Stockhausen (not pictured above, that’s Benedict Cumberbatch), whose work you may know from Wes Anderson films like The Grand Budapest Hotel, Asteroid City, The French Dispatch, Isle of Dogs, and Moonrise Kingdom, as well as titles like Bridge of Spies, and West Side Story (2021), took the time to answer some questions.

Which details from or aspects of The Wonderful Story Henry Sugar did you focus the most on while adapting it to the screen? How did you meld Roald Dahl and Wes’s worlds?

The details on this one started with Dahl’s writing hut! We matched the details pretty carefully and exactly. As soon as we step outside of the hut though we start to move through the world of the story and the world of the stage at the same time. Wes had the idea of how he wanted to do this from the very beginning. My main challenge was trying to figure out how to pull it off—making the parts move and getting each to have the right detail.

What’s a small change you made on a project that ended up having an unexpectedly significant impact? 

Lots of times this happens—where what seems like a small thing at the time becomes a very significant turning point. I’m in Berlin now writing this and remembering being here scouting for East Berlin for Bridge of Spies. We were struggling to find a section of town that still felt old enough to show the early 60s, and decided to take a chance on a quick search in Poland. That quick search changed the whole production plan and ultimately gave us the look of our East Berlin.

How has technology changed the way you approach your work? 

Technology has definitely changed the way we plan the work. We used to model everything in cardboard or sometimes just plan in two dimensions with pencil and paper. We can now plan in 3-dimensional space using modeling programs and see what real lenses will do.  This allows for more accurate planning and makes scenery moves like the casino set in Henry Sugar possible.

Do you have any signature easter eggs you like to leave? Any small details that you are particularly fond of? 

I wouldn’t say there are easter eggs in this one. But there are loads of special details! I think my favorite might be the levitation boxes where we painted a perspective view of the background onto a prop box. The actor sitting on the box appears to be floating in a very special and theatrical way.

Did you talk about reflecting the iconic Quentin Blake illustrations in production design? How would you go about doing that? 

Not really. They are such incredible drawings and I’d say they’ve been inspiring me since I saw them as a child! But for this the starting point was really the machine Wes devised to move us through the story—and pairing that to specific references scene by scene.

There is such an intentionality to the aesthetics of a Wes world. Is there a set or frame that took you a long time to get perfectly right? 

All of them! It’s a very labor-intensive process getting these frames right. Occasionally one will click right away, but usually it’s a process of refining and refining. The jungle for instance went from sketches to models to samples and back again several times before the final look settled.

If you had to present one frame that showcases the best of your work, what would it be? 

Oh my. Maybe the jungle? I really enjoyed making the jungle!

With all the moving sets in the trailer for The Wonderful Story Henry Sugar, it feels reminiscent of a theatre production. Are there distinct differences in approach between film and theatre and how much do you blur the lines between them in your work? 

I think the lines are blurred completely! Or maybe they aren’t even there. I love that Henry Sugar is so incredibly theatrical in its storytelling.  It allows us to show the artifice of the sets all the time which somehow makes them even more satisfying when they finally do line up and create a complete picture. I think the casino set is a perfect example—the pauses where it all lines up for a second are even more enjoyable because we get to see it broken apart and sliding away.

Thanks, Adam!

[coraniaid]

I'm pretty critical of Buffy's final season (because ... well, I've watched it), but there are some things I think it does well and, since I'm trying to talk myself into working on my S7 AU fic again, I thought it might be worth trying to write down what they are.

I like the sense of completeness there is in going back to some of the show's beginnings. I like seeing Buffy in school again, but this time as an adult with a job. It doesn't just let us re-examine the high school years from a new perspective, it gives Buffy's arc over the last few seasons a nice sense of direction. I like what little we see of Dawn in high school. (I wish there were more episodes like Help.) In principle, I even like the fact that this season's Big Bad is a supernatural threat we've seen on the show before.

While I think there are a lot of problems with the execution (and even with the wider concept) of making the First Evil the primary (frequently the only) antagonist, the First being around does give you a lot of possibilities for having characters literally come face to face with their pasts. I like the final scene of Lessons and I like Conversations With Dead People and I like seeing the Mayor on screen again. I wish the show had done more with this concept.

I like meeting new (Potential) Slayers and finding out more about past Slayers. I like Robin Wood. I like Kennedy. (I wish the show did a better job making the audience care about any of the other Potentials.) I like that Faith comes back. I like that there is a focus on what it means to be a Slayer this season (compare how the show opens, with Buffy taking Dawn on patrol and telling her "it's about power..." [which Dawn doesn't have], to the scene in Chosen where Buffy asks the Potentials "what if you could have that power?").

I also (sorry) really like the fact that the writers resisted the urge to make Dawn a Potential or have her suddenly develop any magical powers as a result of being the Key (which there are at least rumours they were talking about doing). I like that the show stuck with the idea that Dawn is the part of Buffy who gets to be an ordinary girl.

For all its flaws (silly CGI battle against monsters I don't care about which is resolved by a random mcguffin from a different show; weird retcon about Sunnydale apparently being inland; a bunch of other unfortunate writing choices I won't get into here) I really do like Chosen a lot. It feels very fitting that the show ends with Buffy both finally getting to leave Sunnydale and with her no longer having to shoulde the burden of being "the" Slayer (or one of only two Slayers, anyway) anymore. I love how open-ended and hopeful that manages to be.

And speaking of Chosen, I like Buffy's "cookie dough" speech. I like the fact that the show lets Buffy end the series single, and recognizing that she doesn't have to be in a serious romantic relationship if she doesn't feel she's ready for one right now. (I like post-S7 Fuffy as a concept a lot, sure, but I think I prefer it as something that neither of them rushes into.)

I like that Amy comes back? I mean, I don't like anything the season does with her, but still: points for remembering she exists, I guess.

I like the fact that Willow gets to grieve Tara but also move on with her life and start dating again. [I don't know if I would have killed Tara off if I was writing S6 -- I think probably not -- but given that Tara did die I think this is the only good option.]

Empty Places is a good .... name for an episode?

For all my (many, many) issues with Andrew Wells this season (and in particular with just how much Andrew Wells is in this season, which is ... a lot), I think Storyteller is ... pretty good? I liked Jonathan, I think it's sad he dies (and his speech about missing high school now that he's left is another good moment from this season) but I wouldn't really have wanted to have him turn up and help save the day either. Having Andrew kill him (and then have to face up to the fact) feels like the right choice, to me, if you were going to bring either character back [I'm not really sure I would have done that though, to be honest].

Equally, for all my irritation at the time wasted on the "is Giles the First Evil?" subplot and at some of the other character deaths the writers did go for, I'm glad that the Core Four all survive. What the season actually does with Giles isn't very good, and neither Xander nor Willow are in this season enough (especially not in its second half), but at least they all get to live.

Oh, and Anya. I'm glad the writers didn't give in to the temptation to kill off Anya for some sort of cheap shock value, the way some leaked early drafts of Chosen suggest they were thinking of doing. Can you imagine how infuriating that would have been? I don't know if I would ever have accepted it. I might even now be living in denial. Thankfully common sense prevailed there and Anya definitely survived.

[etirabys]

quick queen's thief reread notes, starting with book 2

spoilery!

the queen of attolia: 5/5

oh it's just too crazy not to give a 5/5 to. the perfect romance. she cuts off his hand for espionage and national humiliation, he comes back after recovering to blackmail her into marrying him.

I also really enjoyed the stretch of the book that's just high level descriptions of war movements. it's really amazing it doesn't feel dry. the talent...

the king of attolia: 4.3/5

more self indulgent than I remember but who cares

a conspiracy of kings: 4/5

the most forgettable one, for me. I was politely indifferent to the romance. I liked the first third of the book more than I remember –Sophos's relief to not have a future is so deftly done. technically he's being cowardly but I was never ever mad at him.

interesting climax featuring no clever victory – merely making unpleasant choices over and over again.

did not buy the strained friendship arc when Sophos comes to Attolia – it felt manufactured, and so did the resolution.

thick as thieves: 4.7/5

better and more interesting than I remember! the relatively isolated story... the stylistic shift into Mesopotamian mythology... a most excellent roadtrip romance novel. structurally closest to 1 but really its own thing

also awesome to see the author dialing the pagetime given to warfare up and down between novels – high in 2, 4, 6, low in 1 (no war), 3 (internal politics), 5 (intense two person journey culminating in a briefly described but hugely consequential military engagement).

return of the thief: 3.5/5

whatever. no it was still good. I'm not sure if using Pheris as a narrator was a good idea but I certainly liked it a lot.

the interpersonal dynamics were noticeably weaker than in the previous novels, where they were excellent. I don't buy the tight knit quartet of monarchs.

I thought the light touch with divine intervention in books 1-5 were great and didn't like the 10xification. I prefer as high a ratio of narrative relevance to plot relevance as possible, for divine intervention in fiction, and the series had achieved this so well up until the last book

overall notes

my goodness, such incredible storytelling economy. I went to a book signing event where she said she wrote (or could write?) a lot of banter, but cut it because it was making the book less streamlined. groaned with disappointment at the time but she's right, these books are sleek little sharks

great prose too: unflashy, elegant, unstrained.

gen is a less pleasant person than I remember. I don't really want him to be high king actually. I'm not sure to what degree his tantrums and... truancy?... are meant to be externalized ambivalence about his duties vs being a good yelly strong minded ancient king who tries to kill someone who gravely insults his wife even though it'll piss off the greatest continental power who'd send you military aid. I'm politely assuming it's the latter because it helps me enjoy

great variety between books in what kind of story they're telling & who's telling them.

[elkian]

Rereading The Murderbot Diaries now that I have System Collapse and once again struck by how Murderbot reads expression.

As an ND person myself who sees a lot of overlap with it at times, it's very interesting to me. I've repeatedly had issues where the expressions I was making or interpreting did not match other people's ideas, and my mother has never in my whole life correctly deduced my tone of voice. Not once. I think one reason I'm drawn (haha) to animated and stylized mediums is because stylistic representations of people have to have expressions that scan immediately to as much of the audience as possible.

(Thinking about that bit where Murderbot comments on humans not knowing what they're trying to express when they're in Real Life and not actors on a soap opera set.)

Anyways, it makes sense that Murderbot might have some skill at interpreting expressions and microexpressions and so on. Those are viable and valuable security skills, after all. But it strikes me how accurate it seems to be at doing so. Since the series is almost entirely in Murderbot's perspective, it's less likely to mention being wrong, but it regularly confidently refers to expressions by the emotion it inferred from them.

As someone who is not good at this, it's very interesting to me when I have a lot of traits overlapping with MB. (It's also worth discussing how ND folk, and specifically autistic people, are often pigeonholed to the point that expressing Uncommon Autistic Traits makes people believe you aren't autistic.) Murderbot talks a lot about not liking people or being interested in strange humans, but it often contradicts itself without realizing. I think one reason it claims not to care about humans is because it's often been in positions where its clients could be harmed incidentally or intentionally and it would not be allowed to intercede due to Capitalism Hell, or malice/indifference from the top.

It says it has to do what humans tell it, and that's technically true, but there's a further power dynamic within groups; the boss has all the power and, presumably, the highest level of management in a group has the authority to order SecUnits to do things against their actual design - fighting other SecUnits, ignoring safety protocol in order to save money, and leaving bleeding humans unattended to go pick up equipment are all canonical examples that Murderbot provides us. I wouldn't be at all surprised if killing or harming less influential members of the group in question were totally common and viable.

This is all to mean that it isn't emotionally safe to care about humans, because even if it does its tasks completely successfully, they might be at risk due to the negligence inherent in the system. But Murderbot spends half a dozen books trying and failing Not To Care, so it just refuses to acknowledge that it does care for a long time.

Anyways, I don't have any pithy conclusions, I just find it super interesting that MB talks about having a hard time understanding humans, and ART canonically has difficulty processing human emotional contexts when not familiar with the relevant situations, and yet Murderbot, canonically, is often successful at reading emotion in the expressions of the people around it and itself in recordings. It's not a trait given to many ND characters, particularly autistic or autistic-analogue ones, and it adds some fun texture to the storytelling.

[thesiltverses]

any clues on whats next after tsv ends ? :)

No concrete confirmation, but we did put out a Patreon post back in spring with a few draft pitches, to gauge initial interest and see what kind of genre storytelling folks were most excited to see from us.

I'll paste them below, so you can see the kinds of things we've had in mind (#2 and #3 were the most popular, but it was a fairly even spread outside of that). We've had a few more really fun ideas since then that I'll keep schtum about for now.

General feedback was that people were most enthusiastic about seeing ongoing, multi-season projects from us, which makes perfect sense and is much more sensible for us anyway in terms of sustaining a livelihood / retaining audience members along the way.

That said, TSV has been a three-year endeavour which is a big commitment, and personally I think the best horror is often self-contained, short and sweet.

So I'd really love to have the time to work on a few miniseries-type shows as well, but also need to recognise that we likely don't have the bandwidth to juggle two projects simultaneously.

With all that in mind, I think the direction we're hoping to be able to pursue is:

1+ shorter horror miniseries or one-offs with production or network partners (if they want to work with us) where we're largely on writing duties or with a lighter load.

1 longer, ongoing weird-fiction show which is all ours, baby, all ours.

Draft pitches

#1: Manes

Genre: Historical horror, cosmic horror, family drama with murderous stakes

Influences: The Terror Season 1, pretty much.

Summary: In 208 AD, the ailing Roman emperor Septimius Severus travels north across Hadrian's Wall into Caledonia, with the aim of finally uniting Britain under imperial rule.

For Severus, there's more at stake - his two sons are openly at odds over the succession, and it's openly said that civil war will follow the emperor's death.

Severus himself rose to supreme power through violence and the elimination of his rivals. Now, haunted by the possibility of revenge by the shades of the divine dead and dwelling unhappily on his legacy, the emperor hopes to share his final triumph with his sons and demonstrate a different lesson to them - that an equitable peace is a lasting possibility.

But as the Roman column makes its way north into apparently endless woods, surrounded by cronies, schemers, Britons, soothsayers, priestesses of Cybele, and more, the emperor and his family find that their enemy is nowhere to be seen - but they are being pursued by a force that is both strange and terrible.

And soon enough, the Romans realise that they have perhaps strayed not into Caledonia at all - but into a hostile realm of their own imagining...

Why make this show? We adore period horror, and there's far too little of it out there.

Severus and his family are a fascinating set of characters who we'd love to spend some time with - as ethically-compromised participants in a very Shakespearean tragedy, and as individuals whose heritage, religious beliefs and psychologies allow us to explore aspects of ancient Rome that haven't been done to death in fiction already.

#2: I'll Dance In The Deep Shadow

Genre: Weird-fiction noir, paranoid espionage fiction, cosmic horror

Influences: Cold War spy classics, Roadside Picnic

Summary: Across the water from the mainland UK, a vast walled city has come unexpectedly into existence.

The city’s walls are composed of purest shadow; its leaders have not revealed themselves to us, nor have they made demands of us.

Upon its streets, our own dead and forlorn doubles wander; grinning doppelgangers who seem to know something terrible from the future that’s to come.

We call the city Umbra.

Umbra is a bottomless well of shadow and secrets; its darkened landscapes are home to suppressed memories turned savage and monstrous.

Its citizens and its guards are twisted echoes, repetitions, and whispering relics of the world's buried past - and they will not reveal Umbra's purpose to us.

Around Umbra's great walls, representatives from the world's governments gather and plot against one another - mercenaries, guides, spies, black-market traders, scientists and killers - to infiltrate the city, map its streets, and navigate its dangers for themselves.

Why make this show? Less of an Eskew sequel than it probably sounds at first glance, this one. 

We'd love to do a paranoid, twist-filled, pessimistic John Le Carre-style spy thriller, with multiple characters who can neither trust themselves nor each other - and we feel like we've got some really interesting horror themes around memory and forgetting here to explore with this concept.

#3: Our Wars Have Ended

Genre: Dark fantasy, New Weird fantasy

Influences: The Black Company, the Bas-Lag series, Gormenghast.

Summary: It’s a strange time to be alive.

Thirty years ago, countless legions of the ancient dead rose from their graves to conquer the living lands; lands which now rest in an uneasy - but peaceful - state of occupation.

Withered corpses sit upon the thrones of the living and play silent courtier in the shadowed halls, acting out the rituals and habits of their past lives while dead men and women keep watch from the ruined towers. 

Mortal historians and linguists frantically mediate between our returned masters, trying to keep the peace - which estate belongs to whom? Who shall rule eternal? Which traditions deserve to live on?

But this is a time of wondrous change, too - new technologies, empowered by the revelations of the Dead Reclamation and the will of the Ancestors. Strange machines rumble through the hills and necronautical vessels delve into the unexplored territories of the afterlife itself.

And it has been announced that the Hollowbrow Queen will unite the nation with a powerful gesture, taking on a living consort in a marriage of the fleeting and the eternal.

On one side of the conquered country, an old veteran leads his mercenary company on a reluctant expedition towards the capital, in the employ of a long-dead king on a mission of revenge.

On the other, a young dead-diver and essayer into the realms of the dead is hired to investigate a peculiar mystery, and a conspiracy that may involve both the living and the returned…

Why make this show? Because Game of Thrones had no interest in the (to us) enjoyable questions of 'well, why do the ancient dead want to conquer the living, exactly? What happens once they've done it?' and we'd love to deconstruct that and play with the idea of loathsome undead aristocrats from every period of history squabbling with one another over what their conquered nation actually means.

Because we think we've built up the confidence and the skills to take a big swing at an epic adventure story and a semi-traditional fantasy - it feels like an idea that could potentially appeal to a wider audience while remaining true to our own core values of Weirdness, Horrible Things and More Weirdness.

#4: To Those Who Wait

Genre: Cosmic horror, dark comedy, mockumentary

Influences: Dead Set, Ghostwatch, Savageland, Evil Dead

Summary: Eskew Productions has gone in a surprising direction with its latest production - a new reality experiment and dating-show podcast.

Eight lovelorn singletons have been given rooms in the exclusive Gregory Hotel. Over the course of six weeks, these contestants will go on dates, carry out team challenges, and ultimately try and find themselves a life partner - all without seeing each other's faces.

The aim of the experiment? To prove that good things really do come to those who wait.

As they pore through a mixture of recorded and behind-the-scenes footage, however, it may become very apparent to listeners that something else is waiting in the Gregory.

And one by one, our contestants find themselves at risk of far more than being voted off...

Why make this show? As a great big act of play more than anything else.

We adore horror mockumentaries, but in audio-drama they tend to be faux-journalistic. 

Doing a show that instead mimics hokey reality shows to the point of being mistakable for the real thing, but turns out to be a ghost story instead...that's a lot of fun to us.

#5: In The Devil's Counties

Genre: Historical horror, cosmic horror

Influences: Nathan Ballingrud's Wounds, Seven Samurai, Between Two Fires, Dog Soldiers, Aliens…

Summary: As the Magna Carta states: “All evil customs relating to forests and warrens, foresters, warreners, sheriffs and their servants, or river-banks and their wardens, are at once to be investigated by twelve sworn knights of the county, and within forty days of their enquiry the evil customs are to be abolished completely and irrevocably.”

In early-medieval Sussex, a motley group of knights rides out to investigate tales of ungodly horror and acts of forbidden worship from deep in the English countryside - including Ralph Dagworth, 'hell's mapmaker'.

What the party of knights discovers out in the warrens and the forests of the county, however, is far stranger and more terrible than any Christian conception of hell…

Why make this show? Again, because we're itching to have a go at some period horror, and that weirdly specific Magna Carta quote is just too fun to pass up as a springboard for some 'isolated squaddies in enemy territory' storytelling. (Sadly, it does have a more grounded explanation.)

#6: Strangling Knot

Genre: Anthology horror

Influences: Junji Ito, experimental 8-bit horror, Black Mirror's Bandersnatch

Summary: 

“The rules of the game are simple. This is a place of endless forking paths and one exit. 

There’s something terrible in here with you. Get ready."

A Choose Your Own Adventure-style horror audio anthology; each episode is a distinct story with branching paths that may lead to failure (most of the time) or escape (more rarely).

Why make this show? This is likely the only show that we could reasonably produce as a side-project (and we've been chatting to a couple of other talented horror creators about it already, sssh).

We'd like to be able to play with single-narrator horror storytelling again that's relatively quick and easy to produce - but we do want to at least try and ensure it doesn't feel like we're repeating I Am In Eskew.

There's some really fun stuff happening out there already with CYOA-style audiodrama, and that seems like an opportunity that's ripe for playing about with.

[xaeydnquartz]

Part of me kinda wants to stop DMing my first and current campaign? IDK just need to vent

So, brief expo. like many, got into CR during the pandemic (mainly due to "The Legend of Vox Machina" which lead to me actually bingeing the all 3 campaigns) During which time a friend (who was in my immediate friend group but like the rest of my friend group, i didnt really feel close to) told me that he was really into CR as well. As a fresh new critter, i was stoked. Was able to share my blossoming love of CR with someone (FINALLY!) during which we both mentioned how D&D looked so much fun and that it would be really great to be able to play and ooo what if we got our friends together and played.

After which we discussed, if we did, who would be DM? Seeing as how none of our friends really played D&D our talk lead to either my friend or me and after asking the question "Which do you think you would prefer more?" It was clear i would try my hand at DMing (i like lore in games, and i like storytelling, and im a tad bit of a control freak at times, lol)

Anyway, we eventually got in touch with our close knit of friends, and though i intended to be a standard 6 we suddenly had an 8 party party (and that was with me having to tell even less close friends there wasnt room).

Feeling it would still be manageable (as there was precedent that i could pull inspo from, CR) i began planning a rough idea of a campaign and working with my friends to create their characters and running a session 0 so we were all on the same page. You know standard stuff.

-Fast Forward to current date and time-

It has its stressful moments, but i still am able to enjoy the time with my friends for the most part (though theres a lot of times were ive never felt lonelier) Which brings me to the whole point of the post, my need to vent to the void about this loneliness. Nobody really gets in touch or interacts with me at all. Not to talk about the campaign or even collab on their characters. The most i get are occasional critiques about how i could have done something better couple sessions prior and request to add another person to the 8 person party. When we have sessions, people show up late quite often, leave early quite often, have to cancel as they have other things they are doing (even though we planned and scheduled weeks prior) and even when people are there they somtimes feel like they arent always present. i already feel extremely distant from all of them as they all live closer to each other while i live on the totally opposite side of the state and theyve known each other way longer than i have, but the minimal interactions they have with me, the DM/GM of all people, just continues to add to all of it I know we all are busy with our lives, and that compared to those things D&D is really not that big of a deal or important. And i get that, it is just a game afterall, but it still manages to hit pretty hard

I've communicated my feelings through our time of this campaign, if im being honest, maybe not this indepth. I mean, its partially because i barely see or talk to them (again life gets in the way) but also because i feel extremely guilty for putting this kind of tension to something we are all supposed to be enjoying and relaxing to. Its especially painful as most recently 2 players, who said they would get in touch with me about changes possibly being being made to their characters, never got in touch in anyway shape or form, and its been about a month now? And session is in a week...i didnt even get much as a reply back. Idk, its been almost about a year now and i felt i just needed to get this out somewhere other than debating myself.

Thanks for listening tumblr.

[phantomrose96]

Okay since I'm waiting for laundry, I'm gonna write up some fuller thoughts on the new Spider-verse. Spoilers abound beneath the readmore!

So I'm gonna start with the good, because it really WAS a good movie. The main thing working against it is that it's the successor to the original Spider-verse, which was such a master-class in style and storytelling.

Things I loved:

I'll shout out the animation to start, because how can you not. Absolutely lives up to the original Spider-verse and more with "oh this is giving me chills" style and animation. The whole sequence of Gwen saving people at the Gugenheim absolutely awed me.

Speaking of Gwen, Gwen. That whole first half-hour-ish of Gwen-focused screentime was so, so good... Loved her character-development. Loved her banter. Loved all the jokes and goofs and punch-out back and forth during the Gugenheim fight against... villain whose name I'm forgetting. Miguel showing up was great. Jess showing up was even better.

Gwen unmasking herself to her father was so so good... That was the precise moment I went "oh, yeah, I want to come see this again." This then rolled into Miles's part of the story, and his whole sequence with fighting Spot while trying to get to the parent-teacher conference *chef's kiss*. Amazing animation. Amazing goofs. Amazing humor.

Then... hmm, I have some critiques about much of the middle of the movie... I'll get back to that in the next section. But it still had its highlights: Spider-punk and Pavitr were fantastic, and I feel they were used just the right amount. The gags at Spider H.Q. were excellent. Spiderman-pointing-meme my beloved.

Then when the twist hit... my jaw was on the floor. I'd noticed Rio's eyes were green instead of brown, and just chalked it up to maybe a small production error or an effect of the lighting. Even the "Who's Spiderman?" I was willing to count as just the most hilarious possible identity reveal, to a mom who's just not really paying attention to the street vigilante scene. Then it hit... and the fact that Gwen and Miles were not experiencing the same reality just ah... AH!!!

Things I felt kinda so-so about:

The middle part of the movie felt a bit... lacking in tightness? The tension with his parents felt a bit meandering, seeming to wrap up and then come back, and I feel Rio's attitude toward Miles changed without much reason to have caused it to change.

There was a discomfort to the scene with Miles and Gwen spidering around the city... which I know was largely intentional due to the romantic tension and the "Gwen lying to Miles", but I just Do Not Like romantic tension between characters that did so well as friends. I really didn't care for Miles's jealousy over Hobie.

The Spider H.Q. stuff... I really WANTED to like... but I always feel a sort of perhaps second-hand embarrassment for the kind of stories that are like "yeah there's literally thousands of us in on this, but we didn't invite you because ummmmm 😬".

In addition to that, I also have a distaste for the trope that's like "Every single rational and highly-qualified individual knows that 'X' is a terrible and destructive idea that can get people killed. However our naive and head-strong main character thinks we should do 'X'! So he fights off literally everyone else (and wins, for no reason, considering any one of the highly qualified individuals should out-class him) because he's the main character, and it'll work out okay just because." Like.. personally I had a very hard time rooting for Miles in all that.

Additionally... why did Miguel even tell him that they were all just gonna sit back and let Miles's dad die? Like I get it was necessary for the plot, but it was done with this expectation that Miles would just be like "oh okay I guess :(".

What I would have liked way more would be this: After Miles saves the (should have died) Police Chief from Pavitr's world, Miguel says Miles has "proven himself" and can come to Spider H.Q. to come be trained. (Really, Miguel has recognized Miles is an active threat as a canon-breaker, and he needs to keep Miles distracted for a few days while the canon event of Miles's dad dying takes place in his own dimension.) Gwen and Peter B. understand what's happening, but are forced to go along with it, behaving strangely the whole time. Then when Miles catches them in a lie and the truth comes out, THAT'S when Miles rebels and tries to fight against everyone to get home...

I also would have liked it if maybe there was like... more of a hint of hope for canon-broken universes to be saved. Like if Miguel's policy was "a universe can be saved after canon-breaking, however it's too risky for all the people in that universe to it's Spider Law that we must let our canon events occur. We all make this sacrifice for everyone's mutual protection." then I'd see Miles's defiance as more of a "well I'm breaking from you and will succeed at the risky thing of saving my universe and my dad". They did a little bit hint at this possibility with the fact that Pavitr's dimension is not necessarily doomed, but like if they made this clearer I'd feel better about Miles's defiance being not doomed to kill his entire dimension.

Hmm, I also wanted more out of Peter B. I know this wasn't his movie, but I didn't totally love that so much of his role in this movie was being against Miles. (Next movie, I guess).

And all of this felt just, way less tight than the OG Spider-verse. The OG hit all its marks like a perfect run of Guitar Hero and exploded into an amazing finale. This one... just meandered a bit. In the OG, Miles's leap of faith hit so perfectly. That was THE moment he could make that leap. Vs in this one when he tells his mom ("mom", lol) that he finally faced everyone and won and whatever... it just didn't really hit right.

BUT, I don't wanna end this on a negative note, so actually I wanna talk about the twist again.

Actually before I talk about the twist again, I wanna talk about the scene with Gwen and her dad. The "I quit being a cop halfway through your speech" (and the fact that this may present the loophole that saves her father now). The unspoken fact that Gwen was maybe avoiding coming back because she knew her dad was doomed and didn't want to deal with it. Her dad choosing her over everything. It just. It's good...

BACK to the twist. I am NOT a "talks in the movie theater" person but I couldn't help going "OH his dad is dead in THIS universe :000000" once the reveal hit. And that reveal was like 10 reveals all at once that had me just :0000000

Aaron walking in. The reveal that the whole city is aflame because, as Miguel had called out earlier, this universe doesn't have its Spiderman. The "what did you do to your hair". The mural for Jeff instead. The reveal that Gwen and Miles are nowhere near each other. The overlap of Jeff returning him in the universe Gwen is in with Aaron returning him in the universe Miles is in. Miles getting knocked out and I instantly knew it was Dimension42!Miles that did it to him. The Prowler is thriving and it's Miles this time.

[somepsychopomp]

binge watched all of scavengers reign in one sitting! I have many thoughts, though they all feel jumbled up right now. I think the show starts off VERY strong but faces some pretty significant writing challenges as it progresses. Basically my opinion is:

episodes 1-6: an absolute triumph of imagination and environmental storytelling. They have genuinely some of the best ideas for alien life I've ever seen. The human characters are also all interesting, too. Azi and Levi were my favorite plot line but I really relished in how our first glimpse of Kamen is this sad, lonely malnourished man slowly starving to death in a tree... only to be revealed as a violent selfish asshole who genuinely gets what he deserves as the story progresses.

side note- I'm also a huge fan of the weird plant(?) that basically clones living beings and makes The Thing(s). Also Levi is probably the most compelling character in the entire show.

episodes 7-10: I enjoyed episodes 7-10 and maybe 11 so little that i considered giving up on the show in its entirety. To me, this segment dropped the show from like a 8.5/10 to a 4/10 or even lower. They were such an unenjoyable slog to get through imo (no hard feelings on anyone who liked them tho) because of the small crew of new characters we meet. No surprise you're not supposed to like or trust them, but the show just seemed unwilling to commit to them being actually evil or arguably sympathetic characters just trying to survive their own hostile situation, and kinda waffles between the two possibilities.

I guess that's the attempt at a gray area/morally gray characterization but I just fucking hated all of them and they meant nothing to me. Also it really, genuinely feels like the show speed ran Kamen's arc and completely ran out of ideas on where to take his character from here on out. Which is a bummer considering he's the type of character you absolutely love to hate.

And I'm so, so sorry, but I felt nothing when Sam died. TO MY DEFENSE, I can articulate why! Basically, out of all the characters on the show aside from arguably Kamen, Sam gets beaten up the most. He gets his blood sucked during the early storm, then gets wounded by the freaky cloning plant and almost dies from that, and then almost dies from getting buried alive, AND THEN gets implanted with the parasite from that mysterious lady. The best way I can put it is that his character just made me feel fatigued. His situation wasn't the kind where a protagonist suffers injury after injury but gets up anyways via sheer will/desire to complete their goal/what have you (Mizu from Blue Eye Samurai is a good recent example from adult animation who embodies this trope well, for example).

In contrast, Sam just spends too long on the brink of death for the stakes to feel high anymore. He also does nothing to improve his own condition, relying entirely on Ursula, which I think robs him of his agency and depth. In fact, I spent so long prepared to mourn him, kinda expecting him to not survive the planet, that when the time finally came, I already expressed all my emotions and detached myself from his character. I will say that at the very least, I did like his actual death scene and felt it was nicely done and paced.

episodes 11-12: Perfectly fine finale, I had no major problems with it but these episodes just didn't quite hit the highs of the first half of the series. Will say tho, Levi turbo blasting the Hollow was perfect. Love that for them.

Overall, I think I'll have to rewatch the show again when it's not late at night and I have all my wits about me. Maybe I'll change my opinion on it, because I really, REALLY want to like it in its entirety and will absolutely watch a second season if/when it comes out because, despite all its flaws, Scavengers Reign is something genuinely special.

The first half of the series feels like lightning in a bottle and MUST be seen by all sci fi and fantasy fans!! Even though everything is intensely organic and raw, the planet also has this strange biomechanical feel to it, from the shrapnel wind storm to the big triangle-head birds with electric/static feathers to all the animals that look like statues or toys but still live and breathe. It's such a unique take on an alien world and it was beautiful to see.

[youredreamingofroo]

Okay just to preface, if you're from butters discord, i'm gonna be repeating a lot of what I said in the server, possibly more or less refined, we'll see how my brain goes

I really cannot believe plagiarizers, like you REALLY said "Don't flatter yourself,"... Don't flatter YOURSELF HELLO? You had the AUDACITY to copy someone and claim it as your own, not only that but you did a shoddy job at copying, the thumbnails weren't good, the titles weren't good and were too lengthy, like come on. (only applicable to this person in this situation, if you think your titles [or thumbnails] are too long or are bad they ARENT its perfectly fine the way it is and i love it :))

Additionally, what's so wrong with credit? What's so wrong with saying you were inspired?? Why have some people just devolved to assume that it's bad to credit and talk about/mention the people you're inspired by??? Oh I know why, because those people are short of an imagination, short of creativity, and they want an original idea! So of COURSE the only possible and excusable way to get an original idea is to COPY! Ah yes! Sounds about right, haha. 😐 (all sarcasm) Do people not realize just how lifeless copying is? It's literally just taking someones work and ripping out the guts of that work, the beauty, the effort, the PASSION!! If you copy someone's work, you are just as bad as AI "artists".

Not to namedrop (i mean atp most ppl know who was involved), but Oshin (@/Oshinsims on youtube) has SO much passion for her story and her storytelling and such, and it SHOWS!! IT DOES!!!! And you can tell she loves what shes doing, there's so much feeling, and emotion. But to take her work, and copy that word. for. word, it will not be the same, no matter what you do, it will NOT sound the same. Everyone is different, and we all have our artistic styles, and of course, Oshin's method of expressing and writing story will NOT be the same for everyone, you can draw inspiration, but you still have to put in your own work for it to sound like you and once something sounds like you, it sounds beautiful, it will look beautiful and you'll feel the passion. If I were to take Deja (@/dejasenti99) and then swap their storytelling with Bree (@/stellarfalls), Deja would not tell Bree's story and express Bree's story as good as Bree does, and vice versa, this is not a matter of storytelling, reading/writing skills or anything (because both of them are incredible people, and phenomenal creators and storytellers, do check them both out), it's a matter of style, and those two in particular have two very different styles, both styles can be good, but both styles will not give off the same feeling. Give two people the same outfit and they'll wear it differently. Give two people the same script and they'll tell two different stories.

Make your own work! Do your own stuff! Write your own stories! It's an effort and it takes time. But it PAYS. OFF. No amount of stealing and posting plagiarized work will help you improve and crediting/mentioning inspiration from others WILL NOT KILL YOU, do you understand? There's so many of my mutuals and my peers who would (and probably do) literally cry from happiness at hearing someone is inspired by them and their work. And also, plagiarizing is NOT EXCUSABLE! STOP PUTTING DOWN HOW BAD PLAGIARIZING IS, AND DONT TELL SOMEONE THEYRE BEING DRAMATIC FOR RESPONDING TO A PLAGIARIZER

I will note (make sure to read ALL. OF. THIS. PLEASE); It's okay to practice and use/copy other peoples' work as practice, but DO NOT SHARE WHAT YOU DID, this is PRACTICE/COPIED WORK and SHOULD NOT be portrayed as original work. By copying other peoples' work, you can get a gist of what you want to do and how you want to do things. In the art community, it is often encouraged for beginner artists to trace other peoples' work (specifically people who they draw inspiration from), but in doing so, they are told to NOT SHARE that copied work, this is practice and meant to assist the beginner artist in finding their own style. Take this as being a baby bird, you start out with assistance from your parent bird (other peoples' work) but eventually you'll get to a point where you're ready to fly out the nest and start flying by yourself (making your own work with an inspired style) You can copy other simmers' work [as practice], but don't share it because this is meant to be practice, and you need to work on applying what you've practiced onto your OWN. WORK. (renders/gameplay screenshots/story screenshots/storytelling/writing/character creating/sim style/ETC!) ^ If I worded ANY of this shoddily, please correct me/inform me and sorry for the repetition, but some of you need this drained into your brain lol ^

[inorganicone2230]

This Waking Nightmare (Part 2) Yandere!Morpheus x Fem!Reader

Part 1 and Part 3

Summary: Even before his capture, Dream of The Endless had always longed for a loving partner to share his eternity with, and when he finds that an unexpected turn of events may be the first step towards gaining what it is he has been yearning for for so very long, he’ll do anything to make it a reality.

So when Alex Burgess unexpectedly flees after the death of his father, leaving Fawney Rig to crumble into disrepair, Dream had no idea that his salvation would come, not in the form of any of his siblings, nor by any feat of cunning on his part, but simply by the unprecedented arrival of a single mortal girl who would go on to forever reshape and change the very fabric of the Dreamlord’s endless existence.

Warnings: There are no warnings for now, these first few chapters will be fairly tame.

Neil Gaiman is a master storyteller and I own nothing related to The Sandman in any of its forms and/or adaptations.

It wasn’t too hard to find the entrance to the basement, not when someone had graffitied two of the most famous book quotes of all time right across the door and walls in big black letters.

Abandon all hope, ye who enter here & As above, so below

Whoever did it had probably thought that they were being very clever, but in actuality, they really just came off as being very pretentious and lame. If this were a horror movie, it would be beyond the realm of B-rated cheesiness.

You opened it without much hesitation or fanfare and the door swung inward on rusted and squeaking hinges. Shining your flashlight in, you could see that it wasn’t anything special, just a rickety old staircase that led down into what you naturally assumed was just an ordinary and equally as old basement.

You debated turning around and leaving since you would still have to make the trek back up the incredibly long driveway to make it back to the main road and blessed cell service, but you’d already come this far, you silently told yourself, it’s not like a few more minutes of exploring is gonna do you any harm. After all, if Kalvin had been telling the truth during the drive over, then there wasn’t going to be much to see down there anyway. You’d likely be in and out in less time than it was taking you to actually debate this inconsequential task.

With your mind made up, you slowly began making your way down the stairs, being extra careful to watch your step on the way down so as not to fall and hurt yourself. However, when you finally reached the bottom, you were surprised to see that the opening to the space was blocked off by yet another barrier, this one a barred metal gate that reminded you of an old prison cell door. Luckily for you and your now thoroughly peaked curiosity, it wasn’t actually barring the way anymore since it appeared someone had long since taken it right off its hinges and just left it lying on the floor where it fell.

Carefully making your way around the darn thing so you wouldn’t trip over it and possibly twist your ankle, you finally got a look inside the place, and needless to say, it was pretty damn impressive.

“Holy shit…” You exclaimed.

This sure as hell wasn’t what you had been expecting. You had obviously never seen the basement of a mansion before, but you had imagined that it wouldn’t be that much different from any other basement. However, the dinghy space you had been anticipating entering wasn’t at all what you currently found yourself standing inside of.

Instead of a low ceiling full of cobwebs and support beams and a compact dirt or concrete floor, in its place you found a space the size of a small parking lot, complete with a high ceiling to add more openness to the underground space and solid stone flooring that left echoes in the wake of your footsteps. But it was what you saw in the center of the room that made you truly take notice.

There was a section of the floor in the shape of a large square, smack dab in the middle of the room, that appeared to be separated from the rest of it by means of what you could only interpret as a mini trench of some kind surrounding it in an equally shaped outer square. After moving closer to shine your flashlight down into it, you could just barely make out the telltale signs of dried up sludge coating the bottom, indicating that it must have been filled with water at some point.

“So it was a miniature moat or something?” You questioned the empty room as you continued to look around. If you had to hazard a guess, this probably had less to do with interesting architecture and more to do with the cult that had once called this place home back in the day. There was a small pathway that cut through the mini-moat and gave access to the strange spot, and since you were still curious to get a closer look at it you moved towards it.

*scrap scrap*

The faint sound came from behind you and in a whorl of spiked panic, you spun around, and aimed the flashlight in the direction of the scratching noise and prayed to God that it wasn’t the aforementioned axe murderer you had briefly imagined earlier.

At first, you didn’t see anything at all, but upon closer inspection, you noticed the faint outline of a large rodent near one of the alcoves in the wall and relaxed ever so slightly, but as soon as the light touched it, it shrunk back and suddenly skittered down into the ground through an opening of some kind.

You might have been content to simply forget about that and continue on with your snooping now that you knew there was no danger, except for the fact that you remembered that this whole floor was seemingly made out of stone; and there should have been nowhere for that rat to go underneath it all. You weren’t entirely too sure, but you didn’t think that common household rats were known for burrowing in the ground, much less burrowing through solid stone.

Now thoroughly intrigued, you made your way over to inspect the area and realized that this one random section of the floor was made of wooden planks that extended out from the wall by 4ft or so, in fact, this odd wood trimming seemed to run around the entire length of the room. It was like the people who originally lived here were trying to cover the stone with the wood flooring, but stopped midway through the project for some reason.

Angling your light over the spot the rat had disappeared into, you saw that there was a hole in the wood about the size of a baseball and without much more thought, proceeded to get down on your hands and knees to shine the flashlight inside.

You knew this was an incredibly strange and silly thing to be doing, you weren’t going to find anything of real substance or value in a rat nest, but some unseen force (probably the tequila and your damned curiosity) was pushing you to follow through and at least check it out, if only for the sheer madness of it.

But it wasn’t a rat in a small hole that you saw…

Not even close… It was the broken top step of an old wooden ladder.

“The fuck?” You took a second look to see if it was some kind of trick of the light or even just the broken off piece of wood that would have originally filled in the hole, but sure enough, it was a fucking ladder of all things.

Using the sleeve of your jacket to brush away the thick layers of previously undisturbed dust and dirt coating the wood, you soon found what you were looking for in the form of a rectangular seam that didn’t match up with the rest of the wooden floor boards lining. A quick knock on the top even confirmed your suspicions when the sound rang back hollowly.

This was definitely a hatch door, but it had no handles to lift it with or even hinges at the back to help it angle it upward. If you wanted to get it open, you were going to have to take the whole thing off. But that begged the question of whether or not you even wanted to bother with it. It was probably nothing more than a dank and dirty old root-cellar, but still, you couldn’t help but wonder about it, and you knew that you’d keep thinking about it over and over again if you left without even trying.

Mind made up, you set down the flashlight and positioned it to shine where you needed it before pulling out a sturdy switchblade from your pocket that you had been carrying around for years in case of an emergency or accident. This wasn’t the kind of situation you ever thought you’d find yourself to be using it in, but better this than a potential kidnapping.

Over the course of the next half hour, you worked to use the knife as a makeshift crowbar and pry up the hatch. It wasn’t easy since the damn thing was nailed down in a few spots, but with a little bit of time and elbow grease, it eventually became loose enough to lift and toss aside. The smell of stale air wafted up from the opening and you coughed as the scent settled into your lungs, but it didn’t smell like something rotten or anything horrible, so at the very least, if there were any dead bodies down there, they likely weren’t fresh. As you peered down into the hole, you could see that the drop was about 6ft to 7ft down and the floor was concrete, you just hoped the old ladder was strong enough to handle you going down and back up it at least once. The last thing you wanted was to get stuck down there and end up starving to death, because you highly doubted that Gabby and the others were going to come back looking for you.

So, keeping the knife in your hand, just in case, and the flashlight in the other, you slowly and carefully began making your way down.

The wood groaned and creaked under your weight, but not enough to make you believe it was going to give out or break. You still felt incredibly relieved when your feet finally touched the ground though and you turned around to get your first look at the secret space.

However…

…

…

…

That relief was incredibly short lived upon discovering what exactly it was that this odd chamber had truly been hiding.

—————

Morpheus froze in stunned awe as he watched the young woman deceased down the ladder and into the dank darkness of his prison chamber, the flashlight she carried in her hand shining like a beacon from the Silver City itself as it cast eerie shadows all around the space.

If he were mortal and not the true universal embodiment of dreams and the unconscious mind, he might have pinched himself to see if he was dreaming this all up, but such a thing couldn’t be possible, the entrapment circle crafted around his cage had prevented him from dreaming since the moment of his capture.

Which could really only mean one thing…

That this was real.

It was difficult to make out her features from the dim light cast by her flashlight, but right now, he couldn’t care less what she looked like, not when she held the power to help free him just by simply being here. She was the first true living thing he had laid eyes on in… well… he didn’t accurately know how long, but it was long enough that the mere sight of her was enough to make him want to weep.

But as she raised the light to look around, her reaction to seeing him made it clear that he was not at all what she had been expecting to find down here. 

She screamed in surprise and stumbled back onto her rear, gaping at him in shock and disbelief. She stayed still like that for so long that, were it not for the erratic rise and fall of her chest to indicate otherwise, Dream feared she may have passed out or even died of fright right there on the spot.

She eventually seemed to get her bearings about her and he heard her mumbling some rather choice words before coming to a decision and he watched with bated breath as she closed up the knife he just now noticed she carried in her other hand and put it away in her pocket. She began scrambling around the chamber, looking for something, though he knew not what for.

That question was soon answered however when he saw her bend down to pick up a large rock with a jagged end, to which she must have deemed acceptable, because she was suddenly making her way over to him. He nearly smiled in gleeful triumph when he saw her shoes scuff a line through the entrapment circle, weakening its enchantment on the glass and his power.

She set the flashlight down on the ground before turning to face him through the glass, a determined look set upon her rather beautiful face, and for the first time in what felt like an eternity, he heard another's voice ringing in his ears. He didn’t know if she truly had the voice of an angel, for that’s exactly what it sounded like, or if he was just that desperate for the sound, but he didn’t care. He wanted to beg her to keep talking, to fill his ears with the sweet melody and never stop, but he found his own voice was caught in his throat as the shock that he was finally free settled over him. The long awaited relief washed over him in delightful waves and he slumped against the glass, unable and unwilling to take his eyes off of the beguiling creature standing on the other side of his cage, the rock in her hand raised high and poised to strike.

“Just hang on, I’m going to try and get you out!”

And then she moved.

—————

Finding a naked young man trapped in some kind of creepy glass cage down here was so far down the list of things you hadn’t expected to come across, that it wasn’t ever even an option. But that’s exactly what it was, and you just figured that you could worry about the ‘how’s’ and ‘why’s’ of this incredibly odd turn of events after you had gotten him out of this thing.

For a brief moment, you had thought that the best thing you could do would be to leave and get far enough away to call the police and let them handle this. But you knew they’d likely just think this whole thing was a prank call by some bored teenagers and ignore you, or they’d show up and you’d get arrested for trespassing before losing your scholarship and getting deported. There was also this man’s safety to consider, you admitted to yourself as you thought of what could go wrong if you left him here for even a few hours. You doubted he was down here by choice; what if whoever put him there came back to kill him, or what if he ran out of air or something while you were gone?

He didn’t look hurt or anything as far as you could tell, so he couldn’t have been trapped for very long, you thought, even as your subconscious mind took notice of how there were no human footprints of any kind trailing through the dirt and dust that blanketed the floor, or how there seemed to be no other entrances/exits besides the one you just came through, and that one clearly hadn’t been used in decades.

All of these thoughts piled up in your head faster than you could comprehend or keep track of them, but in the end, it was none of them that made you decide to help him. It was the look on his face, the look that told you something fundamental would shatter inside of him if you turned your back and left him here alone, even if it was only for a short amount of time.

Now here you were, banging on the seemingly indestructible glass with a rock to try and break through, and in your panic, it never even occurred to you to try and see if the damn thing had a door with an outside lock to try and open for him or something.

At first, all it did was scratch the surface and you fears you may actually have to go back up in search of a better tool, like a hammer or something, but after a few more hard strikes in the same spot, spiderwebs and hairline fractures began to splinter outward from the area and you could see that a small hole had been formed. Once the structure was weakened enough, breaking through the rest of it was comparably easy to chip away at, and soon, you had made a hole big enough that he could squeeze through. There were metal pieces wound through the glass and you dragged the rock against both, trying to get rid of as many jagged chunks as you so he wouldn’t seriously hurt himself when climbing out.

“Just… umm, let me brush away some of these shards and pieces before you get out.” You said awkwardly, not entirely too sure how to speak or what to say in a situation like this as you took off your coat and used it to clear away the glass that had fallen inside the cage and then did the same to the floor so he, hopefully, wouldn’t end up slicing the bottoms of his feet to ribbons.

“Give me your hand and I’ll help you out.” You said, trying to remain as calm as you could. He hadn’t said a single word yet as he just kept staring at you with wide eyes and a gobsmacked expression.

You hadn’t bothered to get a really good look at him, not just because of how strange and disturbing this situation was, but also because the man was butt-ass-naked. But now that you were so near to him, you couldn’t not take notice of him and his rather… appealing physique.

Pale skin so white it almost seemed to glow in the dim illumination cast by your flashlight and a messy shock of pitch black hair set over an angular face that you could only describe as being utterly beautiful. With high cheekbones and full pursed lips that were making you think of very sinful and inappropriate things, it really was a miracle you weren’t drooling right now, and that was just what he looked like above the neck.

He didn’t take your outstretched hand though, and instead grabbed the metal portion of the structure and swung himself out with all the ease and grace of a practiced gymnast. His feet touched the ground without a sound and he didn’t even seem bothered by the potential injuries and infection he could sustain from the broken glass and filth ridden floor. He just stood there, stark naked and silently watching you.

As he stood to his full height, you could now see that he was quite a bit taller than you, by at least a couple of inches, if not a whole foot, and you couldn’t help but wonder if you had hit the nail on the head when you thought his movements were as fluid as a gymnast’s, because he certainly had the body of one. He was lean, but even in the crappy light cast by the flashlight, you see that he was sculpted with ropes of solid muscle. He reminded you of those famous statues from Greece, the ones carved from marble to look like the ancient heroes from the epics, like Hercules and Achilles.

But as you looked up to make eye contact with him, you found yourself completely hypnotized by what you found there.

His eyes were the color of raw silver, like dancing silver flames, or the glinting of two bright stars in the deepest and darkest night sky. They were captivating and you found that you were so enraptured with them that you didn’t even realize you had taken a step forward until you heard glass crunching underneath your booted foot and you snapped out of it, jerking back with frightened shock over the momentary loss of your inhibitions.

You really were trying your best not to ogle him, but that was rather hard to accomplish when he was making no move at all to cover himself and you refused to turn your back on him. You might have helped him out of a really bazaar situation, but that didn’t mean you trusted him enough to let your guard down completely with him, he was still a perfect stranger after all.

“Listen,” You started off, trying to find something to say that would help to ease the tension of this incredibly awkward silence. “Now that we got you out of whatever that thing is,” You made a hand motion towards the now destroyed cage. “We should really look at getting out of here before whoever it was that put you in there decides to come back.” You took a step back, opting to put some distance between you and the stranger, but for the first time since you laid eyes on one another, he spoke, and you weren’t entirely certain if it was his words or the haunting raspy sound of his voice that made you freeze, but you did and it cost you.

“They won’t be returning.”

You opened your mouth to ask what the fuck he meant by that, but faster then you could process what was happening, the man’s hand shot out and snagged your wrist. He gave a gentle tug and you went falling into his arms, but before you could even begin to struggle or open your mouth to scream, he opened his other hand and blew something into your face and everything suddenly went dark.

—————

Morpheus caught you in his arms as you went limp against him, the last thing he wanted was to see you get needlessly hurt, especially since he now owed you quite the generous life debt for unknowingly freeing him from what he was beginning to think would be an eternity of confinement.

Looking down at your peaceful expression, he used some of what reminded of his limited power to look into your dreams, trying to find out any information he could in regards to you and the state of the world he was about to re-enter.

Quite often, he was able to glean a lot about a person’s waking life, not just from their dreams, but from the multitude of thoughts that tended to run rampant through their mind in those hazy moments right before sleep truly claimed them. Those moments were often similar to that of waking dreams and he used to use them rather frequently to gather information when it was necessary.

And you were no exception to this trait.

In a matter of moments he knew quite a lot more than he did a few hours ago.

For example, he now knew that he had been imprisoned for well over a century, 106 years to be exact. He also now knew that your name was (Y/N) (L/N), you were 21 years old and attending university here in England despite not being British, he had even learned that you had been fortunate enough to get a single dorm room on campus and that you had been abandoned here after a rather interesting altercation between you and some of your fellow classmates.

With this knowledge in hand, he scooped you up into his arms as gently as he could and found himself marveling at just how soft you felt in his arms. You fidgeted a bit in response to the movement and grumbled something unintelligible before going quiet again, which showed just how weak he truly was, if he was at full power and in possession of his tools, you would have entered into a sleep so deep that only a select few things would have been enough to wake you. That thought was enough to spur him into action once again, and using the knowledge he’d gained from you, he called upon another morsel of his nearly depleted power and brought the both of you to an entirely new location.

Your dorm room was about what anyone could expect of such accommodations and Morpheus was quick to pull back the soft blankets and lay you down on the mediocre bed. 

However, despite knowing he should be leaving right this moment to return to The Dreaming and begin the hunt for his tools of power, he found himself increasingly reluctant to fully release his hold on you. He hadn’t felt skin to skin contact in so long, even before his imprisonment it had been quite a while; but it was one thing to shun such a thing by choice, it was another thing entirely to have the option of it totally stripped away from you by force. Now he was feeling it again with you, and to his touch starved skin, it felt like the most exquisite thing in the world, both waking and dreaming.

Without realizing it, he found himself sitting beside you on the bed and stroking the tips of his fingers down your cheek, you sighed in your sleep and leaned into his touch, as if soothed by it. The simple and unconscious reaction left him with goosebumps prickling his skin and his heart stuttering in his chest as he continued to watch you sleep. He thought about entering your dreams and seeing what such a brave little mortal would conjure up in his realm, but for some inexplicable reason, he found himself unwilling to look away from the peacefulness of your sleeping face here in the waking world.

Eventually though, he knew he had to depart. It was time for him to finally return home, to go back to The Dreaming and assess the damage wrought by his absence over the last century, as well as to begin the search for his tools.

Cupping your face in his hands, he leaned over your sleeping form and pressed his forehead against your own and whispered your name softly to the otherwise silent room.

“You are my savior, my light in the darkness. I don’t believe there is anything I can do that will ever truly be enough to repay you for what you have done for me tonight.” Being this close to you, he couldn’t help but notice your enticing scent and how it made his mouth water, not with the typical hunger one would expect after so long in confinement, but with something that left his cock twitching against his bare leg. However, he ignored that feeling as best he could and continued on. “But this I promise you, my little savior, once I have my tools in my possession again, I will see to it that you spend the rest of your life with nothing but the sweetest and happiest of dreams whenever you enter my realm, even if I have to enter your dreams every evening and craft them by hand myself. I vow that no nightmare will ever intrude and interrupt your sleep ever again.”

There was so much more he wanted to say to you, so much more he wanted to do, but time was of the essence and he needed to leave, before he did something very foolish, something that would surely bring the wrath of the universe down upon his immortal head.

And so, with nothing more than a quick kiss to your brow and another heartfelt exclamation of gratitude, he was gone in a whisp of shadows, as if he had never been there to begin with.

Please enjoy and let me know what you think of this second chapter! I’m dying to know what you all think is going to go down.

Please forgive any minor potholes or inconsistencies, I tried my best to make the detail changes make sense for the story I wanted to tell while still keeping in line with the original source material. This is mostly based off of the Netflix series, but there are some details about the comics and audio books thrown in for flavor.

And as always, I want to give a very BIG thank you to my amazing friend @talpup for all the brainstorming and encouragement on these stories! I’m  sure I would have given up on this blog a while ago if it wasn’t for  all of   their help. I highly encourage anyone who takes the time to  read this to go over to their page or their AO3 account under the same  name and check out their works, especially Chaos and Lost Song. They  are two of my favorite BNHA fics of ALL TIME! And who has also started  their own Yandere!Overhaul fic called Crossroads and is set in a  1920′s prohibition style era, it’s amazing and you really need to check  it out!  

[wellofdean]

Just breaking up this post before it just gets out of hand, but want to reply to these notes from @ironworked :

#I was reading the transcript of a panel Kripke did in 2008#he gets asked about Jo and at the end says they 'don't have any plans to bring her back'#and then: ''(audience cheers)''#then they cheer *for* Ellen#The impression I get is that a large portion of the fandom only ever cared about female characters that weren't 'a threat' to a ship#but who still were there for Dean and Sam#This show had its fumbles and mistakes and iffy stuff with female characters but I'm with Ilarual here - fandom has been significantly wors#the reactions to Mary and Amara are particularly interesting because they're pretty much exactly#the kind of nuanced female character fans *say* they want#and yet they get trashed and misrepresented regularly#funny that#Tv: Supernatural

Ugh. So gross. And to be clear, I am also with @ilarual : there is plenty of misogyny in Supernatural that's there just because it's the air we all breathe, but a lot of it is in the way if someone wants to belittle Dean in some way, they ALWAYS impugn his masculinity, and the way he is supposed to be ashamed of being the one who just wants to keep his family together, and the way he is unable to experience a tender emotion without embarrassment, or the way he can't say "I love you" so he says "I did not leave you!" and "Don't do anything stupid!" angrily instead. Or, the way Sam (soulless) and grandpa Samuel make fun of his nice house with Lisa, and he feels the need to defend himself by saying "Go ahead, call me a soccer mom!" as if the worst possible thing he could be is a feminized, domesticated man who's been tamed by a woman who reads girl magazines. THAT'S misogyny, but fellas, I think the show is attempting to point a thing out with that? All of those things are depictions of misogyny in a show that's about the way terrible patriarchal relationships fuck men up.

Dean's so-called misogyny is cartoonish and ridiculous and clearly a triggered performative response to stereotypical representations of performative femininity, because when Dean is called upon to respond to a woman as a human being, he is well able to do that, even in season 1.

Women who threaten the big ship are always hated in fandom after fandom. Personally, I loved Jo. I loved her crush on Dean, and his big brother act hiding a crush on her. I loved Amara because GOD'S SISTER? Dean's dark female soul image? The way their weird, skeevy connection resolved in mutual empathy, one caged thing to another, and also in giving each other what they most needed? Mary coming back to show Dean that his fantasy of a lost ideal family was just that? A fantasy?

Like, that is just rich storytelling and I am here for it.

I get why people didn't like Amara -- she is an antagonist and I cringed every time she touched Dean's face. She was a threat to Dean, but also? I fucking LOVED that she was there, making me super uncomfortable and fucking EATING, and against Chuck? I wanted her to win. Fuck that guy! I love the idea that a controlling author/father/god who locked his sister and feminine equal up so he could play with his boytoys and make them kill each other. I love that Amara is symbolic of nothingness as opposed to Chuck's being because I think there is a fundamental way in which we struggle to imagine ourselves, AS A CULTURE, without patriarchy.

I also get why people are mad at Mary. We love Dean! We want him to have what he wants! We want him to have fluffy mom-time to make up for all his years of pain. But, can we all just ask ourselves the important question of whether or not a grown-ass man should get what he wants at his mother's expense? Like, are mothers actual human beings with desires, needs and exigencies of their own, or are they slaves to their men and their offspring?*

*Side note: I feel like there are a lot of young people who are mad at their moms on tumblr, and yeah, not all parents live up to their responsibilities and that sucks, but yo: moms are people they make mistakes and have needs.

And, as story devices, which is what they ultimately are, Dean's weird feelings about Amara in a season that is all about Dean thinking about what his heart wants, really only supports the ship we all want to see sail. As for Mary, her death was the inciting incident and her return (and John's) was about healing by letting painful things be painful, and seeing that what you have is pretty fucking good, actually ("I have a family"), and then her second death tests Dean's commitment to holding his family together. Like, our heroes have to be put in situations so we can see their mettle! That's what stories do!

I dunno man. The other day someone I know in meatspace was like: "Oooh! I love Supernatural! Let's talk!" And I was like: "Oh! Cool! Yeah!" and then she says: "Sometimes it sucked though, especially in the later seasons, like when they brought Mary back," and I was like........."Actually, let's not talk."

[sincerely-sofie]

Ruby anon again! I’m glad that I haven’t been interrupting your creative process or intervening at all. I can’t wait to see what you do with Ruby and her siblings!

The siblings, btw, were a piece of work for me to write and develop until I decided to peace out on really doing anything with them. The only two things I remember about them really are:

• They’re bounty hunters and their parents did the same thing to them that they’re doing with Ruby. They’re repeating behavior taught to them and they legitimately think they’re helping Ruby. I scrapped that idea quickly because I felt like that could push out the problematic “the abused become abusers” message and that it could possibly make the siblings sympathetic, and I did not want to make them sympathetic in even the slightest way. Anything I had involving the backstory of Ruby’s siblings and/or what happened to their parents was just tossed out after that.

• I thought about the siblings having opposite personalities and looks: one is more loud and aggressive and the other is more quiet and passive aggressive. One is shiny while the other is not. One is the physical abuser while the other is the emotional abuser. Despite their personalities contrasting, they get along well with each other. I wanted it to symbolize that abuse can look different, but it’s still abuse and can often come with other forms of it. I was still on the fence about that idea because I wasn’t sure if I liked it.

I hope you can write the siblings better than I ever could. I can’t wait to see more of your work! It’s amazing! I hope you have a good night. ^^

OHHHHH MY WORD I CAN’T BEGIN TO TELL YOU HOW AMAZING THESE NOTES ARE AND HOW EXCITED I AM TO INCORPORATE THEM

I love the idea of the siblings embodying different forms of abuse and the significance of how their differences ultimately play off each other in a way that they get along swimmingly. That’s a brilliantly layered piece of storytelling, you’re a genius! And thank you for the compliment, you’re super sweet :>

Real quick, an important thing to note about the possible problematic message that “the abused become abusers”— it’s a heartbreaking fact that many cases of abuse are generational in origin. The documented fact that domestic abusers are frequently victims of corporal punishment is one of the most devastating examples of this. To write a couple of characters who reflect this fact doesn’t automatically push out the idea that the abused become abusers— heck, it could be written as an important insight into the devastating effects of abuse and how it impacts its victims, and how breaking the chain of abuse is even more significant than its already seen.

Just because you write a reason for a character to be a horrible person doesn’t mean they’re automatically sympathetic, or even that they’re sympathetic in a bad way. Villains people can relate to are very powerful from a writing perspective because they make the reader stop, stare into the abyss, and see it staring back at them. A sympathetic or “understandable” villain who is still clearly villainous is terrifying compared to one that’s cartoonish pure evil. I can’t think of anyone who wants to blow up the universe, but I can think of a good few people who are xenophobic to the point of dehumanizing even themselves through their hatred. An origin story isn’t always an excuse. Sometimes it’s nothing more than an explanation— a cautionary tale that says “this could be you, so watch yourself.”

The fact that this is a possible backstory for Ruby and her older siblings is very relevant to Twig’s character in particular. I haven’t talked about Twig’s aunt Rue or mother Rowan’s backstories very much, but Rue was very similar to Twig while growing up— and Twig resembles Rue as a child more than she does her own mother. In a piece I haven’t finished yet, there’s a flashback that reveals the lighter that featured so heavily in the abuse Twig suffered is printed with her grandfather’s initials. Ruby and Twig could talk for hours, I think, about the torrential emotions that come from knowing your tormentor was a victim as well.

[esther-dot]

GRRM Interview from 2011

I: Well, one thing that always came up with Lost was this idea of, they better have the ending figured out. I want them to know right from the beginning what the plan is. As a storyteller, do you believe that that is what you should be doing? Is it even possible?

GRRM: I think it’s possible to an extent. Well first of all, there are different kinds of writers. I’ve given this lecture in many of my talks. I like to say that there are two kinds of writers, there are the architects and the gardeners. And the architects plan everything ahead of time before they write the first word of a novel. They do all the world building, they know how many rooms the house is going to have and they know how they will flow to each other and how high each floor is going to be and where the electricity and the plumbing is going to go and everything. Before they even nail up the first board.

And then there are the gardeners who just sort of dig a hole and they put a seed in it and they water it with their blood and then something starts to grow. Now, they usually know that they plant a peach tree or did they plant a cactus. But the precise shape its going to take they don’t know. I think all most writers are somewhere in the middle, you know. I’m much more of a gardener than an architect and so was Tolkien .

But I like to compare my books to a journey. Like that map there [gestures to a U.S. map on the wall]. If you were going from Los Angeles to New York, you would look at a map like that and you would say, well, okay, I’m going to leave and I’m going to follow the route through Albuquerque and I’m gonna go north to Denver… So you know your eventual destination and the main roads and some of the big landmarks you’re going to go through, but you don’t know where you’re gonna stop for dinner the first night, or where there’s gonna be road construction that will force you to take a detour, where a hitchhiker is going to show up on the side of the road and tell you a fascinating story. These are the things you discover during the journey.

I know the ultimate destination, I know the principal landmarks and things that happen along the way, like [big event redacted] which had been planned from the beginning and all of that. But some of them I discover in the writing. Essentially I know the big stuff, but a lot of little stuff occurs in the course of the writing. And of course some of the little stuff is very, very important. The devil is in the details. The devil is what makes the journey more than just an outline or a Cliff’s Notes kind of experience. So I may know the ultimate fates of Jon Snow and Daenerys and Arya and some of the other principal characters. But I don’t necessarily know the ultimate fates of Dolorous Edd or Hot Pie, you know. Well, I have a few ideas about those, but still. (link)

[lostcauses-noregrets]

I know new AoT stuff wasn't going to be anything but still an artbook wasn't what I expected. I know it was never going to be about the Ackermans but I swear Isayama should do something about them one day because they are "weakest point" storytelling-wise in AoT. Kenny Levi and Mikasa are all my favorites but also they don't make sense and always feel like something Isayama only invented to explain how they are so OP in a more grounded story where ordinary people without Titan powers are just that, ordinary people. That ask you answered recently for example. They are just... It makes zero sense. Fandom, especially Eruri fans, did so much more justice to this side of AoT compared to Isayama. Because in no world it makes sense that they just discover 2 of their soldiers are literally super soldiers and there can be more out there when they are literally threatened by intelligent titans and a mostly unknown enemy. Don't get me wrong, I love that Yams kept it mysterious which gave the fans creative freedom when it comes to Ackerman stuff. Eruri fans are so creative with it. But he still acts like Ackermans exist in their own little world. No one reacts to them, no one is interested in them unless the story has to remind us they are special (again that ask you answered about ackermans being immune). You telling me Paradis, in desperation under the threat of outside world and their intelligent titans, didn't search for possibly more Ackermans? Erwin who loves things like that never questioned Levi or Mikasa? Hange, who is a science freak and loves titan science in the first place, begged Levi or Mikasa to give them their blood sample or anything? No one tried to weaponize them? Ackermans make no sense because it feels like their story is a side story, a side quest and completely seperated from the main storyline, not because they are a mystery. THEY MAKE NO SENSE ITS DRIVING ME CRAZY

I got this ask last weekend and we've had a lot more information about Shingeki FLY since then. We now know it's going to be a 200 page art book, a "top secret final draft", and "Attack on Titan Vol. 35 which contains the newly drawn manga Bad Boy". There's been a lot of speculation about who Bad Boy refers to with many fans holding out hope that the new manga or side story will be about Levi. (Though I did laugh at the person on twitter who said it might be about Armin and Annie.). So you never know Anon, you might get your Ackerman lore yet!

Much as I would love to know more about the Ackermans, I'm not sure I agree that they're the "weakest point" storytelling-wise". I think there are much more annoying plot weaknesses, particularly whatever the hell is going on with Historia! Personally I can live with the layers of ambiguity surrounding the Ackermans, particularly because they've proved such fertile ground for fic writers, as you rightly said.

The thing about the Ackermans is that, given the king's attempts to wipe them out, it's not clear whether anyone on Paradis knew anything about them. Erwin wanted Levi for the Survey Corps as soon as he saw his strength and skill, but when he recruited Levi, he had no idea he was Ackerman, or what that meant. Levi himself only discovered he was an Ackerman at the end of the Uprising Arc. We don't know from canon whether Levi revealed his lineage to Erwin, but I'm quite sure he did. He certainly doesn't seem to have been reticent about talking about his relationship with Kenny to Mikasa and Hanji in the cart, and with Nifa on the rooftop.

But even if Erwin did know by the end of the Uprising that the Ackermans were a clan of supers soldiers, as you put it, he didn't really have a chance to exploit that information; sadly he was killed barely a couple of months later. Hanji does appear to have some knowledge of the Ackermans later in the story, but again, by that stage they were all fighting for their lives so they weren't exactly in a position to go hunting for more Ackermans to support the Alliance.

Anyway, I can understand your frustration about the lack of information about the Ackermans, and I really would love to know more about them too. However, over the years, I've made my peace with the fact that they are likely to remain a mystery.

[gorgeousundertow]

FIC WRITER INTERVIEW

Tagged by @lamialamia

How many works do you have on AO3?

13

What’s your total AO3 word count?

423,658. Hoo boy.

What are your top 5 fics by kudos?

Fundamentally People (Good Omens (TV) Kudos: 782 

The Most Dangerous Thing is to Love (Sherlock (TV) Kudos: 283 

S2.7: 49:07: A De-Montage (Bridgerton (TV) Kudos: 279 

The Opposite of Undercurrent (Sherlock (TV) Kudos: 275 

The Force of The Interaction (Sherlock (TV) Kudos: 238 

Do you respond to comments? Why or why not?

Yes and sometimes almost immediately after I get them and frequently I stop and reread them and read them aloud and tell everyone they were the best part of my day.

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

I write exclusively happy endings, because I have a pathlogical need for a happy ending, and every fic I've written happened because I wanted it to exist so I could read it. That said, maybe From This Day To The Ending of The World? Because...it's still a little complicated? (Not really though, it's still A Happy Ending TM)

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

Uh. They're all really happy. But I think Fundamentally People was the sweetest.

Do you write crossovers?

Haven't yet!

Have you received hate on a fic?

No, never have (thank heavens)

Do you write smut? If so, what kind?

Ohhhhh yes. Looking at my fandoms, it's often the "oh no, what's happening I seem to be very attracted to you, what can that possibly mean? NOTHING AT ALL CLEARLY except we should do that more but never ever talk about and certainly not talk about FEELINGS." Sometimes it's that. Sometimes it's "ohholygodwecanbonebecauseyoulovemetoowhew." One time it was "We are in love and married but Victorian Repression so we don't quuiiiiiite know how to do sex?"

Have you ever had a fic stolen?

Not that I'm aware of.

Have you ever had a fic translated?

Yes! Or they're in process, anyway...

Have you ever co-written a fic before?

No! It would be very fun to try, though!

What’s your all-time favorite ship?

Johnlock Winnix Ineffable Husbands Brad/Nate Why would you ask someone to choose between their best beloveds?

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

I'm pretty good about finishing, actually. I have some ideas kicking around that I might never get to, but I don't have anything I've genuinely started that I've left undone.

What are your writing strengths?

I think I'm very good at dialogue, and decent at pacing (current fic-in-progress notwithstanding grrr). I think I capture voice pretty well.

What are your writing weaknesses?

I'm not always great at setting a scene. I tend to rush through, and I feel like I'm capable of quite lovely writing, but I'm impatient and skip over it. I'm not always great about plotting - I long to write something heavily plotted and gripping, and then I'm like...crickets.

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

Whelp, as somebody with one (1) language skill, I'm not great at it. On occasion, I've needed to use another language--Russian and German have come up recently, I've called upon Good Old Google Translate which is obviously not ideal, but I checked in with a couple of friends when I wasn't sure it was correct. One time I intentionally used Bad French (it was for Aziraphale, who is supposed to be bad at French, and a French-speaking reader was very upset. I explained why I did it, and it was fine, but it was pretty funny).

What was the first fandom you wrote for?

My very first fanfic was for Twelfth Night because I am a Giant Nerd.

What’s a fandom/ship you haven’t written for yet but want to?

I'm in the midst of a Gen Kill fic, so that's on its way. I want to write IronStrange! And Webgott!

What’s your favourite fic you’ve written?

I'm very proud of From This Day To The Ending of The World. It was a new form of storytelling that I'd always wanted to try, and I'm really happy with how it turned out. I'm also really pleased with The Most Dangerous Thing is to Love because it did exactly what I wanted it to do (i.e., it was the fic I wanted to read).

Wheeee tagging @jenkil @latibvles @basilone and anyone else who feels like it!