#also that illustration with all the stuff on the sand is such a good idea like. mwah. that would fuck as an irl ad campaign so bad.

[kelvingemstone]

"how do you get to heaven? something terrible has to happen."

mad men, s6e1, the doorway/succession, s4e6, living+

#mad men #succession #mad men season six #succession season four #kendall roy #don draper #mad men amc #succession hbo #succession living+ #mad men the doorway #that don pitch...the entirety of s5 being soooo suicidal and then commissions and fees...a girl can't help but think of kendall roy #beach/water suicidal boy extraordinaire #don and kendall don't have much in common sometimes but when they're morose? malaised? american???? well. #also stan saying “that's what so great about it” is literally me about succ episodes that cliffhanger like ohhh kendall'll kill himself #that's when shit gets REAL babey that's the spice of life #also that pitch quote? something terrible has to happen to get to heaven? logan dying ofc #don draper is so insane. babygirl that's not how you pitch a hotel chain ad... #that's what's so great about him obviously #also that illustration with all the stuff on the sand is such a good idea like. mwah. that would fuck as an irl ad campaign so bad. #kendall did of course leave his loro piana shirt and probably shit expensive sunglasses on the beach. she's a diva

[justheblueberry]

the process of binding a study in scarlette:

SO. i had a Vision for this fic, right from the start. so many new things i wanted to do and almost no idea how to do it. but let's start from the beginning, shall we?

i usually don't do anywhere NEAR this amount of brainstorming and designing but the fic has so many motifs and details that i knew i wanted to fit in, so i had to draw it all out and piece everything together.

here are a few of my behind-the-scenes brainstorming notes:

this was the very first brainstorm i did, it was basically me flinging a bunch of cool book stuff i saw other people doing at the wall and seeing what stuck in my brain.

this was an idea for a cover which incorporated symbols for each of the chapters inside the branches, but i just wasn't fond of the execution of the draft. so i scrapped it, eventually settling on the silhouette cover for the final.

i had big dreams! and not much experience to back it up with ! so after finishing the typeset, i put it aside for a bit and did a couple other binds first.

this was my second brainstorm, i started to figure out the direction i wanted the illustrations to go in, no longer aimlessly tossing vibes around!

i did a lot of waffling about different versions of the back cover design. here's a couple that i scrapped!

over the summer, i decided to finally stop procrastinating and printed out the typeset (after making a few revisions to it). it's a Chonk. i pressed it some, which helped, but it definitely still had a lot of swell.

sewing with red thread.

endpapers cut, glued, and a glow in the dark paint test.

built a press...up til this point i'd just been stacking a bunch of thick books on top of my binds, but for this one i needed a lying press to sand my edges, so i finally caved. who needs tools? my edge painted book needs tools :(

sanding edges with power sander

so. this was my first time doing anything with edges, so i did a little test on a book i already had; it was a bit of a process trying to work out how much i should dilute it, and it took a bit of trial and error. doing the bottom edge first was the right call ^^;; it's the flakiest out of all the edges on the final bind. i'm really happy with the fore edge though, i got a really even and nice coat on it.

rounding, gluing and (an attempt at) backing

so. it was the day before i was moving. i had run out of time to procrastinate any more. the rounding was quite rushed and i barely backed it at all. there was also the fact that i don't have backing boards and was winging it with absolute unfounded confidence. it still turned out okay though so i got away with it!

dug out a 5 yen coin from who knows where for the bookmark. didn't have pliers with me yet so i had to close the crimp with a metal water bottle and arm strength. who needs tools right

endbands. i love sewing endbands, but man, for chonk fics it gets Long. i think they each took like 2-4 hours to do. i briefly considered learning double core endbands for this bind but decided against it as i barely just got a handle on regular ones. discovery: my ambitions have limits!

this was my finalized cover design. i had planned to do it all with htv, but last minute decided to do the silhouette as a linocut instead. i'd never done one before but i had the materials and the fearlessness that only a beginner (who does not know the limits of fear) can have; i think it turned out good :>

the final stretch!!!! it was at this point, when i realized that the size i'd carved the linocut at would be too wide for the half binding case i had planned. improvisation time. i decided to switch from a regular case binding to a three piece bradel. i have only done case bindings and stab bindings at this point...and with only mild panic and stubborn hubris to fuel me, i went for it. i had already attached an oxford hollow and cut my boards, but it probably wouldn't make too much of a difference! fuck around and find out!

cutting the cloth and adhering the htv. the summary on the back was HELL to weed, and some of the letters ended up crooked. i should've just printed it letterpress, but i was running out of patience.

i followed DAS bookbinding's tutorial on youtube of his in-boards three piece bradel and the part where i had to tuck in the spine cloth in between the hollow was definitely the trickiest, but it went okay in the end!

after attaching the boards and gluing down the endpapers i was finally done!!!! after months and months of the unfinished textblock guilting me from the corner of my room, it's finally finished! fancy pics coming soon!

i learned SO MUCH from this bind, sanding edges, painting edges, linocuts, multiple colors of htv, oxford hollows, and a whole new style of binding....yeah. it was a ride! thanks for reading to the end!

#process #wip #in progress #a study in scarlette #for the amount of new stuff i was bullshitting through i cannot believe i did not make any huge fuck ups #one of the gold corners isn't mirrored #and the edge painting isnt perfect #and the spine got a couple small wrinkles #but honestly those are all pretty minor

[mllemaenad]

The Magnus Protocol: Rolling with It

Well – the show is on the cusp of a mid-season break, so it is absolutely time for someone to do something rash and foolhardy. This will almost certainly lead to a frustrating cliffhanger next week, because that's how pacing works. I look forward to Sam, Alice and Gwen all screwing up royally on their respective excursions.

That said, I genuinely don't believe that sticking your head in the sand is an approach that works. It's all very well to say a person should stay clear of the supernatural, but there's nothing in that that guarantees that the supernatural will go along with that plan. Something quite clearly happened to Sam at The Magnus Institute. Providing he is cautious about it, working out what that was is probably a good idea. But Sam doesn't feel cautious.

It's interesting how traditional this one was, and yet how different – because it's in the differences that you can see how this world works.

This is a bona fide Magnus Institute statement read by, at least insofar as how it sounds, the Archivist himself. And, like others before him, the statement giver has turned up to get the Magnus Institute to deal with his weird supernatural problem.

But the thing is – in The Magnus Archives the statements were always about the people. Oh, there were plenty of weird artefacts in them, but the storyteller themselves was always the point of the whole thing. It was the terror of the individual that The Magnus Institute actively sought, and it was following the interconnecting threads of the various recurring characters that led John to his conclusions.

But The Magnus Institute: Manchester does not care about the people. It cares about the stuff.

There is a very distinct difference between this:

Archivist Statement of Nathan Watts, regarding an encounter on Old Fishmarket Close, Edinburgh. Original statement given April 22nd 2012. Audio recording by Jonathan Sims, Head Archivist of the Magnus Institute, London. – The Magnus Archives: Anglerfish

And this:

Chester Statement and Research assessment for artefact CD137 - Sam What the hell? Chester Magnus Institute – Manchester. Private and confidential. Viability as subject – none Viability as agent – low Viability as catalyst – medium. Recommend referral to Catalytics for Enrichment applicability assessment. – The Magnus Protocol: Rolling with It

The statement giver is nameless, you can only infer he's probably male from an offhand remark:

Chester/Unknown Statement Giver And that brings us about up to date. They're yours now, and I never want to see them again. Don't get me wrong, it’s a blow but I’m just not the right guy to carry them. – The Magnus Protocol: Roll with It

And that's hardly definitive. The Magnus Institute is interested in him only insofar as his experience illustrates what the dice can do. And it intends to take these dice, enhance them in some way, and then use them to cause something. Their use twists fate in some sense – so you can see the logic up to a point. If you're trying to make something particular happen, you might be able to use the dice to do that.

But what the hell were they doing? Specifically, what the hell were they doing to those children?

It's been a thread, all the way through, that distance from people in The Magnus Protocol. The way the cases are gathered, without the knowledge or consent of the people to whom these things happened, the barrier between the protagonists and the stories as Chester, Norris and Augustus are the ones who actually read them ... and now this. The Magnus Institute was looking for "supernaturally active items", not people who had had supernatural experiences.

RedCanary also found an object in The Magnus Institute:

Chester/RedCanary Re: Magnus Institute Ruins By RedCanary on Saturday April 23 2022 12:17pm The photos from the spelunk seem properly gone, but I did find an old wooden thing with a bunch of similar symbols on. Some kinda empty box, not really sure what for, though. Gonna see if I can get the light right for a decent pic. Edit: No dice, I’m afraid. Must be something up with my phone camera. Really not helping the whole paranoia thing either. Anyone know anything about photographic distortion? Gonna see if I can borrow my dad’s SLR tomorrow. – The Magnus Protocol: First Shift

That didn't feel especially noteworthy at the time: The Magnus Institute always did have some weird crap in Artefact Storage. But I keep thinking about Mary Keay:

Mary Keay Often, during my studies, my mother would talk to me of the amazing arcane relics at your Institute. I’m sure you can imagine my disappointment when I finally got a look at the collection of mediocrity that you call your “Artefact Storage.” – The Magnus Archives: First Edition

Mary was ... quite a piece of work, obviously, and there's no doubt that some of the things in Artefact Storage were very dangerous indeed. But it does seem that The Magnus Institute of that universe only collected supernatural objects incidentally: usually because a statement giver happened to bring one in.

But here – well, the artefacts are the point. And RedCanary took one away. And – heh – "no dice". I wonder if that box ever held dice. I wonder if they had still come up snake eyes.

The rest of the point of the piece seems to be about the nature of choice. That's always been a question, of course:

Archivist/Annabelle Cane Of course, that’s not the real crux of the free will question that’s bothering you at the moment, is it? I think that one probably comes down to whether or not you’re choosing to continue reading this statement out loud. You didn’t mean to, did you? No, I’m sure you told Basira and Melanie that you were going to glance over it and report back; perhaps they asked you if you were going to record, and you shook your head: maybe later. That sounds like the sort of thing you’d say. But think about it, John; when’s the last time you were able to read a statement quietly to yourself without instinctively hitting record and speaking it aloud? Is it just instinct, habit? Or is it a compulsion, a string pulled by the Ceaseless Watcher or the Mother of Puppets? – The Magnus Archives: Weaver

You can say the characters are making free choices, sure. But if an evil god (for want of a better term) is leaning on you, that constrains your choices. If your access to pertinent information is limited, that constrains your choices. If you're in the presence of a hypnotic artefact, that constrains your choices.

The statement giver is clearly compelled, at least up to a point. He knows, and Gary knew before him, that rolling the dice was likely a fatal idea. But they both did it anyway. So did all the random people he presented with the dice.

But at the same time, there are hints of a gambling habit that was present before he took ownership to the dice:

Chester/Unknown Statement Giver It’s been a while since I played the tables but I’ve used enough dice to know they were too heavy… And there was something else too. From that point on I own those dice. And I know it. – The Magnus Protocol: Rolling with it

And he clearly took to the damn things in a way that Gary did not. Gary clearly rolled the dice and had both very good luck and very bad. And at a certain point he decided to make them this arsehole's problem (and as badly as that ended for him, I can see why). But our anonymous statement-giver was committed to becoming a dark agent of fate.

Chester/Unknown Statement Giver I started to enjoy that more than the luck. I was rolling for myself less and less, focusing more on being some mysterious stranger. I even began dressing for the part: I got hold of this long dark coat, a wide-brimmed hat, grew a proper goatee, the works. – The Magnus Protocol: Rolling with it

It's funny that he didn't like D&D, given how quickly he took to LARP-ing.

But there are other questions about compulsion, too. Nobody but Gary was hurt? Not true. What about the truck driver, whose life was likely ruined by this event? Were they compelled by the dice to fall asleep, or to plough into that building, even though they'd never touched the dice?

Sam clearly gets a prod toward a Magnus Institute-related case when he's muttering about giving him – but he's also pretty clearly committed, whatever he says to Celia. And he is explicitly in the middle of the world's longest and weirdest application process as he's having this conversation. Maybe Sam's being leaned on, a little, but he's not resisting it.

And then there's Teddy. It's not that anything he says is impossible, of course. It's just an odd string of luck. He gets that job just long enough to be replaced by Sam and Celia, and then it's gone again. And then he's back in Alice's orbit. Teddy's not around the OIAR any more than that truck driver was around the dice. But does he still fall under its influence?

"Gerry Keay's" behaviour in the previous episode was definitely odd, but at the time it was a little difficult to tell whether he was overdoing an act … or if he was actually like that, for some reason. I'm more inclined to think the latter, now. I'm more inclined to think something's leaning on him.

And last, but not at all least, is Sam's questionnaire. Sure, "Why?" might be the weirdest part in the generic sense, but this:

Celia Please list your earliest four negative memories associated with school or an equivalent childhood educational institution, then rate each from zero to seven with zero being neutral and seven being traumatic. – The Magnus Protocol: Rolling with it

It's an odd bit of luck, right, that Sam's paperwork lands on a question to which he is bound to have an interesting answer?

And Gwen – it sounds as though she's been sent out to visit some kind of incredibly irritating 90s television star (I want to strangle the man from the name "Prank Tank" alone). She is to deliver him a name and address, just as Sam previously received a name and address. The coincidence, however, lies most in the children.

What was playing on TV when Sam, Gerry and the unknown others were in The Magnus Institute?

#the magnus protocol #the magnus protocol spoilers #the magnus archives

[satellitesoundwave]

⭐️⭐️

Dealer’s choice! I decided to go with Your Own Hands but couldn’t narrow it down to just one bit. So here’s my commentary on two sections instead lol

From #13:

The machine’s base is a vast crucible, stout and steep sided. Pipes conveying in heat encircle the sides. The superheated air above it shimmers, transparent patterns twisting in the air as the molecules writhe. Pooling inside the cup of the crucible is a pool of liquified obtenteum.

Bathed in the fuel’s toxic green glow is Averruncus' heart; an octahedron bigger than a mech, hovering in the air as if it is beyond the purview of physical laws that everything else has no choice but to obey. Each of its identical faces is roughhewn like stone, and a shade of black that seems to swallow all light that falls on it and give nothing back.

Below the octahedron the obtenteum withdraws, repulsed, pressed flat to the crucible and rising up the sides like liquid in a centrifuge. It is flowing up the crucible’s walls like waves on a vertical shore.   

Okay, so, I reallywanted the causality-breaking-machine itself to feel unnatural and wrong. What it does is so implausible, like everything depends on cause and effect to exist at all. While plotting out YOH I found that trying to consider what that disruption would do to pretty much anything straight up hurts to think about if you try to do it too in-depth lol. I decided to lean into that and give the machine an appearance that also communicates that this thing should never have been able to exist to begin with.

It was partly inspired by the vibe Tarantulas has in SotW’s too. Stuff like the way that his hybrid organic-Cybertronian nature, and the wonky shape and distinct font of his speech bubbles, frame him as an aberration in the narrative. An intruder into the story. Averruncus is very much Tarantulas’ creation, and I wanted to communicate that by sharing the feeling of wrongness that its creator is marked by – Tara’s hybrid nature inspired the sentence “As the octahedron rises above the lip of the crucible it contracts like an organic heart, the sides dropping back down to squeeze out the liquid,“ as well, actually. Organic imagery where you would expect a more mechanical simile. Also kinda gross, which is a good fit for Tarantulas’ vibe too.

The other big inspiration for Averruncus was the gravity drive from the movie Event Horizon, because that thing looks cool as fuck. I saw EH for the first time while writing Your Own Hands, and the gravity drive had a real impact on me.  Mad kudos to all the people involved in designing and building it, I mean just look

so the gravity drive ended up being part of the creative foundation I built on to design Averruncus’ appearance as well

I also wanted to talk about snippet #2, because the stuff in #2 is actually the very first thing I wrote for YOH; I was originally going back and forth on whether I should sign up for the Big Bang, and decided to mock up a little section of the idea I’d picked out to potentially do for the event to get a feel for what writing it would be like. A lot of the approach I wanted to take to the theme and these characters got nailed down in that trial run (which also made it very exciting that this was the scene ashals-dream chose to illustrate). The section's too long to quote the whole scene, so I’ll do some choice bits:

This time he has relocated to a beach. His lure lies nestled on the sand, signalling while he investigates the nearby rocks, captivated by a tenacious little specimen of Niebla Effusa.

Lichen. The composite of fungi and cyanobacteria – or fungi and algae, of course – that possesses characteristics neither of these individual species do in isolation. Two individuals with one form, like an inversion of the typical Cybertronian’s nature for a single individual to have two forms. He longs to collect samples, but they would only go to waste. There is no time left for passion projects.

This is the point where I started to feel like I’d gotten Tarantulas’ pov nailed down. It felt right that he is constantly assessing the world around him through the lens of a scientist’s curiosity, and in an environment it’s the things that appeal to the curiosity which receive special attention from the narration (the composite nature of lichen is something I learned about from Entangled Life by Merlin Sheldrake, which is a great read. Highly recommend)

Whipped onto the rocks by the buffeting wind, waves crash onto land, reaching for the sky until they dissolve into white foam that falls to fleck Tarantulas’ carapace with salty droplets. Prowl is too distant for the fine mist to reach him.

Distance is something I’m often thinking about with these two. The psychological/emotional distance between them is something of a blind spot for both Prowl and Tarantulas; they each think they have a particularly good read on the other, and in some ways they do… but there are key places where they really don’t, and neither is self-aware about those deficiencies. It gives the two of them a knack for unintentionally taking the absolute worst tact with each other – like how chronologically later in the fic Prowl manages to, from an interpersonal standpoint, completely fuck up in the way he saves Tarantulas’ life and be taken by surprise by the fallout. By noting the physical distance between them in this first meeting, I was hoping to gesture at that interpersonal disconnect too

“And what is it that you need, Tarantulas? Why have you been playing this game?”

Tarantulas walks up the dune, leaving the lure in the sand. He won’t need it again. Prowl is going to say yes. It truly is his only option, this time.

He walks right up until he can see himself reflected in that cold blue optic, until the muzzle of the blaster presses into his chest. There is nothing to fear from the gun. There isn’t a weapon in the world capable of making a difference to him anymore.

“This time, Prowl, I need your help.”

A physical distance that Tarantulas is the one to close, in the same way it’s his decisions later on that puts them on a path where closing that emotional distance becomes possible, and turns them away from repeating their damaging cycle but with Prowl as the person consequences splashed back onto this time around. Also, here’s the first place I decided to bring in the emphasis on Prowl saying ‘yes’ that comes up several times across YOH, to tie it into that thread from SotW.

I also really enjoy Tarantulas’ bring completely unconcerned about walking right up to the gun here. He might have decided that he’s okay with having to die in order to get causality stabilised, but he knows that until then Averruncus’ intervention means that he cannot be killed. Tarantulas’ confidence in the face of a deadly weapon is drawn from the total confidence he has in his own work

#satellite speaks #satellite writes #indexing tags: #tarantulas #prowl #prowl/tarantulas #Your Own Hands #ask meme

[yubsie]

I actually had a lot of fun with the various holiday traditions in We Need a Little... so I’m going to take a moment to babble about where various things come from. A big thing I wanted to do with this one was write a Star Wars holiday fic rather than a Christmas fic.

Problem: Star Wars worldbuilding is a bit uneven and one of the things it tends to lack if cultural details. So while I dug into some DEEP lore, I also made a lot of stuff up.

Life Day: Okay, we all know about this one. It’s canon, it’s the go to holiday for winter holiday fics, but given the timeframe and the fact that it’s a Wookiee holiday, it wasn’t going to play a big role. Orga root grows on the surface of Kashyyyk, is quite perilous to harvest and is traditionally served on LIfe Day.

Solstice Tide: This was a lucky find! My husband had already suggested that the Coruscant holiday should be a commercial nightmare that Kanan hated it. Then I found out that the LIfe Day Treasury had a story set during the High Republic era where the Jedi would invite people into the Temple to share in abundance and it being a corrupted Jedi holiday? Perfect.

Sutuu pouches: Also canon! My husband patiently tromped through the book store with me looking for the LIfe Day Treasury when I realized online one of the illustrations was a Twi’lek and it might have something useful for me! The tradition they’re tied to is from Aaloth and it involves bonfires that burned longer than they should have when fighting off the Sith. So they assemble these little tinder pouches. The story in the book involved a rebel finding magnesium rich moss and throwing it at a stormtrooper at a key moment.

Sinya ek Sinya: The holiday didn’t have a name but hey I found a dictionary of Twi’leki terms! The thing about conlangs largely built from RPG supplements is they lack key grammatical features. LIke conjunctions. Though I did eventually find a word for “of”. I wanted to name the holiday Night of NIghts but there was no word for night so it translates to Dark of Dark. Eleni making sure they marked this holiday was a big part of the genesis of the entire rest of the story, and the sutuu pouches gave me a nice specific thing for her to do.

Ryshcate: This is mostly a throwaway reference because they didn’t have the ingredients, but it’s a traditional cake used to mark special occasions (birthdays, really missing Corellia, apologizing to your fellow Corellian). It is, of course, a boozy dessert. This originates from Legends but was canonized by... a cookbook, sure.

Catabar bread: Catabar is one of the few canonical cooking spices that have been established in the GFFA, and it fit the niche of sweet baking spice.

Unnamed Mandalorian Holiday: Does it actually involve fireworks, or does Sabine just want to blow something up and no one else knows enough about Mandalorian culture to argue? The galaxy may never know.

Tanaab Festival of Lights: Oh, did I ever make this one up. More specifically, I made this up for a holiday fic about Wes Janson that I wrote in high school. It is possible the fic is still findable on TF.N but I will not be doing so because I am sure I’d find it painful to read something I wrote that long ago. I did remember the candle tradition though, and thought it fit this story really well. Oddly, this is probably the most directly Christmas inspired custom in the entire story. Or rather, it was inspired by Advent with the specific coloured candles symbolizing specific things.

Night of Frozen Sand: My husband named this one. No, I have no idea what the significance of the light up bantha horns

Twenty-Eight Glimmers: This one was [Raltiir Holiday] for the first draft. I wanted to build an actual custom around ugly sweaters after reading a hilarious Twitter thread about “Your Christian students will be celebrating Yom Christmas soon” that mentioned them and I liked the idea of an ugly sweater explicitly bringing good luck. A custom about luck seemed like a good fit for Hobbie (who still managed to get injured in the fluffy holiday fic, bless him). So then I started researching Raltiir to find something I could build a holiday around. ANd it turns out that most of what we know about Raltiir involves... banking. But! It has 28 moons and while I have several questions about how big these moons are if a terrestrial planet only slightly larger than Earth has that many, it seemed obvious that the winter light based holiday had to incorporate them. You don’t just go around having TWENTY-EIGHT MOONS in your sky and not develop customs about them. (ALso the tides on Raltiir must be a freaking nightmare to predict)

Long Night: And then fairly late in the process I realized I had somehow overlooked Lothal even though that’s the most obvious holiday for the Ghost crew to mark. I’d already did a couple variations on lighting fires, so I went more sound based for driving away the night. Which had the bonus of Kanan musing about just always putting bells on the baby (a thing blind parents do in fact do!)

Tinsel: This does not tie to a specific planet, I just wanted to put tinsel on Chopper.

#fanfic #star war #behind the scenes of my writing process #please note that most of the ideas from my husband were discussed in a graveyard #no one asked for this #but i wanted to talk about it

[mood2you]

Book Review Reviews Blog

Going through a 1-star review and answering their dumb questions. This is about This One Summer. The review actually formed most of its questions as literal questions, so that's a plus.

This will contain spoilers.

"Where is the plot?"

It's about a family, so the plot is in learning why the daughter and father hate the mother. There is no plot! It's about being on vacation!

"Why are there these two 12 year olds talking about sex all the time?"

Twelve year olds are pretty curious about that stuff, because they don't get it, even if someone actually tried to explain it to them, they would say ew gross not you! (especially their parents) and keep on trying to figure it out from their peers. To be fair, it's kind of a sad/uncomfortable graphic novel about a teenage pregnancy. So it was the girlfriend of a boy working at the convenience store that one of the twelve year olds has a crush on and starts trying to snoop into his social life.

"What even happened in this book?"

They spend the days watching horror movies secretly, and going to the beach and eating candy, as you do on vacations. The father goes back to the mainland (for work) and everything the mother says annoys the daughter, who is dealing with her crush on this guy who won't call his "slut" girlfriend, who gets humiliated by some guys heckling/catcalling her at her dosant job at a Native museum. At the end, the daughter overhears her mother explaining to her aunt that one year ago the last time they were on this vacation, she miscarried while swimming. She must have told the father, but not the daughter, so their family got really tense while she grieved.

"Why was there no conclusion?"

That was the conclusion. If you didn't care about the mother O.K. but she got in a fight with the whole family at the beach and stormed off, so, you knew something was coming. I think pairing a miscarriage with a teen pregnancy kind of makes sense, it's two kinds of pregnancies that are, you know, sad. Also one of the girls leaves to go home, I think that's a fine conclusion. A lot books have pretty lame conlusions, but I want to argue the case for this one.

"The last sentence was boobs would be nice what the heck what the heck what the heck?"

It's about these two 12 year olds talking about sex. It's low-stakes, it's supposed to be down-to-earth and really zoomed in. It's a weird subject for the art and backgrounds to be so good.

"What is the purpose of this graphic novel?"

Its purpose is to be a 300 page book you can read in half an hour, its purpose clearly was to illustrate a summer island, I have no idea what I would have felt reading this as a 12 year old or 17 year old which frankly is when I bought this book and never read it (summer kept on running out like sand in my hands, and I don't know how to read graphic novels or poetry books or anthologies) it probably would have scared me.

"Am I still addicted to the cover? Yes"

I did buy it because I thought it was about girls love (which did scare me, I felt like I hate to hide it and such,) and I tried to queerbait this book to get people to buddy-read it with me, but it's about cousins.

My conclusion?

A lot of these reviews are going to just be me smugly saing "it's slow paces, it's about the characters, it's slice of life, it's low stakes" maybe through this project I will learn an answer of why someone would want to put us through that.

#this one summer #book review #blog #tumblr #book review review #poll

[schleierkauz]

Some Highlights from the 03.05 Stream

As usual, here’s some interesting bits of the last Cornelia Funke Q&A. I tried to structure it all a bit better this time but these talks are pretty chaotic sooo... bear with me. There’s more interesting stuff under the read more, I just put it there because it was getting so long. Anything in (brackets) is my own commentary. I hope you enjoy! :)

Inkworld

Q: What's the deal with the death bond between Mo and Dustfinger and will it be relevant in the new book? A: Since Dustfinger is probably immortal now, he’s been operating on a different level than Mo who is very much still mortal. Other than that, Cornelia doesn't want to reveal too much about TCoR for now. She worked on it the day before the stream, and she shows us the notebook she uses for it.

She thought she had a pretty good idea of what the story was going to be but more and more things keep happening and the book is already looking to be a lot longer and more complex than she intended.

- She will focus on TCoR once the move to Italy is complete and she's very excited about that since the Inkworld is essentially Magical Italy. She can't wait to sit in Volterra and write about Ombra.

- The TCoR sketch book might just be published at some point as a sort of bonus making-of book since it's already full of illustrations and other fun stuff

(That looks like the witch character, doesn’t it? I wonder who the other woman is... And god, I wish I could actually read the text. :/)

- The Inkworld exists around 1360 by our understanding of time

- The Mystery Chapter I translated ages ago is still canon! More info on that in the Reckless section

Q: Will we ever get to read the "original" Inkheart by Fenoglio? A: No, never. Cornelia's writing style is too different from Fenoglio's and she wouldn't be able to pull it off. 

However! Cornelia still hopes for an Inkworld TV show that would begin long before the story of the first book. She already has a notebook all about Dustfinger's and the Black Prince's childhoods, how they met each other as well as other characters such as Roxane etc. Fenoglio didn't care much for their backstories so Cornelia feels like she can explore them without stepping on his toes.

- A long time ago, Cornelia had an editor who thought Dustfinger was a bad character (lmao. imagine being that wrong.)

Reckless

Q: Will one of the short stories Cornelia wants to write about the Mirrorworld be about Nerron's mother? A: Interesting idea! She will consider it.

Q: Will Cornelia include African and/or Indigenous stories in the Mirrorworld? A: Yes! She planned to do it in the sixth book but right now it looks like it might happen in the fifth, so she's trying to figure out how to include South-American fairytales alongside African and Indigenous ones. She wants to include those stories through characters we meet along the way, without necessarily taking the story to those places directly. Or maybe she'll write a separate book entirely to do those fairytales justice. 

- The Mirrorworld exists around 1860 by our time

- Cornelia feels like there will be a lot of Mirrorworld spin-offs because she keeps having ideas and loves writing in that world

Q: Did Spieler (Player(?)), when he was in the "real" world, know about Capricorn and Fenoglio's Inkheart book? A: The silver book that makes people into silvertongues was created by Spieler. For a while he found it very convenient to travel the worlds through books but eventually he realised that books tend to develop a will of their own, which is why he ultimately decided to travel via mirrors. He probably knows about Fenoglio but Cornelia doesn't think he'd care much about Capricorn since he's playing in an entirely different league of villainy.

- Cornelia just signed a contract for a Reckless TV show

Cornelias new Farm in Italy

Q: Will she have animals on the new farm as well? A: Probably not! Right now she's more interested in befriending wild animals. Her dogs will stay with her but otherwise she wants to focus on wild animals as well as wild flowers. She wants to share her garden with any animal that stops by - including, hopefully, the occasional feral cat.

- Cornelia is getting into animation! She will work with a friend of hers who is a teacher in that field to create a little stop motion/animation studio on the farm so artists can bring their characters to life in a new way and create short movies.

Q: How can artists apply to be invited to the farm? A: Cornelia doesn't want people to apply directly, she'd rather leave it up to chance and fate. Most of her artists were recommended to her by friends or former colleagues and this method is working very well. She encourages people to post their work on the internet or send it to her via her website or twitter or something, she just doesn't want to hold contests regularly because it would be overwhelming and she doesn't want to have to reject people. Also, it's aimed at young artists who are just starting out and it’s mainly for girls/women, although not exclusively.

Side note, she plans to have another farm in Germany (probably in Schleswig-Holstein) and there will be other projects that happen there.

Q: Will it be possible to visit the farms, will they sell tickets? A: Cornelia doesn't want to sell tickets and definitely doesn't want "Disneyland vibes". The Mirror Farm (in Germany) isn't supposed to make money but she rather wants it to be a gift to her readers. They'll have to somehow limit how many people show up at once but there will be "open days" where anyone can just show up. Cornelia also wants to offer workshops or something similar herself once or twice a year, where people would have the chance to meet her in person.

Bonus: Life Lessons with Cornelia

Q: Does Cornelia have any advice for people in their mid-twenties who are not quite sure what to do with their lives? A: Figure out what you want to do and follow your heart because being stuck doing something you don't care about at all will make you miserable. And then it comes down to discipline and hard work. You might never get rich doing what you love but someone in their 20s is still young enough to try all kinds of different things and find a path that works. The important thing is actually following through instead of just endlessly thinking about what could be. Travel the world, try different jobs. Don't be fooled into thinking you have to go to university/college, that's nonsense. Knowing how to build a sturdy table or plant a good herb garden makes someone an artist in Cornelia's eyes. Listen to advice but don't blindly follow it. Don't be afraid to change your dreams. Make mistakes and learn from them. You live in one of the richest countries in the world, you won't starve or die on the streets so be grateful and be brave.

Misc.

- The three of them spend the first eight minutes of the stream telling us to visit this website and check out the cool bridge their bookshop is built on and the blackbird that moved into the store

- Cornelia's daughter got married and it was beautiful :)

- Cornelia is looking forward to moving to Italy and being closer to "us" and European artists. She says she'll miss California but she is incredibly tired of all the wild fires.

- Cornelia is now fully vaccinated 

- Cornelia is working on a book about two girls. One used to live in Germany in the 40s-50s, was blind and collected plants from all over the world with her father. She would write letters about those plants to her sister, and those letters are found one day by a girl from Brooklyn. She starts to go looking for the plants the letters are about in the botanical garden. Cornelia has an assistant who keeps sending her pictures from that botanical garden and it's a very fun project because it's very rooted in the real world yet Cornelia still gets to tell a story about a friendship that takes place through letters. She hopes to have finished it by August

- The Wild Chicks movie might just actually happen and everyone's excited about it

- An animated Igraine Ohnefurcht movie is in the works

- So is an animated Geisterritter/Ghost Knight movie

- Cornelia keeps losing books and other important things in the mail and it is pretty infuriating

- Cornelia recommends the book "Sand Talk" and once again says white people should be careful about not speaking over marginalised groups in the name of protecting them

#ly dont look #cornelia funke #reckless #inkheart #damn cornelia that's a lot of projects #she didnt even really answer my question but i'm just happy to be noticed honestly #i am..... so interested in the silvertongue lore ngl #i really have to catch up on reckless #also thank u cornelia for validating me dropping out of uni to go live by the ocean hfghfghkfd #info

[thiswasinevitableid]

For the prompt fill, number 3 for Indruck seems pretty fitting!

Here you go! Prompt 3 was “sweet” , Indrid’s design is based on a barracuda and I went with SFW on this one.

“Duck, can you do me a favor when you lock up?” Leo dumps orange taffy into a glass jar. 

“Sure, what d’you need?”

“Got some locks for the garbage cans; put ‘em on after you set the alarm out back. Somethin’s been getting into our trash every damn night for the last week. It makes a god-awful mess and I’m worried we’re gonna get a fine for littering.”

Duck nods, turns his attention back to the flock of tourists approaching the window. The afternoon is swallowed up in a pit of sugar-sticky air and blasts of welcome cold from the freezer. There are worse places for a summer job than Tarkesian’s Sweets--he’s right by the water, can watch the wildlife on his lunch break, and Leo is low-maintenance boss--but after eight hours on his feet getting splashed with soda or burned on the popcorn machine, he’s ready to head home. The trash locks have other ideas.

It takes ten minutes of cursing and fumbling to get the first bin secured. He doesn’t even know how the damn things are getting overturned; they seem too heavy for a raccoon or seagull to knock to the ground. 

A tiny splash behind him, probably a fish jumping. 

Then a crooked, shiny pole slowly enters his periphery. In dim yellow of the streetlight, he can tell the end of it is curved. It pokes inelegantly at the wall, then the locked can, then the wall once again, and then Duck’s leg.

The hook pulls back, pauses, then pokes him again.

“The fuck?” He grabs it when it goes for another jab, pulls up only for his arms to be wrenched towards the water. Not to be outdone, he tugs harder. His opponent retaliates with enough force that he almost tumbles off the pier. He growls, braces his foot on the railing, and hauls the hook and its owner up onto worn wood with him. 

It’s a guy about his age, angular face framed by a mess of silver hair and pierced ears. Figures it’s some sort of artsy punk swimming around poking people in the leg. That explains why he’s shirtless too. 

It does not, however, explain why he has a tail. 

“Rude.” The guy sits up on his hands, silver and black tail flicking droplets of saltwater everywhere, “I don’t go around stopping you from eating.”

“Look man, I just wanted you to stop jabbin me and knockin the trash over.” Maybe if he doesn’t mention the tail it will go away. 

“How else am I supposed to get at those odd, pulpy tubs full of ‘cookies and cream’ or ‘bubblegum’?”

“The fuck--wait, you were tryin’ to get the ice cream containers out of the trash?”

“Yes? I also want more of the caramel apples” he pronounces the last word “applees” causing Duck to giggle in spite of himself. 

“Look, I have to piece words together from the signs on your store. And you obviously know what I meant or you would not be laughing, so do you have any in the cans or not?”

“Nope” Duck gets his laughter under control, “sold out of caramel apples today.” 

“Drat” the visitor starts scooting across the pier towards the unlocked trashcan, “I’ll see what else I can find.”

“Wait don’t fuckin knock that over, Leo’ll be pissed at me if he comes back to a mess, and I don’t feel like pickin up trash because you want a snack!”

“But I’m starving!” The merman, because at this point there’s no way he can deny that’s what’s been rooting through the garbage, whacks at Duck with his tail.

“I know for a damn fact there’s food down there.” He points at the bay. 

“Only if you can catch it, and only if it is not in another mer’s territory. Which much of this area is; I am new here, young, and thus have no claim to any patch of sea.”

“You ain’t got any family?” Something pings in his chest. It’s the part of his heart that made him pick out the runt of litter when his mom let him get a cat on his thirteenth birthday, that means he always splits his lunch with Juno because she’s running track and needs it more than he does, that makes him tear up when he thinks about everything a sapling has to survive to become a tree.

“Merfolk leave home at sixteen.” The merman shrugs.

Duck sighs, grabbing his keys, “If I bring you somethin to eat, will you leave the trash alone?”

“Yes.” 

He shuts off the alarm, grabs a cone and fills it with bright blue ice cream. The merman is back in the water when he returns, arms resting on the pier.

“Oooh, my favorite!” He takes the ice cream, biting huge chunks out of it as Duck re-arms the door. 

Crunch

“...The container is edible!!”

He sits next to the merman’s arms, “Guess you wouldn’t have had an ice cream cone before, huh.”

“No, but it is lovely. I wish humans threw these away more often.” He polishes off the treat, licks his fingers clean with moans Duck hears in his dreams later, and smiles, “thank you for the meal. Goodnight.” 

There’s a final flash of silvery tail, and then Duck’s alone in the breezy night air.

--------------------------------------------------------------

“That’s a sandwich, correct?”

“AHfuck” Duck knocks over his water bottle in surprise. He’s eating behind the candy store like usual and not expecting an aquatic dining companion. 

“Apologies. I have seen you eating here before and thought you may like some company.” He sets a sea urchin on the ground and proceeds to bang on it with a rock. 

“Found some lunch?”

“I followed some otters; I was mainly trying to draw them, but they led me to a kelp bed no one else was in.”

“...Wait how do you draw underwater?”

“Let me finish cracking this open and I will show you.”

Duck spends the rest of his lunch break on his belly, the merman showing him a sketchbook and enchanted pen that conjures whatever colors the illustrator envisions. The mer is genuinely excited to talk to him. He assumes the nuzzling is due to him smelling like cotton candy; he doesn’t mind, the mer’s skin is cool and he makes cute little noises whenever he touches Duck. 

Before the stands, Duck asks, “You got a name?”

“Indrid.”

“Duck.” 

Indrid’s eyes flick to the nearby estuary.

“Yeah, like the bird. It’s a nickname.”

“I like it.” Indrid smiles, dives, and flaps his tail once in farewell.

------------------------------------------------------

“Cutting school again?” Indrid’s voice bubbles up by his feet. 

“Yep.” Duck watches the spring clouds roll by from his favorite spot on the beach. It’s secluded and far from town, meaning no one will give him shit for skipping class and nobody will see Indrid.

He worked at Leo’s until this past summer, only quitting at the start of his senior year of high school when Indrid pointed out that much of Kepler was surrounded by water and that, if Duck wanted to see him, he did not have to keep working at the candy store in order to do so. 

“Not that I mind the free food.” Indrid winks. 

“Just gonna bring you bulk ice cream from Safeway; no way am I missin out on that chirpin you do when you eat it.”

Duck slides the grocery bag towards the surf, “not like KCC is gonna rescind my offer. Ain’t a fuckin Ivy League or some shit.”

“And you will be happy there?”

“Yeah. They got a decent work-study program with the park, so I can still get a job as a ranger if I want to.”

“Oh. Good.” 

Indrid sounds sad, and Duck sits up on his elbows. His friend’s torso is fully on land, his tail fidgeting in the foam. 

“What’s up?

“I...Barclay told me his human is going to a school further inland, and I know there are many places you could got to learn. You...you did not choose to stay in Kepler because you feel the need to look after me, did you?”

“Course not.” Duck is sitting up now, aching to stroke Indrid’s hair, “I mean, I’m glad we’re still gonna be able to see each other, and I really hopin I can get a room near the beach so it’s easy to come talk. But this is the right choice for me; if I really want to, I can transfer to a different school in a few years, and I can learn a lot here without takin on a shit-ton of debt. Besides, ain’t like I think you’re helpless; I love bringin you stuff and rubbin your fin when it’s sore, but that’s because you’re my friend. Don’t think you’re helpless. I never have.”

“Not even when I was stealing trash?”

“Thought you were a fuckin nuisance, not helpless.” He playfully nudges his shoulder with his toes. 

Indrid turns his head and nips his calf, “How’s that for a nuisance?”

“Not much, felt kinda nice. Uh, I mean, uh, fuck, so, where’d that worry about my stayin come from?”

The mer crawls and wiggles until they’re shoulder to shoulder, “I think my future sight is finally developing; my fathers arrived around the time he turned eighteen, so it makes sense mine would arrive at a similar point. The trouble is, I am having a hard time telling the futures from my own imaginings and worries.”

“That fuckin sucks.”

“I’ll manage. All seers struggle at the beginning. I just wish I was quicker at learning whether certain timelines are really more likely or if they are just ones that I want to be likely.”

“Like what?”

Indrid glances at him, opens his mouth, then shuts it and faces the sea.

Duck smirks, “‘Drid, there somethin you wanna ask me?”

“No. Yes. Maybe? I, I just don’t want to pressure youOOOHhhh that’s not fair” he flops on his back with a groan as Duck scritches his upper tail, “you know I’ll do anything when you touch me like this.”

“Damn right I do. And what I want is for you to tell me the truth.”

Indrid whines, covers his face with his hands.

“Do it or I’ll stop.”

“Rude” Indrid lowers his hands enough that his red eyes peer over the top, “is that any way to treat a mer who wants to kiss you?”

Duck gives his answer by pouncing on his friend, pinning narrow shoulders into the sand as he devours his mouth in kisses. 

“You like that treatment better?”

“Goodness, yes.” Indrid pulls him back down, slipping his tongue between his lips and nibbling his neck when he finally stops to breathe. Then his hand flails sideways, grabbing the plastic bag and chucking it further up the beach.

“The, the tide is coming in and I, ah, foresee us working up quite the appetite.” He tugs Duck’s collar down with his teeth, nuzzling and licking across his skin with little hums of pleasure, “so I want to save those for afterwards. Who knows” he grins, “maybe we’ll need energy for round two as well.”

Duck cups his cheek, inhales the scent of the sea and the sight of his future, “I like the way you think, sweet thing.”

#Indruck #indrid cold/duck newton #mermay fills

[jennamoran]

The Art of Glitch (Part 18)

Glitch is available here!

… including, now, print on demand!

          Hi! We’re talking about Glitch art direction.

So previously,

we talked about the art in the pre-release;

and then a bit about the general set up for the 1st edition art!

and then covered some ways that example characters can die.

and then a bit about gender/ethnic balancing, plus details on a few pieces in particular!

and then about the first assignment to Elizabeth Sherry.

and then about the first assignment to Beatrice Pelagatti!

and then about the first assignment to Kirsten Moody!

and then the first assignment to Mel Uran!

and then about void flowers and Alexander Benekos!

and then about the first assignment to Robin Scott!

and then about the first assignment to Maria Guarneri!

and then about the first assignment to Lee Moyer!

and then about the first assignment to ?? and, uh, ??!

and then about the first assignment to Sadia Bies!

and then about the first assignment to Silvia Cucchi!

and then about the first assignment to Elena Albanese!

(aside)

Let’s move on!

        Melissa Spandri

https://www.artstation.com/reddraws

So the last artist that came on board on Beatrice’s recommendation was Melissa Spandri!

Now, again, looking at the gallery above, most of this stuff is color; so, again, it was kind of hard to be sure what I was getting into. That said, all in all, her stuff looked pretty solidly on point for Glitch (I mean, there’s a botanical illustration, a bone monster, and a mime, what else does Nobilis-style art need?), so I risked offering her a piece that came relatively early in the book:

Page 14.

(I mean, I would have moved it if it had come out good enough to go in the book but not good enough for page 14?

But, like, I didn’t want to do that sort of thing!  ^_^)

           Page 14

“Castiel Breucos, who dies of the Sea”

Piece Style: a “Strategist” dying of the thing ...

                       Strategist: American (likely Caucasian), they/them, archaic dress style

Bane: Your choice, or “the sea.”

            Examples:

they are posed for a photo in the park and a shark is swimming up through the air behind them (or is posing with them);

surf is flooding in along the ground as they shop in a convenience store;

we see a silhouette in bed or a figure looking glumly out of the only lit window, in a building floating out to sea;

or we see them in bed, and a vast wave out their bedroom window;

or the glass of their bedroom window is broken, with octopus tentacles creeping in and reaching for them, and maybe a little bit of surf is spreading along the floor, and there are a few starfish or sand dollars on the floor partway to their bed;

they are drowning amidst the waves and reaching up a hand dramatically for rescue … in the middle of a busy conference center. Everyone is ignoring them. The waves stop being waves and fade into being tile floor a few feet away.

         [Sensitivity Note]

         Commentary

Originally “dying of the sea” was going to be later in the book and a ... guy? I think?

Changing all the pronoun references to they/them was easy, but feeling confident that I’d done so correctly was hard. ^_^

Anyway, sketches!

Melissa’s sketches are a particular treat; they have a lot of the life that her final pieces will have in them already. ^_^

Anyway, I don’t know that I can actually say which of these ideas was “better,” but (2) looked better in the book.

Another case where I’m so happy I had everything laid out in place first!!

      Also

To be honest, the character doesn’t really look very enby, which bugs me a little. But, like, a lot of enby people don’t look very enby, so, like, it’s hard to go back to the artist for changes over that.

I think I’ve nattered about this before, and stressed over whether I should have held a harder line on such things before. It’s tough!

... but well, now you know.

Castiel Breucos’ pronouns: they/them!

In this second, updated sketch, you may observe the fine archaic clothing, or, uh, what there is of it. ^_^

...

Can I tell you a secret?

The piece had been accepted for quite some time before I noticed---strictly speaking, before someone in discord, I think Rand, pointed out to me---that Castiel was bare-chested.

...

Also, I was today years old when I noticed that Castiel is wearing some sort of running shoe or something.

...

I mean ...

I’m not sure what I thought was going on with the outfit?

I guess ... I guess, my eye just kind of, you know, brushed across it? and went, “Yes, that looks like legitimate high fashion/Excrucian-type clothes.”

And I nodded to myself, and mentally stamped it, LEGIT.

...

God, are people going shirtless around me all the time and I just don’t notice?

That would just be so embarrassing for ... well, practically everybody concerned!

              Page 373

Description: This is an illustration for “stories of people who make deals with forbidden, tabu forces.”

A Strategist is in a wintry tundra. Gender and ethnicity are up to you. They are reasonably dressed for the weather.

They’re approaching a titan-like humanoid that is standing amidst the snow. The titan is visibly bound or sealed, e.g., with its wrists shackled and chained to anchor points in the ground. The titan is wearing a mask with four or six eyes. It is sleek—both the mask and the titan. It may have an inhuman lower body, e.g., insectile or spirit/ghost-like. The humanoid parts of its body are dressed in something reasonably covering.

It is an ancient bound … spirit kind of thing. It is glowering in the Strategist’s direction.

This piece is set in the Lands Beyond the world, where reality itself is only asserted in the loosest of senses, and everything is dream-like and indistinct. Formally, you do not need to show this. But be aware of it. There’s no need to make a precisely realistic location. If you wanted to have a painterly or impressionistic approach, or use water-type or watercolor-type effects, or fade the edges of the piece, you have a great excuse.

If the titan is facing the viewer, then the Strategist probably won’t be. It is possible that the Strategist’s eyes will not be visible in this piece. Thus, it will be difficult to tell that they are a Strategist and not a human. In this piece, that is fine. There is no need to contort the image to show their eyes or dress them up in an extreme example of the Strategist clothing.

              Commentary

The design of this piece on my end took practically forever, even though the final piece request was still sort of vague.

It was really hard to figure out what I actually wanted!

Once I had that, though, and had sent it out, the actual piece design went pretty quick.

Melissa’s first take on the piece was something like this:

And I definitely liked the back spikes a lot, but (1) was a clear overall winner here.

She asked whether I wanted her to go more, like, ghostly, or organic? when finishing the titan up; I voted for ghostly, giving us revised images of:

Putting them in the book, it was clear that (1) was better, so there we were!

... well, better in terms of figure design and angle, anyway; I did tell her that I really liked the strong lighting and drama of (2), and she offered to incorporate it when finishing up (1).

And she did, in the piece in the book!

#patreon-supported posts #glitchrpg #the art of glitch #melissa spandri

[fangirlinglikeabus]

every target novelisation....2!

planet of giants by terrance dicks ok so i think that the reason that this is...good, and an unearthly child was...not good, is because this was written 9 years later when like. other, non-terrance dicks people were also novelising stories and he wasn’t just grinding them out on an industrial level. planet of giants isn’t one of the greats of doctor who but this is a competent adaptation - it doesn’t add much but it does flesh out what’s already there, giving us some backstory elements and making the appearance of giant insects and bodies seem a bit more dramatic than they could manage in 1964. unfortunately it also alters my favourite line from the story (‘i don't know how you know, you're supposed to know!’) and the doctor is weirdly hostile at the beginning (he’s looking forward to ditching ian and barbara, he responds to barbara’s observation ‘drily’ like he’s being a bit sarcastic over her, um, *checks notes* noticing important details). also, dicks describes this in the opening as ‘the doctor’s most grotesque and terrifying adventure’ and i’m like...planet of giants? really??

doctor who and the dalek invasion of earth by terrance dicks ok this one legitimately doesn’t change much at all. it cuts down on some things (including the doctor’s end speech being shorter - i’m assuming that’s a space thing), fleshes out on pov bits as you can in prose, gets rid of the smacked bottom line. bizarrely there are a few times that susan calls her grandfather the doctor which...i’m pretty sure wasn’t there originally. aside from all those small details, yeah it’s basically the same, but it’s well adapted for prose (i genuinely think it stands as a novel in its own right), and depending on your reading speed it might actually be a nice, shorter alternative to the television version - it was around 45 minutes less time for me. some general things i wanted to comment on: the resistance is explicitly shown as kinda gender segregated (exclusively women are preparing food when we first see it) which irritated me; the description of parliament as a symbol of ‘human progress and tradition’ reminded me of blood harvest having the lords/commons system as the Ideal Form Of Government, in terms of how terrance dicks thinks (this may only interest me? idk i very probably spend too much time thinking about the political views of this particular dead dr who script editor); there’s a use of holocaust here that’s technically accurate to what the word literally means but it felt weird to me to use it.

the rescue by ian marter oh man i’ve been busy and this took me aages to read. it kinda...diverges increasingly from the original story as it goes on. we’ve got some scenes with the seeker crew (incidentally one of them says ‘ass’ and i was like???hello???you’re allowed to do that in a dr who book from 1987???), and then most of the expanded stuff is in the climax. dr who and bennett have a full on brawl! ian, barbara and vicki visit a destroyed didoi city on their way back to the tardis! mysterious silver figures! a giant worm encounter! incidentally, this does have way more of a downer ending than the original because it’s strongly implied that the last two of the didoi were killed by seeker crewmembers who fired in a panic, after which the report that forms the epilogue ends with “goodwill to all persons” to give us a taste of bitter irony. so that’s kinda grim. um...there’s actually a lot of little changes and minor expansions to this one as well so off the top of my head: we learn more about why vicki left earth (global warming :/), sandy is a lot more threatening-looking than on screen, the crashed ship gets its name changed to astra-nine, ian and barbara hold hands briefly, barbara’s fall really leaves her beaten up. i like the seeker crew comparing the tardis briefly passing them to various non-police box objects from the future (although the link to china is a bit eastern world=alien association for my tastes), dr who telling vicki ‘give that pretty face a wipe’ is clearly him attempting to cheer her up and it’s not meant to be weird but i found it weird. finally, i’ve gotta say i appreciate ian marter’s commitment to ‘mildly unsettling’ in his descriptions of tardis materialisations. this was the last novelisation he wrote before his death (the book’s dedicated to him) and mild criticisms aside, i do think he’s a good writer and he brings an interestingly different angle to the series. 

the romans by donald cotton oh my god. how do i even start this. i’m not even going to try cataloguing all the changes because this isn’t even close to a straight adaptation. it’s told in the form of various documents collected by tacitus - the doctor’s diary, ian’s journal that he keeps to prove to the headmaster at coal hill that he and barbara haven’t just eloped (i’m not joking, this is the textual reason for it), an assassin’s letters home to his mum, nero’s scribblings, and various other little details. vicki and barbara get less attention than on screen because we don’t see much from their perspective (vicki unfortunately doesn’t even get to chase the assassin out, she just screams in this), and the nero assassination plot is exclusively confined to being mentioned in the epilogue. it’s also a lot broader, or at least consistently broader, which means that ian’s side of things is treated a lot more lightly (which i was personally fine with) but also that we still get nero’s predatory behaviour being played for laughs. there’s also a few comments about women early on that i was unhappy with, and use of fat as an insult. generally, though, i thought this was great! there were a lot of things that i don’t have space or time to include here but i really liked. i guess i’d consider this as a companion piece to the tv version rather than a replacement, which some of these do basically serve as. they tell the same basic story, but they’re so different in a lot of ways that i think it’s worth looking at both. i just checked my notes and remembered this so content warning: poppea sabina’s first section references suicide.

doctor who and the zarbi by bill strutton ok so i think the web planet is boring. i don’t know completely why, i don’t think it’s any one thing, it has some interesting ideas, but it is! it’s fucking boring! anyway, we have a bit more casual sexism in the novel, we’re missing that fun convo about aspirin between vicki and barbara, but really i don’t think it adds or changes much - like even the chapters correspond pretty much exactly to the tv cliffhangers. i guess it’s competently written prose-wise, but i genuinely can’t get over my conviction that this story is boring. am i being unfair? maybe! i like some of the early atmosphere, though, and i appreciate a book which refers to ‘the ship tardis’ (lowercase) and ‘doctor who’ throughout the entire thing. oh yeah, and i encourage you all to look up the illustrations for this. i don’t know who that woman is but she’s definitely not vicki.

doctor who and the crusaders by david whitaker ah yes, the infamous ‘susan married david cameron’ novelisation. tbh i don’t like the crusades and this has the same problems - i don’t care about the english, el akir is every orientalist stereotype whitaker could possibly cram into one man, and That’s Not How A Harem Works. do i think it’s the most egregiously racist doctor who story of all time? probably not! it certainly has sympathetic arabic characters too. but i prefer most other historicals, at least. however, if that isn’t you, i’m sure you’ll get something out of this. there aren’t any particularly extreme changes to the plot structure, although it’s missing some later scenes at the english court, but it’s well written and probably if you like the original you’ll enjoy it more than i did. there’s some dated language surrounding black characters, though, i’m not a fan of the whole ‘we aren’t so different’ speech ian has (because it rests on ‘we all believe in a higher power’ which uh. i don’t. guess that means i’m not ‘civilised’. also generally i don’t like the argument that we should respect each other because of what we have in common - you should respect other people whatever!), and the prologue at the beginning where they muse on history and destiny assumes that the english invaders and the arabs are both equally right in their own ways (the doctor outright says this!)

the space museum by glyn jones so, i really like the space museum. mainly for vicki’s revolutionary fervour, but there are other reasons too. however, i don’t think that this really adds enough to be of interest - although we do get some information about the two alien species’ biology, and a bonus explanation of why everyone speaks english (the moroks briefly considered invading earth so programmed some earth languages into their translation system). there’s a bit more wandering around the museum, some minor tweaks and expansions in other areas, an underground tunnel scene where we learn a bit of the planet’s backstory...ian and the doctor are very snippy to each other in this, which i find funny. oh yeah, and there’s a bizarrely meta bit where ian comments on poor dialogue? basically, this is a book i enjoyed, but really it just makes me want to watch the space museum instead of reading it. just a heads up, there’s a character who briefly considers suicide to get out of his bosses being angry with him. 

the chase by john peel ok before i get started i need to establish that the cover for this one slaps. anyway, i don’t respect john peel at all but this was...alright? doesn’t expand much plotwise (although i suspect both the sand monsters at the beginning and the plants at the end have slightly more to do) but we get a fair bit of pov stuff. unfortunately lacking ian’s dad dancing and hi-fi the panda, the marie celeste bit is no longer played for comedy (barbara angsts over it) and even though the two paragraphs dragging morton dill are kinda funny i’m not sure how i feel about him being committed for claiming he saw daleks. ian and barbara’s departure plays out a little differently. steven is blond for some reason. we learn as well that daleks are charged by solar panels (at least they’re pro-green energy??)

the time meddler by nigel robinson pretty competent, straight down the middle novelisation, although that is tempered by inserting some weird sexist bits for steven and also lowkey being nostalgic for 11th century england at a few points? it’s also a bit more violent than we see on tv, and if anything the rape is more loudly implied, so heads up. other than that, there are a few minor embellishments (we’re explicitly told the dr and monk recognise each other, vicki tells steven that the tardis is important to her because it’s her home, a few differences between the monk’s tardis and the doctor’s are described, vicki views steven following her as a triumphant victory in their power struggle which i personally find funny), and there’s a prologue (recapping steven’s arrival in the tardis) and an epilogue (which delays the monk’s discovery of the broken tardis because he walks to hastings first to try and get involved there). i had fun, but it’s not a must read. 

#doctor who #classic who #first doctor #susan foreman #ian chesterton #barbara wright #vicki pallister #steven taylor #laura reads dw books #target marathon #this took me aaages and i don't even have an excuse lol i finished uni weeks ago #anyway sorry if this is a bit rushed i'm literally leaving for somewhere in five minutes and i wanted to get this out first

[chantillyxlacey]

Holiday Spirits Gift! An OT3 mer-AU in a series of vignettes

Merry Xmas @fishbones-wishbones!! I had so much fun writing this! Your prompt was about as tailor-made for me as it could possibly be lol-- I may have gone a little overboard with it, to the point where it might not even stop with what I’ve got written here-- I’m highly tempted to spin off these vignettes into a long-form fic-- thank you so much for the inspiration!! I hope you enjoy reading this as much as I enjoyed writing it :3 Merry Christmas!

One: In Which Vivi and Arthur have become castaways

Vivi woke up sunburnt, sore, and salt-crusted, the taste of that same awful stuff burning her mouth. The last time she’d woken up to comparable discomfort had been the day after she’d been arrested by the Regnate’s men-- but no matter how unpleasant the waking up was, it did at least mean that she hadn’t drowned. ‘I’m still alive’ was always a good square one to start from.

Despite easing her eyes open slowly, the bright nearly-noon sunlight still stung like needles, so harshly that her optimism was nearly overcome by the urge to just roll over and go back to sleep for awhile. She valiantly resisted the temptation and sat up, ignoring the aching protests of what had to be every individual bone, muscle, and tendon she had to her name.

Even breathing scraped at her lungs and aggravated her rib cage, but the air was fresh and clean, and with each breath the fog cleared from her head more and more. The more sensible she felt, the more miraculous it seemed that she had really made it to see today. She’d more or less resigned herself to death last night, though she’d refused to just give herself up to it for as long as she had the strength to cling to that swath of wood with--

“Arthur!” she gasped, prepared despite her weariness to launch to her feet and scour the beach inch by inch to find him-- but that didn’t turn out to be necessary. He was sprawled on the sand right beside her, still unconscious but clearly breathing.

He looked about as worse for wear as she felt: his skin was an angry red from the sun and peppered with bruises and scrapes from the impact that had scuttled the ship. When she leaned down to shake him gently, trying to rouse him, she could see salt crystals clinging to his eyelashes.

“Arthur-- hey, Arthur!” she called softly, and after a moment he started to stir, a thin groan ekeing between his lips. It turned into a sharp hiss through his teeth when he tried to open his eyes-- Vivi didn’t know if it was the sun or the salt that had stung him more.

She helped him to slowly sit up, and couldn’t stifle a laugh at the way his hair had dried into stiff peaks that stood almost completely vertically.

“If you’re laughing at me that’s a good sign I’m not dead, I guess,” he rasped, then coughed and rubbed at his eyes.

“You guess right!” Vivi thumped him lightly on the arm, careful to avoid his sunburn. “Congratulations on not drowning!” He laughed at that, though it still sounded a bit like a cough.

“How--?” he asked.

“No idea!” Vivi said cheerfully, and he grinned at her for a moment before turning to stare pensively out at the sea.

“Okay then-- What do we do from here?” he asked.

“No idea,” she said, more soberly. She’d read her share of stories about shipwrecked adventurers, but how much could those stories help them through the real ordeal? “We’ll figure things out as we go, I guess.” She willed confidence into the words. Arthur hummed softly, still watching the waves.

His brow furrowed and he squinted, then suddenly shot to his feet, craning his neck and shading his eyes from the sun.

“What is--? Vivi, do you see that?”

“See what--?” Before she even finished asking she spotted it too-- a huge, fast-moving shadow under the water’s surface several yards out from the shore. Distance and the blinding glitter of the sun on the waves made it impossible to guess what it might be, and within moments it vanished entirely, fading into the endless blue.

“What do you suppose…?” Arthur murmured, more to himself than to her. Vivi shrugged, more to herself than to him. For awhile they watched the sea bob and roll, but the shadow did not reappear.

.

Two: In which Vivi and Arthur explore

The myriad of books Vivi had read about exotic locales, swashbuckling novels and natural histories alike, combined with Arthur’s practical experience travelling served them rather well as they took stock of their surroundings.

It was an island, or could loosely be called that at least; they’d swept up on what seemed to be a ring of clusters of sand and marsh, held together by tree roots that started several feet before ground level, as though the trees themselves were balanced atop scuttling insect legs. Vivi had read about mangrove forests like this one, but had never seen so much as an illustration before and hadn’t imagined just how eerie the whole tableau turned out to be; Arthur had seen them before but had never learned the name.

The marsh ring wrapped around a lagoon where the water was the clearest, most shining blue Vivi had ever laid eyes on. To their great surprise it turned out to be entirely fresh, despite opening up into the mangroves in several places, where seawater should have been able to leak in and render it too brackish to safely drink. They weren’t about to dwell on the impossibility though; instead they drank until the burn in their throats cooled and the taste of brine was washed from their mouths.

No longer distracted by thirst, they contemplated the second, smaller island nestled in the center of the lagoon. It looked to be real, solid land rather than marsh, but it was difficult to tell: trees clustered there even more densely than in the mangrove, trailing weeping curtains of leaves to brush the water’s surface and shroud the little island from sight.

“I’ve never seen trees that look like these before…” Arthur murmured. “Have you ever read anything about something like that?”

“I’ve read about trees with colorful bark before,” she answered. “But in greens and reds, not blue. And I’ve never heard of a tree with white leaves at all.”

The lagoon was too deep to wade across, but not too wide to swim-- or it wouldn’t have been if they weren’t still tired and aching from the shipwreck, and not too keen on getting into the water again from the same. They’d have to investigate it later, after they took care of the more pressing need to find food and a place to take shelter.

When they returned to the beach they’d woken up on, Arthur’s arms laden with fruit picked from various of the island’s trees (none of which should be growing in a mangrove; but again, they weren’t about to look any gift horses in the mouth, no matter how impossible they were) and Vivi’s with bits of dry wood for a fire, they were surprised to find that more had washed onto the shore while they were away.

Swathes of sailcloth of varying sizes were heaped just out of reach of the rolling surf, along with a mismatched pile of tools, two knives, several planks of wood and lengths of rope, and one badly dented tin bowl. Strangest of all, though, was the large fish stranded far enough up on the sand that it couldn’t have scuttled itself there, still alive and twitching weakly.

“There’s no way this happened just on accident,” Vivi said.

“No…” Arthur agreed, sounding nervous. Vivi didn’t blame him-- if anyone else from the ship had survived and made it to the island as well-- They wouldn’t be terribly thrilled to share a sanctuary with a prisoner and a traitor to be sure, and neither of them were in much of a state to put up a fight. 

“We should get back into the trees,” Arthur said, clearly thinking along the same lines. “And just wait and see-- right?” He was already backing up as he spoke, and Vivi followed.

They waited amongst the strange, ghostly roots until the first lavender tinges of sunset crept into the sky and the fish had long since stopped moving. No one came, but they crept back out into the open with caution anyway.

“Arthur, look--” Vivi gestured at the sand when she’d put the firewood down. “There’s no footprints.” “That’s-- Hm. That’s worse somehow, actually. So... what does that mean, exactly? Did a ghost do all this, or what?”

“Thoughtful ghost,” Vivi mused, starting to arrange the firewood and shave off some bark to catch sparks. “Do you know how to cook fish?” “Uh.”

“We’ll figure that out as we go, too,” Vivi laughed.

The fish ended up unevenly cooked, but they were too hungry to care much, and it tasted alright anyway. They ate their fill and slept like the dead.

.

Three: In which Vivi and Arthur develop routines

The days passed much like the first-- they foraged and tried their luck fishing, and they built a fairly sturdy lean-to between some of the more tightly packed trees, which they shared. The first few times they had woken up to find that the chill of the night had nudged them into each other’s arms as they slept had been awkward, but now they were so used to it that they dropped all pretense, and fell asleep holding one another from the start.

There was plenty of opportunity to explore the central island once their lingering aches subsided, but they never did. Something about it was-- offputting. It had the air of an intensely private place, and even Vivi’s usually insatiable curiosity was cowed in the face of its forbidding aura. They ventured into the lagoon itself to bathe, but never past the deepest point.

Each day also saw a new cache of useful flotsam awash on the sand where they had first woken up: more boards and rope, metal utensils, and one especially lucky morning,  one of the smaller iron cookpots from the galley. Something like that could never have just floated up on its own, but they never saw any sign of whoever it was helping them.

Their anonymous angel also left them food. Sometimes it was another fish, sometimes a pile of live clams left in a pit full of seawater dug into the sand, and once a pile of seaweed that Vivi had vaguely recalled could be boiled to make a broth. Whoever it was, they never left any footprints, or any other evidence of their existence but their gifts.

“Maybe it is a ghost,” Vivi mused one evening as she dug a roasted clam out of its shell with a twig.

“What kind of ghost would be so interested in feeding a couple of castaways?” Arthur wondered back, taking a gulp of the sweet water they had recently discovered was hidden inside the hard green fruits that grew on some of the island’s trees closer to the shore. Vivi chewed her clam thoughtfully, but ultimately had no answer beyond a hum and a shrug. 

“Getting better at cooking these,” she said instead, reaching for another. “Not that you’d know.” She wrinkled her nose at Arthur, who preferred to eat his raw. Vivi found it detestable. He grinned at her, unrepentant, and held the palm fruit out to her. She drained the last mouthful, then flopped against Arthur with a sigh and hooked one arm into the crook of his elbow, sliding the other around his waist.

She couldn’t be absolutely certain, between the night’s darkness and the orange cast of the firelight, but she’d be more than willing to bet that the color in Arthur’s face wasn’t just from sunburn. She snuggled closer and closed her eyes, smiling to herself when she felt Arthur’s cheek lean against the top of her head.

They sat like that for awhile, warm from more than just the fire, and listened to the night sounds. Vivi spent a few minutes weighing the pros and cons of letting go of Arthur long enough for her to lean up and kiss him. She gradually became aware of a new sound-- something that stood apart from the sigh of the waves and the rustle of leaves, and shook her from her thoughts. Arthur shifted, raising his head as though listening too.

“Artie? Are you… singing?” She already knew the answer before he shook his head-- the sound was distant, so far away that it had to be coming from out at sea. “Could that be a whale? I’ve read that they sing but I never thought I’d get to hear it-- Can you hear whalesong from shore like this?”

“You can,” Arthur said distractedly, staring out at the waves with his brow furrowed. “But I’ve never heard any whale that sounded like this before, though… This sounds too much like…”

“It sounds like a person singing, right? Maybe a ship…” She didn’t finish the thought. The moon was full and fat tonight, and if a ship had been so close they should be able to see it, but nothing interrupted the smooth, dark line of the horizon.

“Most captains are smarter than to risk their ships sailing through this part of the sea,” Arthur murmured. The captain of the Morgause had thought himself above those stories, and everyone but the two of them had paid for it dearly.

.

Four: In which Vivi and Arthur meet someone interesting

Whatever she’d thought they’re mysterious benefactor would be like-- she’d never have guessed he was a real-- living, breathing, real and right there-- merman.

He was enormous; had he been a man standing on two legs he would have been at least ten feet tall, even if she estimated on the conservative side. The broad, sinuous tail that trailed in the surf behind him was nearly that long all on its own, covered in ink-dark scales that glittered with startling violet iridescence where the sun hit. White stripes marched along its length, looking for all the world like he’d simply had ribs painted on. 

His huge hands, each big enough to cover Vivi’s entire torso, were webbed and the fingers tipped in blunt claws, but they handled the gift they’d left for him with utter delicacy. Pale slashes of gills lined his sides, standing out starkly against his brown skin. Other than those details however, from the waist up he looked remarkably ordinary.

Well-- perhaps ‘ordinary’ wasn’t the right word. Remarkably human was probably more accurate; ‘ordinary’ simply didn’t take into account just how astonishingly... appealing his appearance was. Even with half his face covered by an overhang of dark violet hair, Vivi could already tell that he had to be the most attractive man she’d ever seen in her life. Arthur looked just as gobsmacked as she felt, standing beside her and looking down at the same impossible figure on the beach.

“Are you--” Vivi started to call out, and the merman’s head snapped up, his face a mask of shock for a single moment before it-- disappeared.

That handsome, almost-entirely-human face was replaced in an instant with a fanged skull, twin sparks of magenta burning in the empty sockets where eyes should belong. Arthur yelped a curse and tried to scrabble backwards so fast that the powdery sand under his feet gave way and he crashed down on his back. Vivi sucked in a gasp, but it was more amazement than fear.

“Wait!” she called, darting forward even as the merman started to retreat backwards into the surf. “Please, wait-- don’t go just yet!”

As she got closer, she realized that he hadn’t actually shape-shifted or dissolved into shadow and bone-- his skin had simply changed colors, as she’d read certain sea creatures were able to do. Most of his color had deepened to a shade nearly identical to his tail, with patches leeched of color in shapes that mimicked a skeleton.

The patterns faded and his skin returned to human tones as she approached; his eyes, however, remained the same. The whites weren’t white, but as black as his pupils, and the irises were vividly pink. The look in them was guarded and uncertain.

“Was--” She paused. There was no guarantee he’d understand her. There was no reason to assume he could speak English, or any human language at all-- but what else could she do but at least try to communicate? “Was it you who’s been helping us?”

For a moment she thought he didn’t understand, and felt a stab of dismay at how to bridge a language gap that vast-- but then he nodded, face still tight with wariness. “You rescued us, too, didn’t you?” Another nod, although there was an odd hesitation to it, his eyes downcast in something almost like-- shame?

“Did you sink the ship?” Vivi gaped at Arthur, who by now had stood back up and come to her side, aghast that he’d jump to that conclusion. When she looked back to the merman, however, he nodded again.

“It came too close to the island,” he lamented. His voice surprised her: a soft tenor that didn’t seem like it should belong to someone so huge and imposing looking, and laced through with an accent she couldn’t quite place. As he spoke, she could see sharp, triangular teeth flashing behind his lips like pearls. “I’m tasked by My Lady to keep any intruders away, by any means necessary.”

“Why save us, then?”

“You didn’t deserve to drown. You kept each other afloat through the storm, you helped each other even though it put your own safety at risk.” He sounded as though he was reasoning it out to himself as much as explaining to them. “I couldn’t just… Duty or not, I couldn’t just let you die.”

Vivi and Arthur shared a glance. Neither of them were quite sure how to respond. After an uncomfortable silence, the merman offered back the amulet they had made. Vivi blinked.

“You don’t like it?” she blurted.

“N-no-- that isn’t it. I thought you would want it back. That you wouldn’t want to give a gift to someone who…”

“Someone who saved our lives, and has been looking out for us ever since?” Vivi offered.

“Your lives wouldn’t have needed saving if it hadn’t been for me.”

“We kind of needed saving before the ship sank, to be honest,” Arthur said. “There wasn’t anything good waiting for a couple of prisoners when we made port.” “Prisoners?” He sounded horrified.

“Vivi was arrested unfairly and I got caught trying to help her escape. That kind of mutiny gets you hanged-- If it hadn’t been for the storm they probably wouldn’t even have waited ‘til we came ashore.” “I’m sorry,” the merman murmured.

“You don’t have to be. Like I said, you saved our necks.” Arthur offered a wry half-smile, but the merman still looked unsure.

“What’s your name?” Vivi knelt on the sand before him-- even lying on his belly and sunk low in shame, his gaze was even with hers.

“My-- what?”

“Oh--” Vivi wondered if she’d just asked something incredibly stupid, or perhaps even insensitive. “Do you… have a name? Something you call yourself?”

“Yes, of course,” he said, still sounding completely baffled. “I’ve just-- I’ve never had to introduce myself to someone before. My name is Lewis.” It was an astoundingly ordinary name for a mythical-- or supposedly mythical-- being to have. Vivi had to stifle a laugh that was wholly inappropriate for the moment, but she did smile at him.

“Thank you for saving our lives, Lewis.”

He ducked his head again, though this time it seemed more like a flustered movement than an ashamed one.

“You���re… welcome,” he mumbled.

The rest of the afternoon was spent sitting on that beach, trading further introductions and asking Lewis questions about the island.

They learned that the smaller central island, which they still hadn’t yet dared to explore, housed a temple hidden among the weeping trees. It belonged to goddess who Lewis would not name, only calling her “My Lady.”

There were not-- at least as far as Lewis knew-- other merfolk, and he had no parents or family. His Lady had created him with magic for the sole purpose of guarding her island and her temple from any intruders-- the second-to-last line of defense after the enchanted storm she had concocted with magic stole from an ancient rival; he was under orders to sink any ship that braved that tempest, though thankfully crews that were bold or foolish enough to do so were a rarity. Past him, there were wards growing within the trees on the central island itself to repel trespassers. Vivi and Arthur were the first humans to ever set foot on the isle to test them.

“Is it safe here?” Arthur asked. “If your, ah-- your ‘Lady’ comes back to find us here…” 

“I wouldn’t expect her to. There are decades between her visits, and she was here less than a season ago. She won’t be returning any time soon.”

Most other questions about his Lady Lewis was cagey at best about, but on any other topic he was happy to give thorough answers. He had apparently never had a conversation with anyone other than the Lady he served before, and he seemed to be enjoying it immensely. They talked through the entire evening, parting ways only when it grew so late that sleep became impossible to fight.

.

Five: In which Lewis procures a very strange looking fish for lunch

Arthur eyed the lumpy creature with amused skepticism. “Don’t take this the wrong way, Lewis, but I really hope this guy tastes better than he looks.”

Lewis didn’t seem the least bit offended. “He isn’t much to look at, that’s true,” he laughed. “But we don’t know-- perhaps among fish he’s a real Prince Charming.”

“Isn’t that you, instead?” Arthur grinned, then realized just exactly what it was he’d said. His and Lewis’ faces were mirror images of wide-eyed surprise until Arthur went pink from the tip of one ear across to the other and he turned his attention to the cookfire  with sudden enthusiasm. “So uh-- how’s the best way to cook his highness? Does the fire need to be hotter, do we need more firewood--?”

Lewis didn’t blush-- Vivi wondered if he could blush at all-- but he looked equally flustered as he explained that this kind of fish needed a more delicate heat, and how they should wrap it in palm leaves. Vivi smirked to herself, eyeing the way that their hands seemed to ‘accidentally’ brush far more often than could be entirely accidental as they prepared the fish together.

.

Six: In which Lewis and Arthur have a heart to heart

“I’ve been wondering something,” Arthur hesitated. Lewis flicked the very tips of his fins against Arthur’s arm.

“You can ask anything, Arthur. I’ve told you that before.” 

“How did you learn so much about the world? You said you’ve never left this island before, but you know a lot-- did-- did you used to be human, Lewis?” Lewis looked surprised, then sad.

“No, Arthur. I’ve always been this.”

“Wait-- I didn’t mean it like--” “I know you didn’t; I know you’d never. I just…” He sighed. “There was a man that My Lady used to create me. I never really was him-- I don’t have any of his memories-- but whatever knowledge he had is now mine. So I know a great deal about a world I’m not a part of.”

“That’s-- so she turned him into you? I’m not sure I understand.”

“No. I wondered myself, when I was new. She told me that he did not become me any more than the earth a seed is planted in becomes the tree.”

“....I still don’t really get it.”

“I didn’t either,” Lewis laughed ruefully. “She said that whether I understood my origin or not didn’t matter, as long as I understood my purpose.”

Without thinking, Arthur laid his hand over Lewis’.

“Why haven’t you ever left?” He asked. “You said your Lady only even comes around every few decades, you could just… go, and see the world for yourself.”

“I was afraid.” Lewis drew abstract shapes in the sand with one blunt claw. “My purpose here isn’t much, but it’s more than I’d have anywhere else.”

“Didn’t you ever get lonely though?” “Not really. And now I never am,” he looked up at Arthur, and finally smiled again.

.

Seven: In which Lewis invites Vivi and Arthur over for dinner

“Where on the island do you live, anyway, Lewis?”

“Not anywhere on it-- Under it. Beneath the temple there’s a large cavern, and that’s where I live.”

“Oh,” Vivi hummed thoughtfully. Lewis tilted his head, seeming confused.

“Did you want to see it?”

“Isn’t it underwater?” Arthur wondered.

“The entrance is, but there’s a pocket of air in the cave, and a little beach. It might be too far for you to swim on your own but I could carry you--!” He broke off, folding his hands sheepishly. “Ah-- if you didn’t mind me doing that, of course.”

“I wouldn’t mind at all,” Vivi said with a flutter of her eyelashes that was playful but nonetheless made Lewis duck his head shyly.

Lewis met them at the lagoon and they waded in until the water reached their chests. With absolute gentleness, Lewis scooped them against his chest, one of them in each of his massive arms.

“Take as deep of a breath as you can,” he said, and waiting until they had before diving down with them. The water was warm at the lagoon’s surface, but it rapidly cooled as they delved deeper and the light that filtered through her eyelids dimmed. If it hadn’t been for Lewis and his warmth, she didn’t think she would have been able to stand the cold, even though it was mercifully brief. The water warmed back up, and the light returned.

Just when Vivi’s chest was starting to burn with the need for air, the water broke above her head. She sputtered and drew in a long, grateful breath, swiping water from her eyes until she could focus.

“Oh--!” She didn’t know where to look first-- The cave would have been beautiful even unadorned: the ceiling was high-- so high it must have breached the surface and belonged to the ground of the island itself, and peppered with holes that let sunlight stream in. Embedded in the rich black stone of the walls were freckles of micah, which glimmered faintly and reflected like stars in the water’s surface. Even the sand making up the cave’s beach seemed to have a pearly sheen to it.

Garlands were strung in a complex web throughout the cave. Abalone shells and bits of sea glass clinked gently along their lengths, throwing dancing blots of color around the chamber. A band of colorful mosaic, stretching from just above the water line to presumably as high as Lewis could reach, wrapped about two-thirds of the way around the cavern walls. Even clearly incomplete it was gorgeous-- a lovely and chaotic mix of abstract shapes, pictures of sealife, and even maps of constellations. In the water tiny, colorful fish darted around them like living jewels.

Along one wall were natural ridges of stone that Lewis had utilized as shelves, which were covered with an array of dishes and vessels. Some of these were made of stone, some were fashioned from large shells, and a few seemed to be human-made and had probably been salvaged from the seabed. A fire pit sat in the middle of a stretch of pebbles further away from the water’s edge, and a wooden rack nearby seemed to be a setup for drying out firewood. The trinket Vivi and Arthur had made was set in a prominent niche in the cave wall, directly in a beam of golden sunlight.

“It isn’t very much,” Lewis said sheepishly as he set them on the sand.

“What on Earth are you talking about?” Arthur nudged him lightly with his elbow. “Lewis, this place is incredible!”

“It’s like something from a dream!” Vivi agreed, beaming up at him. She clung to his bicep, having to use both her arms around just to reach all the way around. He cast his eyes down and clearly would have been blushing if he could. He’d let them go, but his arms curled gently back around them now.

After a while, Lewis lit a fire with a flint and steel, and prepared a pot of soup for them that was more elaborate than any Vivi had seen before, and was also about the tastiest thing she’d ever eaten. They spent hours sitting by the fire, so absorbed in talking and sharing their meal, that they hardly noticed as the light filtering into the cave from above shifted into rosy hues, then faded. Rather than face the cold of the depths, especially not in the chilly night air, Vivi and Arthur opted to bed down in the soft sand of the cave’s beach.

.

Eight: In which Vivi is happy precisely where she is

Vivi woke up warm and serene. For a few blissful minutes she didn’t open her eyes or think about where she was, just basked in the comfort of the moment. When she did open her eyes at last, her field of vision was filled with a swathe of skin-- Lewis’ specifically.

Though he’d fallen asleep alongside them on the main beach plenty of times before, Lewis had always kept a respectful distance between himself and the two of them. Now, in the much smaller space of the cave, the three of them had gravitated together as they slept. Vivi was tucked against the expanse of Lewis’ chest, and she could feel Arthur’s arm draped over her waist, as well as the tickle of his breath against the back of her neck. Lewis’ tail was curled up around her and Arthur both, as though holding them in just his arms wasn’t enough.

Vivi was who knew how far from home, from any kind of civilization at all, and at the moment she had no idea how or even if she’d get back. Somehow, she didn’t find the thought distressing-- in fact, she’d never felt as safe or as much like she belonged somewhere as she did right now, wrapped up in Lewis and Arthur’s warm embraces.

They’d figured things out for themselves as they went pretty well so far, and Vivi didn’t doubt that they could keep right on doing so. She craned her neck up to brush a kiss under the edge of Lewis’ jaw, which was as far up as she could reach, and threaded her fingers through Arthur’s. Sighing contentedly, she settled back down into sleep.

#msaholidayspirits2019 #Mystery Skulls #MSA #Mystery Skulls Animated #lewvithur #Lewis Pepper #Vivi Yukino #Arthur Kingsmen #the ot3 #lacey writes

[ckret2]

How long does it take for you to write a story (not oneshots but like multi-chaptered shit or just a very lengthy one chapter) and how much do you research and map it out? Is researching fun, tedious or exhausting for you?

It depends on how long the story is! “Man Of Dreams” on FFnet, about 108k, I wrote in uhhh, I’ve been saying “about a month” for years but I don’t remember exactly how long I spent where writing it was my primary project, but I DID write it over one summer break and spent about another month proofing it. “The Cop & the Cryptid,” about 130k, I wrote in about a month and a half and proofed over a few weeks. (That’s not counting the time those fics were with betas.) Cold Day In Hell, at 24k, took me... god, idk when I started it. Maybe a couple weeks, week and a half? I’m pretty sure I didn’t have time to start it until NaNoWriMo ended on Nov 30, and I posted it Dec 13, so.

If you want to see exactly how much I map out a long fic, you can directly compare “The Cop & the Cryptid” to its outline. In a lot of places you can go paragraph-by-paragraph in the fic and find a corresponding line/sentence in the outline. TC&TC is 130k, and its outline alone is 40k.

I was able to write the outline super fast because it’s incredibly goofy. When I write an outline, I just ramble it out at a couple friends in a chat room, and i can write like 10k a day if all I’m doing is rambling. And then, once I have that outline, I can also write the fic super fast, because I’ve already written the fic, I just need to make it sound like a fic instead of like i’m gossiping about someone’s weird workplace drama that i overhead. So even though in total I’ve written 170k between the outline and the fic, it goes a lot faster than if I’d just tried to sit down and write the 130k fic all by itself, because the first time i’m only worrying about plot but don’t have to worry about word choice and the second time i’m only worrying about word choice but don’t have to worry about plot. When I was writing TC&TC, I literally had the screen split between the outline and the actual fic, and just glanced back and forth going line by line on the outline and expanding it into proper narration & dialogue and tweaking as needed as I went.

And jeez, how much do I research. That is a difficult question because like. I’m constantly researching. If I get a tiny seed of an idea for a detail in a story, and I don’t know whatever I need to know in order to write that, my next instinct IMMEDIATELY is to look up whatever it is I need to look up in order to know enough to write that thing.

Example: when I was writing “You Made That?” and decided this giant frigging pteranodon was going to blow glass using a volcano as the oven, I had to go look up how exactly blowing glass works, because like, I know Apply Heat To Sand, but I wanted to be realistic, I wanted to know what kind of sand Rodan would have to get and what other ingredients. And because of that research I discovered that the lava in volcanoes isn’t actually hot enough to melt glass. And then I discovered that the lava in volcanoes isn’t hot enough to melt lava. The mantle where rocks melt into magma isn’t hot enough to melt rocks. And then I spent the next five hours feverishly trying to find out first how rocks melt into magma if they’re not hot enough to melt, and then how the hell humans got fires hot enough to melt glass back when all they had was wood fires to work with. And I read a lot of very academic papers about volcanoes and glassmaking with a lot of words that I had to go look up, because I have not studied either of these fields, except to the extent that I’ve learned about volcanoes in order to write about Rodan.

(The super simplified answer, for those of you who are now going to be haunted by the thought that the mantle isn’t hot enough to melt the rocks that it clearly is melting: the melting point of a rock gets lower when a) it’s mixed with water, or b) the amount of pressure on it is suddenly reduced. As rocks in the mantle are pushed upward toward the crust, water from the surface gets sucked underwater that mixes with the rocks, and the pressure on the rocks is decreased because it’s now closer to the surface/has less weight pushing down on it; and both of these things combined lower the melting point of the rocks enough that they can melt into magma. Then, once it’s on the surface, it’s no longer mixed with water and the pressure is stabilized rather than decreasing, so the melting point of the rock increases again and it solidifies. And you can melt glass with a wood fire by, first, putting it in a little oven so that none of the heat escapes, and second, blowing air over it at the EXACT right speed so that it maximizes the amount of oxygen reaching the wood fire and makes it burn hotter but doesn’t go so fast that it blows some of the heat away. Trying to maximize the heat of a wood fire in an oven like that is all about trying to hit the exact balance between “add more oxygen” and “don’t blow away heat” where you reach the point where the fire is as hot as you can mathematically make it.)

And like once I knew that, I just made sure that Rodan had a makeshift oven in order to contain heat and the ability to blow air over the fire to make it hotter and bam story’s done.

And like... nobody was making me do that. I needed a tiny factoid for the story, and I was possessed by an all-consuming hunger to obtain that factoid and nothing could drag me from my course until I’d obtained it. I didn’t need to know how the mantle melts rocks, but like... I needed to know how the mantle melts rocks.

Sometimes when I do research it’s like that, I know I need a specific factoid and I go out and find it; sometimes it’s more general, like, “oh, one of the characters I’m dealing with worked in the radio industry in the 1930s, what was that like?” and when I’ve got spare time or am bored I go read up on the history of radio, even though I don’t need it right now, but because I don’t know what I’m gonna need until I need it. What if it turns out that people who worked in the radio industry in the 1930s, like, carried around forks for good luck? Then I can say this character carries a fork everywhere and that’s a weird character detail I never would’ve gotten if I hadn’t done the research even if I didn’t know I needed it. (Note: to my knowledge, there is no association between lucky forks and the radio industry. I made up this example to illustrate the kind of thing you can’t possibly know you don’t know unless you’ve already done the research without looking for a fact like that.)

And sometimes research flows into each other. Like for one thing I needed to know what a traditional radio sign-off format sounded like, back when radio stations turned off at night and played the national anthem before they went dark; and because I was looking that up, I found a YouTube video talking about how a radio station in 1939 recorded an entire day of broadcasts, so now I know I can go look that up and listen to an entire day on one radio station in the 30s and learn a lot more about how radio broadcasts sounded within a few years of the timeframe I’m working with for the above character. I wasn’t looking for that when I was looking up radio sign offs, but because I have that it’s gonna be hella useful.

So, like, tl;dr: I research a lot. I research anything that crosses my mind as something I want to put in a story that I don’t already know enough about to write about. I research for tiny details and I pre-research big broad concepts that might be relevant to my stories later. My research leads to more research, and prior research tells me about things I can look into on future research. The research never ever ends. There is a whole amazing world out there with billions of people alive and that’s only counting the people alive right now, not all the people that were alive before, and ALL of those people were Doing Stuff and Creating Things and Making Discoveries and ALL of it connects together and you’ve gotta understand all of it, the whole universe and everything in it, all of the science and every single human achievement, before you can write a story.

But failing that you’ve gotta at least understand whatever’s surrounding your characters.

If I try to write without research like that, it kind of feels like trying to solve a jigsaw puzzle with only 20% of the pieces. I am annoyed and dissatisfied that I don’t know those things.

The argument against that much research is typically “oh if you’re writing sci fi/fantasy you can just make that stuff up” but let me tell you, the creativity of one single human writer will never match the creativity of tens of thousands of hardworking humans trying to make a discovery or accomplish a task. One single human writer all alone will never be able to match the fascinating weird details of the real world and all the things we’ve put into it or discovered in it. If you try to make all that stuff up—like, if you’re writing high fantasy and you just make up how forging a sword works—then you have shackled yourself to the limits of your own imagination. If you do the research, dig into how actual swords are made in the real world, then you have supplemented your own creativity with the creativity of however many humans over the millennia have contributed to that craft. There’s so much interesting stuff out there. And I am bound and determined to find it.

#anonymous #ask #writing #about my writing

[purplesurveys]

874

What's something you couldn't live without, other than the obvious? It’d be very hard to have to get by without my glasses. I’d technically survive, but I’ll have to get used to bumping into things a lot and never recognizing anyone unless they’re right beside/in front of me. What's something that will always cheer you up? Dogs. Real life dogs, photos of dogs, videos of dogs, stories about dogs, etc. Who's had the biggest positive impact on your life? My orgmates. They made me happy when I needed it the most, called me out when I needed the help, and idk I’m just happy whenever I get to see them. I can’t recall a time where I felt like it was a chore to spend some time with them. Do you wear flip-flops during the winter? Sigh...moving on... What was the last thing you said out loud? I asked Nina to help me bring Cooper and his stuff up to my parents’ room; specifically, I asked her to bring his food and water bowls.

What's something that irritates you to no end? Backhand compliments. An uncle once congratulated me for getting into my dream school but ended his sentence with “are you sure you don’t wanna go to [2nd top university in the country, (which I also passed the day before)]? You’ll fit better there.” This was like two days after I found out I got into UP, so I was still on cloud nine. I don’t know how my face contorted after that but I wasn’t pleased.

Honestly, do looks matter to you? Yes, but not as much as personality and intelligence. When was the last time you had a girls/guys night out? Not sure. I just have nights out in general; I never plan out gender-exclusive hangouts with my friends. Do you still watch kiddie movies/tv shows? Sometimes, when I get in the mood to. It’s not something I feel the need to do regularly. What's your worst habit? Never learning my lesson and being careless just because everything is going well. Best way I can illustrate this is when a couple of a months ago I started getting regular headaches because I’d sleep at 3, 4 AM – I addressed it by giving myself an earlier bedtime. When the headaches went away and I started feeling better, I went right back to sleeping late lol. Procrastinating is a good example too; I’ve submitted work early occasionally and it’s satisfying as fuck, but I never learn for the most part and stick to doing stuff at the last minute. Do your parents call you by any embarrassing nicknames? No. Byn is a nickname, but I don’t find it embarrassing. Do you have road rage? Yeah but there have to be certain conditions for me to get to that point, like once I’ve seen enough stupidity on the road and I can’t take it anymore; when I’m tense about something; or when traffic has been standstill for too long. Is there a certain word that you always forget how to spell? Not really. I know my spelling pretty well. Are there any books in your room? Which ones? Yesssss but it’s mostly because I owned a lot of books as a kid and I’ve thrown none of them out. My book collection is sorely not updated because I stopped reading as I got older. Do you take too many surveys? I wouldn’t say I take too many, especially considering the fact that I used to take like 7-10 surveys everyday back in high school. I do take them regularly. Write some lyrics from the song you're currently listening to: "You know I’m always coming back to this place, you know I’m always gonna look for your face.”

When it comes to dating, what's your preferred age range? 0-1 year. When was the last time someone gave you a weird look? Continued the next morning, lol. I was dancing in my seat over dinner last night because the fried chicken we had was super good, so my mom looked at me strangely. Do you like to cuddle? Only with a significant other, and an animal if they’re willing to cuddle. Do you like the band Cartel? I don’t think I’ve heard of that band yet. Do you play any instruments? No, but I’m always wishing I could. Do you ever blare the music in the car and dance like an idiot? I used to do that when I drove to and from school. It’s the only time in the day where I’m not working and I’m alone, so I allow myself to let loose. Though I gotta say, most of it is recorded because I always have a dashcam on HAHAHAHA so I definitely have some footage I don’t want getting aired in like my funeral or something. Do you like playing in the rain? When I was a kid.

What's something you miss? Going to the mall is a big one. Anything unpleasant coming up soon? The worst thing I can think of is the first anniversary of Nacho’s passing. It’s not till September, but when I think about how March literally feels like yesterday September doesn’t seem too far away anymore. If you had a pet moose, what would you name him? Probably the name of another animal, like Cow. I’ve seen other people name their dogs the names of different animals and it has always sounded so hilarious to me. Do you often hold back what you really want to say? If it’s gonna make me look unnecessarily blunt and hurtful then yes. Are you currently wearing any jewlery? Nope. What was the last gift you gave to someone? Cooper, for Father’s Day. It was my mom’s idea but I helped chip in with the graduation money I got from one of my aunts. Do you decorate for Christmas? (If you celebrate it, that is.) We do. I’ll probably put a tree and some stockings up once I live alone, idk, just so I don’t feel too lonely. Are you hungry? A bit, but it’s manageable. On that note, I miss continental breakfasts. I’ve been having Filipino-style breakfast for months and I really would just like a goddamn croissant or bread rolls with butter for once, lol. When was the last time you went bowling? Sometime in September and October last year. Can you whistle? Yes. Is there a certain genre of music that you just can't stand? Country. Are you allergic to anything? Nope. How many pillows do you sleep with? Two. I lay my head on one and hug another. If I don’t have a ~hug pillow~ it takes much longer for me to fall asleep. You've just won a free vacation! Where do you want to go? Covid restrictions hypothetically put aside, I’d love to go on the New York/Texas trip I initially planned as my grad gift. Do you have a good relationship with your parents? I have a good relationship with my dad. But it’s not like I feel comfortable enough to tell either of my parents any of my secrets. What's your favorite thing about yourself? Gabie likes to tell me “you’re too selfless, you don’t have to help everyone” in sort of like an annoyed tone because that’s exactly what I do lol - help anyone, even if I have to go out of my way or even if it’ll inconvenience me to do it. But I love it about me. I like when I get to make people go home with one less issue on their shoulders. Do you have any health problems? Scoliosis. Have you ever had a near-death experience? Almost smashed into a car that suddenly braked while I was going 50, 60 kph. Are you extremely picky when it comes to guys/girls? That’s what demis essentially are, lol. Do you ever listen to classical music? It’s my last resort when I’m studying and no other music is helping me get focused. What was the last concert you attended? Paramore. What's a movie you'd like to see right now? (Old or new) Ammonite, it’s an upcoming film with Kate Winslet and Saoirse Ronan. Do you take life too seriously? Most of the time. I just find it necessary that way. When was the last time you were truly scared? This weekend when my mom watched a jumpscare with the sound on, so I heard the loud demon scream that came up in the end. What's the funniest trick you've ever pulled on anyone? I don’t like pulling tricks because I don’t like them pulled on me. The most I’ve done is take Gab’s phone and pretend with her that it’s lost. Do you like orange juice? I’ll drink it if it’s served for free, but I wouldn’t buy one for myself. Do you own any skinny jeans? Yes, nearly all my jeans are skinny. Do you have a diary/journal that you frequently write in? You’re looking at it. When was the last time you had a good workout? November, back when I still had that intense PE class that made me work out for an hour every Wednesday and Friday. Do you like your eye color? I find it too common but I’m not actively complaining about it. I don’t feel the need to change it. When was the last time you played with Play-Doh? Two or three years ago at a cousins’ place. One of them was still a baby then, so the toys they had around were clay and kinetic sand and stuff. What's something that you think people waste too much time on? Fighting on Facebook comments lol Do you think they should outlaw talking on your cell phone while driving? They already have, at least here. Are you embarrassed to burp or fart in front of your friends? For the most part. I’ll burp only in front of Angela and Gab. Do you like peanut butter cookies? Yesssssss, but I don’t get to have it a lot. :(

#survey #surveys

[houseofvans]

SKETCHY BEHAVIORS | INTERVIEW W/ CRYSTAL HABITATS

Combining stain glass, metal smithing and mineralogy, founder of Crystal Habitats, Rachel Pitler transformed her drawing and painting skills into a magical world of 3D stained glass and molten metal sculptures – from jewel adorned cardholders, wands, daggers (athames), to ring holders, just to mention a few. Not only one thing, Rachel is also a co-founder of Bitchcraft, an unique holiday event featuring over 60 vendors, selling everything dark & magical. We’re excited to talk to Rachel and find out more about how she started her creations, what inspires them, and what she has planned for 2019! 

Take the leap below!

Photographs courtesy of the artist. 

Introduce yourself. My name is Rachel Pitler Hsiung. I am a mixed-media artist (stained glass, molten metal, oil painting, and clay). Originally I am from Detroit; however, I have been living in Los Angeles now for many years. My professional background is in the rock & mineral industry. Working in this field allows me to travel to all the big gem shows where I am able to work with interesting specimens on a daily basis... as well as being surrounded by these beauties is a huge creative plus for me and where I draw much of my inspiration.

Tell us a little about your background in art? I never had any formal training in drawing & painting. My mom is a fantasy illustrator, so growing up I often sat with my mom and watched her paint/draw, and I took to it myself pretty quickly. I got a job in my 20s teaching art to kids & teens on the basics of drawing, watercolor & oil painting. I taught art for 8 years. It was a really important time in my life for me to grow as an artist. Through teaching others I discovered a lot about myself, I learned to enjoy my process of making art, to never stop learning, and to push myself out of my comfort zone into new mediums.

How did you go from working with traditional material like oil paints and pastels to a medium like stain glass and solder?  When did you start creating pieces out of glass, metal, and so forth? A little over 5 years ago one of my best friends Erin Coovert (Moontan Stain Glass) started taking a glass class. She encouraged me to try out her class, I did and have been forever changed by this incredible medium. I am so grateful to her for sharing this path with me as it opened up so much more for me in terms of my creative abilities. It's really hard when you have a lot of creative ideas, but little tools to make them into reality. I was such a two dimensional art person trying to be a 3D artist and for whatever reason stained glass opened that part of my brain up to problem solve and tackle art projects that I would have otherwise given up on.

Tell us a little about Crystal Habitats and the unique pieces that you create for it? In mineralogy, the word crystal habit is a characteristic of crystal groups & individual crystals. I wanted to make artwork that reflected my own take on crystals and create pieces that are like little worlds within themselves, little habitats that harness magick and cast their energy onto whoever uses them. Art for me has always been a refuge and a place of healing. 

I love making tools that do just that. I make wands & daggers (athames) that are adorned with crystals & molten metal. I make three sided pyramids (often with crystals adhered to them), jewelry, ring holders, and a lot of other items. In my drawings & paintings, I have a fantasy world I came up with called The Ice Crags. Many of my paintings & drawings take place in this realm. My characters are often High Priestess (and wizards). Recently I have started to making these characters in stained glass.

Of the many things you create–from wands to daggers–which is your favorite to make and why? What is the process like for one of these, from start to finish? Right now I am really enjoying the process of making my snake athames (a type of dagger). Snakes represent healing & transformation, when paired with a stone setting and blade, these pieces really become a source of internal empowerment.

My friend John (@jabforge) makes my blades, I make the hilt with molten metal...I cut out a copper/metal sheet with my metal cutter to create a handle. I hand solder the entire base...there are different ways to solder...I have adapted a painting style of soldering, you can create patterns within the metal to give it a unique look. When I add the crystals I make bezels out of metal, and solder it to the hilt, and I hand make the the snakes out of epoxy clay. I give my pieces a dark patina and I often use my dremel to smooth out parts and I sand it down to give it an interesting aged look. I enjoy making these in particular as it is a collaboration which I always love and each piece has such a unique character to them. When working with molten metal, I never know what pattern I am going to make till I start soldering, it's always fun to see how they turn out.  

In your studio, what type of art materials and tools would we find on your desk? Too many tools and never enough tools! Lead free solder, soldering iron, flux, glass cutting materials, dremel, jewelry wax, metal cutter, thin wires, metal sheets, copper sheets, all sorts of dental tools (I use them for carving) epoxy clay, lots of glues, torch, hammers, paint, glass, wood, my lapidary wheel, patina, cabochons and crystals parts, there's a lot of stuff! Im super obsessed with working with new materials. Since I work in a handful of mediums, it becomes a real science project in my studio mashing them together to see what works and what doesn’t.

What are some of the cool collaborations you’ve done? How do collaborators incorporate your works into what they’re doing?  A recent collaboration I did was with my good friend Alex from Acid Queen Jewelry. She makes incredible jewelry and we often talk shop on a weekly basis. She made a gorgeous ring and I made a matching glass ring holder (glass base with a quartz point as the holder for the ring). She and I will have more collabs in 2019! Very excited to work with her again! And as mentioned earlier John from Jab Forge. He is a blacksmith, his blade work is my favorite...his blades look like moon craters, they have a real old world look to them and I enjoy matching my style of metal work with his work.  

What medium haven’t you tried that you’d definitely like to get your hands on? Metalsmithing. Well this is a medium I have dabbled in but really haven’t gone deep and it’s my goal for 2019 to get into it more. Specifically so that I can incorporate a different type of metal work into my stained glass & my solder work. Medium cross over is my favorite thing to mess around with, good for the brain ;)

Not only are you behind Crystal Habitats and its creations, but you had an active role in creating an event/community called Bitchcraft. Can you tell us more about Bitchcraft, how it started and the idea behind it? When was the last one and when’s the next one? Yes! 10 years ago I co-founded it with 4 of my friends. We all made things and wanted an all female handmade collective where we could barter/sell goods.  I believe we had like 10 vendors at the first one in our friend’s backyard...now there are over 60 vendors, it's a pretty large holiday event. It's a collective that celebrates everything dark & magickal, a curated group of like-minded makers filled with everything from metal goods, apothecary, altar items, capes, wands, jewelry, and really a lot of items related to other worldly and the occult. We just had our annual holiday show in December! There's always a chance for a mid year show but for now not till Dec 2019 :)

Who are some of your favorite vendors or artists from that Bitchcraft community? What’s your favorite thing about that community? Oh that is really hard for me to say!! Most of these people have been my friends for a long time and have been a creative support system and I cherish all of them and appreciate & admire all of their works. My favorite thing about the Bcraft community is the friendships! There is so much love and support with this crew...outside of this event a lot of the vendors work with each other on projects, do shows together, help promote and support one another. Having a strong group of makers is super important to me and has helped me grow so much as an artist, and I am so thankful for all of them!

Who are some other artists you’re inspired by? What kind of things inspire you? I have the longest list of artist who have inspired me!! But I have to say my very top inspirational artist would be my mom, Sheri-Pitler McClure. Her work is everything to me...she has a way of drawing people that is so out of this time, totally belongs in Middle Earth. Growing up my mom surrounded our household with fantasy - wizard & unicorn statues spread throughout our my childhood home...she is a big fan of science fiction, so as a kid I was exposed to all movies and books on the subject. She is also a rock collector (she did opal lapidary work back in the day) so I guess all of these things had a big impact on me. When I was really young she painted a series of these goddesses that represented the different seasonal full moons. These women were painted as strong ethereal beings, who’s magick reached out from the canvas and wided my eyes to endless worlds one could create. That was my first memory of how art can really change your perspective and it has stuck with me ever since.  

Other things that inspire me spans from crystal formations, old medieval paintings, everything Tolkien, old lore & fantasy books/movies. I am also really into the color pallet of the Dark Crystal, I often watch and think about that movie when I am making.

What’s been the most challenging part of maintaining Crystal Habitats? What’s been the most rewarding? What do you do to keep the balance? I would say compartmenting my time has been a big challenge….often people tell me to do my art full time but working in the mineral business is my dream job and it is also is a place where I come up with my concepts...its like one can’t exist without the other, so figuring out the balance of them has been something that I am always working on. The most rewarding part is when I have a really fresh new idea and I am able to execute it….there are some designs that I will do over and over, but when a new design pops into my head it becomes extremely exciting to work on.

Recently I have been bringing balance into my work space by not taking on too many custom orders or too many shows...allowing myself to have breaks...through these breaks I have been able to come back fresh and renewed, which is very important to my process.

What’s your advice to folks who see what you do and want to pursue it as a career? Don’t compare yourself to others. Keep learning, discover new mediums, always be a student of something it really opens your mind to concepts that otherwise could be dormant.

What’s your best advice for creative folks on social media platforms, like Instagram? Have fun! I know that sounds lame, be seriously don’t get caught up in it too much. The more stress you surround yourself with social media & the more it takes away from your art. I love using social media, I love using it to showcase my art and be connected to other artists/communities, but don’t allow it to become overwhelming. I think being true to your art is the most important part:)

What are your FAVORITE Vans?  Slip-Ons!

Finally can you share with us what exciting things you may have lined up for 2019? I’ll be working on a new line of handmade jewelry boxes. A lot more snake themed items for sure!! I have been working on some Shield Maiden jewelry through metalsmithing/lost wax mediums, it is something I have been really taking my time with and I am hoping to have some completed soon. I will also being vending at the Culver City Gem & Mineral Show in June 2019.

FOLLOW RACHEL | INSTAGRAM | WEBSITE 

#Art #Vans #Vans Art #Vans Girls #Crystal Habitats #Rachel Pitler #Metal smithing #stain glass #crystal #hand craft #DIY

[vinceaddams]

Tagged by @deeisace​, and I haven’t answered one of these in ages so I might as well!

Nickname(s): Vince, and occasionally Wince (because at my last workplace half the people there were Romanian and pronounced their V’s like W’s)

Zodiac: I have no idea, and don’t care enough to google it. That stuff bores me to death.

Last Move I Saw: It was a few weeks ago so I can’t be sure, but I think the last movie I watched was Impromptu. I liked it. Here’s a link to the review that made me want to watch it, and here’s a link to where I watched it if anyone wants to! (It’s set in the 1830′s and is about George Sand and Chopin and Liszt.)

Last Thing I Googled: Lady Amherst’s Pheasant (because I just reblogged a couple of photos of one, and I wanted to see more Good Fashionable Bird photos.)

Favourite Musician/Band: The Damned

Song Stuck In My Head: None at the moment. I know I had one stuck in my head a few days ago, but it seems I did a good job of forgetting it.

Other Blogs:

@vincents-crows​  (My sewing & drawings)

@shittydinosaurdrawings​ (Also my drawings, but much worse and only dinosaurs!)

Do I Get Asks: Occasionally.

Following: 185

Followers: 1589.  I often wonder how many of them are bots.

Lucky Number: Nope.

What I’m Wearing: White linen shirt with ruffles, black cotton fall front pants, black cotton socks.

Dream Job: Oh heck, uhhh maybe a professional embroiderer or something like that? Museum curator specializing in textiles? One of those people who work for The School Of Historical Dress? I just want to work with pretty historical things and do a lot of hand sewing! I think I’d also be okay with illustrating or painting or something. Something where I’m making pretty stuff.

Dream Trip: To a lot of museums to examine and study 18th century clothes. Going to Scotland would be really nice, though also quite sad because I never got to visit my aunt there while she was alive.

Play Any Instruments: Nope, I was always quite terrible in music class. But one time I posed with a violin for a photography student and apparently I held the bow pretty convincingly?

Languages: English, some French words but not enough to actually speak it.

Favourite Songs: That changes pretty often, and I somehow can’t think of any at the moment.

Describe Yourself As Aesthetic Things: Uh, embroidery and waistcoats and buttons I guess? And foggy cemeteries, all the great stuff trees do in autumn, and elaborate historical interiors. Those idealized pretty boys in 18th century paintings.

#about me #deeisace #thanks for tagging me!