#like. you hate the linear passage of time.

[polysyndetonaddictsupportgroup]

hi!! you recommended vonnegut a while ago, and i just read slaughterhouse five and it was incredible and i was wondering which one of his books is your favorite/which one you would recommend next?? thank you!!

oh my GOD yes yes yes I am not a normal person about kurt vonnegut. I have three options for you with pitches as to why.

Mother Night is one of my favorites out of everything he ever wrote, and it’s definitely an excellent second book. He wrote in his foreword that it’s the only book he ever wrote that he knew what the meaning of it was. Whether that’s actually true and remained true, I don’t know, but the point he makes in it is one that’s pretty profound and I’ve heard shockingly little of in media.

The book follows a former high-ranking member of the Nazi party, who was a very successful propagandist for them, which distracted from the fact that he was also the most successful wartime spy for Allied forces. It’s also one of the less weird books he’s ever written? Kurt Vonnegut really leans into absurdism, and it’s more evident in some books than others. This sort of helps with the learning curve.

That being said, Cat’s Cradle is my favorite out of all of his books, and it’s also the second I ever read, after slaughterhouse five. It’s like, 20% more weird than slaughterhouse five? So if you vibed with some of the weirder aspects of it (think like, the alien zoo subplot) then I highly recommend Cat’s Cradle. I honestly can’t figure out how to give a synopsis of this one without revealing information best revealed in the book, but it’s a commentary on the post-WWII arms race and religion. It’s insanely good.

The thing about Kurt Vonnegut is that he has a lot of different recurring themes, and I feel like everyone takes away some kind of core message from his works. That being said, I feel like The Sirens of Titan most clearly and compellingly states Vonnegut’s core message in his works, and it’s definitely a must-read out of his books. It’s not my favorite but it’s definitely fighting it out for a place at the very top of the list. It follows the richest man in the world, who has the least purpose in it, at the center of an interplanetary war between Mars and Earth.

I will say that there’s only one book that I would say you probably shouldn’t read as your second book and that’s Breakfast of Champions. There’s two reasons for this.

First, Kurt Vonnegut’s books exist in a loosely interconnected universe. He’s somewhere between Marvel and Shakespeare in how he does it. It’s not like Marvel where it’s feeding into an overarching narrative, and you don’t need to read them in some kind of particular order to understand, but he’s not like Shakespeare just alluding to his own works in different plays in the sense that these books are explicitly existing within the same universe. You have specific places (Ilium, which you saw in Slaughterhouse Five, shows up a lot) and characters that recur throughout. The protagonist of Mother Night, for example, is briefly referenced in Slaughterhouse Five, etc. They’re used primarily as a vehicle for meta commentary and it’s honestly so well executed.

Kilgore Trout makes the most appearances across the disparate novels. He’s widely regarded as a character meant to be a stand-in for Vonnegut himself, and he plays his largest role in Breakfast of Champions. You also have characters in Breakfast of Champions that are taken directly from his other books, like with the minor role the protagonist of Bluebeard plays in BoC (Bluebeard is also a banger of a book worth reading but personally my least favorite of all his books). Again, you don’t need to read Vonnegut’s books in any official order to understand them, but Breakfast of Champions has the most cameos and greatest use of meta fiction in it, so the reading experience is just overall enhanced by having a little more grounding in his other works.

The second reason is it’s really fucking weird.

In a brilliant kind of way. It’s regarded to be one of his best works, and it deserves the reputation. But the techniques he uses in this are by far the most experimental, and while those experiments absolutely pay off, I usually recommend that people get used to his particular approach to absurdism before tackling Breakfast of Champions. I highly recommend this book if you like Vonnegut, but really spend time with him as an author before reading it and you’ll get so much more out of it.

[cielhunternorwood]

So I had no desire to actually play as Vergil in DMC 5 because, much like 3 and 4, it's just the same game but Vergil and no cutscenes. There's nothing else to it, which makes it boring.

So modding the game to play as Crimson Weave Alpha instead at least offers some motivation to keep doing it. Especially when there's an announcer voice mod of Alpha to go with it.

The only problem is NO ONE is replacing Bury the Light with Narwhal or anything, and I'm not a fan of BtL outside of the memes.

I think playing Vergil like this is also revealing something very obnoxious about DMC 5 which is a huge step back from DMC 3/4: the game is painfully linear with little exploration opportunities. You could say the same of 4 only to a lesser extent, since there are full areas to explore (and then tread backwards in the second half) with only a few linear passages involved.

I might be among the few, but I feel like DMC 5 isn't actually that good for a huge number of reasons I won't list. It really should have been a game entirely focused on Nero, with V being the 5 equivalent of Trish from 1. I mean, half the story writing comes off as trying to complain at players for ragging on Nero and finding an ending to say, "Okay. There. Nero beat up both of them. Now will you let us make a game for him, you twats?"

By comparison, I think I enjoyed DmC's story way more, and rightfully guessed that all the hate it got was undeserved. Though I guess 5 outdid it by actually giving Nero an even greater time to shine- albeit briefly and AT THE END OF THE DAMN GAME. Also he got the ultimate F Bomb moment.

[guardsbian]

things I have learned about writers who are also your readers, from online critique sites and writing advice

it's very long and very snarky, so under the cut it goes

they hate the word "was" because of the dreaded "passive voice." if you use "was," they assume it is because you have not heard of the great evil that is "passive voice." in order to best educate you, they will purposefully misinterpret your sentence to greatly exaggerated degrees, as if they were talking to a child they despised

a good chunk of them will hate non-literal word choice. rather than simply say that something was hard to understand, they will instead say "X doesn't do Y," as if you were fully unaware that eyes do not literally jump, or weapons do not perform actions without the assistance of a hand, or a sensory adjective used does not necessarily correlate to the expected sense one would associate with a given noun. you are not allowed to invoke metaphors or similes as it pertains to description unless you spell out in your text that you are making a non-literal comparison

similarly, some people do not like reading non-linear or non-literal action: if a thought is not occurring during a specified action or moment in time in which one has time to think, then it is a confusing shift of perspective that confuses the story's tense. because, somehow, when the thought in the narration was expressed in-universe is more important than the fact that the thought was relevant enough to express

unreliable narrators are good, unless they're too unreliable, in which case you are lying to your reader and they're bad and you should rewrite your entire story from the perspective of someone who isn't your plot-driving protagonist

the concept of a "mary sue" is somehow really important and relevant

americans don't always understand why british stories are written in british english

someone will recommended you check out dan brown (in general), or stephen king's "on writing"

gender is the most important thing about a character. if a character's gender is not immediately evident, then the reader will assume a gender, because there is no other lens through which to interpret a character's actions. anything outside of immediately noted as male or female is assumed to be ambiguous, unless it's supposed to be nonbinary or something, in which you also need to elaborate on that immediately, because they/them is too confusing as a grammatical concept unless you specify that someone is nonbinary, and if they're ambiguous, then you should just make them not ambiguous

you need to get into the heads of your characters. after all, men are squares and women are circles. men looking at their female love interest will get so boob horny that they won't think about anything else. women looking at their male love interest will give an enchanting YA romance description of his personality and maybe even... his looks?? men are also hormone-driven procreation hounds who can't act normal in a love triangle or whatever because they want to propagate their genetic line so badly. but also don't be afraid to write gay people!! they're just like everyone else, guys

no one will be worse at reading your work than a middle aged man who's been writing for decades and apparently has dozens of books under his belt. don't ask if they're traditionally published, none of the answers will be satisfactory. if you are a teenage girl then these men are going to tear apart your work as if they're scrolling through a fanfiction cringe compilation and you're not literally 15

what the fuck is symbolism? this passage's purpose isn't immediately evident to them, so instead of asking you about it or elaborating on how it might have disrupted the pacing or confused the scene's focus, they're going to tell you that you need to delete it because it's pointless. and they know this because of the single chapter they've read of your story

but fear not! because they're just being honest :)

plus, the better way to take criticism you don't agree with isn't necessarily at face value, but corroborated across multiple perspectives, which can help you find the underlying root of an issue that people have decided to harshly and immediately ascribe to pretentious word choice, or pronoun confusion, or obvious inexperience, or any other number of really weird reasons that literally no one else said out about your work

[manonamora-if-reviews]

A World Without You by jaunefleur

An Anti-Romance Jam entry. > Note: this entry was submitted as a demo. containing a prologue and 3 Chapters. The review will only reflect what is there. Still the demo is quite long. I maybe needed a few hours to read it all (on playthrough).

Entry - More by Jaune - @jaunefleurwrites CW: terminal illness, impending death, anxiety, death, teen pregnancy

Dealing with a World without You

You are going to die. You know it. Nothing will change from the facts that your illness is incurable and that you only have few moments left before your inevitable demise. You resigned yourself to your fate. But when Damin, a bubbly bubblegum-haired [person] crosses your path, everything you thought about life flips upside down. This is the premise of the project. At the current state of the demo, you've met that person, but sparks haven't quite flown just yet between you two.

From the start, it is clear AWWY is quite anchored in the Tumblr/CoG school of IF, with its custom UI, expected extensive length, and flowery style. However, instead of focusing on branching and choices, AWWY takes a more linear approach with a twist. This makes sense with the story told, considering the MC's fate is sealed - unless a magical cure comes at the last minute, they will die no matter what. So, rather than giving player a plethora choices, the demo subvert expectations by switching POVs within a chapter, limiting choices to one or two for flavour within a chapter. You may start the chapter with your MC, before the story is cut to your mother's POV or your brother's or Damin's. Parsed through those, you are treated to some flashbacks, exploring the different character's pasts, and how those events shaped their present. This creates an interesting dynamic, making the story feel at times more like a movie than and interactive game. The switches between POV or time period are also clearly indicated at the start of each part. Having to control the MC through the eyes of another character was a bit surreal, but in a good way!

Maybe a downside to this approach is the evident lack of player agency throughout the story. Even with the MC referred as 'you' in their POV, you feel more like a spectator than an active participants. While again, this make sense considering the context - you can't affect the end - it does take a bit away from the interactivity of the game, making the project look more kinetic than interactive in nature. This is not an inherent critique of this aspect of the project, as kinetic stories can pull a bigger punch than a choke-full-of-choice game. And I can see this story being one of those. It is just that, at time, some opportunities to elevate a scene through interactivity were missed, which could have made important beats more impactful (like the scene where the MC claims to hate everyone). On the other hand, it did work quite well for the character creation, avoiding any potential choice-fatigue for the player by spreading out those choices throughout the story - only bringing up relevant elements when necessary.

I struggled as well with the pace of the story, as it went back and forth between past and present, and between POVs, making something the sequence of events a bit... confusing. A perhaps good example would be when Damin meets the MC at the butterfly grove*, for the first time it seems, but doesn't seem to recognise the MC (who turns out to be their neighbour) in the next chapter, or whether Damin arrived before the MC into town or the reverse. This resulted in some high-pressure events, like the fight between the MC and Damin, feeling a bit coming out of nowhere (unless it was supposed to be a flashforward?). In the same vein, it seemed like the prose focused a bit too much on (over)telling the player what was happening, rather than let the scene speak for itself. This lead often to repetitions in one same passage/paragraph*. I thought this was a bit of a shame, since there are pretty poetic descriptions of actions/setting, but were drowned in explanations. A bit more TLC on the prose will help the flow of the story. For example, hinting at a character's feelings through action only (instead of the action + description of the feeling) - like breathing a bit too fast or twitching when anxious, or freezing when someone is angry talking to you - or use punctuation and formatting to establish at a tone (instead of describing the tone then the uttered words) - like three dots to show uncertainty or disdain, or a en-dash to choke on words when emotional. *Sidenote: this scene felt pretty magical with the butterflies dancing! *Repetition can be useful, but should be used in moderation for strongest impact.

Underneath it all, there is a good base for an interesting story. The characters, though clearly flawed (good!), feel believable and quite human (especially the moody teenagers). Their pain will still pull your heartstrings. It is set up to be a tearjerker, for sure! Most introduced characters have clear motivations, goals, and challenges to overcome - mainly carrying on after MC passes. It is quite clear where the story is going, and it could make for quite the heartbreaking and bittersweet conclusion. Out of all characters introduced so far, I particularly enjoyed Damin's sassy grandmother. She seems like a treasure, and a needed comedic relief in this heavy story. I hope we see more of (and learn more about) her in future chapters.

Another aspect I quite enjoyed was the addition of assets in the game, particularly the images. The demo gave a neat way of choosing Damin's gender (and inherent design), as well as customising our room (by choosing one of "our" drawing). Seeing our sketchbook getting filled as we move from chapter to chapter, used as an alternative to a written journal, was a nice touch. I hope more are planned for the future, their designs were lovely. Note: I picked the hippopotamus :P

The premise of the game made me thing of The Fault in Our Stars by John Green, which I think it took inspiration from?

There was supposed to be audio according to the credits, but I didn't hear any music during my playthrough. I had some small issues with the game itself, with the OpenDyslexic font not working, or the colour palette not being quite accessible (not contrasted enough) for easy reading. I also picked up on a few wrong pronouns for Damin and wrong names for myself.

[arionawrites]

it’s this concept of you can never get it back, you know? time is linear and structured and confusing and irrational and maybe i could believe in time travel and fantastical ideas of forever and always and maybe, yeah, you can relive those moments in your dreams, but even then, even in the most hopeful and whimsical of scenarios, it will never be the first time all over again

your favorite movie will never be the same on the second watch. your favorite show will never be the same as the first time you saw it.

there are positives, right? life is not darkness and negativity and i appreciate that—you may not be able to watch your favorite movie or your favorite show again and experience it the way you did originally, but you can find something new with every rewatch. there are silver linings and i hold onto them until my fingers bleed and still my grip is not strong enough.

there is good. there is bad. there is black and white and the neverending grey area in between.

there is also red and blue and orange and green and every other color and shade. there is everything and it is all so beautiful and yet it can all feel so bland.

sometimes that makes it worse, i think. not the idea that the world itself is bland, but that, somehow, i am the only one to see it so poorly. somehow, the world is bright and colorful and full of whimsy and i am stuck with the feeling of void hopelessness. is it just me?

it both is and it also definitely isn’t.

there are a lot of fine lines and precariously balanced situations—when do intentions matter and when do actions outweigh the intentions behind them? when do you rely on a support system and when do you lean on that support system to the point of it being unhealthy?

i wrote something once. it was a character who struggled to stop a bad habit and found motivation in hating the way it made the people he loves sad. “[he] doesn’t want to make [his loved one] sad, knows that he should avoid the [bad habit] for himself but figures it’s a process to get to that point, figures that he should start with having a reason at all and then work towards making that reason something more about himself.”

i write things that make sense to me and then i read them back and i find myself crying because i don’t understand anymore. because i read that passage and i get it but also i don’t. it’s incredible how a change in sunlight shifts my entire perspective. it’s terrifying how the hour of day contrasts so heavily with night.

i read that very same passage a few days ago while sun shone through my window and i thought, wow.

but now. the moon hidden with the stars behind dark clouds in the middle of the night, i read that and i think, is that how i really view recovery?

for the wrong reasons in the hopes that they turn right? the wrong methods praying that the result is worth it?

it is daunting. i have never felt less intimidated. i have also never felt more scared than i do right now.

the clock keeps ticking and the moon shines through cracks in the clouds and i wonder what it’s like to be 23 and not feel uncomfortable hugging my mom. i wonder what it’s like to be 16 and not feel scared about what eventually moving out will mean for my little sister’s future. i wonder what it’s like to be alive and not have the very life you live be centered on so many others, practically anyone that is not yourself.

sometimes i write things that make sense to me but sometimes i write things that don’t. this is not writing so much as it is a ramble of words plucked helplessly from the air in the hopes of creating something salvagable and comprehensible and real.

thie is real.

yet nothing has ever felt quite so fake.

[red-dyed-sarumane]

okay! i've finally finished the southern reach trilogy & want to thought dump bc thats what i do when i enjoy things 👍 im going to assume most people have not read this & explain as such

i'll be real i only picked this up bc i saw the movie based off the first book & was like "well huh" & then couldnt get the idea of an environment that just... refracts everything back and in on itself is just. so cool. it's such a cool idea. so when i saw in the credits it was based off a book i HAD to go read it the concept was too interesting i had to know what was in the book they couldnt translate to the movie

i got such a treat oh my god.

something that stood out to me pretty quickly, given im into a completely separate other series where none of the characters have public names, is that, iirc the movie DID give names but the whole first book theres no names. they each have a profession & are called as such. even as we get names in later books, only one of the og characters is ever named and the biologist thats one of the most important characters is simply that. the biologist. & it means absolutely nothing in terms of how impersonal or deep the character feels. because shes utterly complete and herself. respectable. i like that.

but most importantly the world, oh my god the world. the movie has its own not entirely off base take on it. different and yet similar enough. if u like fucked up worlds im recommending this 200% its just SO fascinating. its a little area cut off from the rest of the real world they call area x & it is protected by a sort of boundary but its. self refraction of things doesnt even begin to cover what its got going on. i dont even know how to describe it right. theres THINGS just so many unexplainable things, you think the area is out to get them but it ends up more like... the area's attempt at self preservation at the cost of the other, the intruders. like the whole thing is self aware.

the plants & terrain arent ever changing, not anymore than they would be with time, & not all of the animals are some fucked up threat out to get them. the area itself is the threat, impossible things in the sky, ocean, shadows weaving into the world & messing up whoever happens to come into contact with it. weird inexplicable things happening to those they send in to explore.

and at first it seems like a survivors came back wrong story. like whatever's in there, whatever fucked them up did so to such an extent none of the survivors even live long. which is fascinating in its own right like what is it that harms them to such an extent. & ur introduced to all the weird monsters & occurrences in a way thats like. well this things out to get them. & u need to know more.

& man the more the next 2 books give u is just so INTERESTING.

but first i have to say i hated the corporate mind games that took up 2/3 of the second book. hard to get through. johns such a man baby sometimes & its so frustrating seeing him just decide pieces of the puzzle are no use to him & getting rid of them. sick of his shit. i dont like him much in the 3rd book either but fine whatever.

the last 1/3 of the second book & like all of the third had the same "no what!?!? ur kidding!?!?" reaction as the first book had & was again interesting & easy to get through. LOTS of juicy secrets & info that ties things together & makes it make as much sense as it can & ends off in such a solid way, not without questions, but with a sense that even if those questions were answered, it wouldn't make any difference, would be maybe a trivia fact more than some grounding breakthrough.

also to whom it matters the cast is pretty diverse & natural about it, having them just be people in a situation & not relying on that to be a selling a point like i see in posts all the time here.

im going to get into spoilers here

the nature of area x is so interesting to me. the time paradox, the fact that time moves in a linear fashion and yet the area contains so much passage of time that just. doesnt match the outside world. the shock of grace saying she'd been there 3 years when it'd only been weeks and yet all the signs proved she wasnt lying. the way how suddenly all the decay & change in the area held just that much more weight to it. that things were even less what they seemed. that lended to knowing the biologist's 30 years in there vastly outweighed the real world's time. that part saying that people couldve lived there, lived out whole full lives between the time the border/area was created & when it was first explored because if the time difference just really hit me for some reason. its such a weird space.

and how the area handles people, not the book but the area, how it gets inside them, turns them into something else. learning that what came back from expeditions wasnt the originals. that the area got inside the people who went in & changed them into something completely unrecognizable. turned into a pig slug hybrid with only their face intact, into an owl, into some Thing writing in life itself on tunnel(tower) walls, into a giant fucking whale that can exist wherever it wants to. the fact that, initially, these are viewed as some fucked up creation recreated from who died there, only to be revealed that these forms ARE the original people and they ARE still alive, just in this new form, and while its implied they may not have the same frame of consciousness as people, its also not stated thats 100% the case- that no outsider can know for sure because people can only know people(or at least hope to know people). the whole concept that the originals have become part of the area living there or dying there in this new way, while the world creates copies of them, sends them back to the real world, fools everyone into thinking these copies are the originals, that something just happened to them and somethings not right anymore. that even when ones like the biologist's copy admits they arent the same person, no one believes them. thats so wild. & its framed that 3 people made it back for real, no copies involved, but the only one with any proof is the director. sure whitby & lowry have life spans unlike other "survivors" but at the same time, its also said theres no real way of knowing if the real or copy whitby lived, & iirc the footage seemed to imply lowry was different on the way back too although i guess that could be attributed to stress but its not like the things he says are very trustworthy either. anyway thats just to wild & intriguing to me, that while they're off living or fighting for life or dying, theres a copy of them they arent even aware of, creating a different truth of them to the outside world. neat concept.

the lighthouse keepers story, the way it all started, that kind of got to me. the way he was just doing his best at his job & the more and more u read u know its about to catch up, he about to be consumed by this & start its spread, and theres nothing anyone can do about it. and god the letter to him at the end. i came here to be fascinated and yet that final moment of human respect across people who were no longer people got to me & i ended up crying. which may be stupid of me. but i LOVE when a world can draw u in so thoroughly & then have characters to get caught up in & care about too.

& i love that the nature of this area is so bizarre that, even when things are stated as directly as possible , u think for a moment the narrator is hallucinating or or being vivid & only to moments later have it shoved it ur face that no, thats the reality, thats word for word whats happening. i had a LOT of "what in the actual fuck" moments & they were jarring of course, as they were meant to be for such a peculiar world, but jarring in the way that drew u in more, made u need to know more.

basically i had a good time & this is going to be constantly in my mind or at least in the back of it. a lot more going on then im saying here & if ur into fucked up world building then definitely give it a chance at least

[thebreakfastgenie]

I have no idea why I follow you.

You made me watch tww, so obviously I didn't follow you for that. I've never seen mash and no offense but i didn't follow for billy joel.

Anyway you're great and I love all your takes on everything.

(Any idea on what you were into like 4 years ago that made me follow you????)

4 years ago.... 2019?? christ I hate the passage of linear time. uhhhhhhhh I think Star Trek primarily!

[longlive2023]

so i did not see the plot twist in the last episode

[bruhbertwest]

every week im like. ah yes last week was a simpler time

[herbgerblin]

something i was wondering about the stolen century, if someone died did they get a new body at the start of a cycle? like merle turned into dust a few times so he would have needed a whole new body instead of his dead body just returning to its "recorded" state. would the body remain or disappear when they left that world? why im asking bc if their bodies remained would lup want to collect and keep her own skulls from diff cycle where she died for shits and giggles and just like,,, display them

*Opens the door to my mindscape, "well, you see..."*

If I'm remembering correctly their bodies rematerialize back onto the ship whether they were dead or alive. It's not so much about the physical material, as it's them being forcibly weaved into reality itself, and what is left returns to what it was (something something matter cannot be created nor destroyed.)

I can't find the specific post, but there's headcanon that instead of each cycle progressing linearly in time, each cycle exists in a singular timespace— (my friend who is a space nerd hates when i use the word "timespace" instead of "spacetime" but fuck him, this is actually a good use of it.)—wherein the ipre experience time in linear years, but the year itself restarts an alternate reality. I like this idea, because it gives credibility to the Nashville liveshow taking place while Greg Grimaldis is still alive and has used Lup's $15 to get rich.

I had a fic idea about Lup using her time belt to check out the different planes. I sort of rationalized the idea that the farther the cycle is from the 100th cycle (Faerune), the longer the "jump" required to get there, and therefore, the shorter they can stay before the belt's failsafe makes them "jump" back. So while she could visit the 99th cycle for argueable years, she's only able to go back to the Twosun world for less than two hours.

*—No, don't leave yet! I have a point to all this, stay in here—*

All that to say, I think it 1.) really depends on the passage of time And 2.) the manner of death in each cycle

If the IPRE lived 12 years in Faerune by the end of Story and Song, and we follow the logic that time in all cycles move simultaineously (with maybe a handful of exceptions, because there's probably one cycle that gets real funky with linear time.) Then it would be twelve years later for all cycles as well.

BUT, if their bodies were left behind in previous cycles, they'd either be completely destroyed, decomposed by the environment, or preserved by the local society (depend's on the society's death culture.) Also I don't know if we are ever clued in on how many times Lup died. In any case, if Lup wanted to hop around and see what's left of her graves/mauseleum/burial platform/etc, she absolutely is within her power to do so.

:0 I also thought it would be cute if she and barold went back and vacationed in all the places they lived in each cycle when they were dating doing science. This is not related to your question, I just wanted to put it out there.

[noxsoulmate]

For the spicy edition of 18 for the Weird asks for writers:

From A Love Like Theirs:

“Hey, baby,” he murmured, voice taking on a cadence that gave Mitchell the sudden sense of invading a sacred moment. “I’m fine, okay?”

Strand stubbornly shook his head, reaching for some gauze to cover the cuts on Carlos’ hand with. Her partner let him without pressing the matter any further, but the moment Strand was done, he caught his hand and moved it to his own neck. Confused by that action, Mitchell needed a second to understand.

When she did, her eyes went wide.

Strand was shaking, his fingers digging into the side of Carlos’ neck – right over his pulse. The longer his fingers were there, obviously feeling the life pulsating through Carlos’ veins, the calmer he seemed to become – at least the shaking started to subside. Mitchell wouldn’t have been able to tell anyone how long they all stayed where they were – but her partner never wavered, never pulled away or looked even remotely inconvenienced. He just sat there, silently, patiently, the thumb of his good hand brushing along Strand’s hip while his bandaged one rested over the hand still on his neck.

From A Reyes Family Tradition:

“Can someone please explain what I did wrong?”

He hated how desperate TK sounded but all Carlos could do in reply was to let out a watery laugh, too busy trying to hold it together to answer. Thankfully, Mar did it for him.

“You did nothing wrong, TK. It’s just… There's a tradition in the Reyes family. A very important, very old tradition. La elección del árbol de Navidad, or The picking of the Christmas Tree. We don’t even know when or where it began but we know that every generation follows this tradition.”

“Okay?” TK replied with an obvious question, eyes flicking back to Carlos every now and then before they landed on Matías as the man picked up the explanation.

“Every year, it’s the patriarch’s duty and honor to pick the Christmas tree and – aside from immediate family – only certain other people are allowed to go with him.”

“Who?”

Carlos could see his family look between each other, smiles wide, obviously trying to decide who would be the one to finally give it away.

It was Maribel who claimed the right for herself.

“Only future spouses of his children.”

(To look these up I had to open these fics of yours & now they're in an open tab on my phone & I know that I'm going to end up re-reading them. Again.)

❤❤❤❤

@firstprince-history-huh, is this you? 😅 well, anyway...

okay, so the question was:

18. Choose a passage from your writing. Tell me about the backstory of this moment. How you came up with it, how it changed from start to end. Spicy addition: Questioner provides the passage.

Okay, let me start by reiterating that no two fics happen the same for me - some are a battle and get reworked a hundred times while others just flow and I can basically post the first draft (after minor corrections made by my dear beta). Funny enough, you picked two scenes that show both extremes.

A Love Like Theirs

For those that haven't read the fic, it's a 5+1 Outsider POV fic - so 5 times their friends witness the love between Tarlos and the +1 being a stranger. I didn't write the parts in a linear order, mostly because it all started with another fic idea, only for me to realize that I could expand it to this 5+1 idea. So the Nancy-part was the first one started, then came the Paul- and Mateo-parts, then the stranger-part, quickly followed by the Mitchell-part, then I tackled the Nancy-part to fit the story, and lastly, the Marjan-part.

That being said, this passage is from Mitchell's POV, witnessing TK taking care of Carlos after Carlos got hurt. Aaaaand I wrote that segment in one go, from start to end, no stops, no switching around. All my beta did in this section was to point out some grammar mistakes, and I think she corrected a few sentences to make them flow better (yeah, I'm not a native speaker, lol). Other than that, the Mitchell-part - and especially this chosen passage - basically made it to ao3 in as close to the draft-version as it gets.

Not plot-wise... as I said, it started from the Nancy part and became this idea of a 5+1 fic, 5 friends, 1 stranger. It was quickly clear that I wanted the stranger to be the shop clerk where they buy their rings. Paul, Nancy, and Marjan were a given for the friends, which left Mateo, Judd, and Mitchell. Mitchell made the list first, because I wanted at least one person to be "from Carlos' side", and then I came up with the idea for the Mateo-part and he simply fit it better than Judd.

I've always wanted to write scenes where TK has to patch Carlos up on scene, and I still have some planned - but here, it fit perfectly. So I went with it. I also really wanted to show how someone changes their view of these two. All the other friends know how deep their love is, they just get private glances into just how deep. But Mitchell still remembers the break-up and I thought it logical that she hadn't forgiven TK so quickly because she didn't see him suffering as well. So, it was easy to put these things together...

A Reyes Family Tradition

Oh God, this story is so dear to me for a reason I don't even know myself - and it was definitely a battle with this fic! I've stopped it and started over and over again; I even set it aside for a few months. I just couldn't get it right! And I wanted to get it right, especially this chosen passage, because it's the big revelation, and I just couldn't get the vision I had onto paper. I'm still not sure I fully did, but at one point, I knew it was the best I could do. My beta also had her hand full with the whole story, lol. So yeah, this one here was definitely a battle.

Plot-wise, the idea for the tradition came first. I feel like the Reyes family is definitely a traditional one, so I can see them having lots and lots of traditions such as this. The next thing that came to mind was the picture of the whole family just being utterly shocked and stunned to silence before all hell breaks loose and everyone is squealing - and TK is just confused as to what just happened, while Carlos is close to happy tears. So yeah, the passage you picked is exactly the scene I envisioned first.

Everything that comes after was far easier to write because I hadn't envisioned it so often, so I could basically just go with the flow again, lol.

Really hope you liked these answers 😊

Send me weird questions from the Weird Questions List 😊

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Recommendation engines and "lean-back" media

In William Gibson’s 1992 novel “Idoru,” a media executive describes her company’s core audience:

“Best visualized as a vicious, lazy, profoundly ignorant, perpetually hungry organism craving the warm god-flesh of the anointed. Personally I like to imagine something the size of a baby hippo, the color of a week-old boiled potato, that lives by itself, in the dark, in a double-wide on the outskirts of Topeka. It’s covered with eyes and it sweats constantly. The sweat runs into those eyes and makes them sting. It has no mouth…no genitals, and can only express its mute extremes of murderous rage and infantile desire by changing the channels on a universal remote. Or by voting in presidential elections.”

It’s an astonishingly great passage, not just for the image it evokes, but for how it captures the character of the speaker and her contempt for the people who made her fortune.

It’s also a beautiful distillation of the 1990s anxiety about TV’s role in a societal “dumbing down,” that had brewed for a long time, at least since the Nixon-JFK televised debates, whose outcome was widely attributed not to JFK’s ideas, but to Nixon’s terrible TV manner.

Neil Postman’s 1985 “Amusing Ourselves To Death” was a watershed here, comparing the soundbitey Reagan-Dukakis debates with the long, rhetorically complex Lincoln-Douglas debates of the previous century.

(Incidentally, when I finally experienced those debates for myself, courtesy of the 2009 BBC America audiobook, I was more surprised by Lincoln’s unequivocal, forceful repudiations of slavery abolition than by the rhetoric’s nuance)

https://memex.craphound.com/2009/01/20/lincoln-douglas-debate-audiobook-civics-history-and-rhetoric-lesson-in-16-hours/

“Media literacy” scholarship entered the spotlight, and its left flank — epitomized by Chomsky’s 1988 “Manufacturing Consent” — claimed that an increasingly oligarchic media industry was steering society, rather than reflecting it.

Thus, when the internet was demilitarized and the general public started trickling — and then rushing — to use it, there was a widespread hope that we might break free of the tyranny of concentrated, linear programming (in the sense of “what’s on,” and “what it does to you”).

Much of the excitement over Napster wasn’t about getting music for free — it was about the mix-tapification of all music, where your custom playlists would replace the linear album.

Likewise Tivo, whose ad-skipping was ultimately less important than the ability to watch the shows you liked, rather than the shows that were on.

Blogging, too: the promise was that a community of reader-writers could assemble a daily “newsfeed” that reflected their idiosyncratic interests across a variety of sources, surfacing ideas from other places and even other times.

The heady feeling of the time is hard to recall, honestly, but there was a thrill to getting up and reading the news that you chose, listening to a playlist you created, then watching a show you picked.

And while there were those who fretted about the “Daily Me” (what we later came to call the “filter bubble”) the truth was that this kind of active media creation/consumption ranged far more widely than the monopolistic media did.

The real “bubble” wasn’t choosing your own programming — it was everyone turning on their TV on Thursday nights to Friends, Seinfeld and The Simpsons.

The optimism of the era is best summarized in a taxonomy that grouped media into two categories: “lean back” (turn it on and passively consume it) and “lean forward” (steer your media consumption with a series of conscious decisions that explores a vast landscape).

Lean-forward media was intensely sociable: not just because of the distributed conversation that consisted of blog-reblog-reply, but also thanks to user reviews and fannish message-board analysis and recommendations.

I remember the thrill of being in a hotel room years after I’d left my hometown, using Napster to grab rare live recordings of a band I’d grown up seeing in clubs, and striking up a chat with the node’s proprietor that ranged fondly and widely over the shows we’d both seen.

But that sociability was markedly different from the “social” in social media. From the earliest days of Myspace and Facebook, it was clear that this was a sea-change, though it was hard to say exactly what was changing and how.

Around the time Rupert Murdoch bought Myspace, a close friend a blazing argument with a TV executive who insisted that the internet was just a passing fad: that the day would come when all these online kids grew up, got beaten down by work and just wanted to lean back.

To collapse on the sofa and consume media that someone else had programmed for them, anaesthetizing themselves with passive media that didn’t make them think too hard.

This guy was obviously wrong — the internet didn’t disappear — but he was also right about the resurgence of passive, linear media.

But this passive media wasn’t the “must-see TV” of the 80s and 90s.

Rather, it was the passivity of the recommendation algorithm, which created a per-user linear media feed, coupled with mechanisms like “endless scroll” and “autoplay,” that incinerated any trace of an active role for the “consumer” (a very apt term here).

It took me a long time to figure out exactly what I disliked about algorithmic recommendation/autoplay, but I knew I hated it. The reason my 2008 novel LITTLE BROTHER doesn’t have any social media? Wishful thinking. I was hoping it would all die in a fire.

Today, active media is viewed with suspicion, considered synonymous with Qanon-addled boomers who flee Facebook for Parler so they can stan their favorite insurrectionists in peace, freed from the tyranny of the dread shadowban.

But I’m still on team active media. I would rather people actively choose their media diets, in a truly sociable mode of consumption and production, than leaning back and getting fed whatever is served up by the feed.

Today on Wired, Duke public policy scholar Philip M Napoli writes about lean forward and lean back in the context of Trump’s catastrophic failure to launch an independent blog, “From the Desk of Donald J Trump.”

https://www.wired.com/story/opinion-trumps-failed-blog-proves-he-was-just-howling-into-the-void/

In a nutshell, Trump started a blog which he grandiosely characterized as a replacement for the social media monopolists who’d kicked him off their platforms. Within a month, he shut it down.

While Trump claimed the shut-down was all part of the plan, it’s painfully obvious that the real reason was that no one was visiting his website.

Now, there are many possible, non-exclusive explanations for this.

For starters, it was a very bad social media website. It lacked even rudimentary social tools. The Washington Post called it “a primitive one-way loudspeaker,” noting its lack of per-post comments, a decades old commonplace.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2021/05/21/trump-online-traffic-plunge/

Trump paid (or more likely, stiffed) a grifter crony to build the site for him, and it shows: the “Like” buttons didn’t do anything, the video-sharing buttons created links to nowhere, etc. From the Desk… was cursed at birth.

But Napoli’s argument is that even if Trump had built a good blog, it would have failed. Trump has a highly motivated cult of tens of millions of people — people who deliberately risked death to follow him, some even ingesting fish-tank cleaner and bleach at his urging.

The fact that these cult-members were willing to risk their lives, but not endure poor web design, says a lot about the nature of the Trump cult, and its relationship to passive media.

The Trump cult is a “push media” cult, simultaneously completely committed to Trump but unwilling to do much to follow him.

That’s the common thread between Fox News (and its successors like OANN) and MAGA Facebook.

And it echoes the despairing testimony of the children of Fox cultists, that their boomer parents consume endless linear TV, turning on Fox from the moment they arise and leaving it on until they fall asleep in front of it (also, reportedly, how Trump spent his presidency).

Napoli says that Trump’s success on monopoly social media platforms and his failure as a blogger reveals the role that algorithmically derived, per-user, endless scroll linear media played in the ascendancy of his views.

It makes me think of that TV exec and his prediction of the internet’s imminent disappearance (which, come to think of it, is not so far off from my own wishful thinking about social media’s disappearance in Little Brother).

He was absolutely right that this century has left so many of us exhausted, wanting nothing more than the numbness of lean-back, linear feeds.

But up against that is another phenomenon: the resurgence of active political movements.

After a 12-month period that saw widescale civil unrest, from last summer’s BLM uprising to the bizarre storming of the capital, you can’t really call this the golden age of passivity.

While Fox and OANN consumption might be the passive daily round of one of Idoru’s “vicious, lazy, profoundly ignorant, perpetually hungry organisms craving the warm god-flesh of the anointed,” that is in no way true of Qanon.

Qanon is an active pastime, a form of collaborative storytelling with all the mechanics of the Alternate Reality Games that the lean-forward media advocates who came out of the blogging era love so fiercely:

https://pluralistic.net/2020/08/06/no-vitiated-air/#other-hon

Meanwhile, the “clicktivism” that progressive cynics decried as useless performance a decade ago has become an active contact sport, welding together global movements from Occupy to BLM that use the digital to organize the highly physical.

That’s the paradox of lean-forward and lean-back: sometimes, the things you learn while leaning back make you lean forward — in fact, they might just get you off the couch altogether.

I think that Napoli is onto something. The fact that Trump’s cultists didn’t follow him to his crummy blog tells us that Trump was an effect, not a cause (something many of us suspected all along, as he’s clearly neither bright nor competent enough to inspire a movement).

But the fact that “cyberspace keeps everting” (to paraphrase “Spook Country,” another William Gibson novel) tells us that passive media consumption isn’t a guarantee of passivity in the rest of your life (and sometimes, it’s a guarantee of the opposite).

And it clarifies the role that social media plays in our discourse — not so much a “radicalizer” as a means to corral likeminded people together without them having to do much. Within those groups are those who are poised for action, or who can be moved to it.

The ease with which these people find one another doesn’t produce a deterministic outcome. Sometimes, the feed satisfies your urge for change (“clicktivism”). Sometimes, it fuels it (“radicalizing”).

Notwithstanding smug media execs, the digital realm equips us to “express our mute extremes of murderous rage and infantile desire” by doing much more than “changing the channels on a universal remote” — for better and for worse.

Image: Ian Burt (modified) https://www.flickr.com/photos/oddsock/267206444

CC BY: https://creativecommo

ns.org/licenses/by/2.0/

[ohnotoomanyfandoms]

I'm really interested in your analysis of the plot twist being that matthew is in love with james instead of cordelia. Many people (including me) have joked about how it would make more sense but I never really consider it... In a canon way? But it could make sense. I like what you say about his (lack of) pov. Maybe there is something to analyse too in his reaction to james and grace vs jordelia. Like from the start he didn't really like grace but because he struggled to believe her. Ok I don't know where I'm going with this I need to reread chog. But just so you know that at least 1 person is interested in what you have to say about this theory.

Thank you! 

I shall try my best to explain why I’m choosing to believe Matthew is in love with James and not Cordelia until I am proven wrong by canon. 

1) The lack of POV that I mentioned in my other post is very telling. Cassandra’s choice indicates Matthew has a secret. We already know about his dark sin, so it’s not that. It’s something us readers aren’t supposed to know, so that it can come as a revelation later. 

2) Matthew hates Grace. He always has and he still does. Now, remember, Matthew was the only person James confided in about Grace. If James told him he was in love, shouldn't Matthew have been happy for him? If he had reservations about Grace specifically, why not make them known? No, in those initial years he didn’t loathe Grace specifically, he’d never even met her, but he was jealous of her for holding James’s heart. And then obviously he grows angry and bitter when Grace breaks James’s heart and leaves him for Charles of all people, proving, in Matthew’s eyes, that she’s just a social climber.

3) Cordelia. Matthew and Cordelia get along marvelously. He adores her as a person, and she him. They immediately build this camaraderie built upon how much they love the Herondales. As the book progresses and they get to know each other more, they start caring about each other and understanding each other as friends do. Now, I know everyone assumes those are signs of Matthew falling in love with her, but if the storyline was that linear, then why not have his POV? Why not show us how he was falling for her? Because it’s a red herring, that’s why. 

Hear me out: you can whip out ANY passage in Chain of Gold or snippet from Chain of Iron where you think the hidden subtext is that Matthew is developing feelings for Cordelia. I dare you, any passage, read it through the lens of “Matthew actually loves James.” You’ll see. I can provide examples in another post, if you want, let me know. 

Every time you think Matthew is jealous of James, it’s actually James he’s looking at, not Cordelia. Every time he’s angry, it’s on James’s behalf, for his sake. Now, you could of course just read this as parabatai protectiveness and I wouldn’t fault you for it. It’s how I read it as for nearly a year, after all. And then I re-read some old theories of mine from like 2015 and things clicked. I re-read the book and it all made sense through those lenses. 

I always said there was something suspicious about Matthew’s alleged feelings for Cordelia. They came too fast. I even theorized Grace compelled him to feel things for her, so as to mess things up a bit. Now I realize those feelings were never there in the first place. 

Now, let me address some of your potential reservations: 

A) “But this would mean Matthew is in love with both Herondale siblings! Isn’t that a bit odd?” No odder than James and Lucie Herondale being in love with Grace and Jesse Blackthorn, another set of siblings. I mean what are the odds of THAT happening, right? (Unless you believe Jesse is also making Lucie fall for him like Grace did with James.) It’s actually way less strange if a bisexual boy falls for his best friend and his little sister. Or falls for the sister as a result of his love for his best friend being literally impossible. As in, James can’t reciprocate because he’s straight, and even if that weren’t the case, any romantic or sexual relationship between them is forbidden by the Law. 

B) “Would this be another parabatai love story?” No, this wouldn’t be another TDA situation, because James doesn’t and can’t love Matthew back romantically. If anything, this is unrequited love in its purest form (which, by the way, isn’t even forbidden by the Clave. What is forbidden is if you actually have a relationship, consummate, but it takes two to tango, so there is no chance of Matthew facing legal consequences like exile or mark-stripping for this, thankfully). We’ve seen some unrequited love situation in other TSC books, but it was never a main thing. Alec got over his imaginary crush on Jace the second he met Magnus. Same for Simon with Clary and Izzy. For Matthew, this could be yet another reason for his torment. 

C) “Must everyone be gay???? stop making every character gay” I’m sorry, Matthew is canonically bisexual and therefore what I am suggesting is canonically possible. 

If you don’t agree with this theory, I am curious to hear what you think the “big plot twist in the love triangle” is going to be! 

[benditlikepress]

Are you still writing?

bestie..... yes! however it is me. and i am. lazy and also have 30 ideas at any one time. teaching is so tiring but also is not being able to settle on which fic to write first. very much in my "song-inspired non linear timeline" era in terms of the things i'm writing, including a couple of songs inspired by these passages

will I die at this faultline? / between the edge of entropy and woe / I wanted everything so much it grows / until I can't manage this appetite / I loved you so traumatically that I / can barely lift the world you left for me / there's lots of ghosts I somehow still can see / holding onto me for our dear life / all these bodies always touching mine [girlpool; faultline]

I could hate you now / it's quite alright to hate me now / when we both know that deep down / the feeling still deep down is good / if I could see through walls I could see you're faking / if you could see my thoughts you would see your face is / safe in my rental like an armored truck back then / we didn't give a fuck back then / I ain't a kid no more / we'll never be those kids again [frank ocean; ivy]

[mittensmorgul]

About your Bugs episode: I agree, never quite understood why it was considered the worst episode of the show when there so much meat character wise (the rest is very bad, yes). It's in the bottom, sure, but not at the bottom of the bottom. There was another podcast that said that Dean always judged Sam when Sam never did it, and I was like: "Pikachu face". Really??? never? Sure. Haven't though about Dean being the one that visited Sam at Standford, but I can see it. Hope you're feeling well. : )

OH GOSH. Hi! And thanks for listening! :D

And yeah, the problems with Bugs sort of add to my enjoyment of the episode, especially knowing how much of a pain in the butt it was to film. The pacing in the episode was awful (what is the linear passage of time anyway?), the whole concept for the curse was contrived and racist, but Kim Manners... and umbrellas... and Dean’s steam shower... :’D

I think possibly one of the frustrations people have with it, especially on first watch (and I think this is probably one a lot of people skip entirely on a rewatch, from a combination of remembering it was gross and the overblown hatred for this episode in the fandom-- and even in canon... Chuck hates this one personally, too...) ... i lost the thread, let me try to start over... :’D

I think a frustration people have with this one is that in some ways they were still trying to force Sam into the pov/emotional anchor of the series, when the writers had already really moved out of that stance episodes before this one. But it hadn’t really broken through completely yet that they were writing Dean as the emotional anchor by this point.

Yes, Sam has the close arc with the kid, not Dean, and Dean’s more aligned with the Father character who was a mildly antagonistic character to stat with. But the father was STILL trying to support his kid, who was smart and curious about the world but also in a bit of a rebellious teenager phase. It’s really hard to see the world from an adult perspective when you’re convinced you’re mature and your parents are just assholes... which... is kinda what Sam is beginning to learn about Dean...

Though he never really does learn it, and for that I am eternally frustrated, but heck... this episode basically puts Sam in the rebellious teenager role, and Dean in the parent who has resigned himself to just absorb the emotional reactions of his kid. I mean, the episode starts out when one of my favorite shots in the series-- Sam reclining on the impala while Dean comes out of the pool hall having earned the money they will have to live on. GORGEOUS shot. But while Dean had been hustling pool, Sam is literally just lounging there.

We already had judgy comments from sam going back to the pilot episode (you and dad still living off credit card fraud?). But even here, eight episodes in, Sam is still bitching about the fact they don’t have “real” jobs. And I get that it’s about underlining the fact that Sam really wants a normal life where he doesn’t hunt and can pretend the monsters aren’t real and someone else can handle those problems or whatever. But that’s also part of the reason I could never, ever see Sam as the main character of this show, right from the start.

You make a show called Supernatural. One of the guys is immersed in the life of hunting and monsters, and the other one is sort of dragged back into that life by circumstance but constantly longs for the upper middle class life of normalcy he’d run away to college to build for himself. Which one of these two is supposed to be the pov character? Our emotional connection to a show about monsters and hunting, that we chose to watch for supernatural stuff? The one who lives it fully, or the one whose main goal is to run away from it and ignore the reality of their universe? Exactly...

And this episode does a really good job of framing that. I really wish more folks would just ignore the glaring badness of the episode, and give it a rewatch just for the character stuff.

And for everyone else who's wondering what even prompted this episode, it's my @spngeorg podcast! I'm going episode by episode and just... recording all the thoughts that go through my head while I watch, basically... so if you want to listen to me ramble about this show chronologically (I swear, I only complain about the finale some of the time...) you can listen on AnchorFM, or wherever you enjoy podcasts. :) As of the time of this post, I've watched 30 episodes. 2.09 Croatoan is up next!

[chdarling]

18, 35, 36, 38

35. What’s your favorite writing rule to smash into smithereens?

Answered here. :)

36. They say to Write What You Know. Setting aside for a moment the fact that this is terrible advice...what do you Know?

I know some varied things. I know how to brew a cup of tea to the exact specifications of each of my loved ones; I know where to buy the best chocolate chip cookie in my city; I know how to make a lovely Yorkshire pudding; I know how to make damn good grits; I know the name and measurements of every IKEA shelving unit; I know the Latin names for lots of plants; I know where to go to get a same-day double entry Chinese visa in Hong Kong; and where to buy bagels in Guangzhou; and that if you know the right people you can exchange US dollars to Cuban pesos for a better rate on the sly in a cleaning supply closet in the Havana airport; but for legal reasons I know I should say that I totally did not do that; I know what it feels like to be stranded alone in a hotel and so sick you can’t get off the floor; I know that a boar’s tail is called a wreath; and an otter’s tail a rudder; I know what rock bottom feels like, tastes like, smells like; I know how to file FMLA; and fight with insurance; and rebuild an entire life from scratch; I know that grief isn’t linear; and sometimes neither is time; and I know that a blue whale’s heart weighs 400 lbs and that is really frickin’ cool.

38. What is something about your writing process YOU think is Really Weird? If you are comfortable, please share. If you’re not comfortable, what do you think cats say about us?

Honestly, probably the amount of obsessive detail I put into prep work. Mostly I do it because it’s fun and it’s a way to trick my brain into being creative when I’m tired (brain too foggy to write words? just make lists of names for family trees instead!), but sometimes I get a little 😳😳😳 about it lol

I’m just super earnest and interested in everything!!!

18. Choose a passage from your writing. Tell me about the backstory of this moment. How you came up with it, how it changed from start to end. Spicy addition: Questioner provides the passage

Gotta admit, kinda hate myself for this question. I feel like I have nothing insightful to say tonight, but I’ll try. Putting this after the cut because this is getting long and apparently I’m incapable of choosing a short passage.

This an excerpt from The Howling Nights, Chapter 51: For Enemies, but I’m actually just going to talk about the whole chapter lmao sorry. I think of this specific moment as “Severus’s descent.”

And he strolled away, as quietly as he’d arrived. Severus sat there in the gloom, heart hammering with the implications of what Mulciber had just offered him. He’d heard plenty of talk about Death Eaters in the Slytherin common room over the years, but he had never assumed it was a path open to him, a half-blood with a dirty Muggle father. He’d never considered it was path he’d desire…and yet…

He thought of Sirius Black, who had so casually sent him to certain death…

All right, Detective Snivellus, here’s a clue…

He thought of James Potter, who’d tormented him endlessly, just for sport…

Looking for all your friends, Snivellus? Might take a little while. It’d probably help to make some first…

He thought — unwillingly — of Lily Evans, who had betrayed his secrets to his worst enemy…

Why are you so obsessed with them anyway?

He thought of Professor Dumbledore, smug and condescending as he threatened Severus with expulsion for Black and Potter’s crime…

On the contrary, Mr. Snape. It seems to me that Mr. Potter saved your life.

And he thought of the werewolf, jaws wide, teeth glinting in the moonlight…

RUN!

They all thought him weak, foolish, an easy target, a convenient scapegoat…but he’d show them. He’d show them all. 


Oh yes, he thought, and he nearly smiled at the memory, You’re going to pay for that.

Then he reached for his copy of Advanced Potion-Making, never far from his side, and thumbed through the pages until he found the spot where he’d scrawled Sectumsempra hastily in the margin. The faint brown whorl of a bloody fingerprint stained the corner. He picked up his quill, sucked at the end of it for a moment of deliberation, and then, with great satisfaction, he scratched two words underneath: For enemies.

This was without a doubt one of the hardest chapters to write. I must have redone it ten or fifteen times. It was an absolute monster and I hated the whole experience hahaha. But it’s such an important chapter and I was determined to get it right. I think I got close. 🤞🏼

The goal here was to show that Severus was coping with a genuine trauma response in the aftermath of the prank, and also to give context for his rage, to show how unfair Dumbledore’s response to the prank felt from his POV, and how that sense of injustice led him further astray. Dumbledore in TLE really dropped the ball on how he responded to Severus in this moment — which was intentional on my part because I wanted to show an institution failing to deal appropriately with the radicalization of youth.

Basically, I wanted the whole chapter to feel like you (Severus) were hurtling towards something inevitable and that you couldn’t stop it. The constant flashbacks are supposed to constantly interrupt Severus’s thoughts and stop him from getting any real space or closure from the incident. Instead he’s just obsessing and descending deeper and deeper into his fury and making worse and worse choices because of it. I wanted Severus to feel like becoming Death Eater was the only choice (even though we all know it wasn’t).

I was sad for like three days after I finished writing this LOL.