In honour of F2 being back in Imola this weekend, this is the F2 edition of my US number ones posts. Enjoy 😊
Juan Manuel Correra (9th August 1999) & Ritomo Miyata (10th August 1999) - Christina Aguilera - Genie In A Bottle
Kush Maini (22nd September 2000) - Madonna - Music
Richard Verschoor (16th December 2000) - Destiny's Child - Independent Women Pt 1
Victor Martins (16th June 2001) - Christina Aguilera, Lil' Kim, Mya & Pink - Lady Marmalade
Enzo Fittipaldi (18th July 2001) - Usher - U Remind Me
Rafael Villagomez (10th November 2001) - Mary J.Blige - Family Affair
Amaury Cordeel (9th July 2002) - Nelly - Hot In Herre
Dennis Hauger (17th March 2003) - Jennifer Lopez ft LL Cool J - All I Have
Franco Colapinto (27th May 2003) - Sean Paul - Get Busy
Zane Maloney (2nd October 2003) - Nelly, P.Diddy & Murphy Lee - Shake Ya Tailfeather
Joshua Durksen (27th October 2003) - Beyonce ft Sean Paul - Baby Boy
Paul Aron (9th February 2004) - OutKast - Hey Ya!
Roman Stanek (25th February 2004) - Twista ft Kanye West & Jamie Foxx - Slow Jamz
Taylor Barnard (1st June 2004) - Usher - Burn
Isack Hadjar (28th September 2004) & Gabriel Bortoleto (14th October 2004) - Ciara ft Petey Pablo - Goodies
Zak O'Sullivan (6th February 2005) - Mario - Let Me Love You
Jak Crawford - (2nd May 2005) - 50 Cent ft Olivia - Candy Shop
Ollie Bearman (8th May 2005) - Gwen Stefani - Hollaback Girl
Pepe Marti (13th June 2005) - Mariah Carey - We Belong Together
Kimi Antonelli (25th August 2006) - Fergie - London Bridge
Another link to this playlist 😊
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Hi! I am an ardent fan of your writing, and I hope to be as sorted and planned as you some day in my own writing journey.
My question is: you have a keen eye when it comes to planning character personality, dynamics, and such. I've also been wading through your ask replies, and your insights into how you write people and how you make them play off of each other is so wonderful to read. If it's not too personal a q, how did you learn how to write like this? Did you go to school for writing, does it come from years of observing people, do you have reading list recs for "how to write real people and real interactions"?
Thanks! This is a really flattering question. I'll try to answer it honestly, because I wish someone had been brutally honest about this with me when I was a young writer.
I didn't go to school for writing. I started doing it when I was about nine years old. It sucked very badly. I kept writing throughout high school, and it still mostly sucked, but some of it was occasionally interesting. ("Interesting" here does not mean "good," by the way.) I took a break in college, and then came back. I've been writing ever since. Sometimes, I feel good about it. A lot of the time, I don't!
I hate giving this advice, because I remember how it feels to get it, and it's the most uninspiring, boring-ass, dog shit advice you can get, but it's also the only advice that is 100% unequivocally true: you have to write, and specifically, you have to write things that suck.
I do not mean that you should make things that suck on purpose. I mean that you have to sit down and try your absolute hardest to make something good. You have to put in the hours, the elbow grease, the blood, sweat, and tears, and then you have to read it over and accept that it just totally sucks. There is no way around this, and you should be wary of people who tell you there is. There is no trick, no rule, no book you can buy or article you can read, that will make your writing not suck. The best someone else can do is tell you what good writing looks like, and chances are, you knew that anyway — after all, you love to read. You wouldn't be trying to do this if you didn't. And anyone who says they can teach you to write so good it doesn't suck at first is either lying to you, or they have forgotten how they learned to write in the first place.
So the trick is to sit there in the miserable doldrums of Suck, write a ton, and learn to like it. Because this is the phase of your path as an artist when you find what it is you love about writing, and it cannot be the chance to make "good writing." This will be the thing that bears you through and compels you to keep going when your writing is shit, i.e., the very thing that makes you a writer in the first place. So find that, and you've got a good start.
Some people know this, but assume that perseverance as a writer is about trying to get to the point where you don't suck anymore. This is not true, and it is an actively dangerous lie to tell young writers. You are not aiming to feel like your writing doesn't suck. You are aiming to write. You are aiming to have written. Everything else is dust and rust. And of course, you'll find things you like about your pieces, you'll find things you're proud of, you'll learn to love the things you've made. But that little itch of self-criticism, in the back of your brain — the one that cringes when you read a clunky line, or thinks of a better character beat right after it's far too late to change — that's never going away. That's the Writer part of you. Read Kafka, read Dickens, read Tolstoy, you will find diary entries where they lament how absolutely fucking atrocious their writing was, and how angry they are that they can't do better. A good writer hates their sentences because they can always imagine better ones. And the ability to imagine a better sentence is what's going to make you pick up the pen again tomorrow. And the day after that. And the day after that.
Which is what I mean, and probably what all those other annoying, preachy advice-givers mean, when we say: a good writer is just someone who writes every day. It's that easy, and that hard.
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Good things: I've been invited to partake in a certain exhibit regarding a certain author since I've had the privilege of illustrating the covers for the UK edition of a certain fantasy series.
Not so good things: I've lost most of the scans for the 8 illustrations (I think I only have 3? 4?) so that means I need to figure out WHERE I stashed the originals. I know I HAVE them, so that's some comfort. But I have so many stashes. And it's been... 10+ years and two moves. On top of that, they may need retouching. Fun times!
A minor "conundrum": I finally need to decide where I would like to offer said illustrations for print. I have a society6, but it is rather dusty these days. That aside, the print quality seems pretty decent (I have not seen with my own actual eyes, but considering I've yet to hear otherwise, I'd say they go over well.) That said, if anyone has opinions/experiences on print on demand storefronts, I'd love to hear them. I'll say in advance I would prefer to not handle printing them myself. If you know, you know.
So yeah: Things! Winged horses abound, and the search for my old art begins. If you are a fan of the old Green Rider series illustrations, watch this space?
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I loove the android robin au it's really one of the most interesting au I have seen in a while.
I am always happy to see new post abt it
Also making my favourite characters go through hell and then receiving comfort from their people is like the best thing ever for me so every time I see a whump!Robin post I like automatically
People loving android!Robin makes me so happy anansnssndsnsns she's curious and excitable and full of wonder and the world keeps punishing her for simply being alive. Sometimes it's too painful even for me, big whump lover 😭😭 though seriously, there is not enough Robin whump, and while all the characters in the show are very whumpeable, hurting my little blorbo Robin feels special because... she's just so deeply lonely. She's lonely and she thinks she deserves to be because of something wrong with her (pulling this interpretation from Surviving Hawkins lore which is canon to me 😭). That was a big idea I had when I first came up with android!Robin... that there is something wrong with her. Broken. In this AU she's literally broken in a lot of way (battery and memory problems, weak joints in her lower half, etc), but that's all within the range of normal robot problems. The real issue with her is that she's sentient. It terrifies people because it really brings out the existencial horror of... well, existing. It terrifies Robin most of all. She is the problem. She is what's wrong with her. She shouldn't exist.
But at the same time, she loves being alive so much! She doesn't understand it and doesn't know how it happened, but it happened, and now she's real and wants to experience life and the world and know people like human beings do. So it's her constant battle to become human despite humans having hurt her so much in the past... only for Nancy to already see her as human. Just one made of metal and plastic, but human nonetheless. She's the first person to see her that way and maybe everyone else thinks she's crazy, but Nancy is used to that. She's so sure of this, though, of Robin's self-awareness. She trusts her so blindly. She doesn't even need proof. And not only does she believe her, but she defends her humanity in front of her friends and family so ardently, fighting so hard for Robin to be aknowledged by everyone else as human. Fighting so hard to give her a home and family for the first time in her life.
Nancy has it bad for Robin, really. She's just so in love, even if everyone else thinks she's crazy for falling in love with a machine (no one thinks she is, though, because they all know Robin, and once you know Robin, it's impossible not to love her).
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