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tbookblurbs · 5 months

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The Best of H.P. Lovecraft

2.5/5 - Horror but not bloodcurdling, not a woman in sight, Lovecraft has a crazy intense fear of old age

So, I'm not sure if these short stories are actually all that predictable or if I have just read/seen enough horror generally to know what to look for. Most of the endings for these stories you can parse out pretty quick, but what's more enjoyable is the journey to get there. Lovecraft loves to use the first person and he really captures the descent into madness of a lot of his characters.

I wasn't overly enamored by the prose of most of the stories. It's overburdened and where his stories could be short, he rambles. It's easy to pick up on his two or three favorite adjectives after around three stories. There's also hints here and there of the white supremacist ideas that Lovecraft held (including, yes, the famous cat from "the Rats in the Walls") and they mostly show up in the idea that indigenous cultures are primitive, that cities are being "overrun" by immigrants, and that there are somehow creatures that were human but are now Othered. It's rampant across the books.

Personally, I didn't find the mythology that he sets up to be all that compelling, but again, I can't tell if the reason that it all seems so overdone is because everyone used him as a jumping off point, or if he's just capturing a popular trope well.

Easily the best stories for me were "The Shadow Over Innsmouth" which manages to subvert some of the trends that you see throughout Lovecraft's writing and "The Color Out of Space" which is pure science fiction. So much of science fiction and "weird fiction" pulls from Lovecraft, but almost everyone improves on what he lays out. He's just not an overly impressive writer, in my opinion. Where he's good, he's great, but he's not often good.

A note on the women: I'm sure I saw it on here somewhere, but there's a post that's along the lines of "you are much more likely to run into an eldritch horror in a Lovecraft story than you are a woman" and that is so true.

#I can recognize that Lovecraft founded a new sect for genre fiction #and also recognize that the guy Sucks #I'm also just impressed by his writing. He's WAY too verbose #it feels like he never had an editor look at anything he wrote (which to be fair I don't think he had an editor)#I also saw a couple reviews when I had just finished it that said that this book gets you used to and able to forgive Lovecraft's prose #and I am personally of the opinion that if I have to forgive your prose you are not a very good writer #the best of hp lovecraft #hp lovecraft #the shadow over innsmouth #the color out of space #book review #horror #science fiction #weird fiction

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naranjapetrificada · 1 month

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For the writers' ask game: 11, 18, 37, please?

Thanks for asking ♥️

Answers behind the cut to spare your dashboards. If you want to play the "get to know your fic writers" game, just pick your question(s) from this list!

11. Link your three favorite fics right now

I always have so many favorites but three recent favorites that I cannot recommend highly enough are:

The Tolling Bells by @edsbacktattoo, which was recently completed and an incredible experience to follow. As a writer, I will never have enough praise for what was accomplished here. As a reader, let me just say that if you like visceral longing and existential overwhelm that still has a happy ending, you've gotta give it a try.

As We Go Hand in Hand by @petrichorca, which is such a sweet, poignant, healing one-shot about Ed's post-canon headspace as he reckons with the size of his love for Stede, how badly he wants to marry him, and how unworthy he still feels of it. Ends with them in a believable but secure place.

The recently resumed Prevailing Winds by holograms. Not sure if they're on tumblr. Anyway, it's an alternate timeline AU, in which Blackbeard and The Gentleman Pirate die the deaths that happened IRL after having a completely different love story, but Ed comes back to do it all over again in the canon timeline. He seems to be the only one who knows what's going on and is desperate to protect Stede and himself from the fates they met before, and his new story is interspersed with flashbacks to the other one, where we get to see them fall in love and what ends up going wrong. It's fascinating as both a reader and a writer, and I'm so impressed with how they're handling telling such a complex story while managing to make every character believable in both timelines.

18. Do you title your fics before, during, or after the writing process? How do you come up with titles?

Titling usually happens like 2/3 of the way through? If it's a one-shot I usually figure out something that's relevant to what's been written so far that a) sounds good and b) sparks some curiosity. Although sometimes the titles are also just very prosaic.

That 2/3 rule applies for my current longfic as in I was 2/3 of my way through Chapter 1. The thing the title comes from is probably not going to actually come up in the fic until chapter 4 or 5, but the timing still works.

For the chapter titles I'm using songs, but I'm using them completely free of context. The content of the songs has mattered significantly less than their titles, and I have a whole doc full of song titles that I think I'm gonna use for future chapters. The exception, so far, might be Chapter 3. I had a non-song title for Chapter 2, then everything relevant to it got pushed back to 3. So there's a chance that anything could happen, really!

37. How do you choose where to end a chapter?

Oh my goodness this is such A Question for Chapter 2. With Chapter 1, I knew down to the exact line I wanted to end on, which meant I knew which scene it would be, which meant I just had to figure out what came before. For a first chapter I think that can work because that's when you're sort of presenting your thesis statement (if not to readers then at least to yourself). I don't think that will be viable going forward.

I had some idea of where I thought Chapter 2 could end, but these chucklefucks are so verbose (especially in their heads) that every single possibility I'd previously thought of ended up being wrong. All of those scenes got pushed back to Chapter 3 at least. I knew I didn't want chapter 2 to get too long or the trend of ever increasing chapter length would absolutely paralyze me and o would never get anything else written.

The end of Chapter 2 is literally, literally the first part of it that could have worked as a stopping point for me, and the whole chapter still ended up being ~1500 words longer than the previous one. I have a feeling that "finally a good stopping point!" might be the way it gets decided in the future, although I guess what makes a good stopping point is stuff like the end of a pivotal scene, the reveal of an important bit of information, a character resolving to do something, etc. We'll see!

#ask games #ask game #asked and answered #fic writing #writing asks #writing process

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deliciouskeys · 1 year

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Yay! Lots of numbers below, feel free to pick and choose :)

16, 26, 39 (I think you *know* which particular scene I want a snippet of, but anything will do haha), 69, 76 for ZM

Thanks for the asks. I warn you, the following is verbose and references morally reprehensible fics. TW, lol.

16. How many fic ideas are you nurturing right now? Share one of them?

I have many if just vague ideas count! And I'm sure you'll be pleased that they all revolve around Homelander, one way or another lol. I hate "claiming" prompts on the Meow meow prompt jar because it feels like hogging it unless I'm going to be actively writing, but I did just sign up for your "fertility treatment" prompt. My brain is often eaten up by the idea of HL being happily pregnant, and really self-satisfied to the point of being annoying. Meanwhile Butcher's probably kind of worried-- not like HL's going to be able to get a C section, at least not through conventional means. HL's blithely all 'we'll cross that bridge when we get there.' He's just enthused about getting to use a breast pump in the near future, and probably the fact that the baby he has is going to adore him unconditionally.

Yes, I am gross.

26. Which of your fics would you call your wildest ride?

Hrm. Unfortunately the wildest ride is still probably the first fic I ever posted publicly. Originally on LJ. 51k words. 12 chapters. Of... me being a teenage edgelord and writing about Captain Hook privateprisoning a prepubertal boy, that's not ever going to grow up, as if the chanslash wasn't bad enough.

Anyway, I skimmed through this fic about a year ago just to recall what was in it again, and I had forgotten just how fucked that story is, beyond even the pairing premise itself. There's gangrape of a child, ye olde macabre medical horror, and severe emotional trauma and manipulation/gaslighting that leads to really inappropriate bonding. But it did have impressive levels of worldbuilding, and pretty intricate dynamics between the, um, leads, but also side characters. It was a very rich environment. I was "1 or 2 chapters away from finishing it" and then never did, because, damn that thing was hard to wrap up in a not-completely-disturbing ending. I still occasionally get requests to finish it and people are subscribed, but I would not be able to get back into whatever mindset I had at that age. "Wildest" ! = "good" lol, but I'd never delete it.

Don't judge me for what i was doing ~20 years ago D:

39. Share a snippet from a WIP

Heh, full disclosure I criiiinge posting snippets of my fics because they're so awkward out of context, it's like walking in in the middle of sex. But here you go, from a section you asked for. I wish I just had this done and posted to AO3 -__-

Homelander probably senses the hesitation and decides to get himself up to a kneeling position, tilting his face up, licking his lips invitingly, probably hoping to defuse and redirect the weird energy in the room into something sexual rather than violent.

"Oh no you don't." Instead of undoing his fly, Butcher hoists Homelander up to his feet and pulls him out of the cage and towards the breakfast nook. "Lie down across my lap," he commands once he's situated himself in a chair.

"Why did you--" Homelander's words catch in his throat as Butcher yanks him down to lie across his lap, not waiting for obedience. "…take Temp V?" He sounds worried, and tries to lift his head, only to get his shoulders shoved back down.

The first thwack across Homelander's ass sounds really loud, echoing off the walls of the living room. Butcher gave it his all, somewhat forgetting that his strength was amped up. His palm smarts and he can only guess what it feels like on the receiving end. Homelander doesn't make a sound, maybe too shocked. Butcher swats him again.

"Really? This is just childi—" Another thwack resounds across the room and Homelander breathes hard through his nose. "That hurts, you know," he hisses.

"Yeah, that's the general idea. I know no one probably ever punished you while you were growing up, so it must be a new concept…" Butcher trails off, suddenly recalling the photocopied lab notes from Vought and realizing what he's saying is uncharitable.

Homelander doesn't argue, just lets out a strained whimper when Butcher's next whack lands square on the place he hit the first time. Angry red splotches are forming on his skin, helpfully marking out where he's already been hit and where he hasn't.

69. What work of yours, if any, are you the most embarrassed about existing?

I'm not embarrassed per se, but I probably should be (if by nothing else than the sheer length of these three). Original dates, reposted to AO3 later.

2003- 51k chanslash mentioned in the previous question

2006 - 21k of working through some angst issues. Original work set in WWII Germany, also starts out underage although at least postpubertal, problematic and historically inaccurate

2008- 59k of Pineapple Express mpreg, although I do recommend that movie to anyone who likes implied gayness in media and bizarre, funny dialogue which was a fun challenge to try to emulate in fic

76. Did you have any ideas that didn’t make the final cut of [ZM]?

I have generally managed to get everything into ZM that I wanted! One longish sequence I remember discarding (no mourning) was HL goading Billy to take Temp V with some form of misbehavior, and that being the thing that finally tips them into an overtly sexual, rather than a covertly-in-denial-kinky, relationship. It was violence that ended up as sex. But it was pretty rapey, and I didn't like it for this pairing. I prefer the version posted, where they're almost accidentally upping the ante, and kind of mutually sexually harassing each other, and it's about as consensual as it can be, at least within a private prison setting.

Plus Temp V does make an appearance towards the end of the fic, as you can tell from the WIP snippet lol.

#asks #xieyaohuan #writing #fanfic #meme

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athela-3 · 3 years

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@julias-cherry-garden I volunteer to give this a shot! (Although, disclaimer, I'm not actually a writing blog so this is gonna be mostly a 3 am ramble transposed to 3 pm).

Taichi Nanao + writing a love letter for his S/O

As soon as he decides to do it, he's a mess. A jumble of excitement and anxiety, nerves tangled like a ball of yarn that'd been assaulted by four consecutive kittens and one parakeet. It has to be perfect! It has to be cool! He will give his 110% effort into it and then some more!

He keeps on mentioning the letter around Mankai. Not in a braggy way, just, it's consumed his mind and he can't not blurt out about it every hour like a cuckoo clock. It takes precisely half a day for the whole company to know about it, whether they want to or not.

He asks Muku for help, because who better to ask about romantic gestures than the local shoujo manga expert? They spend hours poring over love letters in Muku's stack of manga, looking for ideas and heart-stopping one-liners to steal.

Homare advises him to let the words flow from his heart, which Taichi promises to do. (The poet also recited something florid and abstract about young love, at least until Hisoka complains about the noise.)

Citron tries to give some advice as well, mostly about the way love letters work in his country. But—written in gold ink, sealed with a drop of exotic tree gum, and sent attached to a tiger's collar?! How is Taichi gonna do any of that?! His love letter could never be as awesome as that!

Tsuzuru has to assure Taichi that no, Citron's probably just making that up. Taichi tries to ask him, as the resident writer, for tips, and after thinking for a bit Tsuzuru says: "Just don't forget to tell them how they make you feel. That's what matters."

Finally, he drags Kazunari into the stationery shop, trying to find the best snazzy paper and pens with cool colourful ink. Should he add stickers, or is that lame? Glitter, or is that too elementary school? What about scented paper, that's a thing, right? Kazu helps him pick out the good stuff without going overboard, even lends some of his personal art supplies. Puppy Pair solidarity forever, piko☆!

After the agony that is stationery comes the agony of actually writing the letter down. Taichi probably makes several test drafts before he rewrites the best one on the pretty paper, tongue sticking out and face scrunching in concentration as he tries to make his handwriting as neat as possible.

His letter is gushy. Hoo boy, is it gushy. He goes on and on about all the things he loves about his S/O, and trust me, it's a lot. He comes close to filling the entire sheet of paper, so his handwriting gets progressively smaller and more cramped the further down the page you go. He can't help it! He loves his S/O too much!

(He tries to keep all the advice he's received in mind, but in the end, once he gets started he's on a roll, and most of the advice flies out the metaphorical window.)

By the time he's done, the paper is slightly crinkled at the corner from where his arm rested against it, and some of the ink is slightly smudged. He tries to draw a cute doodle in what little space is left, in hopes of distracting his S/O from the (minuscule) flaws in the writing itself.

And there it is. His masterpiece. Not as aesthetically-pleasing as Kazunari's art, as grandiosely verbose as Homare's example, as snappily cool as Muku's manga, or as immediately impressive as Citron's story.

But he did write what his S/O makes him feel, and what he lacks in finesse he more than makes up in passion. Not a single word ends on that paper that didn't come from the sincerest depths of his heart. And that, Omi assures him as they turn off the lights to go to bed, is the most important thing.

#a3!#a3! headcanons #taichi nanao #ari writes #...ari writes?? ari actually writes??#and not at 3 am?? le shock!#to the anon who requested this to cherry: i hope this works for ya #*comic sans gold star meme* i tried

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