Tumgik
#tbh i might just start writing some random stuff from her pov to get to know her better and see where it goes
cuddl3s4shur1 · 1 year
Text
All I Do Is Think Of You
Hbcu Shuriri x Hbcu Fem
Authors Note:Bro I was not trying to make this story but I got a random burst of energy to write this might be the end of this series tbh
Summary: After remembering and finding everything that went down last night will you finally confess ?
Part 1
Warnings : Fluff
Taglist: @tuesdaylovesu(bae fR) @niaalove @lunax0654 @letitias-fav @writesbyriri @yvxmpire @2k7-sparkles @shuriislut @shuri-my-love @ziayamikaelson @saintswrld @atssukoo @randomhoex @womenlxver
ㅤㅤ✷ ࣭ ࣪ ˖ ☞ ࣭ ࣪ ᩠ ֗ ✦ ࣭ ࣪ ˖
Y/n's POV
You begin to get out of bed looking for your phone,purse all the stuff you could think of that you brought and that would help you figure out what happened last night. You find all the stuff you could find that was yours. You try to turn on your phone, great its dead. You charge your phone to a good 10%."Your order a Uber when you phone first turned on so you can head to your dorm.
You look around the place this was not there fucking dorm so where the fuck are you. You examine the place more and more to see it’s a hotel. You run to the hotel lobby Seeing your Uber was here.
You start to call Amani”I’ll be at the dorm soon I have,Ps I have to tell you something”. You hear Amani start to hum as a response . You end the call
You get in the Uber ,You scrolling on your phone trying to find videos and messages from last night . You find videos of you dancing on riri and shuri at one point .”Damn I ain’t know I was THAT drunk” you say chuckling .
When you make it to the campus you give the Uber a extra 5 “thank you “ They driver nods . You run to the entrance on the dorm campus and you scan your key card .
You take a elevator to your dorm and you you go to your dorm.You open the dorm door excited to tell Amani the tea.
Shuri’s Pov
I wake up feeling the sun glistening on my skin I start to pat the bed only to realize y/n wasn’t here. “She’s not here “ I say to myself. “ she probably left trying to figure out the tea .
I text her hoping she sees and responds.
Me:Hey I was wondering if you want to come out to this gala with me and riri
Secretly Mine💕👩🏾‍❤️‍💋‍👩🏾:Um I guess what should I where. .
Me:Anything tbh
Secretly Mine 💕👩🏾‍❤️‍💋‍👩🏾:What time
Me:9-12 I’ll pick you up at 8:30
Secretly Mine💕👩🏾‍❤️‍💋‍👩🏾:mhm
I overall forgot about the gala until my phone reminded me thank the lord . I already had my outfit planned out but riri on the other hand didn’t which means this whole day we where going to look for a outfit .
I get up from the bed and head to the bathroom ,This hotel was pretty damn nice. I brush my teeth and I start to hear moving around. Riri makes her way to bathroom “You know y/n left” she says in her morning voice.”I guess I didn’t hear her leave” I say spitting out my toothpaste. “Well as her later though I invited her to the gala since we can +2 “ I say getting some mouthwash . “Shii I don’t got a dress ,I’ll just ask Amani”riri says face palming . “I told you to go find a dress but noooo” I say having a eye roll.”First off don’t be a hater second I had stuff to do” riri says getting her toothpaste.”Oh I’m the hater because I told you to get dress woah “ I say being funny .
After brushing my teeth I decided to make breakfast after breakfast I was going to take a shower get dressed and head back to the Dorms . “You ready to go “ I ask making sure riri had all of her stuff . “Yeah I’m ready “ We make are way to the lobby and get in the Uber .
“Last night was something” I say looking at riri .”It was but it was good to see that side of y/n since we haven’t seen her like that in a while” I agree .”It’s something she said last night that’s been going through my mind “ I look at her confused on what she meant .”you know you and shuri are my crushes I avoid you guys cause I love you" riri says reciting y/n’s words .”That’s why she’s been acting weird it makes sense now “ I say putting it all together.
Hours Later
Y/n’s Pov
It was 5:30 getting close to the time shuri wanted to pic you up.She didn’t give you to much detail but told you to look good and you took that to heart.One thine about you was you could over dress sometimes.Amani left and went back her friends place . Which meant you where alone to listen to music and get dressed .
You connected your music to a speaker and starting getting hype.
Hoes come easy plays
“I give no fucks how’s come easyyy”You say taking a break from your make up. After the song ends you go back to doing your make up so you can have it done in time and not rush. You where doing a tan make up look with gems . It was going to match your dress perfectly :).
“Than ride it with my surf board surfboard surfboard “ You sing drunk in love by Beyoncé getting your materials for your hair . You check the time seeing that it was 6:30 you had to still do your hair and put on your dress. For your hair you decided to just have it flat ironed which wasn’t hard until you thought you could do the Pamela Anderson hair style .
By the time you got your hair to look right it was 7:30 which means you have to get in your dress . You already put on the jewelry you want to wear . You put on your dress and looked in the mirror . “Damn I look fine like who wouldn’t be in love with me “ you say smiling.
Tumblr media
(Outfit Idea you can wear whatever)
You go to your dresser to get your perfume . Coco Mademoiselle your favorite . “I smell good and look good it’s a 2 in 1” you say looking at your dress . You go in your closet to get you tan shrug . “One thing about me is I’m not going to be cold I could never “ you say taking to yourself.
You walk back to your bed and in the way you grab your heels . You sit on your bed putting on your heels. You hear a knock at the door it’s most likely shuri. Only problem you need to get your purse ready which was your phone charger and your make up fixer pen your card and yours keys . “One second” you yell putting all the stuff for your purse in your purse. You close your purse and walk to the door .
You unlock the door walk out closing it behind you. “Wow y/n you look … You look beautiful “ shuri says “thank you you look good also “ you say showing a smile . “Riri’s down stairs she wanted take pictures in the lobby “ shuri says as she starts to walk to the elevator. You follow shuri from behind and make your way to the elevator. You open you purse to get your phone to see your ex called .
You where not going to call her back because you knew it would be some bull shit.Than she called again all you could think was what does she want. You answer the call already annoyed .
“Yes Eliza”
“I saw you at the party last night and it got me thinking “
“About what”
“About us how good we where together how you where funny how you we would do fun dates”
“Ok so what I think about it sometimes to and I don’t call you so what is it really”
“I was thinking if you would like to go out tonight “
“Yeah no but if you really want to see me tonight turn on the tv and watch the annual gala “
“How would you have money to go to the gala “
“You mad you not going”
Shuri looks at you felt anger in her eyes.
“So you rather go to a gala than hang out with me”
“Do you here yourself right now ofc I would go to a gala than with you I will go anywhere than hang out with you”
“Lemme see the phone “ shuri mouths to you .You nod and give her the phone while putting it on speaker
“Are you jealous that she moved on to somebody else “ shuri asks Eliza .
“Give the phone back to y/n I wasn’t done talking to her”
“She’s done talking to you “ shuri says ending the phone Call.
The elevator doors open just in time.You walk out seeing riri taking pictures . “Hey ri” you say walking up to her . “You looking good” she says smirking .”Alright let’s go” shuri says making her way outside to a limo . You get in the limo and start to relax .
Once you made it to the gala you shuri and riri walked on the red carpet and did funny poses .Than you did i your own poses you did some iconic red carpet poses .
You walked into the gala you were going to sit down but stopped to get water . “May I get some water “ you ask the bartender. The bartender nods and hands you a water bottle. You walk to the table riri and shuri where sitting at. The gala was pretty boring it was talking science and fashion design.
After they talked about the science and fashion they played music .
Lost Without You-Robin Thicke
Started to play . You hummed the melody to the song . Your mothers loves this song and she always plays it . You damn near knew all the lyrics to the song.Even though you where all dolled up you where bored.You hear someone sit next to you.
"May I have this dance” You look up to see shuri offering you a hand . “Sure” You and shuri swayed and danced to the song .Riri was dancing with her friend lamar. You would sing the lyrics to shuri on and off. As the song ended you begin to sit back and down .
Shuri sits down and riri pulls a chair next to shuri. “As I listened to the lyrics of the song I realized something” riri says rubbing her hands together.”I am lost without you and shuri “ she says you look at her . “When you would ignore us it made me feel like the emotions I had towards you where wrong like we didn’t have tension like we weren’t flirting” shuri says backing up riri.”When I’m not with you I can’t hope but think what if I let her go what if I let the love of my life slip away “ Shuri’ says grabbing one of your hands .” And with that I want to love you not just me ,Me and riri want to love like we always have before but this time make it official “ Shuri says you look at her with love .
“I want to love you,I want to wake up knowing that I have you two by my side ,I love you and I always did” You say confessing your love to your crushes now your girlfriends.
Let’s just say that one slip up would be the best slip up
81 notes · View notes
corkisms · 2 years
Note
Dude I am super excited to read about Eldritch Duke and Eldritch Bain’s backstory!!
im soo mad i had such a comprehensive answer to this post and tumblr ATE IT so now i gotta rewrite the whole thing from memory. hell on earth :[
alright i CANNOT take credit for eldritch bain thats @des-paa-cee-toeee BABYY!!! eldritch duke came about on a whim before i knew abt despaa’s take on eldritch bain but it was soooo fun learning abt this bain and throwing ideas at the wall (discord dms) to see what stuck (exploded in the microwave). i cant speak to bain's origins bc im still learning them myself but ive got some eldritch duke facts down. readmore placed below to contain the brainspill ^_^ (and it really is one hell of a brainspill like it got way longer than i intended so sorry in advance😭)
right so dukes a university student in the late 60s/early 70s(?)
hes taking part in an archaeology project with one of his classmates in a forest near his uni (studying bone fragments, arrowheads, just collecting random samples) and keeping audio logs of the whole project
his classmate strays too far and messes around in a bunch of forestbeings' turf
the beings retaliate by possessing/driving the classmate mad
classmate offs duke via rock crimes (fly high babe) and duke gets to spend some time getting acquainted with the spirits in the trees
one of the forestbeings decides that that was kinda fucked up in hindsight and takes pity on duke, searing life and consciousness back into his broken body and resurrecting him from the mud as a nothuman trapped in a mostly mortal vessel (you work with what ya got)
this process might take a while but idk if itll make up the 20 yr gap in his lifespan yet (give that hes 20ish in the 70s and shows up in pd2 in 2017 as a 50 yr old and not a 70 yr old)
i just think hes neat!
tbh idk how i actually feel abt writing this duke au given that i think im also writing some other stuff rn but i looove gnawing on it when im spaced out during class its like my screensaver. i actually started a little smthg as a sort of taste-test for this au where its a police report on the case of duke's initial disappearance in the 70s, documenting the weird facts from an in-universe after-the-fact pov (i am such a sucker for dramatic irony its not funny) and working through the story in the form of aforementioned audio logs. pasting the scraps below
~
Friends initially report 20-year-old August Lindenhurst missing on August 18th, 1968.
Over summer break, Lindenhurst had been taking part in a month-long personal project proposed by 19-year-old Gillian 'Gill' Dorsey, both students at Dennington University. Classmates became concerned when the project's allotted time period ended and Lindenhurst had still not returned to campus. He and Dorsey were last seen entering the forest behind the main building (see map in addendum 2A) with bags one month prior. Investigators organized search teams, which found their equipment still intact in a makeshift bell tent approximately 1.8 miles from campus, and CSI later noted that the project seemed largely archaeological in nature. Around the same time the tent was discovered, a welfare check conducted on Dorsey's dorm discovered her partially decomposed body still in bed (Dorsey case filed separately, though it shares many unusual circumstances with this one).
CSI recovered a collection of microtapes from the tent in the forest, dated throughout the month as audio logs leading up to Lindenhurst's disappearance. Detective Greene was able to transcribe a majority of the logs’ content despite questionable integrity following recent storms. Following analysis of the tapes, the Lindenhurst case was changed from missing persons to homicide. Transcripts deemed relevant to the case are attached below (transcripts for the rest of the tapes available in addendum 2F).
~
and then the transcript of the first tape starts! from there the rest of the story plays out over multiple tapes as duke n his classmate (using gill dorsey as a placeholder name for no reason in particular) pick through tiny buried oddities over the course of about a month. all the while we see signs that theres Something In These Woods thrown in (discussing strange dreams in passing, unidentified voices heard on tape, odd changes in behavior seen in casual conversation, etc) leading up to the discovery of The Final Tape later on in the case, recorded on the day the project was supposed to end 
~
The original recorder was recovered in a clearing approx. 600 feet from the tent. Clear signs of a fight present in surroundings (see addendum 3A-3G). Blood at the scene matched with Lindenhurst. The recorder still contained the most recent (presumably final) microtape inside. Det. Greene reassigned for transcription.
~
and then we get into the nitty gritty of the day of the attack. the report basically concludes with “well that was fucked up” given that lindenhurst’s killer classmate is also dead under mysterious circumstances (found in bed with their mouth and lungs all full of dirt, more thoughts on that but this post is more than long enough rn) so theres kinda. no one to prosecute. the story itself ends with the whole case file being completely wiped by bain, revealing that we were just reading the report along with him the entire time as part of a background check on duke. hes troubled by the implications to say the least, like sorry man you found more than you bargained for in this funky crime grandpa!! the whole ‘coming back nothuman’ thing isnt super covered in this version of the story bc it is still just a police report and obvs cant have ALL the details but that does still happen
thoughts n suggestions n corrections welcome i love having thoughts and making words i love it to bloody pieces. i love kneading ideas in my brain like dough. also ty for reading this far mwah 😭 😭 😭
13 notes · View notes
shinylitwick94 · 3 years
Text
Shinylitwick's summer (SF/)Fantasy reads - Part I
As it turns out trying to complete the r/fantasy book bingo and not wanting to get into heavy reads this year meant that I spent most of my summer reading almost exclusively SFF, and I read a lot of it. I'm sharing my thoughts on these with anyone who might be interested in them. This covers books I read between july and the first week of september 2021. I'll be doing this in two parts because it would be too long otherwise.
As a reminder, these are personal thoughts, not professional reviews, so take everything I say with a grain of salt.
Without further ado:
Under Heaven, by Guy Gavriel Kay
By this point I think I can say pretty firmly I’m a fan of GGK. I just really enjoy his “alternate history with a dash of fantasy” stuff, and I like his writing and the fact that he’s so good at capturing that sort of bittersweet melancholy I’m a huge junkie for.
That being said, Under Heaven started off amazing, spent a lot of time in eh, and finished solid. I like it, but it’s my least favorite of his books so far. I think it essentially suffers from making promises it doesn’t deliver on. There’s a lot of stories which go nowhere, which I’m sometimes fine with, but I don’t think it worked here. Especially with the sister. I have very little familiarity with Chinese history, but from what I’ve read in other reviews, he stuck rather more closely to the history here than he usually does, which maybe limited his ability to maneuver his characters. Still, I would recommend it, if this is your style.
The Last Wish, by Andrzej Sapkowski
I’ve tried reading this before…in Russian. Don’t know why I thought that was a good idea (something about maybe a better translation?). Anyway, my Russian obviously wasn’t up to scratch and the books are polish anyway.
So, English translation it was. As many of you will know this is actually a short story collection, which is the first part of the Witcher book series. I’d already watched the tv show, and played a bit of the game, so some of the stories were new to me, and others weren’t.
I liked how the book highlighted the “twisted fairytale” aspect of some of these (e.g Snow White, Rumplestiltskin) – that didn’t really come across so well in the adaptations. I think altogether it was a fun and enjoyable read.
The Farthest Shore, by Ursula Le Guin (Book 3 in the Earthsea Cycle)
Ursula Le Guin made me cry again. I’ve been talking about Le Guin a lot recently, with a friend who’s read a lot of her nonfiction, but none of her fiction, while I’ve for the most part just read the fiction. She’s one of those authors who just seems to get it, and who knows how to use the genre to its full extent. Magic and dragons aren’t just a toy, but a tool to actually say something.
She does that across the board, of course, but Farthest Shore hit me harder than the other Earthsea books have, maybe because imho it’s the saddest so far. There’s a lot about death, acceptance, and time passing, and responsibility in this which I really liked. I feel like it manages to get its themes across in a way that is crystal clear, but not ham-fisted. I loved this book, I really did, but I feel like I will need to read it again in a few years, and I’m sure it will be a different read then.
One of many nice quotes:
“When I was young, I had to choose between the life of being and the life of doing. And I leapt at the latter like a trout to a fly. But each deed you do, each act, binds you to itself and to its consequences, and makes you act again and yet again. Then very seldom do you come upon a space, a time like this, between act and act, when you may stop and simply be. Or wonder who, after all, you are.”
The Black Company, by Glen Cook (Book 1 in the Chronicles of the Black Company)
This was sold to me as the granddaddy of grimdark fantasy, and I can certainly see it. It’s clearly influenced a lot of later fantasy authors (Erikson, Abercrombie, to some extent Martin). Yet somehow it manages to be less explicit, or graphic, than some modern grimdark. It can be pretty gross too, but it knows how to cut away when necessary and is usually smart about implying things. I also really liked the basic concept of following characters who work for the Dark Lord (or Dark Lady in this case). The characters themselves are interesting enough – in this first book we don’t go super in depth on a lot of them, but the ones we’re stuck with are decent, and the story holds. Still, I felt like this was more a worldbuilding book than a character book, if that makes sense. And I did like the world. It’s appropriately dark and petty and sucks, but hey that’s what we’re here for.
So overall, I enjoyed it and would recommend to anyone who is interested into the more grimdark side of fantasy. Stay away from it if that’s not your thing or you’re super squeamish.
(most of Tumblr dni I guess)
The Empress of Salt and Fortune, by Nghi Vo
This was a fun little read. I had no idea what to expect going in and I ended up enjoying it. The story follows a nonbinary monk as they go through the affairs of a deceased empress and in discussion with Rabbit, the said empress’s servant, learn her story. The story is mostly told by Rabbit and each section follows a particular object. I liked how that was set up and the way in which the whole picture was slowly revealed to the reader. It’s apparently been read as a feminist story and I can see where that reading comes from, and it was likely intentionally so. It wasn’t the most important part of this to me, but up to you to judge.
I will say though, and this is not the book’s fault, but mine, that reading a story where the POV character uses they/them pronouns was more confusing than I anticipated. I kept expecting there to be more of them at random points in the narrative, and having to backtrack to understand.
It’s a short nice read, but definitely something I feel more comfortable recommending to people here than irl.
Equal Rites, by Terry Pratchett (Discworld)
Not much to say here. Discworld is Discworld and can do no wrong, apparently. This might be one of my favorites so far. Loved Granny to pieces, it was fun, it was funny, it was thoughtful without being heavy. It’s the Discworld, what can you do.
The House in the Cerulean Sea, by T.J. Klune
This was pure tooth-rotting fluff, which I think I kind of needed to balance out my reading. It’s cute, it’s cheesy, it’s wholesome it owns it and is proud of it. It’s very LGBT friendly. It’s a good guys win, bad guys lose, discrimination dies today kind of thing.
I’m surprised it’s not bigger on Tumblr tbh (it’s not non-existent either, I checked, just smaller than expected; maybe it’s too nice?).
Anyway, I did like it, and I’m exaggerating just a little bit on the cheesiness. It’s a sweet little story about a character who would normally be played by Martin Freeman (if a bit chubbier) learning that there is more to life than Rules and Regulations and finding love and a family.
If that’s your sort of thing, give it a shot.
9 notes · View notes
thrillridesz · 4 years
Note
saw this and think it's real fun so could you pair your moots with a tbz member who they're most similar with in terms of personality?
hello! i’m sorry this is a little late but i finally found a bit of time to sit down answer this ^^ also please don’t be offended if i didn’t include you here, i just went with the names i thought of immediately when the tbz member comes to mind! ><
sangyeon - @moondustaeil
i’ve said this a lot of times and i’m going to say it again. of all my moots, amber is the closest in terms of personality wise to sangyeon! they both make people feel really safe around them and can always be depended on. they are also mature beyond their years and tbh amber just gives me sangyeon vibes...
jacob - @ihearttbz
riane is so sweet and kindhearted, just like jacob. they are both complete angels and they were they talk is just really soft and comforting somehow? i feel like they are both the ones to look out for everyone else before themselves and are people you would love to engage in 3am talks with and talk about anything at all.
younghoon - @jyeonvoir 
i know i said elsie gave me juyeon vibes and i dang near paired her with juyeon again here but at further thought, i thought she might be more like bbang instead. like younghoon, i think elsie can be rather reserved at first but when you start to talk to her, she’s actually really nice and easy to talk to. i’m not actually sure how to explain it but it’s a gut feeling for this one, somehow pairing her with juyeon on this one would feel wrong.
hyunjae - @bobagyu
these 2 people are so funny and their humour is so direct and similar that sometimes i wonder if i’m talking to hyunjae 2.0 but rose ver. the way rose talks and responds to things reminds me a lot of hyunjae. you guys know how hyunjae is always so straightforward and is known to speak his mind? that’s rose as well.
juyeon - @sankyeom
belle and juyeon are alike because i always saw them as the highly talented type but are also incredibly low key and humble about their own achievements. juyeon seems like the kind of guy to really be dedicated to his work, giving himself very high standards and idk why but that’s how i see belle as well. there’s also this softness to the both of them that kinda makes me want to give them a big hug.
kevin - @kpophours
anna is a perfect example of someone who knows when to be serious and when to play around, just like kevin. i feel like her advice is always pretty sound and what she says is what i can imagine kevin saying as well. we haven’t been talking lately but i rmb being so relaxed around her and even at our first convo, i didn’t feel awkward at all. 
chanhee - @tidalstorm
seeing amal’s tags on her posts always makes me think of chanhee for some reasons and just the way she talks too? like she’s sweet and friendly but internally i feel like there’s this sassiness that i normally would associate with chanhee. it’s like they have a soft aura but there’s a little bit of a kick to them as well!
changmin - @atbzkingdom + @fluffytbz
i know we always think of changmin as a very happy go lucky kinda guy ( bruh as im typing this he’s having a vlive LMAO ok by anyways ) and i feel like dee is like that but i think beneath that happy go lucky exterior, they’re both also very introspective people who are actually very mature in their thinking and very intellectual as well. they are people who know how to have fun and you think that that is all there is to them when it’s not the case.
rosie is a huge ball of fluff like changmin tbh!! they’re both so cute and adorable and i think that the way they talk is also quite similar? you know how changmin’s voice is always so upbeat even though he may just be talking in a very casual manner? yeah, i think that’s how i imagine rosie to sound like! honestly? mad changmin vibes from this girl
haknyeon - @mae-gi-writes
at first i wanted to say kevin but after a little bit more thinking, i’m going to say haknyeon. i feel like haknyeon and mae are the kind of ppl you’d turn to if you just want to be completely random and weird around bc you can trust them to act just the same around you. they are both the type of the people you’d love to be best buds with and when you hang around them, you never know what you’re gonna get because one moment they can be quiet, the next they can be the wildest and most boisterous ppl you meet.
hyunjoon - @aveluant1a + @thepixelelf
yu is basically hyunjoon and every bit as cool and chill and catlike as he is imo. she’s not someone of many words, like hyunjoon but when she does say stuff, it’s always very meaningful and well thought out. sometimes her perspective on stuff are from povs that i’ve never thought of exploring at all so talking to her always feel like im learning something new along the way and it’s just like how i think talking to hyunjoon would be like as a guy who had so much happen to him both good and bad.
idk if casey knows this but she’s one of the very first tbz writers that i followed and i’ve read her earliest works and i just rmbed being so awestruck by them? the artistry is actually unbelievable and when i read her stuff, i feel like i can detect this flair in her work that i like to associate with hyunjoon. like they’re both very committed to their work and have this individualistic, unique flair in them. they way she interacts with ppl is also very calm and logical, like hyunjoon which i admire as well! (p.s idk if you rmb but i think i once requested a juyeon drabble from you (#59) and it’s still one of my fav tbz works on tumblr EVER  )
sunwoo - @beomberry
didn't need to think twice lol for sunwoo lol, it’s def gonna be anie. they both care so much for the ppl around them and also put in a lot of effort in everything they do like have you seen anie’s works? the headers and the story... everything is so well executed and you can see how much effort she puts into them. but the biggest similarity is that they’re both not afraid to be themselves and i think that’s what i like so much about them.
eric - @chaoticdeobi + @sunkisseddwoo
yo the amount of energy bea has is freaking insane sometimes. it’s a sort of radiant energy that she exudes that makes you want to hang around with her and just befriend her. talking to bea always makes me so happy and i sometimes catch myself smiling as i’m texting her because that’s the kind of effect she’d have on other ppl! in that aspect, she's like eric imo bc i get the same feeling when im like watching crack tbz videos that feature eric ><
alesha, i would say resembles the softer side of eric. the more mellow but nonetheless cheery version of eric, if that makes sense? alesha is honestly a very lovely person and i think she really takes the time to build on her relationships with others, such as being there for others and making them feel valued much like how i think eric is like!
30 notes · View notes
sagemoderocklee · 4 years
Note
⭐the most recent chapter of taol with shadow!shikamaru⭐
ohhhhh thank you for asking about this chapter! this is definitely my favorite non-gaalee chapter! it was also the chapter that I was probably the most nervous about because of the direction I took Shikamaru in!
it’s been a while since i published that chapter, so i had to skim before i could really touch on the elements of it that I really wanted to talk about, so sorry this took so long to get to. again, not something i could really reply to in the midst of having my tits tattooed. and i was too tired last night after my appointment to reply to this cause i knew it was gonna be long.
anyways, director’s cut for chapter 11 of The Art of Love is below the cut:
so a quick breakdown of what happened in this chapter to refresh anyone’s memory:
This chapter was a Shikamaru PoV chapter, (and aside from Gaara and Lee, he’s actually one of my fave characters to write. It’s hard to rank who I love writing the most, tbh, but I really do love Shikamaru as a character and enjoying writing from his POV.)
With this chapter, things are really starting to progress in a very material way--we’ve got Shikamaru’s fake arrest, Chouji taking his place in Iron, Shikamaru’s team for a secret mission is formed, and his escape from Konoha takes place. He rendezvous with Team Eight and Sai, and they begin a long journey, posing as civilian travelers who’ve been impact by the outbreaks of violence throughout the last five years.
First they go to a town I made up for this fic, Kōten Outpost, where they uncover a small bit of information. Here, things take a drastic turn: Shikamaru makes a pact with Shadow Kami--a pact that hasn’t been made in hundreds of years, and the records of which are unclear and incomplete. This reveals something about the Nara clan otherwise unknown. They’re abilities to manipulate shadow comes not from chakra specifically, but from ancient pacts, magic that has since been forgotten by shinobi.
This pact poses a danger to Shikamaru, to his teammates, to the world, but he takes it on because he is more than determined to rescue Temari. He cannot possibly predict the consequences of the pact, but he knows it will give him unimaginable power. Power he definitely cannot control.
After this, they move northward, making their way out of Fire Country and into, first Steam Country (originally Hot Water Country), and then Crystal Country (originally Frost Country). Their goal is to make their way to Kumogakure in Lightning, but posing as civilians means traveling slowly. And Shikamaru is no longer in the best condition as he struggles against an unimaginable force that now lives within him.
The journey from town to town, and village to village takes months. They disguise themselves in numerous ways, and eventually they do make it into Lighting, a harrowing feat made possible by Shikamaru’s growing strength and understanding of the Shadow Kami.
The chapter ends here, after they’ve crossed the boarder into Lightning.
So, brief(ish) recap.
I think the main things I’d really love to talk about are Shikamaru’s pact with the Shadow Kami, the team he put together, Hinata’s role, some of the minor worldbuilding that went into this chapter, and his relationship to Temari. Which is obviously a lot to talk about lol but i really love this chapter.
So, to start with, I wanna talk about the less in depth stuff, which would be the team he put together and Hinata specifically.
I think it’s obvious that Team Eight and Sai were the best choices for this incredibly covert operation. Sai with his experience in ROOT and Team Eight as a team of trackers were the best candidates, even though Team Eight doesn’t necessarily specialize in undercover work. My thinking is that every shinobi has to have at least a basic grasp (cough except Lee) of undercover work and disguise. We obviously don’t get a lot of that in the series proper, but the series sort of takes the fact that these characters are ninja as more of a loose concept. ANBU and ROOT are really the closest to actual ninja, I’d say. Whereas Genin, Chuunin, and Jounin are more like your standard military personnel, I guess.
But that all being said, I don’t think you could really have someone be a successful Chuunin or Jounin without some experience and skill in these areas. I mean, as we saw in the first Chuunin exams, one of their tests was literally intelligence gathering without getting caught.
The team itself is large, but I didn’t want to skip out on using any of these characters, because each of them offered something vital to the team, and I don’t think Shikamaru would want to risk not using all the skills available to him that Team Eight and Sai offer. Sai’s obviously the best and most likely to fit into this role, and I think Shino is also well suited to this kind of work, but Kiba and Hinata are a little harder to place here. Kiba because he’s rather brash, and Hinata because she’s so... meek and bland. But Kiba is honestly easier to justify than Hinata from the off.
Hinata is always the character I struggle with the most because she doesn’t really offer us much in the canon. I’m sure someone will tell me I’m wrong or whatever, but Hinata exists specifically as a vehicle for male fantasy fulfillment. She’s fan service. Big tits, sweet, meek, totally devoted to the hero. Her arc revolves around Naruto, she exits to prop him up.
And that was a big reason why I wasn’t going to avoid writing her into TAoL. I couldn’t. I needed to address the issue of her relationship to Naruto, for starters, and I wanted to give her the chance to grow. I like her more when I separate her from Naruto--whether that’s presenting their obviously imbalanced relationship as detrimental to her and thus something she needs to finally let go of, or just not having her interact with him at all (like in Kado).
Shikamaru wondered if Naruto would even care that Hinata's acceptance of this mission was her way of breaking up with him.
I wanted to make it absolutely clear that this was the end of her relationship with Naruto and the start of her becoming her own person. We don’t get her PoV in this story because she’s not a central character in the grand scheme of things, but she has her own journey, and that revolves largely around her being a more competent shinobi and defining herself separate from Naruto. She’s faked an illness without telling him and he never went to see her--their relationship is over, and Hinata can finally move on.
And she starts to come into her own within this journey. She’s not in Konoha anymore. She doesn’t have her father to contend with or her sister or Neji’s death. And she doesn’t have constant reminders of Naruto (except when Kiba’s being an ass). Writing her as a more confident shinobi is... difficult to say the least. I personally don’t think she’s actually suited to shinobi work (politics, sure, but not actual combat), so even though I’m writing her as a more competent shinobi, it was very hard for me to suspend my belief for that. But that’s always been my problem with Hinata, and I kinda had to push myself past that hurdle of “is this recognizably Hinata?” because 1) she isn’t the central figure and 2) I need her to not be too much like Hinata because otherwise their cover is blown. So I can accept that she might come across as a lil OC. She’s undercover anyways, so she’s not gonna act like herself. And again, I want her to be more interesting and more dynamic than she is canonically.
But it definitely was a struggle.
Setting aside the issue of Hinata, I think the most fun I have when writing Naruto fics is really the worldbuilding aspects. For TAoL, I have like countless reference books and my kanji dictionary is always on hand. You can bet that any original towns and characters, I spent a lot of time scouring my kanji dictionary for a good name. Even if the name is fairly innocuous in meaning, I didn’t just pick it at random.
So for instance, Kōten Outpost uses kanji 995 in my kanji dictionary which mens ‘take a turn for the better’. Kōten is at a four way crossroad, and it’s specifically a place for travelers, merchants, etc.
Kōten Outpost was a quaint, sprawling town at a four-way cross-roads and the oldest settlement in Fire.
Long before Konoha or the rule of shinobi, before the daimyo, before the Warring States era, Kōten Outpost had sat like a picturesque painting. In the midst of wars and battles, in the midst of political upheaval and petty squabbles over boarders, Kōten Outpost had withstood the test of time for long centuries and would most likely continue on well after the age of shinobi.
Obviously, if you’re reading TAoL or just about any canon setting fic I write, you know I like worldbuilding. Kōten is a small piece of worldbuilding, whereas Gyokukakushin is a much larger piece, but Kōten still has it’s place within setting the stage and developing the world of Naruto. I really liked coming up with all the different towns in Fire that were affected by the skirmishes, and I really enjoyed imagining what the towns not run by shinobi would be like. What the people are like, what their culture is like, how they feel about shinobi. I think Kōten is a good example of a snapshot of worldbuilding--not a lot of depth per say, but enough that you get the sense of what it’s like.
With this chapter, however, the focus isn’t on the places and the culture of those places, so it really is just snapshots of places. Yugakure, Shimogakure, Kōten Outpost... This chapter is about the desperate hunt for information and doing whatever it takes.
That being said, the worldbuilding element comes into play again in a big way with Shikamaru and the Shadow Kami.
Admittedly, this was not in my original outline of this fic at all. It was something I came up with in the midst of writing this chapter, and it did make me kinda nervous to take this mystical route with Shikamaru given that nothing in the canon supports it. But then again, nothing in the canon supported aliens, and yet we have canonical aliens. \
Anyways, I felt that, despite my anxiety over the reception, Shikamaru was at least suited to this because I think it’s much easier to pull off mysticism with something like shadows. Plus, we don’t have a lot of canonical backstory for most of the clans, and I enjoyed bringing something new into the canon history, something wholly different.
Precautions had been noted in the scroll for this ritual, warnings from the first ones to perform it of the dangers it posed; his ancestors reaching from beyond the past to guide him through a long forgotten practice: Never look upon the Summoned, for they are more than mere shadow. Never show weakness to the Summoned, for they do not borrow hearts and souls, and will not show you any compassion. Never appear before the Summoned without an offering, for they are bottomless voids and will take you if you have nothing to give.
I really wanted to emphasize that the Shadow Kami do not follow human laws and are entities outside of human conception. There’s a lot more planned for Shikamaru and the consequences of what he does here are far reaching. I don’t want to spoil anything, but I can promise that what Shikamaru’s done doesn’t end at the end of this fic. This isn’t a one time deal, like “oh you can use our power for a little while and then we’ll slip away and you can be a normal shinobi again.”
Shikamaru has unleashed something that will live within him forever. And it will pass on to future generations (assuming he has children at any point.) He, of course, knew the risks, but Temari is everything to him, so what’s being a vessel for Shadow Kami if it means having the power to save the woman he loves?
I wasn’t entirely sure how successful I was in conveying these consequences and I really worried over how OP Shikamaru would be, but the questions I always ask myself are:
1. Is this errand? 2. Are there consequences?
And the answer to both of those questions are yes, in this case.
Shikamaru is a genius, and he’s in line to be the head of the Nara clan. He has access to the scrolls that contain these guarded secrets, and he absolutely doesn’t care about the consequences even though he knows there will be heavy ones.
While yes, at this point, Shikamaru has essentially achieved god-like powers, he cannot control them, and he is always going to run the risk of losing himself completely to the shadows. Shadows aren’t human. They don’t have human rules. They don’t have human wants. And the Shadow Kami, like I said, are bottomless voids. They take and take. Shikamaru has to rely on his own willpower to not be lost.
I imagine that the next Shikamaru chapter will explore more of the Shadow Kami history and the Nara clan history, but I think overall, the introduction to the Shadow Kami was good. It’s a hard balance though for sure because on the one hand, the Shadow Kami are a HUGE plot element that needs to be explored and talked about, but I also don’t want to take away from the immediacy of what’s happening in the overall story--the danger that Temari is in, which is always at the forefront of Shikamaru’s mind.
Which brings us to his relationship with Temari.
She’s his motivating factor in all of this. He does care deeply for Kankurou and Gaara as well, but Temari is the love of his life. That’s his everything. I personally am not a fan of maintaining Shikamaru as this like misogynistic person. He was twelve at the start of the series, and I think it’s safe to say he outgrows that, and also his desire not to get married. I think he genuinely values Temari--as a person and as a shinobi. She’s his equal and his partner.
And I think she’s sort of the great equalizer between him and the Shadow Kami:
Shikamaru's resolve hardened. He wasn't shadow, he wasn't just an empty void for them to fill. He might have given up his body and his humanity to them, but he would never give up his love. He sat back down, and forced the shadows to recede from his veins.
I personally feel like Shikamaru as this sort of embodiment of the lazy genius, this very blase and carefree “i wanna look at the clouds” character has a lot of potential to fail and become uninteresting. I think Temari makes him more interesting because she challenges him, and I think that the focus on their relationship really helps to highlight the pull of the shadows. Now he’s in this constant dance between giving himself over completely, and not forgetting Temari.
The antler that comes up repeatedly throughout this chapter is a symbolic link to Temari.
The antler ring tethered him; it was a blinding light to chase away the darkness; a necessary reminder of who he was and what mattered to him.
I think by the end of the chapter it’s fairly obvious what this is meant to be: an engagement ring.
I decided that it was a Nara tradition to make a ring out of antler, and Shikamaru carries this with him, making the ring when he has downtime on the mission. It’s not just a symbolic link to Temari to help him stay grounded, it’s also his assurance that he won’t let her die.
The repetition of the ring as an item on his person is inspired by a creative writing assignment I had back in college. There’s a story called The Things They Carried, and it kinda reminds me of being in theatre and having object work for a character you play. But the idea is that the things a character carries tells you a lot about them. It’s a window into someone’s soul, a way of communicating something about them without outright telling you about them.
So Shikamaru carries this piece of antler, that starts out as nothing more than a piece of antler and slowly turns into a ring, because he’s lost any and all reservations about marriage in the face of losing Temari. His love for her drives him onward, and his love for her is why he can’t fail. The ring is his refusal to fail.
I think that the ring is one of my favorite elements in this chapter. It’s obviously very subtle and small compared to like the Shadow Kami, but it’s such a desperate and beautiful element of romance. The image of Shikamaru awake late into the night, whittling down the antler until it becomes a ring, his promise to Temari whispered into the night. I think that’s powerful, and I think the ring really does highlight that in a way that not even the pact he made does.
And.... that’s I think the main stuff I wanted to talk about!
This particular chapter was actually supposed to cover their time in Kumo, but the chapter itself had gotten so long at that point that it didn’t make sense to keep going. Plus, the way this fic is planned out, it made sense to move everything that will happen in Kumo to a later Shikamaru chapter.
Thank you so much for this ask! It was fun to talk about this chapter! <3
13 notes · View notes
rynhaswritersblock · 4 years
Text
tiktok famous (hc) - part three | p.p.
summary: you and peter doing various tiktok trends. y'all know the deal
warnings: ultra chaotic writing (i have nine other drafts forgive me i am a tad bit stressed), cussing as always, and HOPEFULLY GOOD WRITING??? oh and yes as always peter being Babey
Tumblr media
+ + +
- HI!!!!!! BACK AT IT AGAIN WITH THE TIKTOK HCS!!!!!!!
- i got a few requests/ideas from y'all for more tiktoks so here we are
- tbh since so many new trends are constantly coming out i might just make this a whole ass SERIES but we'll see
- who knows if i can even handle that
- btw:: if i forgot one or there's one you really want me to write you can comment it and i'll try to add it to this!!! if it's too long since posted though i'll add it to my drafts <3
- OKAY TIME FOR CHAOTIC ENERGY
- as mentioned in past versions of this series
- tiktok dances are ADDICTIVE!!!
- and you literally broke a goddamn sweat learning supalonely but we're NOT GONNA TALK ABOUT IT
- and you and peter are hanging out one day
- and as all of these ideas happen
- you get ~inspired~ by the for you page
- you set up the camera, flipping it so that it's facing peter and not you
- the lil shit hasn't even noticed that you got up yet what a poop
- but as soon as the music starts playing he raises his head
- you're doing the supalonely dance like a fucking BOSS
- all while pretending to be looking at yourself in the camera
- you don't let yourself stare at the screen so you don't get distracted
- but
- of course
- peter is nodding his beat to the beat, clapping for you, and when you to the body roll thing on "drinking" he lets out a whoop that makes you wheeze
- when you finish you laugh, letting out a sigh and grabbing your phone
"not gonna lie, you ate that."
"i know."
- you sit back down next to him, heart rate in da Clouds, and start watching the video
- petey boi is just sitting there like a puppy, crooked smile on his face as he watches you
- in a few parts he's even doing the dance with you
- and he looks so in awe
- you can't stop watching it and smiling at the screen
- but then the fucker sits down next to you and is like "you should post that it was really good"
- so you show him it
- his face gets all red bc he's babey
"you were videoing me??"
- OKAY NEXT ONE
- so i think we all know the rosa videos
- for the b99 fans: rosa rosa rosaaaaaaaaaaaa
- she's a QUEEN
- and you constantly quote those things like
- every time there's a silent moment you're just like "you're fucking lying let me see" and the whole team (avengers squad) is like ayo stfu
- one day y'all are just hanging in the commons of headquarters
- we're getting the band back together!
- and you start videoing cause you're bored
- you point the camera at peter
"aye dude come here?"
- everybody groans and peter gives the camera a sassy look, tilting his head
"you're gay? i fuckin-"
"language," steve mutters
"-knew it dude!" you smile, zooming in on the camera
- peter gets a confused look on his face
"wait no i'm bi"
- tony effin SHOOTS UP
- sitting like there's a goddamn board in his back
- and he slowly turns his head in your direction
- eyebrow raised
- you bust out laughing and so does everyone else, including peter
- tony's looking around like "hey what the FUCK is HAPPENING"
"stark, you didn't know?"
"NO??"
- lol we stan bi peter parker
- aight BACK TO THE SHITS AND GIGGLES
- so you and peter are obsessed with that quirky tiktok bartender girl who makes all the drinks
- i forgot her name but she's like
we're gonna do 2 ounces so that's 1, 2, 3, 4! we're gonna give it a nice strain! andddd shake shake shake shake! fun, right?
- yk what i mean
- hi it's editing ryn it's her tiktok is like paradise bartender
- and so one day
- jk one NIGHT
- it's like 2 am
- and you and peter are like
- let's make lemonade. but like. Fake Alcohol Version Because We're Underage
- and so y'all run to the kitchen
- you almost crush and die from slipping on your socks
- the two of you and laughing and giggling as you run and around and get all your materials
"where is the fucking STRAINER"
"bitch idk help me find the lemon flavor packets"
- it takes FAR too long but y'all are finally ready
- you start recording and the two of you are already laughing
"hey guys so today-"
"TODAY" he pushes you to the side "we're gonna be making LEMONADE!"
- the two of you keep laughing as you shove each other trying to be the one in charge
- so basically
- peter gets water all over the counter
- some of the ice flies out when you shake it
- the strainer DOESN'T WORK AND ALL THE STUFF GETS EVERYWHERE
- and the small amount that lands in the cup tastes like whispering lemon
- like hella watered down there's like nothing there
- the lemon is SHY
- and then in the last 10 seconds of the video bucky walks in
- and he's like wtf... wait y'all are making lemonade??
- and the three of you end up making lemonade for real and drinking it while watching infomercials
- at two in the morning
- fun, right?
- those videos are so satisfying NEXT TIKTOK
- thank u ritxal for the idea !!
- so our boi PETE HERE
- is hella addicted to those cool pov videos
- and he gets a really good idea even though it would make him a SIMP
- he ends up deciding FUCK IT I'M MAKING ONE
- MY TIKTOK ACCOUNT IS PRIVATE ANYWAYS
- so he sets up his phone and jumps around to get ~~in the zone~~
- feeling stupid as hell
- he films one of those ones where it's the "from the other side" *noise!!!!!!!!* one's yk where the ppl are like "are you sure you want to __?" and it has the yes and no buttons
- you know
- i hope
- and he puts the text on it and shrugs, posting it
- meanwhile you're home and you get the notification that peter posted a tiktok
- obviously you click on it because
- uh
- because
- and you watch it and gasp because the caption says pov and ur like who tf is this man peter never posts povs
- you watch as peter is looking nervously at the camera and text pops up saying "are you sure you want to give up?"
- he presses yes and you're like oh god oh peter wait is this a sign shit FUCK
- a new text bubble pops up saying "do you want to see her?" and you fucking yeLP
- you're like holy FUCK WAIT WHO IS HER???? WIFE???? DAUGHTER?????? HUH!!!!!!!
- and then he presses yes
- and the screen goes black
- you see urself in the screen
- and you basically DIE
- a wheeze so hard that it hurts flies out of your mouth and you IMMEDIATELY PRESS DUET
- you start filming with your phone facing the ceiling and as the beat drops (or whatever when it's like ahhhh!) you pop onto the screen, smiling
- and you're like RANDOM CONFIDENCE BOOST WHATEVER POST
- and then BACK TO PETER'S PLACE
- HE GETS THE NOTIFICATION AND IS LIKE WHAT
- AND WHEN HE SEES YOU POP ONTO THE SCREEN HE'S LIKE HOLY FUCK
- AND SO HE FACETIMES YOU
- YOU ANSWER OBVI
"y/n what the hell"
"did you like it?"
"maybe"
- okay i wanna do another pov one so here we go
- i'm sure everyone here is acquainted with the "they call me tiago.. i don't know who's margo" ones
-  these are lowkey difficult to write out so i'm just gonna lay it out for you as best i can
- really trying here
- so peter posts the boy's voice part ("no no no... they call me tiago. i don't know who's margo? i just hit this lotto" etc etc etc)
- and when it's like idk who's margo he just holds a stare with the camera in like an InTiMiDaTiNg way
- even though he's babey and a literal puppy it actually like.. works
- and when you see it you're like yes so you post the other part (that people never do lol "her name is margo" etc all the female voicing)
- and you hold the stare too and EVEN LIKE RAISE YOUR EYEBROW SUGGESTIVELY AND GIVE HIM THE LOOK IYKYK
- so BASICALLY
- i'm really trying here i can visualize these tiktoks perfectly but GOD if i don't struggle a bit while writing them
PETER'S CAPTION: pov: we're rivals on separate missions but you keep screwing with my plans so i try to intimidate you
Y/N'S CAPTION: pov: we're rivals on separate missions but i found you cute so i decide to mess around with your mission
- OH BY THE WAY THE TWO OF YOU LIVE AT AVENGERS HEADQUARTERS AND HE POSTED "YESTERDAY" SO YOU DECIDE TO POST "TODAY" AND WALK OUT OF YOUR ROOM TO WHERE HE WAS IN THE COMMONS RIGHT AFTER YOU POSTED
- can y'all tell how messy my brain is holy shit
- pls forgive me i keep getting random ideas but IT ADDS TO THE CHAOS SO IT'S FINE RIGHT
- OKAY
- BACK AGAIN
- so you post and walk out and as you turn the corner to the commons you can hear the sound play and have to stop a moment to silently scream
- thankfully no one else was in there except for peter (whose back was to you) otherwise you woulda looked INSANE
- you walk up behind him and smile as he laughs slightly and watches it another time, pulling his phone closer to his face to read the caption
"holy shit," he mutters
- he closes his eyes and smiles and tilts his head back, resting it on the back of the couch (🥺)
"you like it?"
- lol
- this kid SHOOTS UP
- HELLO
"oh my god, y/n, what are you doing"
"coming to hang out with you??"
- he sighs as you come and plop down next to him
"what the hell is this"
- he shows you his phone
"a tiktok"
- he smiles and shakes his head (doing that thing where you like look down while doing it and it's so CUTE)
"yeah. i got that."
- NEXT TIKTOK
- alright guess the scenario
- just fucking guess
- i'll wait
- ...
- you'd best BELIEVE that y'all are chilling at headquarters in the commons rn
- where da HELL ELSE
- and
- like LITERALLY EVERY OTHER TIKTOK THAT I WRITE OUT IN THESE
- YOU AND PETE BE CHILLIN
- AND YOU SET UP YOUR PHONE
- god i'm starting to question if i'm capable of writing literally anything else damn
- peter's in the background of course
- and it's this godforsaken audio i'm sure most of you have heard
- you know the one where it's like fast music and then it goes "mm, yeah" and it's usually accompanied with a video of some really pretty girl fake moaning and like rolling her eyes while pushing up her hair??
- well
- all of that
- everything i just said
- is exactly what you do
- and the thing is
- as soon as peter hears the audio he recognizes it
- are we gonna talk about the fact that peter probably spent at least a whole night watching those videos because 1) girls are really pretty and 2) every time he heard it he could vividly imagine you doing it??????? no??? okay
- so he like
- sits up
- does the thing where he rests his forearms on his knees and leans forward, glaring at you through the camera
- and in the background
- if you're paying attention
- peter FLIPS HIS SHIT WHEN YOU DO THE "MM YEAH" PART
- he tHROWS HIS ARMS IN THE AIR LIKE WHAT THE HELL DUDE I THOUGHT I GAVE YOU SIGNS THAT EVEN THOUGH WE'RE NOT A COUPLE AND WE BOTH KNOW YOU LIVE YOUR LIFE OUT OF SPITE,, DOING SOMETHING LIKE THAT ON VIDEO IS ABSOLUTELY OFF LIMITS!!!!!!!
"Y/N!"
- it's still recording and you turn around and laugh, throwing your head back as he jumps up and grabs you by the waist, pulling you in
- the two of you start play fighting just like elio and oliver from cmbyn (but a bit less steamy yk?? more innocent yet still w a bit of tension yeye)
- needless to say you keep that video in a very special place of your heart
- and so does peter like once the two of you stop wrestling you realize that the video had just been looping behind the sound of your laughter and fighting y'all watch it and it loops a few times while the two of you are silent and he finally goes "can you uh. can you send that. to me. ???????"
- next oneeeeeeeeeeeeee
- thank u lilmissquackson for the idea <3
- so in this one you and petey are dating
- and y'all decide to do the put a finger down challenge lol
- but instead of using an audio y'all decide to switch off coming up with ones on the spot
"put a finger down if your boyfriend tackles you every time you're standing near a couch or bed"
"put a finger down if your girlfriend still calls you dude"
"put a finger down if your boyfriend once webbed you to the wall because you wouldn't stand still when he was trying to kiss you"
"put a finger down if your girlfriend used her telepathic powers to keep you out of her room when she was mad at you"
"put a finger down if your boyfriend took TWO YEARS TO ASK YOU OUT"
"put a finger down if your girlfriend started laughing after you told her you liked her"
"put a finger down if you only started laughing because it TOOK YOU LONG ENOUGH"
"put a finger down if your girlfriend showed no signs of liking you before you decided to ask her out"
"put a finger down if your boyfriend is the most oblivious boy in the world"
"put a finger down if you're in love with your girlfriend but haven't said 'i love you' yet because you're scared she won't say it back"
- your jaw drops and turn to him
- needless to say you were very glad to have caught your first "i love you"s on camera
- SIDE NOTE you did not post cause after you and peter watched the video back y'all were both like "we don't wanna be THOSE bitches"
- next one woop
- thank u MrsLillianAmbrose for the idea !!
- okay buds
- so here's the thing
- i hate to under-perform
- but i feel like the best way to get the full effect of this tiktok is to watch it and then just roll with me here
- SOOOOO (if u can)
1) open tiktok 2) search @_tharealjohnnyyy_ 3) go to his account (or it might just show up when you search) 4) and scroll to the "ways to cuddle" video 5) it was posted in february 2020 if that helps give u a time reference lol
- OKAY
- I HOPE Y'ALL GOT TO WATCH IT
- I TRIED JUST PUTTING IT IN HERE BUT WATTPAD WOULDN'T LET ME AND I COULDN'T FIND IT ON YOUTUBE (let me know if one of u does!!!)
- if u weren't able to watch it (i'm so sorry) i'm gonna do the best i can to at least make this entertaining
- WOOP
- so if you could see the tiktok that's really all this is
- you and peter doing literally the same thing
- y'all are giggling in between positions and peter struggles to set the camera up every time it falls
- he ends up just webbing it to the ceiling
- and in the end the two of you fall asleep in the reverse OG position with your fingers playing with his hair 🥰🥰
- i hope that was good enough im sorry AH
- next!!
- thank u Mendesmycam for the idea <33
- okay so y'all know that sound
SOMETHING ABOUT YA GORLL
REALLY MAKES MY HEADDDD WANNA TWIRLLLLLLLLLL
- or whatever the lyrics are
- those tiktoks are SO FUNNY
- AND YOU DECIDE TO COPY THEM
- so you grab a chair and sit peter down in the middle of the room and set the camera up
- luckily for you he has a bag of cheez-its in hand that you plan to utilize later
- babey has a confused look on his face as he watches you press play and he shoves some more cheez-its in his mouth
- the music starts playing and you just about bust out laughing as you walk all around him, running your hand across his chest
- his heart is racing he's like AYO WHAT THE FUCK IS GOIN ON
"y/n what the hell are you-"
SOMETHING ABOUT YOU GIRL
- you practically snap into a weird position
- ur freaking arms are out in front of you and you're on your toes and knees are bent and you're hunched over and it's like
- a very interesting pose
- peter BUSTS OUT LAUGHING
- his eyes are all crinkly as he bends over in the chair
- you just about break but you manage to keep a straight face as you start dancing around weirdly
- needless to say you look like a goddamn CONTORTIONIST
- peter can't stop wheezing
- you make one of your hands in the shape of like the italian man hand this iykyk and fucking SWAN DIVE YOUR FINGERS INTO HIS CHEEZ-IT BAG
- meanwhile peter's STILL DYING
- and you take the cheezits and lean back, sprinkling them all over you (like the popcorn one if you saw that tiktok lmao)
- and the video finally ends and you get to laugh
"y/n what the hell was that"
"i don't know i thought you might enjoy a little entertainment"
- and of course
- that's exactly when no other than SAM WILSON fucking strolls in
- hey how y'all doin'- AHHH (get yo fucking dog bitch! ~it don't bite~ YES IT DO GET YO-)
- sorry got distracted
- and he hears you and his head SPINS ON OVER TO Y'ALL'S DIRECTION
"a little what now?"
- AIGHT GUYS
- LAST ONE
- Y'ALL ARE AT HEADQUARTERS CAUSE WHERE DA HECK ELSE
- this time you're in peter's room though
- and i'd like to imagine this one with the cool led lights because 1) tiktok and 2) i feel like peter would have those in his room
- y'all are just chilling watching hot rod (GREAT MOVIE BTW)
- and
- peter sets up the camera
- not to mention his heart is RACING RN CAUSE HE'S A NERVOUS BEAN
- and he hits record and leans back, letting out a sigh
- you don't even notice his phone literally right there cause you're just enjoying the movie
- a few seconds into the video and petey is like Visibly Freaking Out
- but a funny part plays and you laugh, looking over at him to see if he found it funny too
- he notices you're turning your head so he's like YES I LOOK AT TV HOT ROD MOVIE I AM LOOKING THAT WAY AND WASN'T STARING AT YOU OR THE CAMERA YES THIS IS A FUNNY PART I AM LAUGHING
- and then you look away
- and then he looks at you
- and ever so lightly grabs you by the chin
- and pulls you to him and plants his lips on yours
- finally, dumbass
+ + +
huzzah
i hope u guys enjoyed !!!!!!! ヽ(✿゚▽゚)ノ
7 notes · View notes
hailqiqi · 5 years
Text
2019 Fic Round-Up
Writer buddies, let’s do this (as in, if you haven’t yet, do yours too!)
Stats:
(I’m going with a random quote from each one because I’m a fan of long summaries.)
Fics Posted (Gen): 3
A Little Taste of What Should Have Been
And that was how Pidge found herself kneeling sideways on the couch, face inches away from Lance’s shoulder as he disinfected first two sewing needles and then the earrings with a professional air.
Wriggle, Jiggle, Bake!
“Okay, so you’ve been magically de-aged — because apparently that’s a thing. Why is that a thing? Whatever. Of course it’s a thing out here."
Here
“Don’t make it weird, Lance,” she huffed, already tugging him into the room and closing the door behind them. “C’mon. I’ll help you wash all that off.”
Fics Posted (Plance Oneshots): 7
2 x 100 word drabbles
(Domestic Fantasy & Kabedon)
The Advantages of Being Small
“I couldn’t help it! It was just too tempting!”
Untangle to Wait, Unravel to See
Of course a fortune teller would appear as soon as he started talking about one. They were on a magical world with magical aliens and Lance was like, the hero of the story, so it made sense that events would be tied to his dialogue. Most importantly, it was not creepy at all, and anyone who said Lance was creeped out could go suck it.
the world is out there, my dear, but we're in here
Pidge froze. The reaction was so subtle that Lance would have missed it if he hadn't been watching for it -- she relaxed herself almost immediately, eyebrows raised in casual challenge -- but she'd reacted, all the same.
so it turns out I kinda missed you
Grumbling, Lance crossed his arms and sunk back into his seat. “I could’ve come to get her on my own, you know.” “Yeah, but then you wouldn’t be able to make out in the back seat on the way home.”
The Stars Aren't the Same for You and I
Dancing with Pidge was fun.
Fics Posted (Plance Chaptered): 2 (1.5?)
Skirting Katabasis
"So... Do you think you could put it back together?" Pidge tilted the tablet towards her and looked at him hard. His expression was hesitant, but his eyes were soft...almost pleading. She smirked. "Who do you think I am, Keith?”
The Future in Snippets (Chapters 3-5)
In truth, she had no idea what was fine. Her brain had switched off several heartbeats ago, but she couldn’t really find it in herself to care.
Fics Posted (Plance Collabs): 2
Smack, Kiss, Fall in Love (even chapters)
The prince doesn’t ignore the princess for the nerdy sidekick. Even if that sidekick was a badass fighter who’d saved his life countless times. Or a genius who constantly left his head spinning. Or totally into the same video games that defined Lance’s childhood, and the owner of a smile so blinding it made the stars look dim.
(shoutout to @sp4c3-0ddity​, my co-conspirator who made Pidge’s star so bright!)
It's Beginning to Look a Lot like A Christmas Carol  (Prologue & Chap 1)
“An intervention?” “Sure. Have you ever seen A Christmas Carol?” His mind freezes. “You mean the Dickens book?” “Uh…” Keith’s dad trails off, blinking. “No, the movie. With the little green man? I think they made a version with the grouchy duck, too.”
(shoutout to the awesome @rueitae​ and @sp4c3-0ddity​ who brought both the crack and the tears essential items for any Christmas party all we’re missing is the food fight and divorce)
Total Fics Posted: 14
Oooh wow. That’s more than one a month!
 Ship/Character Breakdown:
Ship Breakdown: Plance, with over 75%
[colleen image]
Character Breakdown: Pidge and Lance are in 100% of my fics. Hunk is next in 5 (with 1 POV!), then Keith and Allura both get 3 (both even get POV parts and Keith’s a major focus in Skirting Katabasis), then Shiro, Coran and Lance/Pidge’s families are more bit players.
I only just realized that the chapter in Smack, Kiss, Fall in Love is the only time I’ve really written Shiro. And now I’m horrified because Shiro was my first love.
Characters that had the Main Focus: 6 +1 Lance POV, 4+2 Pidge POV, 2 Switching POV fics and then the drabbles don’t count.  I actually started out the year tearing my hair out because I related to Pidge so much more, but now I really enjoy writing Lance. It’s actually a little tricky to get into Pidge’s headspace to work on my chaptereds sometimes.
Specifics
 Best/Worst Title?
Best Skirting Katabasis. C’mon. That’s like, literary (Katabasis being hell or destruction in Greek mythos). Worst Untangle to Wait, Unravel to See. I had help with it but this fic was just so hard to name.
Best/worst last line?
Best I tend to structure my chapters/one-shots around the last line so…this is hard.
"What took you so long? I've been waiting for you."
(Untangle to Wait, Unravel to See)
My personal favourite, though, is from so it turns out I kinda missed you:
Luis laughed. “Hi, Not-My-Girlfriend. I’m Not-His-Brother, Luis.”
Worst
Hunk just laughed. “You can’t fix that right now, so you might as well have some fun!”
(Wriggle, Jiggle, Bake!) So cheesey.
The last line that gives me personal arghs is from Here:
He buried his face in her sodden hair and cried.
...because a day after posting I realised that I should’ve written wept, dammit, and now it annoys me every time I see it.
Honourable mention to The Advantages of Being Small for winning the no-context award:
“Reckon I could fit three fingers up there?”
 General Questions
 Looking back, did you write more fics than you thought you would this year, less than you thought, or about what you predicted?
Way more than I thought!  I think I had planned out about 8? Of those I wrote two (zine fics), started but haven’t finished 2, and the other 4 are still pending.
What pairing/genre/fandom did you write that you would never have predicted last year?
None, my obsessions are long-lasting and constant.
What’s your favorite story this year? Not the most popular, but the one that makes you the happiest.
Skirting Katabasis or It’s Beginning to Look a Lot like A Christmas Carol. Though TBH I enjoy re-reading most of the stuff I posted in the last 6 months.
Okay, NOW your most popular story.
In every single metric on AO3 it’s The Future in Snippets. Y’all like your porn (even if there’s not much of it).
On tumblr it’s Wriggle, Jiggle, Bake! by like 100 notes.
Story most underappreciated by the universe?
If this is a roundabout way of saying ‘What’s your LEAST popular story?’ it’s The Advantages of Being Small, but TBH that’s a very short crack-ficlet so it doesn’t bother me (same with the drabbles).
If the question is “What fic do you think people should like MORE?” the answer is Skirting Katabasis. It’s fifth on the list for bookmarks and 9th for Kudos, and I’m not sure why?? Does it sound too gen? Do you not like Platonic Adventure Kidge? Honestly y’all are missing out it’s like the best thing I’ve ever written. Hands down.
Story that could have been better?
The Future in Snippets. Hands down. It was started on a whim, as a practice fic for another idea I’ve been nurturing for even longer, and back when I was newer at this writing thing. It wasn’t very tightly plotted – in fact the plot was expanded upon and changed multiple times before I settled on what I have now, several chapters in – and certain things that should have been seeded were left out of earlier chapters because I wasn’t experienced enough to figure out how to work them in and foolishly thought ‘oh, it won’t matter! Such a small detail!’, so now I’m scratching my head trying to figure out how to compensate.
I tend to work off very tight outlines, but Snippets was missing that for a large part of the process and I think it shows. I do think I’ve done a good job nailing the emotion in it, though, and that’s like 95% of the fic so as long as I keep that up it’ll all be fine.
Sexiest story?
The Future in Snippets is smut so… First place for SFW sexy goes to the world is out there, my dear, but we’re in here.
Saddest story?
I think The Stars Aren’t the Same for You and I wins because it’s a heartbreaking situation with no good resolution. There’s no comfort to be found there.
Most fun?
A Little Taste of What Should Have Been. It’s just…fun!
The most fun I had writing was Smack, Kiss, Fall in Love, because it was challenging, and I’d wake up every day excited to find out what had happened in the last chapter overnight.
Story with single sweetest moment?
The Future in Snippets (Chapter 4) 
“Um…” She turned the brush in her hands over again before holding it up sheepishly. “Do you remember how you said you’d braid my hair?”
Lance’s whole face lit up like a Christmas tree. “Really?!”
A giggle escaped her lips and she smiled, nodding. “Really.”
Hardest story to write?
The Future in Snippets. The emotions in this fic have become a convoluted mess and it is growing exponentially harder to write as I continue. I simply don’t have the level of skill required, but by God I will find it so that I can finish it properly.
Easiest/most fun story to write?
Skirting Katabasis!  The outline for this fic is tight, and I freaking love writing this fic. Like I just feel like smiling the whole process. I don’t know why. It feels like the wrong answer because it’s a fairly involved fic, but I just enjoy everything about it.
Did any stories shift your perceptions of the characters?
Smack, Kiss, Fall in Love actually gave me a much better understanding of Lance. Skirting Katabasis made me really look at Keith and realise that hey – the dude is actually very emotional, very chatty, and very soft (he’s so often typecast as the ‘moody loner’ because that’s what they call him in the show but he really doesn’t act like that).
Most overdue story?
Uh. The Future in Snippets was originally scheduled to be finished in January 2018, so… I also have a soulmate WIP which was meant to be for V-Day 2018.
Did you take any writing risks this year? What did you learn from them?
I started to play about with other POVs, and discovered that I can write other POVs? I also did two collabs!  The first one I discovered that Reem really is a sweetheart, and with the second I discovered that either I’m really bossy or really persuasive or both maybe I should go into politics.
I also did a couple of events and zines and exchanges. I discovered that piece-writing – like writing with a target/deadline/outside expectation – does not agree with me, and I will no longer sign up for events/zines/exchanges.
What are your fic writing goals for next year?
1.     Finish my WIPs.
2.     Write my Pidge Makes Bad Decisions fic!
3.     That’s about it really. Can you take over the world by writing fic? If so, that’s going on the list.
51 notes · View notes
sundaynightnovels · 5 years
Text
11/11/11 Tag Game (again!)
aaaand i’ve also been tagged by @fluffythewritingplant​ for a different set of questions!!! you have a lot of questions huh HAHA but they sound fun so thanks for tagging me in this! <3 1. What is your favorite part of writing? characters! characters interacting!! characters doing things! character dialogues!! characters characters characters! 2. Do you prefer reading or writing? HA i haven’t read a novel in a while. but yea i like them both but... yknow. how bout reading my own writing. i’m narcissistic like that  3. How many people have read your stuff? since the next question is specifically about irl, i’m assuming this is about online??? well, i guess all of yall on tumblr have seen my snippets and excerpts right heh (blatant advertising here) (also in case yall don’t know how i differentiate them, snippets are drabbles that i write outside of my main wip and excerpts come directly from the wip draft itself heh) so yea, all of you!! <3 (i guess?????) 4. How many people irl have read your stuff? kinda mentioned this in my previous 11/11/11 tag, but not much. if it’s school stuff then yea, but if it’s my own personal stuff, not really. maybe like a handful in the past, but right now in the present? no one has read my current wip as of yet. 5. Are there any books or movies that inspired your writing? hmmMMMm. in general i guess studio ghibli (in how they make the mundane little everyday stuff magical, i love that), percy jackson (humour lol), mmmm... i actually really don’t know. i’ve been writing for a long time, so i think everything probably just accumulated and it just culminates in this mess that i call my own brand of writing. my friends (who have read my work in the past) say that i actually have a style -- i’m not sure how true that is HAHA but that’s good to know, but i really have no idea what in particular inspired it. 6. How many WIPs do you have? One (or is it two??? but they are of the same... universe-thing.) OKAY like i’ve finished my first draft of my main novel called like all things out of season, and now i’m working (well, barely) on the companion novel so yea.  floating in my head are about three vague forms of ideas though. one of which i have tried numerous times to write but never finished, another is something that i’m like ooooo i’ll write it right after i finish my current one (guess that ain’t happening), and the last is the most vague, most formless one that i just kinda have a feel on but not rly. 7. What are some ideas you had to throw away because you just didn’t have the time to work on them? i’m sure i’ve lost a lot over the years, especially because my memory sucks. also, since my memory sucks... do you expect me to remember these lost ideas??? 8. Have you ever written any poetry? Wanna show some of your stuff? the first time i ever touched poetry was two years ago for a creative writing class. they all kinda suck... do i want to show my stuff??? hmmmmm.... let me take a peek at what i’ve written then well it is pretty cringe but if you wanna read it (scroll through if you don’t want a cringe fest)
Tumblr media Tumblr media
(1. don’t ask me about the formatting, idk why i did it this way  2. i think the assignment was... okay who am i kidding, idk what the assignment was about. but i think i just thought it’d be interesting to do a poem using like chinese mythology or something like that. speaking of which, the AU that i wanna write of my novel is kinda also about chinese mythology hmmm... did i say too much) 9. What’s your favorite line/scene you’ve ever written (several are possible of course)? i don’t have a favourite line, but for a scene... i’ve mentioned this somewhere else before (in response to an ask i think), but there was this really important scene that i knew, even before starting my novel, that i had to write and it was simply about this man telling them a story. and i had no idea what i’d write, how it’ was going to play out and everything, but then it came out so beautifully and evocative even though while writing i had no idea what i was doing and i actually felt what i was meant to feel in that story and i just lkjkdlfkjsdlfkd i have a lot of feelings to that  and i can’t show it to yall cuz it’s like, the first main turning point of the story. right after that scene was this kinda sleepover-ish scene with Shou and Jun and i loved writing that too because shou was adorable and excited and jun was understandably not impressed and yknow, it was kinda important too in the whole state of things. OF COURSE before that i enjoyed writing the scene where almost all of them (except the female yu) converged together in the noisies’ place and just had a whole lot of mess and fun yeah that entire portion was great because they all happened kinda altogether at once. 10. What’s your favorite quote i don’t think i have one 11. What’s your favorite quote by someone you know? well it’s not my favourite, but it’s the most iconic one that i can remember right now. we were predrinking before going to a club and one of my friends bought vodka, which yknow tastes like nail varnish and is just terrible (i mean... even if you like vodka... you gotta admit, it feels like it can melt your throat off) while others bought like ~~ wine~~ and stuff and she was like “well we just wanna get drunk right so might as well jump straight into it” and that line stuck with me ever since. girl’s got her priorities straight. (if this makes me seem like i like drinking, i really don’t. and i hate wine HAHA) 12. What’s your favorite book? you are a devil. also. no, ain’t answering that. thank you, next. 13. Which book do you regret reading? i had a bunch of them when i was younger, but... i don’t really remember right now. really 14. Is there something you regret writing? when i was younger i once wrote something in the pov of a cat. do i regret it? no.  it was really stupid though. 15. If your OC’s were actual people in your life, what would your relationship be like? oh ho ho. zhen would be the laziest friend ever and i’d probably be really annoyed at her because it’ll be impossible to go out and hang out with her, but yknow what? i’m basically the same.
shou would be annoying in a different way, he’ll be so overly-excited and energetic that i’ll just be like... stop. and he’s the sort who’ll go around talking to random strangers on the street and as a massive unsociable introvert, i’ll be drowning there in my shyness and inability to talk as he goes out yammering and yammering about who knos what (true story, i have a friend as sociable as him. even when we’re talking to mutual acquaintances, i’m just there. a statue, meant to decorate the setting in which she’s in) i can’t communicate with kids, so i’ll probably be really really awkward with lu. like really. maybe i’ll talk to him a little bit, but i can foresee it to be a very uncomfortable interaction, at least on my part. lol yu(f). i don’t think i can talk to her either. she’s too stressed out and working too hard and i don’t like to bother people like that, especially if we aren’t friends yet. ren would be really easy to talk to, he’s just so laidback and chill and nice, like he’s probably the kind of classmate you’ll just end up casually talking to when you meet on the way to class or on the way out from class. i don’t know if we’ll actually become friends, but we’ll end up being at least friendly acquaintances. i think i’d probably avoid teng in real life. he’s way too loud and dramatic and remember, i’m an introverted girl who doesn’t like to have attention on herself... and with him, yknow you’re gonna get all the attention. likewise with jun, you’re gonna get so much attention with him. but i think i could be friends with him tbh. he acts aloof and is pretty snarky and prickly but once i get past that (if i ever do, which to be frank i might not), i think we could be friends. i probably won’t be friends with yu (m) because he’s that strong silent type and unless i’m made to sit with him in class, i probably won’t ever start up a conversation with him. i most likely wouldn’t be friends with jia because she’s the really attractive, popular type yknow? she’s a nice person and i’d probably be friends with her IF we ever spoke to one another, but considering chances of that are low, i don’t think we’d end up friends. i’m reusing the above questions ^ and tagging a few more people @insearchof-solace (sorry tagging you back just because i want to know your answer for the last one HAHA) @usuallydecentwriter @sunnydaysarealwaysgrey @farrradays
7 notes · View notes
Text
@nachttour tagged me in a writing question thing!
1) is there a story you’re holding off on writing for some reason?
uh yeah there’s like, several. some of them are better developed than other but a lot of the reason I’ve been holding off on writing them just comes down to feeling inadequate due to my own limited experience with relationships and feelings of complete inadequacy. it’s hard to write an epic romancu when I’m aromantic as fuck and have a hard time conceptualizing what those feelings might be like to experience, for example, or like, I want the story to be funny but I feel like I’m not actually a very funny person?
also I always feel like I need to do more research. I get stuck on the research phase about 85% of the time haha
2) what work of yours, if any, are you the most embarrassed about existing?
man I am embarrassed by MYSELF existing, so  idk probably all of it when you get right down to it
3) what order do you write in? front of book to back? chronological? favorite scenes first? something else?
it seems to vary a bit. sometimes I just power through start to finish, but sometimes I need to write the ending first to remind myself of what I’m shooting for. sometimes I just gotta write some random scenes in the middle before I forget what they are and have to figure out where they’ll go later.
considering the longest thing I’ve managed to finish comes in at about 12 k  I don’t know if I have enough data to really come up with a firm answer for this one though. from what I can tell, it really does seem like I start at the beginning and go for a bit, write the end, and try to connect the two with occasional random middle bits getting written out of order and a general feeling of “I’ll fix it in post” carrying me through
4) favorite character you’ve written
probably Samantha Traynor. she’s such a fucking nerd and I love her. it was surprisingly easy to write for her once I got started. at least I THINK I did a good job writing her, I have no actual idea haha
5) character you were most surprised to end up writing
I’ve written TWO mass effect fics featuring Samara as a main character and I have no idea how this happened or why because she’s about in the middle when it comes to my most to least favorite mass effect characters list
6) something you would go back and change in your writing that it’s too late/complicated to change now
there’s a couple of fics I wrote for fic exchanges that I kinda wish I could take back and turn into something else because I love the concept but feel guilty about idk, using as a springboard because the original is a gift, or something. it feels ehhhhhhhhh disingenuous to continue them when the gift is supposed to be a singular and self contained unit
for example, oh man I would love to take that vrisrezi space pirates au someplace, but I don’t know if I should because the fic itself is a gift, complete, and so forth. 
plus I hate the way I run out of steam about 4 chapters into everything. I would like to not run out of motivation please
7) when asked, are you embarrassed or enthusiastic to tell people that you write?
considering my output is so low I barely consider myself a writer at all tbh.
but yes, embarrassed. I hope to god the three people I know irl who follow me just like. never see those posts haha
8) favorite genre to write
space adventure! and lately? mysteries even though I have no FUCKING idea why or even how to write them, which is why I have at least three projects stalled out on me haha
9) what, if anything, do you do for inspiration?
I read a lot, mostly. sometimes I stare at a wall. or play minesweeper. 
also when I’m doing something fairly mindless sometimes my mind wanders and I hit something. 
oh and music. music is great
10) write in silence or with background noise? with people or alone?
I usually need music, mood music preferable, instrumental so the lyrics don’t distract me. generally I prefer to not be around people when I write, though a public setting is also fun to write in. I’m too distractable to actually get any done though, so I usually end up just looking like a tool with their notebook out if I try to write in a coffee shop or whatever tho, haha
11) what aspect of your writing do you think has most improved since you started writing?
I think writing fanfic has really helped me figure out what it means to write in character. also I think I’m starting to get better at balancing dialogue versus narration? at least a little bit
12) your weaknesses as an author
the inability to actually finish shit. 
unwillingness to approach emotions that make me feel uncomfortable. 
the fact that I often approach writing a character with the thought of what I would do in a situation rather than what the character would do (which is why writing fanfiction is helping me with that haha)
coming up with plots that lend themselves well to longer stuff
13) your strengths as an author
pretty good at dialogue
when it comes to my own shit, pretty good at coming up with interesting fantasy worlds (I think they’re interesting at least)
I’ve got a pretty firm grasp overall just the nuts and bolts of writing: I mean I tutored English in college for fuck’s sake I know how to write a grammatically correct run on sentence when I want to 
14) do you make playlists for your current wips?
not really
15) why did you start writing?
I wanted to know what happened next
16) are there any characters who haunt you?
not really? I mean, there are specific character TYPES that’ll get me every time, though, like the happy go lucky person who has to learn what pain is but still come out the other side a LOT worse for wear but not completely broken (think Tasslehoff Burrfoot, or perhaps less obscure Vash the Stampede) but I wouldn’t say they haunt me, per say
17) if you could give your fledgling author self any advice, what would it be?
don’t be afraid to be self indulgent. you’ll enjoy it more and who the fuck cares, anyway? people who’ll make fun of you for doing what you love are ass holes
18) were there any works you read that affected you so much that it influenced your writing style? what were they?
If I’m honest I can’t really say what influences my writing style, if I even have one. Mostly all I can do is list off my favorite authors because I’m pretty sure they all have something to do with it. 
so let’s just do that I guess.  when I was a teenager I tended to find a single author and just read through all their works before moving on, and these are the big ones that stand out:
Connie Willis, Anne McCaffrey, Steven Brust and Ursula K. Le Guin. Connie Willis for the humor she includes in almost all her writing, Anne McCaffrey because I STILL spend an inordinate amount of time thinking about Pern. She had a real skill for coming up with both great characters and great settings, even if what she did with them, and also her inability to keep continuity were less good. Steven Brust introduced me to the idea of relating to morally reprehensible characters at an alarmingly young age. Ursula K. Le Guin, I just love her. No idea if it’s actually done anything GOOD to my writing but she gives me something to aspire to.
I read just. a ridiculous amount of fantasy and science fiction as a kid, the genres as a whole without a doubt influence the type of shit I end up writing. also in seventh grade I mainlined dragonlance, just the whole damn thing
later in college I got really into Margaret Atwood. her focus on female characters and narrative just is really great.  
then I went through a depressive phase in my late 20s and just exclusively read Julia Quinn, Joanna Lindsey, Sabrina Jeffreys and Eloisa James, and that was IT. so I’m pretty sure my foray into the romance genre is what makes me honestly prefer povs limited to two or three characters  hey, reading romance novels also lead me to the realization that I’m aromantic so \o/ I guess
19) when it comes to more complicated narratives, how do you keep track of outlines, characters, development, timeline, ect.?
I outline and then give up lol
20) do you write in long sit-down sessions or in little spurts?
little spurts until something grabs me and makes me marathon. usually that’s a deadline, but sometimes it’s also inspiration 
21) what do you think when you read over your older work?
mostly just holy shit I can’t believe I wrote this! sometimes that’s bad, sometimes it’s good. I can’t really tell if I’m good at divorcing myself from my writing enough to give me perspective on it, to tell the truth, because for a good lot of it, I still think it’s pretty good so ???
22) are there any subjects that make you uncomfortable to write?
it’s hard for me to let a character be embarrassed by the dumb shit they do. I don’t want them to do dumb shit because of it, which makes it hard for the character to have shit to grow and learn from.
23) any obscure life experiences that you feel have helped your writing?
I’m pretty sure my own issues with having and experiencing some emotions makes its way into the stuff I choose to write about, especially when it comes to the original stuff (I have. at LEAST three different plot outlines that involve characters literally losing the ability to experience emotions and having to find a way to heal or gain it back haha)  
also the fic I wrote about the box ghost is literally just about what it’s like to work in a factory haha
24) have you ever become an expert on something you previously knew nothing about, in order to better a scene or a story?
listen. 
yes.
I fucking. LOVE. research. 
honestly this is the stage where I most often get lost in the weeds, distracted by my own need to know more
25) copy/paste a few sentences or a short paragraph that you’re particularly proud of
“He was not the knight Casey taught him to be, but he was close enough for government work“ remains the single best pun I’ve ever written
tagging: @anthropwashere @inktail @manicpixiesdreamdragon if you guys are up for it!
2 notes · View notes
youtiaoshutiao · 6 years
Text
gotd season 2 rambles
I finished GOTD two/three weeks back but then was immediately swamped with real life work after that. Finally had time over the weekend to pen down all the thoughts swirling around my head!! I was thinking about whether to make this post or not but no one I know irl has watched this and I kind of want to remember what I felt about the drama so well. Here goes nothing!!
[Though… 慎入!!Beware of entering, for I just finished writing this post and I’m boggled at how utterly long + incoherent + messy this post is]
Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media
- I was rather worried about how Jingyao would play into the whole picture marrying into 楚王府. But in the end I guess it wasn’t thaaaaat bad (minus uhm, her poisoning Li Chu to force Zhenzhu to leave.) I can deal with drama like external factors forcing my OTP apart but what I can’t deal with is if the OTP itself fractures apart. So (at least in my pov) even though the director did all that annoying slow-mo spinning around in circles thing with Jingyao, my intepretation of Li Chu’s 眼神 wasn’t one of 动心/暧昧 and instead was just concern/maintaining a distance so I guess I wasn’t that mad about it….???
Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media
- OTP~~ OTP!! Jing Tian is so beautiful with her hair down :3
Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media
- TBH i enjoyed watching Li Chu and Zhenzhu in the battlefield and all that pining and stuff but I found the way they ended up there kind of… contrived. Though what Jingyao says does have its element of truth, but really?!?! Poisoning?!?! Internal drama?! Couldn’t it have been a more… dramatic reason? Like maybe a political maneuvre making Zhenzhu realise that Li Chu will be ‘burdened’ with her around or smth, then maybe Jingyao coming in to stir the pot, then Zhenzhu making the choice to leave. I just felt that the whole poisoning thing was kind of loophole-y. If Moyan Chou can research and link it back to Jingyao, shouldn’t Li Chu be perfectly capable of doing so too? Yet in those two years he never suspected anything. Though maybe it could be explained by him being too blinded with anger and disappointment at Zhenzhu that he just focused on his princely work in those years rather than sparing any thought on his love life. And I’m not sure how this whole matter ended up being resolved? When Li Chu found out and confronted Zhenzhu about it, she was still all ‘I can’t return back to you because you might come to harm if I break the oath I swore’… But in the end they just kind of ignored it? (after confronting Jingyao). Hm or maybe I missed something hahaha.
Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media
- still the whole arc with them on the battlefield/her becoming the Empress of Yan was still quite entertaining hehe. Pining! Fraught looks! Tears! Angst! I must say that Mao Zi Jun was much better in S2 than S1. In S1 his acting just seemed to be glaring and sticking out his eyeballs hahaha. I guess his forte is in all the emotionally charged scenes… Though I still don’t really care for An Qingxu. Also Zhenzhu’s outfit in the Yan empire was quite pretty too :3
Tumblr media
- On a really random note, lives if you are not a main character in this drama (though actually who am I kidding… you don’t escape from death being a main character here *coughing fit*) are so worthless. I swear there are people dropping dead like flies in every episode… TBH back in the Uyghur ‘you-killed-my-father-prepare-to-die’ arc of the first season, I kind of couldn’t deal with how so many of Li Chu’s men died along the way of Li Chu searching for Zhenzhu because Li Chu refused to rest/take a chill pill when weather conditions sucked.
Tumblr media Tumblr media
- It’s really a pity that they had to resort to excessive greenscreen and body doubles in the last Uyghur arc because it was really quite obvious and kind of affected immersion in the story. I’m guessing Jing Tian couldn’t make it for that filming period? Or maybe they were rushing and had to be split up across filming groups. Like… it was quite jarring to have everyone else in the scene then bam! Switch over to Zhenzhu awkwardly greenscreened in. Or some scenes where it was obvious that Allen wasn’t even interacting with Jingtian but rather a body double.
Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media
- Moyan Chou x Li Chu. Ouchhhhhh (especially since cracks kind of appeared in their friendship with Li Chu marrying Dugu and Zhenzhu using Moyan Chou to get a divorce from Li Chu). I’m really impressed by Allen’s acting ;_; like of course he’s still kind of raw in places but like wow there’s a 灵气 to his acting and he is exceptional considering how it’s his second time playing male lead. Of a 92 episode drama, no less. In the scene where Moyan Chou and Li Chu drink together for the last time, his tears just kept on flowing non stop! Idk if anyone who reads this has the same experience of using the cliche phrase ‘他的眼泪像断了线的珍珠纷纷落下’ (his tears flowed down like a broken string of pearls) in chinese compositions in primary school but that’s the first thing that popped to my mind when I saw this scene hahaha.
Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media
- anyway, compared to this drama’s standard death bgm 荣耀, it was a nice touch to change it up to 为江山 which fit perfectly with the setting and nature of Moyan Chou’s death. It was pretty goosebump inducing when the music crashed over the speakers as he slumped down and the entire congregation of people at that intersection of stones (?!?!) began kneeling and wailing.
Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media
- again props to Jing Tian’s and Allen’s acting. Though Jing Tian wasn’t that consistent in all the crying scenes (though she has so many it’s kind of hard to be hahaha) but i really think they handled the growth and development of their characters quite well. The Zhenzhu and Li Chu you see at the end of s2 are tangibly different from them at the start. Even if they banter with each other, it’s very different in vibes from the early days - more measured and serious. And the change happened quite subtly? imo at least :3 
Tumblr media Tumblr media
- personally felt the whole way the showdown with Empress Zhang took place was kind of… anticlimatic… but I guess that’s kind of how it went down in history hahaha oh wells.
Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media
- hints of how even though Li Chu became emperor, there’s still trouble looming in the distance with Li Fuguo still maintaining power etc. was kind of disturbed reading real history because the image of Daizong having to pander to eunuchs and all that kind of isn’t really aligned with the capable Li Chu we see in the drama (oh the woes of dramatisation of historical characters - i felt the same reading commentary about 14th prince back in the day after watching/reading bbjx) but i was thinking about it and i realised that i can kind of accept that! because there were quite a few scenes throughout the drama where Li Chu was lamenting about how he feels so helpless because he can’t do anything about the political situation/corruption/etc, how even though he has the acumen to perceive and see what all the parties are doing to procure power for themselves he cannot do anything about it. so taking this aspect of Li Chu into context - how he definitely is smart and capable, but that doesn’t mean he isn’t susceptible or is invincible given how the entire tang court is deeply mired in politics and power play, i guess it’s not that far of a stretch to link this Li Chu to the Daizong in history books (who wasn’t a baaad emperor too anyway)
Tumblr media Tumblr media
- the whole Zhenzhu being 油尽灯枯 at the end was also kind of… random and a little contrived imho but given her life circumstances i guess it can be justified and is a logical way to end things, since they do ultimately have to adhere to the historical ending of Zhenzhu going missing and Daizong never electing an empress during his rule. (I have to say, my favourite arc in this entire drama was probably the 10+ eps of separation when the Anshi rebellion kicked in, because the conflict felt very real and organic and the stakes felt really high, so the senses of urgency/loss/anxiety/despair were really heightened.)
Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media
contrived as it may be to me, that didn’t stop me from feeling deeeeeep despair and sorrow through the last few eps ;_; him making longevity noodles for her; them being in the same space that holds so much meaning to both of them, the little wooden hut where she professed her love for him, yet both of them lost in their own separate thoughts; them weeping their own separate tears; him holding her as she takes an afternoon nap, knowing that this is probably one of the last times he can do so…
Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media
and his coronation ceremony/the day she leaves for good from his life. their last hug - he was the very definition of 依依不舍 ): Him walking down the aisle (HAHA is that what it’s called) of the Tang courts, dressed in stately regal emperor garb, the world is his yet he is so utterly alone. 所谓“高处不胜寒”! (haha though this line was not yet in existence during Tang)
Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media
and the ending was so poetic in all its tragedy and hit all my buttons hahaha. Him dressing as a cart driver to send her off for the last time → !!!, her stopping at 醉仙楼 and coming out of the carriage to take a look at the place where her and her Donglang first met → !!!!!! (I think this really got to me because I have a huge fondness for their entire first meeting haha. And this + how she hallucinated Dong Lang in that red outfit when she was semi-conscious to me kind of shows how ultimately she loves Dong Lang for who he is as an adult, and not because he is her 太湖公子 from her childhood, which is very important to me?!) And lastly Li Chu riding on his horse, surveying the mountains and landscape that Zhenzhu disappeared into, the 江山 that he owns… aka really ‘一人一马一江湖’, as the drama oh so helpfully foreshadowed for us in the first few episodes.
Tumblr media
- Since I’ve mentioned 为江山, as I’ve said before, I really love the OSTs in the drama! But while previously the bigger ‘hits’ (in a sense) like 夙念 and 荣耀 were stuck in my head, these past two weeks, I can’t help but keep on replaying 素颜 and 唐韵 on loop. (though I still enjoy all the songs - except maybe the Jike Junyi one which is still not bad but just doesn’t get to me like all the other songs do… maybe because it was never played in any scene throughout the drama? (except the ending credits of s2. which I skipped everytime.) (speaking of which, s2′s opening theme song became 荣耀 but they didn’t correspondingly change the opening sequence which was so nicely timed to 为江山, which is also more regal and had more oomph more befitting of an opening track!! that was quite sad ):))
Tumblr media
And especially for 素颜 (Unadorned Beauty), omgggg the lyrics nearly killed me when I sat down to properly read it at the end of the drama. It’s played twice in the drama - once in the beginning when Zhenzhu and Lin Zhi were sitting for the consort selection tests and once in the end when Zhenzhu leaves the palace (and Donglang) permanently for good. And omg the lyrics really fit perfectly?!?!
→ The verse/first part of the song: “你是春的使节 让残雪融解 / 染成青黛的天 等著细雨停歇 / 你素颜 裹着云烟 诗意了远方 湿润了心  / 闭上眼 姹紫嫣红都不觉甜 只为你的容颜” - basically just really beautiful lyrics about how you are the envoy of spring melting the remnants of snow and how your bare-faced/unadorned beauty bundled in mist lends poetic flavour to the distance and how all the beautiful flowers pale in comparison to your beauty blablabla. The first half of the chorus too: “豁然间 春光如练 / 渲染了 你的出现 / 最留恋 不是云巅 / 是千万里朝颜和暮雪” The whole song just describes Zhenzhu to me, and in these particular lyrics I think about Zhenzhu in the early episodes, fresh and dewy-faced, dressed in pale pinks and whites. I’m just imagining the verse + first chorus being Li Chu’s inner monologue about Zhenzhu and my heart feels all squishy kyaaaaaaaaa
→ The second half of the chorus: “梦回间 春光流泻 /  归去在 落花时节 / 待离别 青空绵绵 / 你会成山水间那一点 如烟” basically talking about how as time passes, she will leave when the flowers fall, and become a dot in the landscape like a wisp of smoke… how apt ;_; and okay here I’m just babbling nonsense but like all the terms like “青空” “山水” “如烟” really fits her costuming in the last few eps which had 水墨/ink wash painting vibes 
(↑ i’m probably overthinking this way too much ahaha)
[on another note, some other particular lines in some of the other songs that I just really liked (i have random feels for sentences that I think are really poetic. though it may only be me who thinks so hahaha)
为江山:“挥手时飞扬飘零的黄沙 蜿蜒于驰骋豪情的天下” and “铿锵的温柔 忠义的绵绸 此情动我幽幽” like all the juxtaposition between toughness and softness… (uhhh it made more sense in my head). this entire song is Li Chu’s life ;_;
唐韵:okay no I went to search up the lyrics again and I want to copy the entire thing over HAHA. I love how the lyrics, true to the setting of the drama and the name of the song (how do you translate 韵 properly? it’s such a nice word haha), incorporate elements of Tang inside it. “釉烧出 多色绚丽的斑斓” or “浸润出 三彩交融的璀璨” - mentions of pottery/sancai glaze that flourished during Early Tang. Or “昔繁华 已苍芜” - befitting the backdrop of the drama - Tang the flourishing golden dynasty at the precipice of its dwindling. And for some reason I just love phrases like “静谧千年的思念” and the whole of the second half of the chorus: “愿你记得 穿梭人浪中一瞥 / 临摹也不能复刻你容颜 / 墨浓映画眉 / 朱红落点唇 / 只盼伴来生共偎”
为你成全:my favourite line is “锦绣长安夜 / 似昙花惊艳”!! 
i think i just really like imagery in lyrics hahaha. i like 荣耀’s lyrics a lot too. in comparison i actually think the lyrics of 夙念 and some parts of 为你成全 are pretty standard drama ost fare… though they still serve their purpose well in inducing appropriate feels in various scenes.
This series of bloopers/original voice clips released by one of the production companies attached to this show is like a soothing balm to an injured heart after watching the ending. And the last video in this series - aww the entire team really put in so much effort to film this show, and it shows in the acting, the props, the sets, the costuming, the music (excluding awkward greenscreen and s2 editing). ANDDD watch from 13:52 onwards!!! A small Easter egg - Allen’s original soft soft voice going “珍珠,你总算回来了……” welp I’m gone
s2 was ultimately a lot weaker in many aspects than s1, and tbh the entire plot of GOTD is riddled with well trodden tropes. But I still have so much fondness and love and feels for this 92 episode drama I mainlined in three weeks (and then promptly regretted because real life came cascading down on me soon after that) :3 It’s definitely an engaging drama that had quite a lot of effort put into its making, and with it’s length there’s something for everyone - (1) an otp that will make you squee (2) endless angst, tears and misery (3) palace politics that are relatively quite complex for it’s 古言 status (4) some harem-esque drama for 后宫戏 fans (5) battle scenes, war tearing apart otp bringing about more angst… et cetera. Considering how I quit dramas at a drop of a hat, I’m pretty impressed that I managed to complete this haha xD
shall end off with a short 花痴楼!
《帅帅的殿下SHOWTIME!》
Tumblr media Tumblr media
虽然在跟别的女人转圈圈但仍非常帅气的殿下!
Tumblr media
微醺醺的新郎装殿下!
Tumblr media
睹物思人的殿下!
Tumblr media
穿上盔甲,眼带杀气的殿下!
Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media
闭着眼,姹紫嫣红都不觉甜的殿下!
Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media
超级无敌苏的殿下!
Tumblr media
化身为大厨的殿下!
I wanted to take more screenshots but I shall just end here, because I scrolled up and got a huge shock seeing exactly just how much babble I spouted. I’m kind of horrified?! Omg anyone who reads this to the end, I’m sorry for all my incoherent rambling :3
15 notes · View notes
Text
13x07 Watching Notes
Should probably not have multiple scenarios where I snark out loud and then the very next line of dialogue is that snark but innocently delivered.
Heyooo it’s not our Christmas cliffhanger though!
Expectations: It has literally just occurred to me right now sitting down to type out my expectations that this season's *entire* main plot so far has been "the spawn of satan is cuter than we expected".
I'm still trying to wrangle the idea of how you get hours of Buckleming plot twists and slow exposition out of this, although introducing 18 different angles for them to tackle the problem and returning us to the AU world is a good start to have at least 4 plot threads going and hey I feel like this episode is supposed to be a breather for having too many Jack episodes in a row which makes it even funnier that they're gonna have to deal with the absence of something but who knows maybe he will show up before episode 9. If not they may genuinely be tricked into considering narrative negative space in some form or another, at least by the actual omission of Jack from the episode, despite the fact it has to be about him.
There's like at least 3 individual ways each arc might go terribly, and I'm typing this as pre-yoga thoughts while trying to do my NaNoWriMo and I watched Brooklyn 99 already this morning, and essentially I'm pretty much just bracing against "Oh god this new sleep pattern is the worst and it has ruined nearly every episode this season for me" migraines. So I'm just gonna be super chill because the stress of this ridiculous bed at 8pm awake at 5am thing is killing me without bad writing on my favourite show.
So, instead of modelling a worst case scenario, here's a best case one: it's crowded, the pacing is bad, there's some bizarre lines of dialogue and no room for any character interaction and the sneak peek already showed us the sum total of Destiel interaction but in hindsight with the rest of the episode that's actually a plus, and aside from that there's no rape or catastrophic bad decisions or characterisation that just makes our guys look like idiots because the villains aren't that smart and they're still outwitting them or something. Cas wasn't even mentioned in the episode description if I recall and I would like to think that is because he gets Buckleminged in the way where they forget he exists so he's in 2 scenes and just kinda stops at some point and that's the last we hear of him for a few episodes but at least nothing happened to him :P
(It HELPS that the bad decision of the year seems like it should be Jack and Kaia ganging up in 13x09 and this is just a plot filler episode where they can't blow everything up from sheer incompetence, since the main plot is still Jack, and all Buckleming can do is escalate stuff but not so much we find Jack, so they're mostly running free with Lucifer, Michael and Asmodeus on the playground they've been permitted to keep them distracted. On the other hand, that does not lend itself towards 'storytelling structure' whatsoever. So I may derive some fun from mentally re-writing this episode as it goes as well.)
-
Hi I'm back and I have tea and preemptive paracetamol and look I not do crap like this lightly but the only thing wrong with me is sleep and yoga but glug glug glug down the hatch, I'm not fucking around, migraine. I swear to god if I even see a HINT of you...
-
I should also mention that my only prep for this episode was watching Tall Tales last night with my mum because we're lightly re-watching season 2 and I thought you know what look how far that fucker has come that he's just one of the show's regular directors now or something. I forgot that completely this morning so I'm amending my expectations (it WAS annoyingly early in the day) to add that Speight hasn't directed a Buckleming yet but I'm interested to see how he handles it.
-
The episode starts with Mary cheerfully punching Lucifer at least 3 times in the face. I am still extremely proud of her for doing that but overall disappointed that it's led to her banishment to be a Buckleming character this season, which has been a fast way to ruin characters.
We get the entire first minute of the recap in Buckleming POV, aka they write the corny villains - and specifically a lot of Asmodeus point of view, his summary of the situation and what needs doing, having graciously inherited this throne, and comments on where Lucifer is as a sort of trailing off, well that's not my concern if he's gone. Only at the minute mark does the recap flip around to something genuinely ABOUT Jack as we've been seeing him, rather than trying to sell Jack as woooo Lucifer's scaaary son. Suddenly Jack's own identity crisis and him leaving.
Maybe it's just because they were trimming for time, but they cut the "all of you" from "I know I'm going to hurt you" but they also left the focus on Sam. I am mostly amused that by removing the clarification - which has been a theme of the season - it reduces that moment to a bare minimum surface layer, as if to say bye bye writing depth hello random action.
-
I had a burgeoning theory last year from one episode or another that pretty much everyone is lampooning Buckleming while letting them get on with writing their stuff, and trying to run loops around them in basically any other way.
-
There was something going on on screen involving a lot of stock footage while I was digging around in my bag looking for my 3DS assuming this was gonna be a Lucifer scene. I still think they're softening him up to kill him, but that's something I have to hope. One of the other non-redemption options is that they need to make him at least halfway manageable if he is gonna end up working with Cas or something. There is something vaguely appropriate matching Buckleming dialogue to Lucifer melodramatics, but unfortunately I really can't give these writers or that character much of a chance so while I'm happy to let them take him to play with over on their bit of the story like a chew toy to keep them off the stuff I like, it is annoying this is all the canon of the show I like >.>
-
One or the other of Buckleming really really dislikes God and organised religion though, and that does often lend the interesting thing to an episode where for some reason as soon as religion is involved the writing actually gets halfway decent.
One thing Lucifer says that catches my interest is his idea the universe is written without irony, when tbh that has literally been his downfall in season 5, and in general the universe is ironic to the WINCHESTERS to whom the universe is actually happening to, and there's the whole Dean is the centre of the universe thing, and THEN there's Billie's line about how sometimes the universe is poetic, coupled with how Dean got Cas back entirely through dramatic irony. I can't remember if Chuck commented on dramatic irony. Anyway Lucifer sucks, the story doesn't happen to him and he doesn't have the resources to read it. Metatron *thrived* on that sort of thing.
-
I like the visual of Michael standing with the sun behind him - it gives him absolutely the divine look he'd love to have, and I just wish he didn't have randomly shirtless Lucifer taking up some of that visual. If someone doesn't make a gifset chopping Lucifer out to just enjoy that image, I will make one, perhaps.
Something else to enjoy about this: they locked Mark P in some sort of medieval torture device and no matter how comfy you try and make it, there's obvious limits to that, so I will enjoy that he had to do that.
-
Michael sees that Lucifer is scared of being locked up and caged, which actually is... accidentally or not... a pretty clever callback, although it wouldn't have killed them to have Michael deduce this on screen, because in 9x18 Dean - Michael's vessel - deduces that Gadreel - a blatant Lucifer parallel in many respects while obviously not in many many others - is terrified of being caged again.
Of course that exchange is one of the single most fascinatingly well-acted exchanges of the entire show which on my umpteenth viewing still knocks me completely flat so it's not a FAIR comparison, but it is an interesting one.
-
I like that Michael think that the main universe is already paradise - in comparison to his shithole, definitely, because it still has pretty stock footage. Thematically interesting since obviously paradise is a bit of an issue with what people want...
-
LOL Wanek's ridiculous "concrete bunker" set... The camera pulls back and there's a massive Jesus on the wall and Lucifer's hanging behind him screeching and it's like... That is an inanimate lump of wood and I can see it rolling its eyes at you.
In the earlier moments out here in the AU we saw the church from 8x23 poking up out of the rubble, and whether this is the same one or not NOW, because I think it was a bit too buried to be this one, it conjures the memory of 8x23, and that one was interesting specifically because Jesus wasn't there - the cross had only his hands and feet remaining and the rest had been torn down. Sam was inserted into that empty space because he was doing the big heroic world-saving sacrifice that from one direction of pure irony the episode was named after (since he decided not to do it/the real motives for his sacrifice were way more interesting than him going through with it heroically anyway etc) but it was another Sam and Jesus moment, like in 5x22 where he more straight-forwardly sacrificed himself.
(And jeeze you watch one episode with the guy and now I can't get him out of my head - remembering in 9x18 Gabriel snarking about how he died for their sins and then making one of the few Jesus references on the show. Jesus is usually extremely absent from this show, so actually having him on screen is very interesting)
Anyway I am pretty sure this is almost entirely to remind Lucifer what a great big fucking drama queen he is being about this all and of course he's sacrificing for nothing.
-
Blah blah promo scene.
They have the photo of Jack from Mia's security camera which means no one has snapped a cute picture of him on their phone yet, Cas included. Disappointing.
-
Now, I'm pretty hesitant to get into characterisation in BL episodes, and Dean just generically wryly comments on how powerful Jack is which could mean anything but Sam then says he might be covering his tracks and then Cas, who has to be written sympathetic to Jack, comes through the door saying that it could mean Jack is in trouble with the various forces that want to control him. Sam's comment coupled with Cas's interruption seems to make it much more likely that Sam's comment is to be taken as vaguely unnerved/suspicious of what Jack can do, and that he's doing things like that Dean implies. That Jack learned so fast he might be able to cause a fair amount of destruction but conceal it from them and if they're trying to track him, Sam is expecting destruction.
-
Dean also came from the kitchen with coffees so why is Cas coming from the back of the Bunker... I'm gonna have to assume he was until just now lounging around in Dean's bed and Dean was like I better go get coffee and help Sam and Cas was like yeah but thanks for the 'sorry your son ran away' sex i feel a lot better and Dean was like no problem babe, and probably gave Cas one of those ridiculous shoulder nudges in the most no homo way ever before he got up to find where they threw his underwear an hour earlier, and Cas just kinda chilled while Dean was getting the coffee so as not to be suspicious by piling in on Sam after taking the exact same length break from the search but then they fucked it up and still managed to enter the scene within 30 seconds of each other.
Yeah, that's probably it.
-
I just saw the list of guest stars wander by and took 3 emergency gulps of my tea at that combo of Osric and for some reason DHJ because file that under genuinely unexpected :P
-
PS: I know we knew Kevin would be back this year but the fact I managed to find Kevin thematic stuff in the last 2 episodes in a row still feels important to me as storytelling rather than foreshadowing.
-
Anyway Cas tries to tell Dean the angels don't like him, and Dean volunteering to go with him because "i could go with you" is a thing and they keep doing it to each other and ow
-
Blah blah we could work a case. Are you serious? I really seriously hope this is not literally Buckleming's thought process about wtf do we do with Sam and Dean this episode after establishing maybe 4-5 other plotlines we need to handle away from them. I hope it turns out to be directly main plot related, whatever they stumble on, but we already now have them in a position where any involvement with the main stuff will be them stumbling on it or it coming to them. See above: ways in which the main characters are automatically made to be stupid. Subtle things, like not being able to imagine a way in which Sam and Dean are resourceful enough to even start to find Jack which doesn't involve googling things.
I mean we have no clue what you're doing with this random witch seeming case, why can't you bring a detail foreward if it's from the main plot to give us a clue. And if it's not, tell us something connected to it which will at least make Sam and Dean interested in it as a lead? Even if they're not right about why, put them on the trail because they're good at their jobs!
-
Anyway hi Asmodeus? As soon as we clear the promo scene etc I start assuming everyone is Asmodeus
I mean, in this case it literally is. but you can't trust anyone these days.
He needs to have his equivalent scene to sitting around in the Bunker googling, which, which is to say, the same type of minions who brought Crowley or Lucifer news are now coming toadying in to tell Asmodeus news, and the only difference is his name is harder to spell.
He's trying to do the same thing reaching out to Jack that we saw Lucifer trying to do last season, to Dagon. There is always the possibility that Asmodeus just isn't powerful enough to get into Jack's head from this extreme range when he has no idea where he is. Loser.
This minion seems to be mistakenly labelling Jack as "the Jack", maybe not as a mark of respect but more misunderstanding what he is, that he's not a thing, that that's his name...
-
Asmodeus asks who's protecting Jack, and cut to the image of Jesus again. I don't know about him, but tbh it could just be that Jack is protecting HIMSELF and they've massive underestimated him to do that. Jesus on this show represents a lot more of the personal autonomy saving yourself thing.
Also hey as long as we're not seeing Jack, we're getting that gosh darned hole in the narrative that he represents while he's missing. Is this actually a lesson in subtlety?
-
Michael meanwhile is enjoying tormenting Lucifer some more because blah blah sole purpose in life and what do you even do when you win.
Lucifer appears to have claimed to be a god in the SPN verse and Michael's like, here you're pathetic, and I'm like, mate, he was pretty pathetic in the main SPN universe too
-
There's some cool crosses on the walls which are trying to help, bringing light into this church.
-
Yeah where is Mary anyway - I wasn't gonna ask, but then Lucifer seemed to imply that Michael was keeping her around.
I mean sheesh the easiest way to get Mary around is to just have her in the scene still lurking but then film it as if it's almost entirely from her eyeballs POV if she doesn't have anything else to be doing right now - having her witnessing this theatre as the person from the main SPN world who's come over here.
-
KEV
-
Awwww he's gone a wee bit off the rails in this world, seeing as he'd have had to be helping Michael and reading tablets the entire time and also the entire world appears to be destroyed.
-
I don't know why Lucifer's having a personal reaction to Kevin unless I totally forgot something but they were literally never in the same seasons as each other although weirdly both in 11x21 so obviously must just be angels would know all the prophetsand which one was currently active... Maybe he's just surprised that in the AU Kevin survived even longer than he did in the supposedly better world.
Well there aren't any Winchesters in this one and Lucifer always underestimates them, in this case positively re: likelihood of getting Kevin killed :P
-
Oh great they're powering down Lucifer a bit. Well that should make him much more irritating.
I mean mostly because everything makes him irritating.
But it means the show wants him around some more but they can't have him at full power because it's just inconvenient so now they're finding a reason to water him down so they can have him around dragging his heels and complaining. I suppose it might make some comparisons to Cas, who's on a smidgen of left-over grace, but again, see also: eye rolling wooden Jesus, there's no way you can redeem Lucifer and not by comparing him to Cas.
Metatron got some sort of treatment but he was nowhere near like Cas even when he was done being redeemed and he still had to be killed off doing a heroic thing rather than let him stick around.
I'm just grinding my teeth and I already got part of the way through the next scene but UGH
-
So hey thinking of random versions of other characters why is DHJ's magnificent facial hair making a cameo return role on this side of the interdimensional nosense? You can't just grow a beard and start hunting witches on the down low on the winchesters' turf.
I'm assuming including DHJ's names in the credits was specifically some sort of nonsense now
specifically monsters going around looking like other things.
Maybe it was a shapeshifter Ketch punched a few weeks ago. It's only been a few weeks since he died, you know.
Maybe it's Asmodeus.
Maybe it's maybelline
The plot reason for the beard had better be hilarious.
-
I like Daniella the Beret Witch. For some reason I thought she looked tons like the witch Sam and Dean were looking at on the CCTV but when I went back to look I actually spotted her in the background watching them and waiting to make her move, and she doesn't look like the one on the CCTV at all so I guess my brain clocked her and filed her away because she was sitting around in a huge scarf, sunglasses and a beret and my brain didn't want me to not pay attention to her in case she was useful.
-
Kevin's weirdly pristine but still grey hoodie is making me giggle. He looks like the AU has barely touched him and Michael's even dirty and ragged.
I'm not sure I even want to touch random morality discussions from Buckleming. Lucifer says Michael is pure evil, Kevin says "aren't you Satan?" and Lucifer really hasn't done anything ever to make us actually want to root for him. Like sure Michael is the much worse bigger bad in the show's rankings but that doesn't make Lucifer less quanitifiably evil. Michael's way more complex because Lucifer is the big cartoon evil that Sam had to originally fear, the "what if I am actually evil" character mirror that obviously Sam isn't but it meant Lucifer needed no character complexity other than whiny manipulative interpretations of how he'd been mistreated where he could protest he had a side. Michael is waaaay more complex just in the like 2 episodes he actually talks in season 5 because he's "what if Dean was the big bad" and he's not evil, he's just 100% black and white morality rigid "good" in the sense of punishing evil, to the point of not questioning an order to kill his brother, and not even having a particularly "cool motive still murder" approach like Cain, but literally just like well okay then I guess I will kill my brother. How to make DEAN evil, or to personify the darkness that lives in him.
I mean I am massively simplifying but dear lord Buckleming if you read my notes this is the baseline direction you need to be writing these characters from and I am trying to HELP.
I am genuinely feeling like you're mistaking "apparent fan favourite because they make a lot of memes about him, Lucifer" as "this must mean people genuinely like him because he's Lucifer" and any possible reason I would find him interesting as a villain who was held up to just kinda exist and be himself doing his awful things contrasted to Michael who was just around existing and doing his awful things, is all just draining away down the toilet. Like you've got Lucifer lodged in there and you're flushing and flushing around him >.>
Anyway I'm going to take this entire scene as 100x more ironic than it was probably originally intended to be, that Kevin is not exactly right about Michael (and lol, Michael being the Dean parallel just kinda using Kevin all the time for random spells and always having him on the hook for doing things for them) but he's sure not wrong about Lucifer, Lucifer protesting Michael is evil because he's mistreating him and has destroyed this planet sure isn't WRONG but it's not a "so therefore I must be right"
And I kind of think the level of subtlety this writing is at is that "Michael is a dick and therefore Lucifer looks better in comparison"
But that's not how any of this works
*insert Jesus eyeroll*
-
*pats poor overworked manic AU!Kevin's hair*
I wonder if he's actually going to be able to do it
it would be HILARIOUS if they waste Lucifer's grace on this
-
Hey he did it, I'm proud of you AU!Kev. He always manages to do the thing :P
Okay not good that Lucifer has just been thrown back because A: Mary is still trapped over there, I assume for the much more important emotional arc stuff to do with rescuing her especially in the parallel to getting Cas back and all this stuff for Sam's arc and all
But UGH the writing of Lucifer is just really annoying me on so many levels and punting him back into the main SPN universe depowered and humbled by his brother, just annoys me so much.
Like I don't know how much more less enthused I have to be about Lucifer having struggles.
Boo hoo
-
Last season Dean got mistaken for homeless after he got hit with the memory spell, and was offered cash to make him go away.
he handled it considerably better than Lucifer.
I am just gonna assume this random woman is Asmodeus.
Lucifer probably ought to go grab that cash he was offered...
-
Oh wait here's Asmodeus, torturing some poor bloke called Karl who apparently works at the motel from last week.
I'm impressed they managed to track Jack that far, tbh
The question is, is there an actual memo that the Winchesters are camped in an old, heavily warded, impossible to map or locate MoL bunker, or is that something you only find out after you tail them for a bit? I mean Jack might not be there any more either but it would be a start :P
I feel extra skeevy about this scene because Asmodeus is being a total moron for starters by not checking Karl's level of clued in to this, and so he's this white plantation owner coded guy in his shiny white suit, torturing a black guy who isn't even on the same level as him for info he doesn't have, and could in no way be resonably expected to know. So it's doubly cruel. Although in some respects Asmodeus's coding makes this gratuitous violence a commentary, just like Buddy and Dave being collosal douches to women in the last few episodes was called out in many ways simply by their existence and coding as collosal douches.
Still not nice to watch on screen, especially without even more specific reference to Asmodeus's doucheyness because the stupidity of this dialogue is not helping.
Like did the minions just bring Karl to him and say hey we tracked the Winchesters and Jack this far, he might know more?
Like...
This is the sort of basic intelligence test fail here, that they're not over-thinking this scene in the specific details that you need to not have your main villain parade around displaying total idiocy over.
Like why the Winchesters would book into a motel under "Sam and Dean Winchester and Jack the Nephilim" and then Karl would know that and know what that means.
You can't just drag a normy into the Hell Main Office and torture them for info about Jack when they have no clue who that is.
He literally
can shapeshift
into anything
Go to the Stampede Motel, turn into a pretty girl in a low cut top, and lean on the motel check in desk until you know what you were after.
I'm no longer impressed they found Karl, I'm AMAZED.
-
Why did they kiiiiill him
-
Lol Asmodeus is so hammy
what's he sensing
Has he figured out Lucifer is back?
-
Meanwhile: Sam and Dean voluntarily go to a creepy cabin in the woods with a witch. This is not quite as stupid as Asmodeus was just being.
-
I am loving the plot development that David Hayden Jones has returned to the show as himself to find Rowena. Like dammit, you were a really cool character I had no interaction with but we coulda had some screen magic for all you know. You may or may not be in this episode as a surprise appearance which as Lizzy said putting MY name in the credits is the "hey it's that guy" fuckery to distract from the fact there's some bigger fuckery at foot (like... aside from the fact I was back to back with OSRIC FUCKING CHAU) because you don't *just* randomly put my very recognisable name in the credits at the start of the episode with Osric unless it's because something's up. So heeey here I am, I'm looking for Rowena, because dangit Ruthie deserves another chance to be in this show.
-
Daniella is also really slow to realise that Sam just said she was going to be bait. It took until Dean repeated it for her to realise.
-
She's really pretty though.
-
She starts choking like several moments before the gas hits her
-
... is that DHJ?
-
I mean we're getting a close up on his face but I literally. Do. Not. Recognise. Him.
I remember rambling at some point in my watching notes in season 12 when his face was being particularly hilarious after I'd seen con photos of DHJ that Ketch is one of the most effective character disguises I've ever seen for an actor's face. TBH it's the same weird different face thing I get from Alex Calvert - that he's all clean shaven and filmed as a wee nougat child in the show but he has an instagram of unrecognisable smouldering glamour shots, often with scruff. DHJ has a beard and that's his face, and part of the Ketch look was being clean shaven and crammed in a tight collar which is an incredibly British upper class twit look, and even in other clothes later the illusion lasted... But add a beard and stop grooming his hair and he just turns into some other person entirely.
-
Ah well, Dean gets to punch DHJ with Ketch's accent again which must be satisfying for him.
-
Did they take DHJ back to the Bunker? Really?
-
Oh he doesn't have the tattoo
LOL he's his "twin" "brother"... Obviously.
Yeah okay whatever you say, DHJ.
-
elizabethrobertajones Hey what if DHJ was actually Rowena
mittensmorgul oh god, don't give them ideas
-
ALSO if you have an "evil twin brother" you would generally assume that this sort of thing would happen a lot and you'd try and clarify sooner? I bring up my twin like every other time I talk about myself.
Also this is a ridiculous concept I refuse to engage with
-
I mean, thematically, wowsers. Fits right in with Buddy and Dave and things that look like other things
-
ALSO DHJ has been going around torturing witches so it's not like he's been the good twin
-
ALSO WHY IS HE HERE?
-
Apparently he's a hitman hunter
-
I suppose it's kind of like Bela but I do find it really strange.
Like how does anyone even know to hire him if no one knows monsters exist? Who is pointing him at these things?
Insinuating himself into situations like Bela to get work maaay be a way to do it, like if the Winchesters showed up in town and immediately told the sheriff what was up and then offered their fee as contractors or something. Pfft.
Pfft.
-
And then he's like "we hunters" because he's trying to bond with them or something
-
To google!
-
It's convenient he kept a beard his whole life
-
Oh okay Sam stole hard drives from the BMoL and is using their actual data.
-
I like the side by sides of their report cards where the prop people literally did them backwards from each other. "*More effort required!" they say about Alexander, and "Excellent work!" for Arthur.
-
Dean isn't buying it
-
LOL they dumped Ketch's corpse into the waste canal.
Do you want a haunted Bunker? That's how you get a haunted Bunker.
-
Anyway Dean is like NOPE don't believe it and Sam's like... there's so much proof... and then he goes in to question DHJ again and DHJ is like... you literally saw me get shot in the head last season, you don't trust that? And Sam's like no I had to concede that Dean had a point that we really can't trust anything and I guess Cas did just randomly come back or something and we have horrific problems with the white men on this show coming back again for completely random reasons that make no sense so you had better bloody well actually be re-introducing Rowena into the narrative even more dramatically than the warning Billie gave about the red-headed witch that Dean probably didn't tell me about now come to think of it, but I'd still like to see her again because we had a sort of weird thing we never really talked about going on...
-
Also are they keeping DHJ in the store room that showed up for the pencil scene but isn't the other store room? It looks like a different part of the Bunker repurposed.
-
Sam mis-reads Ketch, maybe because he never knew him as well as Mary or even Dean saw him. DHJ is like dude I played him for a year and psychoanalysed him and his crush on Dean in multiple interviews, so trust me when I tell you all his character exposition.
The stuff about being loyal to Heaven - I mean the BMoL - and being a company man echo what Ishim said about old Cas in 12x10
-
DHJ like, I did so much character work in those interviews, and I never got a chance for Ketch to be sympathetic so let me offer some more insight on him now you have me in the worst interview chair ever.
Also, don't go into pop culture journalism, Sam
-
"If he were here, he'd admit regret to some of the things he did to your family"
Yeah unless you have a magic twin link (well... not unlikey tbh with random ass canon pulls) you're either Arthur Ketch or just DHJ enjoying doing interviews about Ketch to a twisted and weird level and I'm sort of gonna have to do an intervention on this for him.
-
CAS
-
NEW PLAYGROUND
-
New angel!
mittensmorgul dumas? that's the name the superwiki has linked, but her page is blank
elizabethrobertajones Heh 3 musketeers again first in the off-brand nougat now that
-
"If we had him he wouldn't be imprisoned he'd be put to work"
SHE WANTS NEW ANGELS
I don't freakin blame her
But Jack shouldn't be "put to work" either - he would have to want to do it.
Awww Cas getting protective over Jack before I'm done typing that of course this means Jack would be forced to do it and the angel says "No other choice" because of course she does.
As usual heaven isn't comic book evil but its purposes in the name of "good" are super shady. Even if Jack was pure evil himself, Heaven enslaving a powerful nephilim for its own purposes would be dodgy.
-
Btw I am still torn about Cas's compulsion to care about Jack but on the other hand I am really enjoying Cas generally existing and being alive - and wait a minute she didn't even ask about how he was doing that - so I'm pretty much enjoying the surface level about Cas and Jack right now. Because of course I see the good in Jack that he DOES need protecting, so however Cas ended up on this, at least he is doing the right thing and taking the right stance.
-
"Castiel, he's not your pet. He belongs to all of us."
-
Uhoh, Cas is probably going to get grabbed.
*surprise*
Hey he did pretty well considering he's fighting 3 angels and is much weaker than them.
-
Oh boy, here's Lucifer. This is gonna go great.
-
Does Cas or Lucifer need to start this with the "you're supposed to be dead/in the AU" first?
-
Lol, Cas is the first person in this entire damn episode to actually ask a relevant question, and it's one we already know the answer to
*waves a little flag for Cas though*
Hey and then Lucifer asks about Cas being alive, what do you know.
He then calls Cas "cowboy" and pretends like Cas wouldn't kick his ass.
I am pretty happy about the "cowboy" thing :P
-
Lucifer has found a tan jacket somewhere, specifically one that looks like the one Jack was wearing but maybe a bit thicker, more like Cas's new coat. He's trying to edge in on this family and I can only assume this is not even a veiled metaphor for the douchey biological father wanting to be all interested in his son's business.
Lucifer in a tan jacket makes me think wolf in sheep's clothing.
-
He does, however, shelve the issue of child custody for now, and he appears to be genuinely freaked out enough about Michael to make that a priority and tell Cas about it, because if you want help against Michael, we've had 2 references to Team Free Will in short succession and that was a phrase coined specifically to spite Michael...
I don't think Lucifer should be allowed in, remotely, because it's become a family term, but the imagery is interesting anyway that he is trying to leech off the success of TFW to accomplish the goals he could never do himself. Especially because it was blatant in season 5 to everyone but him that Michael would kick his butt since he already did it once before and nothing has changed, 12x12 confirmed Michael would kill him slowly, and now meeting an AU Michael, he discovers that yep Michael sure is stronger than him, even when he was the last strong archangel left, and then Michael took that from him...
-
None of this, however, makes Lucifer sympathetic or good, just self-interested in not dying, and who is better at not dying than Cas?
I mean he wasn't even expecting to see Cas here, I guess he was going to a heaven portal to try and get them to listen?
-
LOL Kingdom Beer sign over Cas and Lucifer having a chat in a bar.
Cas looks Weary.
"I came back from the dead to deal with THIS? Please take me back to yesterday when it was fun kinky cowboy times with Dean."
-
I'm glad Cas isn't remotely friendly to Lucifer and is quick to remind him about how killed he got last time they hung out. Lucifer continues to be whiny and annoying about it all, unrepentant for killing Cas over petty nonsense.
-
LOL Lucifer is like "this Michael is much more powerful"
buddy. dude. go watch 12x12 then get back to me about how whooped your butt would have been. I mean go look at that lovely painting of him whooping your butt that was in 12x12 and unrelated to the fact he had that fucking lance in the first place.
-
Anyway he's trying to convince Cas to use his influence on Jack to get them to be the ultimate team up but they're fundamentally incapable of doing that because they're the 2 rival dads for Jack and blatantly symbolically being shown as that in these costumes, and that's one of the huge thematic things.
-
Cas like "You are the Weakest Link, goodbye."
-
I love Cas being so snarky, so maybe Lucifer being around is good in some respects, that it makes Cas this snarky because he has something to bounce off as awful and despised as Lucifer. Not even Crowley got THIS dismissive treatment, because they had emotional baggage that was of a whole different sort, whereas Cas and Lucifer have been opposite mirrors the whole time since season 4
-
Lucifer is emphasising how he and Cas are the big cosmic powers around here, with Jack. Hm...
Lol Cas is like "I'm calling my guys who deal with these things" and Lucifer bangs his head on the table in despair. I guess this is like the boy who called wolf except that instead of calling wolf he was literally going around eating all the sheep and was banned from being a shepherd for life and locked away and got out and ate more sheep and was locked away and got out and ate more sheep and got locked away and THEN came back like oh hi something's gonna eat all our sheep.
-
Lucifer then says Cas needs him and that he needs Cas and they all need Jack.
So Um I guess "Need" is The Worst Word right now :P
-
"Jack. Your son's name is *Jack*" *pats Cas's hair*
Pfft themes "is he a chip off the old block?" "thankfully, no. he seems to favour the mother"
Theeeeeeeeemes
-
Cas squinting when he lies - I don't think that's his lying tell because he does it too much, but perhaps uncertainty. The fact he squinted so much in the reintroduction huggy scene last episode feels to me less like lying and more like no clue what was going on and how mad he had to be about his humans sacrificing for him to come back.
-
Laughing at all their labelled phones lying around permanently charging. I think this is the first proof we've ever seen that they have a Bobby phone bank, but I can't imagine who would rely on the Winchesters to answer the phone when they need proof of ID :P They're like ALWAYS being abducted or disappearing on cases.
Or dying.
-
Okay so the phones are more just for their personal IDs for the cards THEY give out and they're just getting a call back from the motel for some reason, I suppose because Jack was with them (seriously. Dean gave the motel the name Jack? I have to assume Jack said his name before they could re-name him on the fly and so he was registered as a guest there as Jack the Nephilim because why the fuck not... Berens has a magic skill of un-fucking Buckleming canon but it seems Buckleming's skill is fucking up poor Davy's, in 12x13 and 12x17 and now here...)
ANYWAY jesus christ Asmodeus is stupid. "Evil Colonel Sanders" literally walked in and abducted Karl in person which means that his stupid ass questions weren't even because his minions brought him the guy and presented him in an idiotic way, but our shapeshifting villain wandered in and took Karl, himself in person with his own freaking face that the Winchesters KNEW and is extremely memorable, and took his prize.
...
DHJ better turn out to be Asmodeus even though I think their screentime overlapped and this makes no freaking sense since he has some established history wandering around attacking witches before they caught up with him.
-
I'd rather have a time plothole than a stupid plothole :P
-
Anyway DHJ is hanging out with them in the library eating a sandwich because... um
reasons?
At least he's in chains.
-
Oh my god I said that sarcastically moments before Sam said it sincerely and then pointed out there's no bathroom in the armoury
what the fuck
-
Like I said up top: as stupid as the villain is, your main characters have to be about as dumb as they are, either only just enough to outwit them, or more stupid if they get outwitted...
Poor Sammy, he was having such a fantastic season
-
Dean just straight up pretends Mary is phone when DHJ asks because why the heck would you monologue your sad life story to the bad guy, and give him emotional leverage over you? Especially when he ASKS because "Alexander" should have no knowledge of Mary or care about her, but then he also shouldn't know the DHJ interview details of Ketch's inner life.
-
YAY Dean and Cas are talking and Dean phoned Cas probably just to hear a sane voice because Cas is managing to weave around being Buckleminged, so far, possibly just because he was not in the opening half of the episode, and then this was a really important conversation they couldn't fuck up so probably got supervised.
-
elizabethrobertajones tee hee Cas standing by the gents to take a call from Dean wait hang on ... I'm not even being jokey I literally just had that moment in the chat with you :P *rewinds* Longing retcon Confirmed Oh dear that is hilarious I don't know if that's the moment you wanted me to see or not but I'm delighted :P
elizabethrobertajones Cas was standing away from Lucifer ready to take Dean's phone call and had to have walked off up to a minute before he called, but most likely in that time when Dean was like UGH I need to talk to Cas and hear the one sane voice in this episode and Cas was like... Brb I... have to use... the 'Gents' and got up and wandered off to take the call eat it, 12x10 and that "where's my phone" moment I mean Buckleming introduced it to fill a plothole so why should they not use it to cover more plotholes at their leisure
... did Speight know? I mean he coulda been like what the heckeroo, and added Cas getting the call and legging it from the table.
-
The only other option I can think of is Cas decided he may as well just get up to "go pee" because Lucifer is so annoying that pretending he needs to go to the loo buys him 5 minutes to let his migraine subside.
-
Also what the fuck DHJ was wandering around the bunker so he could use the bathroom. I am confused. Is this actually like... being hinted at. Like, "hey children, please remember who does and doesn't need to use the bathroom in this episode"
-
Omg
Cas like "I would *like* to see you too" is he literally pretending he and Dean were canoodling on the phone as a cover?
-
I hate everything
-
Anyway need/want blah blah I have been over that a lot lately :P Cas is using his DESIRE to see Dean to get help, by Lucifer saying he NEEDS Cas.
-
"Smooth was never your strong suit" oh my god Lucifer also thought Cas was pretending to be flirty too what is going on
why has this episode confirmed all the headcanons about Cas being the most shittiest phone sex guy ever
of all the things.
why.
-
DHJ wants to go because he misses being in on the action with the guys
-
Like. No, go take your sandwich and sit down.
-
Dean is sad about Cas always getting killed by Lucifer and stuff when he does stupid things.
-
Cas's "ugh stop talking Lucifer" face is a whole layer more existential misery than dealing with Crowley... I think he was secretly fond of Crowley or at least enjoyed hating him, whereas Lucifer is just EXHAUSTING.
He's needling Cas for attention.
-
LOL randomly Asmodeus as if Cas's headache wasn't bad enough, now we got thunder and lightning and very very frightening...
Pfft.
-
bahahaha Lucifer called Asmodeus the dim bulb
I mean he's not wrong, Asmodeus has been completely idiotic all episode. And of course, narratively, his "evil plans" are just self-interest which will endanger the entire world because even if Lucifer is a twat, he has a point about the coming danger of Michael, and Asmodeus just refuses to see the danger, which is all kinds of various political commentary, and using his era aesthetic to say this kind of thinking is such a throwback...
-
I think this might be the most confused Cas has ever been about if he should stab someone or not - if he actually WANTS to defend Lucifer. Not really, but Asmodeus seems like a bigger problem because at least Lucifer isn't trying to kill him.
-
I hope this just randomly gets Asmodeus killed.
Or Lucifer
-
Asmodeus just called Lucifer "screwable"... do they even know what they said? :P
-
EEEP there was a Margiekugel sign and it just flickered off
-
"Nick's bar" pfft because Lucifer?
-
It seems like Sam and Dean are too late and Asmodeus already made off with everyone?
I hope Cas is okay
being held captive by that idiot seems like a fate worse than death. You're going to get villain monologues all day.
-
Anyway fight fight fight
-
Good fight.
-
Where did DHJ even come from?
-
that was a ridiculous nonsense about how he escaped. I also will die if he took Dorothy's bike and not his own left stashed there. Also he nodded at Dean like hey you didn't cavity search me like you should have, which... Is he actually Ketch?
-
He's actually Ketch
Of course that means Dean knows him very well and trusted his gut instinct on knowing Ketch to prove that he was not, in fact, the actor David Hayden Jones, chillaxing on set and being weirdly cheerful about being beaten up by the Winchesters.
-
Pfft he used Rowena's charm to get alive again
-
Well she better be fine if they're gonna use her like this.
-
"Is she?"
-
LOL Ketch ninja'd out of there
Oh good it wasn't Dorothy's bike
Considering how they use Rowena, DON'T use Mary, etc I'd have taken Dorothy's bike as a personal insult. I guess Ketch rode his over to the Bunker before 12x22.
-
I mean at least this means Ketch remembers he got shot and then also he revived in a sewer where he belonged because he is garbage.
-
Wait. He set up this whole thing in like a month or so TOPS since he got shot? If he’s been chasing witches has he even had TIME for a side business?
-
Oh boy, Asmodeus using Cas's voice to talk to Dean.
BAD HELLO DEAN.
That "see you soon" is also way too cheerful. It should be as much of a tip off as Cas begging Dean to come help him in the previous call.
-
I hope Dean sees through it.
Though it's so Buckleming-y I don't think people should be mad if he doesn't because this was them doing a smart!Dean episode.
-
PFFT of course they team up - colonialism from all sorts of fun angles!! The ultimate trashy white guys in suits team up.
-
Thanks Buckleming!
-
Man, I need a whole pot of detox tea now. I don't even have closing thoughts.
68 notes · View notes
morethanonepage · 6 years
Text
2017 Fic Roundup Meme
Total Fics Posted: Nine. Ooof. 
Total Words Posted: 44041
Total Words (of Anything Excluding Blogs) Written: Man I don’t even know how I’d count this -- I’ve written at least ten briefs for work and those are usually between 2 - 5 pages, and I write a lot of WIPs that I don’t end up posting. So I mean it’s probably in the 100,000 range but the majority of that (obviously) is either not fandom related or not likely to see the light of day as publicly consumable or both.
My favorite fic story this year: greenwood -- written as part of an AU meme and so so random -- Maurice-AUs are hardly a fandom trope y’know -- but man that’s one I wish I could commit to writing more of. I love Maurice (both the film and the book) so much and I love John/Chas so much as a pairing that I just kind of forced it to work, and I think it mostly did. But it’s just too far from the Constantine premise to be worth expanding, beyond just for the gimmick. Like as a historical AU I feel like I’d have to incorporate some magic nonsense to it and it wouldn’t be impossible but ugh, plots. Better to leave them in that nice, tender moment with all the possibilities before them. My one regret for it was that I got a little fade-to-black about the sex (not true in the initial conception and I did a little draft of some more explicit from Chas’ POV) but in the end I felt like I’d written too much porn lately (and was trying to be in keeping with the aesthetic of the original story), so.
My best story this year: Adrift -- I’ve re-read it to myself a bunch of times, and I just genuinely enjoyed working through it and figuring out the relationship dynamics and possibilities and putting in references to so many well established headcanons of mine. And John’s SUCH an unreliable narrator/POV character that I always have a great time trying to write him as clearly feeling SOMETHING while he’s pretending he doesn’t. And idk it’s just one of my top pairings ever and I was glad to finally devote myself to writing a nice, slow developing relationship fic with just the two of them working their shit out. 
Story most under-appreciated by the universe, in my opinion:  Honestly at this point, given that I’m writing almost entirely John/Chas fics, and otherwise for very niche pairings, I think any appreciation my fics get is a miracle. Though I do kind of wish I’d written Adrift in the Constantine fandom’s hey-day, because it’s a chaptered developing relationship fic and those are hard to come by and I feel weird saying it’s great but it’s solid and got really good reactions from people who did read it, and I’m proud of that. 
Also I’m not as proud of blended cotton with gannex twill, in terms of its actual quality (I’m not sure the POV shifts quite work as well as I wanted them to) but it took me SO LONG to finish it and it was such a goofy premise that I’m really glad I did, and again I’m a little sad some of the early-day Constantine people didn’t get a chance to read it when I first started goofing around about the possibility of a sentient trenchcoat.
I’m also kind of surprised a reasonable amount of trouble was the least popular of the historic AUs I wrote -- I joked that I didn’t really know what noir was but I think it was close enough and I tried to set a (vaguely angsty) mood of both yearning but inevitable dissatisfaction to it. Maybe I didn’t go gritty enough with it? That tends to be my flaw for any Hellblazer related stuff, admittedly -- I can’t quite commit to the bleakness I know it merits.
Sexiest Story:  Adrift has a lot of sex in it (IT’S NECESSARY TO THE PLOT, she said, not at all defensively), which was described with a fair amount of detail, and then I backed up to more subtle depictions b/c I thought all that sex stuff would get boring. There’s also a lot of John telling himself he’s pretty meh on the sex itself. So I feel like the sexiness of it was kind of neutered by it being so much about the plot (like, the shifts of what they actually get up to were to represent emotional shifts in how they were feeling about each other). Which at least made it less sexy for me to write, anyway.
I got good feedback about The (Shamelessly Indulgent) Sex Chapter in blended cotton with gannex twill [which was somewhat necessary b/c I wanted to get all manner of bodily fluids on the coat b/c in my vague headcanon/justification that’s what actively pushes it into true sentience but--], but honestly I think my truly sexiest fic of the year is mages against literacy -- to the point I was actively embarrassed writing it, and didn’t read it again for months after I posted it, and then went back and was like “w o w”.
Most fun story:  blended cotton with gannex twill. TRENCHIE NO! TRENCHIE YES.
Also a boy with a thorn in his side is....fun for me and a few very specific people, probably. I wrote another high school AU Star Wars fic in 2016 that was way more fun and goofy and idealistic -- it’s called the id fic for a reason -- but if the id fic was what I wish high school had been like for me, ABWATIHS is -- what high school was, tbh. I mean not precisely, but Cassian’s EMOTIONS and his inability to deal with them was #relatable. I wrote it so fast, mostly because I was so intrigued by the possibilities of it and the headcanons I came up with for it, which I’m still really fond of. Like if I were to ever write original fic, I’d file off the serial numbers and make a go of it there.
Story that shifted my own perceptions of the characters: In Good Faith wasn’t, in my opinion, a great fic -- I wrote it too quickly and without enough of a reason beyond ‘someone asked for it’, and some parts were very derivative -- but I did work through some things with it, about Kes and Shara’s potential relationship history, and about what Shara’s flaws might be and what her life was like and why she and Kes work so well together. Not a lot of which actually came out in the fic IMO, but at least I had that going on in my head. 
Hardest story to write: partly mors et fugacem persequitur virum, because I didn’t remember nearly as much about Roman history as I thought I did (and what was I going to do, research??? [I did do some but none of it is actually like -- visible in the fic], and I was overconfident about my ability to make it work and still be in IC. I’m.....still not sure if I didn’t fail on one or both of those accounts.
Also I wrote Anything Can Happen (On Halloween) for no fucking reason other than because I wanted to post the 100th fic in the John/Chas tag (I EARNED THISSS) and I think it shows. Again I wrote it too quickly (in about a week?? ridiculous), I was too nervous about someone else posting something else as the 100th fic instead of me and that my hardwork would’ve GONE TO WASTE wah wah wah anyway the ending was boring and I still feel guilty about it not being very good.  Biggest surprise: Anything Can Happen (On Halloween) was actually surprisingly (to me) well received -- like it got very quick positive reactions and idk why since I’m still genuinely embarrassed by it -- I mean I don’t think it’s a bad fic but it’s rushed and clunky and not terribly original.  A story I want remembered:  Someone on twitter said that Adrift made them ship John/Chas and honestly that’s all I want for it -- that and for the people who keep coming to the lil’ Constantine fandom that there is and go looking for fic find it and read it and at least kind of understand why some rando keeps flooding the tag with John/Chas nonsense. 
Resolutions for 2018: This has been a very John/Chas year for me and while I’m mostly okay with that, I do want to at least try to make my way back to finnpoe again -- I’m working on a bigbang fic so I desperately want to finish that (it’s outlined and everything and I think it may end up being one of my most personal fics) but we’ll see -- Star Wars fandom continues to push me away, and I won’t be able to post it until May, which is rough for someone like me, who depends so much on positive attention. There’s also a bunch of DamFam things I want to explore, especially now. 
I also want to keep writing the John/Chas but I want to stop feeling so embarrassed about it -- like so what that it was so long ago, people are still into it! Every few weeks or so I get someone on tumblr clearly going through my John/Chas tag, anyway. So at least I will have/still have some readers for that nonsense. 
I want to be better about prompts people give me -- I try to set expectations at the floor level for these things but I do genuinely like writing things for people, at least partly b/c I’m terrible at coming up with ideas on my own, so I want to try harder to fill memes and such. 
And idk maybe I’d like to find another ship that I like, that’s not from a dead show, where the fandom isn’t the worst. DARE TO DREAM (the impossible dream).
3 notes · View notes
meanderfall · 7 years
Note
//tornadoes thru ur window, completely shattering the glass: for the writer meme, 5 - 6 - 8 - 10 - 15 - 21 - 25 - 27 - 28 - 29 - 30 - 34 - 36 - 39 - 45 - 47 - 48 - 49 - aaaand 50: how long do you usually let an idea fester in your mind before you're like, "okay, i'll write you down u little fucker"? ALSO IM AWARE THIS IS A LOT, LMAOOO
LDJF;KFGSKGF ADRI MY LOVE, MY WIFE, MY KNIGHT, MY SUN AND MOON, THANK YOU OMG, I HOPE YOU’RE READY FOR A NOVEL OF AN ANSWER LMAO
5.     How much writing do you get done on an average day?
LMAO I ACTUALLY HAVE THIS CALCULATED PER HOUR just bc that’s how long my train ride is. So I can do about 400-500 words in 50~ minutes.anyway tbh, I write almost never, but when I do, I try to get around 1000 words done??? that’s usually when i lose steam too. (though i guess if i did 500 word spurts instead throughout the day, i’d get more done) (TO CLARIFY, the only reason it’s so much is bc i only write when I know /exactly/ what the scene is gonna be and im motivated. if u sat my ass down in front of a computer each day and told me to write, I’d probably only get 100 in two hours, less even.)
6.     Single or multiple POV?
I’m a multiple pov hoe. I’ve thought before of writing something in entirely one pov, but tbh i dont think i could do it if the thing is longer that a 2000 word one shot.
8.     Oldest WIP
I HAD TO PULL OUT MY USB FOR THIS GODDAMN
Okay so, my oldest wip ever, is an original story I started in, I think, 2011 and wrote throughout the year. It’s got about 22k words down, but tbh i dont think im ever gonna touch it again.fanfic-wise, my oldest wip is a harvest moon fanfic, that’s around 6k words i think? and i was planning on re-writing it bc i didnt like the characterization of one of the characters and i wanted to fix that, but it’s been like five years now, i dont think it’s ever gonna be done. (I still want to though). (and u can find said wip on my fanfiction.net account)
10.  Do you set yourself deadlines?
My guy, i’ve never set a deadline for myself in my entire life. I think I tried to do it once, and i completely let it pass by. (Though the fanfic i mentioned previously, im pretty sure i updated once a week before i fucked up)
15.  How do you deal with writer’s block?
I either set it aside (and never pick it up again lmao) and let it stew in the back of my mind until I get something else, oR I POWER THROUGH THIS MOTHERFUCKER, and I’ll probably only write 50 words and hate every single last one of them, but I got it done and it’s better than nothing and hopefully tomorrow i’ll actually have something. (also, sometimes when powering through, what i write ends up inspiring me and im like “oh of course!” and i blaze through it)
21.  Who is/are your favourite character(s) to write?in case u havent noticed yet, about 99% of all my characters are snarky to some degree. I need a character with a wry sense of humour, and I’ll usually stay in their pov a lot. The only other character “type” I have are the sunshine pure cinnamon rolls who care and love everyone. Oh, and I guess also the ones who are pissed and bitter at the world at large. (I should.... probably... try to get out of this comfort zone...)
25.  Favourite part of writing
okay tbh, my favourite part is when I’m winding down from a good writing session, and I just feel so proud and alive, because I was productive and I created something with my own two hands and mind, and there are very few things that are as incredible as that imo
27.  Favourite line/scene
okay so this was hard to pick??? not to mention it’s all crap you’ve seen before but whatever.
There’s this one:
“McCreewas abruptly reminded of when he was nothing more than a teen, snarling andfurious at everyone around him, not willing to trust anyone. And he wasreminded of Gabriel Reyes who stayed calm and collected in front of his fury,gently rebuking him when he crossed a line; who praised him when he did welland willingly trusted him to have his back even though McCree didn’t trust him;who seemed to quietly understand why McCree acted in certain ways, accepted it,but encouraged him to choose better. Gabriel Reyes, who had faith in him whenhe wasn’t even sure he liked himself.“
And this one:
“IfWash’s head was a ghost town, then the Meta’s was a fucking wasteland.
Butthe worst part wasn’t the scorched earth and completely lifeless landscape, norwas it the stormy brown clouds above. No, the worst part was the lava that wasslowly inching its way up the mountain. It bubbled and simmered an awful sicklyorange as it creeped up bit by bit, not fast at all, but inexorably to the topof the mountain, going against all laws of physics. It was so awfully wrongthat he honestly felt sick witnessing it. Not helping was the sizzles it madeas it burned through whatever little vegetation there was and (he had no ideawhy he knew this, maybe it was because he was connected to the Meta’s brain?),it felt like the lava was actually gouging the earth, opening cracks andseeping inside, corrupting and destroying what lay within.
Wasthe Meta even a person anymore?”
(I proooobably would’ve picked something from the tuckington au but.... a lot of my favourite stuff is dialogue, or snarky narration, and idk it’s hard to choose and there aint a lot of depth to it)
28.  Favourite side character
OKAY THERE’S THIS ONE SIDE CHARACTER IN ONE MY ORIGINAL STORY IDEAS WHOM I ADORE (even though he has no name yet lmao) BUT HE’S BASICALLY REALLY SWEET AND CARING AND HE’S TRYING HIS BEST TO BE HAPPY AND SUPPORTIVE FOR ALL HIS COMPANIONS BC THEY’RE ALL GOING THROUGH HARD TIMES, BUT IT’S REALLY HARD FOR HIM AND HE’S INWARDLY SUFFERING SO MUCH BUT HE KEEPS SMILING FOR PEOPLE ANYWAY AND FLDG;DKHGFKG I LOVE HIM
29.  Favourite villain
I’m... cheating for this, I’ve never written a villain ever actually (and tbh what the fuck??? how??? i have so many original story ideas and none of them are villains??? what the fuck (maybe the true villains were the friends we made along the way))
okay so, originally, this character was gonna be the villain alright. She was mean, cruel, snarky, cunning, and manipulative. But as time went on, and I started exploring her character, wondering why she was like this, what her goal is, and I changed and shifted the plot of the story around she... sort of... became the main character. woops.
30.  Favourite idea you haven’t started on yet
IM ONLY GONNA USE ORIGINAL STORIES FOR THIS BC HOLY SHIT
Honestly, I’d probably have to go with this idea I had of a living person picking up the scythe of a Grim Reaper and becoming one and having to learn the ropes of the job.
Okay, I lied, it might actually be this detective series idea I had, wherein the main character, a police officer, has to investigate cases that, for the most part, are reminiscent, or re-imagined versions, of Quebec folk tales, and she has to figure out why the fuck this is happening.
34.  What was the hardest scene you ever had to write?
FIGHTING AND ACTION SCENES I HATE THEM SO MUCH OH MY GOD THEY TAKE FOREVER AND I ALWAYS FEEL LIKE IM FUCKING THEM UP HORRIBLY I HATE THEM (I could give u a specific example, but i dont want to)
36.  Last sentence you wrote
“Shut up.”
(this is actually how chapter 2 of my tuckington high school au ends lmao and there’s nothing to gain from it have fun adri)
39.  Weirdest character concept you’ve ever had
OH SHIT I ACTUALLY KNOW THE ANSWER TO THIS QUESTION, okay so the i have no clue where the idea came from, but for some reason i had this idea of a character who’s mental stability or whatever was linked to these bracelets she wore??? but it was more like she became more primal and animalistic the more bracelets were taken off until she lost all sense of identity, and i think it’s because she was being controlled or used by an organization or whatever. This was just a random idea that I had and okay i know it’s dark af, but it’s honestly the weirdest one. (tbh…. im not sure i have one that could be considered weird…)
45.  How much world building do you do?
all of it. just. all of it. I need to know clothes, food, architecture, cultural norms, the history of the world, how the fuck people can communicate when there are multiple countries and multiple languages, and this is why absolutely none of my original stuff has ever been written
47.  Best way to procrastinate
Day-dreaming scenes and ideas instead of writing them
48.  What’s the most self-insert character/scene you’ve ever written?
W O W ADRI U WANNA CALL ME OUT THAT BADLY HUH?
honestly it’s probably that main character/villain i mentioned previously, bc i just gave her all of my self-loathing and she was supposed to sacrifice herself heroically in the end and there was gonna be an entire speech about why she was the right person to do this. (if it makes u feel any better, I’ve modified it so she doesn’t actually die and everyone is like “wtf? NO!”)
also the protagonist in story, i just gave her my depression and general lostness in life. (most... of my characters... start off with a part of me I want to explore, but over time, as I flesh them out, they become their own people, and actually have nothing to do with me anymore tbh)
49.  Which character would you most want to be friends with, if they were real?
THAT SWEET CINNAMON ROLL I MENTIONED BEFORE OMG YES, I WOULD PROTECT HIM WITH MY LIFE
50: how long do you usually let an idea fester in your mind before you’re like, “okay, i’ll write you down u little fucker”?
*LAUGHS HYSTERICALLY* OH MAN ADRI U HAVE NO IDEA WHAT YOU’VE JUST ASKED DO U OMG WAIT UNTIL U HEAR THIS
okay so u know that story with the cinnamon roll and main character/villain? The basic plot of that story has been in my brain since around 2011. I still haven’t started to write it. (though, to be fair, that story has changed so goddamn much since 2012 holy shit, and for the better tbh)
tbh adri, ur like 80% of my impulse control, and by that I mean you make me impulsive enough to actually write things instead of letting them ruminate in my brain forevermore. Hell, I’ve only started to get back into writing fanfiction because of you, okay, if u weren’t around I’d probably just give up on writing ever, and let the idea of being a novelist be nothing more but a fantasy i daydream about.
0 notes