#wrote this in like the very beginning of 2020 and then… did nothing with it | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

alessiamalfoyzabini · 4 months

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Dark Moon | Chapter One

Pairing | yandere!Jimin x Reader

Word Count | 1,3k

Warnings | +18, explicit language, kidnapping, yandere, use of a sleep-inducing substance (not specific which one), mentions of prostitution

This fanfiction is yandere, if you don't like the genre, don't read and if you are not of age, don't read.

I don't want to hear any complaints in the comments, thank you.

This does not reflect my way of thinking or living at all, it is just a work of fiction, it is like watching a horror movie, many of us love horror movies, but we would never dream of what we see in those movies happening in reality as well.

Simply put, this story was written for entertainment purposes, it should not be seen as a reflection of my values, opinions or morals. I absolutely do not condone such acts.

⤷ Summary | She just wanted to escape her past, take charge of her life and break out of her steel cage, praying in God for a miracle that could change her life for good.

And her prayers were heard, but it was not the Divine that answered her.

That was certainly the devil in the guise of an angel, she thought as those corrupted and empty eyes searched her soul with extreme voracity.

He turned a sweet, false smile on her, before pushing her into the abyss.

➢ Author's Note | Hi, guys! Here is the spin-off of Happy Ending, I hope you like the first chapter! 🥰 I would like to warn you, Jimin in this story will not be kind and soft like Jungkook from Happy Ending, he is very cruel and selfish, he is a hard yandere

Taglist: @katherine-kookie, @dragons-flare, @m00njinnie

Taglist is open!

Chapter List - Next

2020.

Three years ago.

According to Kim Seokjin's rules, the choice of a whore was something very important. The girls chosen had to meet very specific requirements, such as not having anyone who would one day - following their disappearance - look for them. Seokjin did not want any trouble, and Jimin was not about to give him any. He took a long, deep drag from his cigarette, inhaling its bitter addiction, before blowing a thick, white cloud of smoke out the car window. He stretched his gloved hands over the steering wheel, waiting for the next move. Namjoon, at his side, checked that the situation outside was okay -nothing was moving in that neighborhood, not even the shadow of a stray cat - and this created the perfect moment. "Are you ready, Jimin?" asked the older man, beginning to prepare everything needed. The dark-haired boy's eyes sparkled, he nodded confidently as he adjusted his coat. One last glance at the clock and shortly after exactly 1 a.m. they got out of the car, long strides on the asphalt counted only by the ticking of their smart shoes. Seeing them, anyone would have said they were two well-to-do men about to attend an important event, except to glance at the squalor of the houses shrouded in darkness around them. Namjoon carried a dark briefcase in one hand; Jimin walked confidently beside him before turning into a small, narrow, grim alley.

"They have to stay here, don't they?" asked Namjoon, observing the crumbling building. "That's what they wrote," confirmed Jimin, finding the lobby door already wide open; it was a low-level Motel, it wouldn't take long. They found a guy half asleep behind the counter, the two exchanged a glance of understanding before Jimin approached the man in his forties striking him dryly in the back of the head, the latter only having a chance to let out a choked scream before passing out completely. "Thanks, man," sneered the boy, beginning to look up the names he was interested in in the register, along with the room number and corresponding key. He nodded to Namjoon when he had everything and they went up to the indicated floor. Jimin's alert and shrewd eyes immediately found what he was looking for, he pointed the door to his taller friend and together they opened it, they found the lights off, but they were trained to see even in the dark so they went straight to the two beds in the middle of the old and stale room, it was clear that such a Motel could not have all the comforts and amenities with what little they paid, there were not even cameras, it was an unsuitable and unsafe place for young girls like those asleep in those beds, Jimin thought with a grin.

Namjoon set the briefcase down on the floor, retrieving ready-made syringes from it, handed one to his friend and headed for one of the beds, Jimin chose for himself the one near the window and as the filtering neon sign light increasingly put the young girl's sleeping face on display, he inspected the young girl's face carefully, drinking in the sight of her softly parted lips and the warm breath rhythmically lowering and raising her chest. He lowered himself slightly to her neck, cautiously inhaling the light scent of roses emanating from her inviting skin. Namjoon, meanwhile, had already finished gently injecting the pinkish liquid into the other girl's arm, the substance would send her to sleep for a few hours, and Jimin should have hurried to do the same, too bad that he was merely gazing longingly at the woman, completely rapt. Namjoon noticed this and with a shade of reproach in his voice, called him to his senses. "Jimin, get a move on! Don't let your cock harden just now," he scolded him in a low, irritated tone. The young man puffed slightly, before uncorking the loaded syringe, unfortunately not accounting for the girl's light sleep, who squinted her eyelids as if disturbed by the presence looming over her with the eyes of a hawk.

She thought she was dreaming, but the figure of Jimin took a distinct and material form in her field of vision, which at first glance left her speechless.

Then a shrill scream left her throat, she tried to pull away, but Jimin was immediately on her, trying to block her, Namjoon caught up with an expletive clenched between his teeth and grabbed the girl by the shoulders, pushing her against the bed, the latter only in time to kick like a horse, managing to hit Jimin at jaw level, which pissed him off in no small measure, without any kindness or regard he stuck the needle of the syringe on her exposed thigh thanks to her pajama shorts, it penetrated the skin like butter and the girl stiffened screaming in pain, she fainted from shock without needing to wait for the injection to take effect. Namjoon let go a sigh before staring furiously at Jimin, who was touching the affected area with glacial eyes fixed on his victim. "What the fuck has gotten into you! Did you have to give her time to wake up?" he hissed, his silver hair glowing with the neon light outside, and Jimin gritted his teeth at the saintly appearance he was displaying at that moment. "I didn't think she'd wake up so easily, okay?" he blurted out, before pulling the girl's body to himself without any care, Namjoon shook his head before retrieving the other one more gently, the one had been good the whole time and he hoped the other Motel patrons hadn't heard the screams.

They should have moved in complete silence inconspicuously, but Jimin did not know what silence was, evidently. They went out with a placid step, from the other doors they heard absolutely nothing. Perhaps they were not occupied rooms, or most likely no one wanted to risk their skin to go and see what had happened to the girls, it was still a bad neighborhood that one. Jimin held the unconscious body rigidly in his arms, full of lividity. When he had watched her sleep he had called her a tender little angel in his head, well he was wrong, and very wrong, too. The bitch squealed like a goose and he would have loved to stretch her neck, which Namjoon wouldn't let him do anyway, they served without the slightest bruise to the Dark Moon. They arrived at the car without further trouble, even the road had remained deserted, and loaded the bodies into the back seats. "Let's get out of here before something else happens," muttered the friend, Jimin huffed annoyed, getting back into the driver's seat. "You're making it too tragic, no one heard us," he said, earning an angry look. "Because it was a sleazy Motel, you make all that noise in a normal house and see if no one hears you."

Jimin waved a hand, as if to say that he didn't give a shit about Namjoon's worries, bit his own lower lip piercing as he drove taking semi unfamiliar roads to leave no trace of himself. It would not happen again, after all. Yes, it hardly ever happened that he got a hard cock in the middle of a kidnapping on behalf of the Dark Moon, that had been new for him as well. He cast a glance at the other girl as well, but she said absolutely nothing to him, his body seemed to be attracted to the bitch who had kicked him, this made him even more irritated. "Should we take them to the warehouse?" The warehouse was an abandoned building in the middle of nowhere, they used it to hide their equipment, but also often to torture and kill, or as in this case, keep the goods cool just long enough to make decisions about them, it was convenient and practical. "Yes, Jungkook said that Seokjin will lose time at the Dark Moon, there have been clients giving the girls trouble and he is cutting some names off the list," Namjoon replied, reading their maknae's messages. Jimin nodded, taking the last descent of that country road that would lead them straight to the warehouse.

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jmdbjk · 1 year

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Oh, Jimin...

These are my personal impressions, thoughts, interpretations and opinions on Jimin’s solo FACE album. Some of the things I say here are built on things I know from past original content, interviews and what Jimin has shared personally. Some of it is just me reveling in my first experience with Jimin’s long awaited album.

It is such a serious album. Jimin said this is the story of what he was feeling, chronologically, 2020-2022, during the pandemic era. At the beginning of 2020, BTS was rising higher than any Korean artist ever had before and then all of a sudden the momentum came to a halt, and there was nothing. Having the life you’ve known suddenly jerked away from you is traumatizing.

Once the king of social media, Jimin almost ceased by the end of 2020 and never went back. “Oh, he just outgrew it.” No, the man was struggling with his issues and not only did he not need to see the extra crap spewed all over social media but he had nothing left to give, nothing left inside.

I noticed how Jimin looked physically back in 2020. He was downright frail y’all. The man was trying to give us what we wanted at the expense of his mental and physical health. That breakdown he had during the ending ments in Memories 2020 was too much. They were all stressed out, but Jimin... those that said he was being over dramatic... the man was struggling with his mental health.

I wrote this last June, 2022 but never posted it:

After Memories 2020 dropped, we’ve heard Jimin say he struggled after everything got canceled. Days upon days that turned into months upon months and more than two years passed before they finally returned to in-person performances. He stated that during isolation and lockdowns he wondered what was the purpose of his life, or that he had lost his purpose.

Jimin’s struggles were most likely much more severe than he let on and he 100% kept it to himself because he didn’t want us to worry about him. That sounded like solo delusional projection but think about Jimin and how he’s behaved in the past...always telling us not to worry. Always saying things to reassure us that he’s happy, he eats well, don’t worry.

There was no working, no performing, their lives and his life changed drastically overnight just like all of ours did. Would we ever get back to normal? What will happen in the future? When will all of this end?

Face-Off

The album opens with a carnival calliope, it was a little jarring and unexpected. The images it conjured in my brain as the notes played were of a worn out circus winding down. It made me think of the big wild circus that WAS his life, and it just wound down and keeled over.

Knowing the premise of the album, I think the title, Face-Off, implies Jimin is looking at himself. Speaking to himself. The lyrics could also imply he is speaking to someone else, like people he once trusted. But I don’t think so.

He was having a confrontation with himself. Reasoning and bargaining with himself.

Maybe he once trusted himself but in this time and place in which he finds himself, he questions what is he doing? and second guessing himself. Day in and day out, the days are all the same nothingness. Hiding his feelings, faking it, pretending it was all ok. It’s all cool. It’ll be all right. He has said many times he looks back at that time and thinks he could have done more for the fans. Being hard on himself. His own worst critic.

And then this enters the picture: using alcohol to self-medicate. Getting drunk. Numbing the pain. Forgetting. Drink all night. Oh, Jimin...

We know he has a very high alcohol tolerance. He once mentioned that he used to drink a lot. When he declined the champagne during the live after the Busan concert, we all made jokes about it and moved on. Oh, Jimin.

Face-Off feels like it could have been a purging song when he wrote it. A little primal, you know... just scream, get it out. Painful but cathartic.

This is the lyric that was scary: “tonight is a beautiful night, I think I’m close (or I think I have it all/I think I’ve found myself)” were chilling to me because they did not come across as optimistic, they came across as being at the end of one’s rope after becoming a shell of a person. He follows that line with “tonight I don’t want to be sober.” Oh, Jimin.

His vocals open very low and moody then transition to a plaintive cry, punctuated with anger.

Pour it down, pour it out... the anger, the emotions, the words, just pour it out.

Interlude: Dive

Like the calliope that sadly wound down, Dive opens with the melody slowly winding back up to speed. Another day starting. Someone knocks, voices, the ambience of a normal day, breathing, running footsteps. The crowd cheering and Jimin’s voice during his ending ments at the Busan concert, more sounds of people in his life. We hear Jimin’s footsteps trudging, it sounds like we hear him climbing steps, entering his house, closing the door, and first thing he does when he is alone in the quiet is pour a drink and drinking deeply. I am concerned.

Maybe it is supposed to represent the closing of Chapter 1, about a day in the past that was once a “normal” day, since it included the last things he said during that concert.

The music track is dreamlike, repetitive. Living in a dream. Every day. Same thing. Go home. Drink. Do it again. Dive means go deep. In deep. He’s in deep.

There is a very subtle line between drinking in order to make it through another day/night versus drinking to relax and wind down. A slippery slope to walk on every single day.

We’ve transitioned from the world changing overnight to living in a daze trying to pretend everything is ok. Coping.

Like Crazy

(I am going to express my thoughts using the English version of the song.)

Jimin has explained the song is influenced by the movie of the same name.

I have learned that the dialogue from the movie was NOT original to the movie but hired voice actors specifically for the song: “I think we can last forever.” “I’m afraid that everything will disappear.” “Just trust me.” And at the end: “How long again?” “What’s the point?”

He has said the dialogue that was used fit the message of the song. I have not seen the movie. I don’t think the song is a literal interpretation of the movie. I think the song’s basic concept is the emotional struggle trying to maintain a dream. But maintaining a dream is unrealistic no matter what you do to try to make it last. Jimin had to come to terms with that.

Jimin’s vocals begin very light and airy, very dreamy.

[God, he’s fine.]

The vibe of the song is sort of retro, very much evokes the artist, The Weeknd. It has a very 80′s synth beat. It is a very danceable song. Like I said, on the surface.... very dreamy.

Vocals transition and it still seems like he’s having a conversation with himself, or with a voice within himself. A voice telling him to “trust me, follow me... I will make it good for you.” Me: gives a side eye to that voice in Jimin’s head because now I know it’s not trustworthy. “I’ll take the pressure off, been reaching for the stars.” Chasing that high. Go easy, Jimin. Please be careful.

Yes, the lyrics are also very sexy... “give me a good ride,” and “Let me have a taste.” Yep, I’m with ya on all that... ahem...

[Wow]

[side note: I love the make up in the bathroom scene with that stroke of silver under his eye.]

“All my reflections, I can’t even recognize.” ...what he sees of himself is not reality. He doesn’t recognize himself. Don’t try to save me. I want to stay like this.

To me, the mud on the floor, the mud flowing down the walls, the mud on the hand that grabs his wrist at the beginning of the song, the mud on his hand at the end... could represent his perceived imperfections, flawed, therefore dirty: his struggle to cope, his less than perfect thoughts... substance abuse... the struggle that he needs to be perfect on the outside or the attempt to appear perfect on the outside but there’s all this dirt on the inside that he can’t hide any longer.....the huge pile of mud at his feet is out of place in the otherwise normal room of his life. Becoming overwhelming for him.

Some of the visuals of this song are, to put it bluntly, very, not heterosexual. Again, these are just my impressions and opinions. But a friend pointed out the photo on the front of his pants and I went looking for information about the art photographer, Robert Mapplethorpe. He was heavily involved in New York’s gay BDSM scene. Some of the things written about him:

“In a rapidly changing society, he fearlessly confronted taboos surrounding gender, sexuality and mortality, seeking to instill beauty and dignity into subjects that lay outside accepted social norms.”

“... a man who consistently brought his audience face to face with the unknown and the unseen.”

The song ends with him reaching toward the camera to smear it with the mud to hide his imperfect self. When Jimin puts his face in front of the camera, he doesn’t want us to see his imperfections. He wants to be as perfect as he can, he says it all the time, he wants to look pretty for us, but I hope he has realized we accept him as a real human being even with his very human imperfections.

Alone

The alarm clock goes off...yet another day...doesn’t trust the people even if they are nice to him...he’s lost...day in day out... passing out drunk and not remembering...what am I doing? am I the only one feeling like this? Alone, pretending to be ok...every day the same...how much more until I can go back to before? Feeling more and more isolated within his own mind, pretending to be ok but losing himself every day. Mayday. The cry for help. Telling himself it will be all right (we all told ourselves this back then). The small nagging voice that doesn’t believe it.

Realizing you’ve changed and you are never going back to the way you were before.

Not gonna lie, that line right there broke my heart. Gives new meaning to Set Me Free Pt. 2′s line: "raise your hands for the past me.”

He was in so much trouble and no one knew. He reassured us over and over that he was fine. Not to be over-dramatic but I don’t want to think about how close he was... I have seen a few people say this song really resonated with them. It is a very powerful cry for help.

Jimin’s vocals blew me away. The vocals start out very subdued, almost beaten down. His vocal fry squeezes my heart. He ends crying out “what do I have to do to end this darkness?” Bad twilight. Night’s can be hard.

Set Me Free Pt. 2

From my post on March 17, 2023:

Going insane to stay sane. Raise your hands for the past me. Now set me free. This is where I literally cried. Oh, Jimin.

Going crazy trying to fake being ok.

Now I know this song is about him saving himself, setting himself free from this prison he was in, the depression, breaking the chains of alcohol dependency, of telling the naysayers out there and his own internal naysayer to go fuck themselves, Park Jimin is back. Strong and beautiful and fierce. The light of the moon shining on us.

We know he still considers soju his joy. He sounds like he’s taken control, not totally abstaining, but in control. I only wish the rest of his days are happiness and stable mental health well-being.

Letter

So unexpected. I was in shock. My heart floated away.

People talk about how Jimin’s album has no collabs on it, unlike the previous member’s solo work. My opinion is, when you are sharing deeply intimate feelings and emotions and struggles about yourself you don’t want or need other people/voices on your song. It’s not appropriate.

The only exception to this was… Jungkook…not exactly a collab, but he’s there. The other songs used background vocalists who are not members of BTS.

This song was hidden. Yes, there have been other hidden songs. But come on...

Letter has a strong stroke of Promise in the “oh, oh.” And when Jungkook starts singing it is like the world is set right because those two voices blend like nothing else I’ve ever heard. And he comes in in the middle of the song gently supporting Jimin’s vocals. But unmistakably Jungkook. I know it’s up to interpretation, but for me, the lyrics from then on take on something a little extra in meaning with Jungkook there singing with Jimin.

You held your hand out to me and now I will hold on to you. So simple and beautiful. The sounds of the surf remind me of the song “Okinawa” that Jimin posted once. Which also reminds me of their pics at Santa Monica beach...

Letter seems to be an actual letter. When the members told him to write it down, put it in a song, maybe Jimin’s first impulse was to write it as if it was a letter. The lyrics are simple and very to the point and convey:

“...though I’m not good with words, I want to sincerely say let’s make each other happier. You who showed me I am bigger than my small self. You've been by my side and I will be by yours. I hope we stay together until the cold winter. Though the future is unknown and scary, let’s stay together. Never forget we’re together.”

There are references to past songs: Sea, Spring Day. Both of those songs were from 2017.

But Jungkook. On a Jimin song. That was hidden. Clever. That we had no idea about...even though Kookie knocked us over the head with it when he played the guitar for us, making sure we knew he’d only had one lesson. Who do you think gave him that first guitar lesson? Jimin... and Kookie blurting out some English in his last live... who do you think he’s been practicing English with? Duh, Jimin.

It was a hidden song AND the credits were hidden on the page in the book. They were printed in varnish only, which is basically shiny, clear ink.

You know what I think? Jungkook knew about this song since Festa dinner. The teasing about not being offered the chance to listen to the song. That little shit. I KNOW IT WAS THIS SONG!! I JUST KNOW IT!! This was the rumored subunit. Or at least one of them. I guess we’ll eventually see if there are any more between the others.

They sound so beautiful together. I love them. And as I keep saying, they are fine… they’ve been fine.

Last words...

Anyway, that was a lot of words. Maybe I got too deep. Jimin explained himself about how the album originated.

As I was telling my friend earlier...everything in this album has peeled a layer, or several layers, away from EVERYTHING I've seen and heard from Jimin and the group since 2020. I had written some things in the past, like last June and even before that, about how Jimin seemed not well mentally. Things that I had no business saying in public because who the hell am I to think I can say something like that about someone I have never met? So I never posted those words. I never thought I would be so close to the mark in thinking those things. He’s been through it, wrote songs about it, and moved on. And I am so proud of him and this album.

#jimin face #face-off #like crazy #i'm so proud of jimin #if they were trying to quash any ships this was not the way to go about it #i said that after hickey-gate too #also jikook #did i mention i am so proud of jimin?#and kookie is so funny

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ailashiro · 14 days

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Hi! ✨

My Youtube channel recently reached 100k subscribers and even though it seems cliché or something unimportant to most people, it's quite special to me, so I wrote this text to at least express part of what I feel... I know it is extremely tedious to read a huge text, I won't judge you if you want to skip this and continue with what you were doing, but I'm immensely grateful to those who are going to read this (I don't know where you got the patience from) well, let's go…

I created the channel in 2017, two years after my first contact with Animation Memes, I was quite naive, I was still studying at school and all I wanted was to show my stories to people, even if my drawings were full of errors and the videos had a simple and amateur editing, I had a lot of fun and was really amazed to see a community growing and being inspired by the videos I made.

One thing I observed is that each animation meme YouTuber at the time was part of a group that interacted and did several collabs with each other, I wanted to be part of one, I don't deny that, especially Brazilian youtubers like DaianeBR, but I was happy to be just me and my subscribers, I remember when for the first time a video reached more than 1 million views (Fantasize Meme), I simply didn't know what to do with the huge audience that out of nowhere subscribed to my channel at the time kkkkkk

I grew and developed a lot over the years, both in art and as a person, my life changed and I went through difficulties and pain that almost took away the shine and desire to create that I had at the beginning of the channel (That's why my persona changed to a more apathetic character and little by little she regained some of her color and personality) I was close to reaching that 100k subscriber mark before, in 2019, however... Due to the problems in my personal life, I had difficulty finding the desire to draw from before and that's why the channel was stopped for a long time, losing many subscribers, which is normal, YouTube demands frequency, if it doesn't receive this, you are forgotten by the algorithm. From then on, the channel became something more secondary in my life, almost forgetting its existence at times. These were difficult times and in the next few years I focused on recovering what I lost.

In 2020 I joined the Ordem Paranormal fandom, it was there that I managed to get back on my feet and met friends who are like family to me today: Insaniam Inter Chao, my found family. That's why I changed my persona once again, little by little recovering the colors and shine of the past. With them with me to this day I managed to continue on this journey, they are very important to me, capable of unlocking feelings that one day in the past I myself locked them deep inside.

I ended up being in 2 other fandoms in which I made related videos for, including QSMP focusing mainly on the Hideduo ship kkkkk, I met wonderful people in this community and together with some of them I managed a doodles account on Twitter, even though I'm not in that fandom anymore, I don’t want to forget them, I will show support in each one's journey as much as I can.

And here I am in 2024, many things this year also almost took me to the ground, I still don't have the same shine as I used to and my emotional state is still not 100%, but I have dreams and the desire to continue creating, showing the stories that I create and make people inspired. Is it stupid and cliché or even too idealistic? Yes. I'm not intelligent and I'm probably just one of the crowd of artists on the internet, but knowing that to this day, whether I'm an old or new subscriber, following what I do makes me very happy... You know, I'm an extremely insecure person and I often don't I feel worthy of nothing, I don't even know how I interact with a certain number of audiences, that's why on my social medias i post a drawing/video and just disappear kkkkk, I may seem extremely responsible and admirable in the eyes of others who see my art, but I'm a person full of problems and I'm very afraid of the future, but despite everything I'm grateful for everyone who likes my content, even if it takes a long time to be posted.

I'm not famous for having 100k, I don't have a good frequency of videos, I'm terrible at interacting with the public, I don't do well with self-promotion, my videos don't get many views and I practically don't know how to follow any algorithm kkkkk, a complete mess, but I really thank everyone who participates in my journey, whether from the beginning or those who have just subscribed...

Everyone has a world inside them, everyone has their own story, you are more complex than you think and you are much more than just numbers. If I am able to inspire someone as diverse and deep as you, that would be my greatest happiness.

Thank you, really thank you.

Especialmente obrigado a todos os brasileiros que me seguem, não, eu não sou gringa kkkkkk, já me perguntaram várias vezes isso.

Until the next video or drawing! 🔷🌸

#thank you #anime style #digital art #youtube #artists on tumblr

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iamamythologicalcreature · 10 months

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Can I be real for a second?

I’ve gone back and forth in my head about whether or not to post about this very real side of me online or not. There’s nothing shameful about being disabled, but I don’t want to be known as my disability, either. I don’t want that to be my identity.

But I’m hoping to post some of my writing tomorrow for Six Sentence Sunday. Post something I’ve written, albeit just a small bit, online where anyone can see it. It will be the first time I’ve done so since the car accident three years ago. And the truth is, the terrible truth is, my writing is what hurts the most.

Stories have always been a part of my life. They have always been my motivation, why I slogged through everything else - my reason for existing. I wrote novels and hoped to publish, and I fell in love with the writing community and made it my home. I volunteered and organized events. I created an extremely successful and fulfilling teen writing club where I taught creative writing. I was in love with stories, and writing them. I have never not been in love with stories.

(Before I was a writer I was an artist. I’m not going to go into that part of my life in detail, but it was just as heavily affected.)

At the beginning of 2020 I was in a car accident. The driver at fault was pulling out of a bar parking lot in the middle of the day. Make of that what you will. The accident he caused left me with more than a few issues, but for this post I’m focusing on the vision impairment.

Because of COVID, I wasn’t able to seek any diagnosis or treatment until June. I didn’t even begin physical therapy until August. Due to a myriad of issues and unfortunate reasons, I couldn’t complete my treatment. That meant a year and a half of work and struggle went down the drain.

This continues to affect me in many ways. Sometimes it’s things that you might expect - I can’t read Tumblr, or books, most days. Some limitations are less obvious, like how I’m afraid to ask questions (e.g. “what kind of car did Fiona drive?”) because the resources to find the answers myself are out there. Why don’t I just google it? Or reference that amazing spreadsheet someone did? Why am I asking other people to do the work for me? Am I just lazy?

People don’t mean to judge (and I’m sure there are plenty who don’t). But my issues aren’t apparent, so they won’t know unless I take the time to explain it. Able-eyed people should be able to find these simple answers. Just look in the book.

So I don’t ask. Or I apologize a lot for asking. Because it’s just too hard to explain why I need such basic help. (And sadly, some people still don’t believe me and treat me as thought I’m making excuses.)

I lost most of my friends simply for being unable to chat online, particularly during lockdown. I kept three people in my life - the three people willing to break with their comfort zones and talk to me on the phone instead of via text or chat. Those people probably saved my life. I know everyone went through isolation issues in 2020. But I went through them unable to even use a computer or read a book.

Since I’m typing this, you can guess that I’ve recovered somewhat, or made some accommodations that help. Yes. I have. Both of those. But I still have more bad days than good. Typing too long, or playing a phone game, surfing Tumblr - anything done for too long can break my eyes and send me back into total isolation for days.

I was a really good writer. I would regularly write 10-20k every weekend, and I wrote well. I wrote great stuff. (Rough drafts are always rough drafts, but I felt good about what I wrote.) I would sink into a character and go for hours.

Here’s the part that’s relevant to me now: I can’t do that anymore. I can’t write for hours, I can’t take the time to slip into character. I’m doing really well if I can pound out a speedy 1k in 30 minutes and have it not break my eyes. (It usually breaks my eyes.)

If you’re a writer, though - or any kind of creative - you know that the need doesn’t just go away.

(I have tried to record notes on my phone, but I just cannot dictate writing fiction. Only my fingers know how to speak well, and in character. And no, I’m not going to learn braille. It would not be helpful.)

So I’m going to try to write. It’s going to suck, because the things I did to write well before are things I can’t do anymore. I will cry. And then I will wait a week or however long it takes for my eyes to chill the fuck out, and I’ll try again.

(I’ve also started treatment again, just this month. I have to start at square one again, which means it will get worse before it gets better. It will take time, and money - lots of both. Like years. But I can’t give up.)

Anyway. This is why I chose the Simon Snow fandom to try again, for the first time in forever. Because that’s the story, and those are the characters, and these are the people. I know it. So. Hi.

#this is real #some real me stuff in between the fun fandom fluff #reality of disability #actually disabled #vision impairment #keep on #carry on #simon snow series #fandom community #open for voice chat cause really...#questions accepted here #gulp here I go posting now

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unioncolours · 8 months

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The 4th Majsasaurus Year 💖

And so yet another year in fandom has passed. I always write these on the day of my first fanfic’s upload date, which is 22nd of September, and it’s a small tradition to write it, even if this year it was uploaded on the 23rd. My bad, hehe.

In 2020 I wrote my Majsasaurus Year, in 2021 my 2nd Majsasaurus Year and last year my 3rd Majsasaurus Year. This fourth year has been significantly quieter than my last years, especially the firsts, which is also visible on my AO3 page with fewer fics (in numbers) uploaded and no fanarts uploaded.

Still, let’s take a look at what my fourth year as a certified ShikaTema + Shikajin nerd has been up to!

Please keep reading if interested 💙

I ended my 3rd Year discussion with presenting my then brand-new long fic Labyrinth of Confusion. At the time of that discussion only one chapter of the Inojin-centric Crime and Punishment vibey-fic had been uploaded, the first one, and I was excited for what the fic would turn out to be, because this fic was the most pantser like long fic I’ve ever written. I had no clue of anything at any given moment, but damn if I didn’t manage to make the pieces fall perfectly together by the end. LoC ended up being 92k words long and writing it from the very beginning to end took me a bit more than five months. You might think it sounds like a rather long time period for Majsasaurus Bex, and if you did, you are right. I did think so too.

In the middle of the process of writing LoC I went through a stressful time which involved direct triggers to my very bad decline into depression in 2021. This time I managed to work with the triggers opposed to the first time it happened and my wellbeing didn’t spiral down, but it meant a much slower process of writing overall. I moved houses too, and I swear to god, there is nothing more creative-killing than moving your home. It’s stressful, time consuming and expensive and this move involved a lot of planning for the private economy in times such as these. This is the reason I have not made a single artwork since August 2022; the move was heavy on my psyche, and everything involved with economy – and besides that my subscription for the software ran out and lifting the pen became so hard.

This also meant LoC turned into a slow process.

I wrote in my 3rd Year Discussion this: “I sincerely hope I will look back to this fic with love, compared to whatever I felt after Hope in the Universe. I am lowkey excited. Hopefully my readers will also love it.” The other fic referred to was one I wrote during 2021 when I went through the same triggers as now and I hoped so much to not feel bad. And I didn’t feel as bad, finally.

Do I look back at LoC with love? Yes, I do. The final chapter of LoC was published the 1st of February in 2023 after the hard labour of love to build up this mystery and worldbuilding heavy psychological thriller. I am so, so proud of how it turned out, especially given that I tried out a new writing style which I think hit the nail on the head and then drove that nail right into my readers’ hearts.

My absolute bestest Varya drew me a fic cover for LoC, including three artworks here, here and here. Thank you for your enthusiasm.

During the time of uploading LoC, something magical happened. I received my InoShikaCho zine I had worked on in its physical form and to just leaf through it and see my words printed in it and see the artwork of characters I love an unhealthy amount of was amazing. After LoC was finished, and the zine started wrapping up the long process, I uploaded my fic for it onto AO3 for everyone to enjoy.

The fic in question is Stick, Poke, Pierce! which is a funky, funny little piece of baby gen InoShikaCho being young menaces. I wrote that fic back in 2021 and you can read about the process in the Majsasaurus discussion for 2021, and it was a joy to get back to a fic one hadn’t touched in such a long time, this time with accompanying art from the artists of the zine. This cute snappy one shot received surprisingly little attention on AO3, but oh well, it IS cute, and I think people can enjoy cute stuff too sometimes.

I also wrote in my 3rd Year review that I “maybe” have a third chapter to my Temari x Sakura fic as part of my bi-yearly wlw urgent need for this year, but in the end chose against it. In February I started writing on an independent InoTemaSaku sexy threesome fic instead, but writing sexy things didn’t fit with my overall irl mood at that time and I dropped the fic. Did you hear it, Majsasaurus dropped a fic? She who completes e v e r y t h i n g ? I know, I know, I am shocked too, but luckily this was just a wip that went to sleep instead. Maybe I will revive it, because I do want to write more wlw-sex scenes because those are the best for me. Or maybe I will get an Ino x Temari fic out instead that I have an idea for. We don’t know yet.

The urge for wlw-content did not disappear with that part of my life though, as I immediately after deciding to drop the threesome fic started writing what I called WIAG, that was titled to When I am Gorgeous. The idea to WIAG had been in my head for a long while, ever since 2020 in fact, but sometimes you need to marinate your ideas properly before committing to writing them. Let’s not be hasty, and so on. WIAG is a historical au set in the 1930s, being about women who were deemed mad on poor criteria and sent to an asylum. I so enjoyed writing it, and it was so different compared to LoC – the plot heavy, buildup heaving and death heavy action and psychological thriller it was. To quote one of the lovely people who commented WIAG, it was like writing (/reading) a “water colour painting”, so despite the heavy theme, there were many moments in the writing that were surprisingly calm and relied heavily on nature.

I wrote the entire fic besides the final chapter and published the first chapter in April 2023. I even commissioned a fic cover for it by @mheerdraws which can be seen here. WIAG contained what I yearned for, a bit of wlw-action while still being a Shikatema fic. I was rather nervous over it – not for posting the cruel events I depicted in the fic, but for the romance in it, fearing monoshippers ShikaTema shippers to throw rocks at me, but no one did and even if they were monoshippers they loved if enough to give the scene and romance between Temari and Ino a chance, which made me so happy. This was also the likely reason the fic didn’t receive much traction; there was little spice between Shikamaru and Temari which is probably what a lot of people want when scouting for a Temari fic. I am very proud of this fic.

After WIAG I took a well-deserved break, an interesting one at that, since during the time period I wrote WIAG, a fic which dealt heavily with fertility and women’s freedom and right to have (or not have) children in a historical light, I became pregnant myself. The final chapter of WIAG was uploaded in June, when some of the pregnancy symptoms kicked in for real. The biggest symptom I had was tiredness and a lot of it, including naps every day, and I left the creative brain on pause for the entirety of June. I didn’t write a single word in June and didn’t feel bad for it either, which is rare for me.

My fandom life was quite on pause during the summer with me focusing a lot on myself and my irl needs while writing an original fiction work on the side. My OG fiction work was finished in September. In late July I started writing on a fic again, this time a once more, Shikajin my beloved-centric one shot. It was fun to focus on something short and silly after two very emotionally heavy works – also to show my readers that I still have a damn range, haha. I can do both fluffy and sweet, and the heavy angsty torture. The silly one shot going smut turned into what was in August uploaded on AO3 as Attractive. It was lovely to drabble into nothing but romantic fluff and smut without any specific plot. That fic also featured an OC little sister to Shikadai, and she was a blast to write.

One of the anti-highlights of the fandom year was definitely when the time skip designs were revealed. I saw Inojin's new hair style, and, I kid you not however I wish I exaggerated, cried during seven different occasions over the span of four days. I cried over his hair for fucks' sake, me, a grown-ass woman, hAHA. This is a testament on how snowed in I am on these next gen boys, and how close they are to my heart. I fucking love Shikadai and Inojin, way too much, hahaha. Now I have melted the idea of his hair and do not feel awful about it anymore, but I am ever so often sending bombastic side-eyes to Ikemoto.

In September, I decided it was time to tell the fandom world about my little baby and I started writing on my “projection fic”. I don’t often project while writing, so this was a fun exercise. It’s a fic about Temari expecting Shikadai and specifically the birth scene. I finally managed to finish the fic today and uploaded it immediately out of pressure for my 4th Year discussion, hehe. The projection fic became almost 7k words long – and is a wonderful mix of poetic descriptions and just raw depictions of pushing a living baby out of you with all the gore involved. It is called we hold galaxies.

And that was today.

That was an entire year in fandom for me. I have managed to distance myself from jealousy and frustration which I felt a lot last year and have felt more peace in myself and my presence than maybe usual. I gained new friends from a new server, but also lost a great amount of friends too. Now I have learned to let go of fandom friends instead of grieving them a long time, even if it still hurts when your friends give up on you. I also dived into a new fandom (though I am very quiet about it on the internet and have not mentioned this out loud), which is Bungo Stray Dogs. My best fandom friend @notquitejiraiya moved to my country this year, which was a wonderful gift.

I am sad I stopped drawing, that’s true. I am not happy about the little amount of different fics I wrote, but still, it was the right amount.

And for the 5th Majsasaurus Year? I truly hope I can get out a semi-long fic of Shikajin before January (I am aiming for 30k, canonverse) and after that my goal will be to re-edit and re-write To go down with the Sun, my first long fic of Shikajin, which also is one of my best fics of all time. I wrote it when my English wasn’t perfect, so the edit would be only on surface level with language and phrases rather than fixing major content, because there are no plot holes in the entire thing.

Other than that, I don’t know. I don’t know how to write fics while having a newborn baby. But I truly hope there will still be plenty of Majsasaurus on the internet to share in the future too 🥰

Thank you to everyone who has read and commented my fics since September 2022. You make it all worthwhile to hang around four years later too.

Yours truly, Majsasaurus Bex

#majsasaurus

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vacantgodling · 5 months

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LOQUACIOUS IS SUCH A GOOD WORD I WANNA SEE THAT ONE PLSSSS

AHHHH YEAH!!

so loquacious is an exploratory piece that i wrote in the hell year (2020) when i was just beginning to think i should shift vdtrt into what it is now. it wasn’t even CLOSE to where it is today BUT i was definitely thinking about softening gabe up—gabe actually used to be much angrier and gruffer in earlier versions of his character but after awhile it just didn’t feel right. so this piece is from his perspective and it’s talking about how darren is, well, loquacious (or very talkative lol) but with a caveat: he only seems talkative around him.

in some ways this is still somewhat canon. darren is a person who prefers to kickback and let others lead social interactions but around people he’s close with (like olice and like, now, gabe) he tends to talk a Lot because he feels comfortable to. actually in a lot of ways darren mirrors Me personally because i’m p chill but if i know you well i will absolutely talk your ear off, my partner can attest to this.

i never finished it tho, but i can show you what i wrote! so without further ado (also don’t mind some of the more specific details; some info is Wrong or has been retconned)

It always struck Gabe— how absolutely, incessantly, unmitigatedly talkative Darren was. Or at least, how talkative he was with him. Gabe was never much someone for breaking the silence unless he absolutely had to, but there was something about his boyfriend that loosened his tongue and eased off his usually closed shell.

When they lay together, limbs curled around one another like two overgrown cats and Gabe looked into his dark eyes and wound his fingers through his coarse hair; it occurred to him often that he’d just tune out whatever nonsense Darren was saying. About the weather, about the time, the timing of the weather and the reason for it; about the class that they shared that they both hated, or the classes they didn’t and he was curious about. He could seemingly ramble on and on about nothing, and Gabe would let him, interjecting in his chatter to murmur his opinion or hum in understanding every now and again. He wasn’t a bad boyfriend— sometimes he tuned the bloodsucker out but he was always listening.

The only reason it occurred to him at all that Darren was so talkative, was that, unless they were alone, he was oddly quiet. Rather than not having anything to say, he just took the back seat and listened.

Granted, the two of them did have very outspoken friends. Their respective best friends in particular (Michaelis for him and Marco for Darren) were two of the most opinionated, talkative people that Gabe knew— and he knew his father. Still, instead of joining in on their chatter, Darren was content to ‘kick his feet back’ and ‘enjoy the view.’

He listened when others talked and listened well, and it wasn’t as though their friends didn’t encourage him to talk— the opposite— they always hounded him to speak up more but he’d laugh it off and say “Well you all already know what I’m going to say!”

They didn’t. Not by a long shot.

Because Darren talked about everything and nothing. About small details people wouldn’t expect he’d notice, about deep philosophies that Gabe wasn’t even aware that he’d known. About inconsequential things about why does pasta taste like that (with his nose wrinkling) […]

the end tapers off into an unfinished sentence unfortunately lol. but the main bit of retconned info is michaelis existing bc he doesn’t anymore he kinda got absorbed into estel lol. also the classes bit bc it’s more focused on the roadtrip than the school like the old wip used to be. but i do still like this piece! it’s more recent so the style is much better than my older works LOL

vdtrt taglist (ask to be + / -):

@mjjune / @coven-archives / @henrike-does-writing-sometimes

#s: vdtrt #s: darren and co #ren writing

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artsbysmarty · 2 years

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Gonna forgo a funny comic and be serious for a hot minute! (CW: wall of text, family death, mental health discussion)

I’m more than grateful to be a 1st year medical student right now. I feel truly blessed that I get to further my medical education at a wonderful school with some of the nicest, most thoughtful people I’ve ever met as my classmates and friends. But I will say the application process to medical school was one of the most emotionally taxing things I’ve ever gone through— and if I hadn’t gotten in this year, I genuinely would not have wanted to try again.

Just a few months before I was expected to apply in 2020, a month before I took the MCAT, I lost someone very close to me. I ended a long-term relationship and then the world shut down while I was taking some of my hardest classes. Obviously none of that was good for my mental state; it doesn’t help that I’m already so prone to anxiety. But application season was approaching, so I channeled what little energy I had everyday into getting my application ready. My first cycle results were kind of embarrassing: I didn’t even get a single interview invite. The next year I spent improving my application in every way I could: getting work experience, healthcare exposure, spending half the day prepping for retaking the MCAT. I wish I’d enjoyed my gap year more, but it was marked by me feeling like a catastrophic failure at the beginning for not making my parents proud and then feeling exhausted near the end from spending all my time working two jobs and saving up for school, with the fear in the back of my mind that it would all be for nothing yet again. My mom used to joke that she’d marry me off if I didn’t get an acceptance, which I did not find as funny as she did lmaoo.

This isn’t meant to scare anyone off! I just feel like I needed to be honest with myself about what I went through with applying, especially when people around me only see the end result— the white coat. My advice to premeds is this: If you’re applying this cycle or thinking of applying next year, it’s totally okay to feel discouraged if you don’t get in. People taking gap years is way more common than you’d think, so be sure to use it as an opportunity to learn about yourself. It’s okay to let yourself feel upset, to express your doubts out loud to someone you trust, because it’s the only way you’ll be in a position to get back up and dive back in. The application process is honestly the worst part of all this— if you’re anything like me it’ll take a lot of time, money, and will to live out of you. (I will save my rant about financial barriers and diversity in medicine for another day.) It WILL suck, and that’s okay. Because if medicine is something you’re truly passionate about (and I mean REALLY passionate so take a sec to think about what you wrote in your personal statement), it’ll all be worth it come May. Hang in there, and good luck on your cycle!

#original art #my art #comic #smarty draws herself #medical school #med student #premed #medblr

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lenievi · 8 months

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001 for both mckirk and spones please!

This is gonna be long :D I'm gonna have to use read more

001 | send me a ship and I will tell you: mckirk

when I started shipping it if I did: so when the lockdown in 2020 started, I had nothing to do and just watched stuff. I have this favourite dubber and I was looking at the list of stuff he dubbed, and saw Star Trek AOS on that list. This guy is the voice of 2000s Alan Rickman, Tom Hanks, Tony Stark, he also apparently dubbed Garak in that one Star Trek series, and so seeing the reboot films on the list and his name next to McCoy, I was like, gotta check how he sounds. The fact that Kirk was also dubbed by a guy I generally like was a plus. (funnily enough Captain America/Iron Man and Kirk/McCoy are dubbed by the same guys here, which is funny to me). So I checked youtube and the scene I saw was the scene in Beyond where Kirk and McCoy are alone and are having a drink. And that scene did something to my brain, and I was like this is the dynamic I want, I wanna read fics, so before that I had to watch the films. So I watched AOS, basically through McCoy (Kirk/McCoy) lenses and started to read fics. Three weeks later, I decided to watch TOS because a lot of the fics referenced Kirk's backstory, so I wanted to know about it. The three weeks reading fics and looking through livejournal, kind of made me think that McCoy wasn't really an important character in TOS and that AOS made up the mckirk relationship (such a lie), so when I started watching TOS, I only planned to watch episodes heavy on McCoy. Which like... were most of them at the beginning lol I kinda decided not to trust the fandom after like three episodes or something. I binged the three seasons of TOS in like three weeks. I've had a hard time seeing tos!Kirk with men for a long time (I've had a complicated "relationship" with tos!Kirk for so long), so my interest in tos!mckirk was primarily as a platonic relationship [but it was always my fave relationship, I liked it even more than spones, actually] (but romantic in aos), but I started to insert Kirk into my spones fics, wrote a part from his POV, and then one day I just woke up and decided to write a tos!mckirk fic (it was actually because I started to read aos fics again, getting back into aos!mckirk, but... the tos version has been calling me) and just embraced the romantic (and sexual lol) aspect of their relationship.

my thoughts: I love their friendship so much. It's very important to me. I like that McCoy knows what to say to pull Kirk back on the right path, I like that Kirk can be vulnerable around McCoy. In AOS I like that McCoy is the only one Kirk shares stuff with about his mother and his insecurities (in Beyond it looked like he never even allowed the other crew to acknowledge his birthday... until McCoy finally decided to give him a party, after 5 years on the Enterprise...)

What makes me happy about them: we see both of them the most at ease around each other. They can forget who they are around each other, for a moment, at least. McCoy gives Kirk some of his most brightest smiles; McCoy can make Kirk genuinely laugh. Kirk needs him. badly.

What makes me sad about them: I eat angst for breakfast, so uhm...

things done in fanfic that annoys me: the lack of their friendship even in gen fics T_T (we all know what annoys me in aos fic, we don't need a rehash)

things I look for in fanfic: having more fics would be fun lol You know, just a genuine intimacy they show in the the show. Jim's sense of duty being the cause of angst.

Who I’d be comfortable them ending up with, if not each other: McCoy with Spock (I do like the idea of mckirk to spones after the movie era, more or less). tos movie era Kirk? Actually, no one.

My happily ever after for them: buying a cabin in the mountains and getting two dogs (one big and one small) post TUC (then we can stop time lol or not...)

who is the big spoon/little spoon: idk haven't thought about their sleeping position. It would probably change based on what kind of story I'd wanna tell

what is their favorite non-sexual activity: .... you know, they're happy when they find the time to have sex...

spones under the cut

001 | send me a ship and I will tell you: spones

when I started shipping it if I did: so above I said that I started to watch TOS because of mckirk, right? Mainly because of The Conscience of the King and Tarsus IV, right? Well... I finished that episode shipping spones LMAO It really was quite quick for me.

my thoughts: the most engaging dynamic in TOS imho

What makes me happy about them: The loyalty, the trust. They were in each other's lives for 100 years. 100 years. That they're more similar than different. That they actually understand each other, but would never admit it. "I don't think I could stand to lose you again." < what is that? so real to have McCoy say that

What makes me sad about them: that they would leave the other one behind and die if it meant to save Kirk (this isn't meant negatively, I'm not really explicit about it or talk about it, but my spones know that Kirk's life is a priority, sometimes even just to show that no, we're not emotionally compromised, we know what our duty is kinda way. I just think it'd be great to explore that in a fic)

things done in fanfic that annoys me: uhm (I'm speaking in general, it is just my opinion based on my taste; I believe that everyone should write what makes them happy, we can't ever please every single person) McCoy using hobgoblin, elf, jackrabbit (the last two are terms that Kirk used to make Spock angry) as a form of affection/endearment, or at all tbh. McCoy being insecure because of Kirk. (give me Spock being insecure because of McCoy-Kirk friendship) Some people feeling guilty about writing spones and therefore still making kirk-spock have the specialest bond *rolls eyes* I just don't get the need to quantify relationships, I guess. Any kind of pet names.

things I look for in fanfic: balanced relationship, mature arguments that don't rely on pettiness, trying to combine the different world views, not needing to express love in a traditional way, but a way that works for the two of them and their two differing cultures.

Who I’d be comfortable them ending up with, if not each other: McCoy with Kirk, obviously. Spock with Chapel or T'Pring (even during the movie era, yes).

My happily ever after for them: 100 years. What more do you want? LOL My personal hc is that when McCoy dies, and Spock goes to Romulus, McCoy's spirit is always there because a part of his soul stayed inside Spock's katra. So Spock is just haunted by McCoy's spirit until he dies on New Vulcan, and then they're put into the katra stone. Together forever.

who is the big spoon/little spoon: I imagine them more as Spock sleeping on his back and McCoy's head on his arm/chest.

what is their favorite non-sexual activity: banter (they especially enjoy if it makes Kirk exasperated)

[ask meme]

#leni answers memes #so looooooong #tos nonsense #thank you!!#mckirk #spones

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shadyb00ts · 26 days

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A Long & Brutally Honest Review of The Tortured Poets Department

So, if you follow this account for some reason, you'd know that four years ago, I wrote about how the albums folklore and evermore made me a Swiftie again. Those two albums were a big part of my 2020 and represent the evolution of Taylor Swift that made me care about her work again. Before that point I suppose I had been more of a casual fan of Taylor, and I never really got into Pop Taylor that much save for 1989. But when she released her pandemic duology, it really hooked me, considering she was playing to her greatest strength--storytelling. I kind of consider them her best work by far. Fair warning, I'm going to bring up folklore and evermore a lot in this review, so to simplify, I'm just going to refer to the two projects as folkmore.

2020 was definitely a high point for me in terms of general Swiftie-isms. 2021 also continued that with the re-releases of Fearless and Red, albums I deeply loved as a teenager. And then in 2022, she released Midnights, her first brand new autobiographical pop record since Lover in 2019, and uhh... I never did a full-fledged review of Midnights, but needless to say I didn't like it all that much. I thought it was a downgrade from the masterpieces of the folkmore duo, and only a few songs stood out to me. A lot of the project I thought was bland and generic for Taylor. I didn't really consider myself a Swiftie anymore after the Midnights era.

Well, I didn't think she'd somehow manage to make an album worse than that one, but here we are.

The thing about me is that, ever since folkmore, I always set myself up for disappointment when it comes to Taylor. When she announces a new project, I always hope that she does something that would really surprise me. Something new and unexpected, something that showcases her growth and evolution as an artist. As a pop music enthusiast since I was a child, I've grown used to pop stars reinventing their image, having unique and distinct eras to keep things fresh and keep everyone guessing.

I wish Taylor did this, and I think according to her fans, she does. In my opinion, Taylor likes to put herself in a box, and this album is the perfect encapsulation of that. Like Midnights, this album is a collection of songs that sound like they've already existed for years from her other albums. Barely any of the tracks made me feel anything really, and any one of them could belong in her other pop albums like Reputation and Lover.

As usual, she teamed up with her decade-long sole producer Jack Antonoff, and honestly, Jack Antonoff has made some great things in the past. Take Lorde's Melodrama for example, one of my all time favorite albums. He did some very interesting, out-of-the-ordinary production on that album. He's shown that he's capable of making really great stuff. This time around though, he created some of the most boring, snooze-fest synthpop I've heard in a while, with very little variety between songs.

Now I love synthpop as much as anyone; some of my favorite artists are MUNA, Allie X and Lights. Their brand of synthpop, however, has more of a grandiosity to it, a presence. Taylor herself has also proven that she can do synthpop of that vein, as 1989 had some great examples of it. This time however, she does nothing to elevate these milquetoast beats. A particularly scathing review I saw coined it as "dog water synth". There's so many recycled production elements, melodies and chord progressions. Taylor, not only am I begging you to work with anyone other than Jack Antonoff, I'm also begging you to stop having soooo many songs on your albums in C major. I get it, that's your key of choice and it's been that way since the beginning, but my god. Probably half this album is in C major. Please find another key.

So the production left a lot to be desired, but what about the lyrics? Taylor's strong suit has always been songwriting, right? And this album is supposed to contain self-proclaimed "tortured poetry", so it'll probably be her most beautifully written works yet. Right?

Well... no.

Something I've noticed about Swifties is that the majority of them only care about lyrics. If you pore through their live reactions of this album, the one thing they're listening for is lyrics. They don't particularly place any value in vocals or production, really anything outside of what Taylor wrote. They even make a meme out of pulling out a dictionary anytime Taylor drops a new project, cause Taylor's metaphors and word choices are so complex.

Do you remember that meme of someone talking about the show Rick & Morty? Some fan of that show made this long post about how a person has to have a very high IQ to understand Rick & Morty. The show where the most popular joke is an entire episode where Rick turns into a pickle and shouts "I'm Pickle Rick!!!!" for the entire runtime. Well, that same phenomenon is happening again with Swifties and this album.

I've seen more than a few of her diehard stans claiming that anyone who critiques or dislikes this album just doesn't understand "basic reading comprehension" or the concept of metaphors. That this album is just too smart for their tiny little brains to grasp. Mind you, this is an album with gems such as "You smoked then ate seven bars of chocolate / We declared Charlie Puth should be a bigger artist / I scratch your head, you fall asleep / Like a tattooed golden retriever" and "Touch me while your bros play Grand Theft Auto" and let's not forget her romanticizing the 1830s "but without all the racists".

I resent the notion that this woman is exempt from criticism. Everything she writes is not gold. It boggles my mind that the same person who once wrote things like "Your Midas touch on the Chevy door / November flush and your flannel cure" or "Leaving like a father, running like water" or "I made you my temple, my mural, my sky / Now I'm begging for footnotes in the story of your life". She's proven time and time again that she's a very capable, very creative songwriter. And honestly, some of that is still present in this album, albeit very few and far between. It's bogged down by the above examples, which I think are some of her worst writing to date. And I thought "Hey kids, spelling is fun!" was bad.

One of the reasons the folkmore albums captivated me was that Taylor really flexed her storytelling muscles and wrote songs from other people's perspectives, even creating fictional characters. The song "this is me trying" from folklore is one of my favorite examples of this, a beautiful song about characters who are struggling with suicidal thoughts and alcoholism. Another standout in terms of writing is "epiphany", where she draws parallels between soldiers dying on beaches in World War II and the modern-day soldiers that were hospital workers during the height of the pandemic.

This was the type of shit that she never wrote about, because up until that point, her work had been 90% diaristic confessions. And yeah, that was the initial appeal with Taylor, that she was a small town girl whose songs felt like diary entries and you could really relate to her feelings. I remember listening to songs like White Horse and You're Not Sorry as a teenager and crying over a cheating ex that I never even had. Taylor was always really good at making music that perfectly sounded like whatever feeling she was trying to convey, and it's what made them so relatable.

Whenever she writes autobiographical songs nowadays, however, as a billionaire superstar writing about very specific scenarios and high profile relationships in her life, I find it hard to relate to anything, really. In this album for example, plenty of the songs are about her summer fling with Matty Healy, someone who I couldn't care less about. I was looking for songs about Joe Alwyn, because it was the longest relationship she had ever been in and he was a huge part of her life. And sure enough, songs like So Long London and loml did make me feel things, because I felt that her heartbreak was genuine over this relationship ending. So Long London is easily the best written song, because it's sincerely coming from a place of pain that many can relate to after a years-long love story ends. That to me encompasses the "tortured poetry" she was talking about more than any of the other songs were able to convey.

But like I said, most of this album is about Matty Healy. I have absolutely no idea what this man did that made her dedicate an entire album to him, a person that really does not matter in the grand scheme of things. He's a gross weirdo, so I mentally checked out during a lot of the songs centered around him, because no Taylor, I can't relate to the feeling of being a pop star that just got out of a seven year relationship and had a brief fling with a nasty lead singer of a band that's no longer relevant. That is a very specific thing that you went through that I have no strong feelings about, nor do I care about that much. I liked The Smallest Man Who Ever Lived though, I guess. I wouldn't go out of my way to listen to it, but it was decent and I liked the outro portion.

Another song I liked at first was Florida, the collaboration with Florence Welch. I think I liked it initially because A) Florence, B) it was finally something that sounded unique and different, and C) Florence's verse has a callback to the song "no body, no crime" from evermore which I thought was cute. But honestly, after a few more listens, the song is... Yeah, it's bad. The chorus is very grating to my ears, and not even Florence could save it. She sounds great of course, because it's her, but the song itself is just not giving what it's supposed to.

And then the other chunk of the album is about her current boyfriend, football player Travis Kelce. Because who couldn't relate to the feeling of being an international pop star dating an NFL football player? It's a very universal experience, like who hasn't, y'know?

Yeah, as you can tell, I didn't care for these songs either. I'm so tired of hearing about that man and their relationship. Everything I've heard about them being together has been completely against my will.

On top of the 16 songs on the standard album, she surprise dropped another one called "The Anthology", and that title piqued my curiosity because an anthology is a collection of different stories, so I thought she was bringing back the folkmore vibes. Turns out it was as if somebody sucked the life out of those two albums. This may sound harsh, but the Anthology portion of this album sounds like if you bought folklore and evermore on clearance. Just like the bulk of the first 16, I felt nothing. Out of 31 songs in total, I only liked 2 or 3.

This may sound a little mean, but I think I've made it pretty clear that I just... don't care about her life anymore. I don't find her experience as a global superstar selling out stadiums and flying around on her private jets to be interesting. It's certainly not relatable in any way, either. The reason I hold the folkmore albums in such high esteem is because yeah, while there are some autobiographical songs in there, the majority of them are fictional works. I've kinda been spoiled by those songs, because now I know what Taylor is capable of. I want her to go back to writing songs from other perspectives and really challenge herself, step out of that mediocre pop box she's put herself in ever since Midnights. I say all this because she's proven she can do it, so she doesn't need to backslide. She doesn't need to downgrade.

The best analogy I can think of is this. If you play Pokemon, then you know that whenever a Pokemon is evolving, you can press the B button to stop it from happening. I think the folkmore albums were her evolution process, and then someone pressed B and put a stop to it, and that's how we got Midnights and now this. Maybe she pressed the button herself, and she just likes to stay in her little comfort zone because she knows that her billions of fans will like whatever she does at this point. That's why I believe Taylor and Jack barely put in any effort with this project, because they don't have to. Swifties will like whatever they put out. They don't have to try new things or challenge themselves. It's an "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" situation.

If you're a Swiftie reading this, and you didn't really love this album, I just wanna say that it's okay to critique it. I have plenty of artists that I stan, but I'm not going to love everything they do or whatever they put out. I can be a huge fan of someone and still use my critical thinking skills, still have my own opinions. Don't be passive or follow whatever the popular consensus is.

On the flip side, if you love this album, then please don't try to make it seem like it's this complex poetic masterpiece that only smart people get. Don't act as if Taylor is exempt from criticism, and anyone that dares to critique anything she does is just stupid or "doesn't get it". That's a very reductive and small-minded view of music criticism, and media literacy in general. No artist or their work is above critique. Period.

Anyway, that's pretty much all of my thoughts. Thanks for reading this all the way, and I appreciate you for caring enough about my opinion! And remember Swifties, use critical thinking skills and please don't dox me!

#taylor swift #the tortured poets department #ttpd #album review #ts ttpd #pop music #review #tortured poets department

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skylaryozora · 2 years

Text

Late AF Opinion on Fate: The Winx Saga

No one asked for it, but I'm gonna write my opinion on Fate here too before the second season is released (if you're curious about my reactions to specific scenes, please feel free to visit my highlight 'fate comments' on IG, but I'll be basing this post on what I wrote back then).

Let's start with my initial impression, which iirc was in December 2020 when I saw the trailer and pictures for the first time. To put it shortly, I didn't like it at all (here I need to mention that I'm not a fan of live action adaptations in general so I may have been biased from the very beginning that it's not something I will like anyway). I wasn't surprised by the fact that this version was going to be once again focused very much on Bloom, but was still disappointed they didn't decide to try and divide the focus on the characters more evenly, so that it could feel more like six different arcs with comparable screentime which would be more fitting for a series titled "Winx Club" after all. But well, that's just my wishful thinking. Regarding the casting, while I considered Bloom, Stella, and Aisha to be quite spot on, I was quite astonished when I saw the actresses who were going to take on roles of Musa and Flora (at first I thought she was really supposed to be Flora), and that there would be no Tecna, but I guess everyone had a similar reaction. Back then it did not look that convincing to me, so I didn't feel encouraged to watch it when it was released. I observed the fandom's reaction to it, and saw how polarized the opinions were. Some people loved it, others hated it, and there was a third group which claimed that it's okay as long as you don't consider it an adaptation of Winx Club but a separate story. After several months, I gave in and decided to give it a try, all the more because it's just a few episodes so I managed to finish it all during one weekend.

Before I dive into my impressions, I need to stress something first. When I posted some criticism regarding specific scenes on my IG stories, one person pointed out that it's funny that I criticize, and yet I keep watching the show. I don't understand the reasoning behind it; if I stopped watching the show because I didn't like it, there would be people understandably complaining that I shouldn't even say anything when I didn't see all the episodes. Personally, I think it's better to watch until the end to understand the whole picture and provide a better grounded opinion, unless the show would be something absolutely unbearable to watch for some reason.

In general, I would consider the show to be... nothing special, and personally I felt it missed the point when it comes to main aesthetic/theme of the original franchise. When I think about the original Winx Club, what comes right into my mind are the following: vibrant colors, glitter, 2YK fashion, wings of all shapes possible, and fantasy mixed with a sci-fi, highly modern world. The last one is especially fascinating and pretty unique, which makes this show stand out, however, I can imagine that you would need a pretty huge budget to pull it off in a live action in a way which could enchant people. But what is great, the colorful aesthetic didn't stop anyone from implementing mature, adult themes.

In order to make this post concise, I will simply list the things which bug me about this show:

American (Bloom) vs British (all the others iirc) trope

the show's aesthetic seems to be leaning more towards dark academia than Y2K but it's quite poorly executed (fashion choices are disappointing, to say the least), and Alfea is changed into a generic school castle with dull colors and only three teachers

numerous awkward dialogues

Terra being the laughing stock because of her body type (if the show aims to be body-neutral/positive, then discrimination and hate which "plus size" people are forced to deal in real life shouldn't permeate into fictional universe as well, but that's just me)

fairies lost wings a long time ago (this moment had me like "seriously?"), and Bloom, as the protagonist, is ofc the first one since ages to activate the transformation which... didn't transform her; instead, her fire power manifested as flames on her back, vaguely resembling wings which didn't even enable flying - this also misses the point of the original show which has always been immensely focused on wings and flying throughout all the seasons

majority of characters were changed DRASTICALLY (I mean especially their personalities, for me most of them are totally different characters), picking bad traits and overblowing them

Burned Ones as a serious threat didn't convince me because girls, despite being beginners, were able to defeat them two or three times

several anticlimactic scenes

not sure how to feel about the only reportedly queer characters being villains

show is again focused mainly on Bloom and Sky

the word Winx is used just as a name of the girls' suite for some unknown reason... and ofc in the series' title.

With that being said, I can't consider it a good adaptation. I know that an adaptation has all the right to be different from the original, and it actually should be different, but in case of Winx Club and Fate, the drastic changes concerned aspects crucial to the original show which irreversibly colored my impression of the adaptation. I'm writing this because I have encountered many well-written analyses, fan-reboots, redesigns, and headcanons revolving around Winx Club, which were all made by the fandom's members and some of them put the bar pretty high. So, I guess I'd rather refer to Fate as an AU very loosely based on Winx Club.

When it comes to the upcoming second season, you can imagine I'm not hyped at all. I see they added Flora (which makes me wonder if it was sparked by the backlash from fans?), and I think I will watch the second season to see how they decided to write her, out of curiosity, without any expectations or hopes. In the trailer she seems to be saying "Losing control is the best part" which doesn't really sound like something the original Flora would say, so she's probably rendered very differently as well.

Anyway, that would be it. Let me know your thoughts if you have any at this point.

Just a disclaimer: I don't want to denounce any Fate fans, I know many people enjoyed the show and are excited for the new season. I'm just not one of them, I have listed my main reasons above, and as I say, we all have our preferences and expectations so it's probably impossible to create something which could please the whole fandom.

#winx fate #winx club #winx #winx headcanons #fate the winx saga #fate commentary

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fleur-de-violette · 1 year

Note

Fic authors self rec! When you get this, reply with your favorite five fics that you've written, then pass on to at least five other writers. Let’s spread the self-love 💗

Thank you so much for the ask @motleyfam and @fanfictiongreenirises!

Its hard to chose favorites but I would say:

The price of loyalty

Ace knew the consequences of his actions. He knew his choices could bring him here, chained in a cold cell, with the first person who told him his life was worth something taking him to his execution. Still, he made his choices. And faced with his adoptive grandson’s death, Garp also makes a choice. Or: Garp had been loyal to the marines all his life, but twenty years ago he disobeyed to save a child who didn’t deserve to die for being born to the wrong father. His stance on this hadn’t changed.

My first One Piece fic after going back to it. I really enjoyed writing it, I like the vibes, and I got great positive feedback, so it’s a win everywhere here.

To the ones who are alive, and the ones who are there

Dick had been found dead, his body floating in Gotham Bay, hours before. This could just be a simple story if he wasn’t banging on the door of Jason’s apartment. Or: When you wake up in a morgue, the first person to go see is your resurrected little brother. Whumptober day 31: experiment, left for dead

The last fic of my 2020 whumptober that I kept up until may 2022. While I didn’t do whumptober in order, I still wanted to start with the first one and end with the last one. So this idea had been in my head from the very beginning and I only wrote it at the end. I like how it turned out, even if sometimes I find it a bit OOC, it’s written with guts. It’s also my most popular story so far!

And I’ll look into your eyes to find out if I’m real

Bruce wants a lot of things. A bath. Seeing his family. Not having been missing for a whole year. He wants Dick to wake up and realize he’s not a hallucination. Whumptober day 6 – Stop, please.

I just like it. I have nothing particular to say here, but it was easy to write, and I really enjoyed writing it and how it turned out.

Knight in shining armor

Barbara never considered herself the damsel in distress type. But when men invade the clocktower, it’s a good thing she’s got a knight. A dark, silent knight. Whumptober day 3: held at gunpoint.

The idea for held at gunpoint had always been to have Babs in the story, but who would be with her changed for a bit before I settled on Cass. I really like their relationship so I hope I did it justice. They aren’t characters I write often, but I had a lot of fun writing this story.

New year bets

Dick doesn’t see what all of this is about. It’s just a case, keeping him occupied. Jason should stop his weird half teasing half worrying thing. Also, in retrospect, they probably shouldn’t bet on each other’s health.

While I don’t consider this one to be my favorite in term of objective quality of the story or style, it was definitely the most fun to write. The majority of it was written in a few days, I kept adding to it, it’s completely self-indulgent. It’s also very fun, and lighthearted, I think, and it’s nice to write something like that from time to time.

again, thank you for the ask !

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furymint · 1 year

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2022 Creator Reflection

1. ppt meme

the thing im happiest with this year, tbh! i put a lot of work and care into each slide—and i think it shows. at the same time, this thing i made to help my writing be more accessible just became something that required a commitment to read from its length. i hope anyone that read it found it worthwhile! i love rereading it myself.

2. free

jillian’s prophecy attacked again. new florence + the machine song, new bri edit. my motivation to create things has been really low so i tried to limit myself to only devoting an hr or so to this simple edit. i think its cute

3. goal of the century

it doesnt look like i did a lot to this edit, but i added a lot of lighting to it. it was nice editing a picture of lselle and it reminded me a bit of how fun it was to have something i wanted to badly in the game as the seagull minion

4. the loneliest

this one took a few days to complete. i listened to maneskin a lot in the car this year to keep my spirits up, so its ironic that this is the only song i made something for. i used a lot of bad pics to make it so it was a greater struggle than it couldve been, but im still happy w the way it came out even if it didnt linger in my head afterwards

5. will it snow? [nsfw]

it took me a very long time to write this and, altho its not remotely close to my usual vibe, i think its well done. mostly i think it was a v good exercise for all that never made it into the final product. i wrote three different carriage scenes to find the heart of whole piece.

❌ impulsivity > fury > humiliation > resolve

(hoare’s outside, nol jumps out w no plan but to confront him, realizes how stupid he is when hoare a) insults him or b) escapes him, and he determines that he can do nothing until the recital in the evening)

❌ impulsivity > rationale > protectiveness > calm

(hoare’s outside, nol jumps out w no plan but to confront him, realizes how stupid he is before he moves away, so he gets back in the carriage, still mad with adrenaline, embarrassment, and the #masculine impulse of protection all manifested in possessiveness, then a gradual lowering of hackles)

✔️ ostracism > fear > rationale > calm

(looping back to the fake community at the beginning, a return to his fear of societal expectations & his lack of a community where he can be himself, the value of secrecy, the joy of secrecy)

i always loved the original carriage scene and im glad i got to actually finish it. i didnt get to do armistice day this year and i also didnt finish may other things, but at least i have this.

i have to confront more and more often that my drive to engage w ffxiv is almost depleted, and its a really really lonely feeling. i dont know what ill do in the new year about it. i know ill continue my literature work/research and keep drafting my outline for a complete transition of nol and eli into wwi austria-hungary. i want to write more!

past reflections: 2017 | 2018 | 2019 | 2020 | 2021

#i also literally dont know why my file #became so crunchy #for the snow edit #i cut out the dude w the hat at work #and i guess the file saved badly #anyway highly rec scrivener #also i know ppt meme has a lot on marriage plot but i dont feel like it anymore :sob:#brianna babbles #bri edits

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pebblysand · 10 months

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Heyy, I know you're not a Taylor swift fan but I was listening to exile and it reminded so vividly of early castles Harry ginny, I'm re reading for like the 10th time and just thanks for writing it, it's wonder

thank you so much anon! and, you know what, exile is actually one of the very few taylor swift songs i like (maybe because bon iver is on it? 😅) and i did listen to it quite a bit over the winter of 2020, which is when i was writing the beginning of castles. i feel like it's one of those songs where, even though the lyrics don't really match up, it does have castles "vibes," you know? it's kind of like what he wrote by laura marling which, even though the lyrics have nothing to do with anything, always makes me think of giulia. there are just songs like that 🤷🏻‍♀️.

anyway, thanks again anon, glad you're enjoying the fic!

#asked and answered #castles

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morulezopelforever · 1 year

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Alec Scudder is fed up what with one thing or another...

https://archiveofourown.org/works/31992058/chapters/79240288

I’d like to highlight a Maurice fanfic I wrote in 2021. ‘A Gentleman’s Tale’ is the first part of my series ‘For Maurice to End where the Muddle Begins.’

Meet Clive, Maurice and Alec, men in their forties in the 21st centurty, more specifically during one of the 2020 pandemic lockdowns. Their story is told from Clive’s perspective.

Clive has not seen Maurice and Alec for years, and now he finds himself spending a weekend at their place. After a more than warm welcome, Clive feels he has to repay his hosts by inviting them to visit him and Anne...I’m afraid that is not going down all too well with Alec, who used to be an employee at Durham Logistics and who has his own bad memories to battle...

After Alec got home, he joined us in the garden. By now it was too late for a full meal, to my secret relief, because the couple must be nearly broke and I did not want to eat too much of their food. Lazing in his chair, smoking one of my cigarettes and guzzling Carlsberg from a can, Alec promised he’d make us some baked beans on toast with a fried egg on top. That sounded really lovely, but then he got up and announced that he’d clean out the shitty litter boxes first and take a shower and get changed. ‘He’s unbelievably energetic,’ Maurice said admiringly when his lover had gone back inside.

The meal was constantly interrupted by cats begging for bits. One crawled into my lap, settled down and fell asleep, only to wake up when Alec served bowls of tinned rice pudding and jam for dessert.

‘Don’t feed Lily, please,’ he said when I let the animal lick some sweet goo off my finger. ‘She’ll get the screaming ab-dabs.’ ‘That’s enough, Alec,’ Maurice sighed. ‘Don’t spoil Clive’s appetite.’ They looked at each other and burst out laughing. Then they kissed. ‘I love you, you dirty bugger,’ Maurice breathed.

When we were having tea, I conveyed my plan. Now I included Alec too, because I had just seen how inseparable they were. ‘You’re both very welcome to spend some time at my house, to get away from it all. Technically speaking, it’s forbidden because of the corona rules and yadeyadeya, but Anne would love it.’

Alec sat up with a jolt as if struck by lightning. ‘Your house? Are you daft? What if your mum sees me?’

Maurice smiled and lit a cigarette. I had nearly run out, so I decided to drive to the next service area after tea to get a carton. ‘Only Clive and Anne live there, love,’ Maurice said. ‘Why would his mother be a problem?’ Alec would not explain why, and after getting a string of pleading questions, he put down his tea mug with a bang. ‘O.K., so you fellers really want to know? Clive will kick the shit out of me.’

I gave him an encouraging smile, earning a grin of relief.

‘Remember our trip to Amsterdam?’ he began. ‘Must be twenty years ago now…a long time anyroad. I saw all that crazy stuff in the souvenir shops, nothing to my liking, but then I found something…and I got an idea straight away…That shop assistant must have thought I was mad, because I just stood there, nearly pissing myself laughing…So I buy the thing, right, and some other rubbish for my friends…I showed it to you, Clive, didn’t I, when we were having espresso at the airport.’ ‘You did,’ I said. ‘I thought it was grotesque, but I figured you’d bought it for yourself.’

‘So anyroad,’ he went on. ‘You should know, Clive, and I’m sorry if I insult you, you’re a fine bloke and all, but your mum, that’s a different thing. She had a company car, right, so she could have had it cleaned at a car wash and charge it to her credit card…But she wouldn’t. One day she comes up to me while I was outside loading a truck, and she says: ‘Oh, Mr. Scudder, would you be so kind as to clean my car in the washing area for our vans?’ ‘I’m sorry, Mrs. Durham, I’m a forklift driver,’ I say. ‘I can’t just stop loading, my supervisor won’t allow it.’ So she smiles and says I can do it after my shift and I’ll get paid overtime. So I say yes and since that day, it’s the same song, twice a week: ‘Oh, Mr. Scudder, would you be so kind…’ as if her Mercedes ever got dirty, it never did…Yes, I got paid, but then the complaints come. ‘Mr. Scudder, there is mud on the carpet under the pedals, don’t you ever wipe your feet before you get in?’ ‘Mr. Scudder, there’s dandruff on the headrest, would you please keep your head up when you drive my car?’ ‘Mr. Scudder, I found a dent in the number plate. It wouldn’t have been you, would it?’ And all the while my warehouse mates are laughing at me, thinking I’m sweet on the old lady…Sorry, Clive…I got pretty bloody sick of it, I tell you…So after we got back from Amsterdam, she comes up to me and before she can ask, I say: ‘No problem, Mrs. Durham, I’ll wash the Mercedes after my shift.’ And then…’

He started to laugh, coughing helplessly, shaking. Maurice was intrigued. It was a very exciting story. ‘Here, have one,’ I said to Alec, pushing my pack of Marlboros towards him. ‘I’ll get more later.’ Alec nodded, lit up and grinned.

‘So there I am, the Mercedes is all clean and dried and polished, and then I stuck the thing from Amsterdam onto the flap of the boot. And then I drove the car back to the executives’ car park and put it in its place with the rear end facing the wall…’ He started chortling. ‘So she never saw it when she drove off later…Well, next morning she calls me into her office…She’s mad as a bull, shouting at me because on her way home the night before, the other drivers had been honking and flashing their headlights and making all kinds of gestures…The print on the sticker was large enough for all to see…and for me to get fired on the spot.’

‘What did it say then?’ Maurice asked, puzzled. I knew, but I wanted Alec to tell, because every word out of his mouth was so deliciously sordid and juicy, as was this whole story. ‘Well,’ Alec sighed, out of breath with glee. ‘It said: Don’t walk on the grass – smoke it! See driver for details.’

Interested? Check this link:

https://archiveofourown.org/works/31992058/chapters/79240288

#maurice #maurice fanfic #e m forster #james ivory #read on ao3

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weerd1 · 1 year

Text

HOW TO STAR WARS

With three convenient options!

(Please note, I wrote this last year just as Andor S1 ended and Bad Batch S2 started for a friend at work. If someone finds it useful, huzzah. May the Force Be With You.)

OK, I have obviously put WAY too much thought into this, but it’s what I do. Before you dive into 1800 words on Star Wars I whipped up while drinking coffee on a Saturday morning, let me tell you my recommendation is Option 2. But, if you’re ready for a deep dive into other ideas…proceed!

There are two things you have to ALWAYS remember about Star Wars: it has never been chronological, and it has never been complete. Even if you were there in 1977 (and I was) and we got Episode 4 (not chronological) which ended with the Rebels on the run from a still standing Empire (not complete) you don’t have a moment where anything is revealed in order, and the broader story can always be expanded. The result of this is that if you don’t like a particular show or movie or plot point, something is probably going to come along and fix it. There are, believe it or not, movies and shows in The Canon that I don’t think are that great, but like ones I wasn’t super fond of previously, I would expect something is going to come along and expound on those things I didn’t like and make them more palatable.

Option 1

That said, if you want to keep it simple, I would say go ahead and watch everything in release order. The benefit of that is you getting the story the way the world did. We came out of the Original Trilogy in 1983 knowing Vader was really Anakin Skywalker, and his son and daughter were Luke and Leia. We didn’t find out HOW until the Prequel Trilogy (PT) started up in 1999. Some of the way various plot points in later films play out, they hit harder emotionally when you realize what they mean for things you’ve already seen. The weird lady named Mon Mothma who leads the Rebels for 5 minutes in “Return of the Jedi” is now a major character on “Andor” and suddenly this throwaway scene from 1983 grabs your guts because you begin to understand what she went through to get there. If that sounds appealing, here’s that order:

Episode IV: A New Hope (1977)

Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back (1980)

Episode VI: Return of the Jedi (1983)

Episode I: The Phantom Menace (1999)

Episode II: Attack of the Clones (2002)

Episode III: Revenge of the Sith (2005)

Star Wars: The Clone Wars (Animated Movie, 2008)

Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008-2020)

Star Wars Rebels (2014-2018)

Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)

Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016)

Episode VIII: The Last Jedi (2017)

Star Wars: Resistance (2018-2020)

Solo: A Star Wars Story (2018)

Episode IX: The Rise of Skywalker (2019)

The Mandalorian (2019-present)

The Book of Boba Fett (2021-2022)

Obi-Wan Kenobi (2022)

Andor (2022-present)

Ahsoka (upcoming, 2023)

Skeleton Crew (upcoming, 2023

The downside to this is NOTHING happens in order, and you should consult a good reference to get an idea WHEN a particular story takes place in relation to the rest of it all. This one is pretty good, but also includes video games which have great stories, but may or may not be your thing:

(This is from Reddit; you can Google others that fit more what you’re looking for.)

Option 2

Now, based on the graphic above, there’s another way you could watch it all. I would call it “Saga Based.” When George Lucas made the OT it was often referred to as “The Adventures of Luke Skywalker.” Once he made the PT, he started saying the entire saga was about the rise, fall, and redemption of Anakin Skywalker. When Disney took over and made the Sequel Trilogy (ST), they began to refer to it as “The Skywalker Saga.” This means the “Episode” movies, or the left side of the chart above, Episodes I-IX. And it is very easy to consider that the foundation of all other Star Wars. Even if those characters don’t appear directly, in some way the supporting characters are all caught up in Skywalker family drama (and I love that; NO literary character in history is as big a drama queen as Anakin Skywalker/Darth Vader).

Once you have those nine films as a foundation, hit the right side of the chart and work your way through those shows and “Story films.” Again, up to you if you really care about playing video games; they have great stories but nothing that I think you will miss if you just stick to shows and movies.

The advantage to this option is how well-framed the rest of the stories are then, though you have to make sure you’re putting them in chronological context as you watch.

Now, before I go on with a third possible way to watch these, I want to talk about cartoons. Some of the very best Star Wars is animated Star Wars. That being said, they are often produced with children in mind (though the episode of “Star Wars: Rebels” where the Imperial Inquisitor uses a double bladed lightsaber to decapitate the “thin guy/fat guy” comic relief duo is just one example of how the shows push the boundaries; it’s not gory, and the violence is implied, but it’s dark!). The animated shows are not an insignificant time investment. There are seven seasons of “The Clone Wars,” four seasons of “Rebels,” currently we just started the second season of “The Bad Batch,” and “Resistance” has two seasons. I will include at the end some ways to abbreviate “The Clone Wars” if you want. Also, missing from many of these discussions is “Star Wars: Visions,” which are actually alternate interpretations of the Star Wars universe in anime style by Japanese directors. They’re pretty good, but not the Star Wars you know.

Option 3

Now, you want to go hardcore? Then watch full chronological order. You get the story as it happened. I used to be very much against that, but then in my last job I worked with a couple of guys who didn’t grow up in the US, and things that I had taken for granted when I watched the PT were honest surprises to them. (“ANAKIN is Darth Vader????”) The problem with this approach is there are still new things coming out at various points of the timeline, so in your viewing, you may be in the shows like “The Mandalorian” taking place five or six years AFTER the OT, and then another season of “Andor” drops and it’s five years BEFORE the OT, and you have to backtrack.

If you are going for this, here’s the order:

Episode I: The Phantom Menace (1999)

Episode II: Attack of the Clones (2002)

Star Wars: The Clone Wars (Animated Movie, 2008)

Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008-2020)

Episode III: Revenge of the Sith (2005)

Star Wars: The Bad Batch (2021-present)

Solo: A Star Wars Story (2018)

Obi-Wan Kenobi (2022)

Star Wars Rebels (2014-2018)

Andor (2022-present)

Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016)

Episode IV: A New Hope (1977)

Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back (1980)

Episode VI: Return of the Jedi (1983)

The Mandalorian (2019-present)

The Book of Boba Fett (2021-2022)

Star Wars: Resistance (2018-2020)

Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)

Episode VIII: The Last Jedi (2017)

Episode IX: The Rise of Skywalker (2019)

The other issue with trying them this way is some overlap. The last two episodes of “The Clone Wars” happen DURING “Revenge of the Sith.” The events of “Andor” episode 6 has direct impact on “Rebels” episode one, and those stories intertwine a bit. “Book of Boba Fett” takes place between seasons 2 and 3 of “The Mandalorian.” That problem will continue to compound as new shows come out. We’re actually expecting a show in the next year called “The Acolyte” that takes place a hundred years BEFORE “The Phantom Menace”!

Another positive to this option is it allows you to break the various shows and movies up into “eras.” This image, also stolen from Reddit is one way to do that:

The era I find the most interesting (unlike most SW fans) isn’t really about the Jedi but what Obi-Wan called in the original movie “The Dark Times.” In this graphic they would include the “Reign of the Empire” and first half of the “Age of Rebellion” stuff. So many of those stories deal not with Good Space Wizards fighting EVIL Space Wizards, but normal people trying to survive oppression and realizing there is no safety in tyranny. Now, that’s just me. It’s not that I don’t love Obi-Wan and Anakin coming undone and desperately fighting one another in a lava flow, but common people deciding to stand up with no mystical “Force” to protect them? Well that rings my bells.

Star Wars is a huge, still evolving mythology, as complex as any classic we have from Sophocles or Shakespeare or Tolkien. As spiritual as any holy book. At times as deep as any tragedy, and as uplifting as any faith. Sometimes it’s just silly, and sometimes it’s heartrending.

Yes, it is just some solid popcorn-pew-pew-entertainment as well, but thematically there is SO much going on, and it compels me like few other things do.

Anyway, without further ado, here’s an old write up I did about how to take on “The Clone Wars” cartoon. You COULD just watch these episodes:

Star Wars: The Clone Wars – "Clone Cadets" (S 3 Ep 1)

Star Wars: The Clone Wars – "Rookies" (S 1 Ep 5)

Star Wars: The Clone Wars – "ARC Troopers" (S 3 Ep 2)

Star Wars: The Clone Wars – "The Citadel" (S 3 Ep 18)

Star Wars: The Clone Wars – "Counterattack" (S 3 Ep 19)

Star Wars: The Clone Wars – "Citadel Rescue" (S 3 Ep 20)

Star Wars: The Clone Wars – "Darkness on Umbara" (S 4 Ep 7)

Star Wars: The Clone Wars – "The General" (S 4 Ep 8)

Star Wars: The Clone Wars – "Plan of Dissent" (S 4 Ep 9)

Star Wars: The Clone Wars – "Carnage of Krell" (S 4 Ep 10)

Star Wars: The Clone Wars – "The Unknown" (S 6 Ep 1)

Star Wars: The Clone Wars – "Conspiracy" (S6 Ep 2)

Star Wars: The Clone Wars – "Fugitive" (S 6 Ep 3)

Star Wars: The Clone Wars – "Orders" (S 6 Ep 4)

Star Wars: The Clone Wars – "The Bad Batch" (S7)

Star Wars: The Clone Wars – "A Distant Echo"(S7)

Star Wars: The Clone Wars – "On the Wings of Keeradaks" (S7)

Star Wars: The Clone Wars – "Unfinished Business" (S7)

Star Wars: The Clone Wars – "Old Friends Not Forgotten" (S7)

Star Wars: The Clone Wars – "The Phantom Apprentice" (S7)

Star Wars: The Clone Wars – "Shattered" (S7)

Star Wars: The Clone Wars – "Victory and Death" (S7)

These 22 episodes follow the character of Fives, one of the Clones, throughout the war between the movies “Attack of the Clones” and “Revenge of the Sith.” The Season 7 episodes do not feature Fives, but the consequences of his previous actions.

Either way, start with S3 Ep 1. Not sure why the earliest one is in the third season, but it is worth it. (Indeed, here is the CHRONOLOGICAL order of episodes, still not sure why outside of “never been chronological or complete” https://www.starwars.com/news/star-wars-the-clone-wars-chronological-episodeorder.)

If you want to strike a middle ground here, watch the Fives storyline, and add these three important Ahsoka storylines, that is also possible! Just interspace them with the above list:

Season 2, 5-8: Second Battle of Geonosis.

Season 3, 15-17: The Mortis Gods

Season 3, 21-22: Padawan Lost

Season 5, 17-20: The Wrong Jedi.

OR after S4 Ep10, just continue to watch season 4 through 7. There’s almost no dud in there.

The last four episodes of season 7 take place in and around “Revenge of the Sith,” and may themselves be one of the three or four best Star Wars movies.

#Star Wars #meta #long post #what's your preferred method?

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