#but it just wasn't working I couldn't conceptualize it

[suna1suna1]

Day 12, "Companion"

He's so much fun to draw!!!!

Inspired by this color palette posted by @fivepointpalettes

My Companion Looked In Horror At The Scene Unfolding Before Our Very Eyes Before Finally Saying Out Loud What We’ve All Been Thinking

#mermay #mermay 2023 #baymax #big hero 6 #teehee he looks like a manatee #also this prompt gave me issues bc I originally thought of Sherlock Holmes (hence my rant the other day) #but it just wasn't working I couldn't conceptualize it #I like Sherlock Holmes but I don't think I love it enough to draw anything from it atm

[songmingisthighs]

Good Neighbour

group : ateez

pairing : nerd!seonghwa × neighbour!reader

genre : smut, neighbours au

word count : 3.8 k

warning : smut, mdni, explicit sex (piv), mentions of watersports (no actual action), seonghwa mentioning he watches porn, unprotected sex, mentions of Seonghwa pleasuring himself to the thought of (y/n), (y/n)'s kind of a brat ??

a/n : happy seonghwa day !!! :D though i'm in singapore, i still want to post this and i did it !!! >:)

buy me coffee ?

Frantic knocks on Seonghwa's door made him almost smash his lego Death Star by accident. Thankfully, he only smacked his hand on the side of his table. Though painful, he'd have that over ruining the thing he had been working on for the whole day and was three-fourths way done.

The knocks on the door became relentless and bordering on incessant and honestly, it annoyed him quite a lot. He was hoping to have a quiet night in after hearing (and dealing) with the excitement around the apartment earlier. Plus, he promised his friend, San that the next time they hang out he would show him his finished lego Death Star so he could help conceptualize how to put them on display. So obviously, Seonghwa wanted to spend the day for himself, for his hobbies. It wasn't like Seonghwa would usually spend his time out, it was just that his time alone was usually spent on his work as a remote working cyber security expert. They truly benefit from Seonghwa's anxiety and tedious working tendencies but Seonghwa couldn't really complain.

When Seonghwa (finally) opened the door, he was so ready to scold whoever was on the other side, pissed that they annoyed him for no reason. But when he was met with the face of his crush, teary-eyed with her arms hugging her body tightly with a slight tremble, his anger melted away and his shoulders dropped. "(y/n)?" he called out, crouching down slightly to your height to be eye-level with you, "Are you okay? What's wrong? Have you been crying?" he asked, a worried look clear on his face. You had been the object of his affection for quite some times now and when he heard that your house had been burgled while you were at work, Seonghwa felt the most guilty because it was during the time he decided to go out and buy a new lego set for his collection. Had he waited to go a little longer, he would've been able to stop the burglary. Of course by calling someone, what can a nerd like him do? Offer to get pantsed as an exchange? That wouldn't be enough and he had a feeling that he would just make the situation worse. Considering that he only had a handful of experience with having a full conversation with you and every single time, he was so awkward. One time, he managed to spill his own coffee on himself, jumped and bumped his head to the wall behind him. You were nice enough to not make fun of him and even staying with him and iced his head. From then on he was down bad and he swore that he will try to be better for you. That was a year ago so please make your own conclusion.

You were sniffling and your eyes were shifting around warily, arms hugging your own body as a gesture of self preservation and comfort after experiencing a major trauma. "Can I stay here with you for a bit? I- I don't feel safe at home and none of my other friends are available," you sniffled sadly. Seonghwa couldn't help but skip a heartbeat at your words, focusing on the fact that you had indirectly called him your friend. While he would like to be more, he was more than happy that you thought so highly of him and he can only hope that when he finally make his move (whenever that is), his happiness would be tenfold. Whilst trying to suppress the grin that was threatening to split his face in half, Seonghwa frantically nodded and stepped aside, "Of course, you can stay here as long as you want! With me, your friend!" it took everything in him to not laugh or giggle considering that the situation was still sensitive. Thankfully, you didn't seem to realize his attempts of not being a weirdo and you even stepped close to him to gave him a tight hug. "Thank you for being such a good friend, Seonghwa, I'm really glad to have you," your voice was mumbled due to your pressing your face on his shoulders. Seonghwa's body froze especially when you exhaled deeply into his clothes, turning a spot very warm. For some reason, feeling your breath on him was exhilarating and had you not let go of him, you would've definitely felt his boner on your hip.

Even when you were already inside his place, you were still stiff and awkward. The situation was just so stressful to you that even with the company you knew you needed, you were still not able to feel comfortable yet. Seeing this of course upset Seonghwa as he adored your happy and cheerful side. "H-hey, do you want something to drink? My friend, Yunho, got me this pink wine thing and I've been waiting for the right reason to-" "Yes please," you cut him off, both surprising and delighting him with your enthusiasm over alcohol.

· · ─────── ·𖥸· ─────── · ·

Not even half an hour later, you and Seonghwa found yourselves giggling over random things on his couch. You had let loose a little (a lot) with the help of the alcohol and Seonghwa's dumb attempt at imitating his friend Wooyoung's witch laugh. You've been laughing for a solid 5 straight minutes and Seonghwa was beyond proud that he was able to make you that happy and distracted. Or distractedly happy.

"Seonghwa, stop it or I'll pee myself!" you whined whilst still laughing happily, head thrown back and hand on your stomach when you felt like it was starting to cramp. Grinning widely, Seonghwa sat himself back down on the couch, this time unknowingly closer to you with a slight huff and reddened cheeks, courtesy of the alcohol. "If you pee yourself, I know that means you were genuinely laughing so hard and I'll take pride in that," he said, wiggling his eyebrows teasingly. Without Seonghwa realizing, the alcohol had allowed him to be more confident in having you in his apartment whilst simultaneously giving him a bit more courage to be able to communicate with women easier. Usually, he'd stumble over his own words and/or mix them up to create a confusing, awkward word. In return to his statement, you raised an eyebrow at him as a knowing smirk appeared on your face, "You like girls peeing because of you? Kinky," and Seonghwa almost choked on his own spit. Seeing this, you decided to egg him more, "I'm not kink shaming you, Hwa, I'm just surprised you're into that." Seonghwa began sputtering random words, trying to reject the notion but no actual, comprehensible words came out of his mouth and it made him panic because he felt like as if he was trying to hide something when it wasn't the case whatsoever.

The panicked look on Seonghwa's face; the blush, the twitchy eyes, and the trembling bottom lip looked cute to you. You have always thought that he was attractive, hot even, he was just a nerd who gets overly excited over things that he likes and most of the things he like revolves around Star Wars, Marvel, and pink stuffs. Plus, his career path on top of the way he dressed didn't help his case of being a total nerd. You remembered thinking he was so hot when you saw him coming back from playing tennis with his friend Hongjoong and to say your panties suddenly got damp would be the understatement of the year. You've been waiting to be able to see that Seonghwa again and so far you had no luck. Yet.

"I haven't had sex in a year!" He suddenly blurted out without realizing what he had said.

You both sat there frozen; Seonghwa in dreadful realization of the information that he had just unknowingly willingly gave out to you. He remembered Wooyoung and Mingi trolling him about the fact because according to them, it was ridiculous that Seonghwa didn't care much about where or how his sexual frustration was channeled, completely oblivious (or maybe forgetting) that Seonghwa has been pining over you for the longest time. That, and Seonghwa is a very busy smart man with a hobby.

It wasn't like he thought that you would ridicule him, it was just embarrassing to have your crush know you haven't had sex in so long What if he thought he's unexperienced or just THAT unwanted?

"B-but it's not like I have a low sex drive or anything. I get turned on! I really do, I watch porn like a normal person!"

God, if only a meteor could strike him then and there.

Seonghwa was so close to faking an injury or just climbing out the window to escape the awkwardness he had accidentally created. Anything to not be in that position or be that person anymore.

"What kind of porn do you usually watch?"

He was not expecting that question from you.

For a second, Seonghwa thought you were joking. Maybe even making fun of him. Or egging him to spill his kinks or sexual interests just so you could humiliate him later. But the more he looked at you, the more he saw that you were being genuinely curious, there was no malice behind your eyes or gesture. "I... It... It differs from time to time," he was not quite sure why he even responded to you in the first place. Perhaps the alcohol was more potent than he expected it to be. "Oh? So you like dominating and being dominated?" Seonghwa nearly jumped from his seat when your knee touched his, surprised that you were suddenly so close to him. But he didn't move back, he even scooted in, leaning into your warmth and touch that he craved more of after having a taste. "No... Well," though it felt as if there was as lump in his throat, Seonghwa simply coughed it out a couple of times before continuing talking, "I don't quite know about that, but I know I like taking care of my partner."

His eyes widened when you suddenly plopped onto his lap, legs, encasing his thighs as to not let him move around easily. "Tell me more," you said as you wrapped your arms around his shoulders, resting your weight on him completely. Seonghwa's head began to swirl, your scent hitting his nostrils and the realization of how close you both were with each other were intoxicating to him, exhilarating even. His hands automatically moved to be placed on your hips, as if wanting to keep you in the spot as a possessive gesture. "Well, I... I'm very nervous having you here with me right now," he blurted out. You couldn't help but giggle at his confession as you didn't expect him to say something like that to you, it wasn't even the context of the conversation. "Why so? It's not like I'm gonna bite you," then you suddenly leaned in, lips next to his ear and your breath hitting the skin making it warm, "Unless you're into that."

In a blink of an eye, Seonghwa had lunged at you, pining you onto the couch as he whined pathetically. "Please don't tease me like this, I don't want to take advantage of you considering you had just been through something absolutely traumatic and not to mention we were drinking," as he pleaded, his palms balled into fists on either sides of your head as if to ground himself, reminding himself that while he couldn't control his words, he should at least be able to control his urges. Seeing him hold back made you pout, obvious that it was not the reaction that you were hoping for. "Oh come on, Seonghwa! I've been through something absolutely traumatic today so I need you right now, I need your help to make me forget how crappy today has been," your words were so clever and you even bat your eyelashes at him to soften him up which annoyingly enough worked. But still, even if you did have a point, Seonghwa was still hesitant because like he said, he really do enjoy (so far, only the idea of) taking care of his partners and ensuring their consent was one of the ways he liked to do it. Besides, to him, asking for permission to commit a very intimate act was hot, it was as if the decision of having sex could be dependent on one of either parties.

Since this was you, someone who he had been pining for for so long, he decided to make sure of some things as to not let the chance pass by just like that. "How drunk are you exactly?" Seonghwa asked, genuinely hoping that you would still be able to do what he hoped you both would do if the chance comes. "Not drunk at all, just a slight buzz, you?" you asked back, heart beating slightly at the thought of Seonghwa wanting to have sex with you. "Drunk enough to have the courage to propose this to you but not so drunk that it would nullify my consent," he said firmly.

Without wasting more time, you smashed your lips agains this in a frenzied rush. Though you leapt forward, your body dragged him down with you onto the couch due to the gravity and your arms being securely wrapped around his neck. When you both landed, Seonghwa let out a yelp and had his clumsiness kicked in, he would have definitely smushed you under his weight on the couch but he managed to support his own weigh slightly. You loved the feeling of him on top of you though, you loved feeling his mouth on yours. Even from the kiss you could tell that Seonghwa was slightly hesitant, wanting to do something to you (that you have yet to figure out) but he wasn't able to actually reach out for it. Heck, not even to place his hands on your body. Usually, with your previous partners, they would be honking your boobs like a clown horn by now, but Seonghwa was different in a nice and frustrating way. You detached your lips and pouted up at him, showing your displeasure over his treatment, "God, Seonghwa just do whatever the fuck you want with me!" you whined, yanking his collars open to began sucking red marks on his pretty, fair skin, "I want to be taken care of by you. You'd like that, right? You liked knowing that you can take care of me and my needs with no problem and have me however you want."

A guttural growl left Seonghwa's lips and before you know it, Seonghwa had flipped you over so that your chest was against the cushion underneath you. It felt like your breath was knocked out of your lungs from being surprised by the sudden action and by Seonghwa's strength. At least you got another glimpse of your nerdy neighbour's athletic prowess and this time you got to experience what he was capable of first hand.

"You want me to take care of you? You want me to explore what I can do from my extensive research?" the sudden appearance of Seonghwa's low voice vibrating through the air caused electricity to shot down your spine, making it feel tingly. "Yes, please, I want to know what you're capable of, Seonghwa, please," you whined breathily, almost sounding pathetic.

Your permission was all Seonghwa needed to grab you by the waistband of your pants and pulled them down along with your underwear. It felt ridiculous that Seonghwa felt a sudden overwhelming sense of arousal just from seeing your bare ass on display for him, It wan't like he had never seen a naked ass before. For sure, he wasn't a virgin and by God, the amount of times Wooyoung and San pranked him by having their bare asses in front of his face just before he opened his eyes was astronomically embarrassing. Though he can't complain much because this was your ass and the sudden rush of adrenaline and excitement that coursed through this body made him think of the endless possibilities be it from potential kinks to positions and even frequency and volume (amount and sound). This must be how virgins on their wedding nights feel. Seonghwa couldn't help but palmed himself through the layers of clothing he had on as he slowly unbuttoned his pants, nose scrunching at the

"Don't just stare at me, do something!" you demanded, "What? You don't know what to do?" Teasing him might have been a mistake on your part because the next thing you know, Seonghwa slapped your ass harshly. Maybe he was acting out from his reflex, maybe something inside him was switched on because when he heard you yelp, he snapped out of whatever it was that made him hurt your ass and winced, momentarily turning back into the bumbling nerd you knew from before. "Oh my God, I'm sorry, (y/n), a- are you okay? I'm so sorry, I wasn't thinking," he was cringing so hard when he asked because your now red ass was glaring at him, proving that he was being harsh on you. But he was surprised when you turned around to look at him with your bottom lip between your teeth and a shy smile on your face, "N-no, Seonghwa, that was great."

God, it felt like he finally found the answer he has been looking for.

You were doing nothing but showing him a simple expression but for some reason Seonghwa found it so absolutely sexy. Pornographic even. It released the last hold Seonghwa had in himself and before you could reassure him more, Seonghwa had slipped himself into your cunt. The position you were in at the moment under him with your legs stretched back and Seonghwa's knees trapping your body by your thighs, made you feel even tighter to him. Seonghwa stilled with his eyes rolled back into their sockets as your face fell onto the cushion, the sound of you squealing from surprise muffled slightly but it was still loud enough for Seonghwa to hear. His hands found purchase on your ass, his fingers digging onto the soft flesh hard that you thought indents of his fingerprints could be found later if you look for them. "Shi- shit, Seonghwa! You could've warned me!" you whimpered once you managed to find the strength to lift your head again. "Sorry, (y/n), I- I-" he shuddered when he sunk in deeper, your warm cavern accommodating his dick beyond his imagination, "I couldn't- ah! Help myself, God, you're so f- fucking," it was hard for Seonghwa to speak because he tried pulling away once before pushing back in again and it was addicting. You were in no better shape than him. While Seonghwa's fingers dug into your ass, yours dug into his sofa cushion from pleasure. It wasn't like Seonghwa has a monster cock or anything, but for some reason it just felt right. Having him inside you just felt right to you and you were excited to feel and have more of him.

Luckily, Seonghwa started rocking his hips once the initial overwhelming intoxication ebbed away. Really, it felt like Seonghwa wasn't even moving on his own accord, it was as if something was controlling him but he didn't mind, he didn't care, not when whatever was making him move caused you to bury your face in your arms as you moaned and whined, asking, begging him to fuck you more, fuck you harder. That night, Seonghwa truly felt like his sexual urges was driving him as he suddenly grab you by your hair and pulled you up slightly. "Look," it was then that you realized that there was a window in front of you, "You look so beautifully sinful, how could you do this to me?" he grunted. It was true for one part, because it wasn't just you, it was him too, he looked absolutely delectable. You both looked straight out of a victorian pornographic painting with the warm lighting illuminating your figures and the darkness of the night sky outside the window serving as a blank canvas to accommodate the two of you.

"Shit," you gasped when you saw Seonghwa's eyebrows furrowing from the window, clenching your sopping cunt to trap Seonghwa's cock inside you. The more reaction you gave him, the more frantic Seonghwa's movements become. It was like a very intense tango with both of you giving and taking and teasing each other yet still working together in perfect harmony, synchronizing and complimenting each other like genuine art. Only if art is sweaty, messy, and noisy.

It didn't take long for Seonghwa to feel like he was nearly tipping off the edge of his climax. He was so close he could feel it on the tip of his tongue. Maybe he could thank the nights he spent fantasizing about you, those were his 'practice nights' for this day and it actually surprised him that he didn't immediately nutted inside you upon his entry. Those nights he spent fucking his pillow or humping his bed was nothing compared the feeling of your fluttering walls on his cock and your slick lubricating his movements. "I- I'm close," he huffed, hips hitting your ass sharper than before as his hands became harsher in gripping you, possessively trying to hold you as he had his way with you. "Seonghwa, cum in me," You whined, back arching with a moan following your beg. And so Seonghwa released his cum inside you at the mention of you wanting him there. His hips were stuttering slightly but the feeling of him releasing his cum inside you, having the thought of his cum mixing with your own swirling inside his head as the overstimulation creeped in was addicting. He didn't know how long he was going to cum but it felt endless. You, in the receiving end, couldn't help but tense up when Seonghwa's cum filled you to the brim. The movements he was still giving you made both of your mixed cum spill out and wetting your thighs and the sofa beneath you. The tensing muscles in your cunt, ass, and calf somehow heightened your pleasure and it made you even more aware of the presence of Seonghwa's cock still inside you.

When his movements slowed, Seonghwa's mind wound down and it was then that he realized that he had just had sex with you on his couch. Not only that, he was doing things he had never done before in a sexual way, things he had only seen people do in porn and maybe heard from his friends. He felt his chest bloom with pride but the unsureness of how you feel or how you would react prevented him from smiling out of happiness or even saying something to you.

So when you looked back at him, you had a wide grin on your face, making his heart skip a beat.

"So that's what you're into, huh? What else is on the list?"

Oh he's so fucked. Fucked in the best way.

taglist :

@hwasrie-main @yvnnieurl @kodzukein @phenomenalgirl9 @skzatzloveismonsterous @memorymonster @thesolarplanetarysystem @dreamlesswonder86 @maddiebabyxoxo @imababywolf @do-you-actually-care @marievllr-abg @ilsedingsx @wasteitonserendipity @bbymatz @noonaishere @honeyhwaaa @ateezourstars @yoonjunshi @yoongiigolden @camillelafaye @charreddonuts @jcngh0-hq @kpopnightingale @starryunho @atinct @mirror-juliet @hyuckilstan @jayb17 @kpoplover718 @imswitchbabemox @haatohwa @youngestdelacour @x-bluee @erinaimeexx @blackb3ll @mingiholic @angelicyeo @vampcharxter @meowmeowminnie @marvelous-llama @kawennote09 @hongjoong-lovebot @ming-ki @stopeatread @spooo00oky @asjkdk @shinotani

@chloepurpy @cutie-wooyo

network :

@cultofdionysusnet @kflixnet

#cultofdionysusnet #kflixnet #ateez #ateez scenario #ateez scenarios #ateez imagine #ateez imagines #ateez smut #ateez smuts

[eveningrainstorm]

my take on teenage raz and lili!

some design notes under the cut:

They're intended to be about 16 here! I didn't go for anything too drastic in terms of changes -- these are largely just what I'd consider natural evolutions of their canon designs

For Raz, my main focus besides just making him look older was to add a bit more resemblance to the other Aquatos in his design, since his relationship with them wouldn't be strained like it is during canon

Raz is shown with very straight hair in canon, but since most of his family's hair is more wavy or curly I tend to imagine he styles it that way on purpose as part of his Sasha Nein cosplay or whatever. He wouldn't still feel the need to do that at this point, though, so for this design I wanted to make it more curly, similar to Augustus or Frazie, while still similar to his canon style. This turned out to be incredibly difficult and I'm still not entirely happy with where I landed, but it's good enough

I didn't think he would still wear the helmet but I didn't want to discard it entirely, so the goggles were a compromise. I meant to give them some visible scratches and wear and tear since they're presumably the same goggles he's been wearing since he was 10, but I forgot. rip

Obviously the most notable change to Raz's outfit is the scarf -- I wanted something that would tie him visually to the other Aquatos while still fitting with his general look. I imagine they gave it to him as a gift, sort of an acknowledgement that even if he doesn't perform with them as an acrobat, doing his Psychonaut work is his own way of being an Aquato

Raz's outfit here is honestly very similar to his PN2 outfit. This is because in my eyes "long coat and turtleneck" is Peak Character Design and cannot be improved on. (Hence why I may not be the best person to redesign Raz.) He has an actual coat rather than just an oversized blazer this time though, so that's an improvement. With the turtleneck I was was vaguely intending for it to be color-wise something of a middle ground between the Sasha-style green striped turtleneck and the Aquato blue/green and white stripes, but it ended up basically just being the PN1 stripes with the PN2 color. which, you know, that works

I went back and forth on what their heights should be -- I thought it would be kind of funny if Raz ended up short and Lili ended up taller than him, but then I decided to just make them more in line with their families, with Raz being tall and lanky and Lili being average verging on short. Except then I accidentally made Lili tall anyway because I was only vaguely considering her height relative to Raz. I guess Lili's probably taller than her dad now? good for her ig

Most of their facial features are just slight variations of how they look in canon -- slightly smaller eyes and so on. the only real specific change is that Lili has a more defined nose now, similar in shape to her father's

Lili's outfit here is more different from either of her canon outfits than Raz's is, but there's still not much that really requires a ton of explanation. The goal was to make her look vaguely cool and fashionable, although as I am neither of those things I cannot guarantee I was successful

I tried a couple different hairstyles for Lili, and I'm still not entirely set on this one -- Originally what I settled on was to give her two braids, which I did like, but I kept doing sketches of her where I just drew the top part of the hair and was like "ngl this kind of works on its own" and so I ended up going with the short hair. I also briefly tried an asymmetrical haircut but I couldn't get it to look right. I think this one suits her though

Lili's tattoo (on her left wrist) was a later addition to the design, and even in the later stages of drawing this I wasn't sure whether to keep it. I like it conceptually I just haven't figured out a consistent design for it yet, only that it has to be of plants

god these notes got way longer than I meant them to be I am so sorry. Uh basically I'm still figuring out the details of these designs but for now here's Raz and Lili, they're teenagers now, thanks for reading

#still not completely set on these designs but i think i've mostly gotten an idea of what i want from them #i'll probably revisit them in the future. i'm happy with these for now tho #razputin aquato #lili zanotto #psychonauts #psychonauts 2 #my art

[kanmom51]

JM's production diary - the commentary

26 October 2023

So, just watched the commentary.

A few takes on the almost 24 minute clip:

a. JM's live on the 23rd October was not the first time JM watched the documentary. They were watching it together and commenting. So, seeing JK in the doco the other day in the live was not a first time JM is watching this. And yet, man was mezmarized.

b. JM wasn't planning such a personal revealing album to start with.

c. Curiously, well not so curiously nor surprisingly, the whole part of JK's participation in Letter (which once again was referenced as Dear.Army) was not addressed. They obviously watched the whole documentary, but had nothing to say (well more so, nothing the powers at be wanted us to hear) about JK's participation, about the interactions on screen or about the song itself, other than mentioning again it's a song for fans and talking 'around' the song (the fun moments while creating the song), and how emotional it was and made them feel.

*Tried to screenshot and couldn't, but the caption is what I wanted, and that worked, lol.

Point being - the editors are the ones, once again, pushing the "JM really spoke the truth to ARMY".

And that is the end of it.

Not one more word about Letter.

Even at the end of the commentary, when we get JM in the car on the way home talking about the album, about each and every song in the album.

You know what song he doesn't mention?

The one song he supposedly created for ARMY.

The one song that he tears up when hearing.

The one song that you would think JM would talk about while recording that last message to Army, a closing to the documentary and commentary, him on the way home in a very intimate-personal setting, the song he created for them, the song he supposedly gifted to them, and NOT A WORD.

JM talks about Face off, Like Crazy, Alone and Set me free pt. 2. And that's it.

No Letter, no Dear.Army.

You know, that same song we heard in the commentary just minutes before, that still brings tears to their eyes.

And we got another cake. A little late but the team celebrating the #1 billboard success.

So, now we have one more event coming up.

#jimin #JM #JM Production diary #JM's production diary commentary

[smytherines]

Fuck it, here's an Owen Carvour dissertation

We don't have canon ages for Curt & Owen, but personally I headcanon Owen as being born in 1928, making him 29 when the banana incident happens. This leads to a lot of thoughts that are fascinating to me, because growing up in London during WWII could inform so much of his character.

Personally, I believe DMA's accent is much closer to Owen's natural accent. I think the Owen Carvour accent is something he puts on to make himself sound neutrally British while working abroad, because he grew up working class. RP is how most people (at least in the US) assume British people speak. This also works with the Texan agent mega headcanon, like they both have to put on an act to be spies, just like they have to put on an act with their relationship.

And class is really really important to how you conceptualize this character, because your experience of the war could be radically different depending on how much money you had. Food rationing began in 1940, which in this case would make Owen 12. Rationing isn't fully lifted until 1954.

At Elizabeth II's wedding in 1947, the palace made a big deal about how she was saving ration coupons for the material for her wedding- a full two years after WWII ended.

Here's WWII London:

This is the city Owen would've grown up in. This is a war zone. A city where food is tightly rationed, where sirens were constantly going off and you had to draw down the blackout curtains and go sleep in the tube station with bombs dropping constantly overhead:

If Owen were upper middle class, he might have had a shelter at home, some people did. But I imagine him sleeping in dark, cramped, noisy stations. And he learns to keep his cool. He starts to enjoy the danger because he has to to survive it.

Maybe he has lost loved ones to the bombings. Maybe one morning he comes home from the tube station and half of his house is in rubble on the ground. Maybe he's used to hand me down clothes and simple homemade toys and not having enough to eat. He's used to having nothing, having nobody. That's a headcanon a lot of folks have, and I think it makes a lot of sense for his character.

Even if Owen were one of the kids evacuated to the countryside, maybe that happens when he's 15 or so, it wasn't a Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe situation. For a lot of those kids they were leaving their parents behind in a war zone, sleeping in barns or basements, and most importantly working almost non-stop on British farms because all the regular farmhands were fighting.

I think, if this happened, Owen would be itching to go off and fight in the war. My personal headcanon is that he's an intelligent guy, and he figures out how to forge some basic paperwork to claim he is older than he actually is, so he can go fight in WWII.

But by some fluke he couldn't account for, he gets discovered. And because of his skill and his ability to keep his cool under interrogation, he gets recruited to MI6. A lot of MI6 operatives are upper class men, recruited young from the top schools. He mimicks them.

I think many years later, when he and Curt are escaping a Russian weapons facility, Owen loves Curt and trusts in his capabilities (maybe a bit too much- especially when he's been drinking), but he also feels frustrated that Curt is impulsive and cocky and thinks he is untouchable.

Because Curt didn't grow up the way Owen did. He didn't grow up waiting for the bottom to fall out over and over again. He's certainly got his own shit from adolescence, but he doesn't have that survival impulse hardwired into him the way Owen does. So Owen is careful and cautious for the both of them, trying to keep them both safe and alive.

I think about Owen being trapped in the rubble a lot. He would almost certainly be critically injured. Maybe he has PTSD from the WWII bombings, and he's just trapped in an exploded building, trapped with his own memories of childhood until he's almost feral from it.

This also, btw, is why the AU of Owen as Eurydice from Hadestown is so so poignant to me. Someone who grew up cold and hungry and turned their collar to the world, and then suddenly they fall in love and everything is sunlight all around them. All I've Ever Known is such an important owen!Eurydice song to me

I could keep going from here, but I'll stop for now. This isn't as neat and concise as I wanted to present these thoughts, but I can't stop thinking them

#spies are forever #tin can bros #agent curt mega #owen carvour #curtwen #spytown #spytown renaissance #saf headcanon #saf #SAFtistic

[feedingicetothedog]

i can't believe ppl are still debating ep 5....like come on! use your brains for once.

i'm going to start blocking ppl for calling the dv scene 'shock value' or out of character. it's neither of those things and straight up the beginning of that scene comes almost directly from the books.

"And our fragile domestic tranquility erupted with his outrage. He did not have to be loved but he would not be ignored; and once he even flew at her, shouting that he would slap her, and I found myself in the wretched position of fighting him as I'd done years earlier before she'd come to us." (IWTV p. 104)

yeah is the scene in ep 5 more graphic/brutal? sure. but one could argue that louis in the book is playing down the violence in order to maintain the image he's painted of lestat as a weak, stupid failure of a mentor. in opposition to the book, the show has added claudia's account as corroboration of the abuse that they experienced as well as the scale and scope of that abuse. later in the book when claudia proposes that they leave together, louis says this:

"I could hear a vague mingling of sounds now, which meant he had entered the carriage way, that he would soon be on the back stairs. And I thought of what I always felt when I heard him coming, a vague anxiety, a vague need. And then the thought of being free of him forever rushed over me like water I'd forgotten, waves and waves of cool water." (IWTV p. 117)

i don't know about anyone else but this reads to me as an abused spouse hearing their abuser come home. i also think that this vague anxiety and vague need that book louis describes here is etched all over ep 6. the louis of ep 6 is Extremely submissive and placating to lestat in a way he never has been in the previous eps because he's afraid of him. at the beginning of ep 5 itself he straight up tells lestat to shut the fuck up and in the middle he goads lestat by making fun of his intelligence. the contrast is stark and why? because he has been given a fuller picture of the sheer magnitude of lestat's strength and power and knows that it can be turned onto him or claudia. to say that the show doesn't reference the violence after that ep is absolutely ludicrous. claudia references it directly!

this is only one example of several in this ep. the violence was necessary to make the urgency of louis and claudia's need to leave make sense. if lestat wasn't keeping them there with the unspoken threat of repeated violence why would claudia need to scheme and plot to walk out the front door? she did it at the beginning of ep 5, why couldn't she do it again? claudia is older in the show than the book, she's not a 5 year old trying to brave it on her own, the modern conceptualization of the teenager didn't exist, she could reasonably get by. the dv scene was necessary to account for the new context of the characters.

also the slave/master dynamic was not created wholesale by the show writers, that's straight up from the book:

"The vampire made a slave of him, and he would be no more a slave than I would be a slave, and so he killed him. Killed him before he knew what he might know, and then in panic made a slave of you. And you've been his slave." (IWTV p. 120)

they have claudia say this in the show practically verbatim. they didn't add this just to make on the nose points about race, they simply expanded on what already existed in the book. the fact that claudia and louis in the show are black make this sentiment more uncomfortable but it's not any less true. in fact, i think it adds to why claudia refuses to let the situation continue. the transgression becomes more egregious because of the larger implications of white frenchman lording his status over his black creole subordinates (this where lestat's 18th century roots become so interesting as well as his aristocratic heritage. i also think it's interesting that you have lestat = aristocrat; louis = bourgeois; claudia = working class/poor as their economic backgrounds but that's a different post).

if the showrunners were to walk this back i legit would be pissed. it would be such a cheap shot to write such a brutal, narratively cruel scene (i mean this as a compliment) that contextualizes one of the main character's motivation, plot, and worldview (claudia and to an extent louis) and then be like 'jk nevermind, louis was lying! claudia was exaggerating! it wasn't that bad actually!'. like that's just bad writing. it also would be racist. i actually love ep 5, all of it. i've never been to affected by an ep of television in my life and i think it's so brilliantly written. do i think it complicates the loustat relationship? sure but i'm not watching this show because of ships, i'm watching it because it's some of the best crafted television i've seen in years. it's not afraid to piss off fans in favor of a better, more compelling narrative choice and that's why i respect and trust writers more than i do for most other shows.

i also need to emphasize that i love lestat. he's my special boy and has been one of my favorite characters for like 16 years. ep 5 did not diminish that for me, i love how it works in relation to his backstory and how in the books lestat does not break the cycles that terrorized him as a child/young adult. he continues them by putting himself as the perpetrator and isn't that what he does ep 5? the writers get these characters, the actors get these characters. i still think lestat is wildly sympathetic and that's a testament to how strong the writing, directing, and performances on this show are.

anyway, let's all start talking about a different ep, this one has been discoursed to death

#i'm SICK of loustat shippers trying to wish ep 5 away so they don't have to think critically about this ship #and i say this as a loustat fan! #shock value doesn't mean 'i watched it and was shocked!' #shock value means it was added in for no larger narrative purpose other than to be gratuitous. which this scene wasn't. so. #also sorry if this is a bit incoherent i saw a post and got very angry and did all of this #iwtv #tvc #vampterview

[the-red-thread-that-strangles]

IV.

Akai Shuichi: Did you elope. [03:45 a.m.]

What Shuichi really needs is to lay this mystery his mother so graciously imposed on him to rest. The sooner, the better. So here he is, reaching out in the vague hope that just maybe this meeting wasn't actually about him. It's possible, after all, that one of his siblings did something to upset their mother, and she ended up giving all of them an earful. Letting her dismay be known, as is her speciality.

In that scenario, the most likely culprit is his lovesick little brother. He, after all, does have a partner he's even engaged to, and from what Shuichi has seen from Shukichi's fiancée, she might be prone to rash actions while under the influence.

It does not make too much sense, not really; Shukichi has always been the sibling most aware of social sensibilities, the one with the easiest time dealing with their mother. But at this point, Shuichi's grasping at straws.

Because it can't have been about him, judging by his mother's surprise.

Haneda Shukichi: Without telling the best man? Hardly. [03:47 a.m.]

And just like that, he's back to square one.

.

Shuichi might not have the best relationship with his mother, but he knows for a fact that she's not the type for arbitrary courtesy calls. She's all business, all the time. It's a miracle Masumi has a sense of humour at all, and he's yet to be convinced that's not entirely thanks to Shukichi's influence.

Therefore, Mary must have gotten it into her head somehow that there is someone in his life he has purposefully kept from meeting her. Not that she is wrong, conceptually - if he did have a partner, he'd spare them the headache that is dealing with Akai Mary.

The thing is, there is no one like that in his life. Shouldn't be, can't be. Not again. He's learned his lesson.

.

If in doubt, break down what you know about the case, and extrapolate from there.

Considering his mother only just now came out of hiding, he feels reasonably safe in the assumption that she did not make the relevant observation herself. Instead, it seems more likely his darling sister said something that ticked her off - enough that she figured she needed to confront him about it. Therefore, he needs to analyse possible partners in his surroundings, with a focus on those that Masumi knows. As an extension to the parameters, his family is aware of his cover as Okiya Subaru, whose contacts must also be examined. This has cost him enough time. He will get to the bottom of it, now.

.

For anyone who knows their history, Jodie would be an obvious candidate. Not that he still loves her, can't say that he has in years, at least not romantically.

He's been told he's supposed to feel guilty about what he did to her, but he can't help comparing this slight to some of the things he's done while undercover. He always comes away thinking at least she's still alive. At the time, he gave her the best he could: the truth. It might not have been pleasant, but it's certainly better than the lies and secrets he's buried under, these days.

She has, since his return to the US, made it abundantly clear, on several occasions, that the way he broke up with her was 'tactless, heartless and cruel, even for you, Shuu' and 'you better be eternally grateful Camel and I agreed to still work with you.' And to be clear, he is. They make for a decent team. Time and again they've proven they'll have his back. Sure, they have their weaknesses, but so does he, and in the end, they pick up each other's slack. It's good enough.

The irony of learning to appreciate a good team from a criminal syndicate is not lost on Shuichi - even if technically he learned it from two PSB agents. He's definitely not still sulking because he couldn't get Scotch on their team as some sort of remote consultant; the bureau was adamant, and probably right: He can't be in witness protection and working for the FBI. The less connection he has to this case, the better. Still, some days, he finds himself missing Scotch's level head and Bourbon's ingenuity.

Getting sidetracked. Focus.

He's been careful not to mix his Okiya identity and the FBI. That knocks out Jodie - and Kir, for completion's sake. Masumi doesn't know them, and if he has his way, she won't for a good long while. Their work is far too dangerous to get her involved. Plus, letting her meet Jodie would give both of them too much blackmail material.

Hm. Who does Masumi know, actually?

There's her classmates, Mouri Ran and Suzuki Sonoko, who came by the Kudo manor for a while to help him clean it up. While the latter seems a bit taken by Okiya Subaru, both of them are half his age and he really hopes he has been nothing but the perfect gentleman to them. Even if they weren't, though, theirs is a mess he would really rather not deal with. He's got to assume Masumi is more aware of the specifics of their love lives. He can only hope that, aside from the occassional meddling on Conan's behalf, he would prefer literally anything else over being involved with teen romance.

Hm. While on the subject of the Kudo mansion, Kudo Yukiko has been around to help with his disguise and learning to cook (though Furuya and Haibara have assessed that it is barely edible, so he has a long way to go still). She's a known fan of the Scarlet Agent, and surely it's not difficult for Masumi to figure out that movie is based on his life. Still, the girls haven't been around since the Kudos have officially returned, so it's seems rather unlikely Masumi would be aware of their relationship.

He's not going to think about his little cousin as an option. Masumi is smarter than that.

At this point he's really reaching. There's a couple of undergrad engineering students who have requested private tutoring the few times he's been at uni, some in desperation, some in obvious flirtation. He's denied them all. His engineering degree might not just be for show, but he really can't involve civilians in his business. Besides, Masumi hasn't followed him to university. As far as he can tell, at least.

If he's going into barely acquaintance territory, Furuya asked him once or twice to meet in the vicinity of café Poirot, too injured to stray far. He'd been complaining about Masumi giving him odd looks and stalking him, so she might have been watching them run into Enomoto Azusa. That had been a stilted conversation, even for him. Furuya's coworker had been a stark reminder of happiness that could have been, in a different life. Thankfully, perfectly diplomatic Amuro had cut the conversation short, insisting they had places to be.

And with that, he's reached the end of the list of women in his life. Some of them he'd even consider friends, but none of them particularly warrant the term partner, not even professionally. He hasn't had one since Scotch. Jodie could count, maybe, but the term implies a pair and he's been working in that team for so long that in this case Camel would also have to be considered- wait.

His mother is not the kind of person to use cutesy monickers like 'girlfriend', so he figured 'partner' was a professional catch-all. A work partner wouldn't warrant a reaction like that.

It's a little obvious, in hindsight.

Rei who came by with coffee when the girls were baking in the Kudo mansion.

Rei who complained about Masumi following him.

Rei who has been wearing the family sweater.

Oh.

.

Okay, so. Shuichi can see how Masumi arrived at her conclusion, however wrong it might be. For people like them, the fact they're meeting at all is probably the biggest indicator. They've shaken her tail off pretty consistently, so she wouldn't know they don't actually spend that much time together. And that Furuya is rather insistent on the fact that he's a reluctant ally. Not a friend. He still throws a fit whenever he realizes he's done anything exceeding the minimum amount of cooperation (there's a lot of fits).

The headache is back with a vengeance.

He should have listened to Furuya's concerns, intervened before. But he was kind of supposed to be dead.

Shuichi needs to have a talk with his sister.

.

Like Shukichi had promised, no one in their right mind wants to watch the early afternoon screening of Poultrygeist Two - The Plot Chickens. It's a good thing then that 'in their right mind' describes neither Masumi, who is somehow weirdly invested in trashy horror flicks, nor Okiya Subaru, newly minted horror movie connoisseur, as of two days ago. They reconvene inside.

"A pleasant surprise to meet you here, Subaru!" She smiles cheekily at him, grins.

"Miss Sera, was it?" He nods, and ignores her for the moment, turning to watch the screen. In his pocket, he flicks a portable signal jammer on. Nobody is supposed to know who they are and that they are here, but they can never be too careful.

Okiya Subaru continues staring at the screen until the movie starts, in an eruption of gore, splatter and the violent clucking of chickens. It's way too loud. Perfect cover.

"You two have to stop bothering Amuro." It seems wrong to call him that, but it would be even worse to give away Furuya's identity. Shuichi loves his sister, but she already knows too much and really isn't careful enough about it. Furuya must not be exposed, especially not at this critical junction.

"Oh? You want him all to yourself?" Masumi grins, devious. A reckless proposition, if he's ever heard one. Nobody could contain Furuya Rei.

"It's not like that." He shakes his head, trying to get the message across. "You don't want to get on his bad side." An annoyed Furuya is a vicious Furuya, Shuichi could provide extensive testimony to that effect in court. If she doesn't stop, he'll find a way to force her to. And Shuichi isn't sure he would oppose Masumi leaving the picture until the BO is dealt with.

Masumi's eyes narrow, pensive. She's got good instincts, possibly better than his own. Surely she must've noticed Amuro's dazzling smile sugar-coating what usually amounts to orders you shouldn't refuse. The way steel slips into his eyes when he's on a case, how he doesn't stop until he has his answers. The skills that do not fit in with a waiter-slash-detective.

"If he's that dangerous, why do you keep him around?"

A good question, if he's being honest. But in the end his perspective doesn't really matter. Rei leaves him little choice. If he didn't love his Japan so much, he would've followed Shuichi to the end of the world, and probably beyond, already. Now that he's back, there's no chance he could escape for long.

"Work."

Judging by his sister's raised eyebrow, she doesn't seem to believe him.

"Uh-huh. And that's why you gave him your sweater?"

Not her too with that inane piece of clothing. Why does it always circle back to that?

"As I said, it's not like that. He needed it. He's just not managed to give it back." Which, considering Furuya's general tendency for payback in a timely manner, probably means Shuichi won't. It's been months. That's fine. It's not like he is attached to it. And it suits Furuya.

It doesn't look like Masumi is convinced.

"Look." He's just a little bit exasperated. "You followed him to find me, right? You did, well done. Now stay away from him." She's better off far away from Furuya. To be completely honest, she probably should stay away from the both of them, tainted as they are. But she's family, and he can't quite begrudge her reaching out. He tried the same, after all.

She frowns at him, scans him and then, slowly, a grin spreads over her face.

"Alright, if it's that important to you", she agrees pleasantly, and he's about to breathe a sigh of relief when she adds, "on one condition."

"Name it."

"It's my birthday in a month. You're celebrating with us."

It's not a terrible trade-off, but Shuichi has a gut feeling he'll regret having said yes when all is said and done.

They end up actually watching the rest of the movie, and it's frankly kind of nice to spend some quality time roasting a shitty movie with his little sister.

Case closed. Finally.

.

As he sits awake that night, running surveillance from the sniper's nest in the Kudo attic, he wonders how things got to this point.

For years now he's carefully kept his distance to Furuya in order to not get caught in the blast radius when he inevitably explodes and takes as much as possible down with him.

Because somehow, Rei has never gotten the memo to distance himself from the job. A bleeding heart like him that cares too much, too quickly, and lets his emotions dictate his actions is a terrible choice for an undercover agent. He should be dead three times over in a criminal organisation, and yet. And yet.

Shuichi knows, first-hand, the determination it takes to carry on, despite all their work takes from them. What he buried to keep going might possibly, one day, be recovered. But Rei? He immolates himself for the country he loves so dearly. So the world can be brighter, the people safer. In the end, all that will remain of him is a burnt-out shell, nothing but ashes left in his wake. How much further can he go, until he runs out of fuel?

In the years they've known each other now, things have never been easy between them, but Shuichi's never been the one to wish him harm. It was Bourbon who wanted Rye dead, saw him as a threat. Then Amuro Tooru wanted Akai alive, the last thread connecting to Scotch. Shuichi is not quite sure what Furuya Rei wants with him, now.

To be kept so close he's mistaken as Rei's partner is foolish. And a privilege he'd never thought possible.

He's standing side by side with a dying star, and all he wants is to watch it burn a little longer.

.

Sweater weather AU masterpost

#akam #sweater weather AU #iris writes things #long post #alright we've spent enough time with akai for now

[thedreadvampy]

god I'm so mad about PE ALL THE TIME

for a long time I felt bad about being mad about PE bc I was like. oh it's just that as an overachiever academically I Could Not Cope with not being good at a subject. how silly. this is probably how maths class feels for people who are bad at maths etc.

but I really don't think it is. because the goal of a maths teacher is to teach you maths. the standard they're being held to is to give you the tools to get better at it. if they don't we understand that as a failure of teaching, at least conceptually.

PE/gym teachers do not seem to be held to the same standard. the main role of PE teachers seems to be to Force Children To Exercise rather than to Teach Them How. it's like if the full extent of maths class was just giving you pages of equations and saying 'do these until you know how to' and if you say 'I don't understand this' they say 'try harder' and at no point do they even briefly explain what an equation is, the basic idea of how to do it, or what success would look like. and when they do a test they don't mark your answers individually or tell you where you went wrong or the right answer, you just get told 'you're bad at this.' (tbh not even 'you're bad at this do better' honestly just 'you're bad at this and will never be good at it')

I've talked to so many ppl from so many different school settings who are like 'I was awful at sports and then after I left school someone pointed out one very simple and obvious thing I was doing wrong and suddenly I found it super easy'.

if somebody can't do a pushup, teaching doesn't mean yelling at them to try harder, it means taking them through the process of building up to a pushup. if someone sucks at running, teaching means saying 'you're wasting all your energy on kicking your heels up, you need to be pushing down into the ground' not 'haha this guy sucks at running everyone look how slow they are'. if somebody has an asthma attack every time they play football, teaching probably looks more like 'here are some lower-impact exercises you can do on the side of the pitch while we play' not 'ugh fine sit out'

the point of PE being a compulsory subject is a) to keep kids active and b) to instill habits of exercise they can take into adult life. possibly c) to play Team Sports and develop socially from that.

but almost everyone I know who is afraid of or doesn't think they can do exercise learnt that at school. because the way PE tends to be taught consistently prioritises people who are already good at sports, and tells everyone who isn't that that's something inherent to them.

I tell this anecdote a lot but my mum was a world class athlete in the 70s and 80s. literally she has 3 world championships in women's rowing under her belt. she was invited to compete at the Olympics. she's good. but she spent her whole school career being told she couldn't do sports, couldn't run, was only good in hockey for standing at the back looking threatening etc. she found PE miserable and she was fully convinced sports just wasn't it for her. then she discovered archery and slapped at it. then she went to uni, joined the rowing team and within her first term learnt from other rowers how to fix her running, how to do pushups and situps in a way that worked for her, how to get to a place where she could comfortably do weights - because her teammates were working with her, not getting mad that she didn't fit the PE box made for her.

it's just fucked imo how much of a site of misery PE is for so many of us. and we're made to feel like that's a reflection on us being Unfit Lazy Sloths who Don't Want To Exercise and not a reflection on how it's taught. most kids want to exercise if you help them find an exercise that's fun for them and a way to do it that meets their needs. most of us like to be active. it feels good.

but PE teachers en masse, and I'm sure there are plenty of exceptions but in general, aren't interested in fitting the exercise to the child but in fitting the child to the exercise. and so exercise becomes this site of shame and inadequacy and anxiety.

I'M NEARLY 30 AND I KEEP DISCOVERING EXERCISE I LIKE! stuff that I have done before and hated! but in a setting where I'm being encouraged and guided towards succeeding instead of shamed for failing I'm having a whale of a time! I've learnt to like swimming again, dancing, climbing, running (still bad at it though), straight up working out (situps and pushups still injure me so I talked to a PT and they helped me design around that instead of telling me to do it more)

it is fucking insane. that the vast majority of us found specifically PE this immense site of trauma and distress and overwhelming negativity and yet. we're just fine with that as a society? we're like hmmm yes sounds like it's the kids' fault for being lazy and unfit and not instinctual athletes. all of them, including ones who are very fit out of school or later in life, and despite the fact that this is so much more across the board than hatred of literally any other single subject. yes. it's the children who are wrong.

#red said

[vyl3tpwny]

ANTONYMPH (and the things that made it)

art by @voreburger

—

It has been one year since I released Antonymph. This song seriously changed my life and, it would seem, the lives of many others. I am grateful for the apparent impact it has had on people and I'm hopeful that the reach of its message will continue to spread.

I wanted to talk about how we got here.

Between the months of November 2020 and July of 2021, I experienced a gauntlet of emotional trauma, hardship, and declining physical & mental health. These things came after being newly out as trans, kicked out of my home by my family, transitioning from being a college student to a totally independent adult within the span of a month or two, moving away from my home of 21 years to somewhere I've never been before, and then trying to balance all this with the onset of COVID around the world. In January of 2021, all of these things adding up and weighing on me led me into this rabbit hole of thoughts about my life in the past, present, and future. Namely, though, I thought about my home in San Francisco, where I was far away now. I thought about the memories and things that made me who I was up until that point, especially the bad stuff. The whole project of CUTIEMARKS was an analysis of my life's mental struggles throughout my childhood and budding adulthood, examined through the characters of MLP:FiM.

And you know, it wasn't all everyone and everything else. Growing up, I had felt inclined to be a lot of negative forces myself. To be honest, I'm not precisely sure where it came from, and though I'm glad I grew from it, I still used to be that way. When considering a lot of the things of my past I encountered two things that would eventually become the hallmark reasons for creating Antonymph:

I was a dick to people. In so many ways, I was just an asshole for a lot of my life. I still kind of am sometimes, but I think everyone is. I really mean I was a cunt. This overinflated ego, this desire to shut people down for what they liked, this idea that I was always right and I know best about everything. I acted on this a lot and hurt a lot of people, even my closest friends (many of whom are still around me today, and I'm endlessly thankful they stuck with me through my worst).

I was also made to feel the same way, both directly and indirectly. I talked a lot about how it felt like there was pressure from the people closest to me to only like certain things and other things are not good enough to be enjoyed. This comes especially in the case of music, where it felt like there was a lot of disdain around me for pop and non-traditional music. This extended to all types of media though. I wouldn't have been caught dead being perceived as enjoying something like My Little Pony for a while.

So conceptually speaking, my desire to write something like Antonymph came as a rebellion against these things; against the ways I treated people and the ways I was treated.

At this point of my life, I had also recognized this sort of perpetual depression and negativity that pervaded me at all times. Any type of positive emotion would either be subdued or otherwise disappear within moments. It felt like I couldn't love things and I was always just clenching my shoulders preparing for things to hurt all the time.

So, back to January 2021. Sophie Xeon, a musician who I looked up to and felt comfort in, has just died. Very few celebrity deaths have ever affected me, but this one was very personal and intense. I remember going to bed shaking and feeling sick. It was an uneasiness I'll always be able to picture vividly in my head. In the spirit of her unabashed creativity and love for everything, I started conceptualizing a project that would be as bold as I felt she was.

The first, and only, title for this project was "CUTIEMARKS (and the things that bind us)".

A deep dive into SOPHIE's work and her peers' work led me to examine the inspirations for PC Music. From there I rediscovered my love for the dancepop of the late 2000's and early 2010's. Carly Rae Jepson, Kesha, Katy Perry, etc. Around the time I started really using the internet, I secretly loved this music even though it felt like I was going against everything I was supposed to stand for at the time. I grew up in a cishet, Christian, potentially elitist music space. Things that evoked anything other than that induced guilt to enjoy. But I very, very, secretly, quietly, loved that stuff.

So I decided to make some synth patches that evoked those feelings

That's what led to this:

Once this demo was made, the path became rather clear for what I wanted to do. Around the time of the songs that inspired it, I was getting really into Tumblr and all the glittery, kitschy parts of the internet. I had been talking a lot with @voreburger (Pico) at the time of this and had a feeling he would be super into the idea. It started out as just wanting to have Fluttershy coming out of her shell with the help of internet culture. It was after pitching this idea to Pico that he sent me back a rough draft:

The idea was really coming together it seemed. What really drove it was his use of the Gir hoodie, really solidifying the internet time period(s) we were after. The Nintendo DS, the browser extension toolbars, and all that; he was onto something incredible.

By the second draft, I still only had "Antonymph (demo1)" made on my end. Taking inspiration from the art he was doing, I started writing lyrics and programming some drums:

After I had these additions to ground the idea, I started getting more ideas for the art direction of the song.

By this point I want people to understand how much Pico was instrumental to the conceptualizing and execution of this whole project. We bounced so many ideas off of each other and worked to string everything together. It wasn't a case of me commissioning him for a few things and calling it a day, it really wouldn't exist the way it does without him.

In order to test chroma key stuff, he sent this icon that he made.

It was here that I realized that Antonymph could be something bigger. There was now a few pieces of "Fluttershy in a gir onesie" that could be used for a semi-animated music video. I said to Pico the words "we'll create an entire culture around one song". That was essentially the manifesto, how deep I wanted this whole thing to go.

So I got to work. (This also appears to be the first mention of "Fluttgirshy" in our DM's)

I ran the lyrics by Pico in a group chat and we talked about the lyrical direction of the song. After coming up with some stuff together we ended up with demo3:

Between March, 2021 - May, 2021, I took time off from the Antonymph studio sessions for a few reasons:

The visual aspect of the project was now in full effect. I was messaging many of my favourite mutual artists and pitching Antonymph to them and explaining what I needed.

Focusing otherwise on lyrics.

I was working on the other CUTIEMARKS songs, now that the album was no longer a small EP project (which it was originally intended to be, as it always ends up with my music).

It was intimidating to work on Antonymph. It was very clear by this point that it was going to be a big project and a big song, likely to be heard by a lot of people. We all expected this from the start, though it ended up being even more than we imagined. Still, knowing this made it harder to work on the song because the pressure was really on.

Now at this point, many other concepts have been injected into the idea of Antonymph too:

Queerness needed to be a big part of this. Making a song about self acceptance and expression had to entail queerness (like many other aspects of CUTIEMARKS, anyway).

I wanted to help heal my homesickness a little bit, so the music video would start to include video clips that I took in California (most notably, the intro of the music video shows my BART route from San Francisco to Daly City).

I wanted my friends to be a part of it in some way. I couldn't include everyone, but I did a lot to make sure that the people I cared most about would be included in this project, knowing it would be seen by lots of people. I wanted to bring them along for this whole thing. Lots of clips in the music video include videos of my friends, and I took lots of suggestions about the song from friends in servers and group chats.

As a spiritual sequel to "Lesbian Ponies With Weapons", I wanted the song to speak to a lot of the issues our generation is facing around the world especially in the wake of civil rights and economic inequity.

Between May 17, 2021 - May 27, 2021 there were two more Antonymph demos:

After demo4, I asked friends and patreon subscribers if they wanted to be included in the song by way of putting a group of everyone saying "hell yeah" in the second verse. demo5 is where this first is implemented, but all the voices wouldn't be included until the very final version of the song.

art by @sterfler / @uzon

Slowly but surely, everything came together. I worked endlessly on coordinating all the art stuff and doing the video editing and graphic design, until eventually:

It was done. February 24, 2021 - May 28, 2021.

I don't usually talk about finances, but I know for certain that the Antonymph project itself had costed well over $1.5k to make. This is disregarding everything else I had invested into the creation of the CUTIEMARKS album entirely, and is limited purely to Antonymph by itself. And as this project has helped to grow myself as a musician, I should be able to make more projects of this scope in the future.

A few days later, I premiered the trailer for it on June 4, 2021:

And then of course, what followed was the music video itself.

And just like that, it felt like I had taken my first breath of fresh air in a long time. I braced for the response to this, and what followed was extraordinary. Across social media, the #antonymph and #fluttgirshy tags were filling with people making fanart of the interpretation of Fluttershy that Pico and I, along with the many other incredible artists, spent many months getting just right. It all went to even inspire the parody project on SiIvaGunner's channel:

Antonymph was born from the ashes of my trauma and memories, and was forged between me and a dedicated team of incredible visionaries to become this thing that a lot of people connect with now. If I was going to put out a project of this scope and reach, I wanted to make sure it was positive and inspiring, and had the potential to live past its release as something that would continue to influence people for the foreseeable future.

So, Antonymph feels like a HUGE explosion of colours and emotions. And that's because it is. Everything had mounted up to that point. Endless amounts of hardship and mistakes, culminating into something that would be unabashedly beautiful.

I am forever grateful.

Thank you so much. + Thank you so much to Pico for making this project one of the best ever.

Oh, and as an extra special thank you, the stems to ANTONYMPH are now freely available to everyone: https://we.tl/t-j7WJ9dQ6tT

art by @astroeden, made specially for the one year anniversary of Antonymph <3

#vylop #vyletpony #vylet pony #my little pony #mlp #fim #friendship is magic #fluttershy #fluttgirshy #antonymph #cutiemarks #Youtube

[hidefdoritos]

Haha yeah, you know me too well. Yeah, I've always been big on patterns. There was this one time when I was in like 8th grade I got invited to family game night at some friends' house. They explained a card game and let me watch a round.

In the game, the judge decides on a pattern in their head. "Red card, face card, clubs card" or something like that. Then everyone else takes turns laying down cards. The judge declares whether each card is correct or incorrect. At the beginning, it's all guesswork; at some point, the pattern emerges, and then we all congratulate ourselves and change roles.

They let me come in as the judge.

This was a mistake. I was small and full of spite. I didn't know about things like "sharing" or making things "winnable." I knew that the optimal pattern was something so complex they'd never get it but so simple my win would be legitimate. I wouldn't mess with the environment, or with counting the cards, or with a pattern of the frequencies of in/correct. It had to be a visible card pattern, and mine was going to be the best visible card pattern ever.

I chose my pattern. We started. And they started losing their minds.

From their viewpoints, there was no pattern. No rhyme or reason, no telling. I sat increasingly smug in my spot at the table. Half the deck was gone. They stared daggers at me. They had a very nice red-black pattern going, but it wasn't the deciding factor. They asked if I was sure there weren't any mistakes. I was sure. They played on. One declared she didn't have anything left to play. She was wrong, and I looked at her cards and told her so.

They started collaborating among themselves. Pointing at cards. Showing each other their cards. Two thirds of the way through the deck. Three quarters. Seven eighths. Card after card laid down, some accepted, some rejected. By far, farther than they'd ever made it in a game. It wasn't fun anymore, but I wasn't gonna call it off just because the kids were getting bored. I was full of more brainpower than those little twits could even conceptualize, and I was going to win.

One player went out--I confirmed nothing usable left in their hand. Then another. The remaining three played out their cards, swapping turns and swapping theories. Interest had waned. They stared at me glumly as they laid their cards, waiting for a verdict they couldn't predict. A parent left the room to work on the pizza and snacks.

Finally they were stuck. The deck was exhausted, and so were they. A few random cards left over, nothing discernably interesting about any of them.

"Give up?" I asked, a triumphant gleam in my eyes.

They stared at me.

I pointed to the array of cards snaking along the table. "If you'll see here," I gestured expansively, "it's a very simple pattern. Every other card has to be an even number."

They stared at me.

I swallowed.

"So, every other card could be literally anything?" asked an older sibling.

"Y-yeah," I said, losing 80% of my confidence. "...Isn't that fun?"

I was rescued by the remaining parent standing up from the table. "Why don't we start the movie now," they suggested, and started shepherding their glaring children into the living room.

"It could be worse," I explained lamely. "It could have been every fourth, or fifth, or I could have targeted people with their elbows on the table, or...." I trailed off as an adult started directing us toward pizza and snacks.

Anyway, I think that whole escapade says a lot about me in junior high school and also me as a person. Yeah, that pattern recognition is kinda like why I always get the same thing. Yeah, a number seven, ketchup only on the burger, regular fries, root beer with no ice. Can I tip you? Do you take cash tips?

#moss's musings

[elanorpam]

Hey, ive been a fan of your cultstuck series since i first read it 10 years ago and its one that i hold dear along woth toastyglow and their siblings' works. Given that we are all adults now with very busy lives, i dont expect you to kerp up with an old project like writing a fan novel fpr free, but i am curious as what ur current plants for earthbent are, if there are any atm.

(Tbh id be happy with any answer you provide, whether its a detailed outline, an unsure shrug, an excited wink hinting at a deadline or an announcement of permanent hiatus. Youve given so much with your writing, thst i just want you to be happy with whatever plans u have)

hey there! i'm going to go with unsure shrug as an answer here.

see, I did have a detailed outline for cultstuck-- i wrote it all down at around ...2015? very soon after the second eridan chapter, and sent it to my beta, who then proceeded to ghost me forever. I was already sensing she was growing disinterested in the fic/the fandom, giving constant excuses, and I myself was dealing with an anxiety/depression combo that would sharply nosedive by the time the finale came around, so i just... let it go. She didn't care. I wasn't in a good mental place to care. We went our separate ways.

I decided to take a mental health sabbatical, and now, after a few years of sertraline and therapy, the thought of picking it back up is very, very far down my list of priorities. I have so many other fics I want to write, for media which hasn't let me this profoundly down! And also, Cultstuck was conceptualized in the post-cascade hiatus, in chat logs and rough outlines, and was never supposed to take later canon into account unless it dropped any interesting, matching lore...

...but late act 6 took such a dump on the characters and the setting that it took the joy right out of playing on my patch of sandbox, fenced off as it was. And I couldn't connect with the Retcon timeline at all, but some of its developments are so popular and so deeply entrenched that I hesitate to contradict them even though i kind of hate the whole thing and never meant to take it into account?

Let's take the strongest example: Davekat. Dave and Karkat in Cultstuck were never meant to be anything more than mutually annoying acquaintances connected only indirectly via Terezi-- Dave was to be her moirail, and aro-ace besides. This was because for the entirety of the comic, that was the only vibe I got from Dave as a character, and from his interactions with Karkat as a whole-- he and Karkat felt too similar in mutually unpleasant ways, like a cousin that's just enough like you to give you second-hand embarrassment. So by the point the comic was playing coy with pushing the New Dave and New Karkat action figures together, you couldn't get me to care about Davekat if you put a gun to my head. This really hasn't changed in the least. And that means whenever I think of dealing with disappointed Davekat fans in the future of the fic, I just feel an all-encompassing, soul-deep exhaustion.

but i also don't want to drop the fic altogether, for some reason? Like, I might not feel this way forever. So idk, i'm keeping my options open i guess. Subscribe to the fic/series and maybe 10 years from now you'll get a notification like a holiday miracle. Who knows.

#cultstuck #homestuck #homestuck thinks

[liveontelevision]

TV!

(Hazbin Hotel OC/Sona!)

This is TV! TV is a nickname (cuz it's similar to my real name) and I haven't decided on a full name just yet. Here's her backstory and some other info!

○○○

She started as a Hellaverse Persona, but as I went on with the design, I wanted to give her a more unique backstory that's only mildly inspired by my personal life.

She's been through hella conceptual changes i'll probably post a lil' timeline of her progress as a character at some point :)

○○○

Life:

TV was forced into adulthood from a young age. Her parents kicked her out or she may have lost them in some tragic accident, but to add to that she really had no extended family she could contact. She immediately found work locally and didn't return to school to maintain a somewhat livable wage.

Looking back, she always felt like some higher power cursed her. After her hometown had caught onto the fact that she was a 14-year-old lying about her age, who was also working multiple jobs that she really wasn't meant to, she just kept going.

Her next move was to do it all again the next town over. Means of travel really just boiled down to using spare change for buses or walking. My god, she walked everywhere, the poor thing. Rain or Shine. Essentially living on the streets, finding a new place to sleep every night, she managed to abuse this horrid cycle. It took a while, but she did manage to support herself enough to stay put in a small town for a while. Finally settling into a routine, she lived in a cardboard box of an apartment. But hey, it's the first time she's slept on a mattress in years. She also got a waitress job at a retro 50s-style diner. And no matter how frilly the uniform or how short the skirt, she was smart enough to milk every last dime out of her tables. This usually involved letting gentlemen getting a little too handsy, but hey. She had bills to pay. She got used to the constant flirting and finally achieved a more regular routine, but her mind was still broken. She went through phases of depression, having days where she simply couldn't leave her bed, or refused to return home. When she tried to recall what went on during that day, it was simply TV static in her memories, as if she just went into autopilot. These didn't happen often after she got into an average lifestyle, but this ended up being her downfall. Just a few days before her 20th birthday, she took her own life.

(TW: Self Harm/Suicide Depicted)

After a long day of handsy customers, who didn't really tip as well as they should, TV dropped to the floor of her studio apartment, her back against the door. She receded into the same apartment that's getting a rent increase she simply can't afford.

She avoided looking into the mirror as much as she could. Every time it happened, she would get sucked in, her eyes scanning over every flaw. Her bags under her eyes and the large coffee stain down her apron. Her shoes that were nearly worn through and her hair that reeked of cheap coffee and bacon. Tonight, coming home to another red envelope taped to her door, she couldn't mask the exhaustion any longer. Finally managing to rise to her feet, she went on and plopped her purse down onto the counter, rummaging inside and looking for who knows what. She lets out a yelp and slowly pulls out the knife from the kitchen's diner that you had grabbed at some point. When did she grab that? She tried to recall her shift that she just finished, but she must've gone into static mode, again. What made her think she needed this knife? She felt a wave of exhaustion hitting her hard, but she attempted to get ready for bed anyway. She undressed to try and wash the day away, but stopped in her tracks at the mirror. She looked her mostly nude body up and down, stopping at her thighs. Her skin really was beautiful, it's a shame that it's tainted by numerous scars, some fresh, some just barely healed. She clenched her fists to her bust, only drawing her eyes to the scars that laid upon her wrists as well. She went into her autopilot state. Turning her head to look out the bathroom door, she sees her bag and the dirty kitchen knife she smuggled home subconsciously nearby. After that, her mind fell into a pit of static.

○○○

Death:

It felt like waking up from a restless's night sleep, so when she sat up to find herself in the middle of some street instead of her bed, she was perplexed. What managed to get her up and moving was the honking of an approaching van coming full speed in her direction. She scrambled to her feet, just barely avoiding the headlights with a swift leap. When she stood up, she realized how her body didn't ache how it usually does. Her feet weren't wobbly, and her neck and back weren't as stiff as they usually were. Looking back to where she awoke, it startled her how easily she was able to jump such a distance. Finally taking the time to absorb her surroundings, she simply kept walking down these city streets. It was large, and the neon signs and lights were almost too much for her doe eyes to adjust to. She'd really only seen cities like this on postcards, even with all the moving around she had to do in life.

While walking past the store front of an incredibly tall skyscraper, that she couldn't see the top of even if she tried, she saw a collage of screens. One of them had just gone out, drawing her eyes to the sight of televison static. Suddenly, the events of the previous night came back to her.

She died. And this must be Hell? She assumed so, taking a look at the demonic figures walking around her and the giant pentagram stamped onto the sky above her.

In what cruel world does a girl struggling for an easier life deserve to be hellbound?

Continuing her suddenly staggered walk, she was almost immediately stopped at another store front, her reflection catching her eye. For some reason, she appeared in Hell wearing her work uniform. What kind of cruel joke - Were those antlers..? She took a moment to process her new animalistic features. Her skin had a peachfuzz feel to it, and despite the rosiness in her cheeks, her skin looked grey. She yanked at the rabbit ears that trailed down her bust, then reached up to tug at the small antlers, jolting her head in the process. Giving a quick spin, she finally noticed - Oh, you've got to be kidding me - a small little tuft of a tail coming from her backside. She pulled open her mouth next, examining her suddenly rounded front teeth. She had become some kind of Jackalope Demon. A realization that this was her life now suddenly hit. Or her afterlife, at least.

She kept on walking, ignoring any propositions and dodging any troubles to the best of her ability. After a good hike, she found herself on the outskirts of the city, the air somehow clearer. Or as clear as it could be for Hell's standards. A much smaller tower compared to the ones she'd walked by, sat alone at the top of the hill. She recognized it! There were multiple flyers scattered throughout the city with its picture plastered on it. She didn't read into them too much, but did take note of the advertisement because it mentioned free rooms. And any sort of bed sounded like Heaven right now.

○○○

(Aaand then she goes through a bunch of redemption shenanigans n' falls in loooove or something)

Hope you like her :)) give her some luv

#hazbin hotel #hazbin #hazbin hotel fandom #hazbin art #hazbin hotel fanart #hazbin hotel fan character #hazbin hotel oc #hazbin oc #hazbin original character #hazbin hotel art #hazbin hotel sona #hazbin sona #hhoc #hazbin hotel persona

[castingmysilver]

*oh.* And my complicated feelings about Fate/Zero, my burning love for how we see Artoria in that arc, my aggressive brain-screamy "But how do we *fix* it!" as soon as the series ended on me --- same song, different key. Artoria wanted *so damn badly* to be in a Horror With Hope story where it would all be worth it, where she could *restore* the world with her ideals, but she first had to battle with people playing by the rules of *conflicting narratives* to get there and then, without her knowledge, the whole fucking game was rigged. She couldn't save anyone if she couldn't find the right *partner*, with the right understanding of the world, to enact their wish---and he was so broken by repeated dreadful circumstance he couldn't *conceptualize* a path into the light when he was asked to. And..... I don't think she ever even *knew* that was why he turned on their goal at the last minute? That he had just learned that if he was the activator for the Wish, because of how the Grail worked he would *break the world worse, for Everybody,* instead of finally mending it???

But even then...

Even then. He *did* survive. All hell rained down but with the force of a single tsunami, not the force of an apocalypse. Because he stopped it in time. And he found at least one lost soul in the wreckage who he could *make things better* for, and keep moving forward in a very small way. It wasn't over when it was over. The Game had just changed.

#fate anime #anime #artoria pendragon #fate/zero #hopeful horror #but hope deferred #personal #fate anime spoilers #fantasy

[deusvervewrites]

You probably talked about this before, but I'm not sure if you have a tag for it and I've only seen you commenting this sort of stuff when you talk about the fics you're planning to do. I decided to ask anyway because, well, why not?

So, do you have a process for making your fics? Like, an outline, general rules you keep in mind, narretive structures, whatever and etc? Any preferred structures or (snrks) quirks of narrative and storytelling you enjoy making or seeing on other people stories?

I don't think I actually have talked about this, or at least in detail.

All of my fics started as a simple elevator pitch, like 'What If All Might told Midoriya he could be a Quirkless Hero?' or 'What if Midoriya got magical powers from a death god during the sludge villain attack?' or 'Cathleen/Inko raising Izuku.'

Then I move on to brainstorming, where I develop the idea further and work out how I want to handle it. Haigha changed the most conceptually, so I'll use it as my example. It started as 'I want to write Midoriya with All For One Quirk, but not related to All For One.' During my brainstorming process, I came up with the idea of him being experimented on by AFO as a test run for Nine and Shigaraki, only for something to go wrong and that's how he ends up confused in an alleyway with no idea that his Rabbit Quirk is just one he snagged from AFO on the way out. However, as I developed this particular idea, I realized him having All For One wasn't actually as interesting as the mystery of what happened to him and what Quirks he had, so I cut AFO out of it, and reworked the concept to fit.

I also usually have some ideas for future scenes or chapters in mind by this point.

Then I move on to my timeline of events. Since a lot of my stuff involves For Want of a Nail--a small change that goes on to result in far more significant changes--having a timeline helps me keep track of how the butterfly effect is going, and makes it easier for me to adjust as I consider the implications of a specific change more.

I usually use this timeline as my outline, but the timeline in When Freemen Shall Stand is rapidly diverging from canon at an alarming rate, so I might go on to have a second outline specifically for the contents of individual chapters, which will also make it easier to add in more slice-of-life content.

From there, the trick is to do what helps the narrative the most. Haigha for example originally was supposed to start with Midoriya waking up and realizing that his body had been changed, and learning that it's five months later than he thinks it is. However, I couldn't make this chapter work. I think I've still got two or three scrapped attempts at it somewhere. I ended up writing the actual first chapter so that I had something down, and it turned out to be a much better starting point. Referencing his recovery and the effects of his disappearance without showing them helped the mystery, and Nedzu quickly recapping the most important points while seeding future events made it an excellent introduction.

#asks #writing advice #by association

[checkoutmybookshelf]

"You're a 15-Year-Old in a Bespoke Suit and Nobody Died!"

Well...it wasn't quite that nobody died, Angeline (honestly it's a miracle that Holly doesn't have a complex about beloved CO/mentors dying on her watch), but based on Artemis's reaction to you buying him jeans and a t-shirt, it's fair to say that we might need to recalibrate expectations. Let's talk Artemis Fowl and the Atlantis Complex.

If this is your first time with us, please be aware that THIS IS A SPOILERIFIC ZONE below the break!

Headings worked so well for me the last time that we're going to keep going with them here, because there is a lot to talk about for this book!

Turnball Root

They say that every good villain is the hero of their own story. You flip the perspective on Turnball's story, and it's a twisted version of Romeo and Juliet surviving to become Anthony and Cleopatra. Just with more black magic runes.

Turnball makes me so, so sad as an antagonist, because you don't fall in love and enthrall the object of your affection while hanging on to the signs of your glory days if you have any level of self-worth and self-respect. Opal Koboi revels in her own inflated sense of self-worth, but everything about Turnball screams that he has some deep unresolved issues with himself as a person. That makes it really hard to enjoy him as a villain the same way I enjoy Opal, but I appreciate the nuance and weight and depth to his character that the massive red flags herald. If something had gone just a little bit different, if Turnball had been confident in his worth and his value, he could have been much more like his little brother. Julius Root was not perfect, but self-worth was not an issue he dealt with.

Artemis says it himself at the end of the book: Nobody wins when Turnball is "defeated." Anthony and Cleopatra have died by their own hands, and neither Rome nor Egypt are better for it.

Leonore talking Turnball down and basically saying he can help her or stop her is also heartbreaking, because it's so, so clear that she would have loved him without the thrall rune and--again--if Turnball had had the confidence to let her love him on her own, they could have been happy without the evil schemes and separation while Turnball was in jail. Leonore doesn't get a whole lot of character development in her own right, which makes sense for a middle-grade/YA-ish book that just doesn't have the space to develop yet another secondary character, but she's compelling in the sketch we do get, and I believe that Turnball would actually throw everything over for her. His last words in the book are in service to Leonore and Leonore's well-being as he helps her. He couldn't have done anything else, and that choice says so, so much about what could have been.

For me, Turnball is ultimately a tragic figure who was covering his own insecurities and self-loathing with sheer drama and villainy. He absolutely does bad things, and I'd even go so far as to say that he's a bad guy, but the tragedy is that he simply did not have to be.

The Atlantis Complex: Artemis and Orion

Ok, so my book is literally about representations of physical and mental disability in Shakespeare, but this freaking book manages to be more nuanced and more real in terms of the fact that mental health is COMPLICATED. Experiencing it is complicated. People's reactions to signs and symptoms of mental illness is complicated (and often objectively ableist and shitty). Everyone involved is often trying their best, and often it's just not enough. Sometimes it is.

While I was conceptualizing this review, I spent so much time going back and forth on minutiae: What was a positive representation, what was a negative representation, who said what and was it hurtful or not, the nuances of having symptoms in life-or-death situations. It got to the point where I could have written an entire post just about this, but then it occurred to me: I don't have to do that, because if I'm going back and forth this much and if there is so much evidence for both positive and negative representation, then the book isn't trying to do one or the other: it's simply allowing Artemis's mental illness to exist in the story. Which is MIND BOGGLING since so many stories--if they deign to mention disability at all--make the disability the whole thing. Frankly, Colfer pulled off a story where Artemis experiencing psychosis during a life-or-death situation was just...part of the story. It wasn't the main focus, it didn't warp the rest of the world and the plot around it, and it acknowledged the complicated peice where it can be both a help and a detriment in the situation.

Basically, it was allowed to be messy. And it was allowed to be complicated. And it was allowed to be emotional. But nothing derailed the plot.

There was also something really interesting that I'm not going to articulate terribly well here because I'm still processing it, but I want to at least nod to it. In terms of negative and harmful stereotypes about mental illness, Colfer manages to do this thing where he acknowledges that they exist, and there are moments where characters lean into them, but almost as soon as they do, another character pops up to call bullshit on it. For example, at one point Foaly makes a (totally in-character) crack about Dr. J. Argon strapping Artemis into "the crazy chair," and then immediately calls himself out on having said something absolutely shitty. "Crazy" is an ableist term, but it gets tossed around all the time in the real world. For Foaly to make the crack and then immediately walk it back isn't something you see often, but I think showing the crack, immediate self-correct, and then improved behavior going forward is critical. Humans are imperfect, but to self-correct and change for the better is important, and showing that is rare and I really appreciate it.

Ok, I'm going to stop ramling in circles about something I'm still processing, and move on to talking about Orion. I'm going to treat Orion as a separate character here, partly because the book does and partly because I am a) not an expert in mental illnesses and b) do not personally experience any and I don't want to speak from experience I don't possess. What I do want to say is that writing Orion as a blatant charicature of a fantasy medieval hero is AMAZING and HILARIOUS and holy cow I loved it so much. The contrast with Artemis is excellent, and the fact that ORION took Butler's lessons to heart was fabulous.

Artemis and Angeline

The other amazing relationship in this book is Artemis and an Angeline who knows exactly what Artemis's deal is. Between telling Artemis that girls are frightened of him because he's "a 15-year-old in a bespoke suit and nobody died" and her insistence on him spending at least two days a week in the jeans and t-shirt she's bought him, Angeline is absolutely fabulous.

Artemis and the Butlers

Oh Butler...dear heart, you get done so dirty by the son of your heart in this book. You were hired to be a bodyguard and what Artemis needs more than anything in this book is mental health support. You've done well with his mental health so far, but this is so, so far outside your wheelhouse. And then Artemis is one of perhaps three people on earth who know how to actually hurt you, and he DOES. He pushes you away, he invents a threat to Juliet, and then worst of all, he takes away your trust in him. Butler needs therapy almost as much as Artemis does in this book, and it's just crushing to see their relationship take this pounding. When the bullet is your principle's brain, a bodyguard cannot stand between bullet and principle.

On top of all that, Butler has to make the phonecall to Angeline explaining that Artemis has Atlantis Complex. That is one of the worst possible phonecalls to make, but he does it and he does it with grace and compassion. Domovoi Butler is objectively too good for this world.

Juliet Butler is out here living her best life, and frankly we love her for that. She's loving the hell out of her professional wrestling career, and she's found her own feet to stand on, not only with Butler but also with Artemis. She quite rightfully calls out his bullshit a couple of times, which is just delightful. She marries the girly/feminine stuff with the totally badass (and traditionally coded masculine) beautifully in a way that finds joy in both. So many "strong female characters" are strong because they reject everything girly/feminine, but Juliet gets BOTH. It's my favorite thing.

And her match against a dickhead gnome at the end is A+ no notes.

Holly and That One Time She Dated Her CO???

Ok, so I don't actually have a whole ton to say about this except...OMG OMG OMG HOLLY AND TROUBLE WENT ON A DATE!!!!! Which has to be immediately followed up with "Is this how Holly's complex around beloved and respected commanding officers dying horribly on her watch manifests?" And then naturally we have to side eye the absolute hell out of Trouble Kelp because dating subordinates has got to violate workplace ethics. Not that either Holly or Trouble have a great relationship with the rulebook, but Trouble is in charge now, so....Broski. Meet rulebook.

Now, all of that said...I am so mad that this date happened off-page. I would have killed to see it. Especially if Grub showed up at any point in the evening.

Finally: Artemis asking if Holly and Trouble have any plans to bivouac in the near future is INCREDIBLE and deserves both a slow clap and a slap.

A Brief Moment to Hate on Ark Sool

Ark Goddamn Sool full-on went to the dark side. He is MERC-ING for Turnball Root. He doesn't even have the scrap of integrity or loyalty to join the crew properly, he's in it for the goddamn money. We HATE Ark Sool. So. Freaking. Much.

Butler crushing him to death is better than he deserves, but it is IMMENSELY satisfying.

Concluding Thoughts

Overall, I have a lot of affection for this entry in the Artemis Fowl series. It has a complexity and a humor to it that I actually don't think any other book in the series has ("I'm the nut!" anyone?). It does sort of bring the arc of the series as a whole to a grinding halt to have a tragedy about Turnball Root and give Artemis Atlantis Complex, but I'm not mad about it. There is some really damn good character work here, and it paces quickly enough that the book really rocks on by as you read.

#eoin colfer #artemis fowl #artemis fowl the atlantis complex #domovoi butler #juliet butler #holly short #mulch diggums #foaly #turnball root #middle grade sci fi #middle grade fantasy #middle grade fiction #ya sci fi #ya romance #ya fiction #books & libraries #books and reading #books and novels #books #book recommendations

[gudakko]

hanging some thoughts out in the void to dry

one thing ive been thinking more and more as I get older is the kind of people 10 years ago i would've called "normies" didn't deserve half the shit I'd think about them

i was a real chuuni back then and in hindsight i really don't get where id get that sense of superiority

you know people like that now have a lot of stability in their lives

they're done with their studies, they have pretty healthy social lives and already well on their way to start their lifelong careers

such an alien word to me that last one

i think the problem for me is more or a root issue

aside from the fact i didn't go on with my "academic life" i just struggle with the base concept of making something my own

that's kind of the whole thing really, both with jobs, degrees and even just hobbies

i have not seen another person ever talk about this kind of feeling before

people will get into things, spend time acquainting themselves with them and then they'll have that thing

It'll be something they know about with some confidence to the point they can speak about it to other people and even educate them to a degree if they were unfamiliar with it

This applies to any sort of hobby and game

I can't really say i feel that way about anything I'm "into"

if someone was to ask me things about any of those things I'd always have a looming sense of guilt for not being the right person for that question and could immediately think of someone better for it

so how do people confidently get into things? i know it takes time and effort but even things I've been into a long while and enjoy still don't feel *mine*

"someone is consuming this content better than i am" is what ill think

it's weird

i do like learning, memorizing things, learning a bit of this and that and storing that information as something I will know from that point onwards, but it's not enough

there's always the pervading feeling that anything i engage with i do so in an extremely superficial way and i don't know how to do better

i feel it might have to do with me often struggling to process information if it's presented a certain way

it's weird, it just makes me feel like im really stupid and obtuse but I know I like to learn things it's just so hard to look at them and not short circuit sometimes

It really does make me feel like I'm some kind of picky eater unable to process some things for no reason, it's really frustrating and i wish i knew how to get better at it

it makes me wish i wasn't so lazy and easily distracted at school too and that id just find "the right way" to learn things

but some days it'll really feel like that's just some part or setting of me that's always been there and is just supposed to work like that unfortunately

I also think i really exude this "superficiality" of mine to people

maybe they don't know what it is and can't quite put their finger on it but they can tell something is off and it makes communicating with me harder

maybe they can tell i won't be able to understand things the way they do and it just feels disheartening

people that have known me for long enough have come to know this and will sometimes talk down to me like im just some dumb kind and honestly while it was pretty annoying at first i realized i don't really have a comeback for it and they're not entirely wrong

did i just miss an important developmental step in information assimilation? i really think i might have

sometimes ill see people that make art or music, entirely new things that weren't there before

from nothing they made something that hadn't existed before up until now, and they just did that by themselves

i look at these people and i can tell they have a soul, it's undeniable proof to me that they do

I couldn't even begin to imagine the process behind something like that, both conceptually and practically

i wonder what that says about me