#also i have a terrible contrarian streak
Note
im so curious of ur attack of titan presentation. 👁️
In reference to this post
Omg Yuki—the way I genuinely considered sitting down and making a PowerPoint presentation 😂
I won’t. I could—but I won’t.
There’s a ton of cute presentations on this website about “why you should watch this show uwu it’s so good and the characters are adorable and it’s got a great message you’re gonna love it!” and, well…that’s not Attack on Titan for me.
Aot is…a curiosity to me. I do really like a lot of the characters, the animation and music are gorgeous, and the story is sufficiently intriguing. And yes, ultimately, it does have a message I can get behind (War Is Bad. Stick to the classics.) but it wasn’t a show that grabbed me instantly. I had to simmer in it for a while—and I do mean a while.
I suppose mostly what I want to talk about is the Disk Horse, which I kind of hate to do because tumblr is allergic to nuance—but. I also like to talk. So here I go.
(This is going under a cut because I CANNOT shut up. Also, I’m going to get into some dumb fandom drama nonsense and I would like to hide that in order to maintain my dignity.)
I actually first became aware of aot BECAUSE of the discourse. I had more posts on my dash claiming that it was a Bad Show and Don’t Watch It than posts that…actually told me anything about it.
Eventually as I started easing into exploring anime, I decided to check it out. Out of morbid curiosity, mostly. I wanted to know what was so bad about it.
For the first three seasons, I was a little clueless. An annoying protagonist with questionable morals? Main characters attached to some sort of military organization? The protagonist being the Exceptional One, the savior because of his unique abilities? …guys, these are all standard shonen tropes, and I’d only watched like…five animes at that point (I’ve now watched, like, ten. My immersion rate is s l o w.)
Then I reached the end of season 3, and I wen “ohhh.” Not because everyone who’d been insisting it was Bad were right, but because I could actually, finally see what they were talking about.
I hear the word “allegory” get thrown around a lot when it comes to aot, and…honestly, I don’t think that’s the right word. An allegory is a direct, deliberate parallel with either a real life event, or another story. Aot is not an allegory of anything. Now, does it use some real life elements as worldbuilding and narrative devices in its own story? Yes, and sometimes to a “yikes” effect.
But this is a fantasy story that takes place in a fantasy world about races of people that don’t exist. The parallels can be drawn, but it’s not an intentional allegory.
Think of the difference between Lord of the Rings and the Chronicles of Narnia. C.S. Lewis was very clear both in his writing and when talking about his work that it was a Christianity allegory. Aslan represents Jesus—created the world, died for its sins, all knowing, all powerful, does not always intervene, eventually edged out by a false god at the end of the world, etc. etc.
Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings took a lot of inspiration from his experiences in World War I. Read anything about LOTR, or watch any of the movies’ supplemental material, and that’s one of the first things you’ll hear. BUT—did old John Roald Roald intend it to be a one-to-one allegory? No.
The orcs are not the Germans. Humans and elves aren’t the English and French. This is not a fantasy retelling of real-world events—it uses elements of real-world warfare to enhance its own narrative. The faces in the Dead Marshes. Frodo’s life-altering trauma. The hobbits’ return to an unchanged safe haven, only to find they have changed irrevocably. Sam’s/Faramir’s introspection on the “evil” of the men they fight.
Aot does the latter, not the former. And while using imagery we associate with Jewish persecution and the holocaust…isn’t a choice I would have made when writing a story, it wasn’t a deliberately anti-Semitic choice.
We can talk all day long about how it’s not a wise choice, and how the implications can have ramifications—but this wasn’t something the mangaka did out of long-held prejudice, whether conscious or unconscious. I mean, do you really walk away thinking we’re supposed to HATE the Eldians? (If so, get better reading comprehension.)
I guess that’s what my Attack on Titan presentation should really be—teaching people how to read and therefore understand the themes and story correctly. Either that, or I could just make a ship chart and explain why Armin deserves to bang every single character, and in what order he should do so.
#asks#beloved yuki#there! now i don’t have to worry about your url changing lol#<3#like. listen.#i’m not saying there’s no problems with the narrative#I’m not saying there are some things that make me go *teeth emoji*#but does that make the story evil? worthless?#no that’s reductive#attack on titan#also i have a terrible contrarian streak#if someone tells me not to watch something or that it’s bad? i’m gonna watch it and find SOMETHING good about it#and if the best part is the silly ships and aus that i create with my friends? so be it
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Karkat’s New Life
Commission of an AU where Terezi is the heiress and gobbles up the wicked, and is romance-y with Karkat!
-----
The tale of the epic romance of the second coming of the Sufferer and the empress to overthrow the draconic tyrant who had doomed Alternia, was embellished in the tales.
Great loves, and stern rulership, began like this: ‘oh hey, something shiny!’
And so it began.
----
Karkat Vantas had been stoically quiet and doing his best not to panic throughout the entire trip from his hive, and internally he was freaking out.
Years, he had been waiting for this. Grimly expecting that sooner or later, the hemospectrum would come down on him, and that would be that. Even the whole time he had been on a wagon and then the submarine taking him to the bottom of the sea, he had bundled himself up in his sweater, daring the two guards to say something, or taunt him.
Let him show a bit of pre-culling spite; let him die with that, at least.
But they hadn’t said a word to him; not the huge and burly blueblood with a broken horn, not the absolutely massive and curvy purpleblood with horns like wavy step ladders. They didn’t seem particularly threatening. No taunts, no vicious little cuts where it wouldn’t show, just politely escorted him into a massive undersea palace that had apparently been built into the biggest dragon skull he’d ever seen.
‘Would you please come with us?’ they had been so polite when they had come to his door. That was not how a culling went; no drones, no mayhem, just a very polite, if quiet trip.
Karkat looked around, trying not to annoy the two giant guards beside him. He fidgeted and restained the urge to flee, fearing that this would mean instant death. He glanced aside at his lusus, and saw him still lounging in the submarine, clicking contentedly.
“Useless little grump flick,” Karkat grumbled.
“Keep goin’, little one,” the purpleblood rumbled, with just a hint of chucklevoodoos there. It was difficult to see her face past those humongous rumblespheres, but she wasn’t painted like a mirthful cultist; she wore red paint, emphasizing her eyes so that she looked a bit like a dragon.
Red, Karkat noticed, was something of a theme in this palace. It sprang up in unexpected color palettes, typically around whorls carved into bony pillars that…
That…
Looked just like his own sign. He paled. Where they going to kill him and use his blood to paint up the place?
Come to think of it. Deep beneath the sea? A dragon’s skull? And that symbol, that many whispered the mad heiress was so enamored of?
Oh no. He was in the lair of the Heretic Heiress.
They brought him into a huge, resplendent chamber that was mostly filled with random beds, small piles of what looked like obscure tabletop RPG handbooks to him, mountains of dice, and a beanbag chair. Sitting upon it was a sea dweller, and recognizing her, Karkat’s stomach did a funny twist. “Your Draconic Benevolence,” said the blueblood gravely. “Your guest is here.”
The beanbag turned around with some effort. Facing them now was a startlingly short troll girl, perhaps half a sweep older than Karkat but not much more. Her angled horns were the longest he’d ever seen, the facial fins of her caste sticking out like quills, and her wide mouth was a massive of grotesque fangs. Short as she was, though, she was thick; a sports bra in royal colors stood out against rumblespheres bigger than Karkat’s head, her waist was broad and her plump belly ripened by many rich meals, and from the sheer wideness of her hips, her backside was clearly massive. That all she wore was a sports bra, a swimsuit bottom and a skirt tied over her wide hips was a royal affectation.
Terezi Peixes. The heretic heiress conquering Alternia, and presumptive conqueror of the empire if she lived long enough. The most terrifying troll in existence.
She stood up and moved over to him, not so much walking as using a mobile swagger. “Maenad, Zahhak! You can go. I think we’ll do fine.” She grinned widely, putting a webbed hand on his shoulder and playfully pushing him into the bean bag. The guards left, to do guard-y things.
She sat down next to him, inexplicably smug. Her hip brushed against his body and he instinctively blushed.
She turned, facing him, and her claws patted his arm in a friendly way. He looked into her eyes, and realized two things. She couldn’t have been an inch taller than him, and he was short; fuchsia girls took a long time to hit the leviathan size of the empress, it seemed. And two, her eyes with red. The membrane that should have protected her eyes had sealed over them, clouded by some terrible injury. She was blind.
“Name’s Terezi,” she said nonchalantly. “And you, my loyal subject-” she chuckled. “Smell cute.”
He gaped.
“Also, you are Karkat Vantas.”
He wouldn’t be him without a contrarian impulse. “You can’t prove that!”
She tugged at a tag in his sweater. “It’s got Karkat on this tag here.”
“Lies and vaudeville! It’s a gremlin, hiding false names on innocent clothing to lure me to a culling.”
The Heiress laughed at that. “A culling!? You think this is a culling? Oh man, what did those meatheads tell you this was ,huh?”
“They… didn’t say much?”
“Guppy, I outlawed culling when I took over!”
“...Huh?”
She grinned and patted her belly mysteriously. “Anyone who tried to keep up those bad old ways, uh, got what was coming to ‘em.” She leaned in. “I just wanna talk.”
She reached into her very ample cleavage and pulled out a little pendant, and she showed it to him. Dangling from it, carved of fine coral, was the sign of the Shackles. His own sign, a perfect mirror to the one on his shirt.
Her claws touched hiss shirt, his chest. She was so cold, that it was electrifying, and she was so close to him…
She pulled back, and smelled embarrassed. “Your blood is something of an interest of mine.” She grinned. “Wanted to have a chat with someone who knew how bad things can really get up there. An expert opinion.”
Karkat glanced again at her pendant. Don’t stare at her cleavage, DON’T. “That’s all?”
“Yeah. But maybe, you know. If you wanted to know about what that blood means…?” she left the unspoken invitation dangle. “And I’ll keep you hidden from the empress’ goons. The ones still loyal.” She held a hand out. “I swear.”
Uncertainly, wondering why she bothered asking, he shook her hand. “Okay.”
She sniffed him. “Been a long time,” she said carefully. “Since I had anyone in here full time except me.” Her hand lingered on him, not quite squeezing, but close…
A voice coughed. Both of them jumped.
Standing in the back was a… a… Karkat didn’t know what it was. An alien? Smaller than a troll, dark skinned but just as curvy, with features like a woofbeast that felt oddly out of place on the hominid frame. She bowed, her body crackled with green flame and cybernetic implants. A similar alien, much smaller and with odd avian traits, waved mildly. “Sup, ya empress. Me and Jade rounded up that guy who was trying to sell out your guest here to the loyalists.”
“Thanks, Dave, Jade,” the Heiress said. She aimed her face with odd intensity at the chained troll between them; a massive purpleblood, his face streaked in paint. How had two aliens managed to contain THAT?
The two aliens left. Karkat cleared his throat, and the Heiress interrupted. “Couple of friends I met when I was doing some space travels a while back. Nice planet. Conquered by the empress and those guys got experimented on; hoping to free their planet once I get my war on.” She smirked. “Would just love for you to see there. It has a pleasing symmetry.”
Karkat frowned as she stood up, wondering what that meant.
Slowly the Heiress approached the prisoner, and he began to wail. “No, no no, get away from me, get away you freak!”
She tugged on his chains, forcing him head to his knees, head down so that his eyes were level with hers. “You serve a corrupt authority, and your sentence is execution. How shall you plead?”
“I am a loyal servant, you sick traitor!” he snarled. “I’ll not allow any of the Sufferer’s blood to burn the empire-”
She put a finger to his mouth. The touch was soft, but he flinched in sudden, overwhelming terror. “It deserves to burn,” the Heiress said evenly. “Understand that you will make me stronger, and with your aid, I will fix this empire, and save everyone. You will, in some way, redeem our blood.”
“No, no no!” He strained against his, roaring and trying to bust his way free as she leaned forward, her mouth wide, wider than trollishly possible-
What happened next, as she swallowed him whole in a single gulp, was too quick to accurately parse, and Karkat needed a long time to let it register. But this was the technical process.
The Heiress’ mouth opened wide, wider, impossibly wide, seemingly bigger than she was, and a massive tongue curled around the prisoner. With impossible strength that could break a ship in half with one finger, she grabbed his face and pushed his head into her mouth. Incredibly flexible and strong throat muscles gripped on him, and she swallowed.
His horns, big as they were, slipped down without a problem. His head, bigger than her torso, descended as smoothly as a marble down a cliffside, briefly visible through her skin. She slurped up his hair like noodles, tilted his head up as her gulp took in his massive shoulders, those body-breaking biceps.
Down her throat it all went, and into her belly.
His muscular torso, his strong-fat gut, his huge hips. She could have sat in his lap, he was that much bigger than her.
Her belly ballooned as she swallowed him down, several tons and nearly eighteen feet of subjugglator beef slipping down into her digestion sac. She rose up on it as his legs and feet vanished into her body, and it became clear why her belly was exposed; easy access as she flopped onto it, rising upwards and jiggling faintly.
But, to Karkat, it looked like one moment he was there; the next, the Heiress rested on a water matter of a gut, a masculine body still faintly visible in her belly.
She made a small burp. “Whoof. Hope the chucklevoodoo boost doesn’t screw with my psionics any,” she muttered to herself. There was a small noise as Karkat stood up, more baffled than afraid, and she turned to stare at his direction. “Oh. Oh shit, you weren’t supposed to see that yet! I mean…”
Karkat thought to run… and stopped.
He gulped. “Is that… painful? You need help?”
She froze up… and smiled. “Little company would be nice. I’m gonna eat the entire empire if that’s what it takes to stop it. But a little company is nice.”
He walked up and sat beside her. Her mammoth belly felt as big as a room from his old hive, and he cautiously touched it. She giggled and her belly sloshed. “Hee. Tickles.”
“Yeah. I can do that.”
She smirked at him, with a hint of something genuine and lonely there. “Call me Terezi, Mr Vantas.”
“...Hey, if there’s no formality here, call me Karkat?”
“...Nah. I’mma call you something stupid instead.”
“PLEASE DON’T.”
She stuck her tongue out.
And that, as they say, is the beginning of a beautiful romance.
They stuck more fancy sweet stuff in the epic poems, though.
#queued#/#//#///#////#/////#twitchy!terezi#crossthicc!karkat#not actually crossthicc#crossthicc!homestuck#commissions#my writing
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Q & A with Owlet re: The Infinite Coffee & Protection Detail series
Along with many other people, one of my favourite Bucky Barnes fic series is The Infinite Coffee & Protection Detail. I was very happy when its author, Owlet @vmohlere kindly agreed to do the below Q&A with me about it, which is under a cut for length.
Q. How did This, You Protect come about?
1. After my third time seeing the movie [Captain America: The Winter Soldier], I thought it would be fun to write a one-shot about how obnoxious it would be to only partially remember and have to look after Steve.
2. "Oh great," says I, "I can practice writing humor."
3. Hundreds of thousands of words later: what even is my life.
Q. From your comments as you were writing This, You Protect, you did not set out to write such a long fic or a series, but you kept having more ideas and tangents and loved writing Grumpy Bucky?
Accurate! It really did just take over my brain.
Q. Now that the main stories in the series are done, after you have a well-earned rest and work on your other writing and poems, are any one shots likely in due course for the IC&PD?
Mmmmmmaaaaaaaybe. I have notes for a few, that take Steve & Barnes out to the end of their lives, but I hesitate to commit, because I need to focus on my original stuff for now.
BUCKY BARNES:
Q. Coffee addict (did he like it in his old life?) and quick to get back to personal grooming (he was a metrosexual before it was popular).
In my mind, coffee: no – the Bucky-Person drank coffee for warmth & caffeine, but I do picture him as pretty dang vain, until his time under Zola’s “tender care” broke him.
Q. What appealed to you about Bucky? What did you learn about him when writing this?
Initially, in Winter Soldier, I immediately latched onto this character who was set up to be remorseless & relentless, but who was confused in a way he didn’t understand by that *face*. In the fight on the helicarrier, you know his handlers would’ve been incensed by his hesitation, when he was obviously standing there thinking, “Okay, asshole: input me some data so I can determine just what kind of irritant you are.”
Q. Where did you get the idea for the Mission and the Briefing?
You see the Briefing in Winter Soldier, in the memory flashes during the bank vault scene. Mission just erupted into my head out of this sense that there are parts of him HYDRA never tore down.
Q. The climax of This, You Protect – when did you decide that sheep pants would help save the day?
It was one of those beautiful surprises that happen when you make stuff, and I cried all over my notebook.
Q. Bucky’s recovery – a slow, realistic process with some setbacks, pain and humor: learning how to open up to others, to get used to physical contact again eventually, how he helps himself and lets others in, safe spots, good things list, reading, long baths, personal care, baking, sheep pants, coffee, helping others and much more.
There have been a couple of times when a really small thing has saved my life. Everyone’s small lifesaving thing is different. Barnes’s are PJs, baking, and concrete assistive actions.
Q. What I love particularly about this Bucky is how others are drawn to him like Steve was as his true, kind self is able to start emerging again, and how his involvement with those people affects them in turn, like the Avengers interacting with each other in new ways (e.g. the ice cream tasting) and them getting to meet the Olds, which is beneficial all around.
People who don’t recognize how valued they are is a trope I never, ever, ever get tired of. We’re all stuck in our meat bodies, and we see all the messy bits in the inside (my best friend says, “Oh Virginia, you will never irritate anyone as much as you irritate yourself”), and we forget that there exist people who just LIKE us, and that that’s enough. I’ll be writing about that my whole life.
STEVE:
Q. The readers find out in this series that Steve tends to cheat at card games and has been doing so for a long time. Is that because it was the only edge he had when he was sick and frail and tired of being underestimated & he can’t or doesn’t want to break the habit now?
Steve’s a snotball and a contrarian. In my head, he learned to cheat from the women in the Star-Spangled Man show, because they liked to fleece guys who were looking to get the women drunk & take advantage of them. So to him, it’s both a habit and a tool to annoy jerks. Also, he thinks it’s funny to be Captain America, Cheater At Cards. Because the one thing other than Bucky that has always been a constant in his life is people underestimating him/trying to define him by one thing (illness/size vs the costume & shield).
Q. And why does he cheat against LYDIA (which is asking her to serve his ass to him on a platter!)? Does he have a death wish?
He recognizes a similar level of sarcasm in her and thinks it’s hilarious to try to fool her and then get walloped by her.
Q. What things did you discover about Steve along the way?
The cheating at cards thing, which was a throwaway line in the first chapter where I referenced it and then grew in the back corner of my mind like a “volunteer tomato” in a compost heap until it became A Thing. Writing “Truth, Justice, and the Cheating Cheater Way” was SO fun.
It was important to me to give Steve a temper and a wide impetuous streak, which I felt both Avengers and Age of Ultron TOTALLY got wrong about him. Except that we pretend Age of Ultron doesn’t exist.
Q. In A Chance to Try Bravery, we get to see Bucky and his behavior from Steve’s perspective, including that Bucky talks out loud to himself, seemingly without realizing he’s doing so. How often does Bucky do that, or does it vary/lessen as time goes on? And what things does Bucky ramble to Steve and others about when high on medication after the robot fight?
At the beginning, he talks to himself out loud a LOT. There are some hints about that in the text. Over time, that does lessen, except when he’s stressed, which makes him mutter pretty constantly.
Doped-up Barnes is verbally affectionate and has a little bit of the Bucky-person’s Brooklyn twang.
TONY:
Look, I HATE what Civil War did to Tony. There is too much in Barnes’s history for Tony to IDENTIFY with. Tony's arc in Iron Man - capture, body modification, his tech being stolen for nefarious use - has similar touch points to Barnes's story.
Also, for pity’s sake, do we believe for one second that Pepper didn’t make him go to therapy? We do not.
PEPPER:
I am not a Gwyneth Paltrow fan, so it surprised the hell out of me how much affection I developed for Pepper approximately 5 words after she popped up in This, You Protect. I just loved writing her, because she’s so dang together and sensible.
MARIA:
It just made me cackle to set her up as the Alpha Badass. I love her.
SAM:
I’m not going to go back and rewrite, but if I did, I would put in more Sam. Sam’s IMPORTANT. He’s the voice of Real People who go through similar crap to Steve & Barnes and have to deal with it all using Real People methods. He’s what it looks like when you make it to the other side of the wringer – his compassion is deep and wide, but he’s not a martyr and his energy isn’t endless.
NATASHA:
I feel like there’s a heft to Natasha that I don’t even know about in my own fictional universe. She’s like Sam – a picture of what it looks like to Survive Some Shit, with more broken-off edges than Sam has. She carries a lot of burdens that she’ll never tell anyone about.
CLINT:
Truly a poetry nerd.
JARVIS:
The helpful busybody (from better surveillance equipment, to books and lubricants!)
I really enjoyed writing JARVIS, because it was cool to think about a being that was omnipresent and largely non-judgmental. I felt like I had to be careful not to use JARVIS too much or it’d turn out to be a deus ex machina.
CAT ELEANOR:
My own personal Cat Eleanor, who was similarly judgy and protective, was a grey tabby named Boadicea (Boadie) whom I collected as a very ill stray kitten and who lived with me for 13 years. She liked to eat her dinner from a plate on the table and was a terrible stealer of French fries.
Sidebar: I still have her ashes in a bag in my sock drawer, because what the heck am I supposed to do with them?
THOR:
Thor’s compassion & wisdom caught me off guard every time he showed up, even though I was *trying* to remember that he’s powerful and practically immortal. But he outdid my ideas for him.
THE OLDS:
I guess in some parallel universe that I’m channeling, they must be real people, because they popped fully formed into my head like a trio of hilarious Athenas. Esther has a couple of great-nieces on the West Coast, and Ollie has a few distant step-ish younger relatives from his de facto late husband’s side of the family. Functionally, they are each other’s family.
THE CARP, TOSHIRO HAYASHI AND KAZUE:
Based in part on Sushi Gin in Lawrence, Kansas, where I once had a delicious and fun solo meal at the sushi bar, and Masa’s Sushi and Robata Bar in Spring, Texas, whose nabeyaki udon I’m crazy for.
THE COFFEE BAR AND KATIE:
I mentioned her briefly in Team-Building Exercises as if she were important, so then I had to create her for The Long Road Begins at Home. She was a bit of a conundrum until I thought of making her one of the victims of the Chitauri attack.
THE ANTI-VALENTINE’S NO TOUCH CLUB
Q. What were its origins?
Honestly I just wanted to write more Hill, because I surprised myself with how much I liked writing her, and I knew she’d hate Valentine’s Day as much as Barnes. From there, it was a matter of thinking who else would hate it and then add Steve, because of all his “whither thou goest” vibe.
Q. How do you picture the next Valentine’s Day meeting of that club, since two of the members are now bonking each other every chance they get?
That’s not until the NEXT year. And they spend the whole time very purposely not touching one another until they’re cross-eyed and jump each other in the elevator. Hill grumps at them a lot.
THE HAIR CLUB:
It was important to me that the women of the Tower be one another’s support group in the midst of all that testosterone. One of the things that I enjoyed about writing Team-Building Exercises was that it was vignettes that appeared out of thin air without any explanation.
… That being said, it made sense to me that the women’s sense of ease with one another would draw Barnes in just like Esther did. He has no idea how much he lurked and stared at them before they invited him over. Once she Got It, Pepper’s natural caretaker tendencies kicked in, and Barnes was in. Pepper is a Fixer.
Q. Present tense isn’t often used all the way through a long fic. I think the only time I’ve used it in a fic was when I gave the POV character amnesia, and present tense felt right, as he was in the current moment and it was all he had, with no memories to fall back on. But you used it so well that it suits and isn’t jarring. What led you to decide on present tense?
There’s no other option for that character, in my mind. Barnes experiences everything with almost complete immediacy, and present tense was the only way to convey that.
Q. Are Bucky and Steve likely to get their own cat at some stage?
Yes.
Q. YES!!!! Do you have a name in mind for it? And does it love Bucky more than it loves Steve?
I don't want to say anything more about their cat, in case I write that part!
Q. When will the public find out about Bucky being alive, and when will they find out about Bucky and Steve being together?
I have no head canons for these questions. Miracle on Park Avenue is not part of Infinite Coffee, though.
Q. It was interesting that you released Steve and Bucky getting together in Advanced Happiness Skills before you did The Long Road Begins at Home fic. Did the muse direct you to write and release it early?
I tried really hard not to write Long Road – I knew it would eat up acres of time, and I wanted to be done after Advanced Happiness. But it got to the point that I had to write notes or have my head explode, and eventually I had so many dang notes that I figured I’d better type the damn things up.
Q. So, you actually started writing Team-Building Exercises as a standalone instead of as a teaser for The Long Road Begins at Home?
Yes, I really didn't intend to go any farther than that.
Q. And at what point in the series did you realize that it would become Stucky?
Oh gosh, I guess it was always in the background, from the early chapters of This, You Protect. But it was a long time before I thought I’d actually write that part.
Q. Did anything change due to fan comments? What went off in directions that you hadn’t planned on in the plotting stage? What things got left out?
There’s a funny bit about Barnes freaking that Steve will drown in the reflecting pool in the National Mall, until he discovers that it’s only about 18 inches deep.
There was one small detail that I put in because of a fan comment, but I’m sorry to say that I can’t remember what it was.
“Planned on in the plotting stage” … uh.
Um.
Er.
I wrote this whole thing by the seat of my pants.
Q. It can be fun and fraught to do a series, as there is a lot to juggle and things to seed in to set up plots and developments for further down the track. How did you keep tabs on what needed to happen when?
Gotta be magic. I mean, I held the whole thing in my head for years and could see it as clear as day. It crowded out many other things.
Q. What is your writing process like, or was it different for this series?
I write and tinker almost daily, but I’ve found that my best pieces tend to be the ones that build up like pressure in my head and fall out all at once. My Star Wars fic, Generational Mistakes, is over 17,000 words that literally came out all at one time, starting around 1:00 am, when it woke me up. I had to take the day off work, and by the time I had the whole draft out on paper (hand written!), I was literally crying from the pain in my hand.
That’s an extreme example, of course, usually it’s more like the beginning of a thing blooms, and sections build up until they attain enough gravity to ooze out in blobs. I generally have to start out writing by hand until I pick up some inertia and can switch to typing, though I also do a lot of editing in the first typing pass if a whole piece is hand-written.
I write very badly to self-imposed deadlines and very well to feeling like I Owe Someone, so the reader comments really propelled me along throughout the whole series.
Q. The fics have really shown the therapeutic power of cooking, as well as different recipes, especially in the comments section.
There is not enough I can say about the comments section. It took on a life of its own in a way that I would not even have imagined – not just the screaming and the recipes, which were great, but the way people jumped in to comfort and support one another. It is really beautiful, and I’m beyond grateful, and so proud of all of them and to be a part of them.
I’m sincerely humbled by and thankful to all the comments, but especially those from people who found comforting or useful bits in Barnes’s recovery. Even if this one life isn’t the only one we get, it’s the only one we *remember*, and damaging shit is a pure fact of existence. To have provided material help to even one suffering person (much less the dozens of who’ve reached out) makes a strong place in my own heart. I have a concrete thing that I can look at with my own eyeballs and say for real and for sure that I Did Well and I Helped. That gives a human life ballast. It’s an honor.
I started Long Road at a time when I was feeling super demoralized about my original works, and the life it made for itself in fandom still just knocks me over. If y’all were going to have that much faith in me, I figure I’d better lift up my head and have faith in myself. Thank you for that.
xXx
Thank you very much to Owlet for putting up with all of my questions, and if at some stage down the road she is willing to do another one, I already have some questions written down for it!
This Q&A will also be available on Owlet’s AO3 page.
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first off i just wanna say i love lucky child, it's definitely one of my favorite yyh fics of all time! i'm just wondering how you got the confidence to write something like this? i mean, i've had a Kuwabara x oc fic in my head since 2008 and though i'm obv better at writing i'm still nervous about putting myself out there. even with lucky child to inspire me
(*I apologize for taking your Ask WAY OUT OF PROPORTION andturning it into an extended metaphor about buckets and stage fright, but I amNOT a confident person and this is the only thing I could think of that wouldaddress my feelings about confidence, nerves, and just digging deep and gettingyour work out there. Sorry again! It’s long, and I hope it’s not terrible,haha.*)
Confidence is a tricky thing. And the secret is that no oneis as confident as you think they are.
In high school I performed in musicals and plays (h*ckinyes, theater kids). In my very first musical, I idolized one of the older performers.Her name was Chelsea, she was a senior in high school, and one day backstageduring a dress rehearsal I asked her how she combatted stage fright. I hadterrible stage fright. Where did she get her confidence?
She looked at me a minute. Then she nodded at the stagemanager.
“See that bucket?” she said.
A red bucket sat by the wall, at his feet. When the stagemanager saw Chelsea looking, he pointed at the bucket and raised a brow. Sheshook her head. He turned away.
“That’s my bucket,”Chelsea told me. “I throw up every night before a performance, because I get sonervous. But I love theater. I have to push through if I want to do what I love. So every night I just throwit all up and get out there, because Ihave to.”
Then her cue came and she waltzed onstage to play the batty,brazen, beautiful Lina Lamont in Singin’In the Rain. She stole the show. And every night before curtain, she barfedinto that red bucket. The audience was none the wiser.
I’ve carried Chelsea’s red bucket in my head for years. LikeI said: I have terrible, terrible stage fright, and my anxiety is the stuff oflegend. When fright and fear threaten to choke me, I think of Chelsea. She madeit look easy, but inside, she was as anxious as I was.
Chelsea and her red bucket made me realize even the mostconfident-seeming people have their insecurities, and that sometimes, you justneed to get out there, because you haveto.
Every time I post a LuckyChild chapter, I have to do a breathing exercise. I get incredibly nervousto post—doesn’t matter how many people review, or how many people follow thestory. I will always get a pit in mystomach when I see a review alert, or when I have to unveil a new chapter. Rejectiondoesn’t feel good, and I admit I have a deep-seated fear of it.
But…I have the red bucket in my head. And like Chelsea said,I get out there, because I have to.
Lucky Child cameto me in a weird moment, at a weird time. I started writing it shortly after mygrandmother’s cancer diagnosis. I fell into the story as a distraction, and asa means of working through loss, anger, sadness, fear, you name it. It becamethis deeply personal thing, and I have to tell you…I was afraid to post it at first. I was afraid people would take thisstory of mine, in which I shared vulnerabilities and pain, and reject me. Makefun of me. Say the idea was bad and I should feel badly for writing it.
But there I was. Writing it anyway despite the fear—because therewas a story in me I just had to get out. It was a story that could help me, anda story I felt I just needed towrite. And I found I was loving writing every last word of it.
I posted it after giving myself an enormous pep-talk, inwhich I vowed to flip the naysayers the bird and give a big “fuck you” toanyone who came at me.
It wasn’t confidence that let me post LC. Rather, it was pigheaded gall and a contrarian streak a milewide that let me post LC…not tomention the memory of a red bucket I dumped all my worries into.
I knew that if I didn’t just throw the worries aside, justhaul off and write, that I’d neverget to write this thing I was starting to love.
Looking back, it seems silly to fear rejection the way I did(and silly to fear that to this day, which I do). People have accepted thestory with such kindness. I know now I had little reason to be afraid, but atthe time, the fear was overwhelming. Now I’m infinitely glad I didn’t listen tothat fear. I’m infinitely glad Chelsea let me borrow her bucket, in a way, so Icould chuck my worries into it and just getout there, because I have to.
You’ve got a story in you. You’ve had that story in yousince 2008. It’s begging to be written—and I absolutely promise you that theanticipation is one hundred times worse than actually going through with it.And I also promise that every author on the goshdarn internet is just asnervous to post their work as you. They’re just all actresses like Chelsea,barfing into buckets backstage—and their audience is none the wiser.
Basically what I’m saying is, you’re not alone in feelingless than confident. I’m with you. Writing is hard. Sharing that writing is harder. But if you want to do what you love, you’ve just gotta get out there and do it, confidence be damned.
I know you can do it, andyou can borrow my big red bucket any time you like.
Now get out there, because you have to. :)
(Also I’d read the shit out of a KuwaxOC fic, btw, so WRITETHAT FIC, WRITE THAT FIC, WRITE THAT FIC—I’m serious, we NEED more stories likethat and I am behind you 100% of the way.)
#bad advice#writing advice#weird extended metaphors#lucky child#yu yu hakusho#yu yu hakusho fanfiction#i will never stop writing#writing about writing#confidence#anxiety#nerves
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David Smith: It’s Better to Buy Gold & Silver When It DOESN’T Feel Good
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Mike Gleason: It is my privilege now to welcome back David Smith, Senior Analyst at The Morgan Report and regular contributor to MoneyMetals.com. David, thanks for joining us again. How’ve you been sir?
David Smith: Very good Mike, it’s great to be back.
Mike Gleason: Well, before we get into other topics such as the Silver Institute’s latest report on the silver market and also the article you wrote for us recently on digital currencies, crypto-currencies, and so forth, I first want to have you set the stage here on where we are and where we’ve been in the metals markets. The year got off to a good start in gold and silver and then in April, we saw the typical smack down on the futures markets. Silver, for instance, gave back nearly all of its gains during an unprecedented 16-day losing streak and fell about 12% over that period.
Now here we are talking on Wednesday afternoon. We’ve seen the metals bounce back off their deeply oversold levels. All of this back and forth is obviously very frustrating for metals investors, David, and it’s getting quite tiresome to see these bullion banks constantly pushing around the price and ultimately capping it on the upside. So, is there any end in sight here, and how effective will these manipulation schemes continue to be because you’ve got to think that they will come to an end here at some point, right?
David Smith: Well, yeah, and I share the view of people who are pretty worn out by this. Like David Morgan likes to say, the declines will either wear you out or scare you out. So, it’s understandable because people think it’s just going to be more of the same as far as the eye can see. But I do believe that there are a couple of very important factors that are starting to make their presence felt in the market, or will be in the very near future, which are going to start really eroding – and fairly significantly – the ability of the banks and the central governments and the Federal Reserve and the leasing programs and all this to cap the price on the metals way below where they should be if we truly had a system where price discovery operated as it’s supposed to and the price of the metals will be much higher.
I think as we see this falling away, this ability to manage things so to speak, we’re going to see stronger and more sustained upward pricing on the metals. Not so much the big up and down valleys and peaks that we’ve seen but more of a fairly substantial uptrend where the corrections are relatively minor and shorter-lived and the move to the upside is more enduring and more powerful. That’s the promise that these changes hold out to our long-suffering investors and those people who either would like to add more physical metal or are simply asking themselves, “Should I get involved initially?”
Mike Gleason: It isn’t much fun being a bullion investor these days. We’ve seen significantly more clients selling metal in recent months than we did before. There are, of course, plenty of legitimate reasons for individuals to sell metal and raise cash. However, some are simply getting tired of getting punished for being right. They see the dollar as terribly flawed, and it is. They expect consequences for never-ending federal deficits and the explosion in debt. They see the financial system as a house of cards built by crooked bankers, but that house just keeps standing, and the market rigging continues as regulators turn a blind eye. The dollar seems to be holding its own despite the fact that the full faith and credit of the U.S. government isn’t what it once was.
It is a special kind of frustration to watch as the number of reasons to own bullion keep growing while none of these fundamentals seem to show up in the price. What would you say to the tired and frustrated metals investors?
David Smith: First of all, just within the last few days, the U.S. dollar has been making a very sharp drop. It’s down about 160 basis points, and it could be the bottom here for a while, but if it keeps on going, we could see much lower prices, which is traditionally very supportive of higher bullion prices. Also, gold and silver have been strong recently. The mining stocks have been really trashed for the last several months, but the point is, once the metal prices firm up and turn around and these things start receding in the rear-view mirror, the market being a looking-forward mechanism, will anticipate this before you or I or the average person on the street can put our finger on it and say, “Yeah, the trend has changed.”
What keeps me optimistic on this is first of all, there have never been more elements, which none of us can say, “Okay, this is going to cause that and when.” But there’s never been more elements which lend support to the idea of the wisdom of holding gold and silver physically as an insurance policy. It’s an asymmetric trade. In other words, a person doesn’t have to put half of their net worth into the metals. They can put in 5-10% or if they’re really bullish, 10 or 15 or 20%, but even a relatively small amount dollar-wise in your possession is what we call an asymmetric trade. In other words, if even part of what we think has the potential to happen and may happen in the near future takes place, you will have a return of several times what you put in. So, a fairly small commitment can give you a fairly substantial coverage to cover and protect a lot of your other asset classes.
I can’t think of any other asset class that you could say that about now. Certainly, not the stock market. Certainly, not real estate. Virtually all of these asset classes and then bonds, which have been in the 30-year bull market. These things don’t have anything like the upside potential for the relatively small amount of commitment that we see in the precious metals today.
Mike Gleason: Last week the Silver Institute released the World Silver Survey for 2017 and perhaps the most note-worth piece of information in there was that silver supply, for the first time in 14 years, actually declined year-over-year. It also marked the 4th year in a row where we’ve been in a deficit. Talk about some of this data and then also give us your thoughts on when we might finally see these bullish supply/demand fundamentals for silver finally show up in the price, David.
David Smith: That’s very interesting, that report that you referenced about silver supply. You know, Steve St. Angelo did a report fairly recently where he shows that – and I could be wrong on this — I think it was 1987 was the all-time high for silver projections worldwide, but as you said, this survey shows that it declined last year — it had been increasing for the first time in a number of years. Also, there have been some really sharp drop-offs even this year in Mexico and in Chile. We don’t know if those are one-off drops in silver production. It’s fairly substantial. Anywhere from 15 to 35% on a month-to-month basis, and whether that’s due to lower copper prices or other things, but I think really, it’s just getting more difficult, if you look at the global situation, to dig a lot of quality silver and gold out of the ground in ways that represent profit to the miners and that represent consistency and predictability for the supply chain.
I think more and more for all sorts of reasons, the supply of both of these metals are going to become more problematic. And if this survey last week holds up on silver, it wouldn’t surprise me to see the same thing next year with a bigger drop. I think the days of easy production of gold and silver and loading up the boat and being able to supply everybody, all comers, at a good price, I think that’s really starting to change. By the time the average person in the street figures that out and feels comfortable with it, prices are going to be a lot higher and supply is going to be more problematic.
I’d like to say one more thing on this, Mike. When it’s easy to do something in terms of an investment, it’s not always the best time to do it. In fact, it’s usually the worst time. If you’re having a hard time doing it now and you’ve looked through things, you agree with the issues but it’s still hard, it’s probably the right time to either start accumulating or add to it. Because if you wait until it feels good, the market will have discounted a lot of that, and you will pay much higher prices for what you do get, assuming that supply is even there in the quantities that you would like.
Mike Gleason: Well put. Certainly, the contrarian mindset often does win out when it comes to the world of investing. Now one more thing on that survey, I know solar continues to be a big source of silver demand. The report highlighted that. What are the prospects there, David, because the amount of silver being used in solar is really starting to move the needle, isn’t it?
David Smith: It is, and even though they’re getting the silver panels (to the point) where they use less silver than they needed to before, the number of panels being produced continues to grow, in some cases almost exponentially. They’re getting to the price point where just about everybody can afford silver panels. I think Tesla’s coming out with one now that looks like a regular terracotta roofing tile. So, they’re going to become a commodity, but those commodities are going to take a lot of silver in order to meet all those needs. That’s just one area where you have a lot of growth going on. We’ve seen a lot of growth in the use of gold, for example, in medical procedures to target cancer cells by delivering a drug right to, or the chemo in that case, right to where the cell is, kill it, but not the good cells. They’re using nanotechnology on this, so on an individual basis, it’s not a big deal, but when you start realizing that that could take a huge percentage of the cancer dealing industry over the next 5-10 years or so, suddenly it becomes a significant amount and is essentially a new use for gold, which had not been even on the charts before.
Mike Gleason: Obviously, there’s not a never-ending supply, as we’re coming to find out. So, it certainly could be very interesting if we get some sort of new application like that that’s going to take up a lot of demand. Now, you recently wrote an article for MoneyMetals.com about the blockchain and Bitcoin, and you highlighted how the ascent of these crypto-currencies — Bitcoin of course being the main one there — and how the rise in prominence is actually going to be a good thing for gold and silver. Give us your thoughts there, David.
David Smith: It has a real potential. Whenever people hear the blockchain, they think of blockchain hype and Bitcoin. In my article, I barely mention Bitcoin in passing. The reason for that is not because Bitcoin isn’t important in the cryptocurrency space – in fact over half of these digital currencies’ volume traded right now is Bitcoin even though there are several hundred other little currencies, most of which will probably disappear – but what intrigued me was that there are efforts made now, and the most interesting effort that I’ve seen so far is in India, where they are experimenting with the ability for people to buy metal online, digital gold now probably silver soon to follow, in the local currency. I think that’s where, if that works, that would be a breakout moment for people all over in different areas of the world because now a lot of the times that you buy something online in the cryptocurrency space, you have to take your dollars or your pesos or whatever and convert those into Bitcoin and then purchase the product.
But now they’re able to do this in India with the rupee. In addition, it’s the size of the purchase. You can buy as little as one rupee of gold, and there is 65 rupees to the dollar, so in other words, you could buy a 2-cent purchase of gold digitally with the promise that it would be stored in a Swiss warehouse where you could take delivery of it if you wanted, locally. You could store it there. You could buy it and sell it digitally. So, it’s the early days on this thing, but it bears watching, and I think it’s important for our readers to understand some of these experiments that are going on and understand that it will be quite a while before the need to buy physical metals as we’ve done in the past becomes obviated by digital metals.
Maybe that will never happen, but the point is still that it will introduce many new people to the market who probably never owned the metals before, never owned gold before, and it will also encourage those people who are holders – and we know that India and China and other countries in Asia historically have accumulated, and continue to do so, massive amounts of precious metals as a form of wealth and for jewelry and other things – they continue to add to their stash. So, it should increase the pool of buyers and the demand factor. That, at some point, is going to collide with the very thing that you brought up earlier, which is the questionable ability of the mining sector to continue supplying gold and silver in the quantities that they’ve been able to do in the past. That’s going to become more problematic for all sorts of reasons as the months and years go by, much more so.
Mike Gleason: Even though we’re talking about digital, I guess in some sense here, if we’re talking about an investment that is backed by the physical metal somewhere, obviously, there is the demand for that physical product, even if those citizens of India or wherever they are aren’t taking delivery of that gold initially. If the fund still owns the gold, they have to have it somewhere, so there is still that demand for the physical product, so it certainly can add to that.
David Smith: Exactly. The only difference is instead of going into a location and handing your money, your currency over and walking out with the gold in your pocket, they do it digitally, but the gold still exists. That’s still removed from the supply basis, and if it’s honorably kept, it’s a promise… and that’s what any kind of currency – which gold and silver are, they’re money – it’s based upon the promise that it’s there. If I buy it, that I can take a delivery on it whenever I want, and it will be the stated purity and the amount. And if that promise is honored, the more and more, people will come to be comfortable with the idea of buying metal, whether it’s digitally or in person, and there will be, in a way, almost kind of doubling back into the gold standard of 100 years ago, only doing it with an online component versus what we had before of the physical property where you had your currency, which is redeemable on demand. As you remember the Gold Certificates and the Silver Certificates where you could – there was a time, probably before many of us were born – but you could walk into an American bank and demand X amount of gold or X amount of silver for your paper currency. We can no longer do that.
Mike Gleason: Talk about the miners here for a minute, David, because you obviously follow the space very closely. Now, part of the recent selloff in the futures market was due in part to the GDXJ selling off some shares of some of the thinly-traded stocks the index owned, which hurt the sector as they liquidated shares of those companies. But what is the situation with the miners? Anything noteworthy there in terms of how the industry is doing after this continual two steps forward, two steps back price action that we keep getting in the futures markets?
David Smith: First of all, the better companies in the industry are cashed up well. They’ve lowered their debt. They’ve lowered their all-in sustainable cost that Chris Marchese talked about in The Morgan Report, which is kind of the gold standard so to speak, pun intended, for evaluating the mining company. What is the cost all-in to produce that ounce of gold and silver rather than some other metric or using two elements to define it? That gives you and me and investors a pretty clear idea of what it’s costing these companies, and as Adam Hamilton has pointed out, the primary gold producers today are making anywhere from $275 to $350 an ounce, beyond all-in sustainable costs. They’re making money, and the process is looking like they’re going to continue to be able to do that.
What you mentioned earlier about the GDXJ, those shares are being sold off because by law, the ETF cannot hold more than, I think, 19.9%. It has to be a little under 20% of the share float of a stock company by law. That’s the same thing with big investors or other companies that want to do a buyout. This has grown so popular that they were bumping up against these limits, and they had to sell a lot of these stocks. Now, some of these stocks won’t come back into the listing that they have and other new ones will be added.
That’s brought a lot of turmoil, and a lot of these stocks that you see that have declined sharply, it has nothing to do with the fact that they’re no longer profitable. They’re making just as much money as they were before, but because they were sold out, some of these take 14, 15 days of selling to get out of the index, and other people that don’t understand what’s going on, they say, “Oh gee, the price is down 25%. I’ve got to get out.” They panic, and of course that’s going to create a buying opportunity for people that really understand what’s going on. As they reinstate these stocks into the GDXJ and add new ones, that will get fresh finances back into the system. So that is not something that people should be worried about.
However, it occurred during the time of soft metal prices in the mining shares in general, so that was just added to the short-term and intermediate-term discomfort.
Mike Gleason: Yeah, and as we touched on earlier, 16-day losing streak there in silver, just an unprecedented sell-off there, totally oversold and now looks like it’s finally reversed itself.
And finally, as we begin to wrap up here, are you focusing on the same sort of price targets for gold and silver that you’d mentioned when we had you back on last in January? For instance, are you still looking at $21-$22 as a key level in silver in terms of a resistance level that we really need to see taken out?
David Smith: That’s really true, and as David Morgan of The Morgan Report has kept his focus in that area. His ideas haven’t changed about where we might end up this year and where we need to be, but for sure, to get rid of all the doubting Thomases, if you see $26 silver penetrated and base built above that, and if you see $1,550 gold, then you can say, “Boy, as far as we can tell, it’s never 100% but the coast is pretty much clear.” And the point is if you wait for that point, a lot of profit potential for you has been given up, and so by definition, right now, we have information risk because the price is relatively low. At $1,550 gold and at $26 (silver), we have price risk because gold will be a couple hundred higher than it is now per ounce. And silver will be, rather than about $17 an ounce, it will be $9-$10 an ounce higher, that’s a lot of price risk that exists then that does not exist now.
Again, going against your emotions, buying on a regular basis, buying within the limits of what you want to accomplish with your outlook and things like that and your ability for risk makes a lot of sense now, rather than waiting until it’s all clear because when it’s all clear, it’s a lot less potentially profitable than if you at least started your stake now and scaled up or scaled down.
Mike Gleason: Very well-put. Right now, we’re looking at $18.50 on silver is the overhead resistance level. We seem like we’ve bumped into that a couple times now and fallen back down, so I guess that’s the first overhead resistance level and then $21-$22 certainly looks like the only thing that’s going to separate silver from $18.50 to $26. It could get interesting if we finally see things moved to the upside. Obviously, there’s some work that needs to be done here, technically, for the metals.
Well, David, thanks so much for sharing your insights and your wisdom with us once again. I appreciate your time and your comments as always. Continued success with the book Second Chance, and I hope you have a great weekend. I look forward to catching up with you again real soon.
David Smith: Very good, Mike. It’s been great talking to you, and I really enjoy writing to your audience. We have a lot of people get on there and put a comment and I try to answer every one of them. The idea of principled exchange of information and point-counterpoint, and I think we have a real good demographic in the people that do business with Money Metals.
Mike Gleason: We certainly appreciate all the work you’re doing. It’s great stuff. If people haven’t checked it out, definitely urge you to take a look at David Smith’s articles. He writes them regularly for us, and you won’t be disappointed.
Well that will do it for this week. Thanks for again to David Smith, Senior Analyst at The Morgan Report and regular columnist for MoneyMetals.com and co-author, along with David Morgan, of the book Second Chance: How to Make and Keep Big Money During the Coming Gold and Silver Shockwave, a book which is available at MoneyMetals.com and Amazon and other places where books are sold. Be sure to pick up a copy today.
Mike Gleason is a Director with Money Metals Exchange, a national precious metals dealer with over 50,000 customers. Gleason is a hard money advocate and a strong proponent of personal liberty, limited government and the Austrian School of Economics. A graduate of the University of Florida, Gleason has extensive experience in management, sales and logistics as well as precious metals investing. He also puts his longtime broadcasting background to good use, hosting a weekly precious metals podcast since 2011, a program listened to by tens of thousands each week.
The post David Smith: It’s Better to Buy Gold & Silver When It DOESN’T Feel Good appeared first on Gold Silver Worlds.
from Gold Silver Worlds http://goldsilverworlds.com/physical-market/david-smith-better-buy-gold-silver-doesnt-feel-good/
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