#vaguely sci-fi inspired

[aster-riskite]

Written in the Stars

(And now for my trademark! A bit of angst after a sweet moment.) @spaus-week

Antonio was a simple man who had one simple habit between duties on the starship. He would come once more to this corridor, staring through this window, the pulse of the engines outside humming. Antonio couldn't help but stare and be one with the universe. It felt like his very core would sing along to this song. Whatever song the stars seemed to sing, anyways. The song reminded him of a certain performer he had met on a distant planet.

The song was gentle and sweet, just as the flowery dialect it had been composed for. Antonio thought he would win the lottery before he could see that man again, but fate had put in a good word for him.

The man who composed it, a self proclaimed conservationist, was traveling with them. He was opting to use anything except the fare that would have been charged to take him on a comfortable journey. He thought about what it was like to live so carefully, but not only did he refuse to honor that thought, it had been interrupted by a few words from the door.

"What's so enticing out there? Nothing new, right? I've already looked." That voice. Those words. Antonio nearly didn't understand them. He was so entranced. "Hello? Can you hear me? You seem like you might as well be lost out there." Ah, what he'd give to be lost in that voice forever.

"Sorry, Rodrigo." Antonio grinned as he looked in the composer's direction. "I've been looking at the stars. They're so pretty!" Much like the visitor he now gazed upon. "You may have looked, but have you seen them yet?"

"I don't see them often, and in all honesty, I suppose I need to take a better look." Roderich stood by his fellow man. "They inspire a lot of my work. Dangerous, overwhelming, but pretty." The composer had a strangely serene look on his face. Pale as the moon of earth, eyes shimmering in a color almost like the void of space had been lit up in flame, those same eyes reflecting the light that those distant stars had been emitting for ages longer than any man had existed.

"Wow..." Antonio sighed, but he didn't look out the window. His own green eyes were fixated on the features of this strange man. He looked so put together, but like a mess the more he was paid attention to. A truly remarkable and vulnerable artist, one of the last of his kind by trade. Antonio hadn't seen music on things with strings and keys before meeting Roderich.

To meet someone so connected to the past in this age of the stars was incredible.

"I need to-" Antonio caught himself. "Could I get to know you better?" His own tanned face was surprisingly flooded with enthusiastic blush.

"Anton, was it?" Roderich asked. "I'd love that. You seem like you enjoy art. I know of a nice gallery you may enjoy, it holds some pretty extravagant exhibits."

"Well, I guess that's that!" He didn't bother to correct him. "I'll meet up with you sometime later, maybe after our ship makes it through the system after this one?" Antonio offered.

"Do you promise?"

And then Roderich woke from his slumber, a bed of beautiful yet modest luxury beneath his aching joints. He remembered that man so fondly, having met him some more times before that ship had made its final journey.

In spite of his promises, poor Anton hasn't been heard from in a while. The artist, the conservationist, the composer and musician, wrote a song in his name. Roderich had a hope that somewhere, somehow, Antonio would hear it. Their time together was as short and sweet as the song's cry for forgiveness. A curse to lady luck and a promise to see him again, even though extreme means.

Roderich wanted to be wrong. But even in spite of their bond, the tragic ending of this symphony was already written in the stars.

[steelblue8]

News media of the late 22nd century - the CuproChrome 3500m wire cartridges, used by Pacificast to distribute news 3 times a week across all Pacific Terran Alliance territories and much of broader human space. Click here for a 3D view in your browser -> https://skfb.ly/oLOBw

[urlocallesbiab]

oh, i think the reason i got So into serirei recently is that they push the same buttons in my brain that brotzly does. yeah, gimme a liar with a heart of gold who deeply hates himself but goes out of his way to help people around him, both strangers and those he cares about, and whose relationship with his boyfriend started out as help in a tough situation and grew into working together in an agency focusing on solving paranormal cases; and the boyfriend — a weirdo with supernatural powers who's socially awkward because he had years of his life stolen from him because of them, and who's traumatized by a nefarious organization that wanted to harness that power, who tries his best to build connections and be kind to people, and who's ultimately, unconditionally, unwaveringly in love with the liar-with-the-heart-of-gold, even in the face of having seen him at his absolute worst and lowest. and also they're both 30yo losers.

ywah, it all comes back to brotzly, it always does.

[bylertruther]

the byIer fandom really is a hivemind bc every time i think i came up with a cool fic idea i'll eventually see posts or fics from other writers spring up showing tht we all had the same exact idea down to even the same exact nitty-gritty details and headcanons for them without ever interacting with each other at all. like... bro. 💀 We're Connected..

[pokimoko]

summer winter reading/writing/arting tag

Thank you so much for tagging me @thealterscrolls in your post, you know I love an excuse to overshare about things I like and/or are working on. Though, I'll be nice and keep each list to a maximum of 8 cause otherwise I would go overboard and that would make this already long post longer than necessary. Alright, let's get into it:

Describe one creative WIP project you're planning to work on over the summer: No summer for me for a while but hey, winter for me personally is a great time to work on stuff cause excursions outside the house are at a minimum, and I don't have to feel bad about being inside all day when the sun's already going down at 5 o'clock in the afternoon. Anyway, I'm hoping to work on my In the Absent Place prequel slash companion fic focusing on Jake and the events that lead into that story. It's been an idea I've wanted to do for months and I have indeed started on it but I keep getting distracted from it by other ideas and fandoms (and also working on zine fics). But I do want to finish it. I also have a fic for The Owl House and one for Wolf 359 that I keep coming back to (aka the fics that have been distracting me), so we'll see if I ever get round to finishing those.

Recommend a book: When it comes to reading books, I am both very easily entertained (I rarely give out 1 or 2 stars) and extremely reserved with what I consider a great book, to me at least. I have given only a few books 5 stars. These are those few books: • 'Project Hail Mary' by Andy Weir • 'Piranesi' by Susanna Clarke • 'Loveless' by Alice Oseman • 'Radio Silence' by Alice Oseman • 'Elatsoe' by Darcie Little Badger • 'Good Omens' by Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett • 'The Witch's Heart' by Genevieve Gornichec • 'His Dark Materials' series by Philip Pullman

Recommend a fic: There are so many great fics I've read that are lost to time because I'm stupid and rarely bookmark stuff (it's that same 5 star problem, y'see). But here's some I have bookmarked or remember really liking: • 'Mens Rea' by yellow_caballero (Moon Knight) • 'the dotted line' by zippe (Moon Knight) • 'An Evolving Situation' by whiskyrunner (Moon Knight, ongoing) • 'Puddlejumping' by Davechicken (Moon Knight) • 'Misguided Ghosts' by petrichorishly (Lucifer) • 'Thermotemporal Equations' by blinkytreefrog (Captain America) • 'No Echo' by sh0rtwave (Wolf 359) • 'you were the song that i'd always sing, you were the light that fire would bring' by rnelody (The Owl House)

Recommend Music: I like listening to a lot of genres, but I think indie pop is probably my go-to, so pretty much all of these will fall under that. Here are some of the songs I've really been enjoying lately: • 'Word to the Trees' by whatever mike • 'Christmas in June' by AJR • 'Kelly Time' by Owl City • 'Bite Down (Bastille vs. HAIM)' by Bastille • 'Jigsaw' by Conan Gray • 'Bloody! Bloody!' by Junie & TheHutFriends • 'Serotonin' by girl in red • 'Talking to Myself' by Will Jay

Share one piece of advice: Nothing you learn is a waste of time. Nothing. Doesn't matter how obscure or pointless it feels like it is, everything comes in handy some way or another eventually (and, hey, even if it doesn't, it can still be fun to have that knowledge). So learn! Learn whatever you want, however big or small. Learn that fictional language or lore from your favourite story. Learn about a show you've never watched from an hour long video essay. Learn about that obscure historical event you found in a Wikipedia rabbit hole at 2AM. Learn not because you have to but because you want to and because you're interested. Because no time is ever wasted when you've gained something new.

That's it for me. I'll tag @pizzee, @yellowocaballero, @theophagism, and @mockspector. Consider it my not-so-sneaky way to learn about your projects and/or favourite books/fics. ;)

[awritersbro]

I want to see an animated story about a space probe orbiting the Centauri system or some other faraway star, and a rover that’s exploring an exoplanet of that star system. They’re two parts of the same mission, and the probe is partially responsible for getting the rover to the exoplanet and relaying its communications to Earth. I want to see them bonding with each other as the only thing they can really talk to without years and years of delay. The rover sends the probe an image of a sunset on the exoplanet, and the probe sends the rover a picture of that same sunset from thousands of kilometers up. The probe sends the rover an image of the star where it points its antenna to send information, and the rover sends an image of what he exoplanet’s night sky. They count down the exoplanet days till the probe next makes its closest approach to the exoplanet so that they can take pictures of each other as tiny little specks in the vast area that they’re exploring. That sort of thing.

and then, something happens.

Something happens and the probe is no longer able to send messages back to the rover. The rover has no idea whether or not the probe is listening or if it’s even still functional. But it can look at the sky. It can use its cameras and it can see the faint glint of light that the probe makes on its closest approach. It’s still there.

which means it can be fixed.

cue a little montage of the rover using all its tools and instruments to make a little one-armed one-robot space program in order to reach its friend on time for the next closest approach. Orbital mechanics and rocket science are just really complicated types of math to it, and because it’s so far from any human, exploring unknown terrain it was programmed to be able to teach itself different kinds of mathematics by recognizing and learning from its mistakes.

it fails at first. It fails a lot. But it fails differently every time and learns from these failures to make better and better rockets until at last the day of closest approach comes.

it’s a dinky, dangerous looking thing. Essentially a hollow transparent dome strapped to a giant pillar of solid rocket fuel with a really long fuse to allow the rover to get into and close the dome on time. The rover checks the time, strikes a metal against a rock to create sparks, and ignites the fuse on the fifth try. The camera follows the fuse as it burns shorter and shorter, and the rover moving up the launch ramp at its top speed of 0.3 kilometers per hour. it just barely makes it. Closing the dome a just as the fuel ignites.

The rover goes faster than it’s ever gone since it entered the exoplanet’s atmosphere as it rattles around in the dome, camera fixated on the familiar distant light that’s growing closer and closer and…

the rocket stops accelerating, the rover starts floating, the dome's door floats open.

It's a simple calculation, but the rover's got one shot at this. Current speed of the probe vs current speed of the rover. Speed. Angle. Velocity.

The rover grabs the door of the dome with its arm, and launches itself towards its friend.

The rover reaches, and it looks like they're going to just barely miss each other...

Then the probe turns one of its instrument arms in reach the rover, and they grab hold of each other.

Fast forward years in the future. the probe, with a new functional communication satellite and a giant solar sail takes a picture of a sunrise on a new planet that we saw the probe pass by once before with relatively little fanfare. The rover is seen on this planer, taking a picture of the same sunrise, and is clearly attempting to turn itself into a helicopter.

[ot3]

The Flower That Bloomed Nowhere

What is it, and why you should read it.

(Art by purple)

The Flower That Bloomed Nowhere is a currently updating webserial by author Lurina. It's one of my favorite things I've read in a long while and I'd like to convince you all to give it a chance.

My elevator pitch is this: A time-loop murder mystery directly inspired by Umineko, with a lot of similar vibes to the Locked Tomb Trilogy - partially due to it's meditations on grief and mortality and partially due to it's far-future magical sci-fi world where we follow a fucked up lesbian necromancer on a task she is determined to see through to the end. A deeply complex, unique, and believable world that plays hosts to one of the best interpersonal dynamics I've read.

In a future so far-flung that it is past the heat death of the universe, humanity has constructed a new society that is post-scarcity but not post-stratification. Utsushikome of Fusai is one amongst a class of prodigious young medical arcanists (essentially grad students) who are invited to visit a recently legitimized conclave of top-of-the-line researchers studying immortality. Accompanying Su is her best friend Ran, a fellow arcanist. Over the course of the novel we begin to slowly unravel exactly what ulterior motives have brought them to this conclave and how events in their childhoods and years of working toward their shared goal has warped their relationship into what we now see. This relationship is the crown jewel of Flower's narrative, and getting to peel back the layers of it as you read is a delight.

Like Umineko, Flower is a murder mystery that prevents itself with in-universe Rules that dictate the murders' parameters, meaning there's a lot to chew on for anyone who likes solving mysteries. For those that don't, like myself, Flower offers instead a richly developed world and plenty of open questions about the sociopolitical and metaphysical implications of its own worldbuilding.

Below the cut, I'll go into more detail about the series (without spoilers!) for those of you whose interest has been piqued.

The Flower That Bloomed Nowhere is currently ongoing, updating every few weeks. It's several hundred thousand words, so if you're looking for something substantial to keep you entertained, you've got it. As you might expect from the length, the pacing is decently slow. I don't see this as a bad thing at all, because within this pacing Lurina dripfeeds the readers enough new and interesting information at a regular rate that it never feels like your time is being wasted. But if you can't handle slow burns, I wouldn't recommend this one for you.

If you enjoyed the Zero Escape series and liked that they stopped solving murder puzzles to infodump about fringe science, I think you'll get a lot out of Flower. Characters are frequently interrupting their life-or-death scenarios to have lofty, philosophical and political discussions. It's a ton of fun if you like reading characters argue.

'People have to sleep.' 'People have to work.' 'People have to die.' But those were just vague rules, phrasing I'd used because it had been easier in the context of that conversation. What really mattered, on the day-to-day level, was the idea that it was all for something. If someone invented a elixir that made people not to need to sleep, it would, in retrospect, recontextualize all nights everyone ever wasted sleeping as wastes of time. Not something that occurred for some inherent purpose, but whims of circumstance, a tragedy of when you happened to be born. If you accepted that all unfair things in the world could be removed, if only someone knew how - fatigue, labor, death - then to exist in the world we had now, with all its grotesque imperfections, was to know that you had been violated by fate.

Along those lines it's just got a sense of humor I really enjoy. Pretty dry and cavalier. It manages to keep the mood light without feeling like it's undermining it's own stakes. I'm particularly fond of Su's penchant for telling incredibly depressing suicide jokes that just Do Not Land.

The peer pressure cut into me like a hot knife. I hesitated a little, biting my lip. "Well, uh, okay. I'll just tell a quick one." I swallowed, my mind quickly scrambling. "Okay, so, there's a woman who runs a dispensary for second hand goods. She sees a man come in who's a regular customer. He's kind of a mess-- Has a big beard, a bad complexion. He buys a razor, and tells her he needs it to clean himself up, because he has a date." I could see that I now had Ophelia's attention and that Kam was looking pleased with herself, but Ran was watching me, too. I could see the look in her eyes. It screamed at me, with such vividity that it could be sold at an art gallery: You better not be telling a suicide joke right now, or we're going to have a talk. But it was too late. The wheels were already in motion.

As I mentioned up top, the relationship between Ran and Su is just one of my favorite interpersonal dynamics ever. Period. The author is playing some insanely complicated 5th dimensional yuri chess and I am absolutely here for it as someone who likes characters who are deeply devoted to each other in a way that is deeply deeply fraught. I cant emphasize enough how obsessed I am with what they have going on.

Additionally, as stated, the worldbuilding in Flower is top tier. The author clearly understands how every part of her world functions, which makes the moral quandaries and politics presented all the more impactful because they're very believable. It's hard to talk about Flower's world without spoiling too much of the specifics that get slowly revealed, but it doesn't fall back on any typical sci-fi standard fare and feels like a breath of fresh air amongst recycled and repetitive worldbuilding tropes.

A lot of really fun side characters. Strong voices for all of the supporting cast (♥♥Kamrusepa♥♥) and even though not every character gets their own arc, they all clearly have plenty of interiority. Once again, another thing that makes Flower feel very believable despite it's absurdities.

Autism

"Did you notice anything out of the ordinary with anyone?" She eyed him. "Anyone who seemed tense?" "Saoite, I'm not sure if you've noticed, but half of our class is so autistic that they constantly seem tense. You might as well ask me to find a specific turd in a sewer." "Just answer the question, please," she replied flatly.

Guys it's really good just trust me I don't want to spoil you for the more intricate plot beats but they're doing some crazy shit here. It's never a bad time to support an independent author's project. If you're sick of corporate mass-media and stuff needing to be marketable, getting into independent works owned and supported by individual creators is a great way to push back against that. I highly recommend it.

[dnotive]

I built a Cyberpunk City out of GARBAGE

(AKA: What you do when you’re stuck at home and bored to tears)

So, one of the wilder things I did during the pandemic was build my own cyberpunk city to use for a music video shoot. 

The bones of the project just uses completely randomly pieces of cardboard and other crap from my garage, randomly glued together into shapes that looked vaguely building-like, and spray-painted gray and black to look somewhat on-purpose.

(Party cups and left over toilet paper tubes just add to the aesthetic)

The next thing I did was add dramatic uplighting, because let’s face it... everything looks cooler and bigger and more intense if it’s uplit. Chunks of leftover LED strips work really well, and it’s really easy to isolate just the blue circuits. It creates the illusion of scale which is important for any model to look large.

Of course, no city is complete without BLINKY LIGHTS (and I’m sure you noted already there’s some blinky action on top of the towers here) so I spent a bunch of time googling blinking light circuits and experimenting with them on a breadboard before ultimately extending the wires to glue them to the buildings themselves.

(I  got a basic electronics kit on Amazon for most of the components)

Then, I put white LED strips inside of the bigger buildings (a little trickier to isolate the W circuits but not impossible!) and poked holes to simulate lit windows for ultimate sci-fi street cred.

At this stage, things were looking pretty legit.

The “final” touch was to create a virtual billboard to go in one of the sections. I had an old first gen ipod touch that I made a little slot for and cobbled together a video loop for. (Don’t worry it’s not permanently installed or anything -- it just slides in and out.)

... and of course what dystopian future is complete without flying cars...?

A little platform for a hotwheels car to go on (after it’s all painted green of course for the greenscreen.)

Insert some practical effects, some video-editing magic, and VOILA! ... it’s CYBERPUNK TIME BAYBEE.

I was inspired by a post on here from literally years ago about making a city out of garbage and LED’s and decided to take it to the next level. I’m sure at some point I could save myself the trouble by learning how to 3D model but this was so much more fun.

I probably spent too much time on this but if you’re in any way curious about what the final result turned out to be, the video I built all of this for premieres on October 15th.

[simon-roy]

have you played/read/heard about Lancer? maybe it's my limited experience with space opera, but when reading Habitat it reminded me a bit of Lancer and the Union. I get that your whole thing is small scale stories taking place in a wider setting, but I'd be interested in knowing more about that wider setting. The Euhumans, the uploads, the robo-church in Rome (is there a robo-pope?). Are there aliens?

I HAVE heard of Lancer - I had the distinct pleasure of doing a bunch of illustrations for the first book (I think it was) back when it first came out, and frankly they are still some of my best sci-fi illustrations yet! Here, i'll post em up here:

But, I digress.

In terms of the wider setting of the Griz Grobus/Habitat universe, I'm trying to slowly expand the world so readers can form a bigger picture of everything. But I recently cooked up a sort of lore megapost, over on my patreon, which I've made open to the public.

In the post, I dig into a little bit of the background - the roots of the "euhumanist culture" that settled most of the universe, the posthumans they destest, and where the apostolic church fits into things... Take a read here: https://www.patreon.com/posts/brief-but-about-87488764?utm_medium=clipboard_copy&utm_source=copyLink&utm_campaign=postshare_creator&utm_content=join_link

But I'm keeping lots of the details vague - not just to keep the world open, for readers to imagine their own version of things, but to give me room for improvisation, should inspiration strike!

Thank you for the question, and I hope you enjoy the linked lore post!

[autolenaphilia]

I’ve recently seen some The Rocky Horror Picture Show discourse. And like people are questioning if Rocky Horror is transmisogynistic. Of course it does. Dr. Frank-N-Furter is intentionally a transmisogynistic villain. That’s the point.

It’s intended as ironic of course, as deliberate camp. The musical is intended as a parody of old sci-fi and horror movies, mixed with a camp drag aesthetic inspired by the contemporary glam rock movement. The mad scientist villains in the movies being parodied were often queer-coded, and vaguely effeminate.

So to parody that, Frank-n-Furter goes far beyond the queer-coding, and is outrageously effeminate and evil. He rapes people, kills them with an axe and serves them for dinner and force-fems them to take part in his climactic stage show. He is a Frankenstein parody, who literally makes an artificial man in order to fuck him (a joke about Frankenstein I’ve seen on tumblr). And does it all while wearing stockings, a bustier and heavy make-up. He is deliberately the ultimate evil man in a dress trope, referencing Psycho and all effeminate mad scientists in media.

That Frank-N-Furter isn’t explicitly a trans woman doesn’t matter. The musical deliberately blurs the line. The line “I’m just a sweet transvestite, from Transsexual, Transylvania” is like a perfect encapsulation of how horror movies treat transfemininity. “Men in dresses” (transvestites) trans women (transsexual) and a symbol of predatory horror movie villainy (Transylvania) are all conflated, making a pun of out how they all begin with “trans”.

Of course, it’s intended to be ironic. It’s a parody of queer-coded villainy in old horror movies by turning it up to eleven, so that you can’t take it seriously. The whole movie has this drag show camp aesthetic that it celebrates, and the supposed representatives of heteronormativity, Brad and Janet are turned in the end. Frank-N-Furter becomes a symbol of a hedonistic queer liberation “Give yourself over to absolute pleasure.. Don’t dream it, be it.”

This is the clear intent of Rocky Horror, and it’s how it became a “queer classic”. Does it work? I’ll admit that I enjoy the movie version. The glam rock aesthetic is fun, the songs are catchy, and they keep coming at a quick pace. A lot of it is admittedly that I love the old horror and sci-fi movies it’s parodying, so my cultural touchstones are similar. I’m the kind of person to get a thrill out of knowing that Frank-N-Furter at one point uses the exact same prop that Peter Cushing used in the second Hammer Frankenstein movie.

That is a different question however from how well it succeeds at subverting the transmisogynistic tropes it handles. Even in the most sympathetic possible account of the musical, it’s doing the equivalent of handling live grenades. Is it the creators tropes to subvert in the first place? Is it the fans?

Let’s talk about Rocky Horror’s creator, Richard O’Brien. He is certainly a weird and contradictory person, he identifies as a third gender and “70% male and 30% female“, and is using estrogen. So arguably he is a transfem enby and thus transmisogyny-affected. But he’s also a transmisogynist who doesn’t believe trans women are “real women”.( I would like to know what exact percentage of “female” as a transfem person turns you into a bad fake trans woman.)

Of course the important thing about O’Brien is that he is rich. He is in a vastly different class position than the majority of transfems. So while he may be taking estrogen and living as a third gender, he is simultaneously isolated by his own wealth from the effects of the transmisogyny he bolsters in the media (see Caitlyn Jenner for another example of a wealthy transfem doing the same thing).

And O’Brien is rich because Rocky Horror is a huge success. The stage show has seen tons of productions, the original ran for 7 years in the West End, and the movie is a slow but certain money maker, with probably the longest theatrical run out of any movie in history. He is swimming in residuals.

This raises the more interesting question of Rocky Horror’s position in the wider culture, and it’s status as “queer media”. It’s a movie which is just not passively watched but celebrated and performed by its fandom. People show up in cosplay to showings, “shadow casts” perform while the movie plays. And of course the original stage musical is still performed.

So we have to ask ourselves, what are people performing? And who is performing it? And I’ve already answered the former question earlier. Rocky Horror is largely an ironic performance of transmisogyny. And the fact is, the majority of people doing that performance are not the main targets of transmisogyny. They are largely TME cishet, queer and trans people. It’s “ironic” transmisogyny to be sure, I think most fans of Rocky Horror who have any understanding of what it is doing view Frank-N-Furter as the true hero of the show. But is it really their thing to be ironic about? Are transmisogyny-exempt people really the people who should reclaim with irony and camp transmisogynistic tropes in horror media? I don’t think so, and that’s why there is so much resentment about Rocky Horror from transfems. And it’s creator doesn’t help, because while he’s arguably transfem, he also spreads transmisogyny in the media.

It illustrates a lot of things, for example how imprecise “queer” is as a description of people. It’s an umbrella term, and does group together people who have much in common. But it also erases the material differences within the community. Queer people aren’t all equally oppressed.

So Rocky Horror status as queer media, as a campy celebration of queerness and parody of anti-queer tropes in genre films is kinda grating. Because it enables TME queer people to perform and celebrate Rocky Horror, because they are queer and it’s about “queerness”, when there are specifically transmisogynistic tropes parodied in the musical. It isn’t really their place to do so.

It appropriates specific transmisogynistic tropes in the media by thoughtlessly subsuming it into the general anti-queerness which it is part of.

Of course there are transfems who got to explore their gender at Rocky Horror showings. But I think the reason they did that is because mtf crossdressing is accepted as part of a camp ironic performance in such a context. It makes it feel safer to perform femininity in public, because you can backtrack and say it’s purely ironic. That’s no different from the comedy crossdressing in American Halloween parties, and I think we can all agree those are often transmisogynistic.

And of course, Rocky Horror is an example of how cis men can perform femininity, and get celebrated for it in mainstream society, while escaping the effects of transmisogyny that transfems experience, and in fact often furthering that transmisogyny. It’s often a (negative) performance of transfemininity, in which actual transfems play no part and are mocked.

Tim Curry is a very good example. He made his career from playing Frank-N-Furter, and he probably couldn’t have done that if he was actually transfem, and not just crossdressing for an ironic performance on stage and screen. Like I don’t have anything against him in particular, quite the opposite, he’s one of my favourite actors, love him in everything from Clue to Muppet Treasure Island to Gabriel Knight. My objection is to the patriarchal and transmisogynistic system that favors cishet men like him.

Speaking of crossdressing on stage, the drag culture which Rocky Horror is inspired by of course has a complex history. It’s deeply rooted in both African-American and queer culture, and transfems have played major roles in drag. But Rocky Horror is if anything even an appropriation of drag culture. It represents drag’s commercialization and recuperation into the mainstream. It took drag out of the gay bars being raided by the police and onto the more respectable West End stage, making a lot of money in the process.

Rocky Horror beyond any qualities it has as a stage and film musical, due to its popularity represents a lot of complex issues. It’s important to queer culture, but it also represents the commercialization and recuperation of queer drag into the cishet mainstream. And within the queer community, it is a shining example of how TME queers can appropriate specifically transfem struggles as their own. It shows how cis men can gain wealth and fame performing transmisogynistic caricatures (even if they are ironic and don’t mean it).

I’m not saying if you enjoy the musical that you should stop enjoying it. But maybe if you are TME, Dr Frank-N-Furter is not your “problematic queer icon” to reclaim.

[stesierra]

Writeblr ReIntro!

I'm posting a new intro because now that I've been on Writeblr a little while, I realize how much information I left out! Hi, I'm Stephanie, I live in the desert with my husband and baby and three cats, and I'm an ace, bipolar fantasy writer! When I was a kid, they said I had ADHD but then I got my Masters degree in biology, so they claim I can't have it. Online tests say I'm probably autistic.

I used to write sci fi twelve years ago but only low tech sci fi about weird aliens, which nobody likes. Now I write fantasy novels! Lots of fantasy novels! I am beginning to post them on my website so if you want to read them, please keep an eye on this post.

My books often but not always have some romance (either m/f or f/f because I prefer female protagonists.) Since I'm ace (and demiromantic), my interpretation of romance and attraction is not exactly what you'd expect from, say, a romance novel.

I am not going to tell you about all my books! I've written eighteen! Four of them are shelved forever! Here's some recent ones (written or revised since 2018) that I haven't given up on. Please ask me questions about them! I LOVE talking about my books! Also, if you want to be added to my taglist for writing samples let me know! Please also tell me if you're interested in alpha or beta reading and for which book! Mutuals only, please!

My books are beneath the cut! As I add WIP intros, I'll update this list with links.

Cast Out

YA fantasy! On her sixteenth birthday, Zisha is cast out of the Plenary Cities for the crime of being born deaf, like her grandmother before her. In the wastelands, she meets Thesil, a depressed and bitter young woman. Zisha wants nothing to do with her — until she sees Thesil's face in a vision. But before she can find out what the visions mean or reach her grandmother's holdings in the wastes, the plague returns to the Plenary Cities. If the disabled really caused the plague thirty years ago, and were cast out to stop the spread, how can it be back when all of them are outcast?

Status: Finished. Being serialized.

WIP intro here.

Now being serialized here. First five chapters up, one posted weekly.

The Bone Queen

This is my NA fantasy about the aftermath of freeing an undead queen and her skeleton army. They take over the kingdom, of course! The main character, Elise, is trapped in Bandrum palace by Aubrey, the ghost who tricked her into falling in love and freeing him (plus everyone else.) He's an animated skeleton now with plans to marry Elise and force her to carry his children. The bone queen has promised him she'll make it happen. Too bad no one cares what Elise wants. If only she had magic of her own...

Status: undergoing a rewrite after developmental edit. Was 109k before revisions. Not available for beta reading.

Draft number? Hahahaha. It has two complete sequels (The Spellbound King (106k) and The Matriarch's Daughter (96k)) I must also rewrite. This series is going to kill me but I love it. My mom, who loves everything I write, complained that it was weird. I'm very proud.

WIP intro here.

First chapter here.

School of Souls

This is my YA contemporary fantasy about a boarding school in the Bighorn Mountains! It's supposed to be a place parents can send "bad" teens to have their problems sorted out, but secretly the founder is using it to train the kids as sorcerers. Even more secretly, the school devours the souls of the students sent there, and the teenagers who graduate aren't the same as the ones who arrived... Warning: does include teenage addiction to sleeping pills and ghosts and and parental death. It's going to have sequels but I haven't written them yet.

Status: Complete first draft. 83k. Available for alpha reading.

WIP intro here.

First chapter here.

The Many-faced Princess

This is YA fantasy with a historical vibe but set in a made up world. Vaguely inspired by ancient Phoenicia. It's about Princess Ameryi, who was blessed by the genderless trickster god, Akihel, to be able to change her face. If her father the king ever found out, he'd have to execute her, of course. Akihel is just plain evil. All the other gods say so. A daughter who's their champion? Impossible. An abomination. So Ameryi will just have to make sure her father never finds out. That was easier to do before the Asirtinsa Empire threatened to invade and her father sent her to secure an alliance with a neighboring king. She's supposed to marry him. Not steal his face and frame him for murder. But sometimes plans just don't work out.

This book was supposed to be about two lesbian princesses who frame the king for murder so they can elope, but both princesses decided to be ace and there was nothing I could do.

Status: Complete first draft. 83k. It's going to have sequels but I haven't written them yet. Available for alpha reading.

First chapter here.

Map here.

Court Phoenix

This is my NA fantasy! Kerra is a blacksmith's apprentice. Not because she wants the job, but because her mother sold her future to him when she was still a toddler who crawled into live fires and giggled as the flames consumed her clothes. Now she's a woman, trapped by the expectations of her family and her village. Until one day, a phoenix crash-lands and dies in her arms. When it's reborn, it chooses Kerra as its keeper. Soon, her dreary future is swept away. A princess from Skyfire, the moving city, offers her a job in the royal court. How could Kerra refuse? Her family's claims that she'll die if she ever leaves the village are just manipulative lies. Aren't they?

Status: Complete third draft. 104k. Available for beta reading.

First chapter here.

The Revenant Trilogy

Adult fantasy. Solving a murder should bring good fortune, but all it brings Mindral Thideet is disaster. Her fame and peaceful life as head researcher at the city of knowledge end abruptly. In retaliation for her investigation into his crimes, Payar Cheref, the head of the powerful Cheref family, burns her beloved cousins alive and scars her face. The scar marks her as a revenant, a body possessed by a godkin, one of the gods' evil children. Her life as a researcher is over. All that's left is revenge.

No one believes her when she denies that godkins have any power over her. But godkins, real ones, are far closer than she realizes. Tearing down Payar Cheref could destroy Mindral, her family, and the nation itself.

-The Halfway Revenant (rewriting draft 4) 120k. Not available for beta reading.

-The Soul-Seer (draft 2) - 130k

-The Godkin's Gambit (draft 2) 121k

First chapter here.

As Immortality Fades

Adult fantasy. Five hundred years ago, one of the immortal and unpredictable Valteifur visited the kingdom of Kathild and granted the young queen Nelone immortality. But there was a catch. She'd live forever, youthful and strong, just so long as her subjects were happy. For centuries, she's met her part of the deal. But when the Valteifur returns to check on her progress, he grants her a new gift: the resurrection of every single person in Kathild who's died in the last two hundred years. Then he disappears.

There aren't enough houses for them all. There's not enough food. And winter is here.

Status: Complete first draft. 98k. Available for alpha reading.

Bi MC, enemies to lovers.

First chapter here.

Stitches and Memories

This one's adult fantasy. Antea's father ripped her mind apart, left her for dead, and vanished twelve years ago, and she's going to find out why. But when constables try to kill her and strange truth magic grows inside of her, hunting her father starts to look like suicide. Too bad going home isn't an option.

Status: I exchanged this with a critique partner and now it embarrasses me. Fourth draft. 122k. Available for beta reading.

Trigger warning: magic seizures

First chapter here.

WIP intro here.

Triangle Park

Contemporary Fantasy. I have no idea who it's for. An elf exiled to the middle of nowhere ends up stuck with an unexpected child. It's about reluctant parenting and protecting the needy. And elves and faeries slumming it in a mobile home.

Status: Complete first draft. 86k. Available for alpha reading.

First chapter here.

Mud-Child

Adult fantasy. Rebeka has always heard that a woman who goes through menopause loses her spark (the magic that lets her create children). If she's had children, it just makes the neighbors a little more fertile. But Rebeka never wanted a man, and she never wanted to raise a child. Not since her twin sister died and her beloved Suza left her for a man. The problem is, the spark leaves a childless woman differently, everyone says. A bitter hag? She'll curse her neighbors. A sweet dim biddie? She'll give her spark to inanimate objects and create a monster. Rebeka doesn't know which she is, but she believes it's a myth.

That was before the clay in her clay pit woke up and called her mother.

Status: Third draft. 109k. Needs a rewrite! Not available for beta reading.

First chapter here.

WIP intro here.

I GUESS I'M WRITING A NEW BOOK

The Giant's Gamble

First chapter here.

I started writing this on Friday the 13th, 2023. LET'S SEE HOW LONG IT TAKES TO WRITE WITH A BABY.

Short stories

The Unfamous Dead

VERY OLD CRAP

The Scribe and the Sphinx

Adult historical fantasy

Status: second draft. Shelved for good. 85k.

The Adrift series

The River's Drift. 100k.

The Waking Mountain. 106k.

Low-tech alien sci fi. Shelved for good.

My first book whose name I forget. About 50k. Exists only as a hard copy in my parents' house.

Taglist so far (tell me if you want to be added or removed)

Tag list for everything

@harleyacoincidence

@anonymousfoz

@moremysteriesthantragedies

@elizababie

@sm-writes-chaos

@bellascarousel

@the-dragon-chronicler

@teacupsandstarlight

@vorskra

@wrenofthewords

@amostdelectablescribbler

@mysticstarlightduck

@phantommill

@gracewritesbooks

@aziz-reads

@owlsandwich

@symbioticsimplicity

@squarebracket-trick

@koala2all

@rmgrey-author

@atomatowriter

@cheerfulmelancholies

@delusionisaplace

@janec23

@writing-is-a-martial-art

@authortango

Just chapters and snippets

@da-na-hae

For The Many-faced Princess

@deadlyessencewhispers

@serenanymph

The Halfway Revenant

@acertainmoshke

For Stitches and Memories

@space-writes

@acertainmoshke

The Bone Queen

@janec23

@holdmyteaplease

@digital-chance

@thecrookedwriterspath

@tea-and-mercury

@coven-archives

I love you all!

[18thcenturythirsttrap]

'When art is so short of inspiration that it has to steal from history, it should at least respect history’s sole essence, which is truth.'

Tbf, Simon Jenkins seems more offended by The Crown than by Napoleon - perhaps that's because many of those represented are still alive?

He makes an excellent general point, though, about 'art so short of inspiration that it has to steal from history'. I think too many novelists, dramatists and film-makers get away with cannibalising dead people's lives for their plotlines, which they then feel they can abandon or embellish when reality seems vague (usually not as vague as they would have us believe) or it doesn't serve their particular narrative purpose. If you're interested in a period, why not use your imagination and create fictional characters whose lives can unfold as you please within that period? Subject to the boundaries of conceivable historical reality, of course.

Or if you can't be bothered with conceivable historical reality, why not opt for sci-fi, or fantasy, where you can create your own rules and reality?

[ashes-writing]

stranger things ● can't fight this feeling ● s.harrington

warning

angsty!Steve in the beginning, flirtatious!coquette reader, neighbors to lovers, high school drama and angst, no sci fi or upside down this is a total AU, underage smoking, alcohol and 🍃 + house parties and eventual filth / PDA ( for my readers who aren't a fan you're warned now ahead of time), Steve finally wins a fight it's happening at some point, teeeny hints of a rivalry between Billy / Steve but Steve is bae so he will win, swearing, sarcasm. mentions of both steve and reader having similar but totally different home lives and steve's parents are.. old money snobby.

<- female reader warning ( personified a fair bit, clothing / hair / body parts and loads of personality so this one isn't as vague sorry babes this is me being ✨ self indulgent ✨ to a degree )

word count

7670 words exactly. I uh.. got carried away, oopsies.

( i'm on my bullshit.. again. there was a lot of groundwork to set bc this is deffo going to be a series. )

summary

he's fresh off a breakup with Nancy and he's not looking. but then you move in next door and he's entirely too aware. will either of you be able to fight your feelings?

( traaash. summary is trash. song inspo / title is can't fight this feeling by REO Speedwagon cos it kinda fits, esp the 'my life has been a whirlwind since I saw you' line. trust me on this. )

taglist

-- taglist here if you want to be tagged in my works please lmk or add yourself. otherwise, i don't tag.also, also.. if anyone who joined my ST list for strictly gareth fics wanna be removed from my other nonsense lmk please?

@tbmunson - bestie i luhh you. i had to tag you in this because you're my inspiration. feel free to ignore though, babes.

@allelitesmut

@chaoticcancer

@cursethememory

@dylanwritesgood

@just-a-blue-nerd

@music4life42

@slyisbehindyou

other links

masterlist ● steve's masterlist ● about + rules

Rain drizzles down the window of the classroom as Steve Harrington stares out, bored. He’s barely listening, his mind’s a million miles away. Replaying the talk he had with the guidance counselor about college and the importance of it in his head. 

The door to the classroom opens with a tired creak, slowly. He tears his eyes off the gray drizzle outside to glance over and he watches as you walk in, stopping by the teacher’s desk. You happen to glance his way and the second you do this, he’s lost in your eyes for a few seconds. You’re the one who looks down first. Beside him, he can hear Carol and Nicole whispering back and forth, he catches bits of it and rolls his eyes.

If he needed a reminder as to why he stopped being friends with Carol and Tommy, the fact that she’s already talking about you and she doesn’t even know you is a good one. Carol snickers quietly, nodding to the front of the classroom at you as she tells Nicole, “She’s gonna get dress coded for that little dress of hers by the end of the day. Only sluts wear that kind of stuff.” and Nicole whispers back, “Carol, that’s mean. You’re not wrong though. I bet she’s easy.”

By now, you’ve clocked the two girls whispering back and forth as they steal glances at you and you want to laugh but you can’t. You’re almost willing to bet that they’re whispering back and forth about the pastel pink slip dress you’re wearing beneath your favorite soft cardigan with the hood and flared sleeves. Honestly, the fact that you’ve only been at Hawkins High for a total of ten minutes now and you’re already being talked about is something you find amusing. 

The teacher is still looking over your schedule and as he does, you shuffle your feet against the speckled tiles. Glancing around the classroom.

The first set of gazes you meet are the two girls who are making no secret that they’re talking about you. You smirk at both and when the redhead looks you up and down and mouths the word slut, you shrug.

It’s nothing you haven’t heard before and honestly, you stopped letting anything anybody else says or thinks about you get to you a long time ago. 

The next person your eyes settle on is the guy sitting right beside the window with an olive colored Members Only jacket. He looks like a classroom is the last place he wants to be and he’s twisting a black ink pen around in between his fingers until he looks up and right at you.

You can’t help but stare. His hand raises and fingers drag through effortlessly styled brown hair and your eyes catch on the movement for a split second but then they’re moving downward. Settling briefly on the prettiest lips you’ve ever seen on a boy, hands down. You bite your own lip for a second or two and you can feel a slow heat rise from the pit of your stomach, blossoming out over your cheeks and settling in the tips of your ears. He’s still staring, you can’t tell whether it’s amusement, curiosity or boredom, maybe it’s a mix of all three playing in doe eyes as he continues to stare. You shift from one foot to the other and your hand raises, catching in the long thick mess you call hair. Lingering there as you let a slow and soft smile slowly play at your lips.

The trance you’re in is broken by the teacher speaking. First to you, “You can take the empty seat in front of Steve Harrington.” and you nod. Then the teacher addresses that same boy you’ve only just managed to take your eyes off of because you were so mesmerized.

Which is dumb, you think to yourself, because I know how guys are. And he looks like the very kind to break your heart and probably laugh about it.

You shove the thought out of your head.

“Mr. Harrington, since you’re not taking one of your naps today, mind raising your hand so that our new student can find her desk, sir?”

There’s quiet laughter among the other students and you catch a glimpse of Steve as a hint of pink creeps into his cheeks and he gives the teacher a dirty look while slowly raising his hand.

You make your way over to your new seat and you’re settling in. The teacher tells you what page he’s reading from and you realize there’s no book at your desk so you speak up. “I don’t have a book.”

“You can share with Mr. Harrington. Maybe if he’s sharing a book he’ll actually pay attention for once.” the teacher shoots Steve a pointed look and Steve grumbles to himself but he moves to the empty seat beside your seat, the one normally occupied by some girl named Andrea. He pushes the seat closer to yours and sets the textbook so that it’s between you so you can see it and read along.

You give him this shy little smile and he gives you a weak one. Half-hearted, because Steve Harrington doesn’t smile that much these days. 

As he settles into the seat he’s moved so that it’s beside your own, the sultry sweet scent of vanilla and a hint of something fruity envelopes the air around you both and when you lean in a little to read the page as he flips it, your movement sends it wafting towards him all over again.

Your hair brushes against his bare arm and he shifts in his seat slightly. You glance up at him apologetically and a few strands of hair swoop down into your eyes. He shrugs off the apology and goes back to reading. Or attempting to read.

You’re almost hyper aware of the boy  sitting next to you, the powdery musk of his designer cologne thick in the air as you catch yourself stealing another glance of his side profile, sharp facial features, the faintest hint of a five o’clock shadow. When you feel his eyes set on you again, you quickly drop your gaze to feign interest in the same paragraph you’ve been reading for almost a whole minute by this point.

You uncross your legs to cross them again the opposite way. He moves to flip the page to the next one and this time, his forearm brushes right against the soft flared sleeve of the cardigan you’re wearing that nearly covers your pastel pink slip dress.

The air is thick, getting thicker by the second. And you catch yourself stealing a look at the clock over the blackboard because you almost can’t breathe properly and you’re wondering how long until the bell rings and you can rush out of class, go find a bathroom and collect yourself. 

Steve’s gaze shifts to the clock and he takes a deep breath. There’s only ten more minutes left to class. The teacher finishes reading and closes his book, gazing out into the classroom. “You may choose someone to work with to complete the worksheet.”

You close the textbook and you’re assuming that he’ll move, abandon you to go work with friends or something. Honestly, you’re not in a hurry to find someone to work with, the equations on the worksheet are something you previously covered at your last school so you know you can struggle through and finish them on your own. ,, and I don’t need anybody to work with anyway, I’m better off alone.” the thought comes but it’s quickly shoved out of your head. You pick up your pencil and start working, despite the fact that Steve hasn’t moved back to his normal seat.

“You’re doing it wrong.” Steve speaks up after about ten or fifteen seconds of watching you bite your lip and glare at the paper in front of you, writing in numbers and erasing them. He clears his throat and nods to the worksheet in front of you. You look up at him and your tongue outlines glossy pink lips. He lets his eyes linger for a second or two before taking your pencil and the worksheet. And he calmly explains exactly what you’re missing to solve the problem.

“You have to divide first.” he tells you and you nod. You take the pencil from him when he holds it out to you and you make an attempt at doing the next one on your own, but you wind up annoyed. Letting the pencil fall to the  desk.

“Math isn’t.. It’s not my thing. I hate numbers.” you admit quietly. Steve looks up from his half-complete worksheet and over to yours. Then he looks at you. “I can help you.. If you want me to, I mean.”

“Please?” you’re giving him this little pout, begging with your eyes. He chuckles and bites his lip as he  trains his eyes on your worksheet. “Okay, I see what’s happening. Okay, this is what you need t’do.” he takes the pencil again and he’s going through each step with you. Every now and then he’ll drag his hand through his hair or pause and rub the back of his neck and your eyes are glued to his hands each time. “Okay, do you understand now?” he questions and you bring yourself out of your little daze to nod. Give him a little smile. “Math isn’t really my thing, but I think I get what you’re saying.”

He chuckles quietly. Goes back to finishing off his own worksheet quietly and after a little more struggling on your end, you finish your worksheet. Everyone else is still working for the most part.

You glance around the classroom for a few seconds to make sure nobody is looking and you slip the pack of gum out. You take a piece for yourself and unwrap it, popping it into your mouth. Then you gently tap Steve on the bicep and when he looks up, you nod to his hands.

His brow raises. You carefully slip the fat square of gum beneath the hand he has resting against the desk, your hands brushing. He sucks in a breath and feels annoyed with himself for the simple fact that even the slightest hint of physical contact is amplified because it’s just so rare that he’s touched or touching anybody else as of late.

It’s not a big deal and he tells himself that.

The bell to end class rings and you rise from your seat, gathering your books and shoving them down into your backpack, slinging that carelessly over one shoulder. Steve realizes that you left a paperback behind on top of the desk you were sitting in so he picks it up and wanders out into the hallway, glancing up and then down, brown eyes scanning the busy crowd of students until he spots you at some lockers down the hall just a little. You’re leaning against a locker with a little silver compact mirror in your hand and you’re reapplying your favorite flavored gloss to your lips.

He makes his way over and you lock eyes with him in the reflection of your little silver mirror just as you’re finishing your touch-up. You give him another soft little smile and close the compact, turning to face him. It puts you body to body and you marvel at the difference in your heights. The way he towers  over you and the way the polo shirt he’s wearing cuffs tight against his biceps. As the hallway gets more crowded, you’re forced at one point to step into him and when you do this, you brush against him just barely and Steve swallows hard.

“Sorry.” you mumble, a softness to your voice when you speak. He tears his focus off that and holds out your paperback, hints of a teasing smirk on his face as you feel your cheeks flame up the second you realize you left your current read sitting behind beneath the desk in class.

You want the floor to open up and swallow you right then and there. Your gaze settles on the thick and well-read paperback he’s holding out to you, the picture of a bare chested pirate standing at the helm of a ship with long dark hair blown out in the breeze emblazoned across the front has you swallowing hard. And there’s this teasing gleam in Steve’s eyes as he chuckles. “I think this is yours.”

“Uh huh.” is all you can manage to get out for some reason. And you’re annoyed at yourself for this. You pluck the book out of his hand and you shove it into your locker once you’ve opened it. Steve’s started to walk away and you steal a quick glance as he disappears into a classroom.

When you have to lean against the locker and breathe in, breathe out to pull yourself together, you grow even more annoyed with yourself. “Jesus christ. He’s just a boy.” you fan yourself and beside you, there’s laughter.

“He’s not even that good looking if you want the honest truth. And his kind.. They think they own the school.”

You’re red-faced when you meet the other girl’s gaze. Biting your lip, you nod in agreement. “Yeah. I kind of thought that’d be the case. Usually is with the pretty ones.”

Robin laughs softly. “I’m Robin. What’s your name?”

“___.”

“You’re new, huh?”

You nod. “Today is my first day.”

Robin smiles at you. “Prepare to be bored out of your skull. I’ve gotta get going. I’ll uh.. I’ll see you around?”

You smile back at her and nod. “Yeah. It’s a small school.” you keep it casual. Careful. Because getting too close isn’t something you’re good at. It’s not something you do well with and every single time you do, it winds up being a complete disaster. As she wanders off to her next class, you consult your schedule.

You’re wandering the hallway, in no hurry despite the fact that you know damn well the tardy bell is about to ring and you need to be making an effort to find your next class. As you turn a corner, you find yourself body to body with another boy. He’s not as tall and he looks more than a little overconfident. Blue eyes flit over you, taking you in. He’s chewing spearmint gum, this mixes with the faintest hint of cigarette and you bite your lip, looking him right in the eyes. It’s cheeky. Defiant. He chuckles.

“Hey. Haven’t seen you around before. I’m Billy.”

“___. You haven’t seen me because I’m new. Do you mind?” you’re staring over his shoulder because he happens to be standing right in front of the door you need to go through to get to your next class. Instead of moving, he leans in the doorway. Blocking your entrance. He chuckles. “Oh? You’re in this class too?”

You nod. He steps out of the door and makes a show about letting you go in first. You ignore his theatrics and slink into the room, presenting the teacher with your schedule and gazing around the room as the teacher writes your name down in her grade book. You wind up sitting at the same dual desk that Billy’s assigned to and you can feel him staring at you through class.

You look up a time or two because the weight of his stare is just that heavy. 

Somewhere in the middle of class, he slips you a note.

← i’m kind of new here too.

← you smell amazing, by the way. Sweet.

You let your palm settle over the note and slip it across the desk so that it’s in front of your space. Your eyes dance over the words and you can’t help but roll them as soon as you read what he’s written about your scent. It’s the perfume, it gets you a lot of compliments. Surprising for a cheap perfume, but it’s your signature scent now, you haven’t worn anything else since freshman year.

You tap your pink pen against the desktop for a few seconds before responding.

→ Fascinating. I lived in the next town over. Where’d you move here from?

→ Thanks?

There’s not much else to say. You’ve got no real desire to ask him about himself, he strikes you as the type who won’t shut up about himself once you give him an opening to talk. Very much egotistical. Not what you’re into at all.

You slip the note back towards him and his hand settles over your hand for just a second or two, settling on top of it so you can’t pull away. It’s annoying, really.

A definite contrast to the way your two accidental brushes against the hand of Steve Harrington in your first class felt. But you’re shoving that one out as quickly as it invades your brain.

Because you’re better off alone. It’s been proven time and time again for you. Made worse by the fact that since your mom’s death, your own father can’t even stand to be around you. You know he loves you, you know he’s grieving but he’s shut you out completely.

You tear yourself out of your own thoughts and lick your lips, training your eyes on the torn slip of paper. You slip it back over to your side of the desk.

← There’s a party tonight. You should come.

← I can show you around.

You glance over at him, chewing your gum. He’s already staring when you look up and as a result, you make it a point to look down. Picking up your favorite pink pen, you start to scrawl out a response. 

→ Can’t. My friends are coming over.

→ I’ll figure it out. Thanks anyway.

You push the torn slip of paper back to him and turn your attention to the worksheet you’ve just been handed by the teacher. This class is another subject you’re not so good at but you’re determined that you’ll struggle in silence. Because you want as little to do with the boy sitting beside you as possible, truth be told. You’re just not into the whole aura of dominance that you’re getting off him.

It reminds you too much of the last boy you dated. The one who kept pushing you into things you weren’t ready for and didn’t want. 

Billy rubs his chin thoughtfully and he steals another look at you as you sit beside him, glaring at the worksheet as you uncross your legs and cross them again. You’ve taken off the high platform shoes you were wearing, they’re discarded below your chair. You twist a strand of hair around your finger as you focus on your work.He leans in a little, nodding to the worksheet. “I can help you.”

“I’m fine.” you answer quick. He frowns to himself as soon as you’ve looked away. You’re the first girl that hasn’t fallen at his feet in months and he’s at a loss about it. He’s also determined to change this.

“You’ve got your square drawn wrong.”

You glance up and over at Billy, the end of your pen rested against the center of your bottom lip. “I’ll figure it out later.” you answer.

“Fine. I’m trying to help.” Billy raises his hands and gives you his best good guy smile. You barely acknowledge it, looking back down at the worksheet in front of you instead. The second the bell rings you’ve gathered your books and you’re out the door before Billy even has the chance to catch you. You glance back to find him flanked by the two girls in your first class, both of them whispering and staring at you intently.. Again.

You roll your eyes and turn your head back to the front of you so that you can actually see where you’re going but you don’t do it soon enough and you collide into Steve. Steve’s hands shoot out, resting against your upper arms to steady you and he chuckles. “You’re in a hurry.”

“Yeah. Sorry. I should’ve been paying attention.” you mumble because yet again, you’re mesmerized. You shake your head and laugh softly at yourself. “Trying to get away from this guy in my class.”

Steve chuckles. Has the passing thought that this is something that probably happens to you a lot. Wonders to himself if it has anything at all to do with the way you carry yourself without realizing it, because it took him all of five minutes in the class he had with you earlier to quickly figure out that you’re one of those girls who carries herself like a little flirt and it’s completely unintentional for the most part.

Like, you’re completely unaware of it.

Because if he weren’t a thousand percent sure there was no way in hell you were flirting with you, if this had been last year, he’d have already put the moves on you.

,, but you’re not that guy anymore.” he reminds himself, ,, and you’re better off not getting close or attached because the one time you did was a disaster.” 

“This guy have a name?” Steve asks. Surprised by the surge of jealousy that rises to the surface quick when you laugh and roll your eyes as you say the name of the guy in question. “Yeah. His name is Billy.”

“The guy’s a douchebag.” Steve steps up into you because he sees Billy rounding the corner, flanked by Carol and Nicole. Tommy’s walking in front of the three of them, facing away from the flow of hallway traffic like an asshole.

Your gaze flits to the group as they make their way past but it’s only because Steve was already glancing their way and you were curious about where he was looking. Billy locks eyes with you and a smirk plays at peachy lips. “Hey Harrington, I see you met ___.”

Carol rolls her eyes and coughs to cover “Slut.” when she passes you.

“ When a house lands on that bitch I want to be there.” you mumble, a response to hearing what she said and tried to cover. You shake your head and laugh it off and Steve is glaring at their retreating backs. “Ignore her. She’s jealous of pretty much everybody.”

“I picked up on that in first.” you admit, laughing softly. You tilt your head to the side slightly, gazing up at Steve. You haven’t bothered to step away from him and he finally realizes that he’s still got his hands against  your upper arms, so he lowers them, slipping them into the pockets of his olive colored jacket. He steps away first, leaning against his locker. “So uh… what class do you have now?”

“Home Ec?” you dig around for the schedule you spent the parts of first class that you weren’t stealing glances at him doodling all over and you find it, holding it out to him. Steve takes the paper and chuckles, raising a hand to rest it against the back of his head. “C’mon. Your class is down the hall from mine. I’ll help you find it.”

Wordlessly, you fall in beside him, wandering down the hall. Neither of you are saying anything to each other. As you pass up Nancy’s locker in the hallway, Nancy watches as Steve walks past with you. She notes the way you tuck yourself into his side when the hallway gets a little too crowded. She catches you when you steal a glance up at him and it lingers right as the two of you are almost past the locker she’s standing in front of. She notices the way you’re biting your lip while you’re staring and all of this prompts her to gently nudge her new boyfriend Jonathan, nodding to your retreating backs.

Jonathan follows his girlfriend’s gaze.

“Do you think he’ll be okay?”

“I don’t know. But I do think she’s into him. Who was she?”

Jonathan shrugs. “Not a single clue.”

But Nancy’s curious now. And she’s sensing the potential to fix the mess she made when she broke up with Steve a few months ago. 

“You’re getting an idea.. Aren’t you?”

“Maybe?” Nancy laughs softly as she says it and Jonathan chuckles. “Leave it alone, Nance.”

But she doesn’t want to because she owes Steve.. Something. She feels horrible about the way things ended. Cheating on him even though it’s not what she set out to do.

She hates the way things ended and she’s really hated seeing him the way he is now, all distant and closed off. Shut down.

Steve spots the door to the Home Ec classroom. He nods to it. “There you are.”

You’re lingering in the doorway, almost body to body. “Thanks. I’ll see you around.” you give him another little smile and you turn, making your way into the classroom. As Steve turns to walk away, he finds himself almost nose to nose with Billy Hargrove, who promptly chuckles. Nods to the door you just walked through. “You can’t handle a girl like that, Harrington. You couldn’t even handle that little mouse you got dumped by. What was her name again?”

Steve rolls his eyes.

“I was walking her to class.”

“Sure you were. If you’re smart, Harrington.. You’ll leave her alone.”

“Maybe you’re the one who should do that, Billy.” and Steve has to check himself, he’s not even sure why he’s getting worked up over it to start with, it’s not like you’re his girl. He doesn’t have any right.

All he knows is that you were in a big hurry to get away from Billy Hargrove not even ten minutes ago and that alone tells him you’re not interested in Billy. 

,, And she’s not your girl so this isn’t your business.” his brain reminds, only to have him ignore it because he’s sick and fucking tired of the way Billy’s taken over since his arrival back in October.

He’s not jealous, he’s just annoyed. Irritated.

The guy’s an asshole and everyone seems to flock to that.

Billy chuckles. “That’s not gonna happen, Harrington. You into her or something?” Billy’s taunting him, a menacing gleam in baby blue eyes as he steps just a little closer. “That what this is, Harrington?”

“Nope. I just know for a fact that she was in such a hurry to escape you that she ran into me.” Steve’s standing taller. Studying Billy with an annoyed look on his face and his arms folded over his chest. Billy makes himself taller. Smirks at Steve. “She’s gonna end up with me. I’m pretty good at getting what I want.”

Steve chuckles. Shrugs it off. “Whatever, Hargrove. I really don’t care.”

It’s a lie, he’d rather eat glass before admitting just how much the thought of Billy making yet another girl fall at his feet annoys him, but he’s determined to stick through it. 

“Stay away from her, Harrington.” Billy calls out the warning as Steve walks away, not even bothering to stop and look back or challenging him.

Because if it happens, it happens. All he’s currently trying to do is finish out his senior year and graduate. Get on with his life. Nothing matters anymore.

–

You wander into your new house, pausing at the door to slip off your shoes and put down your backpack, slip out of your favorite cardigan and hang it neatly on the coat hanger. You close the door behind you and wander over to your father’s state of the art stereo, turning it on and tuning it to the local rock station you prefer and then from there, you wander into the kitchen, sifting through the mail that’s sat on the counter, discarding everything but your catalogs as you wander over and open the double doors of the fridge.

You’ve just popped the tab on your soda when you hear the doorbell ringing, so you wander back out into the living room, throwing open the front door.

“Girl.. This place is big!” your friend Chloe steps into your house and she’s laughing. Talking a mile a minute about what happened today at your old school. And you’d be listening if it weren’t for the fact that you’re just a little distracted, staring at the house across the street.

Steve Harrington is outside, mowing the lawn. A gray t-shirt thrown around his neck to catch the sweat that’s covering his body in a light sheen.

Chloe realizes you aren’t listening and she goes quiet, her gaze following yours.

“He’s kind of a prettyboy, ___. Like Landon.”

You sigh. Give her a sheepish shrug. “He seems sweet though. He’s in my first class of the day.”

“Speaking of.. How weird is it going to our rival high school?” Chloe asks and you finally manage to shut the front door just so you won’t keep staring across the road at the poor guy. You remind yourself a little firmer this time that guys like Steve will break your heart. Zero hesitation.

Your father’s sports car pulls into the circular brick drive in front of the house and he calls out, “Forgot my plane tickets, champ!”

“On the counter, sir!”

“I’m leaving the Visa with you this time. If you girls wanna go into the city and do a little shopping or you need anything, you know the pin, right?”

“Mhm.”

This is standard. You get the same speech every single time he leaves. You’ve been getting it since the summer your mother died, between 8th grade and 9th. When your father started taking more out of town cases. Higher profile ones that meant he’d be away longer. When he started taking solo vacations because he said he needed time.

He goes in for a hug but it’s not the hugs he gave you when you were a little girl, you haven’t gotten one of those since your mom died either. This is stiff and it’s awkward. You pull away and your eyes settle on his navy colored tie. “Dad.. the tie is wrong. You’re going to throw off the whole suit.”

“Fix it,will ya, princess?”

You fix his tie and he chuckles, glancing from you to your best friend Chloe. “You two don’t have any wild parties.”

And then he’s gone, plane ticket in hand. 

Chloe laughs softly. “C’mon. You mentioned this place has a heated pool?”

You laugh. “I did.”

“We can go swim. Teresa and Janey are coming, Janey just had to go home and finish packing her mom for New York.”

“What about Em?”

“She’s gonna no show. And we’re not talking to her right now because oh my god, girl.. Guess who brought her to school this morning?”

“Who?”

“Landon.”

You shrug. “Yeah. I kind of knew  that was coming.”

“It blew up at lunch. They were all over each other and we exploded. I mean, there is such a thing as girl code.”

“Chloe, it’s fine. It’s not like I was gonna marry the guy. Besides.. I broke up with him. Remember?”

“Well yeah, but still. She’s dating him not even a week later. You’re our friend. Friends don’t pull that crap.”

You laugh and smile at her. “It was so hard today, I kept looking for you guys in the hallway. I did make one friend. Her name is Robin? She’s taking AP classes, so she’s in a few of my classes with the seniors.”

“You invited her, right?”

“She said she didn’t want to be in the way. Next time though.”

Chloe smiles. “Good.”

Teresa’s mother’s car pulls into the circular drive out front behind where Chloe parked her older sister’s car when she arrived. Teresa gets out on the driver side and Janey gets out of the passenger seat, the two of them arguing loud about Teresa’s driving and you’re laughing as you open the door again to let them in.

“Girl, holy shit. This house is massive.”

“I’m moving in.”

You laugh, hugging your two friends.

Teresa pulls away from the hug. “Did Chloe tell you about Landon and Em? Girl, that’s who he was cheating on you with.” 

You wince but it doesn’t hurt like you thought it would, finally knowing the  truth. Ultimately, you shrug it off. “It’s whatever, Teresa. I’m over it. It’s not like we were going to get married anyway, I mean.. And honestly, he’s not even that good looking.”

“He’s got balls for a chin.”

You snort, a hand raised to your mouth as you stifle a laugh. “So mean, Teresa.”

“Tessa’s coming too. Mom finally ungrounded her.” Teresa tells you and you laugh. “Unless she gets grounded again.”

“True, you’ve got a point. I can’t believe she thought she’d get away with coming in at 1.”

“Where was she even at?”

“That stupid club in the city? Yeah.. Apparently, Brenda figured out how to score a fake id? She got soooooo wasted. I had to help her up to her room.”

“Wait.. Brenda? Mousy little Brenda? She knows how to score a fake id?” you’re raising a brow because this is surprising. 

“Mhm.  That one.”

 The Mustang Tessa drives pulls to a stop behind the car her twin sister drove and Tessa gets out. “Guess who’s out on parole, bitches!”

She says it so loud that you’re pretty sure Steve’s mother heard her as she got out of her own sports car across the street. Because the woman pauses, looks back at the group of you standing in the open front door of your father’s house and she’s giving you all this look of extreme disdain.

As soon as she’s in the house, Tessa wrinkles her nose. “What the hell was her problem?”

“You know how high on themselves those old money types are, sis.” Teresa laughs. Chloe speaks up. “Her son is hot. I wonder if he has any brothers.. Particularly an older one, y’know me..”

You groan and roll your eyes. And you happen to glance at the house across the street again just in time to see Steve standing in an upstairs window, looking out. You give a little wave and laughing, you turn away, wandering into the house.

“So.. we’re swimming. Right?”

“Duh. I waited for you guys to finally get here so I can test out the heated pool. I ordered pizza too. And Tessa can use her fake id to get us a little something later.” you’re giving the older girl a teasing look and Tessa grumbles, but she finally agrees. “Okay, alright,fine. I better not get in trouble.”

“Girl, nobody in Hawkins knows our mom.”

“Thank God for that.”

All of you make your way up into the room you chose to be yours and you’re taking turns changing into bathing suits in it’s adjoining private bathroom. Janey’s lounging on the bed, flipping through a magazine and you wander over to the big window facing the street, leaning against the glass.

“Hmm.”

“Yeah?” Janey looks up.

“Nothing.”

“Were you creeping on that guy next door?”

You can feel your cheeks burn. “No!”

“Liar!”

“I’m not lying.”

“He’s back.” Janey laughs when you flatten yourself against the wall next to the window and she’s smirking. “Point proven.”

You flip her off.

“Hey, I’m stealing this purple bikini.” Tessa calls out from your walk in closet. You laugh. “Take it. I didn’t like the way it fit. Too much ass.”

“Girl..”

“What? It’s true!”

“If I were a boy, you have no idea.” Teresa is wiggling her brows at you suggestively and you’re laughing and shaking your head. 

You grab your favorite bikini, a red top with little white hearts all over it and a purposely mismatched white bottom with little red hearts all over it and you step into your closet to change. Once you’re done changing, you and your friends wander out into the yard, heading towards the back gate. 

And across the road, Mrs. Harrington rolls her eyes. “Where on Earth are that girls parents?”

Steve almost chokes on the sip of Sprite he’s taken as he tries not to laugh or respond with something that he knows will get him in serious trouble.

His father rolls his eyes at his mother’s query and turns his attention back to Steve. “The coach called to talk to me today at the firm. Says you’ve been less than enthusiastic at practice lately, son. Harringtons are winners.”

“Yes sir.”

“And you need to talk to that rep from my old college. You’ve got to stop being lazy and putting things off. Slacking will not be tolerated.”

“Sweetie, your father just wants what’s best for you. Is this all because of that little drip? What was her name..” his mother rolls her eyes and turns her attention to the sudden shattering of silence, some rock band playing at full blast from the house across the street.

She rubs her forehead, grumbling in annoyance. “Those people are going to bring  down property values.”

Steve clenches his fists. “Don’t you both have a flight to catch soon?”

“We fly out tomorrow. There better not be any girls here while we’re gone.”

“Your mother is right. The last thing you need right now is some little tramp throwing off your focus, kid. You’ve got a big game this Friday. A scout is going to be there. I expect your best effort.”

And Steve goes along with it, nodding his head. But mentally, he’s just reached a point where he’s done. And he doesn’t care. Because he doesn’t want anything his father’s been pushing on him since he was old enough to dribble a ball.

But basketball’s been the only way to get his father’s attention and even an ounce of pride from the man in him. But lately, he’s just reached a point where he doesn’t care. He’s starting to realize that the only time his parents are proud of him happen to be when he’s doing everything they want him to do. It’s as if he’s not allowed anything that might actually make him happy.

They hated Nancy.

They hate it when he goes out or has friends over, they hate anything remotely resembling fun.

“Okay, alright. I will, okay?”

“You’d better. I mean it, son. You’d better start shaping up. High school is almost over, son. It’s time to start growing up. Putting away childish things.”

And Steve can’t take it anymore. He gets up from the table and pushes his chair back into place beneath it forcefully before storming up the stairs.

“I don’t know what’s gotten into that kid but if he doesn’t shape up, I’ll ship him off to the military. That’ll build his character alright. Worked for me.” Steve’s father doesn’t miss a beat, rolling his eyes as the radio in his son’s bedroom kicks on, the sounds of some godawful band filling the house.

Down the table, Steve’s mother glares up at the ceiling. “He was such a sweet little boy. What happened to my sweet little boy? I think it was that frumpy little girl he was so caught up in.. Nancy? Wasn’t that her name? Or was it Nelly?”

Up in his room, Steve grabs his pack of cigarettes, thumping the unopened pack against his palm after he’s opened the window so he doesn’t set off the smoke alarms. Because if he has to take a second more of his parents riding him, he’s going to explode and he knows it.

He flops down in the window seat and leans his head back against the window surround, taking a cigarette out of the pack. And he finds himself glancing across the street to your house. Watching as you and your friends splash around in the heated pool out back. He can hear I Just Died In Your Arms Tonight as it floats across on the night breeze. He chuckles to himself as you try to dive on a massive unicorn float and miss it completely, popping up from beneath the water to splash your friend who is perched on a lounge chair, sipping something out of a wine glass.

As you pull yourself out of the pool and start to walk towards the gate, he quickly drops his gaze, exhaling a plume of smoke out the window and into the night. He’s got his eyes closed, he’s humming along to your radio since apparently, you’re going to let everyone in the neighborhood suffer tonight. Cutting Crew fades to Material Girl by Madonna and his eyes pop open when he hears a hiss coming from the yard below. 

He swings his legs so that they’re out the windows as he sits up, gazing down at you. 

“Hey.”

“Hey.” you’re smiling, a hand caught in wet and wild hair as you tilt your head and stare up at the way he’s sitting half out his bedroom window. You nod to the cigarette pressed between his lips. “You don’t uh.. Do you have more of those?”

“Yeah?”

“Can I bum one? Please?”

“You smoke?” he raises a brow. You shrug. “Everyone has vices, Steve.”

“Yeah. Hang on.”

“Wait, this will be easier if I just ring the bell and ask for you.” you say it and you’re gone before Steve can coax you out of doing that. He hears you ring the doorbell and he swears to himself, hurrying to shove a few cigarettes in the hollowed out book he usually hides his joints in on the rare occasion that his parents are home. And he wanders down the stairs just as your father has thrown open the door and you’re leaning in the doorway.

“Excuse me sir? Your son is in my class, I.. I kind of need to talk to him. It’s about an assignment.”

From behind Steve’s father, his mother speaks up, cutting her eyes at you. “It’s nearly 9 pm. On a Friday. Somehow I doubt you really want to talk to my son about a class assignment.” as she steps into the foyer of the house. 

You can feel the disapproval as it radiates off the woman. But you don’t really care. She reminds you of your old neighbor. Always thinking she’s better than everyone else. Your hand settles on your hip and you flash her a grin. “I’m sorry to bother you so late, ma’am.” and it’s said in your sweetest butter wouldn’t melt of tones. “But I’m trying to catch up. I just moved in.”

“As if the moving truck parked across the street all morning or the construction noises I’ve been subjected to when I happen to be home weren’t obvious.” she’s got her arms folded, she’s looking you up and down and you just know she’s judging you.

And you want to laugh almost immediately.

Because you’re not the one standing around with shoulderpads so ridiculous on a designer blazer and skirt set that you look like a pro linebacker.

You lower the hand caught in your hair. “I can come back.”

“I’ll just go get my son.” Steve’s father gives you this smirk. And it’s similar to Steve’s to a point where you can see exactly where his looks came from, but it’s also different. A little too fake. A little too charming. And it rubs you all sorts of wrong when the man does it.

Steve’s mother is glaring at his father as his father makes his way over to the staircase to yell up for Steve.

You’re relieved when Steve wanders down, and you roll your eyes when his mother immediately stops him and she’s saying something to him in a whisper. You can tell she’s not happy with you being at her door.

It bothers you and amuses you in equal measure.

Steve’s scowling when he walks away from his mom and over to the front door. As he hands you a thick book, he leans in a little. “I think we’re around page 45 in class right now, ___.” he says it with this wink and you nod. “Thank you. I’m sorry to come over so late..” as you laugh softly, giving him this amused little grin.

You’re walking back across the street to get over to your house and take in the pizza that just got delivered when Steve hisses at you to stop from his bedroom window. “Sorry about that. My mom is..” he trails off. You shrug. “Kinda used to it?” you laugh a little. Nod to your house and offer, “If you wanna come over later.. We’re not really doing anything, dude. Just swimming. Tessa’s going to the corner store in a little bit, she’s gonna get some drinks.”

Steve chuckles and shakes his head. “Thanks though. Kind of writing an essay.”

“On a Friday?”

“Yeah.” he laughs quietly. “Why?”

“Nothing.. I mean if I knew your mom’s head wouldn’t explode I’d come over and help.”

“What about your friends though?”

“I mean, unless you’re opposed to having a house full of girls, they’d probably tag along. The offer is open. I mean.. We’re neighbors.” you can feel your face burning and you know you’re fumbling this badly, so you decide it’s time to leave. Go back over to your father’s house and get back to swimming with your friends.

As you wander away and disappear through the back gate, Steve takes a deep breath or two. “Nah..She wasn’t flirting with me.”

He keeps the window open, the sounds of music and laughter competing with REO Speedwagon as it plays quietly on the radio while he attempts a fourth time to come up with an essay that isn’t completely horrible.

And on his smoke breaks, no matter how hard he tries to stay away, he finds himself wandering over to his window. Staring across to yours.

“It’s not gonna happen. And I’m done anyway. Nobody ever stays. Kind of pointless.” he mutters to himself as he lights up his last cigarette and exhales a plume of smoke into the night…

[phoenixyfriend]

I’m actually interested on your thoughts on stewjon-or any other sci-fi or fantasy land- being “space!scotland”.

I’m Scottish, and it actually kinda turns me off of a fic? Like, it gives me an uncanny valley feeling?

Part of it is due to it, most of the time at least, leaning heavily on the English stereotypes of Scotland? Like. We’re not people who think and feel and integrate people from other cultures, we’re not our better social support and services than england, we’re not people who can enjoy the land *and* be modern people, no.

We’re tartan wearing redheads speaking in a “terrible accent” that can’t be understood, whispering about fae stories and superstition, simultaneously getting in fights in Glasgow and carving Glasgow grins, and huddling in stone huts playing bagpipes and carding wool.

It’s uh, dehumanising a bit. And I didn’t realise I had that big of a rant, feel free to ignore this I was just curious from how you were talking about the Moses!obiwan thing.

Context

That tracks! It's a wider problem that incidentally managed to get picked up and spread in a really unfortunate way by fandom, presumably in large part by Americans who Don't Know What They're Doing when they just want to, idk, fantasize about Ewan McGregor speaking in his natural voice.

I think a weird but important note is that, regardless of the Space Scotland thing, I don't usually see Stewjon portrayed, like... positively? It's a shitty background element (infanticide backstory with the barest explanation), a fantasy misogyny place (a lot of the royalty AUs, especially the omegaverse ones, and especially smut), or a general underdeveloped, low-tech, backwater nightmare (also usually used for the smut). I've seen combinations of all three, and it's a toss of the coin if the author includes the Space Scotland element in addition to the above.

(I've seen one or two that seem to take way more inspo from a mix of Imperial China and 17th century France, for instance, or just keep it vaguely European.)

Even the ones that I think try to do the Space Scotland thing respectfully, I can't really comment on because, uh, I'm not Scottish by any stretch and don't know what degree of what element is reasonable.

(I think I can sort of relate in terms of Serbian representation in Western media? Such as it is. Generally we get to be gangsters, sad orphans, an evil priest selling babies to aliens, vampire-inspired cannibals, or Belgrade gets to be a setting where there is literally not a single Serbian character. Not the same thing but I wanted to give some examples to explain why I feel I can relate when people talk about this sort of thing.)

[itsnothingofinterest]

So I'd normally like to do a quick prediction post for 397 after Hori's week off, but I don’t think we’re deep enough in the fight for any kind of major upset or development worth predicting.

So in lieu of that: maybe it could also be fun to guess which students All Might will use gadgets based on in the upcoming chapters and what form those inspirations would take.

Maybe some Koda themed bird-drones for cover, distractions, and other useful things.

A Todoroki themed flamethrower seams easy enough to make,

As does an Aoyama themed chest laser like Iron Man (there's even an indent in the Iron might armor for it),

And some Iida themed jets for speed...more jets than he's already using to fly I mean

Some Shoji themed extra robo-arms for extra punches could be fun.

He's already got the super legs for some Tsuyu-based super jumps,

And the wires to transfer Jirou themed sonic attacks through.

An Ojiro themed robo tail seems easy enough, even if I'm not sure what use it'd have,

But it could shift into something Dark Shadow shaped, maybe some kind of capture device.

Mina themed acid attacks are as simple as having acid stored somewhere, and his whole set up is detailed enough that they could be anywhere (maybe to slow regen down some more),

And some similarly stored balls covered in purple glue could work for an attack themed on the one who must not be named.

The Tooru function could be as simple as any kind of stealth function; which I think would be really useful,

And similarly, the Bakugou function could simply be some kind of explosives, preferably (but not necessarily) launched from his palm.

(Sadly I can't really come up with anything for Uraraka or Momo; their quirks are either to all-purpose to name one thing or seem beyond the realms of technology even in this sci-fi setting. Also I'm just gonna call Hercules Red the Kirishima move. Sound good? Good.)

Man listing all these possibilities out; I’m excited to see what he uses.

...Ah what the heck; some quick general prediction wouldn't hurt: I still aminly think it’ll mostly just be All Might & AFO fighting some more, but a bit or backstory or something's not off the table. But I think the most likely kind of upset we're looking at is maybe the chapter ending with All Might looking like he's on the ropes. (He'll get past it though, don't worry.)

Though if I may give one crazy prediction for the road: I do wanna gesture vaguely at my hope for the two of them to get warped to UA to turn the finale into a cool Deku & All Might vs AFO vs Shigaraki show-down. Because I still think it would be really cool for all of them to be in the same place to talk, fight, or beat up AFO together.

[cyberkiss2uu]

good morning pokemon community umm. gymsona w other gym leaders i think match their vibe ^_^ do nottt ask me what gen any of these ppl are from dude i play pokemon pearl and cant even tell u who the gym leaders are in that. i opned the pokemon wiki and scrolled

anywho more info and stuff below break hehehehehehehhehehe

> this is all copypasted from when i talked ab it in a server LOL

ermm okie side note my only pkmn knowledge is like. pearl. so my bad :3 but the way i made the gym it kinda pushes how gyms traditionally work ... its more like a game show [because i always loved doing the little interviews thru pearl and the contests n stuff] where theres 8 contestants and they just bracket their way down to the final battle against the gym leader/host who is. me technically. but jamie crown is their name ^_^

one fun thing i thought of was because its a live show u wouldnt rlly be able to .. leave and go to the pokecenter and heal or buy items.. so ud have an option to heal between rounds at ur little podium :3 all with pokecenter certified tech or whatev of course !!

because its not gym members i realize it doesnt rlly lend itself towards being a typical gym since it would be ppl from all over coming to compete thinking emoji.. but it kinda works as a like. elite four minigame LOL idk :3 i didnt think ab it too hard

and then in terms of the team i chose

> starmie to fit a celestial theme i have going on w my friends hehe i originally had jirachi but that seems. unfair

> luxray .. my fav pokemon and i originally was going to do an electric gym

> meloetta coz her earpiece thing is vry similar to the og design's earpiece and semi inspired the earpiece now

> and tinkaton for being super cute and also like wat if she helped build and repair stuff... ik the dex entries mention tinkaton being a thief usually but . thats ok i support womens wrongs

and then real nerd alert ☝️ the outfit i just redesigned i think comes together sooo well im so happy w it. the collar being mirrored on the top of the boots, the vaguely sci-fi aesthetic taht i love w the wavy patterning kinda veering towards like 80s and that retro-futuristic look that i love.. the capelet kinda looking jester-y [i looove a good jester aesthetic] plus theyre very 80s. gameshow host personality LOL.. the star tie is super cute i think and the little luxray star shapes around and even in the eyes <333 idfk im just so happy w it its so cute and awesomeee

also the visual of jamie tellinf starmie to use surf in a densely packed room with a high concentration of electrical components on live television is sending me into a FIT because they ARE bimbo enough to do that

and also the design alt and the old outfit :3 the last one is just an outfit i found looking at rhythmic gymnastic leotards n went OH THATS SO JAMIE hehe.. the old design is so dear to me and i still rlly like it but i love this new one a lot ^_^ idk i think their design will change a lot regardless because being a game show host i think they would have lots of diff outfits as opposed to a uniform but.. pokemon logic u wear the same outfit for the rest of ur life