#so! fun casual writing! write self-indulgently 2019

[thought-42]

Clone Wars fic day two

Today on the random Clone Wars modern day au: Cody and Obi-Wan stand outside in the cold and talk about Obi-Wan's relationship with academia while Anakin and Kix actually learn things. Part One is Here 

In March, Anakin texts Obi-Wan to inform him they're going to the open sciences conference at the university.

'Do I have a choice in this?' Obi-Wan responds.

'Absolutely not'. And then, 'Cody will be there. And there's a bunch of theoretical math talks.'

'I don't see how either of those things is meant to make this more appealing.'

Anakin calls him just so Obi-Wan can hear him laughing.

The following Thursday Obi-Wan meets Anakin and Kix on campus. He's a little hungover, and the clusters of students and professors in jeans and carrying coffees and laptops is making him painfully nostalgic for his own school days. He should have remained in academia, but having been absent three years he's not sure he could fit back in as comfortably as everyone around him seems to.

"Cody's just paying for parking," Kix says. He's got a printed out schedule of the conference sessions, red and blue underlining scattered across the paper.

"You should decide which talks you want to go to," Anakin tells Obi-Wan. He's only wearing a hoody, and Obi-Wan can see him shivering.

"The idea is for us to spend time together," Obi-Wan says. "I'm sure whatever you've picked out will be interesting."

"Stop making it weird!" Anakin says, frustrated.

"It's not making it weird," Obi-Wan snaps. "Honestly, Anakin, why even ask me to come if you're not interested in spending time together?"

"Don't worry, I'll be sure to tell Mace you did your required weekly hour of mentoring," Anakin snipes back.

"You know that's not what I mean."

"This seems... productive," Cody says, jogging up.

"This is how they communicate," Kix says. "As long as there's nobody else around. Eventually I assume the urge to smash their heads together fades."

"Fuck off," Anakin tells Kix, snatching the schedule out of his hand and waving it in Obi-Wan's face. "I told you, there's math shit in here. Pick something, seriously. You paid for the tickets, the least you should get is to learn about something your interested in."

"Have you considered there's a reason I don't work in my field of study?" Obi-Wan retorts.

"Umm, because real world jobs where a BSC in mathematics is useful don't actually exist? Do not try to make this into a tragic backstory, math did not kill your parents in a back alley."

Cody looks alarmed. Obi-Wan holds up a hand. "I never knew my parents. I sincerely doubt they were murdered, in a back alley or otherwise."

"...So we'll go to our respective talks and meet up for lunch?" Cody asks, clearly trying to move the conversation along.

"Thank you!" Anakin says. "At least somebody gets how this is supposed to work."

"I'm going in," Kix says. "Anakin, put your fucking gloves on before you get frostbite. Obi-Wan, drink some goddamn water. Hi, Cody."

"Hang on," says Anakin, and, handing the schedule to Cody, he follows after Kix.

"Well," Obi-Wan says, acerbically, "if this doesn't count as enriching the youth, I don't know what does."

Cody scans the schedule. "You think they would have gone to this on their own?" he says. "Setting aside the part where you paid, university campuses aren't exactly the most welcoming space."

"I think it's lovely here," Obi-Wan says. "I'm quite jealous, actually. Uni was fun."

"You studied maths?"

"The second time around, yes. I did creative writing at Newcastle because I believed it would be widely applicable, then Maths here because it seemed very practical and it upset Qui-Gon terribly."

"And now?" Cody asks.

"Now I do the overnight shifts at one of the transitional housing residences on the East Side and take whatever shifts Starbucks is willing to give me. Luckily Qui-Gon's step-father firmly believes that all one needs to get ahead in life is to be smarter and richer than your opponents, so I haven't got any student debt."

"But you want to go back to school," Cody says. It is, uncomfortably, not a question. "Why don't you? If I can ask."

Most people could not, in fact, ask, yet Obi-Wan finds himself shrugging, burrowing his face deeper into the collar of his coat. "I want... to do something useful. Academia is lovely and valuable, but I suppose at the end of the day Qui-Gon has had the strongest influence in my life. I could easily let myself vanish into an ivory tower, get lost in debates and publishing and drinking my way through conferences across the continent. Perhaps I'd even be doing something worthwhile. It seems a very cozy, though permanently precarious life. But it also seems very... removed. Very detached. I'm certain there are plenty of academics out there who can approach their area of study from a theoretical viewpoint while not losing touch with the more human, on-the-ground aspects of it, but I don't trust myself to be one of them. Besides, I don't even know what I would study. It's the idealized aesthetics of academia I want, not the reality. Besides, I have enough friends at the universities that I never want for journal access." "And making coffee and watching over a sleeping house is making a difference?" Cody asks. In unspoken accord they start walking towards the front doors of the engineering building.

"Two nights ago I was able to keep a young person alive long enough after an unintentional overdose that the paramedics were able to get them to hospital. Three weeks ago I convinced a different person not to kill themself this month. A week before that I helped one of our residents use the office computer to set up a video call so she could talk to her daughter who lives in California. She's Deaf, and can't afford a smartphone, so it was the first time they've been able to talk this year."

Cody's gaze has dropped, and Obi-Wan frowns. "I'm not... trying to come across as some sort of... white knight," he says, a little anxious. "Qui-Gon is an excellent guide for how not to act. But... yes, perhaps it's self-indulgent and arrogant of me, but I want to do some sort of concrete good and as of the moment I feel as if I am. The coffee... well, it helps my bills and my caffeine addiction."

Cody smiles a bit at this last, as Obi-wan hoped he would, and Obi-Wan releases a mental sigh of relief. Cody holds up the schedule.

"I admit," he says, "I have no idea what half of the words on this even mean. So unlike Anakin, you can feel free to drag me along to all the mathematics talks you want with no fear that you're keeping me from something more interesting."

"You wouldn't rather be with Kix in that case?"

"I'll join him this afternoon," Cody says. "Right now he's still well-caffeinated and just thrilled to be here. By this afternoon he'll be more comfortable and ready to pick fights. Though I'm wondering if the same can be said for you."

"I haven't any idea what you're talking about," Obi-Wan says.

"Anakin I bet is just happy to meet people like him and will want to be everybody's best friend. But Kix is here to learn, and if he thinks somebody else is getting in the way of that, or is teaching something incorrectly, he won't have much patience for it. And I bet as soon as you walk through these doors your dormant academic asshole will be fully awakened."

"Kix is going to be an incredible doctor one day," Obi-Wan says. "And I wouldn't blame him for his lack of patience. He'll need a scholarship, so the more he can learn the better. And... Cody. Sometimes people are just... wrong. And it's our duty, as the more informed party, to educate them."

"You've thrown a textbook at someone, haven't you?" Cody says, resignedly.

"Absolutely not," Obi-Wan says. "...it was a computer mouse. And I may have poured a drink on a professor's head, but it was entirely justified."

Cody rubs his temples. "Come on," he says. "I'll get you a bottle of water and a shitty coffee before we get started."

#Obi Wan Kenobi #Commander cody #Codywan #tumblrfic tag #Star Wars Why? #sorry if this is bad i had a pretty bad headache while I was writing #plus if I put actual thought into this universe I wouldn't ever post anything for it #so! fun casual writing! write self-indulgently 2019 #tomorrow: Obi-Wan breaks his ankle probably

[fereldanwench]

Fic Author Self-Recommendations

Tagged by @starsandskies--Thank you!!! 💙💙💙

When you get this, reply with your favourite five fics that you’ve written, then pass on to at least five other writers. Let’s spread the self-love.

It's very tempting for me to only include my Cyberpunk fics, but I'm gonna try to spread out the love a little bit here.

Don't Get Dead [Dragon Age: Origins; T]

Summary: Somewhat experienced Ansley Hawke offers a little advice and food to Lorelei Cousland during a brief encounter before the battle of Ostagar. Comments: This is just a little character-driven one-shot between my canon-compliant Hawke and Cousland--I know OC & OC stuff usually slides under folks' radars for obvious reasons, but I loved writing this, and I always kind of pleasantly surprise myself when I re-read it.

Under Stars [Mass Effect: Andromeda; T]

Summary: Sara Ryder and Harry Carlyle navigate a tipsy encounter before leaving the Milky Way. Comments: Even though I have not updated this in... What? 4, 5 years? I actually do have a lot of subsequent chapters drafted. Before Cyberpunk took over my brain last summer, I actually thought this was gonna be my next big fic project. I love kind and patient Harry contrasted against bitter and impulsive Sara.

Heartlines [The Outer Worlds; T]

Summary: The Captain gives Vicar Max a (bad) palm reading. Comments: I also drafted a lot of Outer Worlds fic, but it was at the end of 2019/beginning of 2020, and well... We all know how 2020 went. But Max has got to be one of my favorite characters to write, especially if I can make him squirm a little.

Revelations [Cyberpunk 2077; T]

Summary: Takemura and V share a casual dinner, talk about the past, and plan for the future. Comments: This was my first Cyberpunk fic, and the first thing I'd written in about a year and a half, so it's a little rough. But it was driven purely by a passion I hadn't felt in a long time, and I think it will always be special to me because of that. Plus it's fun going back to the first fic with Goro and Valerie and seeing how ideas that had just started to sprout have developed over several months.

Homecoming [Cyberpunk 2077; E]

Summary: Takemura and V are physically reunited after her time in Mikoshi. Comments: This was just purely indulgent fluffy smut. I was never really able to write smut before Goro and Valerie--I tried a few times, but I'd usually fizzle out before the, uh, main course would be served. I see them both as being very sensual, enthusiastic partners, and I just can't get enough of how they love each other.

Tagging @bnbc, @sarasa-cat, @ren3gade, @chilljustacat, and @dustymagpie (no pressure, of course. 💙)

#mine: stories #s: mass effect #s: dragon age #s: the outer worlds #g: mea #g: dao #g: tow #g: cyberpunk 2077 #ship: harry x sara #ship: max x felicity #ship: goro x valerie #oc: lorelei cousland #oc: ansley hawke #oc: felicity gibson #oc: sara ryder #oc: valerie v powell #c: vicar max #c: harry carlyle #c: goro takemura

[ceallachs]

thank you.

This announcement is a little overdue, but I’ve gained over 1k followers on this blog! 🥳🥳🥳

I actually passed this milestone a while ago. Life has just been getting to me with so much to do that I can only manage a couple of drawings at a time. So I don’t have anything special other than my heartfelt thanks and some words. Under this post, I address a lot of things in regards to my art journey, fandoms, future plans with BakuTodo, and a lot of it is about AkaKuro.

So if you are interested, please read on. If you’re here just to check my art, thank you. Thank you for taking the time to let my work be part of your day and for your support. ^^

.

I know I was mostly only posting KnB/AkaKuro stuff until only a couple months ago, so the change from KnB to BNHA was pretty drastic and nerve-racking. I’ve been thinking of making the move as early as December 2019, but I hesitated for the longest time. As someone who has built their fandom “identity” around AkaKuro and KnB, making that move to another fandom, to another OTP even, may have come as a surprise to a lot of my old followers and friends. I do not keep track of every individual followers I get; surely some have left, or maybe some still stick around to see if I will get back to AkaKuro again, one day.

Interests are fleeting and people change constantly. In a time where people always jump onto the next big thing to another in a short span of time, I can say that I have a pretty good streak of committing to my main fandoms. My first online fandom lasted for seven years. The next was KnB, and this one lasted for nine years.

I was a teenager when I joined the KnB fandom and now I’m in my 20s. I still love AkaKuro with all my heart; it will always be a big part of who I am, but I have to admit at some point where I am now in life, and I will say I have already moved on.

This is an excerpt from my Twitter that I thought I should also address here because it sums up everything I’ve wanted to say. I’ve made some major tweaks and edits and added more things to properly articulate my feelings about the matter. I hope it is understandable enough.

It started in November.

In the first few months of dabbling with BakuTodo, I was very, very scared. I was worried because I was such a prominent person for the AkaKuro fandom; I hosted and held events for years, I stayed "active" for AkaKuro even five years after KnB had ended. I wrote fics, drew stuff, promoted every AkaKuro thing I can even when all my AkaKuro friends have moved on. I have so much AkaKuro merch and doujins because it had taken over my life that prominently. 

So after all of that, I didn't know what would happen with a change because I felt like I was already in too deep to move on now. I wasn't sure if I could (should) like anything else, or if I was even allowed to like something else as deeply as AkaKuro without letting people down.

Eventually I just gave in three months later and became more vocal about this new interest. I lost followers which was expected, even those whose handles that became very familiar to me because they actively interacted with me about AkaKuro and KnB before. It stung but not as badly as I thought it would. The change was nice; I felt free.

I think it's only now that I've become comfortable to admit all this in public. To admit my worries, to admit that I've liked a ship more than AkaKuro for a while, to admit that the weight of AkaKuro being prominently tied to my name like an identity has become too heavy a burden to bear. I still do love AkaKuro, it's a part of my life that will never change, I think. But it's also not my main source of happiness nor inspiration anymore, and I hope that, it's okay for me to feel that way now that I've said it out loud.

It's strange to explain, but I think it's because I've dedicated a huge chunk of my life to AkaKuro that I think I've already exhausted all I have to give for it. Nine years of being solely dedicated to one ship is a long time, you have to admit. It's not like my other ships that are more casual, so that burst of excitement will always be present when it gets brought up once in a while. With AkaKuro, my feelings for it have significantly mellowed down, like a precious memory now tucked away in a special place in my heart.

A friend told me that it's okay to move on, and that somewhere down the line AkaKuro will become something I'll look back on fondly even though bittersweet. I have no doubts that'll be the case. But it's also nice to finally just be honest and set myself free.

I've also been feeling very guilty of promising an AkaKuro zine last December and now... it is just the last thing on my mind. I have so much more I want to do that is no longer about AkaKuro, and I shouldn’t force myself to do this zine out of obligation. But if ever someone else were to host an AkaKuro zine, I will support it and even participate if the timing is right.

About my future plans, I don’t think I will be drawing KnB again out of leisure (maybe for commissions, or projects, etc). I still have a lot of unfinished and unreleased KnB fanmerch though (an AkaKuro yukata standee and Carnival AkaKuro standee, and maybe a re-release of some old charms for the last time), so that may be the last of my contribution to this ship out of my own volition for a while. It would be a waste to scrap them.

Right now, all my love and inspiration for anything creative and self-indulgent is being driven by BakuTodo and it’s the best feeling I’ve had in a long time. I want to draw more about them; I have long list of ideas I’m excited to get into. Not only that, my love for writing was reawakened too, and I hope to also post fics about them along with my art.

I still love AkaKuro, and people can still talk to me about AkaKuro, but it is definitely not my priority ship anymore. Who knows if I'll come back to it again, but for right now, I hope everyone will be okay with the change. And if not, that's okay too and I expected it, I also put this out here to give the go signal if anyone wants to unfollow or not. I know there are people who only follow for specific content, and I've come to terms with myself to be okay with this happening with me.

Just know I'm happy where I am. I'm grateful to friends and acquaintances who still stick around to support me even after this, and I also understand if some don’t. I hope those who leave will find another content creator to cater to their needs. Thanks for giving me a chance. ^^

I hope this clears up the kind of content to be expected from me from now on. I will never forget my time in the KnB fandom because this is where it all started for me. I will also be slowly getting rid of more AkaKuro doujins, fanmerch, and official merch collection once the lockdown situation eases up. Hopefully someone else will find homes for them.

Tumblr is not my main social media but I still do like the format of blogging here, so I stay to cross-post my art from Twitter and Instagram. 

From exclusively drawing cheebs, I’m now also drawing non-cheebs and I’m having a lot of fun. My art is far from perfect and that’s okay. As someone who gave up on art for nine years, being able to do it again now, sharing and posting my art and actually be happy about it is more than enough for me. I’m not striving for perfection, I know where my level is at. Drawing and writing are both hobbies I hold dear -- a creative outlet for me to express my love for what I’m currently passionate about and what makes me happy. I really appreciate it if you stay with me for this ride because I know I’ve come a long way these past 2-3 years.

To anyone who views my art, likes and reblogs, leaves nice comments and all, I hope you know that I appreciate you a lot. I rarely get messages on here, but I do read tags on my posts often, and going through them always puts a smile on my face to know that I have an audience here who genuinely likes what I do.

There isn’t much more for me to say here so I think that will be all. Again, thank you for 1k+ followers! If I can make even just a single person happy with my art, whether you’re new here or just dropping by or have been following me for a long time, I’ll be content. And if I can make someone like BakuTodo too through how I portray them, that’d be even more amazing. ^^

Until next time. 💖

#chii speaks #akakuro

[prettyboysdontlookatexplosions]

inspired by @honeybabydichotomy​ some time back / me wildly needing a series of small brain breaks from trying to plan this remote lesson while sleep deprived because i simply could not fall back asleep after 3:15 this morning and my brain is feeling A Wee Bit Totally Deranged, here is my vague/wishy-washy to-write list!

things you can more or less properly call WIPs:

*the story i am actively working on right now, in which eliot & quentin take a miserable vacation together and i attempt to set a world record for number of words devoted to cultivating the precise emotion of Agonized Horniness. i thought that this was going to be short and it is definitely going to be well over 20k, big lol @ me for wildly underestimating the quantity of feelings i had about eliot waugh! but actually i am having extreme amounts of fun with this deeply self-indulgent project, which has both let me try out some things that feel new for me and also unexpectedly become very personal but not at all in the way i usually mean when i say that a story is very personal, to the extent that not only am i not (as i usually am by this point in a fic) incredibly impatient to finish it, but also i am a little sad at the prospect of no longer living with it in my head all the time! i have superstitiously grounded myself from posting any more snippets of it but taken as a set i think these do capture the vibe.

*a quick & slightly goofy resurrection fic set as a kind of episode tag for 5x03 set in an alternate universe where the “plot” of season 5 is not really happening but alice and eliot still wind up on the top of grief mountain. my motivation for this one decreased as season 5 continued to be Like That to the point of erasing any desire to keep anything from it in my personal magicians canon, but i like the central conceit which involves rewriting alice’s golem spell as a collaborative spell because i’m a sucker for any and all pieces coming together imagery, and also i feel like for me personally actually succeeding in writing something light and breezy would be a really instructive and cool learning experience!

*i am too bashful to publicly describe the last item on this list and may yet prove to be too bashful to ever finish it but it started out as me trying to imagine a conversation in which quentin tells eliot about Ye Olde Sex Magic Escapade and has sort of evolved into like me thinking a lot about eliot’s ability to trust himself? trying to find the right tone/voice for this one has been a beast largely because quentin turning 800 shades of red while he explains to eliot that a stranger had to give him advice about how to give his girlfriend the orgasms he didn’t know she wasn’t having is the funniest thing in the entire world to both me and eliot, but then every other Concept i have for it is, you know, not so much. i would like to persevere though for precisely the reason i am so bashful about it, which is that i am interested in trying to do what like 80% of people into fic do several times a year, namely write a story that moves through characterization & emotional beats mostly through the mechanism of Doing It.

wisps of half-assed notions floating idly in my brain which may or may not ever result in any actual writing:

*i have two vague epilogue/coda notions for wild geese. one is that i’d like to just check in on that version of quentin a few months later and get to see him feeling like a functional person and enjoying & reflecting on the novelty of that, learning to lean in a little more to who he is and what he wants, possibly via [redacted for reasons of bashfulness], possibly just further toying with the hugely entertaining to me notion that one lingering side effect of his death/undeath is that he suddenly becomes a foodie. or he gets into, i dunno, kickboxing. just very Wow I Have A Body times. the other idea is that i am charmed by the notion of quentin and julia getting a brakebills grant to do summer fieldwork at a hedge coven/hippie commune in like maine or something, both because i like the idea of q & j getting to have a fun low-stakes magic adventure together (they deserve it!!!) and because i’m amused by the extent to which julia would be like “this is an extremely fun way to spend exactly 2 months of my life after which i would fully go out of my mind” while quentin is like “idk maybe i do want to join a hedge commune? i wonder if eliot would be into it.” also q & e writing interdimensionally transmitted letters!

*some.... thing... about julia and eliot becoming friends, either like a snapshot of them bonding while trying to resurrect q, or else a post-resurrection fic where the process was very quick so they never really bonded but now that eliot and quentin are dating julia just shows up one day like “hello eliot who is dating my best friend and therefore also my best friend now! :D” and eliot’s like “wait what now” because he’s so used to imperiously friend-seducing people in the weirdest way possible that julia texting him a link to showing of john waters shorts at metrograph is not something he knows how to process

*some... thing... about alice figuring out how to Be Okay after quentin undeads and they break up. she gets really into some niche hobby or takes herself to some scenic location and hates it or finally tries pot. shit, maybe i am accidentally talking myself into casually shipping alice/josh. but also maybe she doesn’t hook up with anyone? maybe she gets to just have... a... friend? (kady?)

*the night of the s5 finale what i really wanted more than anything was some kind of wildly, exuberantly happy ending for eliot and the mechanism for that which popped into my head was an old school kinda 5-times-ish fic centered around a series of new year’s eves. (1) yes i have written this exact conceit before (2) yes this was partly influenced by the fact that new year’s day by taylor swift REMAINS the eliot love song of all time and “i want your midnights / but i’ll be cleaning up bottles with you on new year’s day” is still the most infuriatingly perfect description of eliot in love humanly conceivable. the heart wants what it wants.

*something exploring my vague headcanon that quentin and julia absolutely accidentally did magic as kids but it was always in the structure of being dreamy kids playing at magic and half-convincing themselves in that dreamy-kid way it was real, so that when later they outgrew that they also mentally filed those experiences away as playing pretend with great intensity.

*some............... thing........... involving present day post-s4 (alive) quentin and arielle’s... grave? great-grandchild? i dunno man, like, teddy never existed without quentin going back in time, but arielle was presumably a real person and not some weird quest-generated cipher, and i just can’t imagine that a version of quentin who remembers even as much as her name and that they were married has access to fillory and some free time and doesn’t try to figure out what did happen to her. or, like, eliot comes across someone in a familiar town with familiar eyes and is like, q i think there is someone you maybe have to see. for most of my half-assed notions i would probably be almost as happy to read a fic that already exists instead of writing it myself but for this one in particular if anyone has read one please do send it my way. it just feels like an odd gap to read so many fics where quentin and eliot are thinking about The Mosaic and Their Family and not at all interested in the branch of that family that like, concretely in this timeline lived. in my brain this is NOT a depressing story but it is admittedly hard to see how that would work out in practice.

*as you can tell from this list i am not generally a big AU person in terms of writing, because by the time i’ve exhausted the things poking at me from canon to resolve or play around with i have historically lost my stamina for that fandom. BUT, the one gratuitously self-indulgent non-magic AU i want in the world is one where quentin and alice were college sweethearts who got married at 23 and divorced six months later and quentin reacted to this by deciding that love/joy/hope/happiness/dreams are for children and stupid people, and now it’s like... 6-10 years later idk and quentin is “fine” in that he shows up to work on time and pays his bills on time and doesn’t often feel sad but lives a very small life in which he doesn’t often feel much of anything or have much of a connection to himself or other people, enter of course eliot having gone through some Rough Times but eventually turned a corner towards getting his shit together and whose joie de vivre / general hotness / open-hearted affection shakes things up in ways that are both thrilling and totally horrifying!

uncategorizable by the headings listed above:

*on december 28, 2019, i started a google doc titled “magicians underworld breakout fic” which i have sporadically been adding notes towards ever since, inspired mostly by how much i think it was a missed opportunity to never have quentin and penny come to any kind of mutual understanding of each other (or even of their own reactions to each other!) except via fake pod person underworld nonsense, and how potentially fun it would be for them to team up to make it back to life. it currently contains just under 3600 words, but they are exclusively things such as:

hades and the underworld library? hades and the whole library? what’s cool about god motivations is they are almost definitionally stupid

or:

They have been taught certain things and those things are lies - connecting to how Margo got her axes

similar to #3 on the WIP list above, the reason i may never write this is the same as the reason i very much want to actually write this, which is that it is by necessity very plotty, something i have never, ever, ever done. i started brainstorming in the last few days i was wrapping up wild geese partly because i was so excited to have written a story where like magic events happened and only like 96% of the plot could be described as “and then a person has a feeling” as opposed to my usual 100%. i have generated a lot more ideas than i really expected to (some of which i like a lot!) but also am still extremely far from having a workable story, although i also have not dedicated any purposeful time to it really, just kind of let it percolate. also it is tough because every version of how it might be told i come up with definitely involves multiple POVs and so far seems to involve more than 2 partly because like a bunch of my other magicians grudges/missed opportunity wishlist items keep sort of working their way in, which is... a lot. i feel like a sensible thing to do would be to come up with at least one (1) kind of mid-tier plottiness concept, somewhere between “50k words of And Then A Person Has A Feeling with a couple thousand spent on Magic Things Happen, Which Are Also Feelings, But Whatever” and like “5 strands of plot drawing together for me to work out every single one of the 700 beefs i have with this show at once” but AS YOU CAN SEE i literally do not have any ideas that fall into that category at the moment, so. we shall see!

#the magicians #this wound up truly unhingedly long but sleep deprivation is rly jostling my brains! #also first real of quarantine qontent is there are no rules of quarantine qontent

[rosaguard]

summer’s power hour of love(tm): kas edition.

    i feel like this post has probably been a long time coming. i don’t generally like digging into my feelings - whether positive or negative because...well i’m weird lmao. but tonight, i’m digging into the trashcan that is my feelings(tm) to show appreciate to someone who deserves it.

intro.

 i generally don’t like being redundant so i won’t go into how our friendship started but i will reaffirm something you said before which is that i appreciate that our friendship felt natural. it wasn’t forced, we didn’t instantly become ‘friends’ - if anything it was the opposite. we were in some of the same circles and had a mutual respect for each other before we really started writing together in like late 2018/ early 2019. i probably don’t say it off enough but it makes me so happy that we’re friends now. like, really, really happy. i appreciate you lot even if i don’t talk to you constantly. so much so that internally, i keep a specific list of relationships that i’m very determined not to fuck up(tm) and my friendship with you is one of them. ( and no, i’m joking/memeing for once. i’m dead serious ). i won’t get too deep into main but there have been rare times where i’ve gotten more...personal(tm) i guess about my struggles, self-isolation being one of the biggest, so it’s nice to know i have a friend i can just...share stupid stuff with or whatever whenever i’m feeling lonely.

writing.

     for starters, you’re...probably the best writing partner i’ve ever had? i don’t really throw out compliments to people easily so this isn’t something i say lightly. in your words we just ‘vibe’. like i probably could talk constantly about our muses, dynamics, plot more, etc. but i do partially hold myself back because i don’t want to come off annoying ( which i know is dumb!!! b/c you’ve said it wouldn’t be annoying but!!! i’m an insecure lil shit man. it’s hard. i’m working on it lol ). anyway, the point is that i enjoy writing that builds towards something and i feel like every one of our dynamics is like that. i know you’ve gone into your feelings about being slow and it’s like...whatever to me lol. life > roleplay. plus, i’m cool with waiting because i know the payoff for whatever you write will be worth it. also you constantly indulge me in my bullshit. exhibit a and b:

HEHE

but seriously you’re great. whenever i come up to you with ‘i want to write this dynamic/ship/whatever’, you’re always open to and ready to give 100% no matter what. again, it’s something i appreciate and don’t take for granted at all. writing with you has pushed me to be a better writer, to challenge myself, and to get out of my comfort zone. i’ve been writing on tumblr since 2013 and didn’t actually start writing ships until 2018. i don’t really have experience with it like a lot of other people do but it’s never really been hard because there’s no pressure to be writing with each other all the time and whatnot. also anyone who can get me to actually write smut is well...they’re worth keeping around because i hate it!!! but also found it weirdly fun too lmao.  

me, first writing smut for kas:

me, writing more smut later.

    we call that growth kids. anyway, you’re also an extremely talented writer. you always put so much thought into your blogs, nothing feels half-assed and i commend you for that. there is always a passion for whatever character you choose to write - and it makes me even more interested even if i’m completely unfamiliar with who they are / what series they come from ( ex. gene ). you’ve also influenced my blogs  - both directly and indirectly. for instance, guess who encouraged me to make aeri.s brown when i was on the fence? you! you’ve always been so supportive of me and i feel like i wouldn’t be the same writer i am know without having had the opportunity to write with you.

friendship.

   i’ve already told you’re a good person - probably too good for a lot of people on this site - and i mean that. truly. you do so much for a lot of people here - whether it’s making blogs for your friends or offering to make themes for free ( and honestly, the price of your commissions should be appreciated because the amount of effort and work put into this is realistically worth more ). i can’t speak for anyone but myself but i just want to say that it’s a noticed and appreciated. always. you care and you give a shit about your friends wholeheartedly and it’s great? you’re fucking great kas. ( god, i hate getting sappy but i’ve come this far so i can’t stop now i guess ). but like seriously, you’re a special person who deserves the world.i can’t believe i’m admitting this shit but i really almost cried a bit today when i thought about how you actually listened to songs / playlists i send you for our ships. in the grand scheme of things, this is not a big deal at all but it is important to me in a way i can’t properly articulate(tm). 

    i feel like...i’ve always been ignored / easily replaceable by friends so someone just...giving a shit for once, no matter how small, is nice. i’ve always gotten that sense of ‘i care’ from you. you’ve always made an effort to reach out when you didn’t have to, do nice things for me which you didn’t have, and matched my energy - whether it’s writing, venting, or just casually talking - which again, i appreciate more than you know.

conclusion.

anyway, i feel like this post still doesn’t fully cover exactly what i want to say but that’s probably just because i’m bad at expressing myself lol. but just know that i do really love writing with you and cherish all of our ships so much!!!  our friendship means a lot to me and i’m grateful that i got to meet you on here. love you 3000 @castershot​.  ❤

#castershot #i feel like my spirit has left my body #❀ . ━ ❛ take your time ❪ ooc ❫ . #long post //

[ionlycareaboutyou]

2019 fic writing roundup!

thank you to @quinnmorgendorffer for tagging me!!!

Total 2019 Word Count:  172,106 (a lot of this is probably “Meet the Parents”) Total 2019 Hits: 21,055 Other 2019 AO3 Stats: Kudos: 2013; Comment threads: 190; Bookmarks: 387; Subscriptions: 86.

Total 2018 Word Count: 21,840 Total 2018 Hits: 5,899 Other 2018 AO3 Stats: Kudos: 567; Comment threads: 71; Bookmarks: 70; Subscriptions: 22.

links and titles to 2019 works

for Arrested Development, in alphabetical order:

“it’s been ages since we were really honest” - a oneshot i wrote for the Netflix Originals Fic Exchange for dreamkist on ao3! it was my first time doing a fic exchange and i’m really glad i took that leap and did something like it, because it was a challenge in a fun way, and i really like how it turned out. it’s about gob and tony’s first times as a couple (not just their First Time because we all know about that), and i’m proud of it.

“I Want to Break Free” - my biggest solo project to date, my gob bluth figure skater AU. i’ve said so much about this fic and agonized about it and joked about it, and at the end of the day i am so proud of it, and i’m glad that i wrote it.

“Let’s Start the New Year Right” - blunder smut where they fuck on lucille’s bed, that’s the long and short of that.

“Meet the Parents” - co-written with @gobbluthbisexual. gob meets tony’s family and him and tony fuck a LOT. rebecca and i fell in love over the course of writing this summer 2018! 

“My Sweetheart When a Boy” - blunder victorian AU...currently unfinished. i had big ambitions for this fic and i really hope one day i gain the motivation to finish it.

“The Pianist and the Magician” - birthday fic for @quinnmorgendorffer, pianist!gob meets struggling magician!tony and they share a night together (not smutty despite the description lol). i’m soooo proud of this one, my goal was to make it very atmospheric, almost movie-like, and i think i achieved that, in a sense.

daria:

“you are the bearer of unconditional things” - short conversation between trent and daria i wrote when feeling introspective. 

IT:

“Everything He Needs” - my very first reddie fic, written shortly after seeing chapter 2 and having my heart ripped out, lmao. it’s a stereotypical fix-it where richie stays with eddie in the hospital as he recovers. i do really like how it turned out, though.

“New York’s Hottest Talk Show Guest: Richie Tozier” - this is a crossover fic with SNL, but i’m putting it here because richie and eddie are the main focus. basically, richie goes on late night with seth meyers, brings eddie along, and they meet seth and his husband, stefon as well. it’s very silly and self indulgent, but was inspired by ADORABLE fanart which i adored.

“Want You in my Room” - richie and eddie have morning sex, nothing more, nothing less.

“who’s gonna drive you home tonight” - cowritten with my friend robin. eddie had a “fuck you mom!” phase once he got out of derry and that resulted in him getting a motorcycle and a few tattoos. he comes back to derry and him and richie meet. this is currently unfinished, but i hope we can finish it in 2020!

SNL:

“'cause living like this is risking all that i know, and if it kills me, that's how i wanna go” - seth meyers/stefon 5+1 times fic. i love how this turned out and all the love that it received was totally unexpected.

Favorite Fic: honestly not sure. i’m going to go with “‘cause living like this...” because it was probably the most fun to write, and i’m really glad that i stopped being too embarrassed to share all my sethon thoughts with others, because i got so many nice comments. “everything he needs” is probably a close runner up, though.

Hardest Fic: hoooooo....probably “i want to break free” because i’ve always been hesitant to do multichapters because i’ve abandoned them before, but i needed to finish that one (and i did!). also, even though i’m a huge figure skating fan, that fic required a lot of research on the scoring system and rules of the sport during the time that i set the fic in.

Do You Plan to Take Prompts in 2020?: i really want to!! i love taking prompts, even if i don’t always fulfill them (SORRY!)

What was the best thing about 2019?: writing for new fandoms like IT and SNL!!!! holy shit, i did NOT expect to be completely consumed by the Clown Movie this year, but i definitely was, and now reddie is one of my favorite pairings i’ve ever been invested in. because of that, i read sooo much good reddie fic, i seriously cannot overstate how amazing the writers for reddie are.

What was the worst thing about 2019?: the writer’s block that went through this winter, ugh

Any last thoughts for 2019?: this was my best year for fic writing by far, and i’m so thankful for all the suppor i’ve received

Goals for 2020

reddie old hollywood au is first and foremost my priority, since it’s my bigbang project

write more fics for my friends (i NEED to write a quinn/jane thing for alex i just MUST)

finish my fic with robin

i tag anyone who wants to do this!

#my writing #this was fun! thank you alex!

[factoidlabs]

Joseph Wayne Reed, Jr. - 1932-2019

With greatest sorrow and longing, I write to tell you that Joe Reed, our father, is gone.

He was brilliant, funny, unfalteringly sweet, and he recognized us all and loved us to the very last. And that’s the best we could have hoped for when Alzheimer’s disease finally finished taking him from us just before dawn on Monday.

Dad was too huge a figure in my life to be summed up in an obit or a eulogy, but failing to try would deny him the honor he is due.

Born in Depression-era Florida of working-class Hoosiers (his mother was a newspaper bookkeeper and his father an Army medic and eventually a Linotype operator), Dad grew almost fractally; He built a rich life in myriad wild directions towards a sort of glorious crescendo in which everyone around him thrived on his energies and his friendship and his art.

Passionate about the mangroves and palms and snakes and sunset thunderstorms where he grew up on Florida’s Gulf Coast, he Boy-Scouted his way up to Eagle Scout, the highest rank.

Keen for information and knowledge of all sorts, he devoured books. He excelled in school, rode a scholarship to a Yale B.A. - the first of his family in 4-year college - and eventually took a Master’s and a Ph.D. in English Literature that propelled him into lifelong professorship at Wesleyan University.

Mad for movies, he went on to cofound Wesleyan’s renowned Film Studies program, helping launch the careers of more than a few Hollywood blockbuster auteurs. We, his family and friends, gorged on the wonderfully bottomless weekend diet of movies he fed us through a 16mm projector in the darkened living room.

He was forever smitten with his post-high-school sweetheart, Kit. They conspired on witty Christmastime publications, recited epic poetry for fun, proofread each other's manuscripts together aloud - using funny voices for italics and all-caps. They raised three children and taught us by their own example of 61 years of steady marriage how to marry well, endure hardships and disagreements with grit and humility, and stay firmly in love.

The two of them - so inseparable until Kit died in 2017 that they were often known as KittenJoe - saw to it through trips to England and India and Utah and Shelter Island and the 1964 World’s Fair and even the local apple orchard that we kids learned one core lesson: pursue whatever you want in life, so long as you’re happy.

Back in college, I wrote on the dedication page of my multimedia thesis, “For my mother, who taught me how to listen, and for my father, who taught me how to see.”

Because Dad would point things out. And by doing so, he would teach.

He marched us through the Met and the Whitney and MOMA in New York, the Smithsonian in DC, the Museum of Science and Technology in London. A Rembrandt, a fur-lined teacup, a steam locomotive, the Star Spangled Banner itself - pricked enthusiasm to burst from him: “Look, Mackie, isn’t that GREAT?”

We sat together in the St. Petersburg sand, watching thunderheads bluster and flash. “Oh,” he exclaimed, awash in wonder. “Look at THAT.”

“Don’t put your thumb there,” he warned bluntly as the band-saw screamed, teaching me at 12 to respect and love making things with power tools, “Or you’ll lose it.”

And Dad made art. The word is inadequate to his massive body of work.

Decades of beauty and fancy and genuine American weirdness sprang from the moment when, at 32 or so, he casually took up painting pictures of insects and plants because, as he said later, “I was bored.”

His childhood love for insects and the classics blended in wild historical tableaux. He populated that early series of paintings entirely with ants (because, as he said, he wasn’t good at people and all the people in epic masterpieces looked like ants anyway). His Wreck of the Hindenburg is still one of my favorites.

He relished painting the alphabet - a 28-tile template with one letter for each tile (with “&” and “¶” rounding out 26 to a neat 4x7) - for whatever visual topic obsessed him or his patron.

Stretched out on a paint-spattered patent-leather-upholstered chaise-lounge in front of the TV every night without fail, he painted and etched hundreds of alphabets - first of insects and plants, later of movie stars and boxers and Texans and Gertrude Stein and Edgar Allan Poe and the American and British flags and Dubious American Inventions and his wife and his kids.

He indulged in fathomless bizarretés in between:

A series of “Infestations” of Renaissance royalty, beset by bees and worms and beetles.

The “automatic” portrait series (inspired by his illustration for Kit’s wonderful short story “Automatic Tiger”) - John Ford and Marlene Dietrich and John Wayne, half their human faces stripped away to reveal clockwork mechanisms inside their metal skulls.

Gen’l. George Custer and Whistler’s Mother plopped down into quotidian scenes as stern and stoic intruders.

Presidents swam Underwater. First Ladies floated in Space.

On and on and on, Dad sketched and printed and painted and drew, and taught, and wrote, and traveled, full of love for his friends and family, scorn for his foes (Republican convention speeches on TV were often greeted with the cry, "Oh, HORSESHIT!"), and nearly seismic energy for the arts.

All of this is inadequate to honor his life, except to add that Dad burned brightly, laughed heartily and was loved (and sometimes feared by his students) deeply.

He never lectured so much as he orated, raged, declaimed. He was as manically amused by Richard Nixon and Donnie and Marie Osmond as he was wowed by Orson Welles and Akira Kurosawa and George Peckinpah.

In a Wesleyan student review of professors, someone noted with backhanded fondness: “NOT AS POMPOUS AS HE’S CRACKED UP TO BE.” He loved the quote so much he put it on his door to help dispel anxiety in office-hours visitors.

Or maybe just to revel in his brand.

As with Mom, there are to be no services for Dad.

Joseph Wayne Reed, Jr. would want you simply to remember him as when you last saw them together; welcoming you into the seemingly endless open house they made of our huge pile of a Connecticut Victorian home, and warming you with their constant cooking and mentorship and generosity and wicked laughter.

You are invited to contribute via this link to Alzheimer’s Los Angeles, an organization that puts nearly every dollar donated towards support of and care for people with Alzheimer’s disease.

[terryblount]

Mortal Kombat 11- Review

For every niche game genre, there is a popular, more mass-appeal entry in its genre. Like Pokémon to JRPGs and Destiny to MMOs, so is Mortal Kombat 11 to fighting games.

The Mortal Kombat series is what I like to call a dudebro fighting game. It’s got a low barrier for entry, and it’s easy to cheer during the game’s gory sequences. While that may sound negative, it really isn’t: any game that can get more people to enjoy fighting games should be celebrated.

With Mortal Kombat 11, however, we have the case of a game that’s almost confused as to what it wants to be. It’s a good fighting game, and the addition of fine-tuning characters to your playstyle certainly helps add a personal stake to games.

However, the game’s own insistence that customizing is important while also making it damn-near impossible to customize your character without dropping obscene hours into the game leads to an ultimately confusing experience.

The characters all seem to have unique start dialogue with each other, which is a pretty nice touch

Presentation

Mortal Kombat 11 is very much a Triple-A game. As far as the objective quality of the game’s presentation goes, everything looks great. The models are all intricately detailed, the backdrops interesting and its gore made abundant.

However, in its attempts to also be a Live Service, it takes many bites out of its own enjoyability as a fighting game. Silly “Dragon Challenges” cause constant pop-ups at the bottom of the screen telling you to do things like land five crouching kicks every few seconds, as well as constant score notifications on the left. Points tallies at the end of rounds, even in local splitscreen make hitting rematch take that much longer.

Due to the game’s focus on customizing things, the game loses out on a lot of basic appeal most fighting games have. Some characters’ win screens are flat-out boring, because they have several others to choose from but only if they can unlock it by spending time in other game modes.

While this may seem like a nitpick, remember: Mortal Kombat is a game all about its flash. No one does fatalities because they tell a deep and touching story, they do them because they shock and awe. So for MK11 to be anything less than that right out the box would be a serious blemish on the game’s track record.

When this fighting game is a fighting game, it’s a damn good fighting game.

  Gameplay

As a fighting game, Mortal Kombat 11 is great. Combos in this game are generally quite short, and the new feature of a separate offense and defense meter that recharge over time is really interesting. Rather than have supers, the game has certain special moves that you can enhance at the cost of one meter, dealing more damage.

However, a huge gripe I have with this game is its insistence on wasting the player’s time. In the actual fight, many animations are so focused on showing off how bloody and shocking it is that the animations feel pointlessly self-indulgent.

A good comparison to make would be 2016’s Doom, where the gory finishers were designed specifically not to interrupt the flow of combat. This game does that, but in a polar opposite kind of way. Kotal Kahn, for example, has a move that ends with him sawing through the opponent. However, the game bothers to painstakingly show him thrusting the blade in and out of the opponent for what in fighting game time feels like the pre-production phase of Anthem.

There’s also the problem with unlocking materials for your character. Many of them have specific modes you need to beat to unlock them, primarily the “Towers of Time”, which is an arcade ladder with “Konsumables” that add abilities. The problem with this is the game actively punishes you for not using Konsumables, giving you a lower score, and the only way to get more is by opening lootboxes. The opponents, meanwhile, always have the best Konsumables, making some fights nigh unwinnable as they cover half the stage in passively damaging lasers and knock you out of combos with invincible assists. Considering how much the game wants you to customize your fighters, it’s pretty obvious how much they’d want you to play this mode.

If you’re playing this game with local vs, make sure you have a separate profile with its own account for player 2. P2 cannot use any of your gear/loadouts for your character, so without forewarning prepare to feel very scummy if whoever’s playing P2 is stuck with the default loadouts while you have your customized character.

I used to have a problem with the customizable special moves in this game, but given more time I quite like them. The ability to remove certain moves that I wasn’t using with better moves or upgrades for unremovable core moves actually does help personalize the experience, and even AI games feel a little better as a result.

I could recommend this game to people just starting to get into fighting games just for its great tutorials and resources.

 Kontent Content:

Mortal Kombat 11 feels like some sort of weird reverse-logic justification for paid content in a sixty-dollar game. The game has plenty of unlockables, as well as features like Skip Challenge tokens for arcade ladders, none of which can be bought with real money.

The problem is that the game is very much designed for you to have these features, despite them all being completely random drops. If anything it feels like the game wanted to make them paid, had them built around that, then yoinked the paid option out of the game just so someone could write an article wishing they could pay to skip some of the utter nonsense this game pulls.

The game has plenty of modes, such as Story, Klassik Towers (Normal Arcade), Towers of Time (We talked about this earlier) and the Krypt. The story and basic Arcade ladders are relatively inoffensive in their offerings, and pretty much what you’d come to expect from a Mortal Kombat.

So mk11 has a "Minigame" That's just opening lootboxes with in-Game gold #PS4sharehttps://t.co/p7YhOFYlO1 pic.twitter.com/Bv4yknhv9X

— Wamirul @ [PULL MY DEVIL TRIGGER] (@Wamirul) April 25, 2019

The Krypt is the most offensive part of Mortal Kombat 11. It’s a pretend-adventure game in which you explore a huge area to spend your gold opening lootboxes.

Remember when I said Mortal Kombat feels like it constantly wastes your time? It’s never more blatant than with The Krypt, where it almost makes you wish for a generic lootbox screen. So much chaff is thrown into the lootboxes that it might actually be impossible to get anything you want. Things like concept art, crafting materials and konsumables are thrown into the pool too, making any attempt at making your character look cool turn into a wasted half-hour of getting an overworked artist’s hard work that they were underpaid for.

One thing from recent entries that I love in MK11 is its move list. All the moves, combos and even fatalities are easily accessible in the menu, with their frame data laid bare for all to see. Aside from letting more advanced players know how to plan their combos, this also opens the door to more casual players learning about the more in-depth aspects of fighting games, and I think that’s great.

Some of these end screens are a lot cooler than others, but most of them are almost blatant in how they’re meant to show off your customizable gear (in this case, Scorpion’s kunai and face mask are painfully in-view)

  Personal Enjoyment:

As said before, Mortal Kombat 11, at its core, is fun. The most fun I’ve had with this game has been just having people over and doing some best-of-threes and learning the characters. In a field test, the flashy animations and cool character designs have even won over my non-fighting-game siblings to get them to try it out.

The action-figure-esque design of the characters, the ridiculous gore of the Fatal Blow moves, they’re all fun. It’s a great party game to have, since even non-players can’t help but cheer when something ridiculous happens.

This end screen serves no purpose other than showing off Noob Saibot’s fanny pack.

Konklusion Conclusion

As said before, Mortal Kombat 11 is a great fighting game. It’s fun, relatively accessible and for most people, just flashy enough to get a crowd excited.

Yet the moment I leave local versus mode, I cannot think of anything else I enjoy in this game. Its obsession with being a live service ruins everything else in this game, especially when loading screens are enhanced by the need to connect to servers constantly. Not getting to simply buy the cool outfits for my wraith-ninja using any of the game’s multitude of currencies as I drown in konsumables and concept art really take a hit to this game’s fun, which is a shame because in the heat of a match, it’s great.

While some may argue it is commendable that they didn’t simply lock all the gear behind a paywall, I can’t say this is much better. I used to think that Dead or Alive’s progression system was mean with its costume shards, but at least I was guaranteed costumes for the characters I played. And even then, I unlocked everything in 3 days of casual play.

If I could, I’d give the actual Kombat vs the rest of the game separate scores. It’s a genuinely good fighting game buried under a pile of time-wasting chaff. It’s certainly a good party game, but I wouldn’t advise any kind of serious play with it.

Review copy provided by the publisher

Mortal Kombat 11- Review published first on https://touchgen.tumblr.com/