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aniy2k · 3 years

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Riot Grrrl, Kinderwhore, and White Feminism

Riot Grrrl was an underground feminist movement that began in the early 90s. It was tied to the punk music scene, radical politics and DIY. It started originally with a Zine by Tobi Vai named Jigsaw in 1988 that expressed and spread radical politics and feminism. Vail later on decided to start a band by the name Bikini Kill.

For most ‘Styles’, people don't even bother looking at the history of where it came from originally, so why is it important?

While part of Alternative culture is Fashion and a way to express yourself that's against societal norms, there is alot of political significance that comes with it. When talking about it, Riot Grrrl tik tok creators, and other Alternative creators, say the political significance is based on what the subcultures are. Without that, you cannot be a part of the subculture. Obviously there are alot of conservatives in the scene (As you can see from the usage of lace code) Some complain and say that it's “gatekeeping”, but in my opinion, it's honestly… not. This isn’t the same as someone taking a popular music artist, then saying “You don't know this song? Ur fake lolz”.. This is separating mindsets that Alternative people strongly believe in and instead protecting a community that is supposed to be a safe place.

The Riot Grrrl movement provided a space where women in punk music tackled the conflict of inequality and sexism, and decided to fight it, united and organized.

Kathleen Hanna, Bikini Kills lead singer, ended up writing the “Riot Grrrl Manifesto” in 1991, which is a summary of what Riot Grrrl is and what it means to be a part of it.

Summary:

“ BECAUSE us girls crave records and books and fanzines that speak to US that WE feel included in and can understand in our own ways.

BECAUSE we wanna make it easier for girls to see/hear each other's work so that we can share strategies and criticize-applaud each other.

BECAUSE we must take over the means of production in order to create our own meanings.

BECAUSE viewing our work as being connected to our girlfriends-politics-real lives is essential if we are gonna figure out how we are doing impacts, reflects, perpetuates, or DISRUPTS the status quo.

BECAUSE we recognize fantasies of Instant Macho Gun Revolution as impractical lies meant to keep us simply dreaming instead of becoming our dreams AND THUS seek to create revolution in our own lives every single day by envisioning and creating alternatives to the bullshit christian capitalist way of doing things.

BECAUSE we are unwilling to let our real and valid anger be diffused and/or turned against us via the internalization of sexism as witnessed in girl/girl jealousy and self defeating girltype behaviors.

BECAUSE I believe with my wholeheartmindbody that girls constitute a revolutionary soul force that can, and will change the world for real.”

I’m not personally too much of a fan of how Kathleen Hannah ended up seeming like the regular ol’ white feminist that basically put WOC in the shadows within this whole movement. While this piece is about educating about the power that the Riot Grrrl scene had within punk culture, it has many many faults. The diversity within the scene isn’t there. It seemed to be a feminst movement, but only showcased one type of girl. White girls.

Multiple black punks from that era came out and said that they felt that the riot grrrl scene wasn't for them. Honestly? I don’t blame them. You look up Riot Grrrl on pinterest or on tumblr, you can probably count on your one hand how many POC women are showcased.. This moment for women of color is probably the epitome of White feminism in some cases. Author, Gabby Bess, adds that “The history of Riot Grrrl is inevitably written as "predominately white," glossing over the contributions of black women and other women of color”.

Just like the article from VICE states,

“In contrast to this ironclad narrative of the white Riot Grrrl, black women did participate in the movement. Few and far between, maybe, but they participated nonetheless, and they deserve more than to be swept under a rug of whiteness--These women carved their own feminist pathways into the hardcore scene, precisely because they were rendered invisible by the Riot Grrrl movement.”

One very powerful punk from that time, Ramdasha Bikceem, made up a whole Zine when they were 15, that illustrates the conversation of race and gender in Riot Grrrl so perfectly

This would all result in another black punk from that time, Tamar-Kali Brown, to make her own movement called “Sista Grrrl riot”. Out of all of the information that is circulated about the Riot Grrrl scene, Sista Grrrl Riot was probably one of its least talked about movements. Tamir-Kali Brown and her bandmates brought together a community and showed people a version of themselves on a stage where they weren’t represented.

> Kinderwhore

Kinderwhore is a very popular style within the RiotGrrrl community. A lot of people Champion Hole lead singer, Courtney Love, for this style's popularity, but actually her bandmate Kat Bjelland introduced the style first. Though, with that being said, Courtney Love definitely made Kinderwhore one of many staple styles for the Riot Grrrl Subculture.

What is Kinderwhore exactly? One thing about styles like this one is, there isn’t a specific definition to what it is. It was a bold, punk and sophisticated subversion of the classic "girl" stereotype, with a mini-feminine dress and bold makeup. The great part of the Kinderwhore Style is that it was about power. The power of femininity. It was so much more than just a style that included small dresses and mary janes. It was taking the most “fragile” feminine image and making it into something that is punk, and that takes all of the power back.

Another part of Riot Grrrl fashion is just a subversion of regular punk fashion. DIY, big boots, Plaid, Skirts, Spikes.

The idea of taking every inch of femininity that men manipulate and instead using it to make them realize that they can't handle what we are, is such a powerful thing to me as a fashion lover, but also as an aspiring social activist. As the rise of social media attention of Alternative Subcultures continues, I believe the next generation of Riot Grrls are going to kick butt and be more inclusive than the 90s scene was.

ani ok.

pls give me feedback and for those who obv have more education abt this pls give me feedback as well!! i think this is super interesting and enjoyed researching this <3

#riot girl #punk girl #bikini kill #hole band #courtney love #black punks #alternative #alt rock

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cbspams · 3 years

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iKON - Love Scenario + Killing Me

I'll specifically be referring to each member by the name they're using in Kingdom subtitles, so like Jinhwan instead of Jay, Donghyuk instead of DK etc.

Damn these are long lol, thank god for read more cuts

Sarangeul haetdaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa 🎶🎶🎶

I'm honestly so happy they did Love Scenario. I mean it's one of their most famous songs for sure but like, I would've been really sad if it wasn't performed at least once on Kingdom I think, just because I was so curious how they would spin it.

I will say that I would not consider this performance as a "mash up". Now in Round 2 the only groups who do mashups are iKON and SKZ as far as I'm aware, so I'm also taking some of the mash ups used in RTK (Pentagon - Shine/Spring Snow, ONF - We Must Love/Moscow Moscow, It's Raining) as reference to why I would personally call this a "set" rather than a "mash up".

So Love Scenario is a pretty classic mellow song, one which is beloved for obvious reasons of being fun and cheerful but in a quieter, soft vibes way. I loved that they took the melody and made it even more cheerful, adding in those trumpet/saxophone tones and bumping it up to a musical tone song. I especially appreciate that they made it so bright because the other performances are so dark (ATEEZ included, though theirs was more forceful and powerful than dark). It's just really refreshing to hear.

Going back to mash ups though, I'm not sure if I could consider this a mash up in my mind? Here's the thing, I don't actually consider Shine/Spring Snow (Pentagon) or We Must Love/Moscow Moscow (ONF) as mash ups wither. To me, those are more like "sets", in which the songs have similar vibes or transition really well into each other. Shine/Spring Snow being a special stage to send of Jinho, the transition wasn't just a musical flow through but a small "cut". I can't really judge this one as a mash up because it's not a performance for the stage but for the heart but if you watch it, you can clearly see where Shine ends and where Spring Snow begins right? Even if the songs bled into each other though, the way they arranged Shine and Spring Snow, I think it would've been a flawless transition in.

Separately, consider ONF's spliced set in which they do nearly all of We Must Love and then tag Moscow Moscow in towards the end lyrically. Because both songs carry different vibes originally, the arrangement became really important in order to splice the songs together and make the transition seamless. And that arrangement did a wonderful job! If I didn't watch those songs beforehand, I wouldn't even have been able to tell that there were two songs in the performance.

So then what's a mash up? A mash up in my mind is more similar to SKZ's Jasin or ONF's It's Raining. It's where the songs and melodies are arranged together, splicing together lyrics and melodies to become one song completely. There's no telling where one song ends and another begins because they're integrated together. ONF's It's Raining is actually a really cool example of this, where they mashed up It's Raining (Rain) with their own song Complete. They keep all the lyrics of It's Raining but add in their own jaunty vibe with the fun saxophone, changing the song entirely. Similarly, SKZ's Jasin (which I will also analyze later), has God's Menu and Side Effects spliced together to become a new song. Obviously SKZ's is different from ONF as SKZ produce and arrange their own songs already, but the end result is the same: a completely new song despite carrying lyrics and melodies from the components.

In this way, I would define iKON's performance as a "set" over a "mash up". The songs align together to tell a story and have a relatively seamless transition, but they do not incorporate each other to become a new song. I think that as far as arrangements go, this is decent and like in Shine/Spring Snow or We Must Love/Moscow Moscow, it's not a bad idea but it feels "weaker" because it's more like just lining the songs up together instead of actually "mashing" the songs together.

Wow that's a lot of talk on something that's not even actually the performance kdjfhk

BACK TO IT.

Because their theme is a breakup and dealing with what comes after, I think their intro is incredibly strong. Like the others said in the episode itself, Bobby's opening shot captures attention immediately. I love that they used a sort of, older black and white movie set with and actual The End card. I think the kind of jazzy vibes go right with that opening shot, the set designer and costumer definitely knew what kind of image they were going for. The movie end card as well as the girl disappearing clearly defines the performance as a breakup illustration, and the mellow vibes perfectly fit the kind of nostalgia that Love Scenario talks about. For anyone who doesn't know, Love Scenario is actually a post-breakup song that reminisces on the good times they had in the relationship. Bobby's verse in particular mentions that it's good they cut it off when they did, even though it hurts.

I also want to mention that I love how individual Bobby is. It's clear in every performance that he's a quirky one and I'm really impressed how he carries it in each performance, because this performance requires more cohesion as a story and yet he still adds little flairs of his own to make the performance more engaging and also more representative of iKON's hip hop style.

Donghyuk's acting and dance sequence flows so well! It's smooth, tells a small story of how they were close but drifting apart and I think his flair with the trench coat works wonderfully as far as visual effects go. There's just something so satisfying about watching the coat go whoosh hehe

THE CHORUS!!! Yo this totally reminds me of like, old broadway in the 1920's. The gold lights, jazzy tone, even the trench coats which I believe are iconic of old movie detectives and gentlemen-esque figures. Kinda reminds me of like black and white detective movies? The thing is, even if you don't know exactly what the outfits and such remind you of, the fact that they invoke that memory is awesome. I love costume design specifically because you don't always have to be detail for detail. It's enough if you can invoke a specific image in the mind of the audience. Junhoe really rocks the look in particular.

The choreography is also very reminiscent of musical theater! Obviously all of kpop is coordinated to be group based and there's always been formations that are similar to what iKON did, however the slide and arms out movement is very much so a musical theater thing. The flashing hands thing is as well! They really nailed down the idea of musical theater, and I love that so much! It's a sort of genre bend you might not expect from kpop but iKON's out here showing you that it is possible.

I love the lighting sequence. The blue and purple are so good, and once again it just invokes that older musical theater style because even as there's color, there's also a lot of clear white/yellow light. Choosing just two colors can be really impactful as the fewer colors there are, the more concentrated the stage looks. Consider for example, Pentagon's Follow stage in RTK. Choosing to only go with gold light and then using other lights as accents really enhanced the theme as well as made the stage easier to follow. Humans are designed to track movement and flashing, so having fewer things to distract us means we focus more on iKON's performance and less on the entire set.

I'll skip to the transition here just because the rest of the muscial theater sequence is very similar to what I've already said.

The transition is a bit jarring if I'm being honest. I think the fact that everyone else reacted like ?! as well means that the transition isn't as smooth as it could have been, especially considering the next song is Killing me. I mean it's pretty straight forward story wise: you fall in love, you undergo the break up and you're hurt but you're happy that you loved. But then still you feel regret and pain because you broke up. I think what would've made this smoother was if DK had one more dance sequence with the female dancer from the beginning. If she walks away from him and then he falls to the floor and has that heartbeat moment, I think that would've helped ease into the next song much easier.

The fact that they end on the line You’re too precious to just leave in the past though is a good transition point. It then bleeds into how in Killing Me, the lingering memories stick deeply. So lyrically it makes a lot of sense. I just don't like how the arrangement just switches off so suddenly, from cheerful jazz to then a rain fall heart beat thing. There's just something missing in between, visually or auditorily.

Something I've noticed about iKON is that they really like using their arms. In Rhythm Ta (intro stage), this stage and later in Inception (Round 2), iKON always has a dance sequence that involves moving arms, kind of like snakes? But as trees? Tree branches as snakes? Yeah. But I literally adore this kind of consistency. It's really cool to watch especially because as the rounds go on, they do it with more people so like obv the 100 sec intro was just the members of iKON but then round 1 had more and then round 2 was literally so many people!! It creates such a cool visual effect! For this performance, I do wish the lighting wasn't as dark as it was. I think some flashing black light would've made this awesome but it's still cool as it is.

PLEASE THE DANCE BREAK IS SO CLEAN. The move where Yunhyeong moves his arms in a circle and the members mirror that (screen left goes from low to high while screen right goes from high to low) is really pleasing to see. I could already tell from the 100 sec intro performance but iKON is has really good bounce to their movement. They pull off the isolation and popping that everyone else does but they do it so smoothly.

I think part of what gives iKON their bounce and flow is that when they stop for a second, it's very clean. There's no extra wobbling that happens with others. And again I really do think their dedicating to using their arms in wide gestures helps contribute to that contrast, because when you go wide movement to stop to wide movement again, your eyes get tricked into thinking the stop is a lot smoother than it could actually be.

I already could tell from before but Donghyuk and Jinhwan really are amazing dancers. Donghyuk is a master of more technical aspects but Jinhwan is really elegant in his moves? That little body roll he does just before Chanwoo's part is so good.

Chanwoo's acting!! Specifically his lines go "Why did I meet her? / Why did I choose this break up?" And then the next part that they all sing in is "I loved her to death / The extinguished fire is burning up again" which makes the fire lighting up so much more obvious. I also think that the fire stand area kind of looks like a coffin so lighting it on fire is a way of mourning the relationship? It visually looks awesome and connects really well to the story line itself, especially since it's a very intense moment to a soft drop in the song. Contrast creates focus!!

And then we have the literally name brand stuff iKON is made out of: bouncing hip hop. It fits them so well, it really does!

Gosh okay I know iKON hasn't been ranking very high and on initial impact, they honestly rank about mid to low for me as well but the more I watch their performances, the more I recognize bits and pieces of artistry they put into their performances. I really start to think like, no wonder they have so many award winning songs. I'm not really sure if they're suited to the way that this competition show works? Because I think first impressions are everything, and although obviously the kingdom judges will understand the lyricism and view the set designs and such more clearly, iKON's performances are still better suited to being watched repeatedly. Their first impression is always good but curiously not enough as far as initial impact goes. It's kind of like it just sticks to you so you want to see it over and over again. Which is really not great for competition shows like this where first impression and impact are everything, which I get but also it lowkey sucks because you miss a lot of details and it sort of forces everyone into the highly impactful performances rather than nuanced ones.

I've mentioned this before but because Kingdom has so much more for set design, costumes, lighting, it can be really distracting from the groups themselves. I think iKON actually does really well with having "still" sets, in which they're the focus, but I feel like that leads to more people picking out their flaws? I dunno, I really like iKON's performances so much and yet I can't find it in my heart to rank them higher than 3rd at any given point. I do just think it's the style of competition.

STILL, it means so much that they stick to their own identity rather than conform to Kingdom's standards. And clearly as they rise through the ranks, more people are recognizing that. So iKON! Fighting!!

#admin talk #kingdom commentary #kingdom performance comments

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prettyboysdontlookatexplosions · 4 years

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Hi! Your dialogue has always been amazing, but it stood out to me even more in the latest chapter -- I think because we got to see Alice, and Eliot, AND Quentin, and new characters Luisa and the Selkie... If you feel like talking about it (no pressure), what's your process for this like? How do you nail characters' voices so well? They all come off as having different patterns of dialogue, tone, HOW they say whatever they're going to say.... I love it :D

omg anon this is such a flattering ask!!! i feel like this is an annoying thing to say but it does feel like i should mention up front that dialogue is probably the aspect of writing i do least consciously - like there are lines i could probably peel back and determine why i felt like writing them that way was right for a particular character, but i likely didn’t put any of that into words at the time. this is extra the case when doing something like writing fic for a television show - if there’s dialogue i’m basically always hearing the voices of the actors performing it, and that kind of steers what comes out. (one of the reasons the magicians is a lot of fun to write for is that the characters all have very distinct and well-defined voices; also i am lucky in that, as i have mentioned before, quentin and julia in particular are like the most demographically similar characters i’ve ever seen on screen to me and my oldest friends, so they especially feel very intuitive for me, haha.)

in terms of process, honestly a lot of scenes/fics start basically as more grown up versions of the daydreams i would have on long car rides as a kid where i’d make up a new episode of sailor moon in my head or whatever, and the narrative etc. fills in around that. one thing i’ve done differently in this series which particularly in the first part is so dialogue-heavy is that when i’ve had a scene really stuck in my head i’ve gone ahead and jotted it down as just a transcription of lines back and forth until i run out of steam, and then when i came to it in the actual drafting process i sort of tidied it up/built from there (a bunch of julia & quentin’s exchanges on the road, and most of the phone calls with eliot, started out that way). so that has been fun and part of a general effort to remind myself that you get to the good stuff by writing down whatever you think of on the way, and that part of it is really like playing, or daydreaming. and then for actually writing out a dialogue scene, my focus will be on like, getting everyone to say what i want them to say, more than on how it sounds, which kind of arises organically.

a couple other dialogue thoughts...

—my high school theater teacher told us once that actors doing an accent will sometimes ground themselves by picking key words/sounds to really get right, which is a principle that you can kind of apply to dialogue, too, either in terms of particular verbal tics, phrasings or constructions they tend to favor, the types of comparisons they make, etc.

—a weird amount of how i think about the world comes from high school theater, lmao... anyway my high school PLAYWRITING teacher once gave me some feedback on a scene which was that you can establish characters as people who swear a lot by having them swear a lot at the beginning, and then backing off and being more selective so your audience doesn’t get tired of/numb to it - the audience will still feel like the characters are swearing a lot, because they’ve decided the characters swear a lot so they sort of fill that in subconsciously, but the actual swearing can have more of an impact/be less cluttered. that’s not a universal rule ofc and for swearing in particular i don’t rly follow it for the magicians because the writers of the show clearly don’t either lmao, BUT - i think you can generalize this to, “if you’re clever about how you establish that something is normal, you can use way less of it than you might initially think you need to get the same effect.” i will for example sometimes go back if i’ve had a character say something paragraph length and take out a couple “likes” and other kind of naturalism-markers, because you don’t need to use them as much as people do in real life for the reader to feel like it’s realistic.

—kind of related to that, a while ago @yeats-infection said something like, “you’ll never be able to capture the full complexities of human speech on a page, so it’s better to choose how you’re stylizing and commit to it!” which is IMO great advice that i have been trying to really internalize. damage control in particular absolutely does not have “realistic” dialogue but it (hopefully at least! haha) scans as authentic / doesn’t pop as non-realistic because it’s all taking place in a story with a particular heightened, exaggerated, go-for-broke tone, so it feels real *within* the fabric of that universe. (wreck my days is kind of the opposite - a story with very sparse, almost colorless dialogue, where the characters say pretty much as little as i could get away with to tell the story, which works because it’s a story about silences papering over this churn of emotions behind them.)

—also related from that, i think a LOT, like a LOOOOT, about rob thomas once describing the dialogue on veronica mars as “how teenagers would talk if they had 24 hours to think about it”... first of all that’s a great description of the great dialogue on that great show... but second of all i feel like it points both to how much fun and liberty you can actually have while still being believable, AND what you need to do to make it work, which is the same thing you have to do for every other thing, namely: keep it rooted in character. this is to me the difference between rob thomas and someone like aaron sorkin or joss whedon — all three of them have created work with dialogue you could say is “artificially clever,” but in something like veronica mars, the dialogue all feels like the smartest and cleverest version of the specific character who is saying it, as opposed to the other dudes’ stuff, which often (to me at least!) feels like... generically clever, interchangeably clever, like any of a number of characters could say it. so like a huge part of my M. O. in writing damage control was absolutely like, “what is the meanest/funniest/most fucked up thing quentin could say in this moment,” and like, that works as an M. O. for that story because going to those extremes is, i mean, to be clear, extremely entertaining to me personally which is always my #1 reason for writing fanfiction and should be yours also, BUT, also, because leaning into those extremes is a way of illustrating how wildly disconnected quentin is from his own interiority, as well as being (particularly with eliot) one of the things he’s doing to try to feel slightly less dead inside. and also, it works because none of the things he says would really make sense or have the same effect coming from anyone else.... specificity is always the name of the game!

—related to that, it helps to listen closely to e.g. canon if you’re writing fic for a show, but it also helps to pay attention to authors whose dialogue you like to expand your toolbox for “tricking” the reader into feeling like what they’re reading is “natural.”

—two fic-specific things that are sort of peeves of mine, which, if they are not peeves if yours ignore this!!!! fic is for fun!!!! but: (1) no one on earth and no characters on the magicians use pet names with anywhere near the frequency of characters in fic especially not when they have such perfectly good affectionate and non-cheesy nicknames for each other in canon (2) i have read many a fic in my time (truly like across years and fandoms, this is not remotely magicians specific at all and in fact might even be less prominent here than i’ve usually seen) that was good and fun and well-written and well-characterized and the dialogue felt like the made-up people i knew and liked..... UNTIL it got to the sex scene and absolutely everything they said could have come from a porn dialogue generator. bonerkiller! obvs if you’re writing something where like the whole point is to write erotic content about [throws dart] quentin coldwater getting off on sucking dick while dressed as a french maid or whatever, i mean, ultimately as always do what serves the story! but if the sex scene is PART of a story rather than the whole point, imo it is sexier to have characters sound like themselves even if that means saying fewer very explicit things, or saying them more awkwardly or less “sexily,” than to go from zero to “want your huge cock in me baby, gonna fuck me so good” etc etc regardless of who’s boning. (i feel like this trend has died down a bit but there was a while where i felt like every sex scene in fic showed extreme arousal by having the characters too turned on to use the pronoun “i”... like a lot of “wanna suck your dick” “want you inside me” etc... possibly all of you are doing this in bed all the time and i am embarrassing myself by acting like it is not a universal symptom of acute horniness, but like really it struck me so odd to act like this happens every time people have sex that it started taking me out of the scene whenever i read it...)

#thank u for this anon it was an extremely fun way to procrastinate on writing this sleepy saturday afternoon #and also i feel like trying to actually think through this more than i usually do was helpful!#also i always feel like talking about this kind of thing #bc i like all writers am insanely narcissistic about writing and love getting permission to do so #askbox

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lucy-ghoul · 3 years

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Mikasa Ackermann, Levi Ackermann, Amane Misa, Aeron Greyjoy for the charactet ask :3

SOMEONE HEARD MY PRAYERS AND NOW MY TIME HAS COME, tysm!!!!! <3

okay, let's start with levi (my beloved):

hogwarts house: gryffindor (maybe....?) | slytherin | ravenclaw | hufflepuff

ugh, the hp sorting house system is way too reductive. he has qualities of gryffindor, slytherin, and hufflepuff - brave, astute, loyal to a fault, etc. so it's a hard choice. but if i really have to choose, i'd go for gryffindor. i know that his Bad Boy facade shouts slytherin, but while he has larger goals (killing all the titans, then saving the world etc.), he's got no actual ambition for himself. hufflepuff would also be a good option.

daemon (from the his dark materials series): (because i've just decided that's just way more accurate than the hp method) some kind of big feline. maybe a panther - a black panther would be the ideal - aloof, predatory, dangerous, fiercely independent.

best quality: besides his obvious strenghts as a leader and warrior, the way he cares for his comrades-in-arms. it's very hard to gain his trust and respect, but once you have it, it's forever. he's pragmatic and ruthless, yes, but he also has a huge capacity for compassion and friendship. not that he would be effusive about his affections, of course.

worst quality: none, he's absolutely perfect ❤ jklsdfhjk jokes aside, he really struggles to open up (a serious understatement), idt he ever talked about his traumatic past with anyone. i mean, maybe he mentioned it to hange and erwin (erwin knew him when he was still an undergound thug, so...), but... he's not great with feelings. despite his apathetic, intimidating mask, he feels and cares deeply, but he has a long history with losing the people he loves, so he tries to not personally care about his squadmates, which can be both a strenght and a weakness. of course, he spectacularly fails at this.

ship them with: well, it's not a secret that i'm a huge rivamika fan, this ship is almost literally consuming my waking thoughts lmao. imo they're perfectly compatible: very similar personalities (stoic, the strongest warriors, absolutely terrifying on the battlefield but with a soft underbelly), very similar pasts/experiences, so many parallels that it's actually ridiculous, etc. i love how they're both each other's equals and likeness (yes, i took it from jane eyre. no, i don't regret anything lmao). a lot of tropes i love, too: Terrible First Impression (the Pride and Prejudice vibes are so strong with these two, you have no idea), Kindred Spirits/Mirror Images, Veteran/Young Prodigy, The Last of Their Kind, even Height Difference lmao. i could write a whole rivamika manifesto, but this is already too long. (maybe for some other time 👀) i would've loved for their dynamic to be more explored in canon but alas, isayama clearly didn't give a shit about the ackerman legacy, he just used it as a plot shortcut to give them conveniently unique powers, since they never really talked about it 🙄 (and before some troll comes into my askbox shouting "you iNcEsT fReAk!!!!1!!", they're only very distantly related. we know shit about the ackermans but we know for sure that they've got at least several generations between them. biologically their shared DNA is 0%, obviously they don't see each other as family, all the eldians have a dead ass common ancestor from 2000 years ago so they're all basically ⁓related anyway. if you really wanna scream about i.ncest, go watch got/dark/the borgias and shut the fuck up please. or alternatively go outside and touch some grass) sorry for the rant, uh. anyway, i can also see levi/erwin. idk if i'd ever care enough to read a fic about them (i'm usually a huge multishipper, but for some weird reason not when it comes to rivamika? same with braime and kastle tbh), but still, i can see it.

brotp them with: hange and erwin, obv. veteran trio >>> ema trio, sorry not sorry (at least h. and e. died before yams had the chance to ruin their character arcs)

needs to stay away from: ...uh, filth, i guess? lmao

misc. thoughts: besides the stupid teenage fangirl crush i have on him, i'm genuinely fascinated by the man himself. he's a huge mess of a contradictions, and yet somehow it works: he's violent and brash and kind of an asshole, but also has a strong moral code and integrity; he's obv very skilled at all the killing/torturing stuff and yet he has a huge respect for life; he's got a potty mouth to say the least, and yet some very aristocratic manners/tastes (the way he sits, his preference for tea and usually refined clothes); he comes from what's supposed to be an illustrous bloodline, he's methodical and very precise, and yet he was born and raised in the underground, he's been used to filth and blood and poverty since he was a child, kenny of all people was his father figure, and probably has known no other life than a perennial survival mode existence. he's "humanity's strongest soldier", but while well-built he's also small, the david to the titans' goliah, and probably not what people would assume a born warrior looks like. he's also one of the few characters who stayed true to himself and his original characterization until the end, bless you smol king ❤

(okay, this is getting long!)

mikasa:

hogwarts house: gryffindor | slytherin | ravenclaw | hufflepuff

this is actually easy: mikasa belongs to hufflepuff and no, i won't take criticism (just joking lol). enough with this "hufflepuffs are fluffy puppies/Cinnamon Rolls <3" thing: mikasa values loyalty and duty more than anything else. she's also hardworking... and fierce, strong, lethal. yes, hufflepuff and lethal are not mutually exclusive concepts.

daemon: (finally the better option) a she-wolf, fiercely protective of her pack.

best quality: loyal, brave, incredibly strong (alongside her more fragile qualities). practical and level-headed on the battlefield, at least when eren is not included in the picture.

worst quality: struggles to let go of the past (understandable, considering her trauma). tunnel-vision when it comes to eren, obv. extreme levels of delusions ("if only i spoke openly about my romantic feelings for him - as if i didn't made them abundantly clear in ⁓6 years - he wouldn't kill 80% of humanity :(((" lmao okay. just. okay), but that's more on the writing. she's sadly more static than any other main character throughtout the whole series.

ship them with: see above :) but recently i've also started to be intrigued by mikasa/annie and mikasa/sasha. also, i'm sympathetic to jeankasa fans, though i don't actually care for the ship.

brotp them with: EMA trio, especially armin+mikasa. their friendship is so beautiful and special. also sasha.

needs to stay away from: ...... eren, at least romantically. again, that's more on the writing than anything else, but e.remika unfortunately encompasses many tropes i loathe with all the strength of my old shriveled heart: childhood friends-to lovers where the (male) childhood friend doesn't acknolewdge/is completely indifferent to the other (female) friend's romantic feelings, she hopelessly pines for him for years without anything more than a cold shoulder... until in the last chapter it's revealed that he loved her all along and doesn't "want other men to have her!!! :((" (then why did you have no reaction whatsoever to jean's years-long crush on her while she was jealous of any vaguely female-shaped human being you were friendly to, including hange? are you that dumb, man?); the female character's development and entire arc 100% revolves around the male protagonist - she has no goals, no dreams of her own except staying with him forever and ever; the romance is based on an idealized childhood dream, therefore reaffirming those childish illusions would make the character regress, not actually grow up (and nope, epilogue!jk doesn’t count; that also lacks build-up - i would’ve said the same about rm as well, so it’s not about shipping, guys, it really isn’t - and mikasa needed an inner change; getting married to another man but still praying to eren’s shrine is not substitute to actual development lol). post-time skip she's never really frustrated/angry with him, they never get a confrontation about him becoming a, y'know, mass-murderer of gigantic (pun intended) proportions; she puts him on a pedestal, and never stops idealizing him/never sees him for what he actually is (the narrative framing him as some kind of tragic martyr/saint eren from paradis with zero agency and basically... no clear motivation for the abovementioned mass murder, and not the actual complex tragic anti-hero/villain motivated by revenge and righteous fury he deserved to be, does not help). it lacks a good or even decent build-up - it's basically all tell and not show. now, if they'd actually been childhood friends to enemies to lovers/mutually co-dependent... it could have been interesting. sadly, it's not my cup of tea. of course this is just my personal preference, no hard feelings to the shippers.

misc. thoughts: enormous potential. she's been my fav female character since s1 - and ah, i miss s1!mikasa, when she had actually other stuff to do besides mothering eren. i love that she's the strongest warrior (second only to levi, obv), that her skills are never called into questions despite her gender, i love how she stands up for herself and the people she loves, that she may seem cold and stoic and yet has a such a huge heart, that she's not perfect but also sometimes awe-inspiring. sadly, she never really gets out of eren's shadow; what she lacks is an arc focused on herself. that's why imo getting deeper into the ackerman lore would've helped (also, you cannot make the main female character and the most popular male character descend from the same Unique Bloodline or whatever, and never really make them acknowledge it out loud; as a writer, you just can't lol). my spite is so strong that i'm currently writing a ridiculously pretentious fic that's 70% development for her character, to give her a voice, and 30% ackerthirsting. (yes, that's the fic i'm always vagueblogging about lmao, rip @ my brain). if any other rivamika fan is interested… mind you, it’s in italian tho, and idt i have the skills to translate into english.

misa:

hogwarts house: gryffindor | slytherin | ravenclaw | hufflepuff

daemon: mmh, maybe some kind of butterfly? beautiful, colorful, and short-lived.

best quality: glorious fashion sense, more inventive and ingenious than fans actually give her credit for.

worst quality: shallow, impulsive, and obv her dependence on/obsession with light (which stems from trauma btw, but still… the very opposite of a relationship between equals).

ship them with: rem, kinda (monster/human ftw!). also weirdly enough mogi, a little bit? she deserves someone who actually respects her… though she’s far from being a perfect angel. she may actually be crazier than light on some aspects. but in this house we stan evil ladies anyway, so i have no problem with that <3

brotp them with: uh, idk, maybe matsuda?

needs to stay away from: obv light. also takada.

misc. thoughts: a tragic victim of sexist writing. she may be… unhinged to say the least, but she didn’t deserve the abuse she got from light (and from the fans). the female characters’ writing in dn is so bad that idk if it’s on purpose, to kinda mirror the reality of women in a patriarchal society (dependent on men, housewives whose life entirely revolves around their husband/boyfriend etc.), or just casual misogyny lol. it’s even more baffling since we don’t know the author’s gender (they may be a man, a woman, nb, anything really). i tend for the latter option tho.

aegon greyjoy (now, i wasn’t expecting him lol):

hogwarts house: gryffindor | slytherin | ravenclaw | hufflepuff

i’m so sorry, i haven’t the slightest idea lmao. maybe gryffindor? mind you, it’s been a long time since i’ve re-read the books, so i don’t have many thoughts about him.

daemon: maybe it’s cliché, but some kind of fish/squid lmao

best quality: ugh, i really can’t remember much from his chapters :(( he’s not a coward, i guess? (lame answer, sorry!)

worst quality: definitely his religious fanaticism.

ship them with: no one.

brotp them with: uh… his family, ig? except euron.

needs to stay away from: obv euron. brr ://

misc. thoughts: i genuinely like the greyjoys chapters, though i vastly prefer the martells (with the exception of theon and asha, bcs i love them). yes, they’re deranged. yes, victarion is… well, victarion lol. but the drowned god religion is actually interesting, grrm knows how to write trauma - every time aeron mentions euron and that freaking door i’m like… :// - and the tragedy of it all… just great writing all around.

okay, that’s the end lmao. thank you so much, love!!! ❤❤

#1 #2 #3 #4 #5 #asks #cafeleningrad #if *anyone* dares to start stupid wank on my super niche blog they'll be blocked on sight i'm warning you #snk salt

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hoardlikegoldenirises · 4 years

Photo

johnnywyatt wedding outfits cause i... have NO self control. and just do things. for fun. just because i enjoy them. technically for a fic but it’s not done yet so i can’t link that.

i’d like to, in theory, draw an actual illustration with this but i like to design things so that’s what i did instead. maybe in the future.

post on twitter: link

re: beadwork:

transcription of what the jewelry detail image says:

“I think it would be nice if Wyatt had a collar stud mounted with some beadwork, as a small thing. BUT. I'm white. And it's really not my place to try to design something like that, with visual language I don't understand and lack the cultural context for.”

idk that i have anything more to add, really, but i want to include some links to some actual Indigenous artists/info about finding them--

profiles of beadwork artists: https://www.vogue.com/vogueworld/article/indigenous-beadwork-instagram-artists-jewelry-accessories

a contemporary beader/jeweler: http://dorlah.tripod.com/index.html

and Beyond Buckskin's list of Native-run businesses: http://www.beyondbuckskin.com/p/buy-native.html

I have..... words.... about all the rest.

So have a readmore for all my words:

As far as everything else

Here’s my notes on some of that:

(my condolences if readmores don’t work for you)

For the outfits overall, I wanted them to be a little less... well, boring, for one. I didn’t want to go with simply the traditional tuxedo style so I looked for different kinds of shirts and jackets I could use that were a little less typical but still suitable--though overall this does make them less formal, especially the lack of bowties.

This works for me cause I was also considering a less formal wedding--still nice and fancy but not like... church-going. not white tie. Not even a huge event. Friends and family, you know?

I’m also just a fan of upright collars. Which I’m sure is tooootally not obvious to anyone who’s seen a lot of my outfit designs through the years.

I liked Wyatt in all-white. I dunno why. I just thought it worked. That’s very classic but still a little bold. Johnny... I am not sure if I can explain why I ended up choosing the dark colors or the blue velvet... but I like it. The silk lining is SUPPOSEDLY Liberty London but I’m not sure how true that is--it’s from a random Etsy listing that’s actually for a pocket square. lol.

Shoes... shoes.... I just love drawing shoes and I like outfits where the shoes pop. So I went. a little ham. wyatt’s are based on a pair of red leather men’s boots I found on google.. with some modifications so they aren’t just the same as the pair I found--I used a few different references including western and cowboy boots. these red things were the main inspiration though--

For Johnny’s shoes I also used severa different references--mostly women’s Chelsea boots, wanting to retain some of the cowboy boot influence (idk WHY i just thought it was fun and he’s worn cowboy boots a few times), but also a fire-themed pair of suede Louboutin high heels, which is where I got the overall color scheme from--

yes i do collage my refs

as far as jewelry and accessories-- like I said I didn’t feel comfortable trying to design a beadwork collar pin for Wyatt but ideally he would have that small bit of his culture.

in the WIP fic johnny proposes For Real (after already planning some) with a leather bracelet w/ infinity charm--as you can see. I just thought it was romantic and suited Wyatt’s overall very masculine sense of style... a sparkly diamond ring didn’t seem like the right choice to me, and I kind of wanted them to have the same number of rings.

Tye mentioned the possibility of Johnny having a matching bracelet too which I had NOT thought of since Wyatt’s return gift was a little less concrete, but it is very cute to think about...

YES johnny is wearing diamond stud earrings. I just think it’s cute.

The cuff links were really just me saving a few varieties of cuff links and seeing what I liked.... just noodling around. I knew I wanted red enamel and I initially wanted some kind of pave diamond settings but I spent so long between saving refs and actually drawing this that I forgot my original idea XD So I just made up a new one. Arguably it fits some of the theming with the wedding rings BECAUSE

the wedding rings are shooting star themed.

i know, it’s corny. call me a cornivore.

moreso i originally wanted to work the infinity into both of their rings but I ended up dropping that mostly.

I saved a lot of pictures of various shooting star and comet themed rings--comet rings are actually an existing style and I looked at those a lot and at various shapes and tried to come up with something that evoked some of those but uh without like. stealing a specific design. I think I managed?

(you can also see peeks at designs for wyatt’s dad’s wedding ring where i decided on the simple 2 diamond band)

Wyatt’s was kind of hard for me to design at first.... though I def wanted some kind of art deco style for some reason? maybe just saw a ring and went, damn that’s cool. but i wanted it to retain the shooting star motif--it went through a few versions trying to work that in until I finished designing Johnny’s and realized something and just simplified Wyatt’s down a lot and let the motif be in the fact that it matched and also had sparkly stones.

As far as material, me and Tye had several entire conversations about heatproof jewelry (for johnny obvs) and i decided no stones, and on using ceramic... I also spent a bit of time looking up jewelry stuff and metal types and eventually settled on black colored titanium carbide (ceramic) for Johnny and on black zirconium for Wyatt, since his doesn’t need to be fireproof. Wyatt's ring has a fire opal (LISTEN. romance.) and gold + diamonds from father's ring (the band with diamonds) and...

I did it so that even without a stone Johnny’s still was faceted to match the opal on Wyatt’s..... yes.... i know...... i amaze me too.

I’m not actually sure if the process to make the metal black (assuming it’s not naturally black?) would hold under extreme heat but I figure re-blackening is less of an ordeal than like.... making an entire new ring. not that even ceramic would hold up if he went nova, but... that is truly asking a lot lmfaooo he can just put it in a special unstable molecule pouch or something. before he, you know, uses his emergency ultra-huge explosion power. yeah, ring would be the least important in any situation where he burns hot enough to destroy... *squints*... a material used on spacecraft for heat shielding.

that’s def a ring that has to be very precisely and carefully made.

....

anyway.

i think... that’s everything..... very long post...... if you read it.... congrats? i’ll probably add a fic link to this post when i actually finish it, not for another month at least tho lol

maybe someday i will get around to drawing an actual drawing using these outfits.

#johnnywyatt #arghdesign #nadiart #johnny storm #wyatt wingfoot #fanadiart #fantastic four

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viktcrr-archive · 4 years

Text

MAXENCE DANET FAUVEL / NONBINARY. — viktor samuels is really making a name for themselves as a tier 3 shepherd. i think that he/they are studying english + visual arts in their senior year at lockwood, living in peregrinis. originally from rochester, new york, viktor is known to be observant & ingenious, but can also be reticent & dependent. — james / 20 / est / she/they.

3/5 !!! once again ... little edits

TW DEATH, HEAVY GRIEF, OVERDOSE / DRUG ADDICTION, HOSPITALIZATION, HYPERSEXUALITY, RELIGION MENTIONS, MENTAL ILLNESS

a e s t h e t i c s

old tvs and their static, worn tapes, horror movie screams, spilled ink, a sculptor’s hands, clay-stained, chicken scratch handwriting, messy notes, messy hair, scoffs and eye-rolls, bruised knuckles, sore throats, funeral homes and a crying preacher, shattered ceramics, knife fights, high ledges, vertically-striped pants, red lights, the moon shrouded in clouds, cigarette butts.

general info !!

full name: viktor phillip samuels

nickname(s): icky vicky :/

b.o.d. - jan 2nd

label(s): the black hole, the crepehanger, the impious, the opaque, the tempest, etc.

height: 6′0″

hometown: rochester, new york

sexuality: uuuhhh god … probably pan tbh

stats

biography !!

okay so … born and raised in rochester, new york to the well known samuels family. preacher father, a mother, a twin sister born 15 minutes before him - aka tatiana samuels, who died back in january.

kinda … grew up as a really awkward, quiet kid? like … just didn’t really interact with other kids super well, preferred being alone and like … digging up bugs in the dirt. only friend was like … his own sister.

grew out of this as they got older, instead sort of … becoming a bit of a dick? to compensate for years of awkwardness? will bite the hand that feeds him. was a full on nuisance by middle school. tatiana was not, at least, noticeably.

has always been a fan of darker materials, y’know - grim and creepy, morbid shit. big fan of tim burton ever since he was a kid, which isn’t … a good look for a preacher’s son, but he’s never really felt ~in~ with the rest of his family, anyway.

drew disturbing pictures as a kid probably tbh that prompted one or two or five phone calls home 2 assure everything was fine.

has always been really … good at art, in general - from drawing to painting to playing with clay, that’s always been viktor’s Thing.

aNyWaYs. being tatiana’s twin brother was kinda hard sometimes. tatiana and him were near opposites besides their same mean-spirited trait. she was better in the public than he was, but viktor was arguably more talented than tatiana. they both loved each other deeply and found each other as competition for their parents’ attention - a rivalry, of sorts.

high school is when viktor really started to act out - started extreme, like losing his virginity in their church and vandalism around the neighborhoods. faked being possessed in the middle of sunday service. almost had an exorcism performed on him, probably.

the only redeemable trait was like … his sheer talent with art. was in a 3d art AP course, specialized in sculpting - could pretty much create anything he wanted with enough dedication.

because his parents would be focused on disciplining him for his antics, tatiana could sneak away and get away with stuff easier. so like, y’know, that’s on the bright-side of things.

never been particularly motivated to do much - wasn’t planning on attending lockwood but his parents kinda … did and sent in his application for him b/c they were Not on board with him Wasting Away (wanted him out of the house asap)

actually pretty smart !! just doesn’t like … want to apply himself ever. double majoring in english and visual arts because they’re like … two of his only interests :/ plus he wants to write and illustrate his own series of children books with a style similar to tim burton’s

he’d been experimenting since high school but college is where he really started to like … crack down on himself and figure himself out. was out as pan & nonbinary by his sophomore year of college, just … not to his family, necessarily. thinks tatiana always knew, but didn’t … really use it against him, blessedly enough

always felt like the whole twin - connection thing was … both wack and also not-wack? sometimes it felt believable but sometimes he had no idea what was going on in tatiana’s head. but he felt oddly transparent to her, always - like he was predictable to no one but her.

( TW DEATH, GRIEF, OVERDOSE / HOSPITALIZATION BEYOND THIS POINT )

but when tatiana disappeared - it was like, like viktor knew. the moment she had been kidnapped - felt something deeply wrong in his gut. and when tatiana died - viktor felt something cut so severely in him. he knew, he always knew exactly when. he couldn’t put his finger on how - but he knew. even when everybody else held out hope for her to be found - he knew.

went on a bender around the same time, had always struggled w/ drug addiction but it got worse the longer tatiana went without being found.

( also struggled heavily with his mental health, too ?? has manic and depressive episodes. will fixate on a sculpting project for six months and then purposely knock it off the table and destroy it in the matter of seconds once it’s finished for. no fucking reason. impulse spends A Lot. )

when her body was found, viktor went off the rails. ended up overdosing and being hospitalized where he spent the next like … however long months … until they deemed him better.

stayed out of school until very recently b/c he just … didn’t want to go back. didn’t want to deal with it. didn’t want to be known as the dead girl’s twin. but then his mom kinda just was like ‘u go back 2 school or god so help me’ n he was like FINE.

so ya !! viktor’s back after being gone since tatiana’s body was found. that’s it, that’s him, a lil glimpse of his life.

trying to finish his senior year b/c he … obviously left before he could.

finding out that it was george who killed tatiana has ultimately ... caused viktor to spiral. his lows are some of his lowest, his highs are ... very high, but very bad. unstable & unpredictable in his actions it’s ... a whole thing :/

personality !!

the human embodiment of a gremlin, fed after midnight. a goblin, if u will. one of those cats with a narrow head and big ass ears. that’s him.

b i g horror & halloween enthusiast. loves the old campy horror movies. probably has an abundance of masks from different movies. dresses like a grimy millennial beetlejuice more than he should. love those vertically striped pants!

fashion alternates between e-boy (would b tik tok famous if he were like … 17), millennial beetlejuice, and like … goth in a crop top and sweatpants. big fan of crop tops. big fan of sweatpants.

he can be fucking mean. petty, aggressive, instigator. will literally spit in ur face or no reason. kind of person who’ll stick his gum into other ppl’s hair. other than that he’s like … pretty okay. he’s not always mean, he’s just a dick like … 70% of the time lmao

i mean yeah okay he’ll call someone a stinky bitch for no reason except He Feels Like It And Believes It. it’s fine he’s fine, we’re fine.

despite the fact tht he’s probably getting into fights whenever - considers himself 2 be a lover n not a fighter but that’s just because he Fucks a lot. kind of uses it like a coping mechanism, like he’s this big fancy carnival show that’s like ‘come one, come all! fuck the dead girl’s twin brother!’ may have a problem w/ hypersexuality but it’s nothing he’s fully. aware of.

the preacher’s whore son, basically

like i said he’s pan & nb, switches between he and they pronouns but like … he has such a fragile grip on his identity that u could call him ‘dog-faced bitch’ and he’d turn like hey wassup :)

vastly impulsive, like i’ve mentioned … destroys his own creations 4 the fun of it, spends all his money on useless shit, will cheat on someone bc he feels like it. screams into the night sky frequently, like a cat in heat.

i mean he also creates useless shit for no reason too. spent six months sculpting a hollowed out tree the size of him and then took a sledgehammer to it.

dramatic fuck. used to play the organ at the church like … when no one was looking after him and service was about to start. just these creepy as melodies. would do the same thing at home on his keyboard w/ the organ setting whenever he got grounded until his parents took away his keyboard sadjfkg

won’t talk about his time away b/c it’s not rly anybody’s business but ofc nothing is sacred to the watershed app, y’know, nothing’s private.

still like - he absolutely refuses to talk about tatiana’s death and like, his mental health or his addiction (he’s fallen back into it tbh but it hasn’t gotten bad again … yet) or like … anything involving his own emotions

will literally just change the topic! abruptly, no warning, asks about the jonas brothers instead.

that being said he’s obsessed with tatiana’s death. tatiana was very much a rock for him, kinda dependent on her in a way? just … being there, y’know, kept him grounded.

so he obv became a shepherd bc he wants to know Everything there is abt the app, wants to be deep inside it, wanted to know Who Exactly Killed Tatiana and like … not saying he wants 2 commit murder but :/ yknow. he’s very upset.

emotionally unavailable while also like crying twice a day.

will tell you straight up what he wants from you, no bullshit, no beating around the bush - just blunt. if he wants to just fuck, nothing else, then that’s that. if he feels deviation he’ll ghost in like. less than a second. kinda awful like that! feels no shame.

but like … also is emotional ?? as shit ?? it’s confusing. he’ll cry on a whim and then flip u off if u try to console him or like. ask him anything. will bite you.

he goes to therapy but he generally fucks around and wastes most of the time until the therapist threatens to like … idk what therapists r allowed to threaten. to send him off to another therapist? idk.

likes being intimidating but like … not with his body or nothing ‘cos he’s a TWIG, but like … uses his love for horror n creepy shit to his advantage. has an abundance of fake blood. has channeled the energy of jack nicholson and used it on tatiana’s boyfriends before.

( also a big fan of sfx makeup, has dabbled in it)

probably chases kids with a chainsaw (w/o the like … chain … or w/e … so it’s not actually Dangerous) around halloween

he’s generally never doing good, both mental health wise and morally.

would probably steal candy from a baby for the fun of it.

i don’t know if there’s a good to him, deep down, and i don’t know if he sees any issues with himself either !! nothing really breaks through to him anymore, the only person who ever really made him stop and Think about his actions was tatiana.

kinda introverted, recluse type who doesn’t rly like most people or going out, but he’ll go to parties if it means he’ll be high as shit.

pretty observant. likes to analyze people even though he’s probably not … fully right.

connections to the victims !!

tatiana samuels / his twin sister, other half - the only one able to control viktor.

george craig iii / close family friends ... they could appreciate each other, when viktor wasn’t being an outright asshole.

hana williams / ‘friends’ with benefits, their relationship was rocky at best but she was a good lay. have often fought due to their clash in personalities and viktor’s history with christoph.

christoph wainwright / an ex-hook up, an infrequent occasion whenever christoph wanted to tick off hana. viktor was often on board, never the one to consider others’ feelings.

wanted connections !!

he lives alone currently but like … ex - roommates where viktor was just. a nightmare to live with.

feel like a lot of enemies is also a possibility !! viktor’s messy.

people that like … knew tatiana. dated tatiana, even, and viktor would pretty much try to intimidate / scare them at any given chance :/

close friends of tatiana too

people who hated tatiana but liked viktor. people who hated viktor but liked tatiana

people who take pity on him and he Hates it viciously and vocally.

a band of hooligan gremlin kids who do drugs and fuck shit up around town like they’re edgy teenagers even though they’re all early to mid 20s.

the girl he lost his virginity 2 in high school lmao … a distant memory

fellow rochester locals, from church or school or whatever

exes from the past !! good terms and bad terms, but i love bad terms a whole lot mainly b/c viktor’s a jackass.

don’t know if he’s soft towards anybody but we can try. we can Try.

friends, old friends, new friends, bad friends, good friends, close friends, frenemies, etc. etc. all of it

hookups !! so many hookups. fwbs, one night stands, whatever.

uuhhhh god. i don’t know. im so sleepy rn. people in the same major or similar majors.

maybe a ride or die.

people he’s a bad influence on / an enabler towards / all around toxic for them / each other.

people he’s fought !! people who’ve seen him get into random fights and were like ‘uh wtf’

fellow shepherds !!

literally anything im not picky.

#wshintro #grief tw #death tw #overdose tw #addiction tw #hospitalization tw #hypersexuality tw #religion mention #mental illness tw

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untilthenextencore · 5 years

Text

Kashmir Pt. 5 - The Mists Are Breaking~...

Written with @where-the-hot-springs-blow

Forever editing as usual~

Enjoy~!

...

Charissa studied Jimmy as Jimmy came closer & draped an arm around her leading her to the window where she took in the magnificent views they were then afforded after the onslaught Mother Nature had previously bestowed. Noting how he was losing himself to his thoughts, instead of answering his questions she only had a simple remark about the surprisingly tranquil post-storm scene before them. "It's so calm." There was a tiny crack near the hinge of the window through which she could smell the cool damp night outside. The night blooming jasmine coloring the breeze as it slipped through the crack & seemed to color her thoughts a hazy lavender shade similar to the mists shadowing the rich velvet night sky accented by the impossibly bright milky moon & stars above.

The breeze - however small - was strong enough to ruffle a few pages of Heston's book, causing Charissa to turn away from him & remove herself from his grasp with a gasp. "Oh! Your book!" She reached out to still the pages, palm splaying flat on them just as the breeze stilled.

Gazing down at the book now she noticed the title of the page now read "Amulets, Talismans & Charms". It featured detailed images of all kinds of little tools, jewelry like pendants & other jewels and the powers associated with them. She glanced at the list of jewels noticing that among them was listed one of her favorites, star sapphire. It was considered to be amongst the strongest of all, containing a bit of all the rest. Listed as being "All Element". Rather than just "Earth", "Air", "Fire", "Water", "Light" or "Lightning / Electricity". Her fingers toyed with a thin chain around her neck which held just such a star sapphire, though in all the havoc it had turned around & was then resting between her shoulder blades & underneath her hair.

"Hmmm... "All Element"..." She mused, before asking a question to no one in particular. "Guess I have good taste then, huh?" Giggling softly as she tried to lighten the mood which to her had gotten almost as heavy as the air outside.

She then noticed the moonlight flickering off of something to her left. Something on Heston's person. Turning her gaze to him she saw the glint coming from a jeweled pendant in his grasp that glittered from the cracks between his fingers. It looked so familiar, double checking the page beneath her fingertips she saw the reason why.

"Hey, your pendant looks just like the one in the picture here!" She tapped her finger on the illustrated figure image towards the margin of the page. Laughing she turned back to regard him with an incredulous grin at the coincidence when upon second glance & further inspection of the pendant she gasped. "Oh! Is that a star sapphire too? I just love those! Do you? I suppose it must seem cliche due to my name & all but I can't help it!"

Charissa then shifted the cloak to adjust her necklace, bringing the star sapphire back around, lifting it up slightly to where it glittered in the moonlight as well.

"I just bought this at a small shop not too long ago... I saw it in a display & kept doubling back... It was like I couldn't leave it alone... I couldn't leave the store without it... Like it was calling me... I had to have it... Even though I'm not usually that way about jewelry most times... This time was different... I had to have it... I had to buy it... I had to get it... To have it in my possession... I just had to... I don't know why..." She smiled before releasing the pendant to where it now laid just below her collarbones, still glittering, nodding towards the pendant in his grasp.

"Was it the same with you, Lord Heston? With that..." Then after another gasp that came as she regarded the glittering finery on both his hands. "Oh! And your rings too?"

...

Heston moved to where she stood by his book, placing one hand over hers atop the pages. With his other hand, he easily unpinned the pendant from his coat & laid it down beside their hands.

It was an golden, oval-shaped pendant with a stylised, multipointed star engraved upon it. At the tip of each star was a glittering star sapphire, shining brilliantly even in the dim light.

He fought the urge to turn it over, to reveal the portrait of her former self painted on the back of it, sternly telling himself that she must be the one to do it, that she must be the one to make the choice to touch it. Any less would have been him forcing his desires onto her, which he would have chosen death before doing. His beloved Starbright was sanctified to him, above even his own basest desires.

Instead he reached out & touched her own pendant, examining it closely, forcing himself to ignore the alternating chills & heat running throughout his body at the mere touch of it. It was so familiar, so beautiful...

His chest tightened further at the sight of it.

He'd not seen it in ages... Not since one of his more vivid visions of Starbright after her death where he pleaded for her to return & she promised that she would & she would bring with her a sign or signs if he so wished, proving it was indeed her. The pendant went missing from his collection very shortly after. No fingerprints were left nor was anything else disturbed in such a way as to lead Heston to believe either thievery was afoot or that it was just some sick prank. Everything was as he left it. And even when he turned every last house of his upside down, there was no sign of it.

It was gone.

His only comfort at the mysterious pendant's loss being that perhaps it would reappear one day as part of his beloved's promised signs.

And here it was, now around the neck of a young woman who bore a striking resemblance to his dear, departed beloved but who apparently had no knowledge of him or the Order he & his beloved once belonged to, nor any memories of it whatsoever. Heston was nearly a wreck. Yet somehow he still managed to find his tongue enough to reply.

"It suits you, Charissa. Hardly a cliche at all. I would think the real cliche would be if you hated star sapphires because of your name."

He could not help but smile, letting himself speak from the heart as much as he dared at such a delicate moment.

"It sounds as though you were made for this pendant. Or... Was it made for you?"

He gazed down at his hand over hers, his long fingers, surprisingly roughened & callused from early years of his initiate training, to the ring on his finger. He could see her eyes following its sparkle as well, looking completely fascinated by it.

"This ring... It once belonged to a very important person to me. I have worn it ever since she left me, hoping it would perhaps draw us back together. It is one of my most cherished talismans."

He allowed to see the matching one upon his left hand, the golden band engraved with his initials & titles.

...

Charissa looked down to their hands where they now joined, his over hers. She turned her hand to take his, bringing it up for closer inspection. The sight of the oval ring set of a similar urge within her. But it was a small spark as opposed to the raging firelike urge to possess the pendant she now wore. It had potential to grow but was tempered by the endearing, affectionate words he spoke about it & its meaning to him.

"It's gorgeous." As she spoke those simple words, the urge grew stronger, the spark growing into a flame. Her words seemed to vaguely echo in her head as a low hum started in the background.

Perhaps it was just in her head... Perhaps the echo was just a trick her ears were playing on her... Or they were popping... Perhaps the hum was just the house settling... Or the wind picking up outside...

Yeah, that's it...

Perhaps...

Perhaps the fact that her head was now feeling as if it were humming was also a trick her body was playing on her...

Or her mind...

Yeah, that's it...

Perhaps...

Still...

She couldn't shake the feeling that she was supposed to remember something just then...

Something...

Or someone...

It rang a bell deep within her...

Far off in the distance...

Perhaps that bell ringing was what that persistent hum was?...

Yeah, that's it...

Perhaps...

Blinking out of the daze that she felt she was in, shaking her head to shake out of it she let his hand slip from hers to pick up the pendant.

"And this..." At first contact the buzz grew louder, the bell ringing harder. She ran her thumb over the star, feeling as if lightning were striking within her head. As if that were what was ringing the bell.

"This... This... This... This is..." She stumbled slightly, the lightning flashes, bell ringing & buzzing staggering her.

She turned slightly away from Jimmy, facing the desk. Her right hand came down to splay on the desk - on the grimoire - to steady herself. Her fingers making contact with both the grimoire's teachings about star sapphires and his star sapphire pendant hit her like another bolt of lightning, making her draw in a shaky gasping breath, stumbling once more before righting herself, trying her best to blink & shake out of her sudden affliction once more, turning her attention back to the pendant, hushing.

"This is... Stunning..."

As those words left her lips she flipped the pendant over to the painted portrait on the back. Another sharp intake of breath coupled with a few more rapid fire blinks as she tried her best to focus, to clear her vision even though through the lightning flashes, the buzzing, the bells ringing & the heavy lavender tinged mists - like the heavy, late evening mists that still lingered outside, lavender tinged against the star studded & moonlit black velvet sky - she felt enveloping her all the more, she knew that she was seeing perfectly clear. She could tell as much by the familiar sight of Jimmy's ring on the left ring finger of the woman in the painting.

But still she couldn't wrap her mind around the image of the woman who wore that ring that now encircled Jimmy's third finger on his right hand. And so the obvious question came as she motioned to the woman wearing Jimmy's treasured ring clad in a dreamy, frothy, diaphonous periwinkle blue creation with what Charissa noticed to be another familiar piece of star sapphire jewelry.

"Lord Heston..." She hushed in a shaky voice amid even shakier breaths. "Lord Heston... Who is this woman? Who... Who is she? And why... If... If I may ask... Why... Does she have your ring?... Even my pendant... Seems... Seems to resemble hers..." She then gave another small, incredulous - if a bit weak and equally shaky - laugh. "How funny..."

...

She was remembering more now! He could almost scent the memories racing back into her mind, the confusion & disconnect between both lives clear in her eyes, & upon her face.

Ever the gentleman, his hands moved to her shoulders to steady her, give her a safe place to lean upon as she remembered.

"She is my beloved, my ageless, powerful Lady Starbright. This ring was hers, matched to mine, cut from the same pieces of gold & star sapphire. They are linked, as she and I are. As powerful as I am alone, with her we are twice that. She is twin of my heart. I have loved no woman quite like her ever since.

And yes, my girl, the two of you wear a strikingly similar pendant. You have a keen eye to notice it, don’t you think?"

Steadying Charissa, he led her to a sofa by the fire, all leather & velvets. Boldly, but with the greatest of gentility, he unwrapped her cape, exposing her only to the fire, rather than his eyes. Taking her hand in his, he kissed it again.

"You seem a bit fogged, Charissa. Please sit down, let your dress dry completely. You seem a touch feverish suddenly."

...

Charissa leant back into him, nearly melting with relief at his strong reassuring presence. She put up no fight as he led her to the sofa, nor when he removed her cloak, only leaning further into his embrace, head resting in the crook of his shoulder. She smiled weakly at the feel of his lips on her hand. Studying his fingers she gave a soft laugh, speaking in a soft voice that still seemed to echo to her. Was it only in her head?

"Have you not been sketching anything as of late, Heston? Nor painting? Shame. Almost never have I known these hands to be without at least a smudge of charcoal or a touch of paint."

Her gaze then lifted to regard his face, watching how the firelight & shadows danced upon his visage. Light and shade. Again she laughed softly & spoke in that same echoing voice.

"I almost wonder as to what you have been doing all this time, Heston? Apart from your usual frightening poor defenseless maidens as has been your reputation. I see nothing has changed except for your tactics. A hermit now, Heston? Roping the Hermit into it too now, Heston? Really now?"

Charissa then winced & pulled her hand back from him a fraction, the echo fading as she shook her head, looking down & away, suddenly contrite.

"No... No... I'm sorry... I'm sorry... I... I'm sorry, Lord Heston... I'm sorry... Please forgive me... I... I don't know what I'm saying... I... I... I don't know why I'm being so rude... I... I... I just... I just..."

Her gaze then lifted back up as she laughed teasingly, reaching up to run her fingers tenderly over the soft, delicate skin just under his lashline.

"Your eyes are a bit puffy. And your face is flushed. Two surefire signs that you haven't been sleeping well. Are you tired, Heston? You always get flushed when you're tired. Even back when you were playing around on that little Berkshire houseboat hideaway on the Thames of yours Pangbourne, you did. You always did. It's a wonder how you aren't the one that's feverish. You never take care of yourself. Always holing up with all your grimoires & ancient scrolls & texts in your little library. I always had to be the one to help take care of you. You were always so prickly with the others. And we both know you were an absolutely mess at taking care of yourself whenever you got invested in your studies. Getting so sucked in... I bet that's what you've been doing in here too, isn't it? Hence the Hermit? You always were crazy about your magic. Weren't you, Heston? Silly about spells and all. Like a child with its favorite toy. You're just mad about it. Absolutely mad about it! Mad as ever. Aren't you?" She asked with another chuckle.

She then cupped his cheek, caressing the swell of it with her thumb, smiling at him in a way that was very much unlike Charissa but very much like another raven haired vision he had once known to have an affinity for star sapphires.

But still...

Nothing could have ever prepared him for the words that fell from her lips next. Just three little words. Just three. Just three words. But they were words which included a name which he hadn't heard in ages but which was music to his ears.

"Aren't you, Professor?"

#jimmy page fanfic #jimmy page fanfiction #untilthenextencore #led zeppelin fanfiction #led zeppelin fanfic

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khaleesirin · 5 years

Note

(1/3) Previous anon here, I feel like I need to clarify: I didn’t know about Nard being ableist & I just said it to fit in the character limit anyway. « Big tiddy gf » is obv not how I see Hinata nor how I define women which is my point : I feel that he did, when it comes to Hinata at least (though his portrayal of girls in general is very reductive). It seems she was meant to be Naruto’s wife first & the rest of her came as an afterthought to his « I want my hero to have ideal gf » plan

(2/4)which is why I feel uncomfortable with his portrayal of her. I’m fine with characters like Hinata, the themes of abuse and recovery and defining relationships make for interesting character arcs, but I also don’t feel Kishi has the subtlety or even the desire to handle these themes when it comes to her. For example Killua in HxH has similar themes but is handled way better and less creepily imo. It feels like her growth, as positive as it is, was really a trope to glorify Naruto even more.

(¾)You said tons of metas have been written, and I read some, and it’s very cool. I just think it’s a shame that we have to rely on that and novels to be able to grasp the depth of her character which I feel is otherwise treated in a very offhanded way. Ultimately she sometimes feels like more of a tool to the plot rather than a fully fledged character which I think is sad. I do want her to be more than a trophy wife, and she is, but she also easily could be so much more.

(4/4) She’s not the only character that was done dirty and when I talk about bad portrayal I obv don’t bash her, I deplore Kishi’s dodgy writing. I was interested to see your take on that but I understand that trying to explain it in only 500 characters was a bad idea. I expressed it badly and I’m sorry if it offended you. If you still think my take is terrible and you don’t wanna interact that’s completely fine, but I wanted to clarify that at least.

–

Thank you for taking your time to write this reply. I feel like I need to also take time to reply to you to clarify myself as much as possible.

Kishimoto, as much as he frustrates me as a writer, didn’t really portray Hinata as a “cute tiddy shy gf” in the entire series. You may be conflating Hinata in the manga and how SP milked her popularity. She was rarely illustrated as “cute” in the manga, and her character design wasn’t sexualized in the manga as much as it was in the anime. So I don’t think you should criticize Kishimoto on this, because Hinata was done respectfully, and beautifully (in terms of illustrations) in the manga. Heck, during the entire 4th shinobi war, she was wearing an androgynous looking attire, like the rest of them.

Second, there’s nothing wrong in of itself for Kishimoto to initially assign Hinata as Naruto’s love interest. It’s a normal thing in character building. It’s the same way when a writer designs/assigns who will be the villain, who will be the side-kick to the villain, who will be the comic relief in the story. It’s on us, as readers, if our value-judgment to a role as “main hero’s love interest” is a bad thing. Hinata was created to have a specific role, yes, and that’s to be Naruto’s love interest. There’s nothing like an afterthought to how Kishimoto wants to write Hinata though, because since the beginning, we already know why Hinata feels something for Naruto. There’s nothing superficial to it, there’s nothing disrespectful about it. Hinata was created not to glorify Naruto (the character) but to romanticize the message of Naruto (the series), which she learned from him and something she taught him (and she taught us as readers). This is actually a role of a heroine, yet she was already given this role as she was introduced in the series, so I honestly don’t get why everything else written for Hinata is an afterthought.

Like I’ve mentioned elsewhere, for Hinata, Naruto is her ubermensch, in that tru his insistence to get acknowledge, Hinata also finally realized for herself a reason why someone like her has the right to exist, and that she, too, deserves to exist. She doesn’t provide lip service for Naruto (the character) though, because she’s the one to tell him off during the war. As I’ve mentioned earlier, Kishimoto uses Hinata to tell to the audience what the message of Naruto (the series) is, and it has to be about Naruto because he is the titular character. It means Naruto must have done something to make us understand why he is the hero of the story. It’s not a glorification of Naruto as if he is a god that we need to worship, but a romanticization of his brand of heroism, which is one thing that I love about this series. Often, when we talk about heroes, it’s always about how they are “above” or “superior,” but for Hinata, and for Kishimoto, heroes are those imperfect people who continue to fight, who continue to stand up, despite failures after failures after failures. Hinata, because she is influenced by Naruto, is an embodiment of that. But she embodied it not FOR NARUTO himself, but for other characters as well, and more importantly, for herself. To make her satisfy with her own existence.

Hinata’s character has so much depth in the manga itself. I don’t need the novels or the anime or other materials to know who she is. Because on the get go, we understand where she is coming from. Her insecurity is not used as a “moe” character trait to make her endearing, but a fundamental part of her struggle and her growth. Her character growth was not used as a lip service for Naruto, because it was a way to make her stand out as a character, it was a way to define who she is. Of course, she is used as a plot device. Every character is a plot device. How else do you move a story?

Like I’ve mentioned elsewhere, I wish Kishimoto could have done more for Hinata, I wished she was given a fight against Kanon, I wished she was given a plot just with her and Team 8. Kishimoto is a limited writer, and it shows when he writes his female characters. But, in no way or form, was Hinata reduced to just a trophy wife. If you honestly think she has no personality, that’s on you. If you are set to believe this, no amount of metas or discourse would change your mind. Like you, I criticize Kishimoto’s writing of female characters, but I don’t specifically criticize Hinata for her supposed “character flaw.”

It’s fine though. Again, thanks for clarifying your position. If you want to read more about my thoughts regarding Hinata and Kishimoto, I implore you to take time to peruse my blog (IDK if I have a good tagging system or what) since I actually had a discussion with other anons regarding Kishimoto’s writing and Hinata’s character structure and why despite my frustration regarding his writing, I find Hinata a complex character.

#naruhina #ask #hinata

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kierongillen · 6 years

Text

Writer Notes: The Wicked + the Divine 1923

Spoilers, obv.

Jamie said that for once, an issue of WicDiv will have more of my prose in it than are in the writers note. I joked that “We'll see about that” but I think I'm actually going to keep this one relatively tight. There is a lot of allusions and nods, and if I start doing the full Jess Nevins League Annotations, it's going to take forever, be over-explaining the joke and generally come across as a bad look.

The 1923 special was one of the logical pantheons to go back to, not least as the implicit floating question of “Who the hell were those four people at the start of issue one.” Not that alone made it happen – hell, maybe to the contrary. WicDiv is so big in historical implication that half the way it works is by implication. You choose a detail, and let the imagination populate around it. This nervous stand-off between saying too little and saying too much is very much a core balancing act.

I've had people ask what I knew about them back in issue one. The core, necessary stuff. The nature of what led to the suicide pact, the Gatsby-ish setting and the emotional underpinings between the four – Susanoo and Amaterasu's divine bro-sis complications, the history with Amon-Ra, the broad strokes of their personality, what movement in art they were representing, etc. But stuff changes, and lots of stuff added.

I forget where the core idea came from, but it was there and immediate and obvious in its “Oh yeah – that's clearly something that is intellectually and artistically valid, and also dumbly hilarious.” Which is very much the go-to WicDiv move. The way I described it to people was “Agatha Christie's And Then There Were None, but with a bunch of modernist figures getting bumped off. Theme of high art versus low art, the birth of the 20th century culture, the war, etc.”

Details added to that – the gods' suicide pact to try and avert WW2 – which started to lead to the gods we wanted to cast elsewhere. A number of figures who echo with the war interestingly – Orwell, Hemingway, Piccasso started to appear in there. There were figures I just knew I wanted – Woolf, etc.

The form came there – I had the idea of being a prose/comics hybrid early, but resisted it, because I knew it would be a lot of work. I say that not out of laziness, but out of simple possibility. In the end, I was right – there was no time to do this along my usual workload, and I ended up working over the Christmas holiday to write this. I had Christmas off, but otherwise, I was with the gods. Still – it was done quickly. As the lady says, “The deadlines were crushing”

The other options were to do in multiple issues. I found myself thinking that two issues may work – and that idea was before the Christmas Annual. That was rejected, as I was aware that while it wasn't laziness, it was to some degree cowardice. A prose/comics hybrid was the right idea to support the story. Commit.

So we did, and I started playing for time. There is a lot of research – obviously involving reading a bunch of the relevant figures, not least Christie to think of structure. I was picking my cast, and seeing how they fit together, and so on.

There was a problem. I still didn't have a plot. What were these gods doing?

At which point, on the suggestion of a reader on twitter, I read John Carey's The Intellectuals And the Masses and the scales fell from my eyes. Of course. I've been so blind.

The book is a gleeful, sustained and viscous intellectual evisceration of high Modernism. Much of it I already knew, but this specifically argued case made me realise the obvious: intellectually speaking, a bunch of them were fellow travellers with totalitarianism and had nothing but disgust for the common person. In other words, in WicDiv's universe, it made me realise I could step past my actual admiration for many of the figures in question and just follow those implications through.

And suddenly, there's the plot rather than the concept. In my head, I was thinking everyone would be very anti fascism. By realising some of them wouldn't necessarily be (or, at least, “Hey – it won't be that bad, and what really matters is art and the people who can actually appreciate art”.) I have multiple sides with multiple questions and a bunch of place to explore.

At which point, we needed our artist. Aud worked with Al on the Ultimates, which was my first extended exposure to her bar individual bits of art – we loved it, and thought she'd be perfect. We approached her, and she said yes.

At which point, the problems of scripting. I played with time to actually write the prose to get more and more research. The script I wrote her had the comic pages, but only included a synopsis of what happened in the prose bits, so Aud could follow the narrative. I'll include one of them later in this to give you an idea. The point being – the structure, and the primary clues (and red-herrings) were in existence at that point. I just had to execute them. I could put that off.

I did.

I ended up actually writing the prose two months after Aud got the script, so I had all her pages to look at while working. This obviously led to a lot of inspirational material back and forth. There's a few problems – some fun ideas I had in the process of writing aren't ever shown in the art, and some areas where I had to write around a problem. But some of those writing around a problem led to some of the more memorable bits in the story.

It was fine. This is a dense issue of WicDiv. I did the math, and I think in terms of material, you'd be pushed to do it in any less than 4 issues without compressing, and maybe even five. However, that was necessary to be what it was required to be. It was a dragon, and we killed it.

Here's a section from the opening letter to Aud, which basically speaks to the core intent...

The mood is basically an Agatha Christie Murder Mystery. This is pulp and light. It just happens to star riffs on some of the most intellectual writers of all time. As such, we kind of mock them. They're trapped in this kind of story – and this story kills them all.

At the same time, this is a story about form. What is comics? What is prose? Is illustrated prose just a comic with a really big caption? This is arguably the most modernist issue of WicDiv that we've ever done. As such, we're saying the exact opposite to the above as well – that we are the successors to these geniuses, and this is our ultimate tribute to them.

My tongue is in cheek with the above, but perhaps less than it should be.

I smile. There's a lot about this issue that makes me smile. And readers too – it went down in basically the most optimistic scenario it could have been. We knew that there would be some people who just rejected it due to the comics/prose hybrid form – and hell, I don't even necessarily think those people are wrong to do so. However, with a handful of exceptions – none of whom were reviewers – the only people who didn't like the issue were those who rejected it because of formal reasons.

I admit, this has led me to unpacking why people did, and some theories will come below. I also get the feeling this is an issue which I am at risk from taking the wrong lessons from.

Let's do this.

Jamie Cover: Minimalistic, clean, book cover. Instantly classy. Instantly foreshadowing That Fucking Lighthouse.

I notice the $4.99 price here. Yeah, we decided to sort of stack the odds in people liking the oddness. This is a lot of content for five dollars. If people like the way I think, you get your money's worth.

Aud's Cover: In giving Aud a brief, I wanted to do a scene which we likely weren't going to see inside. Plus the final cast hadn't been sorted out at this point, so we wanted to do something with the four figures from issue 1. As such, doing Amaterasu and Susanoo in a waltz among the living light dead struck us as fun. Aud wanted to integrate the title, which also works well. The doomed romance of the pair of them is certainly a key nature part, and felt good to foreshadow here.

Image Expo Cover: This was done far later than the other ones, and is so good we tried to work out if there was a way of switching it with the main cover. Alas, too late. This is inspired by Weimer Pursell's World Fair poster. Jamie is almost unrecognisable in style due to the lack of classical inking. I especially like this as it shows Lucifer on the cover, which obviously adds to the impact when we kill him.

IFC

The headshots were done last by Aud, after she done the rest – it was a “If we have time, it'd be good to do this too.” We played with some ideas for using them in different places (perhaps even as far as topping each bit of prose) but decided that was too much. That we go in deep with the prose at the start causes big problems. Oddly, my main take from reading Christie is how the opening of the books are the hardest parts – they're trying to set up so many characters, and I had a tendency (especially with my somewhat loose relationship with names) to lose which dude was which dude. That was always going to be a sticking point in this issue, so I felt a Dramatis Personnae to open would work as a visual anchor to the cast. “Dionysus? Who's Dionysus.” <Flips back> “Ah!”> and then back in.

Lovely design here by Sergio. I'll want to rave about Sergio throughout, but let's say it here loudly. This is amazing work.

Okay! The gods. Let's do what everyone's been asking for and saying who's influenced by who. Or at least, broadly.

Part of the reason why I wanted to do 1923 in prose was it would give the opportunity to have all 12 gods. The specials have gone down well, but there's been a regular undercurrent of “We want to know more about the others”. In 25 pages, that's not going to happen, at least in any way which is useful. We have to focus to some degree. In this case, for once, we wanted to give a full image of a full pantheon, just to show how it worked in another period – and with that, a readers' imagination can populate others with more guidance.

Secondary issue: while I've been describing the comic as “Modernist poets in an Agatha Christie Murder Mystery” that clearly wasn't true. We'd already shown four gods from 1923, so it clearly couldn't just be modernist poets. Of course, this is the theme – high art versus low art and the various different approaches to the gods is key.

Essentially, the 1923 pantheon is half way between the 1831 and 2013 pantheons in approach, with elements of both. As a mid-way point between the two, that seems to work. The gods that hark to the future have an approach more similar to the 2013 pantheon. The defeated gods have an approach which has a little more to the past. It's more complicated than that, and there's obvious exceptions, but that's what the backbone is.

So some gods are based on an archetypal sort of creator or artform, with a few nods to specific things, (Amon-Ra, Susanoo, Amaterasu, Minerva, Baal) while others are inspired an actual figure with a few grace notes from elsewhere (Neptune, Dionysus, Morrigan) and others are inspired by a creator merged with something from their fiction (Lucifer, Norns, Set). And then there's Woden, who isn't a god, so the rules change.

I swapped “based on” for “inspired” just now in the above. WicDiv may be inspired by figures, but the real figures also exist in the world of WicDiv. This gives us the narrative distance required to do what we do with them.

So, from the top, and in broad strokes. If you want more of the indirect influences and some theories, I think TWATD has the best round up.

Baal: One part of the conspiracy. Researching the period, there is a lot of white elitist dudes of various stripes, and Baal ends up being them all. In terms of actual references, there's a lot of TS Elliot in there, but there's strong notes of Ezra Pound and the big reference only a few people have spotted is Wyndham Lewis, who I think provides the majority of the look. I'm not sure Jamie was thinking of that explicitly, but he wanted to definitely have someone who looks like an elitist. Of all the older-gods, he's the broadest and most archetypal, and that's because there's a lot of this sort of guy, and it felt like repeating the same character multiple times. It's also a pretty white pantheon anyway.

Amaterasu: The concept of her in issue one was “all of Dramatic Film”. As such, she recalls a lot of early movie heroines. In terms of her powers, she recalls Georges Méliès in several places. I wasn't aware of The Four Troublesome Heads at the time of writing, but I really wish I was.

Lucifer: Fitzgerald meets Gatsby.

Susanoo: If Amaterasu is dramatic film, Susanoo is comedy. Biggest influence in terms of me thinking of how he moves is Buster Keaton, and for me, Susanoo's movement was the thing that was always on my mind.

The Morrigan: Primarily Joyce. Jamie using the later-period Joyce eyepatch is one of my favourite notes in all of this, but Aud just makes him sing as the bedraggled writer. He's a heartbreaker. He's notably the Modernist who is against the Modernists' elitists and topics, which is one of the beats to complicate things.(Random quote from Woolf on Joyce: “a self-taught working man, and we all know how distressing they are, how egotistic, insistent, raw, striking, and ultimately nauseating.”)

Neptune: Hemingway, with a few random grace notes from Nemo. I smile at “Sea god. Short sentences.” I had far too much fun writing Hemingway parody – the active character with the active voice.

The Norns: Wells, Huxley and Orwell, with grace notes in Little Brother from all their books. The idea of a triple-god who are all Future was the core of it, and I yelped in excitement.

Set: Woolf meets Orlando (which basically means it's Woolf meets her literary love portrait of Vita Sackville-West). Her historical-anecdote-for-any-occasion twitch comes from Orlando done in the style of Baron Munchausen's loving hyper-parody, but I can't deny it does come off a little like Tahani from the Good Place. The Set from Bloomsbury is my favourite pun in the issue, not least because people either get it immediately or just miss it completely. The figure I'm least comfortable with throwing under the bus, but I've already written her as a hero figure in Uber, so it probably evens out. I also remember things like the quote from the Morrigan above, which as a self-taught nauseating working man, does tend to soothe things somewhat. Like the Baal, her position is less being pro fascism (and Set is distinctly less pro fascism than Baal) and more a complete lack of interest in anything which isn't art. It's definitely one when the “inspired by” distance is key.

Amon-Ra: Embodiment of Jazz and Blues – primarily blues – with a little of the Harlem Renaissance. Most of the tiny nods are Robert Johnson ones.

Woden: Most of the visual language is are from German Expressionism (most obviously Fritz Lang) and the political beliefs (to state the obvious) Nazism. Like 2013 Woden, Woden isn't a god. He's a god who's killed someone and stolen their place and turned it to his own awful ends. When researching Uber, I found people like Hitler difficult to get on a human level. I've never known anyone like Hitler. Conversely, Joseph Goebbels? If you take the guy in his 20s propping up the the bar talking about how he's working on his novel and add virulent anti-semitism, then you basically have Goebbels. You can almost see him shiver in delight that he murdered his way into controlling art in his country... but there isn't a note of art in him. That's basically Woden. He's appropriated the art of a country at gunpoint. He looks like a villain, but even that look isn't his, and his villainy more profound. He would rule a people through sound and light. As Morrigan is the Modernist against Modernist's elitism, Woden is the Populist Against The People.

Minerva: Child-star archetype generally, Shirley Temple specifically. (I just typoed “Shirley Crabtree.” Now that is a very different look) In terms of personality though, I found myself falling into a slightly frenzied Enid Blighton Famous Five-ish voice.

Dionysus: Picasso as living Guernica. As good a place as any to mention the time-mashing in all of this – basically, the Spanish Civil War experience was moved from the thirties to WW1. That's the sort of editing we do with the figures. This is about (broadly speaking) “Between the wars and what that felt like, and giving birth to the 20th century.”

I lobbed a bunch of ideas at Jamie, and he did full body length plans for each. We'll probably include them in the trade when we get there.

Page 3-5

Right – 3000 words in and I haven't started the story yet. Things are going to be looser now – most of the thinking is above.

The second two pages were originally written as a splash, but Aud wanted to do it widescreen. I originally WANTED it as a two-page splash, but I didn't have the space to spare, so this re-creating it pleased me. Obviously this sets out the visual location of the whole story – here we have the island, here we have a lighthouse, etc.

Aud suggested doing it in a limited palette form, with the ink washes, and we clearly loved it. When actually describing the sea in the text bits, I was trying to evoke these actual seas, which is a fun way to do interplay.

But yeah – it's our “Here's Ananke.” As I suspect many have noticed, the specials main connective tissues are Ananke and Lucifer. The backbone of the specials trade is the meetings of Anankes and Lucifers across the centuries.

The “This will have to be my masterpiece” is lots of fun. I suspect this is how Christie felt about And Then There Was None. It's interesting that in all the conversation around the issue I haven't seen anyone realise that Ananke is Christie – some kind of demonic Miss Marple figure, writing the plot. It's also the first red herring. Clearly we know Ananke is a murderer at this point, so she's always the logical suspect. The story is based around flirting with that, stepping away from that, then stepping back to it.

The title was decided late – literally when this page was being laid out. I felt it was a little too obvious, but decided it was just obvious enough. Layout minimalistic, clipped, recalling both books and film (especially of the period). It's the first of that sort of thing, and far from the last.

Page 5

We initially decided we didn't need the icon page. We didn't think we'd have space.

Then the do-a-splash-as--two-pages actually created some problems, in terms of leading to all the early death reveals to be on the right. We were in a position of either padding the first text section by a page (and when that was long, it felt bad) or strimming it (which is bad, in a different way). Then we did some math and realised if we had an interstitial here it would actually bring us to the exact 56 pages.

So Jamie did the icons and everything became perfect.

Here he picks up the Art Deco from issue 1, which is a delight. Much to love here – I think his personal favourite is Dionysus' icon, which is understandable, as that's just awesome. I'm glad we actually found space to do this – yes, part of the book was showing a complete pantheon... but a pantheon isn't really complete until you see their icons.

In other notes, I'm considering using these icons as shoulder transfers for my Space Marine chapter.

7-12

Chapter 1!

Here's the synopsis of what I wrote in Aud's drawing script...

This is basically a series of short chapters, ala the opening of AND THEN THERE WERE NONE (but shorter), introducing the various parties making their way to the island. I suspect they will be three, who will be...

The first ship reaching the island – Dionysus, the Norns, Woden, Morrigan, Minerva, Neptune. Possibly two ships. We set up some key relationships here – at least, Morrigan and Minerva seem to be getting on.

The Awesome Egyptian-mode approach carrying the Egyptian gods. It belongs to Set. Baal tells Amon-Ra Set is getting reading ready, before Amon-Ra then teleports down to the island, having seen...

...Amaterasu/Susanoo's approach, setting up their own somewhat populist beliefs in art (and light) and their fear they may be in an incestuous relationship. Amon meets them.

(Regarding teleportation: the gods have their selection of appropriate abilities to their archetypes – it's perhaps worth noting that the “Good” gods in this story tend to be sun or light gods. In the 2014 pantheon, the underworld gods tend to be the “Good” ones.)

One of his servants – made of living light, projected from the house – tell them that the final gods are arriving now. “Give them five minutes, then send them down.” Alone, drinking, he muses on all he's done to build this place? Will she finally be impressed with him? Someone arrives. He asks “Does this impress? “They smile, say it's perfect and for a second he's happy, before they click their fingers.

So there's the shape of it there, especially the key beats – it's enough for me to know there IS a solution.

This is the longest of the prose sections, and unavoidably so. The first movement of a Murder Mystery is to reveal the cast. It's also the longest section anyway – we start primarily in prose and we move towards primarily to comics. Prose is high art, old europe, etc and comics is low art, the new world, etc.

In terms of prose style, I weighed up what to do. I started thinking a pure Christie homage in actual prose, but backed away – it's a fun card trick to show, but I think it'd be less satisfying to the reader (who may or may not like Christie), and more easy to fuck up (So high risk for little reward). So structurally it was based on Christie, and instead the found a voice I found fun – a little period, but also a performance. And far too reference heavy for its own good. But Fun.

Fun is a key thing. The more I decided to be playful with the book, the better it seemed to work. As said, this is a key WicDiv stance. I haven't re-read it in detail (and I'm only skimming now) but I'm not too angry with what's here. That'll do.

The d____ was one of the Christie stylistic choices I chose to keep for period. It's fun.

Morrigan basically speaks in stream-of-consciousness parody throughout, including bits of Joycean scripts. Part of me was tempted to do the ““MORRIGAN: (softly). Aye.” said Morrigan, softly.” joke throughout. I can imagine Neptune wanting to punch him for the adjectives, evidently.

Hmm. Yeah, I'm sitting here thinking “I really don't need to say much about the prose sections.”

Page 13-14

The structure is key visual and plot relevant scenes are played out in comics. The stuff you need to see and we want to show you. Plus, abstractly, I suspect someone could just read the comic pages and get the core of the story.

(The things are prose are also things which are inefficient in comics – drawing room discussions are rarely riveting visual prose, and nightmarishly tricky to do with a large cast. Not that it's impossible – see THE WATCH chapter in Imperial Phase)

I like Ananke's complicity-inducing glance-to-read in the fourth panel of thirteen.

I do like the Butler.

And the reveal! These splashes were considered a bunch – my original idea was actually to have them in a frame, to REALLY AGGRESSIVELY make them works of art, and turn it into a gallery wall. In the end, the distance from reader seemed too much, and we went a way which took a lot of it in (as in, we're still looking at an image, the caption is designed to evoke a plaque in an exhibit, the caption of the prose also a framing in art) but just let Aud be Aud and blow people away.

So much here - First appearance of a non-sepia cover. I wish I did something with that apple too, for the full Lucifer-in-Paradise.

Page 15-18

Chapter 2!

The Metropolitan are definitely the great-lost-visual from the issue. Clearly, the robot from Metropolis as a servant.

Honestly, getting the cast to go at each other here is fun, in the dual conversation of what they're talking about (the murders) and what they're really talking about (Art). Also, they're mostly funny – some I like more than others, but when doing the prose, I rapidly found how much I enjoyed doing these affectionate mockeries.

Skimming through this, I'm considering who the lead actually is. In some ways, obviously, it doesn't have one – in my head, the Norns are the lead, and Verondi, specifically, but I suspect Susanoo is the moral and human backbone of it. People seem to like him too: everyone loves a sad clown.

19-20

See – this is where the “comic pages alone are still readable.” As in, we specifically show the core clues you need to know in the comics. There's other clues in the prose, and there's certainly red herrings in the comic (Ananke's sinister nature is played up).

I really like how Aud does the Butler here, which is good, considering it's the last we see of him – that fade in between the second and third panel.

Yes, page 20 is probably the most PAINFUL pun in the issue.

21-24

Chapter 3!

Man, the small change which nags at me most which I may change for the trade is Woden saying “We're not too different. Perhaps... two-thirds different.” Clearly, it should be one-third different.

The word “posset” is my tribute to The Box Of Delights, which is a traditional Xmas watching in my house.

25-26

And the last two pager – prose firmly dominating as the old world dominates the plot, to state the obvious.

Oddly tricky first panel to letter – I kept on trying to get a BIG BROTHER WATCHING YOU joke into it, but it always felt clunky. Or rather, clunkier than normal.

The red seaweed is a lovely touch for Neptune.

27-28

Pace-pace-pace. Neptune not being able to swim is, I suspect, my favourite character beat. Masculinity is one hell of a drug.

This whole sequence I imagined Ananke as a passive-aggressive Sherlock Holmes pretending to be Watson.

29-33

And Set giving serious pose at the end of 29. Well done, Set. You've risen to this occasion.

Quiet tension leading to violence. Honestly, I really like the My Chemical Romance vibe to the Norns – Verondi is very much the star here.

First appearance of the full on screen interstitial card – obviously saving the full explanation until later, nearer the climax, but the edging into comics formalism aping period cinema necessity.

I think the most chilling of the death scenes is this one.

34-35

Chapter 5

Always the shortest of the interstitial texts, this expanded with the end of Perhaps the biggest change from the synopsis was bringing forward the Amon-Ra/Amaterasu/Susanoo plot as the counter-plot to the issue. It was a case of me realising it served as a distraction, but also a useful human arc to them. I wanted to see it. If I wanted to see it, it implies that the reader would too.

Obviously Minerva is the player to watch at this point. I'm reminded of one of the minor influences on Minerva – namely, Alice of Wonderland fame. I say the core stuff earlier, but there's a bunch of that kind of thing.

Really nice how Sergio fills the half page at the end of this sequence – as I've said on twitter, it's interesting that many people have said “Most” of the comic is prose. That's not true – the majority of the book is comics. Prose just takes longer to read in the same given space. For readers, I get it, but it did grate slightly when reviewers did it. Basic fact-checking is the basic minimum.

36-39

We finally get Morrigan' dialogue in comics form – it was the first Morrigan wrote. Courier seemed the right choice.

I laughed when writing TO THE LIGHTHOUSE. No, this is not what Woolf was writing about.

40-42

Chapter 6.

The Modernists' last flourish – I was considering doing this section in the style of From the Lighthouse, with the floating perspective and virtuoso parenthesis use, but decided it wasn't worth the risk. Even if done in the parodic style, it's still a huge risk, and not necessarily one which will travel to more than a proportion of the audience. Plus, this is the Explain Everything To The Readers bit, so we really do want it to be clear.

I did consider going back to it at the last minute after I had done this take, but decided against it, in favour of a heavy smattering of Modernist injokes. Most obvious is that Orlando opens with Orlando playing around with someone's decapitated head.

43-49

And the climatic fight scene! Where things get sillier, but also more pointed. The ironic distance is opening up again with the cards.

“It's not all fine” a flirtation with WicDiv's core “It's going to be okay”

I kind of admire Susanoo's determination to pretend it isn't all this bad.

Aud suggested the multiple panels on 43 to show the disappearing of the light, which is a good call.

I also feel a little iffy about the quasi-Wells of Urdr – he's a mess of faults, and certainly was fond of many of these ideas, but he also was an avowed pacifist. I suspect he's the flip of Woolf – she got her hero spotlight in Uber, and now we get a twisted take. He appears like he does here, murdered after he gets in over his head while not realising what was actually happening, and is someone considerably more heroic in Spangly New Thing. But you'll have to wait for that, right?

Set's blowing of them apart is A+. And the dagger-twist of the core quote of Room of One's Own is... well, it's hyperbolic, but if you read Room, it's absolutely there. Room is an economic argument as much as anything else.

The final sequence being a Keaton-stunt married to pure-cinema-magic train creation (a nod towards the famous L'Arrivée d'un train en gare de La Ciotat which reputedly had people running out the cinema as they thought a train was going to hit them). Metaphorically, a lot of people were like Baal here. They got run over too.

There were some dialogue tweaks here to ensure clarity – Minerva's “Goodbye Set” to ensure it was clear it was Set who was alive.

50-52

Chapter 7!

If I went the FULL HOMAGE route, if Chapter 6 was going to be a To The Lighthouse homage, the first section of this would have been written as a screenplay while the second bit would be written like a propaganda news report. Ultimately, I don't think we needed to disrupt the reader any more than we already did.

Especially as clarity here is absolutely the key thing – we have a statement in Chapter 6 of what Set/Baal thought they were doing... and now we have a different reading presented by Ananke to the gods of light and then ANOTHER reading of what Woden thought he was going on with the Zeitgeist which is then immediately undercut by Ananke.

The key thing was making the mystery of it as plain as possible – we give you what we can, and then underline the fact “Perhaps someone will work it out” of it.

(Minor detail here, ala Alice – Woden gets Lovecraftian nod with the Colour Out Of Space)

Ananke's last lines came to me as wrapping it up, and one of those “Yes, this is exactly how to end this)

I suspect for all the monstering of the modernists, there's more of a fundamental ambivalence than you expect. If given a choice between Art Elitism and fascism or populist arts and advanced consumerism, I'd choose the latter... but doesn't mean the latter is ideal, especially when it's clear how all the gods of light have been played as much as the literary gods. As always with WicDiv, we're not really interested in easy answers.

53-54

And once more we return.

Back tomorrow, where Mothering Invention kicks off.

Thanks for reading.

#the wicked and the divine #WicDiv #aud koch #writer notes

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freedom-of-fanfic · 7 years

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I was wondering, what do you think of sh@l@din shippers who hate on Kl@nce?Isn’t that still using @nti rhetoric in implying that kl@nce is abusive? It’s not the same obv bc they don’t bully anyone but still. Idk like the whole kl@nce hate is rly off putting. Most k/l shippers aren’t even @ntis. I wish there was a safe space to ship both, cause it kinda seems like to be an @nti 🐜 you can’t ship kl@nce.

this kind of ties into something I’ve been meaning to talk about for a bit? But I’m going to try to keep it brief for once.

i feel like the anti-shipping position that ships/fics should be pure, wholesome, and safe has quietly permeated the fandom groundwater, becoming the accepted default position, and it’s been done by antis taking refuge in audacity.

anti-shippers take it as a given fact that fiction must be morally wholesome and ships must be healthy. breezing right past the questions of ‘do ships have to be healthy to be valid?’ and ‘do fanworks have to be moral to be allowed to exist?’, fandom antis jump straight to ‘this ship/this fanwork is csa/incestuous/abusive’ regardless of whether or not these things are true.

ship defenders and anti-censorship blogs end up focusing on pointing out the ship is not csa or the fanwork does not feature abuse, not necessarily conscious that by doing so they quietly cede ground: ‘but if it was unhealthy/immoral,’ they quietly imply, ‘it would of course be indefensible.’

losing that ground - losing the position that all ships are valid and all fanworks are allowed to exist, moral value and purity aside - has naturally led shippers to adopt the language of antis when fighting back against antis or complaining about their NOTPs.

this is particularly true in the VLD fandom. for example, sh1dge is denigrated by a huge number of people - she1th and kl@nce shippers alike in addition to antis/klantis -as ‘pedophilia’ (read: csa). it doesn’t matter why sh1dge shippers ship it or how they ship it; it’s treated as fact that sh1dge is indefensible and shipping it is indefensible. (and even as I type this, I feel the need to disclaim that the age gap makes me personally uncomfortable.)

but shipping sh1dge shouldn’t need defense in the first place. they’re fictional characters! it’s not a real 9th grader being shipped with a young adult. they are infinitely malleable in the imagination and all interpretations of their relationship are valid. shipping it doesn’t prove anything about the shipper’s feelings about age gaps in rl couples or anything else. but the vldiscourse often loses sight of that.

your ask illustrates another example. as ‘klantis’ (pro-kl@nce anti-shippers) are perpetuating a thinly-veiled ship war with she1th - ‘anti-sh@ladin’ is just the natural outgrowth of being forced to defend the consistency of their position - it’s no surprise that having ceased to posit that ships don’t need to be justified to be shipped, she1th shippers long ago started to fire back at klantis with anti-kl@nce arguments functionally indistinguishable from any anti-shipper position. ‘kl@nce is abusive!’ how about: she1th and kl@nce are equally good ships and it doesn’t matter how ‘healthy’ they are! (and using this kind of argument to attack klantis catches non-anti kl@nce shippers in the crossfire.)

the fact that the default fandom position has made a considerable shift from ‘all ships are valid’ and ‘fictional creations and tastes are separate from real behaviors and tastes’ towards ‘only healthy ships are valid’ and ‘garbage in, garbage out’/’fiction consumption has a 1:1 correspondence with rl behavior’ has changed the tone of fandom.

shippers and anti-shippers often sound similar in their praise and condemnation of otps/notps.

It’s increasingly likely for a pro-shipper in one fandom to hold an anti-shipper position in another*, depending on whether the anti-shipping movement protects or bags on their OTP.

anti- and pro- shippers alike will often join together to harass and dogpile the creators of kinky or dark fanworks that violate their sensibilities.

*while I have seen active, harrasses/doxxes/harms-others-for-their-ships anti-shippers turn ‘pro-ship’ in a new fandom because their OTP was an anti target, they usually maintain anti principles of what’s allowed to be shipped or not.

so tl;dr: anyone is allowed to have a notp and hate on a ship, but I think no better of sh@ladin shippers using anti arguments to bag on kl@nce than I do kl@nce shippers using anti arguments to bag on sh@ladins. It’s the same poisonous thinking, the same misapplication of words, the same deeply worrying assumption that ships must be healthy and fanworks must be moral.

But in my opinion, the worst part of all is that as fandom increasingly accepts the unspoken anti-shipper premise that everything must be good/moral/pure, all of fandom becomes more authoritarian. We grow intolerant of the pain and circumstances of others, more self-hating and afraid of attacks we secretly fear we deserve, and more susceptible to anyone promising to save us from our own moral failings (such as ‘fandom moms’, anti culture, etc.), pointing us at a scapegoat to blame for everything bad around us.

all antis had to do was scream lies at the top of their lungs until the rest of us got too tired to keep fighting and too distracted to see the unspoken goalpost shift.

#anti culture #the klanti saga #vldiscourse #authoritarianism #the generational shift from 'ship and let ship' to anti culture #ship and let ship #why antis do the thing #anti culture is purity culture #the unfortunate truth about purity culture #in defense of shipping #in defense of fanworks #*chanting* SHIP WAR SHIP WAR SHIP WAR

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holsthoughts · 5 years

Text

t h r e e

this post, entirely about gabbie hanna. which is very fitting considering i associate the number three with her.

where to start? i suppose at the beginning. that being september 2016.

i don't remember exactly when but sometime before drop the mic tour i fell in love with her videos, and i mean i fell fuckin hard lol. i just connected to her on a way i didn't really understand as a just-turned-sixteen-year-old girl. anyway, the first video i remember being posted after i started stanning was ‘how social media ruins relationships’ a dance video, that gabbie rarely posts but has stuck with me as my first proper memory of her. and the beginning of something mad.

if anyone reading this doesn't know gabbie (hi, were have u been?) she's a youtuber. she's the gal in my icon <3 not only is she a youtuber she's also. musician (currently with six (technically 7) songs out and an album called ‘this time next year’ on the way), author (of adultolescence which reached number 3 (three, see?) on the New York times bestseller list, with book two on the way also), illustrator (of said ny times bestselling book and various other designs), tv host (for a while on the revamped TRL) and so much more but of course i'm biased and could go o forever so i'll leave it there.

after deciding to subscribe and do the general social media stalk of and internet personality of someone i’ve just found i was obsessed and over two years later, still am <3

i changed my twitter @ to a gabbie fan account, made friends (with some of the most amazing people) and just felt so at home. sounds crazy but it was like something clicked and not only did i fall in love with gabbie, i also fell in love with her community.

january 2017; something past 2am, i'm awake for some apparent reason and gabbie goes live on live.ly (i know, long ago) of course i join and this is where I got my first gabbie notice (which i know isn't everything but it was something so heartwarming knowing that after a couple months she saw me) she did this emoji game where she’d act out an emoji and the first person to correctly guess and send it in the chat would be ‘best friended’. in this stream she also announced that she’d be coming to london for summer in the city.

summer in the city is a video convention in the uk (obv) in august, this was suuucchhh a big deal as i was already planning to go and the fact that she’d be there was the BEST feeling ever. in the time between she announced and it finally came around i got my follow from her on twitter (which also has a cute story behind it - i made a deal with my step dad, if I got an A in any of my january exams (which i was getting the results for on March 3rd) he would buy me my ticket to sitc. so of course i was v nervous, went to bed - or at least tried to - the night before and work up on the third to gabbie’s follow, which probably doesn't sound like a big deal so literally everyone else ever but it just felt like a lil ‘good luck, u got this’ from her which meant frickin everything. so i got an A, therefore got my ticket and was so ready for august.

august 2017; the fourth of august, my mam, joel and i set off to london on the mega bus. me excited as anything as i was on my way to london after not having gone for about 6 years, getting ready to see three of my best pals (who i was meeting for the first time the next day because of gabbie) and also preparing myself to see gab irl for the first time ever. right as i saw about to try and sleep i got a message from a twitter mutual of a video of gabbie saying hi to me after they’d met her at their hotel lobby, i lost my mind and couldn't sleep after, naturally. the fifth of august, i got up in a shitty ibis budget hotel room in barking early af to get ready and make sure i looked presentable to go to the excel (which was an hour away on the tube, nightmare), went to breakfast and was too nervous to eat lmao (not like me AT ALL) and then we were off. i met chaz first, then eli then toni who where the best company that weekend and i'm so grateful for them. we waited two hours at main stage for the comedy panel to be able to get front row to see gabbie at her first sitc 2017 panel which was crazy emotional. i screamed, laughed, cried (yes, cried) and lost my fucking mind at gabbie literally jumping off the fucking stage and run over to chaz (who i was standing next to) and hugged her and then toni. frickin insane dude. we had such a good day and were all buzzing to se meeting gabbie the next day. the sixth of august, maybe my favourite day of my entire life <3 we ended up leaving the hotel late which wasn't fun considering gabbie had a panel at 12 and of course we wanted to get front row. chaz managed to get there first and toni and i joined her, the doors opened and we (along with the 15 others who also wanted front row ran to the queue, literally RAN and i do not run usually, sis made an exception for my fave <3 anyway we got front row and eli (who was late) sat behind us and we watched gab so sooo well. she kept looking over at us and making cute faces, looking right fuckin at us whilst mentioning her community and projects etc. and she done so fuckin well when hazel hayes (a knob) literally came for her for absolutely no reason, which tuned into a joke lol. next, another main stage panel which we got to second row for since we were late as the schedule didn't have that panel on it LOL (ty for that sitc) next, my fave part, getting legend herself<333 toni and eli went earlier than chaz and i because they had to leave early. chaz and i tried to wait until last but some bitchy af girls were doing the same and we heard that she might have to leave early so joined the queue. meeting her; my favourite moment ever. has went first and i stood recording until gabbie says to chaz “ya who’s the rest of the squad” making me lose me mind internally LOL, i knew she knew about us since chaz had dm’ed her saying and gab had said that she was looking out for us in the crowd of panels AWW. chaz said about how eli and toni had come earlier and then said “so its just me and holly left” and at that moment gabbie looked at me, right into my fucking soul and said “hi holly!” and opened her arms to me <333 OUCH IM SOFT. she was and still is the best. we had a cute AF lil convo where she told the security (because they were looking at us stupid bc of how excited we all were and also bc she spent so much longer with us than anyone else lmao) that chaz an i “are twitter icons” which i died at ouchie. she then complemented my hair (which i’d dyed purple and blue to match hers - cringe, yes - to then find out she dyed hers blonde a week before london LMAO of course. i told her how i also got my nose pierced bc of her and she told me “you gotta do all these now” showing me her ears that had SIX new piercings that she’d got for a vid that wasn't out at the time, saying “next time i see you, next year, you better have five” which of course i did literally five days after meeting her lol, love that for me, even though i didn't see her the next year (ouch)

skipping a lot but gabbie truly means so so much to me, and this for sure won't be the last time i do a post about her. she truly deserves the world <3

- h

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lilylink9-blog · 5 years

Text

French Gift Ideas for Mother’s Day

Mother’s Day is celebrated the second Sunday of May in North America. In France, it is the last Sunday in May. (Unless that falls on Pentecost Sunday, in which case it’s the first Sunday in June. Still with me?)

In 2018, Americans will celebrate Mother’s Day on May 13; the French will celebrate la fête des mères on May 27.

If your mother loves all things French, this is the time to pamper her inner Parisienne! You could even surprise her with an encore gift on French Mother’s Day.

French children usually craft some kind of project at school for their maman — most iconically, un collier de pâtes, a necklace made of dried pasta — and graduate to buying her flowers, chocolates, or beauty products when they are older.

Here are some wonderful, high-quality French gift ideas I’ve hand-picked with love so you can tell your amazing mother how amazing she is. And if you’re a new mother, you are fully entitled to buying any one of these for your amazing self, obv.

For even more French-inspired ideas, check out my Best Gifts for the French-Loving Cook! All of them will work as a French Mother’s Day gift.

Bonne fête to Mamans everywhere!

Mother’s Day Greeting Cards in French

Say it beautifully in French!

“Like Mother Like Daughter” Tote Bag

Get one for you and one for her, you’ll be so cute when you walk together. What better way to express that you’re proud of the parts of you that are also hers?

A Clotilde-designed Montmartre shirt

Would your mother like to wear a shirt that celebrates the beauty and charm of Montmartre in a unique, hand-drawn way? I have just the shirt for her, with an illustration I drew myself, inspired by my beloved neighborhood.

Vegan Ethical French Skincare Products

From an independent Parisian brand I love. I use these every single day, and for gift-giving I especially recommend the Discovery kit. They ship internationally, and remember to use my referral code 034587703 to save 5€ on your order.

French Single-Estate Chocolate Sampler

Michel Cluizel is a family-owned and high-quality French manufacturer of bean-to-bar chocolate, who source their beans directly from plantations. This sampler box is a delicious way for your mother to taste the distinctive flavor of each.

Biopics of Remarkable French Women

Edith Piaf in La Vie en Rose and Coco Chanel in Coco Before Chanel

Get her a DVD of (or streaming access to) either one of these superb French movies. Consider turning it into an inspiring and moving night with both of you watching the film and eating chocolate together (see above).

Maman Shirt and Sweater

Momwear has never been so stylish.

Online French Lessons

Has your mother always dreamed of learning French? Sign her up for Frantastique, a fun and well-crafted French course delivered by email, that she can customize to her level and preferences.

By using this link, Chocolate & Zucchini readers will get one month totally free. It would be so fun for you and your mom to try out the service together, non ?

Inspiring French Podcasts

Change Ma Vie

La Poudre

If your mom wants to add even more French language into her life, set up her phone with a podcast app if she doesn’t already have one, show her how it works, and subscribe her to Change ma vie and La Poudre, two of the hottest French podcasts. ;)

Secret Paris Coloring Book

For the artistic-minded mother who enjoys coloring as a meditative activity, this remarkably pretty coloring book doubles up as a mini-getaway to Paris.

Liquid Savon de Marseille with Citrus Essential Oils

Savon de Marseille is the most iconic kind of French soap, and this liquid one is presented in a handy liquid dispenser. The citrus scent is particularly good as a kitchen sink soap; for a bathroom, perhaps you’ll want to opt for the rose scent.

Tasting Paris

Do you dream of taking your mother to Paris and sharing lovely meals with her on sidewalk terraces? If that’s not in the cards for you this year, the next best thing may well be to give her this fresh new cookbook of mine. Tasting Paris is like a stroll through Paris’ most charming streets, and 100 recipes to create some of these inspired meals right in her (or your) kitchen.

A Gorgeous French Journal

This lovely journal with gold foil on the cover and fading lines on the pages is the ideal accessory if you’re going to (pretend to) be sitting at the terrace of a café, jotting down inspired notes and brilliant insights. Your mother totally needs this.

Assorted French Candy

These all-natural flavored drops are among the most cherished of regional French treats, manufactured in the medieval Burgundy village where the 2000 film Chocolat was shot. Of course, the pretty pillboxes should be saved and reused for ordinary mints.

The French Market Cookbook

If your mother enjoys cooking simple, fresh foods, get her a copy of my cookbook of French vegetarian recipes! Full of healthful ideas for colorful meals.

Maman Mug

Get your mom to think of you every morning (that’s what this is all about, right?) with this lovely mug, personalized with your own year of birth. Such a sweet gift for brand-new mothers, too!

French Tea Sampler For Her Office

I always enjoy teas from French brand Le Palais des Thés and this assortment of muslin bags is especially created for refreshment and energy at work (6 different teas, 8 bags of each). Another way to show love to your mom throughout her day!

Divine Oil from Caudalie

Caudalie is a French brand of cosmetics I love from the Bordeaux wine country that leverages the antioxydants found in grapes. This multi-purpose dry oil can be used to nourish the skin, the hair, and the body. Lovely fragrance and luxurious feel. (If you’re looking to get a combo, I also use the shampoo from the same brand.)

A Book of French Poetry (with translations)

A new and wonderful selection of poems spanning nine centuries of French poets, packaged into a beautiful hard-cover volume that will find its perfect place on your mother’s nightstand.

Best Foot Cream in the World from L’Occitane

My sister used to work at L’Occitane near Aix-en-Provence so I got to try a lot of their products, and this foot cream is my favorite. It is super refreshing and hydrating for weary feet at the end of the day, but not at all sticky.

La Vie En Rose French Print

A quality print of a gorgeous, vibrant watercolor by a French artist from the south of France, to brighten her mood daily! I recommend you get the A3 size (11.69 by 16.53 inches) and pair it with this simple golden frame.

How to Be Parisian Wherever You Are

A best-selling book by a team of Parisiennes, celebrating French women’s sense of style in an approachable and humorous way.

“Savon” Soap Dish

Give your mom this beautiful French dish soap along with a bar of French lavender soap.

Beauty Travel Kit from Nuxe

Nuxe makes high-quality French cosmetics, and their Rêve de Miel (“dream of honey”) line is wonderful. This travel kit will be very handy next time your mother flies in to visit.

French Pitcher

This is a very typical, traditional French shape for a pitcher that can be used to serve water or juice, but also doubles up as a vase. Give it to your mother with a bunch of fresh flowers!

Fig Blossom Fragrance from Roger & Gallet

Roger & Gallet is a French perfumer that was first established in Paris more than 150 years ago. The scents are classic and elegant, and the packaging is chic and timeless — just like your mother!

Edible French

A highly giftable little book by yours truly, featuring the most evocative French expressions related to food, with bite-size cultural notes and luscious watercolor illustrations by my friend Melina Josserand.

Paris Walking Tour

If your mother has a trip to Paris planned in the coming months, consider treating her to a private walking tour with me. Please get in touch; I will offer you a discount if you gift me to your mom. :)

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Source: https://cnz.to/gift-guide/french-gift-ideas-mothers-day/

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