#The Fuckening Narrators
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Round 2 - Match 2
The Fuckening Narrators
(@duskdragon39, @serethespider, @laurenbrightwing, @errormarigenous)
Consisting of Crayak, Drode, Ellimist and One
Who are they?
It started with Animorphs. More precisely, it started with one of that story's gods putting a branching block of alternate timelines into quarantine so that they wouldn't keep fucking with canon. And then a group of assholes came along, stole the names of the gods in question, and took over ownership of the quarantine block. As Drode so succinctly put it: "God has abandoned you! And now me and my friends are god." Things did not get better from there. The vibes are the worst group project you've ever worked on, but with violence allowed. They may or may not be in some sort of polyamorous relationship. (They'll deny it if you even suggest it). They hate each other. They admire each other. Every one of them thinks they know how the story should go. (Every one of them will murder to make the story go their way). Good fucking luck, because any character in this mess isn't getting out alive.
In a State
(@breach-of-conduct)
Consisting of Oisín, Eislyn, Corianne, Taryn and Síofra
Who are they?
Zombie apocalypse about a queer friend group each with thier own growth into who they are
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people have been raving about project hail mary to me and i have been trying SO hard but i literally cannot get through it. i only have three days left on my libby copy (cannot extend hold bc such long wait list) and i know we’re not gonna make it
#my brother who rarely texts meliterally sent me a parageaph about it#like. its just kinda boring sorry??? am i the only one???? its like so popular rn??#like i made it half way but it took like 2.5 weeks#no scientist narrator willever be TheBiologist from annihilation sooooo#as a scientist i hate when scientist protags know literally every science#this narrators supposed to be a microbiologist and he has barely talked about micro yet knows everything about astronomy and physics and#everything. i work in a microbiology lab and let me tell you#my coworkers are brilliant . but at their subject not at fucken everything!#also the narrators just annoying to me#dont spoil bc i prob will finish at some pt but i wld like to kmow what others think
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Oh ok you’ve seen it cool.
We need to talk about this then. Obligatory spoiler warning.
(Ignore the dubious quality I took this on a phone )
Ok- like- what do you even do in this situation if you’re Kong? That thing needs four Titan-sized chain leashes to keep it down, charges up like Godzilla, and is half its size by virtue of being on four legs. It’s already double his size if proportions are accurate.
Insane. Titan among titans. Can’t wait to see her try to murder him ❤️
SCYLLA. SPIDER.
In Rome clearly, you can see statues. Wonder why they’re fighting? Scylla must’ve gotten peeved at something and Goji’s stopping her from stomping on his favorite sleepy place (the literal colosseum).
SHIMO FUCKEN BIIIIIIIG!
Regarding Scylla, there's actually a prequel comic – Godzilla X Kong: The Hunted – setting up the Goji-Scylla brawl, and I'll put details (or as many details I can recall) under the cut in case you want to track it down. If not, read away!
So the antagonist of The Hunted is this billionaire tech bro with a cybernetic arm who kidnaps superfauna from the Hollow Earth and uses them to test his Mecha up on the Topside. As for how he gets away with this with a Monarch outpost set up in the Hollow Earth, maybe he's got signal blocker tech, or his cyber arm can cause SIGNALIS-style feedback loops or something, who knows. What a cartoon character this guy is, dude decorates his island mansion with Titan statues, or stuffed displays or something. This dude's building himself up to bigger and stronger fights so he can one day fight Godzilla, because it turns out that oh no! He lost his family and also his arm in the events of 2014! I think his family was in Las Vegas at the time, which makes it darkly funny, because Tech Bro is on a revenge kick and Femuto was literally just going for an after lunch walk.
Godzilla knows some shit is happening, so Tech Bro throws the Big G off his trail by futzing with some signals which, if I recall correctly, ends up causing Scylla to go on a Nuclear Power Plant Feeding Frenzy. Bernie's keeping tabs on the situation and provides commentary/narration. One power plant goes full Elephant's Foot by the time she's done. Goji's chasing after her but can't catch up to make her cut the shit out... until Rome, which is where we get Godzilla vs Scylla. Also, JAYSUS WEPT, but did they amp up the spidery aesthetic for Scylla?! She's activating my arachnophobia, damn!
But what happens to Tech Bro? Lemme tell ya: Tech Bro suits up in his We Have Pacific Rim At Home-ass Mecha and goes fucking around in the Hollow Earth. One of the new critters introduced is this thorny tailed puma cat thing, and Tech Bro spots two cubs playing. Like a scumbag, he goes to kill them. Mama Thorn Cat intervenes to protect her babies but is killed, and Tech Bro (having gleefully become the same sadistic family-destroying monster he views the Titans as) chases down the cubs to brutally kill them...
But Kong shows up to save the day! Tech Bro puts up a fight and he's yammering all about how Kong's just a big dumb monkey and has nothing to him but his size (dude must have slept on the Hong Kong Fight, because only a Hubristic Dumbass would underestimate Kong), and that "I, as a cool big dick human man with money and a TRAGIC BACKSTORY am the REAL HUNTER AND NOT YOU" and long story short Kong drops his Mecha down a cliff and bricks it. Tech Bro escapes his busted ass mecha whining about the cost of his Mecha, and ends up killed by the same cubs he tried to kill. Circle of Life, you love to see it.
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I tried to draw your narrator. 👉👈
“This is really good! Thank you so much!” For if you can't read my shitty handwriting-
I Had a fucken moment in the middle of the cafeteria so I hope this portrayed it accurately lol. Thank you so much, I love it.
#tsp#the stanley parable#tspud#thestanleyparable#tsp narrator#the stanley parable: ultra deluxe#the stanley parable narrator#fan art#tsp fandom#narrator design#tsp art#reaction#reaction art#THANK YOU!!!
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When I saw the first guardians film in middle school, my love of our favorite raccoon began. Finding a community of Rocket lovers after keeping it silently inside for so long is special (in a way I can't articulate without sounding goofy bc it's an anthropomorphic raccoon we're talking about here). I graduate from college this weekend and want to thank you for your stories getting me through hard times and motivationless days. It's given me a knew way to enjoy the movies I've watched so many times :) What was the media that got you super into Rocket and inspired your fiction writing? Much love!!
first and foremost, i want to congratulate you. school is not easy, and i swear it gets harder and feels more high-pressure/high-stakes every year. i hope that your time at college has given you more learning experiences than all-nighters, more opportunities than stressors, and more joy than hardship. and i hope that you are able to take everything you’ve earned and enjoy your freedom from university surrounded by good people, with plenty of time and resources to do the things you love. if you haven’t yet, please take time to sit and breathe and really soak up the fact that you did this. be proud of yourself. you fucken deserve it.
secondly, i read this while walking to the parking garage at 11pm after helping at an event for my college students (i work at a university) and i had to sit in my car and wait till i stopped tearing up so i could drive home. this truly made me so happy and im so glad my silly stories made things even just a little easier for you. ♡
so, my falling in love with rocket was a process. (cue me narrating this for three paragraphs like a schoolgirl with her first crush)
when we first saw rocket’s back in gotg1 i was like, oh. he’s in so much pain. between that + his fucken sarcasm, i complained afterward that the movie would’ve been so much better if he was the main character (lol). i started lazily dabbling in comics content then. i hadn’t been big into marvel comics before (more of a dc/image comics kid) but rocket and groot were becoming my faves. i loved gotg2. so much more focus on rocket, and yondu’s arc had me bawling like a baby. gotg2 made me like gotg1 more, which is part of how i judge the quality of a narrative series tbh (and why i think series are so hard to make). when the first gotg3 trailer came out and it was clear this was rocket’s story, i was obsessed. i didnt watch any additional trailers or read any more comics — rare for me. i wanted to go in completely blank. then i went back to the theatre to rewatch it three additional times (i have never before gone to see a movie more than once in the theatre). i was like… almost bursting with love for this stupid raccoon at this point.
then i got around to reading his grounded comic arc, and it was like — the dam burst. i hadn’t written fanfiction since 2017ish, and hadn’t been on tumblr since 2016, but i was like — i have to write about this fucken raccoon. i need to take care of him lol.
so when you ask what media - i guess all of it? in increments? because of course now ive watched most of his various cartoon incarnations, read probably 70% of the comics content, halfway through a stream of the 2021 game, have one of the novels (sitting on the tbr pile) and frankly the love just continues to grow.
now that ive taken up thirty-two years of your life, i just want to say im so glad you found this fandom and this community. he may be an anthropomorphic raccoon but he’s meaningful to people, in so many ways. im so very very glad that he could be that for you, and that you’re here.
congrats again, nonnie. i hope post-graduation life rewards you with supportive people who love and understand you, with joyful new experiences, good health, and everything you need to live happily and fully.
#not me crying in my car on a thursday night or whatever#nonnie#rfh asks#thank you#you’re so sweet#rocket raccoon#guardians of the galaxy
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Okay but why did the Wenclair break up scene- aka Enid finally standing up fer herself and calling Wednesday out on her constant prioritization of the investigation over everyone else and constant shitty behavior towards them, as she SHOULD mind you- have SO MUCH more weight and impact than every Love Interest Moment between Ajax, Xavier, and Tyler COMBINED? In this essay I will-
Wednesday literally showed no regret for constantly leading Tyler on and using his feelings for her own gain; Enid seems to just like Ajax ‘because he’s cute’ and then moving on ultra quick with Lucas because he was semi-nice to her for like two seconds and she thought that meant they should be together (yes, this is my Comphet Enid Delusions). When Xavier was literally in chains Wednesday still felt little remorse and had the gall to pretty much demand help from him DESPITE LITERALLY BEING THE REASON WHY HES WRONGFULLY IMPRISONED. Also, I love the difference of Wednesday trying to defend herself with, “I apologized. It’s over” as soon as she sees Enid’s distress and THEN getting defensive at Enid’s call out with a, “I never asked you to do that.” Compared to her silence and stone cold expression during Xavier’s, Enid’s call out actually gets a reaction out of her with immediate effects.
When Enid left Wednesday alone in her room she immediately felt SO fucken regretful as she curled up on the floor- ON THE SPLIT OF THE WINDOW MIND U OUGHHH THE SYMBOLISM- and started to lament. Her despondent stare at Enid’s bed as the realization that she’ll likely never see the werewolf on that bed again truly sinks in, her slow walk towards the window, the way she slinks down to the floor and tucks her head into her pulled-up legs with her arms hugging close to herself in a self-soothing manner. Jenna, you are so masterful in conveying characters through sheer body language. Wednesday literally narrates to us that being alone, “For the first time in my life, it doesn’t feel good.” Enid leaving mattered so fucken much to Wednesday, her absence truly made her sit down- literally- and feel actual regret towards her actions. Not nearly getting killed multiple times, not constantly on the verge of being on expulsion, but Enid essentially giving up on her is what does her in.
The imagery standing/sitting on the split of the window is so powerful. One part of her still reaching for the familiar shadowy darkness, and yes this part is still pretty strong as she ends the scene still super determined to find the killer. But the color in her is growing, a half of her that’s shifted and become attached to a much softer side. Enid leaving was 10000% necessary because both needed the space. Enid needed time to recollect and reinforce her boundaries- which she does later and does so spectacularly my babygirl- meanwhile Wednesday has to fully face the consequences of her actions and accept that she needs to do better. This sort of breakup scene- because cmon, the sheer tension and emotional haywire and immediate regret hits you like a TRUCK don’t tell me this wasn’t a breakup- was such a pivotal point of Wenclair’s relationship because without it neither would’ve had the foundation to finally move forward on equal footing. Enid probably would have run herself into the ground trying to people-please Wednesday because she’s so desperate to not be alone while Wednesday would have kept acting like a deflecting, detached goth girlie who keeps moving forward no matter the cost. Now that grievances have been aired, they have this chance to grow and be better, and my god, that’s exactly what they end up doing AND THATS WHY WENCLAIR IS SO FUCKEN GOOD TO AND FOR EACH OTHER‼️‼️‼️‼️
This analysis is getting quite long so here's a final note to reflect on. Not only did Wednesday give zero shits about Xavier in chains, look at how Xavier basically told Wednesday the same thing as Enid. He tells her she's toxic as shit and that she should just leave because her actions keep getting people hurt. In the aftermath, does Wednesday curl up and lament over him too? Do his words impart a change in Wednesday, a need to do and be better? Not even close, homies, not even close. The difference in how Enid's rejection of Wednesday affects her versus Xavier's is so fucken undeniably H U G E it's obvious who Wednesday truly cares about more in the long run and therefore pathetically hilarious how they keep shoving straight romances down our throats when Wenclair clearly holds SO much more chemistry and weight. If anything, the only good thing Xavier’s and Wednesday’s ‘romance’ gave us is a parallel, a foils of sorts, to Wenclair and what a Wednesday who gives no shits looks like to what a Wednesday who gives all the shits looks like.
#imma keep making long posts about Wenclair ALL DAAYYY BABBBYYY#wenclair warriors rise up#they drive me so insane#i love them SO MUCH#the parallels ur honor the PARALLELS#wenclair#wednesday addams#enid sinclair
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you know that fake dude's computer generated voice that's on lots of short videos with bullshit clickbait stories like "this woman thought she adopted a puppy but got the surprise of her life when it grew up" or it'll be just bad jokes over random footage even... hold on there's so many i know i can find one in like two seconds.. here, THIS fucken voice
yeah, THAT voice. i automatically block any channel or poster that posts videos using that voice. I get that the original purpose of that kind of thing was probably an accessibility feature, but in practice it never turns out to be anything that isn't someone else's original content being hijacked by like, user funnymoments785 or some shit, and before i started automatically blocking all videos with this voice i would get this kind of video a hundred times a day -- even blocking every video that uses it i still found the above video within a few seconds of scrolling my feed.
anybody remember when there weren't algorithms and bots and content farms?
the internet used to be a human thing, a shared creation of actual individual people.
surely we can take it back, the pure connection is still there, tho the telephone companies and internet providers do control the access.
ANYWAY, i fucking automatically block this kind of shit, and i hope you do to
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where did the inspiration for cat!dave come from. i love it btw, im just curious where it came from
catdave, like a lot of stuff in the gf3 prologue, just sort of happened. it's one of those things where in writing that chapter, jade grabbed a button that did a thing as a way to keep their villain-narrator honeypot from collapsing, and i decided to roll with it. turning dave into a house cat seemed like a fun gag, especially considering awkweet purrmusk and davepeta and all that. karkat picking up catdave with horror and protectiveness was really funny to me, just like NO HE'S MY BOYFRIEND YOU LEAVE MY SPECIAL MAN ALONE. then i thought, wait, what if a cat had time-distortion powers. what if catdave was like, i'm the hottest fucken kitty that ever did strut, i'ma slow down time and make everyone admire me. that joke alone was enough to keep catdave in, and i figured okay, we'll roll with this for a minute and then reverse it at the end and it'll be a funny anecdote. "hey remember that time dave turned into a cat?"
but unfortunately for dave, this is godfeels. i can't ever just do a fun joke about transformation. if we're gonna accept that jade has a button that can turn people into the animal they secretly want to be, that's gotta have CONSEQUENCES. what is this, fucking rick & morty??? there will be no resetting to the status quo at the end of THIS episode thank you very much!
of course by the time i got to publishing that first catdave chapter i'd figured all this out. dave's sort of defined by his repression and embarrassment at himself and his wants. i've imagined him sticking to his "i don't want to be a hero" thing very closely, and with that just kinda chilling with karkat all the time. (oh there's actually a funny pseudo-continuity error related to this-- in gf1 someone mentions what makes dave and karkat such a good couple. i'd imagined then that davekat were absolutely a totally out gay together couple. then the epilogues said actually no they were still too repressed to actually DO anything, and i decided to lean into that because two incredibly gay men no-homoing together for seven years is really funny/tragic to me from a story perspective. and since i decided to make gf2 parallel the epilogues, it seemed appropriate to fold that back in. i think in gf2 this gets papered over with june being surprised that they hadn't kissed yet? but that's def a thing that changed between fics from my perspective lmao)
so it seemed to me that catdave was a minor analogue to trickster mode- an unexpected jump straight to Personal Apotheosis without the journey necessary to give it any meaning. and that quickly mapped onto the problem of out queer people treating obvious eggs like their own Pet Project, pressuring them and pushing their boundaries even when it IS to some extent what they want. so dave keeps his cat ears and tail because he's a closeted furry with Some Gender, but because his friends all thought the transformation was funny and cute the end result was actually pushing him even further back into the closet. and since i knew that we were aiming towards davekat divorce fever anyway, that felt like the *perfect* dramatic intervention on his character. this is the hardest part of building an ensemble cast drama; giving everyone something Clear and Concise to deal with that can stand in for all their problems, so we can cut right to the chase when necessary.
this process is, in microcosm, the fundamental backbone of godfeels. it's about taking deadly seriously the personal and existential ramifications of extraordinarily silly impossible bullshit.
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20 Questions for Fic Writers
very kindly tagged by @freneticfloetry and @three-drink-amy. thanks, friends!!!
1. How many works do you have on AO3?
20! Three of those are drabble compilations, how I keep my 100-word drabbles organized for different fandoms, but I'm counting them 😂
2. What’s your total AO3 word count?
35,104. I don't know how to write long lmao.
3. What fandoms do you write for?
Most of my fics (15 of them to be exact, as well as the main longer fic I'm writing atm) are for Outlander, but I've written for a total of 5 fandoms, and hop between them at different times. In addition to Outlander, I have fics/drabbles for The Song of Achilles, The Last Binding Trilogy, 911, and 911: Lone Star.
4. What are your top 5 fics by kudos?
To Heart and Home (Outlander, multichap, canon divergent) - by farrrrr, which makes sense, as it's my only multichap
Foundations (Outlander, one shot, canon compliant)
return my fists to fingers (The Last Binding, one shot, canon compliant)(i need more of yall to read these books and write fic for them. i need it)
Sunlight (The Song of Achilles, one shot, canon compliant)
Grievances Raised (Outlander, one shot, modern au)
5. Do you respond to comments? Why or why not?
I do! I don't post often enough that I get an overwhelming amount of comments or anything, so it's not a huge burden to reply to them all. I just am continually baffled by people reading what I write, it genuinely blows my mind.
6. What is the fic you wrote with the angstiest ending?
hmmmmmm. a lot of what I write is pretty angsty, but I love finding and weaving out the thread of hope that lives in those broken places. That said, does heaven have enough angels yet is pretty rough. It's a canon compliant little snippet from the pov of a stillborn infant so like...... she's sad. there's still hope tho! always still hope.
7. What’s the fic you wrote with the happiest ending?
ooo probably the fluffiest happy fic I have is All the Colors in the Rainbow! It ends with all the Frasers going off to Pride, and it makes me hella happy.
The happiest fic story-wise is probably To Heart and Home, just because it fixes The Main Fuckening that happens in Outlander and brings that family back together earlier.
8. Do you get hate on fics?
*knocks on wood* i haven't yet!
9. Do you write smut? If so, what kind?
I don't, I'm not brave enough. The closest I came to it was with Grievances Raised, wherein Claire pegs the brains out of her husband, but I only wrote the aftermath.
10. Do you write crossovers? What’s the craziest one you’ve written?
I haven't done one yet!
11. Have you ever had a fic stolen?
Not that I know of 🤞🏻
12. Have you ever had a fic translated?
I don't think so? I feel like I remember someone asking me to translate To Heart and Home a few years ago, but I don't know if anything ever came of it.
13. Have you ever co-written a fic before?
I haven't! I feel like I would be the worst co-writer lol, I am farrrr too slow.
14. What’s your all-time favorite ship?
to write? idk, probably Jamie and Claire? I just feel like I know them, inside and out. I don't have to look for their voices, they're right there.
15. What’s a WIP you want to finish but doubt you ever will?
oh god, so many outlander ones lmao.
16. What are your writing strengths?
I am really good at matching the tone of the source material! Once I get the voice of the characters/narration/general story style, I feel like I can reproduce the general vibes of canon. I think that's why I sometimes have an easier time with writing fic from stories in the form of books - there's a written tone I can internalize. And consequently, why I've had a harder time with nailing a voice for 911 or Lone Star, even though I do want to eventually write fic for those shows.
17. What are your writing weaknesses?
Dialogue and plot! I write Vibes™, but I don't know how to write actual Stories. I would love to be that writer who could crank out a whole story with a plot and shit, because I love that type of fic with my whole self, but my brain just functions in vibes.
18. Thoughts on writing dialogue in another language in fic?
I am a Coward about it. I've written a fair amount of Gàidhlig into my Outlander fics, especially in To Heart and Home, and honestly I think I've done a pretty good job with it. I spent a lot of time researching the language, up to and including researching grammar structures and taking duolingo lessons at the beginning of the pandemic for a few months. I've forgotten most of it now though, despite duolingo being extremely persistent with its reminders lmao.
However.
If I were to write for 911 and Lone Star like I would like to, I would like to include some Spanish into those stories (especially with Lone Star), and I just don't think I would do it justice. I failed Spanish miserably in high school, and haven't taken a stab at it since. If I include it I want to do it well and respectfully, ya know? I'm bilingual (just not with Spanish lol) and an interpreter, and I think that has brought with it a better understanding of just how complicated language is, and how easy it is to fuck it up when you don't know what you're doing. And as a very white person, I also don't want to act like I know fuck-all about a non-white language and culture when I don't.
Sooooo, I'm a coward about it atm. Hoping to get better eventually though!
19. First fandom you wrote for?
Outlander! Never ever thought I would write fic, didn't think I was "allowed." Hadn't ever written anything creatively before (in english at least), so it was a big jump for me. this makes it sound like english is my second language, when really it's just that the first time that anyone made me write creatively was in my deaf lit class
20. Favorite fic you’ve written?
Oh god this changes all the time. At the moment I've feeling very tender towards into the empty parts of me. It's a really tragic part of canon, but just gorgeous character potential. I loved how gentle this turned out, how John and Claire had a moment of healing in the middle of their tragedy.
But also I think that the fic I'm writing right now is gonna turn out to be my favorite ❤ once I get the writing juices flowing again for one last section 🤞🏻
I'm not sure who all has done this already, but no pressure tagging @liminalmemories21, @flyinghome-againstthewind, @theawkwardterrier, @homerforsure, @paperstorm
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🍇
I know there are the Sandman fandom faves, but curious if you have any scenes/volumes/moments you particularly love or any you think could use more rep.
fruit fic asks!
🍇 Is there a particular scene/episode/book/etc that you want to just write a million fics about, over and over? Which one?
Such a thoughtful question dude, thank you! Terrible confession to make: I have not actually watched a single episode of The Sandman since first watching the show. At most I've scrubbed through for screencaps or dialogue, and before writing the Corinthian for the first time I watched a YouTube compilation of all his scenes haha 😅
I have also not read the comics, although I have definitely peeked at some panels and have a familiarity-by-osmosis of the events.
Further excluding fandom faves (Season of the Mists toast, Corinthian dark mirror lines, Dream's battleskirt, all show scenes featuring Hob Gadling), I am thinking HARD and can offer the following for bits I adore/am constantly wanting to write about:
The Corinthian's dialogue to Lucienne re: Dream as he leaves the Dreaming in S1E2: “You can’t change him. You can’t save him either.” This is a fucken LEITMOTIF to me from the moment I heard again (did not even take notice on the first watch! It sure hits differently with wider canon knowledge!). Change is a huge theme in The Sandman, but I'm particularly obsessed with how Dream's views on changeability are expressed through his relationships with his creations and the words they say too. Compare with Hob's fateful line in 1889: “I think it’s you that’s changed.”
Humanity as the explicit catalyst for said change is an absolute brainworm to me - see also Gault, Dream's relationship with Hob, Dream's forced imprisonment within the Waking - but in particular, holding this in mind while considering the Corinthian's lines about his justification for the cereal serial killing: “Do you know why I do it? So I can taste what it’s like to be human. You don’t care about humanity.” When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. When all you have is teeth, everything looks like a meal, right? Coupled with the unexpectedly heart-aching delivery here it feels like The Corinthian is out doing what Dream needs to do: being curious, and reaching out to humanity - albeit in an unacceptable way. But I don't think Dream made the Corinthian too hungry. I think he made him too curious. His sin is wanting to know, and how can that possibly be treated with sympathy from an equally arrogant being that harbours the collective unconscious? Dream believes he knows everything already and cannot abide wanting more himself. He's a study in self-denial and repression for the sake of his function. But who else is willing to challenge the fundamental laws of his existence to chase his appetite for more? Who else wants to taste all of life? It's so tragic to me - it feels inevitable through and through, and when you put the desires that got the Corinthian unmade next to the desires that got Hob Gadling all his living...ow.
The opening monologue/narration in S1E1. I just think it's neat! It's such a good example of Dream's character voice and epistemology all at once. By the time Charles Dance was on the screen I was fully and wholly sold on Sandman. I would love to write some fics about the ol' Demon King sometime.
Okay fuck it I know you said excluding fandom faves but I have to be honest and say every single word that came out of Hob's mouth in 1389
#asks#fruit fic asks#an essay#meta#been meaning to write an essay about The Corinthian and Hob Gadling and Dream for AGES and it's started leaking out oh no#the sandman#the corinthian#hob gadling#dream of the endless
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If you’re willing to share, what sorts of changes are you going to be making to Fedallah and the other Asian crew members? (I’m reading Moby Dick for class right now, and Melville’s racism blindspots are really interesting)
hello! this is an excellent question, and one which i’m constantly in the process of wondering how to address.
melville’s racism is rampant in moby dick. even as he tries to write consciously abt race & capitalism, he still perpetuates racist, orientalist, etc stereotypes and beliefs, with all his characters of color. queequeg hardly ever gets to speak for himself, and instead is spoken over by the white narrator. the three officers, all white men, get introduced with backstories and personalities and nuance, while the harpooners, all nonwhite, are introduced via reductive stereotypes and descriptions that center almost exclusively on their “exotic” bodies. the officers all get last words, final soliloquies, as they die, and the harpooners get no such respect. ahab & fedallah’s filipino crew are regularly described as demonic and referred to with pejorative anti-asian language. pip’s suffering as a Black character at the hands of a white supremacist is treated as some divine revelation, & pretty much exclusively is used to further the (ostensibly) white ahab’s anguish.
and fedallah himself — a textbook orientalist caricature of a ~spooky exotic persian man~, whose prophecies and ~satanic~ tendencies plague and doom the narrative.
(putting under a cut bc this got long)
i’ve tried to deal with much of melville’s racism through my comic by expanding on the gaps — like you said, the blind spots — that melville left. queequeg, tashtego, and daggoo all get to speak for themselves and to each other; they exist beyond their relationship to the white characters; i’ve tried my best to deliberately ensure the cast of the pequod is diverse and full of characters of color as whole & non caricatured & authentic as i can. this includes the filipino stowaways who we later discover are ahab & fedallah’s oarsmen.
i’ve mentioned this a bit in the past, but i’m trying to draw a line between moby dick’s watsonian or in-universe racism (stubb being a racist dickhead to, well, everyone, but especially pip & fedallah), vs it’s doylist or out-of-universe or authorial racism (melville calling queequeg a s*vage and referring to pip as “bright” in the way “blacks” are bright). so while i’ll keep the fact that stubb is a racist asshole, i’m not going to treat queequeg and pip the way melville did. characters in moby dick: or, the webcomic (henceforth MDOTW) are racist, but hopefully, if i’ve done my job right, the narrative itself is not.
i’m not going to get this right every time, but i’m hoping i’m doing an okay job.
fedallah specifically is...difficult. he is also deeply personal to me as a persian person & someone w zoroastrian roots in my family. the stereotypes to which melville reduces him are ones that i’ve directly dealt with in my life.
some things i can do to fix fedallah are simple: design choices such as getting rid of melville’s stupid matted hair thing & giving him a proper & period-accurate hair covering, etc. some are more difficult — the things that make fedallah a racist caricature (ie the mysticism and prophetic bullshit) are also the things that mark his role in the plot: his prophecies are important foreshadowing, and they do come true.
some of the things i have done to mitigate this:
-- the design choices i mentioned earlier . no more fucken weird visual orientalist caricature. he is a person and will look like one jfc
-- fedallah is not the only middle eastern character in MDOTW. i have made a very deliberate and conscious choice to cast ahab as nonwhite, particularly a middle eastern man. (i’ve waffled back & forth abt the specific ethnicity, but). i read an essay ages back called ‘the question of race in moby dick’ by fred v. bernard which made the case for reading ahab (and ishmael, tho that’s not the point of this post) as mixed Black, and since then i’ve had trouble reading ahab as white. i’ve talked a lot about how the take of ahab as just “privileged dude leading everyone to their doom” is sort of the most boring one for me; it’s certainly a valid reading of the text, but not particularly interesting. what’s more interesting to me is how the world in which ahab lives is legitimately an awful one — violent and colonialist and capitalist — and how ahab tries in his own deeply flawed ways to fight that world. in what ways is ahab’s rally against the white whale a rally against whiteness itself, and capitalism and colonialism and all these systems that have caused his trauma etc etc? but i digress — my point here is that i personally get even more from this narrative by casting ahab as nonwhite.
i’ve made him swana as a persian person myself — i don’t feel equipped as a nonBlack person to tell this specific story about ahab if he were Black — but also because there are a lot of things about ahab where him being arab or persian makes a lot of sense. one of them being his relationship with fedallah, certainly, but also the way he describes religion, his relationship with fire (slash the worship of fire) etc etc lend to this.
this also means, back to the original point, that fedallah no longer has to bear the burden of sole representative for this group of people. it allows the two of them to feed off each other. it also allows another dimension to their relationship — how does ahab know fedallah? why does ahab trust fedallah so much? well, the solidarity of being two persian or two swana people in this hellscape of USian whaling certainly is a compelling reason
-- and along those lines, making fedallah more of a person than just a vessel for spooky cryptic nonsense. sure, stubb and flask might not-so-jokingly speculate on how he’s the devil in disguise and keeps his tail tucked into his pants, and sure he might make a weird comment about how ahab can only die by rope on a ship full of hempen rigging, but what else is he? does he care for ahab? are they friends? what does he think about the white whale (bc we know what starbuck and ahab and stubb and etc etc think about it)? what is he gaining or losing from this? can i put him up as a foil against starbuck — the voice of reason, begging ahab to turn back — vs him seemingly egging ahab on? almost baiting him to continue? who is fedallah beyond his prophecies? does he believe his own prophecies? is there a way i can depart from those prophecies even further, and not have to rely on them so much to push the narrative forward?
tl;dr to answer your question, what am i changing about fedallah? oh god. hopefully lots of things. hopefully enough.
#moby dick#melville#herman melville#whale weekly#captain ahab#ahab#fedallah#racism#mobydick#quasartalks#quasarwrites#ask#i-think-strange-things#long post#unsurprisingly this got very long#i like ishmelville do not know how to shut up#also the bolding is mostly just to make the readability easier since ik that can be an accessibility issue for some#when large blocks of text aren't broken up by any differentiation#lmk if this is readable and if there are more questions cause i'm happy to talk more about any and all of this
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Round 1 - Match 3
Let's introduce the contestants-
The Fuckening Narrators
(@duskdragon39, @serethespider, @laurenbrightwing, @error-marigenous)
Consisting of Crayak, Drode, Ellimist and One.
Who are they?
It started with Animorphs. More precisely, it started with one of that story's gods putting a branching block of alternate timelines into quarantine so that they wouldn't keep fucking with canon. And then a group of assholes came along, stole the names of the gods in question, and took over ownership of the quarantine block. As Drode so succinctly put it: "God has abandoned you! And now me and my friends are god." Things did not get better from there. The vibes are the worst group project you've ever worked on, but with violence allowed. They may or may not be in some sort of polyamorous relationship. (They'll deny it if you even suggest it). They hate each other. They admire each other. Every one of them thinks they know how the story should go. (Every one of them will murder to make the story go their way). Good fucking luck, because any character in this mess isn't getting out alive.
Raquel and Raffaello
(@siripedra)
Consisting of Raqeul Castillo and Vladimir Raffaello.
Who are they?
Insert a fucked up teenager girlboss and that one trans kid who kept annoying you into being his friend, congratulations you've now been besties for holy shit 6 years Your average grumpy x sunshine duo, but entirely platonic and they're both kinda insane.
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13 books
What’s up readers?! How about a little show and tell? Answer these 13 questions, tag 13 lucky readers and if you’re feeling extra bookish add a shelfie! Let’s Go!
Tagged by @softest-punk
1) The Last book I read:
Foster by Claire Keegan, which is what the movie An Cailín Ciúin was based on. It's only 70 pages (though I listened to the audio, which has a stunning narration) and I think I am in love with Claire Keegan maybe.
The last australian book I read was Witchy (vol 1+2) by Ariel Ries. Really fun comic about young witch Nyneve who is conscripted into the Witch Guards, runs away, and has to figure out her place in the world. Beautiful art!!
2) A book I recommend:
This year I finally read A Safe Girl to Love by Casey Plett, which is a collection of short stories about trans women living in Canada/the US. Every story felt so lived in and alive. It is mostly real-life stuff but there is one story where a woman can speak with her cat and it's done so well. Semi-related stories in that some of the characters know each other/mention each other. A trans classic!!!
3) A book that I couldn’t put down:
Birnam Wood by Eleanor Catton. Set in Aotearoa, centred around these two young women who run a guerilla gardening collective. one of them meets a billionaire who wants to give them a bunch of money. Now see the blurb told me it was an eco thriller but the thriller part is very slow burn until ur like JAYSUS SLOW DOWN.
4) A book I’ve read twice (or more):
I re-read the Southern Reach trilogy (Annihilation, Authority & Acceptance) by Jeff VanderMeer at the end of last yr because he accounced the fourth book. I just love them. The kind of spec fic I would love to write tbh.
5) A book on my TBR:
Praiseworthy by Alexis Wright. I bought it because I knew i was quitting my job and I wanted the staff discount and I thought I'd read it in my unemployment phase. Turns out quitting your job because you're horribly treated means that u enter a big extra-depressed phase so I did not have the brain space to read more than the first 25 pages. But i loved those, they just required more energy than I had. I'm gonna paste the blurb here actually because it just sounds fucken rad:
Praiseworthy is an epic set in the north of Australia, told with the richness of language and scale of imagery for which Alexis Wright has become renowned. In a small town dominated by a haze cloud, which heralds both an ecological catastrophe and a gathering of the ancestors, a crazed visionary seeks out donkeys as the solution to the global climate crisis and the economic dependency of the Aboriginal people. His wife seeks solace from his madness in following the dance of butterflies and scouring the internet to find out how she can seek repatriation for her Aboriginal/Chinese family to China. One of their sons, called Aboriginal Sovereignty, is determined to commit suicide. The other, Tommyhawk, wishes his brother dead so that he can pursue his dream of becoming white and powerful. This is a novel which pushes allegory and language to its limits, a cry of outrage against oppression and disadvantage, and a fable for the end of days.
6) A book I’ve put down:
A Marvellous Light by Freya Marske. I just simply do not care about rich English people. I had about an hour left of the audiobook, I rly tried to push thru but I just couldn't care enough.
7) A book on my wish list:
I would like to get a physical Irish-English dictionary!
8) A favorite book from childhood:
I did love Enid Blyton's Faraway Tree series which look I'm sure u can tell about me if you know me. And look I still do but my god. The amount of parents and parents buying these for their children at the shop for the love of god get them at the op shop PLEASE.
9) A book you would give to a friend:
Vague ............ well it would be something aus.
10) A book of poetry or lyrics that you own
The last one I bought was Non-Essential Work by Omar Sakr. I think Omar is one of the best writers working today in this godforsaken colony. HIs work is just exquisite and so precise.
11) A nonfiction book you own:
The last one I bought was Orientalism by Edward Said which made me realise how if you don't read anything academic in ten+ years it's very hard to get back into reading (or again, perhaps it is the horrible mental illnesses attacking my brain which mean I find it extremely hard to concentrate on anything!!! wahoo!!!!) so I am taking that one slow.
12) What are you currently reading:
Ghost Cities by Siang Lu which comes out in May. It's very funny and absurd and written just the way I like. It's about a dude who lives in Sydney and works as a Chinese translator, but he actually speaks no Chinese and uses google translate to do his job. He's fired via elaborate prank and then somehow gets the attention of a famous movie director, and is currently being whisked away to one of the ghost city apartment complexes in China to make a movie with him. There's a parallel story about an ancient emperor and I just finished the 30-page poem that his newly-imprisoned eunichs composed. It's exciting!!
13) What are you planning on reading next?
The Orphancorp trilogy (dystopian aus YA) by Marlee Jane Ward, which I have already read and simply adore. Three novellas that imo have perfect pacing and are about "what if capitalism was extra bad". They are deeply queer and anti-capitalist.
Tagging: @tideoftrash @drbuttox @briarrolfe @so-boop-tac-u-lar @hamthezombie @frankenfossil @dragnew @tekaihau @rows-study @nessie-nosebleed @tenderfacemeat @athousandhungrythorns @gamling
#a tag game!!!!!!! i love being tagged in things#tho i often do not do them#i still want to do ones i was tagged in months ago hehe#books
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Brief Book Reviews #8
It's been a hot minute and I'm sorry. IRL stuff happened for most of the year and I've only just gotten back to reading again- I'm glad I have, though.
#1: Laura Thalassa, Pestilence (The Four Horsemen, Book 1)
Dark romance with a Horseman of the Apocalypse. It's about as fucked up as it sounds, and I love it.
The story sets the scene for post-apocalyptic Earth: the Horsemen rode out in all four directions some years before the story begins, and with their arrival, all electronics stopped working, save for the lucky few who had backup generators I guess. Then, five years after they vanish, Pestilence shows up, riding across North America to spread a plague. Our protagonist and narrator, Sara Burns, is the unlucky firefighter who tries to shoot him off his horse- she succeeded, for a bit, but sadly this Horseman is immortal and she becomes his prisoner. It's a slow burn, Stockholm syndrome, enemies-to-lovers kind of deal, and god dammit, I love it. There's a few sex scenes and graphic depictions of the dying (including children), so, heads up if you're thinking of getting this book.
...and I might want to play Darksiders again because of this lol.
#2, S.A. Chakraborty, City of Brass
...Well that was a rollercoaster from start to fucking finish. And there's two more books in this series. Holy shit.
I love the world building and political intrigue, and above all, I love how down to earth Nahri is. The bond between her and Dara is believable (and heartbreaking, in later chapters). Ali, though- poor kid can't catch a break. I kinda wish he'd grow a spine, but I don't blame him- his father's a right bastard, honestly. I hope the Qahtanis get found out before the series is over, and that they get what they deserve. I honestly can't say too much without spoiling anything, but as awful as Nahri's situation is, I am left hiking up my standards again after Dara being very ready to kill anything and everything for her. *sigh.*
#3: Tamsyn Muir, Gideon the Ninth (The Locked Tomb trilogy, Book 1)
This book was a fucken trip- and I had a couple of friends get very excited over me reading it. I can understand why, this was a fun read. Like a mix of dark fantasy meets Dead Space. Muir's done a good job of it. Sure, "Lesbian Necromancers IN SPAAAAAAAACE" is a good way to market it, but damn. The murder mystery was a nice touch. Gideon being a disaster lesbian is funny, and I kept hearing Taliesin Jaffe as Percy de Rolo whenever Palamedes showed up. Palamedes my beloved. Dulcinea didn't deserve you. ;_;
Tiktok was enlightening when it came to this series, too- apparently the author pulled the whole thing from their own Homestuck fanfic, and the parallels are very obvious. Then again, I'm still Homestuck'd after all these years, I don't have a leg to stand on here. Gideon is quite obviously Dave, Harrow is obviously supposed to be Karkat, and you can tell if you've been in sharpie bath hell for several years. It's done quite well, though. Can't wait to read the next one. Not sure what I'm gonna read in the meantime, though...
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Isn't it implied that Armand was sexually abused even before Marius when he was basically a child sex trafficking victim? Kind of don't even want RJ to touch that backstory at all at this point tbh
Oh yes, I would say it's not even "implied" as much as very clearly part of his backstory. He's kidnapped and trafficked and winds up with Marius because Marius purchases him.
I will say when I talked about this yesterday I said "Especially because Armand's experience of it doesn't fit neatly into RJ's whole 'rape makes you tougher' trope since Armand doesn't ask the reader to think of it as rape." which!!!!!! I will fine tune here and say I meant his experiences with Marius are the rape he doesn't try to sell us as rape. Please don't get me started on TVA meta and Armand's reliability as a narrator since we are in AMC land today on this post. He's clear about what happens to him when he's trafficked, and when Marius first "rescues" him he's so traumatized that he's nonverbal.
So it absolutely does not make him tougher; it makes him traumatized and vulnerable. I think even his respite of living with Marius is undone when he gets to the cult and re-embraces his fervent religious beliefs. It makes me wonder if he's overcorrecting and seeing his time with Marius as sin. He doesn't recover from this for like 300 years!
But that kinda leans into like a lot of the casual readers' ambiguity about who & what Marius is, also about Anne's intentions writing it/the branding contamination of her erotica career. I would even argue that a lot of casual readers don't even make it this far into the series, anyway. This is probably the most divisive book in the series because some people read it as fun vampire erotica that's just packed to the rafters with sexy & extremely common kink tropes, other people go WAIT WHAT THE FUCK? lol.
I'm not completely buying that the team on this show actually read the whole series, or at least not as deeply as fandom nerds have 😂, and like I think everyone has to remember that Tumblr & fandoming are echochambers and people outside in the regular world tend not to be this sensitive to these topics. Especially when it comes to topics that are more familiar in queer spaces. So it wouldn't surprise me if the Venice era was read uncritically. I almost wanna say maybe even read as Anne intended but what the fuck has this show told us about what Anne intended? LOL.
But there's a lot of ambiguity in TVA with Marius's intentions again don't let me waste Marius meta on an AMC post and the thing people often romanticize about him is that he rescued Armand. And like I just wonder if the show, seeing how they're handling Claudia, would lean into the like Ricean precocious child trope and try to play it off that Armand is asking for it or enjoying it.
And much like the way they're portraying Lestat, I think it's worth noting that Marius's actons often come from grounded places, and the harm he does is not always intentional. Personally I don't think the show has framed Lestat as particularly sympathetic, although they've given us some clues about why he's like this. I think fandom is really extrapolating on that stuff and woobifying him LOL so just. WHEW WOULD THEY DO THAT TO MARIUS? HAHA. fucken yiiikes.
I am *eating popcorn gif* waiting to see if the completely rampant Lestat apologism will extend to Marius bc it's hilarious to me that he has been demonized by fandom along with his fans but yet Domestic Abuser Lestat is just sad about his ex uwu louis is so mean 2 him
So anyway yeah idk man. I'm not thrilled with what the show is saying about teenagers and sexual assault so I definitely have some concerns about Armand. But I also feel like it would be such a cop out to age him up, because him being turned at 17 and looking like that is so important to his character. All of this stuff is important to his character. Like idk I don't want them to shy away from these topics but I just hope like, if there's meaningful feedback from Season 1 maybe they write it more sensitively and with more nuance going forward.
I hate to say it but we can only hope that the show continues on its path of making it the fuck up and maybe none of this will make it to the screen anyway. hopes & prayers. please leave my son out of this adshjgkadg
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+ talk about ren.
"That fuckin' idiot. You know what happens when I say maybe it's not the right idea to plop is'ass in a chair with a dragon jaw poised overhead like a can-opener? Know what he says to that? 'Overreacting, Biv, AS USUAL'. And the lot of'em who would've said he's the fuckin' 'wizard' that's always fuckin' up and keepin' us late, and pissin' off folks with spell splatter...but they decided they gots a bone to pick with me for bein' right. For bein' cautious! That's not their brother, so how fuckin' dare they get on MY case? For FAMILY business? Fer a bit of HESITATION? S'it really worth it to sit there and pat your own ass over the fact you took up fer somebody's ~FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION~ ooooh (gag me alfuckin'ready) when in the next breath that independence you so wanted to see cuz you're so fucked up in need of it yr'self is layin' DEAD at your feet? For a lil ass pat from somebody what's whole world is just a rendition of words in books from a slew of unreliable narrators?
Well fuck me then. Fuck me 'cause they think so poorly of me for darin' to get the least bit outraged over it. My job was hard enough as it was...and now he's even weaker and twice as stubborn. I can't-...I can't protect'im. No matter how hard I fucken' try. Not when he doesn't want it no more, not when even if I tries he's too frail, not when everybody round us decided he's the fuckin' one what needs the most encouragement to venture out with reckless abandon despite what all's 'appened. I hate watchin'-...knowin' what's gonna befall him and with nothin' to do bout it. Cept get a good shove or a rockin' of knuckles when I done nothin' but live fer'im this whole time. When he runs off to be with some coward what's only solution to deal with conflict is to run off and hide in the shadows, what then? He doesn't understand... and I don't think he ever will. And where does that leave me?
The whole fuckin' world is turned right side up-down and I have no clue what's goin' on even though I'm 'posed to all the time-...if he'd just listen to me. Just ... not even in the do what all I say way, just hear me out on the real fuckin' concerns I gots and just consider it instead ah blowin' me off aways. Now my cheek's hurtin' on account of him gettin' fussy and bashin' out at me, and of course he landed his hit too. Sometimes...I just wish there were evenin's with his stories and nobody 'tween us causin' a fuss like what it used to be. We was close once, y'know. Alls each other had. Then somethin' changed. And I'm still not sure if it was him or me."
#//ok durge esque monologue-#//nah let him cook he's had a few bottles of wine thanks to kim#ehrendiil#//here i talked non stop for 3 paras of dialogue is that enough lmao he's got a spot to pick tonight
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