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nyxshadowhawk · 4 months

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A Retrospective on Harry Potter

Why did I like it in the first place? What about it worked? Where do I go from here?

I have decided to give up Harry Potter.

J.K. Rowling’s reputation now stinks to high heaven. At this point, she is quite indefensible. And even if that weren’t the case, she is not someone that I would want to associate with anyway. Meanwhile, the internet has not only turned against her, but against Harry Potter itself. An innocent question on Reddit, about which Hogwarts Houses the ATLA characters would be in, got downvoted to oblivion. Innumerable Tumblr threads insist that fantasy fans should get into literally anything else (suggestions include Discworld, Earthsea, The Wheel of Time, and Percy Jackson). And now that Harry Potter is no longer a sacred cow, there has been a recent slew of video essays that rip it to shreds, attacking it for its poor worldbuilding, unoriginality, and the problematic ideas baked into the original books (like the whole SPEW thing), etc. Those criticisms always existed, but now they’re getting thrown into the limelight.

It pains me to see such an ignoble downfall of Harry Potter’s reputation. If Rowling had just kept her damn mouth shut, Harry Potter would have aged gracefully, becoming a beloved children’s classic. I'd still plan to introduce it to my own kids one day (after Rowling dies and the dust settles). It’s not surprising that not all aspects of it have aged well, since it’s been more than twenty years since its original publishing date, and everything starts to show its age after that long. I acknowledge that most of the criticisms of the series that I’ve seen lately are valid, and I’ve read plenty of better books. And yet, when I return to the books themselves, even with the knowledge of who JKR really is inside my head, I still really enjoy reading them! There’s still a lot about them that I think works!

None of the other things I’ve read have had as collossal of an impact upon my identity, my values, and my own writing as Harry Potter. It’s hard to move on from it, not just because it’s something I enjoy, but because I have to literally extract my identity from it. I don’t know who I’d be without Harry Potter. I don’t know what my work would look like without Harry Potter. I don’t know how to carry it with me as just another piece of media that I like, as opposed to a filter for who I am as a person. So, with all that in mind, I have to ask myself why I liked Harry Potter so much in the first place. If I’m going to move on from it, then I have to be able to define and isolate the things about it that I want to keep with me. Something about it obviously worked, on a massive scale. So what was it?

It’s not the worldbuilding. The worldbuilding is objectively quite terrible, especially in comparison to that of other fantasy writers who knew what they were doing. At best, it’s inconsistent and poorly thought-out, and at worst it’s insensitive or even racist. Is it the characters? The characters are, in my opinion, one of the stronger parts of the story. But I felt very called-out by one of the many online commentators, who said that anyone who identifies with Harry is too cowardly to write self-insert fic. (I do not remember who said it or even which site it was on, but I distinctly remember the phrase, “Reject Harry Potter, embrace Y/N.”) The reason why people get so invested in Harry Potter’s characters is because they’re easy to project upon, and it’s possible that my love of Harry comes more from over a decade’s worth of projection than anything else. The incessant arguments over characters like Snape, Dumbledore, and James Potter ultimately stem from the fact that these characters do not always come across the way Rowling wanted them to. As for the writing itself, it’s decent, but not spectacular. Harry Potter is something of a sandbox world, with less substance than it appears to have and a crapton of missed opportunities, making it ripe for fanfic. For more than ten years, I’ve been doing precisely that — using Harry Potter as a jumping-off point to fill in the gaps and develop my own ideas, some of which became my original projects.

So what does Harry Potter actually have that sets it apart? Why are people so desperate to be part of Harry Potter’s world if the worldbuilding is bad? What, specifically, is so compelling about it? I think that there’s one answer, one thing that is at the center of Potter-mania, and that has been the underlying drive of my love of it for the past decade and a half: the vibe.

Harry Potter’s vibe is immaculate.

You know what I mean, right? It’s not actually a product of any specific trope, but rather a series of aesthetic elements: The wizarding school in a grand castle, with its pointed windows and torches and suits of armor, ghosts and talking portraits and moving staircases, its Great Hall with floating candles and a ceiling that looks like the night sky, its hundreds of magically-concealed secret doorways. Dumbledore’s Office, behind the gryphon statue, with armillary spheres in every single shot. Deliberate archaisms that evoke the Middle Ages without going as far as a Ren Faire: characters wearing heavy robes, writing with quills and ink on parchment instead of paper, drinking from goblets, decorating with tapestries. Owls, cats, toads. Cauldrons simmering in a dungeon laboratory. Shelves piled with dusty tomes, scrolls, glass vials, crystal balls, hourglasses. Magical candy shaped like insects and amphibians. A library with a restricted section. A forbidden forest full of unicorns and werewolves. That is the Vibe.

There are five armillary spheres just in this shot. They are unequivocally the most Wizard of tabletop decor.

There’s more to it than just the aesthetic, though. The vibe is present in something that writers call soft worldbuilding.

There’s a phrase that writers use to describe magic systems, coined by Brandon Sanderson: hard magic and soft magic. Sanderson’s first law of magic is, “An author’s ability to solve problems with magic is directly proportional to how well the reader understands said magic.” A hard magic system has clearly-defined rules — you know where magic comes from, how it works and under which conditions, how the characters can use it, and what its limitations are. Examples of really good hard magic systems include Avatar: The Last Airbender and Fullmetal Alchemist. If the audience doesn’t understand the conditions under which magic can work, then using magic to get out of any kind of scrape risks feeling like the writer pulled something out of their ass. It begs the question, “Well, if they could do that, then why didn’t they do that before?”

You may come away from that thinking that having clearly-defined rules is always better worldbuilding than not having them, but this isn’t the case. Soft magic isn’t fully explained to the audience, but that doesn’t matter, because it isn’t trying to solve problems — its purpose is to be evocative. Soft magic enhances the atmosphere of a world by creating a sense of wonder. If your everyman protagonist is constantly running into cool magical shit that they don’t understand, then the world feels like it teems with magic, magic that is greater and more powerful than they know, leaving lots of secrets to uncover. Harry Potter, at least in the early books, excels at this. The soft magic in Harry Potter is what got me hooked, and I think it’s what a lot of other people liked about it, too.

The essence of soft magic is best summed up by this scene in the fourth film, in which Harry enters the Weasleys’ tiny tent at the Quidditch World Cup, only to find that it’s much bigger on the inside. His reaction is to smile and say, “I love magic.”

That’s it. That’s the essence of it. You don’t need to know the exact spell that makes the tent bigger on the inside. You don’t need to know how Dumbledore can make the food appear on the table with a flick of a wand, or how he can make a bunch of poofy sleeping bags appear with another flick. You don’t need to know how and why the portraits or wizard cards move. You don’t need to know how wizards can appear and disappear on a whim, or what the Deluminator is, or where the Sword of Gryffindor came from. You don’t need to know how the Room of Requirement works. Knowing these things defeats the purpose. It kills the vibe, that vibe being that there is a large and wondrous magical world around you that will always have more to discover.

One of the best “soft magic” moments in the books comes early in Philosopher’s Stone, when Harry is trying to navigate Hogwarts for the first time:

There were a hundred and forty-two staircases at Hogwarts: wide, sweeping ones; narrow, rickety ones; some that led somewhere different on a Friday; some with a vanishing step halfway up that you had to remember to jump. Then there were doors that wouldn't open unless you asked politely, or tickled them in exactly the right place, and doors that weren't really doors at all, but solid walls just pretending. It was also very hard to remember where anything was, because it all seemed to move around a lot. The people in the portraits kept going to visit each other, and Harry was sure the coats of armor could walk. —Philosopher’s Stone, Chapter 8

Many of these details don’t come back later in the series, which is a shame, because this one paragraph is super evocative! It establishes Hogwarts as an inherently magical place, in which the very architecture doesn’t conform to normal rules. Hogwarts seems like it would be exciting to explore (assuming you weren’t late for class), and it gets even better when you learn about all the secret rooms and passages. The games capitalized on this by building all the secret rooms behind bookcases, mirrors, illusory walls, etc. into the game world, and rewarding you for finding them. The utter fascination that produces is hard to overstate.

Another one of the most evocative moments in the first book is when Harry sees Diagon Alley for the first time, after passing through the magically sealed brick wall (the mechanics of which, again, are never explained). This is your first proper glimpse at the wizarding world and what it has to offer:

Harry wished he had about eight more eyes. He turned his head in every direction as they walked up the street, trying to look at everything at once: the shops, the things outside them, the people doing their shopping. A plump woman outside an Apothecary was shaking her head as they passed, saying, “Dragon liver, seventeen Sickles an ounce, they're mad....” A low, soft hooting came from a dark shop with a sign saying Eeylops Owl Emporium — Tawny, Screech, Barn, Brown, and Snowy. Several boys of about Harry's age had their noses pressed against a window with broomsticks in it. "Look," Harry heard one of them say, "the new Nimbus Two Thousand — fastest ever —" There were shops selling robes, shops selling telescopes and strange silver instruments Harry had never seen before, windows stacked with barrels of bat spleens and eels' eyes, tottering piles of spell books, quills, and rolls of parchment, potion bottles, globes of the moon.... —Philosopher’s Stone, Chapter 5

What works so well here is the magical weirdness of wizardishness juxtaposed against normalcy. Eeylops Owl Emporium is just a pet shop to wizards. A woman makes a very mundane complaint about the price of goods, but the goods happen to be dragon liver. Broomsticks are treated like cars. All of these small moments contribute to the feeling of the wizarding world being alive, inhabited, and also magical. It gets you to ask the question of what your life would be like if you were a wizard. What do wizards wear? What do they eat? What do they haggle over and complain about? What do they do for fun?

In Book 3, Harry enjoys Diagon Alley for a few weeks when he suddenly has free time, and we get to experience the wizarding world in a state of “normalcy,” when he isn’t trying to save the world. He gets free ice creams from Florean Fortescue, gazes longingly at the Firebolt, and engages with delightfully weird people. He’s a wizard, living a (briefly) normal wizard life among other wizards in wizard-land. And that is fun. It’s so fun, that people want that experience for themselves, enough for there to be several theme parks and other immersive experiences dedicated to recreating the world of Harry Potter.

One of the greatest things about Universal was its phenomenal attention to detail. You can hear Moaning Myrtle’s voice in the women’s bathroom, and only the women’s bathroom. The walls of the Three Broomsticks have shadows of a broom sweeping by itself and an owl flying projected against the wall, so convincingly that you’ll do a double take when you see it. Knockturn Alley is down a little secret tunnel off of the main street, and that’s where you have to go to buy Dark Arts-themed stuff. It’s really well done.

Another thing that contributes to the vibe, in my opinion, is that the wizarding world is slightly macabre. They eat candy shaped like frogs, flies, mice, and so forth, and they have gross-tasting jellybeans. In the film’s version of the Diagon Alley sequence above, there’s a random shot of a pet bat available for purchase. In the third film, when Harry is practicing the Patronus Charm with Lupin, the candles are shaped like human spines. In the first book, this is Petunia’s description of Lily’s behavior after she became a witch:

Oh, she got a letter just like that and disappeared off to that-that school, and came home every holiday with her pockets full of frog spawn, turning teacups into rats. I was the only one who saw her for what she was — a freak! —Philosopher’s Stone, Chapter 4

I remember reading this for the first time, and it just kind of made intuitive sense to me. I suppose it fits into the “eye of newt and toe of frog” association between magical people and gross things, but somehow it works. Unfortunately, this is retconned later with the knowledge that wizards can’t use magic outside school, but before that limitation gets imposed, the idea of Lily amusing herself by turning teacups into rats seems like an inherently witchy thing to do.

That association between magic and the macabre shows up elsewhere, as well. In The Owl House, Luz’s interest in gross things is one of the things that marks her as a “weirdo” in the real world. When she goes to the magical world of the Boiling Isles, weird and gross stuff is absolutely everywhere. That world’s vibe leans more towards the macabre than the whimsical, but it works because you sort of expect the gross stuff to exist alongside the concept of witches, and that they would be an intrinsic part of the world they inhabit. You don’t question it, because it’s part of the vibe.

(The Owl House is one of the few things I’ve encountered that has a similar vibe to Harry Potter, but it’s still not the same vibe. In fact, The Owl House outright mocks the expectation that magical worlds be whimsical, and directly mocks Harry Potter more than once. The overall vibe is much closer to Gravity Falls.)

The Harry Potter films utilize a lot of similar soft worldbuilding with the background details, especially in the early films that were still brightly-colored and whimsical. For example, the scene in Flourish and Blotts in the second film has impossibly-stacked piles of books and old-timey looking signs describing their subjects, which include things like “Celestial Studies” and “Unicorns.” When Harry arrives in the Burrow in the same film, one of the first things he sees is dishes washing themselves and knitting needles working by themselves, taking completely mundane things and instantly establishing them as magical. In that Patronus scene with Harry and Lupin, the spine-candles and a bunch of random orbs (and the obligatory giant armillary sphere) float around in the background. One small detail that I personally appreciate is the designs on the walls above the teacher’s table in the Great Hall, which are from an alchemical manuscript called the Ripley Scroll:

It’s all these little things that add up to produce The Vibe.

Obviously, much of the vibe is expressed very well in John Williams’ score for the first three Harry Potter films. The mystical minor key of the main theme, the tinkly glockenspiel, the strings, the rising and falling notes that mimic the fluttering of an owl, the flight of a broomstick, or the waving of a wand. That initial shot of the castle across the lake as the orchestra swells, as the children arrive at their wizarding school:

If you grew up with Harry Potter, just looking at this image gives you The Vibe. The nostalgia hit is definitely part of it, but The Vibe was already there, back when you were a child and you didn’t have nostalgia yet.

In my opinion, only Williams’ score captures this vibe — the later films, though their scores are very good, do not. But the soundtrack of the first two video games, by Jeremy Soule (the same person who did Skyrim) absolutely nails it. This, right here, is Harry Potter’s vibe, condensed and distilled:

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This is why I feel invalidated by the common advice “just read another book.” I have read other books. I’ve read plenty of other books, many of which are wonderfully written and have left an impact on me. But there’s still only one Harry Potter. To date, there’s only other book that has filled me with a similarly intense longing for a fictional place, and that is The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern. That book deliberately prioritized atmosphere over everything else in the story, and actually lampshades this in-universe. The Night Circus has a plot and it has characters, but it’s not about its plot or characters. It’s about the setting and its atmosphere. It swallows you up and transports you to a fictional place that is so evocative and so magical that you just have to be part of it or you’ll die. And even then, The Night Circus has a different kind of vibe from Harry Potter. In this particular capacity, there’s nothing else like Harry Potter.

The thing is, I don’t think Rowling was being as deliberate as Erin Morgenstern. (In fact, given many of Rowling’s recent statements, I question how many of her creative choices were deliberated at all.) She was throwing random magical stuff into the background without thinking too hard about it, which works when you’re writing a kids’ story, but stops working when you try to age it up. Actually, scratch that — soft worldbuilding is definitely not just for kids! The Lord of the Rings has a soft magic system, for crying out loud, and Tolkien is the original archmage of worldbuilding. Don’t listen to anyone who tells you that prioritizing atmosphere over meticulousness is bad worldbuilding. That is a valid way to worldbuild! Not everything needs to be clearly explained, not everything needs to make sense. The problem is that Harry Potter doesn’t balance it well. Certain things do have to be explained in order for the magic to play an active role in the story (and the setting of a magic school lends itself to that kind of explanation), but no rules are ever established for the kinds of magic that need rules. When you begin thinking about the rules, you’re no longer just enjoying the magic for what it is. At worst, you begin running up against the Willing Suspension of Disbelief.

It wasn’t actually the “aging up” of the story that did it in, per se, but rather, the introduction of realism. The early books were heavily stylized, and the later books were less so. A heavily stylized story can more easily maintain the Willing Suspension of Disbelief. That’s why, for example, you don’t ask why the characters are singing in a musical — you just sort of accept the story’s outlandish internal logic, and the inherent melodrama of it doesn’t take you out of the story. Stylized stories are more concerned with being emotionally consistent over being logically consistent. The later Harry Potter books changed their emotional tone, but without changing the worldbuilding style to compensate.

In addition to the more mature themes and darker tone, Harry Potter introduced more realism as it went, but Rowling did not have the worldbuilding chops to pull this off. There’s the basic magic system stuff: When you begin thinking about it too hard, something like a Time-Turner stops being a fun magical device, and starts threatening to break the entire story. Then there’s the characters: Dumbledore leaving Harry on the Dursleys’ doorstep in the first book is an age-old fairy tale trope that goes unquestioned, but with the introduction of realism in the later books, it suddenly becomes abandonment of a child to an abusive family. The exaggerated stereotypes of characters like the Dursleys become tone-deaf. The fun school rivalry of the House system is suddenly lacking in nuance. And then there’s the shift in tone: The wizarding world that we were introduced to as a marvellous place is revealed to be dystopian. You start thinking about how impractical things like owl messengers are, you start wondering if Slytherin is being unjustly punished, the bad history appears glaringly obvious, the quaint archaisms become dangerously regressive. Oh, and the grand feasts are made through slave labor! The wizarding world suddenly feels small and backward instead of grand and marvellous. J.K. Rowling’s bigotry throws it all into an even harsher light.

This is why I’ve always preferred the early books and films to the later ones. There’s a lot of things I like about the later ones, but they’re not as stylized — they don’t have The Vibe. Thinking about things too hard is just a necessary condition of adulthood, but it’s still possible to tell a dark, mature story that is highly stylized. I really think JKR could have better pulled off that shift if she was a more competent worldbuilder. But it is painfully obvious that she did not think things through, and probably didn’t understand why she had to. In her defense, she did not know that her story would end up being one of the most scrutinized of all time. As it stands, her strength in worldbuilding was in the softer, smaller, deliberately unexplained moments of magic that were there just to provide atmosphere. And there were less and less of those as the books went along.

Pretty much all the Harry Potter-related content released since the last film — including Cursed Child, Fantastic Beasts, Hogwarts Mystery, Hogwarts Legacy, Magic Awakened, and that short-lived Pokemon Go thing — have been unsuccessful attempts at recreating The Vibe. In fact, the only piece of supplemental Potter content that I think had that Vibe down pat was the original Pottermore, back when it was more of an interactive game. And of course that got axed. That was right around the time things started going downhill.

Some of the art from Pottermore’s original Sorting quiz.

So what now? Well, that’s the question.

I think I can safely say that The Vibe was the reason I liked Harry Potter. It’s the thing I still like the most about it. I’ve spent years chasing it, like an elusive Patronus through a dark wood. If I can capture and distill that Vibe, and use drops of it in my own work, then perhaps I won’t need Harry Potter anymore.

I'm gonna write the story that I wish Harry Potter was, and when I'm a famous author, I won't become a bigot. I'll see you on the other side.

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cryingatships · 6 months

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fandom get to know me better meme

Thanks for the tag @le-trash-prince!! Please pretend I'm not a month-ish late with the answer (⸝⸝⸝O﹏O⸝⸝⸝)

3 ships you like: This is too hard... I love all the ships from my shows (and ofc Pit Babe and The Sign deserves special mention these days!) but from other fandoms hmmmm

In no particular order -

Wolfgang/Soohyuk from Kings's Maker and Triple Crown. My bbs. They deserve the world and more u.u

KhunBam from Tower of God. They were my obsession for a long, long time. I still miss the fandom sometimes :')

SakuAtsu from Haikyuu. Technically I adore all Haikyuu ships but the fanfics and fanart for ship is ✨✨✨✨

Honorary mentions to RoseMaya from LoA for stealing my heart, and Gigolas, a ship I discovered recently that's been an absolute delight <3

first ship ever: Romione. It started my fanfic journey in ffn back in the day 💀

last song you heard: Invisible Love by Nut Supanat from my Thai playlist rn. I'm obsessed (⸝⸝ᵕᴗᵕ⸝⸝)<3

favorite childhood book: There's so many that it's hard to choose favourites lmao. But ig Leela Majumder's Holde Pakhir Palok... I still love it so much. It's a book you find more and more layers and diff stuff to relate to as you grow from a child to a teen to an adult. Literally all of Leela Majumder's works are <3 For smt in English... maybe Oscar Wilde's short stories. Still read them sometimes u.u

currently reading: Terry Prachett's Guards! Guards! Dipping my toes into Discworld owo! I've been v slow with it tho >.>

currently watching: I've been in a rut after The Sign and Pit Babe ended, so only 23.5 for the airing ones (tho there's soooo many good ones airing rn... when will my brain let me go back to watching shows again... T^T) But I'm also watching MSP, and LITA (this one's technically a rewatch) with ma friends u.u

currently consuming: Honeyed water cause I have a sore throat from this hot af weather T^T

currently craving: ice creams. Lots of em. And chilled mango juice.

No pressure tags @acingthecounts, @valentinaonthemoon, @wenyousi, @ranysflower, @sternammorgen, @bastard-ceo, @dramalets (if you guys haven't done this yet) and everyone who wants to join in!! (.◡ ‿ ◡ .)

#tag game #this is so late i'm sorry :')))

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marnz · 5 months

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hello friend!! i was wondering since you both read and write a lot if you had any recs for books that are narrated by death?

also! how is your original novel writing going? you posted a snippet to tumblr once of the opening scene i think and i still think about it because your writing was so descriptive and lush

friend!! please accept my apologies in this delayed answering, your message was so kind that every time I thought about it I got overwhelmed 🥰

Okay books narrated by death! The only one I’ve read is The Book Thief by Markus Zusak and it is gorgeous, I was so obsessed with it as a kid however it is about wwii in germany so ymmv.

however! I did some research and Mort by Terry Pratchett comes highly recommended (it is part of discworld). I enjoy Pratchett, he’s very fun. Death is also a big character in the Sandman Comics by N*il G*iman. I do not enjoy G*iman but ymmv!

I also am duty bound to recommend In the Woods by Tana French, a gorgeous, atmospheric murder mystery that is deeply spooky and unsettling. Death is not the narrator…but I do believe it is a character (many many interpretations!)

I feel quite bad sending you away with like 3 recs so here’s what I’ve been reading

- Exordia by Seth Dickinson - I’m not done with this yet but so far it’s like, what if every sci fi first contact military propaganda action movie…got lost and ended up being about the moral quandary of the trolley problem, Kurdistan, pink noise, and prime numbers? what if an author who hates imperialism and loves math decided to write a book length call out of Barack Obama’s drone warfare program with body horror? what if you were a cringe fail elder millennial in nyc that rescued a sexy alien with 8 snake heads instead of only one and every time you physically touched it was a sex scene? And this made the savior of the world? this book is for: homestuck fans, people who were in tragic situationships with their wife and their bestie, pilots, people who like their sci fi hard

- Giovanni’s Room by James Baldwin - okay if you haven’t read this stop everything and read it immediately. This book is for: tragedy lovers!!!! Gay people!!!!! Francophiles. Marxists. People who were into the social network rpf in 2013 and read that one fanfic where Andrew Garfield and Jesse Eisenberg get cast in a Giovanni’s Room adaption and finally fuck. Anyway. Earlier this year (or possibly last year?) I read a memoir about toxic masculinity and how it demands emotional alienation of the self and I was like “okay. I mean. Obviously?” And buddy. Baldwin says more about this topic in chapter one than that author did in his whole book. And it’s sooooooooooo beautiful god like every paragraph has a life ending sentence.

- the Great Believers by Rebecca Makkai - the year is 1985 and the location is Boystown, the Chicago gayborhood. Our hero? Yale, art lover, is trying to pull off an insane deal at work and survive the devastation of the AIDs epidemic. But actually the year is 2015 and our heroine is Fiona, Yale’s best friend, who travels to Paris to track down her estranged daughter and then her emotional repression stops working! I know this book sounds devastating and it REALLY is, like at one point I was sobbing so hard my husband got really worried and I was like, no, it’s all good, thumbs up! But ALSO this book is very funny and very joyful. This book is for: people who love to laugh. People who love to cry. Art lovers. People who love emotionally messy families.

- I Have Some Questions For You by Rebecca Makkai - a film studies professor & podcaster returns to her elite high school boarding school 20 years after graduating and find herself getting sucked into investigating the murder of her junior year roommate, who was murdered senior year and is now the internet’s favorite cold case. Please note this book is a response to #MeToo. This book is for: people who love True Crime but are also critical of it. People who love twitter drama. People who were losers in high school. People who devotedly at watch YouTube essays. Hot divorcées. Angry women.

I have also read a lot of excellent non fiction, the Murderbot diaries (just read themmmmm! Worth it), the entire Kate Daniels series (again.), the new SJM book, and some mid to bad books.

#answered #ummide #also to answer your question I figured out why my old draft wasn’t working. decided to start over. worth it #thanks so much for asking 🥺#I did do the whole normal epic fantasy thing where I wrote it like that. and now I have decided to approach it like #it’s a true crime investigation memoir that uncovers more than Luka bargained for. I’m loving it.#💜💜💜💜#the new SJM book is. her tortured poets department. which really could mean anything.

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creativenicocorner · 2 years

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2022 Writing Retrospective

2022 was a very interesting year. It certainly went places. It was a year in which I took a slight break from Trollhunters, but also the year I first dipped my toes into writing Discworld fanfic, which has been an incredible and fun san box to play in so far, and I sincerely look forward to posting more.

I’m also fine with admitting that I certainly didn’t write as much as I would have liked in 2022. But that was mainly due to getting a rather intense and draining job which left me with not as much energy as I would have liked. Because of that I found myself making piece with the concept of just writing with less perfectionism in mind...this might lead to not as much polished stuff published in the future...I’ve made peace with imperfections, and hopefully (while always striving to do as well as I can) I can also be less hard on myself when works are less than perfect when published. In short this might be the dawn of what a dear friend of mine titled “The Sketchbook Era” haha

We’ll see

2022 STATS

2022 Total number of.. User Subscriptions: 14 Kudos: 261 Comment Threads: 85 Bookmarks: 56 Subscriptions: 69 (hehe) Word Count: 60,501 Hits: 4,230

Top five hits/fics of 2022:

1) Unbecoming 2 Electric Boogaloo 2) Trial Runs and Errors 3) Small Soppy Snippets 4) The Runaway's Gamble 5) The Start of a New Story

2023 Expectations? Goals? Some sort of word like that...

While I am no longer in a sucky soul destroying work place job, I have a lot of personal projects planned that I’m working on, and a number of ideas in mind to help further my own career. I hope I’ll be able to find a good balance this year between personal/RL situations, and this lovely hobby. I want to grow as a person, a better person, I want so many things for my future...but that can only be possible if I plant the right seeds, and be kind to myself along the way.

There’s a number of Discworld fics I want to crank out, and personal HC and ideas I would love to share and explore. Especially the relationship between Sam Vimes and Moist von Lipwig, as well as the Sto Helit family. I think about them a normal amount lol

I’d also like to tentatively step back into the ToA world, but it’ll probably be more of a wiggling shuffle. It would be grand if I could manage to get a chapter of either Unbecoming 2, Alto Mare , or Terpsichore out (hell it would be phenomenal if I finally finish ACT I of Terpsichore!! But that’s shooting for the stars lol) we’ll see...no promises though

I’d also like to return to some of my DnD character fics. Between the two DnD fics I have so far there’s a good chance I might be able to publish something for Come on Eileen! though the next chapter may or may not be just a full comic instead of posted in its experimental script form.

I’d like to explore comic making more, especially with what I have planned in the more professional future.

And that’s that on that I suppose!

Thank you for reading this far, and happy 2023, may it bring softness and good fortune to all.

Stay awesome out there

Best wishes

#Nico blabs into the void #Nico writes #retrospective #ToA #Discworld #DnD

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bumbleboa · 2 years

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10 Characters, 10 Fandoms

I was tagged by @cleflink ! This is going to be hard for me, why do you ask me to choose between my favorite children...

1. Kuroba Kaito (Magic Kaito/Detective Conan)

Let's start easy with my current active fandom. I adore Kaito, adored him since I first saw him on my sister's tiny TV in 2002 while we watched afternoon anime. I haven't stayed active in the fandom continuously over the last 20 years, but I always come back and whenever I do, I remember why I love him so much.

2. Arthur (Inception)

There are a couple of movies that I have seen several times in the movie theater, because I watched them once and then dragged all my friends to watch it with me. One of these movies was Inception. But I don't think I would have latched onto Arthur this much if it wasn't for the fandom. Many of the fics in that fandom are still so dear to me and the character exploration in them was A+.

3. Furiosa (Mad Max Fury Road)

Speaking of movies I watched several times in the movie theater: I think I watched this movie 5 times, dragging everyone in there with me to witness this movie on a big screen. Every single time was worth it and I love Furiosa so much.

4. Q (James Bond)

While we are talking movies, I can't pass up on mentioning Skyfall! Watched that while I was in film school and fell in love with the beautiful cinematography (highly recommend looking for movie screencaps online, I'd frame so many of these shots). And then there is Q, who made me leave the movie theater and desperately look up fic because I wanted to see more of him (which was hilarious, because the movie released a week ahead of the US in Europe and US Tumblr was incredibly bitter about it)

5. Oikawa Tooru (Haikyuu)

This guy!!!! This guy right here! I love him, I love his hubris, his passion and his ego and he got one of the most satisfying character arcs in the entire series. He came so far! Talk to me about Oikawa and I will not shut up.

6. Nami (One Piece)

My forever girl! She was the reason I wrote fanfic back in the day (and no, none of you will ever get to see it). The Arlong Park storyline left a huge impact on me.

7. Dave Strider (Homestuck)

Speaking of incredibly satisfying character arc! I didn't start out rooting for him but he grew on me like an invasive plant species.

8. Nico di Angelo (Percy Jackson)

Now that I write these down, this is another depressed and traumatized boy coming to terms with homosexuality, clearly there has been a theme. I have drawn so much Nico fanart in the past. He deserves all the happiness.

9. Dick Grayson (Batman)

Fun fact, I am on Tumblr because of this guy. Back in 2011, when I had no idea what DC comics were about, Young Justice aired. And I got curious. And fell headfirst into the Batfamily from there. This was a hard choice, because Damian is also my boy, but Dick was the one who made me dive deep and make a Tumblr so I could share some silly doodles with people.

10. Moist von Lipwig (Discworld)

A conman and a liar with a soft heart, who ends up being the most upstanding person around, trying his best. His books in the series are some of my faves and I should reread them

This is so long already and still just scratches the surface of characters I love/d. I don't know who hasn't been tagged yet, so please feel free to grab this from me and do it yourself💛

#meme #I have a type and it shows #also I am showing how long I hung out on tumblr with this because so many of these were big in waves on here

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birdylion · 1 year

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Fanfic tag game

Found a 2 year old tag game in my likes and I don't know if I ever replied! Thank you @hermitknut for tagging me all this time ago :D

AO3 name: birdylion on ao3, Wayfarer back on fanfiktion.de

Fandom(s): My first big fandom was HP. I wrote a little bit in German for Firefly and Discworld, and then in English for Green Rider, Rogue One, Good Omens, Mass Effect (trilogy + Andromeda), Rivers of London and The Memoirs of Lady Trent.

Number of fics: 23 on ao3. There are some, especially older HP stories on ff.de, that I haven't archived on ao3.

1. Fic you spent the most time on: I have a 70k unpublished (German) Minerva McGonagall/Pomona Sprout schoolgirl romance on my hard drive that would need a lot of reworking in order to be in a shape I would consider putting out there. I worked on that for a year on and off, and then for a summer intensely. From my published work: Probably my RoL one, Bintumani, because it's 12k and the words have to have come from somewhere. Also I spent a lot of time conversing with my beta reader and editing the fic.

2. Fic you spent the least time on: Sleepless Night, the 200 word Good Omens ficlet that I literally typed on my phone instead of sleeping.

3. Longest fic: Bintumani, my Rivers of London travel adventure with Elsie Winstanley and Mamusu Grant in the late 1970s in Sierra Leone which I wrote for yuletide last year.

4. Shortest fic: again Sleepless Night with 200 words :D

5. Most hits: For my English works: What we're made of, my trans Viktor Krum with Hermione at the yule ball HP fic that I wrote for the Trans Wizarding Tournament (a charity auction for trans organisations). But overall, if I count fanfiktion.de, it's Spürst du die Funken, my Dean Thomas/Seamus Finnigan getting together that I still want to translate into English. I have the half finished translation on my hard drive.

6. Most kudos: What we're made of.

7. Most comment: on ao3 Bintumani, on ff.de it's an old HP oneshot collection

8. Fave fic you wrote: hard to tell, and I'll just copy hermitknut's words: "normally whenever I’ve just finished something that one’s my favourite :)" but if I had to chose, I'd say my Lady Trent fic, Studying Dragons, if only because I love the books so much.

9. Fic you want to rewrite/expand on: oh that's easy! I want to expand on To Serve the Sacred, my latest ME Andromeda fic. It's part of a big worldbuilding headcanon I have and I would love to put more of it into a story. Much of the worldbuilding (and the story I linked above) is about the game's Bad Guys, and a) I would need to make readers care about it and b) it would be more interesting to write it from the perspective of known characters. The worldbuilding reveals/twists that I want to do are very clear in my head, and I have a vague idea how to set it up in a story, but ... I need to work out the details, especially which characters I'd use as POV characters. Probably the other Ryder twin, but they'd need a team too, and the characters are only slowly starting to take shape. Also it's such a big project that I've put it on the backburner for now bc I don't have the time for writing plot / novel length fic in English.

10. Share a bit of your WIP or share a story idea that you’re planning: I'm only writing in German right now because that flows easier. My fandom of choice is that one German detective/crime show with the dysfunctional homoerotic dynamic between two of the leads that gets to no1 trending on tumblr once year when there's a new episode. This is now for a story about teenage queer self discovery: (Sorry I tried putting it through Google Translate to share an English version but the translation is terrible.)

Leo stellte sein Rad ab und setzte sich zu Adam auf den Felsen. Groß genug für zwei war der schließlich. Auch, wenn Leo sich damit halb an Adam lehnte. Das war okay. Machten sie ständig. Es war doch okay, oder?

Ein paar Tage nach Ferienbeginn hatte Caro ihm erzählt, dass sie auf dem Halberg Open Air gesehen hatte, wie sich zwei ihrer Klassenkameradinnen während Tokio Hotel geküsst hatten. ‚Cool, dass sie so dazu stehen‘, hatte sie gesagt. ‚Ganz schön mutig. Ich könnte das ja nicht.‘

Leo war nicht schwul, aber wenn er es wäre, dann wäre es Adam vielleicht nicht recht, wenn Leo ihm so nahe war. Wenn er es wäre, dann müsste Leo fairerweise aufhören, neben Adam zu sitzen.

I'm tagging @shakespearerants, @weatheredlaw, @the-moon-loves-the-sea and uh everyone else who follows me and writes fic. Seriously, tell me about it.

#a game is on #fanfiction #my stuff

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up-sideand-down · 1 year

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🤗🦅

Fanfic Writer Emoji Ask

🦅 Do you outline fics or fly by the seat of your pants?

Is both an option? Because I do both. I will outline, but at a certain point I lose focus and can't think about what I want to happen next. So...I'll figure it out when I'm writing. Because after I've written it up to that point I kind of have the flow of the story and can write something down.

So really I build a harness and suspension rig so my flying has a modicum of control. Doesn't mean it won't break down and I fly solo though.

🤗 What advice would you give to new fanfic writers that are just getting started?

This might get long. The only really bad advice is to not write, but here are things that I think brought me the most joy when writing.

Write Bad

Seriously, write as shittily as you please. It doesn't matter. The goal is that...you'll get better. You're not going to get better unless you start and when you start it will be bad. Awesome! That means next time you'll figure out something else. Even more awesome!

Everyone makes grammar and syntax mistakes, everyone proofreads and then all the errors pop out when you post. Great! You can still fix it. There's plenty of people who like to beta, you can ask around or maybe they'll even offer it for you. Everything is fixable, but you have to write it to start getting better.

Challenge yourself

Do the things that make you nervous. Join a fandom exchange. Join a word or time limit challenge. Do NatNoWriMo. Stay up all night and @dogoodweirdly What is the worst thing that's going to happen? You drop out and fail.

And that's fine. I've had that happen, no one yelled, no one was upset and if they were...then I didn't want to write for them anyway. Who wants to write for an asshole.

Instead I was welcomed as a cheerleader for the people still going and you better believe I cheered my heart out because I knew next time I was still going to be up there with them

Don't use Chat GPT

It's great at sounding like a good writer...because it's been trained reading a bunch of good writing. And I will admit it's good for the boring writing things. I've used it for work emails...because those sound better when they're generic and don't sound like me.

But I will never use it for my writing. The stuff that comes from my soul. It will never do it right. It will never sound like you.

It might make less errors, but it has no soul. I'd rather shitty writing from me than "good" writing from something that can't even wish it was me.

Read but don't compare

This one is the hardest. You know who they are, that author who always write the good stuff. The person who you wish you could write like. We all have one.

Go ahead, keep reading them. Keep reading all the things. But don't compare yourself. You're two different people, you can't be the same no matter how hard you wish...and you like the fic. You know you do.

It's hard. I know it is. But keep reading, keep commenting, keep the kudos and likes.

Besides you'll cut yourself off from the next tip...

Steal stuff

We don't admit it...but we pick up on the things we read and we like...and we take some small things with us.

I'm not talking entire pages and paragraphs I'm talking about little things like:

A phrase or sentence that sounded really cool

The way they use commas, dashes, semicolons, colons, etc.

The tone and the indicators they use for that

A word you haven't heard but context clues or a dictionary made it sound really cool.

A plot twist that you enjoyed

Structure and how they make the story flow.

Taking these things isn't illegal. These aren't really copyrightable in the first place and...is fanfic. People aren't going to boo you down because you took a saying or a structure from another fic.

And everyone does it either consciously or unconsciously. For example...I started Discworld two years ago. I love it. Wanna guess what popped up in my story during NatNoWriMo?

Footnotes

*gasp* the horror. How dare I?

Well I'm going to keep doing it because it was fun as hell and no one really cares. Steal the little things. Don't apologize.

Which brings me to the final and most important thing

Write for you

We all want the nice comments. We all want the reblogs. We will check it neurotically and cry when they don't show up fast enough.

But never ever write for those comments. They don't matter. (except they do, but that's not the point) The most important member of your reading audience...is you.

I don't know why you started, but I started so I could write the fic I wanted to read in the first place.

Do I read my own fics? Yes I do. Is that kind of narcissistic? I don't really care. I wrote it for me in the first place. The rest of the audience just hitched along for the ride.

Not to say I think I'm the best author out there. Upside the author makes a ton of mistakes and that bitch never updates...but they're a good writer and Upside the reader likes their fics.

Write for you...and you'll always be satisfied when you read your work again...and surprise yourself.

#about me #fanfic advice #don't know how good it is but it helped me

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pickle92 · 2 years

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TAG GAME

10 characters from 10 fandoms (in no particular order) tagged by @beardedblack thank you darling

its actually really hard to think of 10 i had to come back to this like 3 times lol

1. Edward Teach, OFMD (90% of the active blogs that follow me are ofmd blogs so I don't think I need to explain this one lol. also just to weigh in on beardgate he's def hotter with it, sorry besties. imagine running your fingers thru it and tell me im wrong)

2. Dean Winchester, Supernatural (bc i used to be spn trash and that shit is hard to shake off completely, also he's the best character to make cry or bleed sorry i don't make the rules. also the most bisexual character ever created don't @ me)

3. Ezio Auditore, Assassin's Creed (mainly out of nostalgia bc AC2 was my gateway into fandom/shipper culture and my first time writing proper fanfics (ie not dumb quizilla stories about my chemical romance lmfao, if you're old enough to remember quizilla hello fellow olds). also bi af, him and fucking Leonardo da Vinci were my first OTP)

4. Lara Croft, Tomb Raider (on the subject of video games I gotta give Lara proper credit for 1. representing badass women in games, especially in the 90s and 2. being what in retrospect was clearly my first gay crush, compounded by bicon Angelina Jolie playing her in the movie 😳🥵)

5. Buffy Summers, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, with honorary mention to Spike (following on the theme of badass women, Buffy needs no explanation. also Spike gets a mention bc of how in love with him i was when i was like 12 lol)

6. Jack Sparrow, Pirates of the Caribbean (speaking of people i was in love with, potc kick-started a Johnny Depp obsession when I was a teen and I still think he's one of the best characters ever. also proof I've always loved pirates)

7. Guybrush Threepwood, Monkey Island (before Stede came along he was the og loveable cringefail pirate wannabe. also the monkey island games are so good and make me think of my nan who was cool af and the reason i found monkey island in the first place. also maybe loving pirates is hardwired into me?)

8. Eowyn and Arwen, LOTR (can't choose bc in retrospect they were both early Gay Crushes(tm) and Badass Woman representation, don't think I need say more)

9. Holly Short, Artemis Fowl (realised I hadn't included any book characters so here's another one included for nostalgia's sake (avoiding HP). Holly is a badass making her way in a male dominated field and constantly kicking ass. also she's an elf, so.

10. Sybil Vimes, Discworld (also a badass, but more importantly the fact that she was fat but also still totally cool and Worthy of Love, thank you Terry Pratchett (gnu))

this was really fun to do but also made it apparent that i have a type which is 1. Badass and/or 2. Pirate. so um yeah, do with that info what you will.

gonna tag @littletugtinytug and @jellybeanium124 and anyone else that feels like playing ☺️

#tag games #fandom #nostalgia #fun things

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dastardly-ethereal-love · 9 months

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Did you ever love something so much that is colours the everyday of your life? Like it brings colours back into the world that you thought you’d lost? I have had such a hard year - this time last year I was grieving a miscarriage and the ending of an almost 11 year marriage. I was trying to work out how to stay alive and in the process ended up in hospital for three days to get some clarity and distance from the toxicity of my everyday life. I didn’t want to die but I didn’t know how to keep living.

Having that space to take stock was so helpful. I read stuff, made plans, took care of myself and made friends with those in the hospital with me (one person I am still friends with and it’s been fun getting lunch together in the city and now cooking together at my place).

I’ve had a year to process - to go to therapy and learn Transendental Meditation (really fell off the wagon with that one though it was grand when I did it). I’ve had a year to heal and make much stronger connections with my friends. One of the biggest things in the process of finding myself was Good Omens. Haha Sounds crazy but that show sunk its teeth into me and then I found fanfic because I was not okay with waiting for Season 3 (which hadn’t been confirmed at that stage). The way things ended at Season 2 was gut wrenching and heart breaking and I needed comfort fic. I didn’t even know it existed. I’d never even taken fanfic seriously before. But Archive of our Own gave me so much joy - so many talented authors wrote such beautiful words about our boys and they healed them and healed me a little too in the process. I remembered things like, I love music. I love words. I love dancing around the house and being on my own didn’t mean I had less - it means I had more space for those beautiful things that I had lost along the way. I cried for them and I cried for me and I laughed and cried some more because I found I was happy. Like, actually happy! I wasn’t having to shine it on or put on a smile for the sake of others… I was capturing feelings of hope that I remembered from my teenage years and I was shocked. How could a book/tv show do that?

I of course read the book and listened to the audible version with the voices all done so well. I fell into Facebook fan pages and found so many other people who have experienced the same thing. I felt a lot less alone. I discovered this place on Tumblr and delighted in seeing Neil Gaiman reply to people’s comments with humour and kindness. I found out about how Terry died before the show was made - I mean, I knew he died but it didn’t really mean much to me because though I love fiction fantasy and read so many damn books in high school and my uni days I just never got to his works. So now I’m listening to the discworld series on Audible and I’m laughing at Terry’s sense of humour in his stories. He is a delight. It also breaks my heart all the more because Neil and Terry were friends and you can’t help but see parallels between Crowley and Aziraphale. Imagine if Aziraphale died? I mean Crowley is going to be a wreck with his angel only being in Heaven but dead? How you do keep living after that? But Neil is honouring Terry by making the show and living his life. There is such bravery and love and courage in that. Stuff that makes life good.

Because life is good. Life isn’t easy and it’s certainly not fair. There shouldn’t be wars. There shouldn’t be cancers and other illnesses that take people before they are done (like my brother in law and my father in law). There should be second chances and justice and evil should never win when goodness is still standing but life isn’t fair like that.

In an amazing FanFic I read, where Az is a school teacher and Crowley works for a school curriculum company, they need to get married to get around the constraints of Crowley’s contract and Az’s job’s policies. For a first date, they gotta get married. Haha Well, in this story - Crowley explains that you can’t ‘have time’ - it’s not a thing you can store up and keep for later. It is a trick. No one has time… we just have the moment now because you don’t know what will happen - like in this story where Adam’s mum is killed in a car accident and Crowley becomes his legal guardian. So don’t wait, live life now. Take the good that you can get from life now! I’m so whole heartedly agreeing with this. Live life now - so I’ve done things I would normally be kind of afraid of doing on my own like - going to a concert (I saw Paul McCartney and it was so good!), go to a play (I saw Dictionary of Lost words - also good!) and invite people to do things with you like go to the art gallery (just came back from seeing Louis Bourgeois with a friend yesterday!). Well, the biggest one though? Adopted a cat! Well, two cats it seems! I’ve been wanting a cat for so long. I’ve always said, too risky! The housing market is rubbish and if I even ask to have a cat they may kick me out for some made up reason… but life is short and you can’t guarantee anything. My friend has been rescuing cats from the local Bunnings carpark, insane to me that these gorgeous little creatures are living rough like that. She has a tender heart and has been ferrying them to her home, one by one, and paying to get them spayed and microchipped in order to find them homes. She already has a very busy life with three boys who have their own complex needs and her own as well as her husbands! Haha But she doesn’t look away when something needs caring for. She is so open and loving and very practical. Haha So when I went to visit her to borrow some Dr Who DVDs (I needed more David Tennant in my life!) we sat in her ensuite bathroom and played with kittens and a beautiful mama cat.

That mama cat melted me. She was so loving. She looked after all these kittens and there is no way they are all hers… kittens of all ages and colours. So after meeting her, and read this beautiful FanFic by midnightdragons about a stray cat version of Crowley and Aziraphale… I couldn’t help but be entrapped by this idea. Could I do it? Could I make it work? Was I brave enough to ask my landlord? Was I brave enough to take on the responsibility? I mean, the first day I had Eliza I was wracked by the fear that I wouldn’t be a good enough cat mama. Gah. It’s hideous, this feeling - this desire to be perfect or at least exceptional before I take on something new. I fought that feeling and leaned into the moment and just watched myself and her and tried to see if she was happy with me and if I was happy with her. I mean, that’s how you know you’re doing a good job right? If she’s eating and sleeping and playing and settling into the new space?

Well, she is so happy. My friend had one last kitten left and she asked me to watch him because otherwise he’d be at her home on his own in the ensuite for 3 days with only someone coming in to feed him and change his litter while they were away. That didn’t sound nice for the little man so I agreed to look after him too. But when I saw them together and I couldn’t pull them apart. They bloody love each other. They put themselves together in a box above my TV and purr up a storm. Purr at an indecent level. Like, guys? Should I give you some privacy? Haha It’s a total mum and kitten relationship though and he tries to drink off her and she only lets him sometimes. Eliza always wins their play fights and holds him down with a firm bite on his neck and then licks him like… yes I may have gotten you by your neck and held you down but I also need to just clean your face and ear okay? Haha

They are so happy together so I guess I’ll be mama to two cats now? :)

What I’m saying is, a year ago I was hurting so much. I was treated like I was worthless by my husband and like my feelings didn’t matter and I really took that on. It felt true. I also took on responsibility for his emotions in a way that made me feel like a failure because nothing I ever did was good enough and it was often pushed back on me as being my fault that things weren’t okay. When I asked for help or comfort, I was being selfish by having needs when his needs were so much bigger and more needier. Haha Oh dear.

The joy of it is… I still can love and care for Tom (the ex) in a way that respects who I am and who he is. We have found our way to a friendship that has made coparenting our amazing 5 year old boy so delightful. I love how he is with Jacob. Jacob loves his dad so much. Jacob and I get 4 days together and he gets 3 days with his dad per week. It’s a balance that is working really well for us. Jacob has made it work for himself too. I’m so proud of him and how well he moves in this new world of his. It’s not been easy for him but he’s also found a good space - often asking Tom to send me photos and videos and visa versa so each parent can be part of his life even if we are not physically present. He’s connected his worlds in clever ways. He’s only 5 and a half. He’s a marvel.

But I wanted to pour my heart into this post because I’m so happy. I love journaling and have done it since I was maybe 8 or 9? Not always consistently but it feels good to get things down on paper because it’s capturing something in a form that I can revisit. It makes it real. I know I will grow more and change and Jacob will grow and my cats will grow… everything is always changing… but today is precious and I want a little record of the preciousness of these days.

Also, the male kitten is named Pinky but it’s not a name I chose… I’m keen to ask Jacob to help choose a name but in my heart the two cats really are Aziraphale and Crowley because look at them!

#journaling #cats #pet cats

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dixkens · 2 years

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MI6 Cafe Creators Tag Game

So late getting to this, but thanks to @silverbrume for tagging me in!

We’d love for people to keep getting to know each other after this year’s 007 Fest, so we’re starting this tag game!

Rules: Answer the questions, then tag 3 new people to complete this. Also tag the person who tagged you and @mi6-cafe so we can reblog your response.

Note that when we say ‘fanwork’ in the questions below, that could mean a fanfic, gif, fanart, headcanon, cosplay, crocheted work—any kind of fancreation counts!

What work of yours challenged you when you were creating it?

Everything I’ve written?

But seriously. There’s Nothing to Fear https://archiveofourown.org/works/27674746 from my Bondverse x Leverage crossover series The Incredibly True Adventures of 2 Hackers in Love where Q, seriously wounded in Afghanistan after a plane crash, has to cope with recovering from a life-changing injury.

Deciding that Q’s backstory was wounded veteran always felt right. On the other hand, writing the immediate aftermath of his injury felt like a challenge and a risk and one I wasn’t sure I was up to executing. Particularly since it was important to me to keep the story respectful of the realities of the situation I was fictionalizing.

What is a fanwork you’ve seen which gave you a new headcanon about a character?

There was a fic with a line about how much more dangerous Q is than an agent. I latched onto the idea that Q is dangerous and, more importantly, aware of it quite hard. The fic was good in several ways but also had plot points that irritated me (to the point that if you ask me about it, I WILL rant at you) so I’m not going to track it down to link.

Is there a fanwork that you really want to make, but you haven’t started yet?

Two that I can think of.

The first’s working title is Yusef’s Tale. A backstory for the man Vesper loved and was betrayed by.

The second is a femslash crossover with the movie Red where M (Mansfield) and Victoria Winslow (the assassin played by Helen Mirrin) were/are lovers.

What fanwork of yours surprised you, and how?

High Water Mark https://archiveofourown.org/works/36281518 - I wrote a magical AU. I made up a mythos. I made Q a god. I made M his priestess. I wrote M/Q. The whole thing was very different from what I would have said that I ‘usually write’.

What doesn’t surprise me is it will probably have a sequel. This keeps happening to me.

What themes/styles/subjects are common across many of your fanworks? Alternatively, what themes/styles/subjects are you most interested in creating?

High-trust committed relationships, stories where the conflict is Individual vs System, complex examinations of consent, agency, and autonomy. I also tend to sprinkle in references to other fandoms and geeky jokes in a variety of subjects.

I find myself writing similar things from different angles, making something that seems innocuous at first glance threatening later, or taking the same situation and interpreting it multiple ways. For example, in my branching series Curriculum Vitae https://archiveofourown.org/series/2276666 Q ends up wrapped in a blanket several times but because of circumstances his responses vary from nearly having a panic attack to falling asleep.

What other fandoms do you create for, if any?

I’ve posted in Leverage, Good Omens, Discworld, Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Norse Mythology and likely will again.

I also have WIPs for the Wayward Children series and Thor: Ragnarok. I aspire to someday write fanfic for my favorite spy movie of all time Hopscotch.

Is there an artist that you like to listen to while you create? Or one whose work always inspires you?

I don’t generally listen to anything while I’m writing though I do sometimes find songs that fit a fic’s theme. I’ve been slowly building a playlist to go with 2 Hackers for example.

Share a fanwork that you’ve found yourself thinking about weeks after reading/seeing it.

This is not a Bond fanwork but it is one I think about from time to time even now, years after I first saw it. This Firefly video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fZr9wsZz_bk (I hesitate to call it a fanvid) is an excellent example of a creative work that takes a critical look at the source material’s flaws.

Finally, share where you post your works!

Mostly at https://archiveofourown.org/users/hypatia

Occasionally on https://dixkens.tumblr.com/

Tagging: I’m so late to this party I don’t know who hasn’t already been tagged. If you haven’t and read this, comment, and I’ll tag you!

Edited: Tagging @verdigrissoup

#mi6cafe #mi6 cafe tag game

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brightlotusmoon · 3 years

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My fucking heart.

Winny was among the very best of the fandom. Now she's immortalized in canon.

It's hard to explain how much this means to me as an Old Fan who was literally there for the first Queer Turtles fanfic. (The author became my beta for years and introduced me to Discworld during a discussion about my themes). Over twenty years later this is happening.

I miss you, Winny. I'll try to write that 2007 Mikey fic I talked to you about.

#tmnt #idw tmnt #in memory of winnychan #rest in peace winny #ninja turtles and representation #ninja turtles and the love of fans #when fanfiction becomes canon #when fans become crew #the creators know what they're doing #this is why fandom bullying today confuses me #2007 mikey needed love

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ibijau · 2 years

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fave 10 characters from any media and why u like them?

10. Ori from The Hobbit. He's a fun lil guy and he was my main blorbo in that fandom and I just liked him a lot for his pointless bravery and how very adorable he was

9. Tiffany Aching from the Discworld. Many reasons, but mostly it's a specific part of the first book that has stuck with me through the years. I don't have the exact quote, but something about her opponent calling her selfish like it's the worst thing she could be, and a part of her just owning it like. Yes, she's selfish. And she's still going to protect the people around her, because those are her people. And it just... I just love that moment.

8. Polgara from The Belgariad (and associated books). Role model lady!! But more seriously, I loved how complex she was, and how she was allowed to be clever and powerful and kind, but also bitchy and petty, and it wasn't... the narrative didn't judge or punish her for it? I don't enjoy David and Leigh Eddings books as much as I did as a teenager, but damn, the characters in it were really cool and Polgara most of all

7. Rapunzel from Tangled. To make it short, I got the dvd the year I went no-contact with my mom, and I watched it dozens of time, and it was very therapeutic.

6.Katniss Everdeen, but specifically from the book as I wasn't too impressed with the films. She's just a fascinating character, with so much rage and anger (all justified!!) and it's really cool to see her grow to understand that her world is even more fucked up than she thought, and trying to figure out how to deal with it when everyone is trying to manipulate her one way or another.

5. Lan Xichen. I love his mix of gentle politeness and determination. He is a good man whose kindness is treated as a fault to be taken advantage of by his best friend. Again and again he is confronted with difficult choices (leaving or staying when his sects burns, what to do with lwj when he sides with wwx, what to do with jgy when his guilt is revealed) and he very sincerely tries his best with the information he has. I love him. Fuck but I love him. He is so good. He is so very good, and he tries so damn hard to be fair, and I love him.

4. Granny Weatherwax from the Discworld. She is a BITCH and we LOVE HER. Just. Damn, but there's something so reassuring about her existing as a character? Like. Yeah, she's not very nice. But she tries her best to be good, even when it's not easy, even when it's not pleasant.

3. Nie Huaisang. Whaaaaaat, he is only number three? what fraud is this?? But yeah, I love him a lot, and I think he's just cool. I have no idea who he is in canon. We know who he was, and who he appears to be, but there's pretty much no clues as to the person he really is. How much of the image he presents is real, how much is fake, and does it even matter, does he even know himself what's real or not? I love a character open to interpretation!

2. Bertha Mason (from Jane Eyre). I think she's just a fascinating character, shrouded in mysteries. She is the greatest of evils, and she is the greatest of victims. She is a murdering foul bitch, and she is a woman whose life was controlled by the men around her. There are so, so many ways to read her character, so many possible interpretations! It makes it really fun to write fanfics about her, and to read about people's opinions of her. Which... is kind of a theme here, uh?

Link from any of the main games except Skyward Sword. Listen I know he's usually got the personality of a paperclip, but also he's cool and brave and funny, and I've spent countless hours of my youth (...and of my adult years too...) playing Zelda games, and I started writing and drawing out of love for the franchise, and I just think he's a neat character bc you can project whatever you want upon him

#jau rants #I like complicated and ambivalent characters I guess

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hockpock · 2 years

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Book asks, 15, 16, and 20!

15. recommend and review a book. Any of Terry Pratchett's Discworld series. My favorites are Thief of Time and Nightwatch, but those aren't necessarily the best entry points for the series. Plenty of people have flowcharts and recs on where to jump in so I won't reinvent the wheel.

Checking over the books that made the cut over a couple moves, I'll officially rec You Suck: A Love Story by Christopher Moore. It's a cracky good time and a hurt myself laughing twist on cheesy vampire tropes. It is adult humor though, be warned. Also strongly rec Stupidest Angel and Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ's Childhood Pal . They're. uh. Blasphetastic.

Oh, and the Eyre Affair by Jasper Fforde. Alternate universes, time travel, and literary world hopping. Endorsed by the Toast Board. The series starts dragging a little as it gets more into itself, but the first book is a solid standalone with fun characters and a satisfying resolution.

16. how many books have you read this year? I really haven't read much at all, as far as traditional published books. Fanfic enough to fill a library, yes. Physical books... read a handful of Seanan Maguire's Wayward Children series borrowed from my roommate, made some attempts to re-read the Vorkosigan Saga by Louis McMaster Bujold.

The first book of that skeleton lesbian homestuck expy i've been seeing on my dash has been waiting on my tablet since it was tor's free book of the month but I haven't been in the right mood for it.

20. what are things you look for in a book? Character driven, some sense of humor, interesting concepts. I appreciate "hard" sci-fi and fantasy but if it's too dense my brain just slides over it these days; I'm a sucker for crack treated seriously, tropes turned upside down and lampshaded.

My favorite genre is "Parody of The Thing That Is Also THE THING", something that knows it's own pitfalls and isn't just pointing from the outside going " I HAVE OBSERVED THIS THING HAPPENS IN GENRE, AREN'T I CLEVER. REFERENCE!"

Also if your sprawling ensemble cast on an adventure can have ironic near misses and mild miscommunications, so much the better.

#pock posts a thing #ask response #ask games #book talk #getting to know you

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thebirdandhersong · 3 years

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The Year So Far Book Ask

Tagged by @madamescarlette <3 thank you, darling!! (I DO SO LOVE TO TALK ABOUT BOOKS!!!!)

1. Best book you have read in 2021 so far?

HOW can I answer that!!!! Here is a top 10 because I cannot narrow it down!!

Middlemarch: read it twice this year (liked it the first time, LOVED it the second time)

David Copperfield: my new favourite Dickens. There is a lot of joy and compassion at the heart of this book, and I Loved it very much.

The Mill on the Floss: can’t explain the feeling I got from reading this book (tbh if you know, you know!! It warms your heart but it also makes you want to stand in the rain and cry)

The Queen of Attolia: a roller coaster. Very overwhelming. Was incredibly Shocked many times. (Also, who’d have thought?? Gen??? In LOVE??? Fantastic in concept and in execution)

The Adventures of Sally: a new favourite Wodehouse. You will laugh so hard tears will spring to your eyes.

Night Watch: this one stuck a knife in me and twisted..... but in a good way.

Anne of the Island: much-needed comfort read!!!

Leave it to Psmith: another new favourite Wodehouse. Modern rom-coms wish they could do rom-com like Psmith, Eve, and the umbrella that was Definitely Not His.

The Penderwicks at Point Mouette: A DELIGHT (speechless!!)

The Penderwicks on Gardam Street: ALSO A DELIGHT (still speechless!!)

2. Best sequel you have read in 2021 so far?

Ohohoho. All the Discworld sequels. (Especially A Hat Full of Sky, Night Watch, Thud!, I Shall Wear Midnight.)

Also, The Queen of Attolia. That book decimated me. Admittedly no one’s emotions are very stable at two in the morning, but I was an absolute Wreck that night (morning?).

3. A new release you want to check out?

I am behind on the times so my idea of ‘new’ is rather skewed.... I still really want to read Spin the Dawn, The Goblin Emperor, and Spinning Silver. And am making my way through Queen’s Thief.

4. Most anticipated book release of the second half of the year?

I... don’t follow new releases that much, to be honest. I am currently looking through the lists and don’t see anything I recognise s;lfdjsdlk;

5. Biggest disappointment?

The Hunchback of Notre Dame. I knew how it was going end, but i was still mad. (These days I like books with a hefty amount of Hope and that one.... definitely did not have that.) I also read Tess of the d’Urbervilles for the first time and remember being just... really frustrated with all the characters and about the lack of Hope in that one, too. I was also hoping to love I Capture the Castle and was a bit grumpy about the second half of the book!!

6. Biggest surprise?

The books I read because my friends loved them!! Such as The Blue Castle (Eden), The Man Born to be King (Magpie), Gourmet Hound (Eden), Queen’s Thief (Fran), Blandings Castle/Psmith (Rebekah), Discworld (I think I started reading it for the first time because of Fran as well)...... I also reread a bunch of old favourites (Lord of the Rings and a few Jane Austens) and they were even better than I remembered!! Which was just wonderful!! (though not very surprising, I guess!!)

7. Favourite new author (either new to you or debut)?

MEGAN WHALEN TURNER. I also have a new appreciation for P.G. Wodehouse (after crashing through all of his Jeeves books and most of the Blandings Castle audiobooks) and Terry Pratchett (after bulldozing through a good number of Discworld books, most of them two or three times) and Georgette Heyer (read my first few Heyers this year and had SUCH a blast).

8. Favourite new fictional crush?

In general: Ik-jun from Hospital Playlist (He’s not from a book sksfjkl ;sdfj k I wanted to mention him because I just love him a Lot)

In terms of books: Sam Vimes (sdlkfjs;kls) and Henry Tilney (I loved him before, but this year cemented him as one of the top, if not The Favourite Austen hero in my heart). I don’t know if Gen counts, because I feel very friendly towards him, and alternate between wanting to make soup for him and wanting to bonk him on the head with a cardboard tube.

Mal (from S&B) had some Really Good lines, too. Especially in the last chapter of Ruin and Rising.

9. Newest favourite character?

A whole PLATOON of them. Sasha and Lysander from @magpie-trove‘s story, Beatrice and Romeo from @imissthembutitwasntadisaster‘s story, Emilia and Lily from @itspileofgoodthings‘s stories, Tiffany Aching, Granny Weatherwax, Helen and Irene and Costis from Queen’s Thief, Dorothea and Maggie from George Eliot’s books, Sally from The Adventures of Sally....

10. A book that made you cry?

Literally cried so many times this year over all sorts of stories. But a few off the top of my head:

The Penderwicks (all of them): cried from sheer joy!!!

Seven for a Secret: there are so many lines in the most recent chapters alone that brought tears to my eyes.

The Keys of Fire: which is The definitive Fairy Tail fanfic for me. I just love this story so much. And i was surprised all over again by the forgiveness and the love and the grace and the healing in this story this time around!!

The Queen of Attolia/The King of Attolia: cried out of surprise and joy at nearly all the Gen/Irene scenes (not the beginning ones sl;fksdsdlfk jd but my heart did a great leap when Gen remembers seeing Irene dance)

Ruin and Rising: cried at the ending. Also because I was so happy. (There is no such thing as an ordinary love!!!)

Crooked Kingdom: cried at what Kaz did for Inej (couldn’t help it. That moment was beautiful)

(It has been quite an emotional year. The waterworks are triggered by the smallest things. But I’m happy to say that I’ve cried out of happiness mostly in the book department.)

11. A book that made you happy?

(Nearly all of them tbh!!! I have so many new favourite books from this year’s reading list alone!!!)

The Penderwicks series. Was in bliss for the whole week. I was also incredibly happy listening to the Discworld audiobooks, and reading new installments of Emilia and Seven for a Secret and The Stars Hold No Part In This!!! All the Wodehouse and Heyer books I read were delightful.... David Copperfield was so full of joy and grace and it made me want to prance in a field. All of the Anne books I reread were comfort reads. And of course The Keys of Fire, which kept me smiling for hours: I feel like a kid being handed an ice cream cone with three scoops and a cherry on top whenever I read it. Incredibly happy.

12. Most beautiful book you have bought or received this year?

The second-hand Vintage Classics Jane Austens!! :’) especially Northanger Abbey, which was in Excellent condition. Very floppy (unlike the longer Austens..... alas for Mansfield Park, which is harder to flip through) and fits comfortably in my hands.

And the Tundra Classics edition of Anne of the Island. (I liked the way the paper felt and the text was a really nice font and size!)

13. What book do you need to read by the end of the year?

OOH TONS. I’m still reading Anna Karenina (stopped because I thought: I need a happy story right now). Would love to keep reading Queen’s Thief (I’m taking it slow because they’re books that should be savoured), make some headway in Dorothy Sayers’s Lord Peter Wimsey books, read more Georgette Heyer, start on The Goblin Emperor and a Bunch of books I've been meaning to read for a while (The Eagle of the Ninth, Piranesi, Phantom of the Opera, Surprised by Joy, Crime and Punishment, War and Peace are the main ones. This is an ambitious list but I’d like to read at least two of them before the year is out sl;kffdksl;dfjslk;)

tagging: @imissthembutitwasntadisaster @soldier-poet-king @septembersung @lady-merian @called-kept if you would like to!! And YOU, if you think it looks fun and want to give it a try!! :D

#oh MAN when i get started on books it is so hard to stop sldfkj s;dlkj #thank you for tagging me eden!!! :D this was a LOT of fun!!!!#reading adventures #songbird again #2021 has been a very interesting reading year simply because reading is a way i Cope and the more stressed i am the more i tend to read #it sounds weird but unfortunately it is true #this year has been quite a year (i say this as we approach the end of july slkf;s js) so i've been reading ravenously #thankfully not about rocks anymore though!!!!!!

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