#this is probably going to be a recurring thing because I want silly little poetry snippets on my blog ahhh

[aita-blorbos]

AITA for avenging my brother?

hiiiii ^^ so im (30, let's say M for convenience's sake) am currently the leader of a very big sect, which was Not the plan WhatSoEVER (i'll get into it). i was born as the younger sibling to the sect heir, which meant i had free reign to basically do whatever i wanted while he got the responsibilities and stuff! great deal methinks. our father died when we were both still young due to heart issues that run in the family and also being killed. since my brother had a decade or so on me, he pretty much raised me from then on while also having the new role of official sect leader on his shoulders.

again, seems like a good deal! he was strict, and really really insisted i practiced my fighting skills (like that wasn't the literal cause of our family's heart issues) to the point that one time he like kind of burned my paper fan collection in front of me but that's like it's all besides the point okay he loved me and i loved him and we were both there for each other okay? okay

anyway he had this servant/best friend/pretty sure somethingsomething was going on there. he was kind of like a second big brother to me. our interests overlapped and he also preferred stuff like art and poetry over fighting. he understood me in a way that my brother couldn't, and he helped raise me just as much, even accompanying me to my third year of summer courses. which lol was supposed to be a one year course but i failed twice. lmao w/e

things got... bad. a war broke out, the servant betrayed us by letting a dangerous enemy out of his cell, and he and my brother had a horrible fight that ended in the former's expulsion from our sect. fast forward yadda yadda this isn't so much the part of the story it's just context but basically that turned out to be a plan to get close to the enemy sect leader so he could stab him in the back. which turned out to become a recurring theme.

the servant, now a prominent figure in his own sect, my brother, and one basically-a-celeb from another sect became this big trio (and totally a Thing) because of the role they played in ending the war. servant-now-big-boy (let's go with snbb for convenience) used that position to send my brother into a cardiac arrest by playing a melody that was supposed to soothe him differently.

so now i was alone, and with one of the current biggest sects to lead, while all i wanted to do is look cute, paint and be bisexual. you can probably imagine how i felt when i learned who did it, especially considering how not only no one else knew, but he got /rewarded/ for it by becoming a sect leader himself. soooo i got a little silly and here's where i mighttttt be tah :3

basically i started a 10+ years revenge plan. i didn't really plan a /lot/ of it, but i knew i'd have to resurrect one of my childhood friends for it to grab attention away from me etc and such and so on and so forth. but basically i also got a gay and socially rejected teenager killed for that, desecrated the corpse of snbb's mother, paid some people to spread rumours here and there, possibly killed a few cats to lure a group of people where i needed them to be, and adopted a public persona of a useless idiot who couldn't run a sect for the life of me to keep suspsicions off of me for the duration of this, which was Also a part to get back at him because that meant he, as someone responsible and sooo niceys and oh won't you please help your poor little meowmeow with the big scary emails plssss (he basically ran the sect for me lol).

to top it all off i had him killed by the one person that loved him the most (mister sir basically-a-celeb. god his jawline is stronger than my will to live) (he has gone into seclusion and is isolating himself indefinitely to mourn)

but also all this allowed my old bestie to get gay married with his longtime heartthrob

so. aita?

[indecentpause]

20 Questions Tag

@reeseweston tagged me for these questions! It took me a while but here it is!

I’m going to tag @pen-for-sword, @infinitelyblankpage, @mercurialscoundrel, and @adorhauer, and anyone else who sees this and wants to. :)

cw: frank talk of suicide in the answer for question 16.

1. Is there any scene from any piece you’ve written that actually scared you? If so, describe the scene.

I’ve never written anything that scared me, just about subjects that disturb me, and it’s not really the same thing. I’m not telling you what it is publicly, although I will say if you go far enough back you’ll find it posted on my writeblr (it’s a Sheraton Academy short story).

2. What genre do you feel most awkward writing?

Probably sci-fi. I don’t know, I just... can’t.

3. How many different types of writing do you write? Types of writing include novels, short stories, poetry, song lyrics, etc.

Novels and short stories. I used to write poetry, but other than devotional poetry, which is... different, because I can just be free with how I feel and not have to worry about form or rules, I haven’t written poetry in years.

4. How old were you when you first started writing?

First grade, however old that is.

5. How confident are you in your writing?

Getting better. I still look at it and see everything wrong with it, but when I get such nice and positive feedback from everyone, it helps, and I feel a little better with each nice comment I get. :3 (YOUR FEEDBACK IS AMAZE PLS NEVER STOP)

6. Have you ever written and posted anything that was very personal to you?

Yes. The previously mentioned short story, and one (1) piece of devotional poetry dedicated to Hermes.

7. What inspired you to start writing?

I have a hard time verbalizing and explaining things, but I like words, and telling stories, so writing them down seemed like the obvious thing to do!

8. Which of your OCs do you relate to the most?

I try really hard to not make characters I relate with TOO much, but I’d have to say probably Cal. He was -almost- a self insert OC when I made him for the RP Sheraton Academy, but I fleshed him out and he became his own character the more I wrote with him.

9. Have you ever written self-insert fanfiction?

I mean. When I was in middle school? Like I wrote a fic where I went on a boat cruise and solved a mystery with the Sailor Scouts, and a Gundam Wing fic where I was in a radio tower piping in instructions to the heroes. But nothing sexy because I was just a kid, and nothing with the Y/N___ thing. That wasn’t really a thing I’d seen yet.

10. What is your favorite piece you’ve ever written about?

Until Our Hearts Go Numb and The Fairy Portal. (follow the links for purchasing information! and remember you can always ask me if you want to know about triggers or more details)

11. How frequently do you actually sit down and write?

Most days, even if it’s just a line or two. Some days I get out a sentence, some I get thousands of words, but it’s the practice of trying to do something at least 5 days out of the week, even if the best I can do it sit for ten minutes and write a sentence.

12. How many hours at a time do you do research on your writing?

I rarely do hours. Maybe a half hour at a time at most.

13. Do you like to branch out in your writing or do you tend to stick to what you know?

You could probably say I have a lot of recurring themes in my fiction, but I just... write what’s fun. And for me, fun is dysfunctional relationships sometimes, adorable fluffy couples in love sometimes, silly adventures, life or death fights. It changes depending on my mood.

14. What would your antagonist of your current WIP say to you if they saw you in person?

There isn’t really an antagonist in the thing I’m working on now, it’s just Jen and Kylie trying their best and constantly fucking things up on both sides because they don’t communicate properly.

15. Do you consider yourself your OCs’ god or just kind of a guiding hand (or other? If other, please list)?

I just... write? And let things happen and flow as they come to me? I don’t really know that I’m either.

16. What do you think you’d be doing with your time if you’d never gotten into writing?

It sounds super dramatic but I’d probably have killed myself because I would have had no other way to communicate and connect with people. Please don’t come at me like I’m making light of it, I am 100% serious. Thankfully I got into writing and that didn’t happen.

17. Have you ever written a smut piece?

Yes and I still cringe!!! I am ace so writing smut is... Uncomfortable and Awkward, but my wife said they were good, so here’s hoping.

18. What was the first thing you ever wrote about?

A bunch of animal friends going on adventures in a Magical Desert.

19. What is the most creative creature you’ve ever created for world-building?

I don’t really make up creatures, I tend to use existing mythos from the culture the story is about.

20. Tell me one random fact about your WIP that you have yet to tell your followers.

Jen ends up homeless twice over the course of the story. Everything else is spoilers.

[mst3kproject]

422: The Day the Earth Froze

The Kalevala is sort of the Iliad of Finland.  As the opening narration of The Day the Earth Froze explains, in the middle of the 19th century a philologist named Elias Lönnrot compiled a collection of folklore and oral poetry into a single epic, which went on to become a major cornerstone of Finnish national identity.  There's a Lemminkäinen Construction Group and a Sampo National Bank, towns called Kalevala and Pohjola, and things like Ilmarinen Streets all over the place.  February 28th is Kalevala Day.  It's a big damn deal.

Before I started this review, I did some thinking about whether I ought to read the poem before I tackled the movie.  I ended up deciding against it for a couple of reasons.  First, because a movie ought to stand on its own: part of its purpose is to bring the story to a new audience.  If you can only understand the movie because you're already familiar with the source material, it has failed both as an adaptation and as a piece of art in its own right.  I am therefore going into The Day the Earth Froze unspoiled by the poem, and will see what I can make of it.

Second, the Kalevala is fifty percent longer than the Iliad and would probably have taken me months to read.  That was also a constributing factor.

The Day the Earth Froze is a fairy tale: a bunch of old guys in pajamas want Ilmarinen the blacksmith to build them a Sampo, a magical object that can produce gold, grain, and salt.  It cannot be forged, however, without heavenly fire, which belongs to the witch Louhi (she keeps it in a cow skull for some reason).  It just so happens that Louhi wants the Sampo for herself, so she kidnaps Ilmarinen's sister Annikki and refuses to let her go except in exchange for the Sampo.  With no choice, Ilmarinen builds it, and then takes his sister home while her boyfriend, Lemminkäinen, goes back to destroy the Sampo.  Louhi takes revenge by crashing Lemminkäinen and Annikki's wedding and stealing the Sun.  The men of Kalevala must find a way to defeat her and force her to return it, or the world will come to an end in darkness and cold.

(If you're thinking that all the names in the movie sound like they came from the Silmarillion, that's because Tolkien loved the way Finnish sounded and used parts of its phonology and grammar as inspiration for the Elvish language Quenya.  Also, you're a nerd.)

The original film, called simply Sampo, was ninety minutes long.  Quite a bit of it was cut when they dubbed it into English as The Day the Earth Froze, and a little more chopped out by the MST3K people.  In addition to the English version, I managed to find one in the original Finnish with rather sparse subtitles.  I'm sure I missed a lot of the nuances of the dialogue that way, but I got to see the stuff that wasn't in the episode and boy howdy, some of it was weird.

For example, that bit of dialogue between Annikki and Lemminkäinen when they flirt a moment before his log floats away?  Not in the original.  I'm guessing AIP dubbed that in because they thought it was creepy that these two fall in love without ever even learning each other's names.  In an unusual move for American International Pictures, they were right.  It's even creepier when both parties run straight home to their families to rave about this pretty person they know absolutely nothing about.

Did you wonder how Lemminkäinen found out that Louhi had taken Annikki?  I kinda did.  Turns out it's because Annikki sent him a magical telegram made of hair, which gives him a vision causing him to shoot a taxidermied eagle with an arrow (I promise you, the scene is even stranger than you're imagining).  This, unfortunately, raises a new question: did Louhi have a way of delivering her ransom demand, or was she counting on Annikki to pull some Disney Princess magic out of her ass?  What if it hadn't occurred to Annikki to throw a lock of hair out the window?  What if Ilmarinen and Lemminkäinen just concluded she fell out of her boat and got eaten by a shark or something?  The extra material actually makes less sense.

Then there's the entire subplot they cut out, at least ten or fifteen minutes of movie in which Lemminkäinen gets his ass kicked by Louhi and his mom has to come to his rescue.  See, after Lemminkäinen returns to Pohjola for the Sampo, the witch tricks him into dropping his sword (after failing to trick him into drinking a flagon of frogs) and then puts a snake down his shirt.  He passes out from the venom, and the trolls throw his body off a cliff.  Luckily the sun was watching – it informs our hero's mother of this, and she straight-up walks across the sea, no explanation whatsoever, commands the ocean to spit him back up, and walks home again carrying him like a tea tray!

Holy shit.  Why didn't they send her to get the Sampo back?  She could just walk in and put it in her fucking purse! What's going to stop a woman who can give orders to the sea?

Once Le Mom Käinen gets her son's corpse back to Kalevala, the Tree and the Road who refused to help her earlier take pity and give her magical sap and dirt to bring him back to life.  So after all that, how does he thank her for bringing all her awe-inspiring superpowers to bear in saving his life?  Why, he goes right out and does the thing that got him killed again, returning to Pohjola to destroy the Sampo!  I hope she grounded him.

Like The Magic Voyage of Sinbad, The Day the Earth Froze was directed by Aleksandr Ptushko, and it's interesting to compare the two films.  The Day the Earth Froze has less of the distinctly operatic feel that was such a part of Magic Voyage, but it is not completely absent.  There's very little of it, to be sure, in the opening sequences, which are shot in the countryside with an emphasis on the great outdoors as a sort of rural paradise.  We see thick woods, rushing rivers, herds of goats, and get an idea of a rustic but prosperous community.  Something similar happens at Annikki and Lemminkäinen's wedding: dancing outdoors and crowds of extras for a more naturalistic feel.

This contrasts with the way things are depicted in Pohjola, where Louhi and her trolls make their home.  Here the sets look more like sets, and there is a greater use of painted backdrops – when Joel and the bots describe the field of snakes as 'an El Greco', they've got the right idea.  The Land of Kalevala is supposed to be a version of the real world.  It is romanticized and idealized, but the audience ought to be able to imagine themselves going about an ordinary life within in, complete with the hard work necessary to a pastoral existence.  It is important that all three of the main characters are introduced while doing work: Lemminkäinen is cutting wood, Annikki is doing laundry, and Ilmarinen is working in his forge.

Pohjola, on the other hand, is part of a fantasy, a land of witches and trolls, and looks correspondingly less real.  This extends for the most part to the actions of the characters.  Ilmarinen could not build the Sampo in Kalevala, because it required something (the heavenly fire) only available in the fantasy land of Pohjola.  In Kalevala, Ilmarinen and Lemminkäinen must chop a boat out of a tree. In Pohjola, they are able to forge one in the same fire Ilmarinen already used to make a horse!  And the fantastic Sampo cannot be brought back to the real world of Kalevala in its magical form.  All Lemminkäinen can bring back is a piece of it, which will bring undefined 'good luck' instead of material gold or grain.  When Ilmarinen tries, in Kalevala, to forge a new sun to replace the one Louhi took away, he is told he cannot succeed.

Perhaps this is another reason why the sequence with Lemminkäinen's mom was cut out for the American audience – it is a departure into the purely fantastical, and jars with the otherwise more realistic portrayal of Kalevala.  It also doesn't really affect the plot at all, as illustrated by how easily it is excised in a chunk and how nothing seems to be missing from the narrative as a result.  I presume it was in the movie because it was in the poem, but it doesn't do much.  Imagine the Lord of the Rings movies had included the sequence with Tom Bombadil.  Yeah, it would have been nice for the fans to see, but it doesn't give us anything that recurs in the story, it would have killed the rising tension, and those unfamiliar with the books would have been left sitting there wondering what the hell they just watched.  Annikki's hair telegram does foreshadow the existence of some mild magic in the 'real' world, but the feats of Le Mom Käinen are way beyond that.

The effects used to present these real and unreal worlds are often quite good.  Louhi's cloak sailing along on the wind looks very creepy and purposeful.  The only time it's really silly is when Lemminkäinen fights it off.  The chained-up winds are quite (pardon me) atmospheric, dangling ominously from the cave ceiling as they do – I like that the North Wind's bag is covered in icicles.  The burning horse looks just unearthly enough and the Sampo doesn't look like anything in particular, which helps it remain a little mysterious even when it's right there grinding out gold.  The matte paintings that represent Kalevala buried in snow are a little unreal-looking themselves, but perhaps they represent the fantasy world of Pohjola intruding into the real one of Kalevala, where it can do nothing but harm.

As weird as the movie is, I really did enjoy The Day the Earth Froze, and I'm actually kind of looking forward to watching The Sword and the Dragon now.  You guys can also expect to see Aleksandr Ptushko in the Episodes that Never Were section sometime, not because his films are bad but because I really want to see more of them.

[greenmaskedmarauder]

All questions

Dave you’re so mean to me

1: when you have cereal, do you have more milk than cereal or more cereal than milk? I think it’s pretty even

2: do you like the feeling of cold air on your cheeks on a wintery day? I tolerate it, being from a really cold area. I don’t think anyone particularly likes it.

3: what random objects do you use to bookmark your books? anything I can grab. receipts, foreign money, a random photo

4: how do you take your coffee/tea? strong coffee with a hint of creamer

5: are you self-conscious of your smile? nah

6: do you keep plants? no but I could if I had cute planters

7: do you name your plants? I totally would

8: what artistic medium do you use to express your feelings? writing

9: do you like singing/humming to yourself? yeah

10: do you sleep on your back, side, or stomach? side, though I guess I roll around too. stealing covers, pushing Dave off the bed

11: what's an inner joke you have with your friends? uhhh we had one a while back but I can’t remember. a recurring one is using the insult of “douchey buttmuncher”

12: what's your favorite planet? the one on which my fictional stories all take place

13: what's something that made you smile today? a message I got from my mom

14: if you were to live with your best friend in an old flat in a big city, what would it look like? probably pretty messy, with an eclectic mix of furniture from the second hand shop and various wall arts, and books

15: go google a weird space fact and tell us what it is! The Apollo space mission’s footprints will most likely stay on the moon for the next 100 million years

16: what's your favorite pasta dish? alfredo, or lasagna

17: what color do you really want to dye your hair? all the colors of the rainbow

18: tell us about something dumb/funny you did that has since gone down in history between you and your friends and is always brought up. Not between me and my friends, but when I was 15 and learning to drive, my mom ordered chicken from a truck stop 15 miles from our hometown (it’s very small) and then had me drive so I could get some practice in. I got a thing of minute maid apple juice so we could eat there, and then go back. I was studying the bottle of the apple juice, and read the part where it says which states you can recycle the bottle in and get money. So I said with a completely straight face “Mother, why does my apple juice say HI ME 5c?”

19: do you keep a journal? what do you write/draw/ in it? I do not

20: what's your favorite eye color? I like green eyes because I like my eyes, but brown eyes are also amazing, and don’t get nearly enough love.

21: talk about your favorite bag, the one that's been to hell and back with you and that you love to pieces. uhhhh

22: are you a morning person? haha nope

23: what's your favorite thing to do on lazy days where you have 0 obligations? absolutely nothing

24: is there someone out there you would trust with every single one of your secrets? my best friend. even when we recently got into a huge fight, I know I can trust her

25: what's the weirdest place you've ever broken into? when I was seven I went to a friend’s house and just hung out there even though no one was home. Don’t ask me why, I just did. tbh it was pretty easy since no one locks their doors in a small town.

26: what are the shoes you've had for forever and wear with every single outfit? I haven’t had any pair of shoes forever and ever

27: what's your favorite bubblegum flavor? classic bubblegum

28: sunrise or sunset? sunrise, though I rarely get to see them

29: what's something really cute that one of your friends does and is totally endearing? Sadie gets super duper giggly when she’s drinking, and almost anything can make her laugh.

30: think of it: have you ever been truly scared? for my life? only once

31: what is your opinion of socks? do you like wearing weird socks? do you sleep with socks? do you confine yourself to white sock hell? really, just talk about socks. socks must be short, but they can definitely (and should be) be colorful

32: tell us a story of something that happened to you after 3AM when you were with friends. I took Sadie to get food after she’d been drinking bicardi 151 and after we got back she threw up on the floor. oops

33: what's your fave pastry? I like kolaches best

34: tell us about the stuffed animal you kept as a kid. what is it called? what does it look like? do you still keep it? my favorite buddy as a kid was the pug beanie baby named Pugsly. he went everywhere with me, and I even made people give him bandaids if I was hurt. He’s in storage at my parents’ house somewhere...

35: do you like stationary and pretty pens and so on? do you use them often? yeah but no

36: which band's sound would fit your mood right now? I have no idea

37: do you like keeping your room messy or clean? I would like it to be clean, but I am very messy

38: tell us about your pet peeves! people who never discipline their kids. and people who think other people are less of people

39: what color do you wear the most? most of my shirts are green

40: think of a piece of jewelry you own: what's it's story? does it have any meaning to you? this blue flower necklace that used to be my grandma’s. she died of cancer when I was little. whenever I wear it, I feel closer to her.

41: what's the last book you remember really, really loving? see I love most books, so I have to split this one. But Harry Potter, the Inheritance Cycle, Lockwood and Co.

42: do you have a favorite coffee shop? describe it! The Einstein’s on campus at my school

43: who was the last person you gazed at the stars with? Sadie

44: when was the last time you remember feeling completely serene and at peace with everything? The last time I was in the Black Hills, just staring out on the ravine. I felt at peace being with the trees and nature.

45: do you trust your instincts a lot? yeah

46: tell us the worst pun you can think of. *holds rock* hey I can rock your world tonight

47: what food do you think should be banned from the universe? I’m a foodie

48: what was your biggest fear as a kid? is it the same today? my biggest fear as a kid was losing my parents. I think it is

49: do you like buying CDs and records? what was the last one you bought? I haven’t bought a CD in 8 years

50: what's an odd thing you collect? foreign currency

51: think of a person. what song do you associate with them? Dave, Collide by Howie Day

52: what are your favorite memes of the year so far? anything that mocks Donald Trump

53: have you ever watched the rocky horror picture show? heathers? beetlejuice? pulp fiction? what do you think of them? never seen it

54: who's the last person you saw with a true look of sadness on their face? a customer who came through my line the other day

55: what's the most dramatic thing you've ever done to prove a point? kissed my best friend while drunk. all because some guy in our friend group said “I bet Lyndsey won’t do it” so yeah

56: what are some things you find endearing in people? Dave and the face he makes whenever I tell him he’s cute

57: go listen to bohemian rhapsody. how did it make you feel? did you dramatically reenact the lyrics? I feel silly

58: who's the wine mom and who's the vodka aunt in your group of friends? why? My friend Erin is the wine mom. I don’t know who’d be the vodka aunt. Because Erin has a wine rack in her apartment. Like a big fancy one that’s also old.

59: what's your favorite myth? I like the Greek myths

60: do you like poetry? what are some of your faves? where the sidewalk ends

61: what's the stupidest gift you've ever given? the stupidest one you've ever received? a box of kleenexes, a flashlight

62: do you drink juice in the morning? which kind? nah

63: are you fussy about your books and music? do you keep them meticulously organized or kinda leave them be? meticulously organize books

64: what color is the sky where you are right now? right now it’s black because it’s night time

65: is there anyone you haven't seen in a long time who you'd love to hang out with? Dave

66: what would your ideal flower crown look like? have some peonies that are vibrant pink and some blue bachelor’s buttons for contrast

67: how do gloomy days where the sky is dark and the world is misty make you feel? whimsical

68: what's winter like where you live? right now it’s weird

69: what are your favorite board games? battleship, Scrabble, Sequence

70: have you ever used a ouija board? nope and I don’t plan to either

71: what's your favorite kind of tea? uhhh

72: are you a person who needs to note everything down or else you'll forget it? I probably should write things down more

73: what are some of your worst habits? sleeping too much

74: describe a good friend of yours without using their name or gendered pronouns. red hair, spunky personality, quick to come to a friend’s aid if they’re able, but also not afraid to say what they think about situations

75: tell us about your pets! right now just my fish Salazar. He’s a betta, and he likes to flare up at his filter because he’s silly. He also hides in his ship, behind the elephant, and confronts his Buddha statue

76: is there anything you should be doing right now but aren't? maybe sleeping

77: pink or yellow lemonade? pink

78: are you in the minion hateclub or fanclub? I’m meh about minions

79: what's one of the cutest things someone has ever done for you? sent me flowers from a long distance

80: what color are your bedroom walls? did you choose that color? if so, why? they are beige and no I did not choose the color

81: describe one of your friend's eyes using the most abstract imagery you can think of. pieces of broken stained glass from a peacock image

82: are/were you good in school? nope

83: what's some of your favorite album art? I don’t really have any

84: are you planning on getting tattoos? which ones? One on my foot that says “Be strong. Be courageous. I am with you. -Joshua 1:9″

85: do you read comics? what are your faves? I like the avatar comics

86: do you like concept albums? which ones? not really an album person. I find individual songs I like and go from there

87: what are some movies you think everyone should watch at least once in their lives? Balto

88: are there any artistic movements you particularly enjoy? what?

89: are you close to your parents? yes. I tell them everything

90: talk about your one of you favorite cities. It is a city but it doesn’t feel like a city, and that’s just fine with me, since I hate cities.

91: where do you plan on traveling this year? St Paul next week, California this summer.

92: are you a person who drowns their pasta in cheese or a person who barely sprinkles a pinch? give me the cheese

93: what's the hairstyle you wear the most? ponytail/braid/down

94: who was the last person you know to have a birthday? Sadie/my Dad

95: what are your plans for this weekend? haha

96: do you install your computer updates really quickly or do you procrastinate on them a lot? the absolute last second

97: myer briggs type, zodiac sign, and hogwarts house? INFP-T mediator, Capricorn, Hufflepuff

98: when's the last time you went hiking? did you enjoy it? last summer at a retreat. yeah, I love hikes

99: list some songs that resonate to your soul whenever you hear them. Priceless by For King and Country, Thrive by Casting Crowns

100: if you were presented with two buttons, one that allows you to go 5 years into the past, the other 5 years into the future, which one would you press? why? Future. The past has already happened, and though something happened to me 5 years ago, I wouldn’t change it, because then I might not be the same person I am now. I want to see what I accomplish in the next 5 years.

[ihfsttinuf]

Screw It, I’m Making a Webcomic

So, as I made it abundantly clear on Twitter mere moments ago, I have a real honest-to-Glob New Year’s Resolution for 2017.

I am going to create a webcomic.

I am going to write a sequential art narrative which I will draw and provide various artistic accoutrements to and post it on the Internet. This is going to happen by the end of this year. I am doing this.

Perhaps this sudden outburst and declaration of artistic intent seems a bit out of left field, both in its overtones of grandiosity and relative lack of context given what most of you guys know about me. So let me provide some of that much needed context, both to show you why I am doing this and what I am really saying, which is probably even more ambitious (and maybe pretentious) than you think it is.

I’ve been writing weird little stories and drawing accompanying illustrations for them since I was a wean, as most of us did at that age, but since that point I’ve never really stopped. At a very young age I encountered not only excellent children’s books ranging from the charming and heartwarming to the downright mind-bending—Peter Sís and Henrik Drescher were big in my household—but also illustrated works whose contents and subtext were far too old for me yet entranced me nonetheless, particularly the works of the great New England illustrator and satirist Edward Gorey. By the age of six or seven, I had memorised “The Gashlycrumb Tinies” and would recite it with morbid glee to anyone who would ask (or didn’t). I discovered books through Gorey’s cover illustrations, first accidentally discovering the alternate history genre through his work on Joan Aiken’s Dido Twite series, and was only drawn deeper into John Bellairs’ junior Gothics when I discovered that Gorey had provided the frontispiece and dust jacket to every one of the entries in the series he’d written up to his death—which I mourned, with a mix of vague incomprehension, sorrow, and creeping disappointment. I was eight at the time.

Parallel to this, I spent a lot of time at my town’s local art centre, which provided free classes in all sorts of artistic endeavours. I took most to theatre and improv in particular—I was a wee ham; now I am a large ham—but what stuck with me was drawing and, to a lesser extent, animation. As I fixated on Gorey’s superficial techniques and aesthetics, the simple sunken eyes and odd little triangular noses, I’d also more subtly acquired his less obvious techniques: The way he used cross-hatching and simple, intense linework to suggest different textures entranced me, and indeed still does. I am told that a very strict art teacher, who I thought disliked me and of whom I was somewhat afraid, freely admitted that a sketch I’d done of a horned figure playing a flute on a rooftop by the light of the moon had taken her breath away.

Which is not to say that I was, or am, some prodigy of form, or that I lacked for more prosaic influences. The former, I will get to, but the latter is best expressed in the fact that a recurring scene which I have since revised and transfigured many, many times began life as... well, thinly veiled Darkwing Duck fanfiction, minus the duck part, given a sound twist of Lovecraft’s “The Statement of Randolph Carter”. I was maybe eleven or so at the time.

It was in one of these classes that this weird little scene deep beneath a ruined graveyard was born. It was also there that I made plans for an elaborate series of beast fables, set in a world quite unlike our own.

It is perhaps worth noting that one of the handful of these early sketches which sticks in y mind to this day was a tale of two young male lizards falling in love only to be torn apart by a disapproving society. Even at an age when I was functionally unaware of homosexuality and bemused or outright repulsed by what I knew of sex, a queer romance was perhaps the most emotionally intense thing that I had conceived of up to that point. But I digress.

The setting in question and certain characters in it would perennially re-emerge in my other writing, which I was quite certain would be my career path throughout late elementary and middle school. In seventh grade, I was part of an experimental programme where middle and high school students were allowed to enrol in a creative writing course at a nearby university. Only two students wound up attending: Myself, and a classmate of mine who had skipped a grade and would later become known in my high school as something of a mad and insufferable genius. (We got on pretty well.) After several semesters of studying poetry and short fiction, there was a presentation. One of the selections I made for my reading was a list-poem, from the perspective of an older character trying to live day by day with the memory of his deceased wife hanging over him, with the distinction that the final entry was a reminder to keep his claws neatly filed.

It was around that time that I began to come under the influence of Thomas Ligotti, and it was with this exposure to the refiner’s fire of such elegant horror—the kind that brought the same sort of visions into my mind that Gorey brought to the page—that I realised what form my true opus should take, at least in plot. I took it with me into high school, and beyond into the wilderness of these past six-and-a-half years of confusion. The polestar of this mad endeavour formed here.

I had been thinking a lot about epic high fantasy at the time—I was eleven when The Return of the King hit theatres, and I had read enough in the genre and in styles adjacent to it to be aware of the tropes—and it occurred to me that the moral framework and cosmology of a lot of such works rang a bit hollow to me, not because right and wrong did not exist, as certainly people do good and bad things to one another all the time, but because there was always this sense of certainty that the side one was meant to root for was indubitably in the right and some great objective force of Good deemed it so, blessing their struggle against a force similarly ordained by some great objective Evil. It was that last dimension which particularly irked me. It felt reassuring in the most painfully reductive and philosophically trite way possible. And so often the battles were so... literal. I never much cared for war films to begin with, and by putting such struggles in a fantastical framework, you subtracted the one thing that made war films kind of neat: The recognition that these were people doing the fighting and the killing. Not symbols, people.

Very middle school analysis, yes, and unfair to some things I quite enjoy, Tolkien included, but the ultimate conclusions were the important part.

Which is where Ligotti comes in. Much has been made of his non-fiction opus The Conspiracy Against the Human Race, but in terms of his philosophy and its influence on my thinking at the time, I’d rather stick to his fiction, as that was what I was reading and that is what made me. In brief, Ligotti is not a reassuring writer. The universe of his stories reflects his views of our own, which are, in essence, a wholesale rejection of the commonly held notion that human consciousness and life in general are good things that we should all be even remotely enthused about, instead proposing that the very idea that we are aware of ourselves and that we should think of ourselves as individuals for whom some higher power might just be watching out is more likely an obscene and sadistic joke on that hypothetical power’s part or else, more likely, a horrible accident. His stories are filled with personal totems and surreal motifs, the fates of his characters determined by blind chance or the detached malicious prankstery of a party with whom they cannot bargain or reason, the sadistic frenzies of Poe’s maniacal villain-protagonists writ large, often on a cosmic scale. There is the feel of a nightmare and yet also of the sleepless hours after, alone in the dark, thinking, where wakefulness and dream bleed between one another and all the world is a nightmare to which the hells of sleep might well be preferable.

If I’ve lost you, well, I’m sorry; but you and I probably have something to talk about if your first reaction to all this was, “I’ve certainly had *those* days.”

And if you’ve had enough of those days, the rest probably follows easily enough.

Wouldn’t it be interesting, I thought, if one took that quest narrative key to so many epic fantasies, and put it through a world where the rules of the game were so utterly reversed? If our well-meaning hero—of course, as in Tolkien, basically some poor backwater schmo, by no means stupid nor necessarily naïve but very, *very* far from the classical man of virtue—were to bear with him some artefact of power that could, perhaps by its very existence, rend the veil of normalcy that should keep all of the sane and happy citizens of this world from confronting what writhes beneath all that they see, what might he choose to do with it, particularly if he were, say, by some inexplicable invisible bond, *tied* to it?

Now, what makes a fitting antagonist for such a tale? What sort of character provides the ideal foil for a kind-hearted soul confronted with all the horrors of what may be in a neat little package? Rather than some cosmic sadist intent on throwing us all under the bus, why not something a bit scarier: Another kind-hearted soul. Someone who has seen behind the veil their whole life. Someone who has seen the truth and the agony of this world and seeks nothing less than perfect closure

And there it was.

And then it began to get complicated.

For every character that I created to flesh out the story, another came into being, and I wanted to know more about them. A side-plot salvaged from some other silly project merged seamlessly into the new whole, and suddenly there were whole new plots, full of new characters with motives that I wanted to understand. Characters grew, changed, lightened and darkened as my thoughts steeped. Exposure to other writers through classes and forums and variably disastrous shared writing projects made me realise what I did and did not know, what I could and could not do.

It was also in high school that I began taking music seriously, first toying around in Garageband and singing in the school choir and then as part of a band with several close friends. I wrote a lot of poetry, and I sang a bit, so we had lyrics; I still drew sometimes, so we had art when we needed it, although we rarely needed it. I was always ambitious with my lyrics: One of our most successful songs was structured to simulate one character murdering another during a snowstorm in a glade where they had played and hidden as a child. Morbid character studies were common; I was always taking grim little vacations in people’s heads, my own or otherwise. Informed by my middle school studies of haibun and my lyrical adventures, my prose grew more experimental, collapsing into poems or switching into strange persons and tenses. My mind was full of images, yet where to go with them?

My path to sequential art was an odd and rocky one. As mentioned, I loved picture books and illustrated stories as a child, and while I failed to touch upon them earlier (mea culpa!), Calvin and Hobbes and The Far Side were pretty important in their own right. I even attempted to create something of a running series at around the time I was in that poetry programme, mainly for the amusement of myself and a very affable art teacher who found the premise amusing. It was only a year or two later that I would read Doom Patrol—the first superhero comic that I would ever admit to liking, and still one of the chosen few—and realise that Grant Morrison, the bastard, had stolen my idea before I’d even been born: Of killing one’s own imaginary friend, only to be tormented by their vengeful spectre years after the fact at the least appropriate of times.

But the comic idea sort of fell by the wayside for the longest time, for the simple reason that I am, to my own mind, an atrocious draughtsman. I cannot reproduce figures to save my life. Hilarious, seeing as I can draw you a teeming alien cityscape, or a perfectly detailed mosquito in flames, but in terms of doing the same thing twice, I’ve spent years hanging my head in shame and self-loathing.

The secret is, though, not that I couldn’t learn this, but that for such a long time, pride had kept me from allowing myself to be bad at things until I was good. As someone to whom a lot of fairly complex ideas just come naturally, someone who just absorbs information like a souped-up Dyson vacuum, the idea of having to draw the same damned thing ten thousand times just to get decent at drawing that same damned thing was a horrifying prospect. It still is.

I got pushed into it. My own fictions put a knife to my throat and told me, “This is what needs to happen.” But it took two different interconnected experiences to understand how, both courtesy of my boyfriend being a huge dork.

The first was his recommendation that I read LAMEZINE 02, at that time the latest salvo from the wonderfully deranged comic artist Cate Wurtz, then going by the moniker Partydog; the second was his use of a Bec Noir avatar on a forum we’re both on, which got me to finally bite the bullet and read Homestuck.

Wurtz’ Lamezone comics are a trip. Her art style is by most technical standards fairly primitive, but it’s a very *refined* jankiness, part and parcel to her overall embrace of scuzzy punk ‘zine aesthetics, immediately recognisable and all-around immediate. Her approach to story and tone is just the same, at once surreal and ridiculous and incredibly emotionally potent, ranging in tone from giddy B-movie absurdity to crushing Carver-esque sorrow, composed of as many little side-stories that flesh out what sort of world these characters live in as of its “meat” and all the better for it. The way that her comics are often framed only adds to the ambience: DVD menus of hit TV series that never existed, tales from the everyday lives of people living on the precipice of madness (and/or suburban Kansas), the wild Lynchian adventures of a man who talks to the spirit of the good ol’ USA through Twitter while traipsing through other people’s comics and the comment sections on furry porn sites. She was even working on a video game at one point about a woman trying to battle her way through deformed iterations of her past selves while maintaining a sufficient ganja supply. I have no idea if that’s still happening. It looked awesome.

Homestuck has already had much said about it, so I’ll keep it brief. Comparisons to Pynchon are not unwarranted. It takes the hypertextual potential of the webcomic to the next level, and is longer than many novel series. The art is, quite intentionally, all over the place, and uses collage surprisingly effectively. The story is a beautiful mess that is, fundamentally, about the process of storytelling and how “things that happen” become “stories” in the first place. It’s very oblique about this, and generally quite funny.

And so I looked to the story I was writing.

I looked at the multiple plotlines growing out of one another, intersecting, snakes devouring their tails, thematic parallels on parallels, spirals of mental imagery with bits of torn wallpaper making the fabric of waistcoats and cathedrals made out of lines of scripture and trees bearing watches like fruit, and I went: “This should be a comic! A hypercomic, in fact, McLuhan-style! This should be a wondrous blend of visuals and text and...

“I...

“I can’t draw. Fuck me. I should stick to prose, like a good loser. Get rejected that way instead.”

So I waffled. For months. And then for years.

But you know what?

I’m done waffling.

Limitation is power in its own right. Ever since I learned of Oulipo in that long-ago three-person poetry class, I’ve been fascinated with the idea of innovation through defining what you cannot do, or what you must do, no matter what. Of forcing yourself to start from a set place or end at one, no ifs, ands or buts.

I am limited. Within that, I am omnipotent.

I am going to draw this comic. I am going to write it and I am going to draw it even if it starts out looking like total shit and the process drives me half-insane. If things that I love, in sequential art but also in music and painting and writing and animation and all sorts of other forms, can make a perceived deficit into a key strength, I can do it, too. Even if I can’t be a classical master, I can be the best at that crazy thing I do.

I guess this is also my grandiose way of saying “fuck last year,” where I made so much progress that felt so thwarted by external circumstances and my own failings, and where so much went wrong for so many of us. So I’m embracing this year as a year of progress. Even if everything else sucks, I’ll be running up that hill.

And just so there’s no mistaking it, I will still be making music and probably writing at least a smidgen of prose fiction and poetry on the side. In the former category, I might even start a band.

Oh, wait. We’re not doing half-measures any more.

I’m starting a band, too.

Tell your friends.

Happy 2017, everyone, and have a lovely rest of your night.

[gentle--riot]

writer questions!

Since I am but a little bitty baby blog and my brain doesn’t feel like coming up with something original tonight, I’m gonna do this long af list of writer questions:

1. Right- or left-handed?

I’m technically ambidextrous, but I prefer the right.

2. Pencil or keyboard?

I use both at different times and for different projects. Planning is almost always done on paper, but I do the bulk of my writing on my computer.

3. Favorite genre to write in?

As a general rule, I write realistic romantic fiction, though I have ideas that branch through several other genres. 

4. Least favorite genre to write in?

I don’t do sci-fi well, I don’t think. 

5. When did you start writing?

I wrote my first story when I was 6, and I pretty much just kept writing stories.

6. What was your first story about?

It was about a boy named Sky Racer who liked a girl in his class, and everyone made fun of him for liking a girl. Her name was Lacy Daffodil. 

7. How do you plan/outline your stories?

I’m planning on doing a full post about this, but I’ll give you the short version. I can create magnificent outlines, but I often struggle to stick to them. I still need a plan, though, so I make a list of things that need to happen and then set them in order and write them. 

8. Where do you get story inspiration from?

I’m planning a full post about this, too, but generally the shower or from watching tv. I’ll hear a cool name and see a cool thing that a person does, and then I’ll put those together, create a full character, and send them on adventures. 

9. Would you ever write fanfiction?

I love fanfiction, actually. I’m currently finishing my first one! I’ve read some gorgeous fanfictions as well as some horrible ones, the same as with every other genre of fiction. 

10. Have you ever gotten a story/idea from a dream?

I haven’t! My dreams are generally such a mix of trivial and bizarre that it seems silly to write a story from them. 

11. Who is/are your favorite writer(s)?

I’m a huge fan of the classics, though I think Austen is a little overrated *dodges the incoming projectiles*. I love Hemingway’s short stories, every single Bronte, Shakespeare’s poetry, Dickens, Dickinson, Neruda, and e.e. cummings. I also really love children’s poetry books. I adore Shel Silverstein.

12. What is your favorite book?

Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte :)

13. Have you ever had fanart drawn of one of your original creations?

I don’t think I have! I don’t have much I’ve shared, though, so I feel like it’s maybe only a matter of time.

14. At which time of day do you write best?

I like late afternoon and nighttime.

15. What are your writing strengths?

I’ve been told that I have a distinctive voice -- that my own distinctive way of putting words together can be felt across academic, blogging, fiction, and even poetry. I’m also pretty good at writing emotional scenes and kissing. 

16. What are your writing weaknesses?

I’m REALLY bad at dialogue by nature, but I’m getting better. I also struggle with sort of... not skirting the big things that need to be addressed. 

17. Have you ever submitted your manuscript to a publisher?

I have not.

18. Have you finished a novel?

Sort of. I set out to write a novel, but it turned out to be the length of a novella instead. 

19. What is your highest word-count?

The project I’m finishing for Camp NaNoWriMo, Tied, is nearly 80,000 words long, and it’s my longest project. 

20. What is/are your favorite word(s) to use in writing?

As a fandom in-joke, I like to use #soon in my fics, and I really dig the phrase “endlessly and entirely”, so I have to work really hard to not use it constantly. 

21. Who is your favorite character that you’ve created?

My main character, Chessa Barrow, from my novel 18 Years. 

22. What are some of the main themes in your writing?

Disability empowerment is a big theme throughout my work. I also emphasize imperfections and universal acceptance. 

23. Have you ever been critiqued by a professional?

Only by my professor in college, who was published. He would often tell me that I am a gifted writer and have a distinctive, inimitable way with language. That kept me writing, because he doesn’t just hand out compliments. 

24. Have you taken writing courses?

I did! I took exactly one. Before I changed my college major from English to counseling psychology, I took a course in creative fiction. 

25. How would you describe a good writer?

I don’t like this question. A good writer, in my humble opinion, has educated themself about writing and been diligent enough to make their work readable and enjoyable. I truly don’t feel the need to go further than that for the simple reason that... I have no authority here.

26. What are you planning to write in the future?

IT’S A REALLY LONG LIST: a fairy tale trilogy, a fanfic about knights and wizards and stuff, a story with angels and demons and swords, another fanfic where Kevin is president and Avi is vice president, and... I know there are more, but I don’t have my list closeby. 

27.What advice do you have for aspiring writers?

Keep aspiring. Keep doing your best to make the best work you can make. 

28. What is the last sentence you wrote?

It was a sad song, but it was still a song. 

29. What is your favorite quote from a story you’ve written?

“I swear to Ina Garten, if this is a dream, I’m suing my subconscious.”

30. What is the title of the last story you were writing?

Tied

31. Have/would you self-publish?

I plan on self-publishing. 

32. What is the longest amount of time you’ve gone without writing?

I probably took two years off of doing fiction when I was finishing my psych degree.

33. Have you ever written a Mary Sue/Gary Stu?

I actually have a story called “moments ♡” where the main characters do not have distinguishing features, and I often put myself in the girl’s position, though she is not perfect, and I sure as heck don’t want her man. 

34. What made you want to start writing?

Well, I don’t remember why I started making up stories as a kid, but as an adult, I had an accident in my wheelchair where I was seriously injured. I had a conversation with Avi Kaplan’s mom, Shelly (I like her more than Avi), and she told me that I must be full of stories. 

I took up writing full-time shortly thereafter. 

35. Have you ever turned real-life people into characters?

Yes. Often. I do generally change them a little bit, but in my upcoming trilogy, many of my friends make appearances :)

36. Describe your protagonist in three words:

Brave. Sassy. Strong.

37. Describe your antagonist in three words:

Bigoted. Douchey. Argumentative. 

38. Do you know anyone else who writes?

I do! Many of my online friends are writers, and most of my interaction is online ;)

39. What’s you favorite writing snack/drink?

I love puff corn and Faygo cola more than most family members. 

40. Have you ever made a cover for your story? 

Yes. I have several works on Wattpad or ones that are going there, and I have made all the covers myself. 

41. Would you ever consider being a ghostwriter?

I would if I needed the work. 

42. Has your writing won any competitions?

Yep! I won several essay and poetry competitions in high school.

43. Has your writing ever made anyone cry?

It’s a recurring theme, I’m afraid. 

44. Do you share your writing with your friends/family?

I do! I use Wattpad to share fanfiction with whoever wants to see on Wattpad, and two of my friends are reading chapters of my novel as I finish them. 

45. What are some of the heavier topics you’ve written about?

What haven’t I covered? Emotional, physical, and sexual abuse, anxiety, ableism, sexism, self-harm, illicit drug use, alcohol abuse, death of loved ones... I haven’t written on suicide, but that doesn’t mean I won’t. 

46. Do you prefer happy or sad endings?

I’m a firm believer in happily ever after :)

47. What is a line of your writing that sounds weird out of context?

“I don’t think I would like an ass salad.”

48. What is a first line from one of your stories that you really enjoy?

“I am a badass.” from my novel, 18 Years. 

49. How diverse/well-represented are your characters?

Oh boy! My fics are inherently diverse considering how diverse the subject of them is. My novel is already very diverse and growing more diverse by the day :)

50. Have you ever written about a country you’ve never been in?

I tried when I was a teenager, but it didn’t go well. 

51. Have you ever written a LGBTQIA+ character who wasn’t lesbian/gay?

Yes! The protagonist in my novel is demisexual, and one of her closest friends is a nonbinary pansexual. 

52. Has your work ever been compared to famous writers/works?

Yep! I have been called the next J.K. Rowling just because of who I am as a person, but my work has been compared to John Green on a few ocasions. 

53. What are three of the best character names you’ve come up with?

Chesapeake Dawne Barrow, Jack Everett Mason, Jesse Oliver Hamlin

54. Has a single event in your life ever sparked a story idea/character?

Well, one of my best friends likes to call me a badass because I am in constant pain, but I keep living. I don’t see myself as a badass at all, so I decided to write a character living with my issues who is a badass... and Chessa was born. 

55. Do you believe in writer’s block?

Not necessarily. I believe we can get into a creative funk and struggle to get ideas out, but if you plan well and take care of your mental health, that doesn’t happen so often.

56. How do you get rid of writer’s block?

I just take in art. I’m a big fan of contemporary dance, so I like to watch some Travis Wall choreography when I’m feeling blank. 

57. Do you prefer realistic or non-realistic (paranormal, fantasy, etc.) writing?

I’m more realistic, though I do enjoy more non-realistic things. 

58. Which of your characters would you (A) Hug? (B) Date? (C) Kill?

I’d hug Chessa from 18 Years, date Kevin from Tied, and kill Nate from Tied.

59. Have you ever killed off a favorite character?

I’ve never killed off a character. I’m too soft :(

60. How did you kill off a character in a previous story?

^^^

61. What’s the most tragic backstory you’ve given a character?

*if you’re interested in reading Tied, don’t read this* My love interest was molested by her father, and then she was in a very abusive relationship in college. I’m not telling more. Bye.

62. Do you enjoy writing happy or sad scenes more? 

HAPPY. I love happy scenes. I wrote about a week of sad ones, and my anxiety yelled at me all week. 

63. What’s the best feedback you’ve ever gotten on a story?

“You went there. Gorgeously.” 

64. What is the weirdest Google search you’ve conducted for a story?

“hairless dog breeds”

65. Have you ever lost sleep over a character?

Yep.

66. Have you ever written a sex scene?

Yep! *runs away demisexually*

67. What do you love and hate about your protagonist?

I love her passion. I hate her fighting to not feel things in her personal life. 

68. Have you ever written a chapter that mentally and physically drained you?

Yes! This month!

69. Do your parents/family approve of you being a writer?

The opinions tend to be quite mixed. 

70. Write a story in six words or less.

She was happy. It mattered.