#edge of alchemy 2017
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On October 11, 2018, Edge of Alchemy was screened at the TOHorror Film Fest.
#edge of alchemy#edge of alchemy 2017#stacy steers#antony cooper#arthouse film#avant garde#avant garde film#experimental film#art film#film collage#arthouse cinema#movie art#art#drawing#movie history#pop art#modern art#pop surrealism#cult movies#portrait#cult film
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Stacey Steers, {2017} Edge of Alchemy
#film#gif#stacey steers#edge of alchemy#mary pickford#janet gaynor#2017#female filmmakers#animation#collage animation#found footage#bees#people#women#short film#usa#2010s#colour#black and white
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Edge of Alchemy (2017) dir. Stacey Steers
#Edge of Alchemy#Stacey Steers#film#cinema#movie#movie stills#film frames#cinematography#movies#films#animation
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Collage artwork for film Edge of Alchemy (Stacey Steers, 2017)
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Ben DuVall
Six Plates for Alan Caiger-Smith, 2021
Risograph prints in hand-stamped portfolio
Edition of 50, available here.
Beginning in the 1950s, Aldermaston, Berkshire, England was home to two heirs of the Hermetic alchemical tradition—the Atomic Weapons Research Establishment (AWRE), and Alan Caiger-Smith's Aldermaston Pottery studio. While AWRE dealt in the sinister objectives of the imagined Philosopher's Stone, mass annihilation and military supremacy, Caiger-Smith was researching one of the more esoteric byproducts of the ancient alchemists: lustre glaze ceramics. Caiger-Smith charted alchemy and lustreware's own violent history (lest we forget the magus John Dee coined the term ‟British Empire”), as lustre glazes and firing techniques were technologies stolen from the Islamic world by the crusaders of the Middle Ages. With their oxidized, gold-like surfaces, they were perhaps the closest attempt at transmutation achieved in the alchemical laboratories of old. After much trial and error in his Aldermaston kilns, Caiger-Smith finally resurrected a technique of lustreware which had been lost since medieval times, and adorned his vessels with elegant, calligraphic brushwork. In response to AWRE's presence, Aldermaston also became an important site for the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament marches, beginning in the 1950s. Though I have found no indication that Caiger-Smith participated in these demonstrations, several of his studio assistants have given accounts of their engagement in the CND.
Alan Caiger-Smith passed away in February, 2020. As a memorial to his life and legacy, this is a print edition of a series of drawings I worked on from 2017–2019, based on his lustreware plate designs, as well as slogans and symbols of the CND London-Aldermaston marches. The portfolio includes six Risographed prints, using black, yellow, scarlet, and metallic gold (the alchemical color change sequence) Riso inks, and one print of a drawing of Caiger-Smith with caption, edition info, and signature on verso. The plate prints are 10 x 10″ each and have hand-deckled edges. All prints come in a specially designed, hand-stamped portfolio.
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Brie Larson, (Instagram, June 5, 2017)
—Strong Is the New Pretty: A Celebration of Girls Being Themselves, Kate T. Parker (2017)
—Milagros: Votive Offerings from the Americas: Votive Offerings from the Americas, Martha Egan (1991)
—The Rules Do Not Apply, Ariel Levy (2017)
—We Monks and Soldiers, Lutz Bassmann (2008)
—On Edge: A Journey Through Anxiety, Andrea Petersen (2017)
—Patience, Daniel Clowes (2016)
—Alchemy of Herbs: Transform Everyday Ingredients into Foods and Remedies That Heal, Rosalee de la Foret (2017)
#brie larson#strong is the new pretty#milagros#the rules do not apply#we monks and soldiers#on edge#patience#alchemy of herbs#kate t parker#martha egan#ariel levy#lutz bassmann#andrea petersen#daniel clowes#rosalee de la foret#books#celebrities#books read by celebrities#instagram
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Has anyone else ever noticed the differences between transmutation circles in 2003 and Brotherhood?
03's circles tend to have bilateral symmetry and non-geometric designs, with line endpoints outside the circle itself; unlike Brotherhood's, which have either rotational, radial or repeating symmetry and interior designs which are much more geometric, with lines ending equidistant on the edges of the circle.
(Translation: you can fold 03′s circles in half and the halves mirror each other. Brotherhood’s circles often look the same if you rotate them to certain points, but halves of the circles often aren’t mirror images of each other.)
I feel like brotherhood just had a much larger cast of characters so we saw a lot more transmutation circles being used. Also, the manga was more complete at that point, so the show’s designers didn’t have to come up with all the transmutation circles themselves.
Here are a few examples of contrasting transmutation circles.
The Philosopher’s Stone
This is the circle used to create the Philosopher’s Stone in the 2003 series. The circle used in Brotherhood and the Manga is very different:
Finally, this is the circle/map used to create the stone in Sacred Star of Milos (yes, this is a spoiler, but since no one seems to care about Milos I’m adding it here anyway.)
Milos has its own style of alchemy; it seems to conform to Amestrian principles so far as powering its arrays (with tectonic energy, as opposed to the Dragon’s Pulse), but the arrays themselves are visually unique, almost more similar to 03′s arrays, except much more geometric.
And that’s not even looking at the circle used in the live-action movie (which was different as well!)
Water Transmutation
In 2003, this array was used by the thief Psiren, who operated in a city on a lake (aka Amestrian Venice, also known as Aquroya.) This array seems to be used primarily for transmutations involving water.
Contrast that with the circle used by Isaac MacDougal, the Ice Alchemist, in the first episode of Brotherhood. This circle is a bit of an outlier; Isaac doesn’t appear in the manga, so this transmutation circle was created by the people working on Brotherhood without any inspiration from Arakawa. However, it still complies to the design sensibilities of Brotherhood’s circles; rotational symmetry rather than bilateral and more geometric than artistic designs.
Also it’s got a cute lil oxygen atom and two adorable hydrogens how cute is that!?
I could not find a good picture anywhere for the transmutation circles used by “Ashley Crichton” in Sacred Star of Milos, so this will have to do. These circles were also used for water transmutation (primarily to create ice and snow from water in the atmosphere), but also were used for generating electric shocks. As you can see, even in the same continuity, multiple arrays are used to accomplish the same transmutations.
Agricultural Alchemy and Basic Arrays
In the 2003 series, this array was used by the Tringham brothers to control plants. Again, notice the bilateral symmetry.
This is a very basic transmutation circle that I believe appears in both series, as are both the following:
All three of these circles are very geometric, with lines meeting another line at their endpoints, all in line with what we’ve seen so far of most of Arakawa’s designs.
Human Transmutation
We all know this one; it is probably the most complex circle in either series. I believe the same circle was used in the human transmutation attempt in both series. Notice the intersecting lines and multiple types of symmetry in the circle.
If I remember correctly, this was the version of a human transmutation array from the 2017 live-action movie.
Reverse/Cancellation Transmutation Circle
This isn’t really part of my 03/Brotherhood compare and contrast thesis, but it is an interesting outlier. Notice the non-standard symbology and the lines with endpoints that don’t intersect other lines or circles. However, this circle does have rotational symmetry. I would put down the unusual symbology and the line endpoints being where they are to it actually being an alkahestry circle (even though Mei's pentagram circles all have lines ending on the circle.)
Another interesting thing about the Brotherhood circles is that a great number of them (almost all of which have something to do with the human soul) have five points, whereas the same circles in 03 would, given Ed’s use of a septagram (seven-point) circle, likely be more effective using seven points.
Do Mei’s five-point star circles also operate by creating a connection with the human soul? Possibly! But it’s nowhere suggested anywhere else in the text.
In conclusion, we should just appreciate the creative teams of both Brotherhood and 03 and respect the designs they chose to ultimately run with. Thanks for reading this very very long post.
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For fanfic appreciation day, I’d like to make my Comprehensive Fic Rec List™
So as follows, here is my ultimate list of fave robron fics:
AU
That’s How Easy Love Can Be series by @robertsugdn
Big Spender by @portinastorm
Robron Week 2017 by BoleynC
The Muse by @iwillsendapostcard
A Different Language series by @sapphicsugden
I've Been Searching For a Feeling (Haven't Found It Yet) by @littlelooneyluna
Too Hard, Heart First by @madroxed
The Vampire of Home Farm by ghostwriter15
You Can Avoid The Fire But You’ll Never Be Free by @capseycartwright
You Put That Magic In My Bones series by @capseycartwright
Promise Me You’ll Always Be A Friend by @escapingreality51
War Can’t Kill Love by @nooneelsecomesclose17
Blind Dates by @blondhairedking
What Lies Underneath by @escapingreality51
Even Though You’re My Best Friend by @littlelooneyluna
Summer Lovin’ by lullabelle_moon
Extraordinary by robronsugsy
The Swan Prince by @iwillsendapostcard
Last Christmas by @reinacadeea
Don’t You Let Me Go by @wolkje25
Royal Expectations by bexcj
All Thinking Is Comparison series by electrumqueen
Pretend Boyfriends AU by @reinacadeea
What The World Waited For by @prettyboysugden
The Hardest Science by @typicalrobotgirl5
You’re My First Everything by DirtyLilGreaseMonkey
The Days Were Bright Red series by electrumqueen
The Birthdays by @stulot
Paradise by tenpercentbatteryremaining
Every No Turns Into a Maybe by @strongboyfriends
The Journey by tenpercentbatteryremaining
Collision by @turnerkanes
Still I Call It Magic by @josephtate
Journey Beyond series by moonlighten (moonlighten if you’re out there, *shoves you my bank account details* take what you want, if that’s what it takes for you to update after 2 years)
Lost Myself Again and I Feel Unsafe by @reinacadeea
Cupid is A Knavish Lad by @turnerkanes
You Been Holding Your Breath, Weighted Down by falconeggs
All The Ways We Could’ve Loved series by @capseycartwright
Touch by DirtyLilGreaseMonkey
Sharing Me With You by @littlelooneyluna
The Red String by @thefancyspin
Your Love Was Handmade For Somebody Like Me series by @capseycartwright
Alchemy series by @iwillsendapostcard
Find Someone (Like You) by @kayceecruz
At 30,000 ft by @notforonesecond
Heal Them With Fire From Above by @josephtate
A Different Kind Of Love by @littlelooneyluna
Into The Light by @snarfettelove
My Love For You Allows Me Not To Judge The Way You Live by @reinacadeea
It’s Cliche For A Reason, Honey series by @iwillsendapostcard
Speak Softly, But Carry A Big Can of Paint by that_proves_nothing
The Other Side by @wolkje25
Arch Enemy by bexcj
Good, Bad and Undecided by tenpercentbatteryremaining
Rights and Wrongs by @memorieswarm
And I Wanna Sleep Next To You by @littlelooneyluna
Saying it With Flowers by MonkeyLuv
Take A Deep Breath series by falconeggs
The Insubstantial Shadows by @sapphicsugden
You Keep Me Grounded by @frecklysugden
Dirty Dancing by lullabelle_moon
I Love You a Latte series by @capseycartwright
Simple Things by @escapingreality51
License To...Kiss? by @robincormoran
Finding Home by @memorieswarm
Unsinkable by sweetly_disposed
Sure As The World Keeps The Moon in The Sky by @aarobron
By Your Side by @snarfettelove
Shoot The Poets by tazza1993
Consume Me (Just Don’t Leave Me) by Lily_Rizzy
Midnight In Paris by @capseycartwright
Maneuver One Into Place by @robertjacobsugdens
Never Know Who You’ll Find by @aarobron
Hey, I Just Met You, And This Is Crazy... by @rustandruin
You Took a Mystery and Made Me Want It by @vicbartons
Wrap Me Up in Quiet Sins by @escapingreality51
The Boy Next Door by loonyloopylou
Our Nights Under the Stars by @notforonesecond
You Can't Always Get What You Want, and If You Try Sometime, You Find You Get What You Need by @blondhairedking
Canon Compliant (ish)
Affair Era
White Noise by @thefancyspin
those soft lads by @littlelooneyluna
Morning Pet by Creatrix
The Strength To Find Another Way by auselysium
Twister by robronsugsy
Seeing The Pain, Seeing The Pleasure by @aarobron
So Many Nights Like This by Lily_rizzy
Post Affair Era
Oh It’s Such A Shame For Us To Part by @littlelooneyluna
Exponential by @beautifulhigh
Redemption by Ermmmmmm
Soon We Will Be Strangers by electrumqueen
Reset- Robert 2.0 by dragontreasure26
I’ll Be Your Spiderman by DirtyLilGreaseMonkey
Reunion 1.0
The Sun Is Full of Shit by Ermmmmmm
The Fine Art of Dating by lullabelle_moon
Coming Home by pyjamagurl
Birthday Hope by @fisticuffsandjapery
Lost and Found by @wolkje25
Bite Your Tongue by @strongboyfriends
Tonight, They Sleep by auselysium
Boyfriends Era
Down By The Sea by MonkeyLuv
All Over Again by miss_romance_lover
Roblivion series by @littlelooneyluna
Save The Best Til Last by DirtyLilGreaseMonkey
Gone To The Dogs series by electrumqueen
Finding Light Beyond the Dark by @littlelooneyluna
Lightwater Valley by KadenAadi
Soften Every Edge by @portinastorm
Inevitable by afewthoughts
Fire and Hearts series by @wolkje25
After A Year Like This by orphan_account (I think it was veryveryverytemporarily though!)
Not A Rolex by pyjamagurl
Something New by @itswheremydemonshide10
Proposal Fic
When It’s Right
Give Me Your Forever by have_faith_in_me
SSW
Two Halves of A Whole by @turquoiseterrier
The Absence Of by @sapphicsugden
Engagement Era
Village Talk series by @theprincessed
19/11/14 by @portinastorm
Love Like This by unlucky19
Blank Page by @madroxed
The Shadow Of A Moment series by @tragicrogers
You’re So Much Brighter Than The Sun To Me by @capseycartwright
I’d Never Dreamed I’d Meet Someone Like You by wishesandwonders
Misconceptions by @itswheremydemonshide10
Wedding Fic
In My Place by @misswhimsy
Waste Time With A Masterpiece by @sapphicsugden
Unbreakable by miss_romance_lover
Everything by miss_romance_lover
Prison Fic
Visit by @beautifulhigh
Husbands Fic
A Spell Never Broken by @strongboyfriends
What You Said You Were by @sapphicsugden
Unclench by @smittenwithsugden
What I Wouldn’t Give by @thefancyspin
The Best Gift is You by specificity
The Adventures of Misty and Maggie by @capseycartwright and @josephtate
Bernice The Marriage Counsellor by ghostwriter15
Post Break Up Fic
I Had This Thing To Call My Own series by @kayceecruz
The Most Treacherous Thing by @persiflager
Breaking Rules by @blondhairedking
Reunion 2.0 Fic
Separation Never Suited Us by @wellyfullofale
Come Back to Me by @wellyfullofale
There’s a Thousand Things I’ve Wanted to Say But I’ve Never Been Brave by storiesthatmakeus
Christmas Fic
All I Want For Christmas Is You by @misswhimsy
Behind Lock And Key by @wolkje25
Mistletoe Kisses (all the chapters, all the brilliant pairings) by @helenhuntingdon
Post Reunion 2.0 Fic
Back to You by @aarobron
She Hid Around Corners and She Hid Under Beds by @rustandruin
Don’t Take Me Down, I See Your Bluff by storiesthatmakeus
Future Fic
Six Years Later by bluwinterflower
Miles To Go by @turnerkanes
You’re a Part of Me by @hayfieldmc
Ice Swans and Dry-Cleaning by @persiflager
Darling, Ours Was Always A Love Story by messedupforever
BONUS because if I have to read it/know it exists so do you
Inevitably I’ve missed some out and there are a few authors I missed out a lot of their amazing fics but if I’ve mentioned you, chances are I think all your fics are amazing!
I’d like to thank all the fic writers of this and every fandom for the tireless work you do, it’s so appreciated!!!
#rhia talks#robron fic#fic rec#about me#there will be writers that are on tumblr that i haven't tagged in which case i'm so sorry i didn't know your url!
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On March 24, 2017, Edge of Alchemy was screened at the Ann Arbor Film Festival.
Here's some new art to celebrate!
#edge of alchemy#edge of alchemy 2017#stacey steers#antony cooper#avant garde film#art film#experimental fiilm#experimental animation#animated film#avant garde cinema#short film#feminist film#fan art#cult movies#movie fan art#movie art#art#drawing#movie history#pop art#modern art#pop surrealism#portrait#cult film
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Shallura Fic Rec #3
Time for another Shallura fic rec list! (categorized to the best of my ability)
Shallura Rec List #1
Shallura Rec List #2
Mulitchapter/Long Fics
(I’m including fics that have been updated/concluded since the last fic rec list)
Into the Woods - (3/3) - @andtheblueberrymuffin
Something wet and cold splatters against Allura’s cheek.
A moment later, a second drop lands on her forehead, and she groans, raising a hand to rub at her face. She feels… groggy, as though she just woke from a long, deep sleep. The wetness on her face makes no sense. She cracks her eyes open and finds that she is staring up at a gray sky, full of storm clouds, heavy with rain.
This is not where she last remembers being.
Or: The one where Allura and Shiro end up lost in space.
Slow burn, hurt/comfort, plot, huddling for warmth, mystery, feelings, gore related to hunting
The Princess and the Pilot - (5/?) - @ashesandhoney
In an alternate timeline, Shiro gets picked up by the Galra before the war starts and eventually ends up being given to the Princess of the Alteans as a joke or an attempt to start a war or as a mistake. Whatever their motive was for sending him, Allura is now left trying to figure out what to do with him.
Alternate universe, slow burn, prisoner Shiro
The Space Between Stars - (6/?) - wordswithdragons ( @shiroallura)
Stranded across the galaxy, Shiro and Keith must survive the cold blooded creatures that lurk upon the planet they crash landed on. Pidge, Hunk and Lance find themselves caught up on a Galra infested planet of winged aliens, while Allura and Coran face coming to terms with their greatest hope and sorrow: Altea. // A rewriting, fix-it fic of season two, featuring families, backstories, aliens, loss, and love. More info inside.
No Need To Say Goodbye - (1/1) - @smolsarcasticraspberry
The juniberry tree blossoms every seven years, and when it does, a gateway opens up to another world - a world that Shiro first explores as a child. There, he meets Allura. They do not speak the same language, but children do not need words to play. Every seven years, when the gateway opens again, Shiro steps through to visit the girl he knows on the other side. But the gateway only stays open as long as the juniberry flowers bloom...
AU, angst, childhood friends, reunion
Masks - (1/5) - @braincoins
Shiro screws-up and Allura has to cover for him by pretending they're married. This means Shiro is now involved in the negotiations with an alien race rumored to have sent the Galra packing. They could be a great help to the Coalition, so long as they're not offended or insulted in some way. So it's Allura's job to convince them to sign on, and it's Shiro's job to be her consort. Neither of those should be that difficult... right?
Fake/pretend relationship, semi-au, Fluff & Politics, pining!Shiro, the other paladins & Coran are here too but not as much
When We Were Young - (8/8) - @ashesandhoney
When they were young they had hidden under tables at embassy events and eaten stolen pieces of cake. They had climbed up onto the roof at school and made up stories about the teachers walking to their cars at the end of the day. They weren’t the same species but that had never stopped them before.
It’s been tens years since he last saw her.
Childhood friends, AU - canon divergence, marriage proposal, alien culture, no Voltron
Find Me In The Night - (2/2) - @smolsarcasticraspberry
"Ah, yes. Charged particles from your local star interact with the magnetic field of the planet in areas where the magnetic field lines are close together."
Shiro laughs, in spite of himself. She's the nerdiest princess he's ever met. Not that he's met many, of course. Or any at all, before her.
"We call it an aurora. It's beautiful, isn't it?"
***
When aliens land on Earth looking for a mysterious weapon under the Arctic ice, Captain Shirogane of the Galaxy Garrison is tasked with accompanying an alien Princess in her quest.
Mature, Shallura Holidays Month 2017, Pre-Kerberos Mission, Earth AU, winter fic
Touch - (3/3) - @ashesandhoney
The Sacred Alteans could bend quintessence to their whims but wielding that much power couldn't be consequence free.
Allura loses her sense of touch and has to learn to function without it.
A fic with scenes including: nearly bleeding to death, some angst over being the last of a species, fancy ballgowns and space pirates, tickling, sparring practice, Shiro being really into Allura wearing track pants, blow job jokes, quite a bit of pining, Allura glowing, some smut.
Explicit, mutual pining, fluff, mild hurt/comfort, AU - Canon Divergence, light angst
Of Small Talks and Forget-me-nots - (6/6) - Part 1 - Opl_Mor
Shiro has been chasing Allura since he was six and she stumbled into his land of make believe- his escape from the strain between his parents. A misfit pair with no one but each other try to navigate an often cruel and unforgiving world. Unfortunately, fate isn't always kind and sometimes pairs are pulled apart. This is a story of hardships and heartbreak, but more than that, it's about the power of mending those parts of life. This is about a modern princess saving a lonely boy in more ways than she could possibly know.
Childhood friends, friends to lovers, bullying, divorce, Shiro’s got a lisp, Allura is a ballerina black belt
Woman King - (20/20) - @juniperallura
Queen Allura rules over the Altean court, in the company of her young cousin Lance. As the bloody war with the Galra drags on, she searches for unlikely allies- including a supposed defector dwelling on the edge of the palace village. A Shallura historical/fantasy AU (with side Klance).
AU - historical, AU - fantasy, side Klance, light angst, slow burn, pining, mutul pining, secret relationship
When the Sun Sets - (4/?) - rainingWolf
Out of everyone in the entire galaxy, Shiro just so happened to chance upon Allura on a starry night. Set in a zombie apocalypse AU.
Zombie apocalypse, Zombie AU, romance, drama, action/adventure, angst, Altea, alien planet
Across the Universe - (2/?) - saintgenevieve
Allura takes a deep breath. “Pidge…what is a soulmate?”
“What?”
“Shiro told Keith I was his ‘soulmate,’ but I don’t really understand what that word means.”
Mature, Pining, serious pining and angst, Allura’s relationship with the paladins, friendship, love confessions, true love, grieving, some Klance
Loving the Alien - (3/?) - hatandgoggles
The story takes place in 1954, in a town in New Mexico. Roughly seven years after a mysterious object crashed into the nearby desert, a woman Shiro met that night returns to his diner when he needs it the most. Or will she only drag him into an adventure he never asked for?
AU - 1950s
Let Go Darling - (1/?) - evelyn_hayes
Allura blinks. She's suddenly outside, the pale moon shining down on her and the old house behind her. There's a man gripping her hand. Tall and shrouded in a peculiar jacket. His hood shadows his face, but she makes out a scar across his nose and a patch of white hair dangling from the front of his head. She searches his face and sees-
Black eyes.
Witch!Allura, Hunter!Allura, Demon!Shiro, alchemy, magic, crossover, feat. the IMPALA BABY, but in white, guadian demon, self-harm, road trips, true names, vassal and liege, angst, klance fluff, Shiro has PTSD, protective Shiro, implied/referenced abuse/torture, businessman Lotor
There is Love in Your Body (But You Can’t Get it Out) - (1/1) - @andtheblueberrymuffin
In the end, it doesn’t matter how exactly Shiro falls in love with Allura. He just does and it’s… Not a problem, exactly, but a consideration that lurks in the back of his thoughts. He doesn’t plan to do anything about it. They’re in the middle of a war. This isn’t the time for love. And even if it was, he is what he is and she is…. Beyond him.
Or: The one where mistakes were made and Shiro has to crash a wedding that shouldn't be happening in the first place.
Angst with happy ending, feelings, wedding crashing, emotional trauma is the real villain here
Duties of Heart - (1/1) - anglmukhii
They were both Jedi, but she was also a Queen. There were worlds of differences between them, yet they can only find peace and solace in each other. But between an Order that forbids it and her position that demands that if she marry, it must be for the good of her people: is there truly any hope for them?
AU - Star Wars Setting, break up, making up, angst, fluff, one fight scene, Jedi Shiro, Allura’s a Jedi too but she’s a queen as well, mentions of Keith, Shallura Secret Santa 2017
The Lost Kingdom (1/?) - littlewinterwonderland
"…in a single day and night of misfortune, the kingdom of Altea, perhaps the greatest civilization on earth, disappeared into the depths of the sea. It left behind only mystery, gloom and a boy with a heart made for the unknown"
Atlantis AU, Shiro is a nerd
Day to Day - (7/7) One-shot Collection - TKipani
Seven days when Shiro and Allura were a little more than paladin and princess. Series of drabbles/oneshots for Shallura Week 2016. These drabbles are sequential and connected.
Shallura Week 2016, sequential, the whole gang makes an appearance, drabbles and oneshots, connections, vague Klance if you squint
Lose It - (1/1) - viiisenya
Shiro is a decent enough hitman sometimes doubling as a thief, when the occasion (and payout) called for it. The last person he thinks would call for his services is influential businessman Alfor Altea of Voltron Inc., and what Shiro thought would be an easy job turned out to be a little more complicated thanks to one company heiress. He's usually the one that does the stealing but he didn't think he'd be the victim of a theft himself.
Hitman/thief AU, implied Klance, one-shot
We Were Young Once (We Are Young Again) - (1/1) - @andtheblueberrymuffin
They win.
In the aftermath, Shiro can’t quite wrap his mind around it. The war consumed every thought he had and every bit of his energy for so long that its sudden absence leaves behind a gaping hole. He expects to wake up, to find that Zarkon and Haggar are still out there and that the victory was just some cruel trick executed by his mind.
Or: The one where Shiro and Allura learn how to live outside of the war that's defined their lives for so long.
Slow burn, mutual pining, domestic fluff, post-war, recovery, some angst, arguing, emotional glowing
Throughout the Ages - (11/11) - MinnieTheMoocherDA
Shallura modern au where they've known each other since kindergarten. A collection of various one-shots depicting events in their lives as they grow up.
AU - Modern Setting, AU - High School, Keith and Shiro are adopted brothers, Allura and Lance are cousins
Fluff
Snooze Button - @alteanrituals (thesoulsikeep)
Mornings are the worst, especially after a battle.
Fluff, cuddling and snuggling, lazy mornings, established Shiro/Allura
Have a Magical Day - nayanroo ( @teslatricity)
The universe is mostly at peace again, and so it's time for its defenders to take a vacation. What better place to do that than Disney World?
Disney World & DisneyLand, established Shallura, minor background Klance, background Hunay, Allura doesn’t want any Mickey ears, she wants the right Mickey ears, and to kiss her boyfriend as much as possible
Compatible - thir13enth ( @ahumanintraining)
"I wonder what marks you would have, if you were Altean."
Fluff, exploration of a headcanon, beautiful beautiful fluff and cute humor
De-Stress - TKipani
Politics and battles are difficult, but Allura finds ways to de-stress. And Shiro is happy to help.
One-shot, battle sequences, fighting sequences, the couple that kicks ass together stays together, takes place sometime within season 4, ignores clone theory
Ice Deck - @ebonynightwriter
The Paladins awake to a chill in the Castleship – and a very different training deck.
Fun/Humor, ice skating, ship repairs, friendship, one-shot, canon universe, Shallura Month 2017
Just You and Me (Or Thank the Stars the Kids Aren’t Home) - thir13enth ( @ahumanintraining)
Domestic fluff, actual parents Shiro and Allura, ft. starrycove’s shallura children!
A Matter of Time - nayanroo ( @teslatricity)
The war's over, and the universe is starting to rebuild. As Allura leads the charge in forming new alliances, looking to the future, Shiro considers the kind of future he wants for them. But being a paladin means that your plans tend to go awry and your timing is never the greatest...
Shiro’s parents, engagement, Shiro is a bit of a disaster, he loves her so much y’all
“Shallura Fanfiction” - @clairelutra
Mutual pining/feelings, humor
Something Sparkly - @pensversusswords
“I’d love something sparkly,” Allura says.
Shiro is powerless when it comes to giving Allura what she wants.
First kiss, getting together, fluff, misunderstandings, Altean traditions
Contagion - @andtheblueberrymuffin
Based on my week, have some Shallura + paladins fluff wherein all the earthlings come down with the space flu and are not great patients.
Learn By Heart - @braincoins
It's Allura's first semester teaching, and she's prepared for anything ...except Takashi Shirogane.
Modern AU, Shallura Secret Santa 2017, College/University AU, hot for teacher, pining, fluff
Autumn Wishes - @juniperallura
For prompt "hold my hand/shooting star"
Shiro & Allura spend a day at the farm
Fluff, fluff without plot, Earth AU, Modern AU, fall vibes
Shiro and Allura Both Can’t Sleep - mckinlily
It is a generally held assumption that Shiro and Allura, both being unable to sleep, met up in the quiet of the night, and over the course pouring out their hearts to each other, fell in love. And while it is true neither Shiro nor Allura is very good at sleeping and they have met up at god-forsaken hours in the Castle, the heart-wrenching conversations are more a fiction than reality. This is due to the fact that—despite all attempts to appear otherwise—Shiro and Allura are actually both very young adults and just as susceptible terrible 2am ideas as anyone.
They do fall in love though. But it goes like this:
OR How Shiro and Allura got a lifetime ban from Hunk's kitchen and other fun stories.
Caught in the Act - @andtheblueberrymuffin
Established relationship, fic prompt, stuck in the elevator
Once Upon a December - RukiaG ( @rukia-g)
One-shots for Shallura Holiday Month. Some may be AU, some post-canon.
Shallura Holiday Month 2017, AU - bodyguard, Protect AU, AU - modern setting, AU - fairy tale, post-canon
Lost in Your Light - Cyan ( @vehicroids)
It hadn't been long at all since they found the blue lion, since they were all forced into an unknown part of the universe. Shiro struggled to sleep, thinking on it all. Thankfully, he wouldn't be alone that night.
Tooth-rotting fluff, fluff, traveling, post-canon, post-series, mutual pining, secret santa
Snow Angels - @bosstoaster (ChaoticReactions)
Advent Challenge, warm and fuzzy feelings, snow angels
Peace - @plumeriafairy14
Many decades in the future after team Voltron defeated the evil plagues of the Galra Empire, Allura sits in the palace gazebo with her husband, Shiro. They go through the photo albums they have collected over the years and Allura savors the intimate moment as the former Black Paladin holds her in his embrace while narrating the memory of each photograph.
Allura basks in his love and takes what she can; her time is running out, after all.
Future fic, Illness, bittersweet ending, Shiro and Allura as emperor and empress, minor Klance, reminiscing
The Aftermath - Rosey_Vasilia
After a particularly rough attempt to rescue a planet from Galra occupation, Shiro decides to try and help Allura stop blaming herself.
Background Klance, literally Shallura being soft, short fluffy one-shot, a mission goes wrong so Shiro comforts Allura
Basorexia - 13Vivacious13
It was ridiculous. Completely, utterly, inexplicably ridiculous. No one should want to kiss the back of someone's neck as much as she wanted to right now.
Movie night, space family time, fluff, pining
In a Snap - KatherineKatie ( @kittykattykatherine)
AU - Modern Setting, First dates, wingman, Keith means so well, snapchat, texting, light angst, flower shops, carnivals, humor, comedy, fluff
The Day Of - thir13enth ( @ahumanintraining)
in which Shiro tries to propose, but Allura is too confused to figure it out.
Definitely fluffy, marriage proposal, AU, Shiro’s parents
Artist’s Block - befuddle
Allura's suffering from artist's block, and Shiro just wants to help.
Artist and model AU, Modern AU
Sparkles - Meli_writes (@meli-writes)
Shiro wants to get out of the castle for a bit. When Allura agrees to go out with him he decides to get her something sparkly.
Space Mall, sparkly things, date, kisses, space dad, space mom, human vocab lesson, fluffy, cute, silly
Flight - littlespacestars (the shameless self-promo)
“Dad, I’m going to fly Blue!” A little girl speeds into the hangar with her arms out at her sides, triumphantly making a beeline towards the lions.
“Wait, wait, wait.” Shiro lifts his daughter away from the blue lion and props her on his hip, holding up a finger. “Just so we’re clear. I said Uncle Lance could fly Blue with you in his lap. This isn’t like you and me in Black.”
Lance strolls up behind them and leans against Blue, grinning from ear to ear.
“With a safety belt,” Shiro enunciates. “Lance.”
Tooth-rotting fluff, overprotective Space Dad, actual space parents, Uncle Klance, star babies, Shallura babies
Birthday - littlespacestars (the shameless self promo)
“Uh, Allura?” He doesn’t move an inch, only side glances at her and then back at the plump mouse standing upright on its hind legs. “There’s a giant—”
“Oh, don’t be alarmed, Shiro!” Allura sets aside her watering can and quickly scoops the stout mouse into her hands. She strokes the top of its head and gives it a fond smile. “This is just Platt, no need to worry.”
“Platt,” he repeats, still a little dumbfounded. “Okay, so it’s normal for you to have a yellow and green mouse. Noted.”
AU, minor angst, hurt/comfort, Shiro is human, Allura is still an alien, Shiro wants to celebrate her birthday, fluff, Shiro’s a dork, space mice, Shiro likes Lord of the Rings, Allura’s been stranded on Earth for six years now
Angst
Try Your Best (And Don’t Succeed) - mckinlily
Grief/mourning, Shiro has PTSD, Allura is a mess, Shiro is a mess, everyone is a mess but they’re trying the best they can, angst with a hopeful ending, set in season 2, gen or pre-slash, Allura-centric
Things Will Turn Out Fine - distinctive_pineapples (@obscure-sentimentalist)
“Would you mind telling me a story?” he asks, brushing a hand against the back of his head as if embarrassed by the request. “Maybe an Altean folktale, or something about your family. I… I’d just like to have something to remember you by.”
And oh, does that make her want to weep.
Future fic, Shallurangst, inspired by another show, angst with a happy ending, hopeful ending
Past and Future - @ebonynightwriter
During a Rebel training mission, Shiro and Allura are cut off from the group, and stranded on an unknown planet. Pushing to reunite with their team, they move forward, unaware of the dangerous forces around them…
Drama, tension, fighting, space battles, PTSD, psychological drama, mind control, mind games, developing relationship, feelings, one-shot, canon universe, season 4, Shallura Month 2017
S5 Shallurangst Drabbles - wordswithdragons ( @shiroallura)
this is a series of shallurangst drabbles posted to my tumblr over at shiroallura. do not all follow the same timeline, although many of them do fit together, the bottom three each individual takes of different possibilities set after s5. enjoy and maybe have tissues if you're weepy like me
Protect AU: I Have a Princess (and she has me) - killashilla
After a royal Altean gala is violently interrupted, Princess Allura and her bodyguard Shiro wait out the chaos alone while testing the boundaries of their strict roles in each others lives.
Shallura Protect AU, AU - bodyguard, AU - Real World, angst with feels, pining, mutual pining, blood and injury, undressing, forbidden love
I Miss You - SirFangirl
The princess who lost everything managed to lose something once more.
Angst, spoilers for season five, Allura knows a fake Shiro when she sees one but won’t admit it, the white lion knows what’s up, Shiro misses his friends and doesn’t deserve to suffer like this
Home (It’s in Her Hands) - palladioaigis
She's the light at the end of the tunnel, his everything, his home, and his love for her transcends time and space.
[[ Written for the Shallura zine Stars Aligned, Issue Two: Onwards.]]
Shallura Zine, Shiro needs therapy or a hug dammit, reunion
Stay With Me - nachseon
It’s not fair. It never is.
Angst, heavy angst, emotional hurt/comfort, mutual pining
Checkmate - rainingWolf
Shallura, Klance, drama, angst, action, romance, remix, VLD Fanfiction Remix 2017
Kintsukuroi - 13Vivacious13
Shiro is still coming to terms with the past. Allura notices and tries to help the best she can.
Emotional hurt/comfort, angst with a happy ending sorta, mentions of non-consensual body modifications, nothing too serious happens, I promise, mostly just reflecting on the past, established Allura/Shiro
Only Human - @bosstoaster (ChaoticReactions)
Collection of whump fics, tumblr prompt, leaning against walls to hide needing support, injury, hurt/comfort
Kuron/Clone Theory
Exchanges - thir13enth ( @ahumanintraining)
no returns, no refunds.
Clone theory, some angst
The Return of the Real Shiro - Meli_writes ( @meli-writes)
The real Shiro returns to the castle and finds a man with HIS face pretending to be HIM.
In his search to find a paladin he runs into Allura and he's so relieved because that last he heard from her she was screaming in pain.
Now, he has to explain that he is the real Shiro not that phony walking around the castle.
Shallura hugs, the real Shiro, Shiro returns, from wherever
Gravity - @braincoins
He looked at the clone. Monster, he thought. You didn’t mean to be, didn’t even want to be, but that’s what you are. He couldn’t help thinking that perhaps he and this clone had more in common after all.
Shallura Month 2017, angst, emotional hurt/comfort
Clone - littlespacestars (shameless self-promo)
Kuron is aware he’s a clone. He tries deciding whether or not to come clean to Allura about it, or let it surface on its own.
Shallurangst, One-sided attraction, Kuron wishes he were the real Shiro, angst
Like Real People Do - (5/5) - @andtheblueberrymuffin (Part 1 of Like Real People Do)
“Shiro knows this is wrong. Everything is wrong. But they need him. Keith said so, and Shiro knows, he knows, that if they need him he has to help them. It’s what he would do. It’s what he does. (Everything is fine.)
Or: The one where something is very wrong with Shiro after his second escape from the Galra.”
Tragedy, Post-Season/Series 03, Speculation about Shiro post season 3, ‘Shiro’, Implied/Referenced mind control, mind control aftermath & recovery, clone Shiro, prepare your tissues and cry deeply
Survivor's Rites (3/3) - (Part 2 of Like Real People Do) - @andtheblueberrymuffin
The Paladins have suffered losses before, but nothing quite like the one they're dealing with now. It's difficult to find the time to grieve when dealing with betrayals and Lotor's continued attacks. None of them are well-equipped to move on, in any case.
Or: the sequel to 'Like Real People Do.' Now with more misery.
Past character death, grief/mourning, post season 3, lion swapping, angst
Heartlines (8/8) - (Part 3 of Like Real People Do) - @andtheblueberrymuffin
After months of searching, Shiro has finally found his way back to the Castle of Lions, but nothing is quite how he remembers it. Everyone looks at him like they're seeing a ghost, for one thing....
Or: the conclusion to the 'Like Real People Do' series, where the fallout from the Galra Empire's experiments with human cloning nearly destroys everything the team has worked so hard to build. Takes place directly after the end of 'Survivor's Rites.'
Angst, emotional hurt/comfort, normal hurt/comfort in later chapters, clones, lion swapping, trauma, grief/mourning, plot, slow build, post season 3, implied/referenced underage drinking, original character death(s), attempted sexual assault, DOES NOT GET FAR
NSFW
Unconventional Piloting Methods - Pixie_rings ( @materassassino)
Flying a giant robot lion while having sex isn't the best idea.
Unsafe flight practices, do not attempt at home, vaginal sex, vaginal fingering, higher than the mile high club
Make You Feel Pure - sublimation ( @667-darkavenue)
“After all he’d been through, it couldn’t be clearer that universal forces had bent themselves backwards to pull him into the orbit of someone who cared for him, who trusted him, and who needed his care and trust just as much...”
Pool sex, breast play, outercourse, oral sex, praise kink, attention kink, praise kink, body worship, existential crisis midsex, stumbling upon all the embarrassing kinks you’re into midsex, sex with your girlfriend so good it opens your third eye, soft dom Allura
Playlist - befuddle
“If there’s anyone to blame for cockblocking, blame your shitty taste in music!”
Domestic AU where Shiro tries to get his groove on, and Allura just isn't having it.
Sex in public, car sex, fluff
Infomercials - befuddle
“We need it! We can’t keep replacing my bedframe at the crack of a new quintant to avoid suspicion. This will solve all our problems!”
Not graphic, suggestive content, humor, Shiro and Allura keep breaking the bedframe, this is the Shallura discord’s fault, the Shallura discord’s legacy, shitpost
Incandescent - CalicoTomcat
Shiro and Allura share an intimate evening and morning together, savoring a peaceful moment on the Castle of Lions.
Established relationship, oral sex, vaginal sex, genital piercing, fluffy and adorkable
Belong To You Alone - sublimation ( @667-darkavenue)
“Smile back, ask questions about him, go along with his suggestions. You’ve seen me do it.”
He thought it over. “Isn’t that… We have to leave in a day, with or without the army.”
“Oh, Shiro.” Allura smiled. “He’s not trying to ask for your hand, he just thinks you’re nice to look at. It’s harmless.”
“Well. I’ll give it a shot.”
When Shiro gave something a shot, he didn’t hold back.
Space politics, throwing Shiro under the bus as sexy leverage, blow jobs, frustration, jealousy, smut w/ plot, attention kink, praise kink, misunderstanding & miscommunication
Dirty Talk, Dirty Thoughts - Meli_writes ( @meli-writes)
Allura has always wondered what The Paladins meant when they shouted things like: "Fuck you!" or "Suck my dick!" in the middle of a fight against Zarkon's army. One night she asks Shiro what it all means and he tries his best to explain. ;)
Funny, sexy, dirty talk, dirty thoughts, angst, smut, embarrassed Shiro, flirty Allura, sexy Shiro
Alien Anatomy Altean - FeyduBois
Shiro and Allura's first time does not go as planned due to differences in biology.
Alien sex, alien biology, anal fingering, crack, smut
Une Petite Mort Thermique - pixie_rings ( @materassassino)
The one sexual taboo Altea had, and she is about to break it.
Anal sex, alien biology, kink meme
Just So I Can Feel Something - @smolsarcasticraspberry
Sometimes you can't sleep and the only thing that helps is fucking your co-worker in the break room cos you haven't been kissed in 10,000 years.
OR: that time after Crystal Venom when Shiro and Allura hooked up on the sofas and tried to act like it didn't mean anything.
"Allura took a sip of her tea, hoping the hot steam would hide her blush, and leaned over to put her mug down on the coffee table. Her body shifted with the movement, and her hand drew away from Shiro's. To her surprise, his fingers tightened around her own. As if he didn't want to let go.
She glanced down at his hand where it gripped hers, and then up at his face.
"Sorry," he said. "I just… I haven't been touched in a long time. It's nice.""
Smut, fluff, flut, porn with feelings, post Crystal Venom, canon compliant
Reunited - bittergoldilocks
Before Shiro disappeared they had been at the beginning of a tentative relationship which had amounted to stolen kisses, secret meetings, hushed affections, and one adventurous encounter in a supply closet. When “Shiro”- the clone- had “returned”, Allura thought it was over. Not only did the meetings stop, eventually even the kind words did too. She had been devastated. And Shiro seemed to somehow understand this now.
Reunion sex, praise kink, crying, slight angst, Real Shiro, love confessions
Relinquish - @braincoins
The Coalition's newest allies are annoying and picky and Allura's on the verge of losing her cool with them. Shiro steps in to give her a night away from responsibility and decision-making.
softdom!Shiro, oral sex, fingering, how to be sweet and loving while also fucking someone senseless, and also still be goofy dorks
She Still Pulls on Me - nayanroo ( @teslatricity)
some nights, shiro can't sleep. on those nights, allura sets aside her crown.
Mention of nightmares, throne sex, shallura exchange
To the New Morning - babyfairy ( @babyfairybaekhyun)
Morning showers are often Shiro’s favorite kind of showers.
PWP, smut, shower sex, fluff
Relaxing - head_and_heart
Shiro has an idea of how to help Allura relax after a long mission
Porn without plot, oral sex, vaginal fingering, sex, no excuse for this just smutty smut
Silk and Tongue - Meli_writes ( @meli-writes)
“I have something in mind that I think you’ll enjoy, want to try it?,” he asked her again. She was flushed and her pink body marks glowed a little brighter from her arousal.
“What did you have in mind because I kind of like it here,” she said while she rocked her hips to grind against him.
He smirked and brought his hands to rest on her hips. “I like you there too, but I was thinking you might like doing that against my mouth,” he said.
Allura’s hips stopped, but Shiro noticed her breath quicken in excitement.
Pure smut, silk robes, hungry licks, porn without plot, Allura tries something new, shameless smut
Galaxies Collide - @smolsarcasticraspberry
Shiro and Allura take a joyride in the Black Lion. IF YOU KNOW WHAT I MEAN.
Mind Link AU, flut, smut, some plot, dom Shiro, not super dom, but like a lil bit, soft dom Shiro, they’re gonna bang in the Black lion okay, it was inevitable
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Please support these lovely writers and give them some kudos and a comment! I actually discovered a lot of fics I haven’t gotten around to fully reading yet, so I need to go back and do the same! Thanks for the lovely fics, guys! <3
#shallura fic rec#shallura#fic recs#shiro#allura#takashi shirogane#princess allura#vld#voltron#I would put a READ MORE thing on this but when I do it screws up the text??#fml#idek guys#i'M SORRY
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The Fenris Wolf 9: VERY few left! This ed consists of the 23 first hand-numbered copies, each comes w a signed print by Val Denham!
https://store.trapart.net/details/00026
This volume contains material from the conference Psychoanalysis, Art & the Occult (London, 2016), with contributions from Gary Lachman, Vanessa Sinclair, Katelan Foisy, Sharron Kraus, Demetrius Lacroix, Graham Duff, Ken Henson, Peter Grey, Val Denham, Claire-Madeline Culkin, Steven Reisner, Katy Bohinc, Olga Cox Cameron, Ingo Lambrecht, Elliott Edge, Charlotte Rodgers, Alkistis Dimech, Fred Yee, Robert Ansell, Ray O Neill, Derek M Elmore, Julio Mendes Rodrigo, Eve Watson, and Carl Abrahamsson. Topics include Sigmund Freud and the Occult, Art as Alchemy, the art of John Balance, Cut-Ups as a magical and psychoanalytic tool, Maori shamanism within therapy, Animistic art, Dance as ritual, Androgynous aspects in Austin Osman Spare’s art, Salvador Dali’s meeting with Jacques Lacan, Rebis: the Double Being, David Bowie’s Non-Human Effect, similarities between ritual magic and psychoanalysis, and much more. Trapart Books 2017. 248 pages, 148 x 210 mm, hardbound with dust jacket.
#thefenriswolf #valdenham #vanessasinclair #carlabrahamsson #psychartcult #occulture
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William Cheng, Taking Back the Laugh: Comedic Alibis, Funny Fails, 43 Critical Inquiry 528 (2017)
Eighteen days after 11 September 2001, a new season of Saturday Night Live premiered on schedule, making big headlines given how most other television programs were getting replaced by round-the-clock news coverage. The NFL and MLB called off games, the Emmys were doubly postponed, Rockstar delayed the release of Grand Theft Auto III (set in a fictionalized New York City), and Disney’s parks closed their doors.1 Entertainment across the United States—sitcoms, sports, rollercoasters—screeched to a halt, ground to zero. For SNL producer Lorne Michaels to reboot his laugh factory was saying something.2
Specifically, Michaels wanted the host Reese Witherspoon to say “fucking.”3 He told her to work the word into the opening monologue’s punchline, declaring he would happily pay whatever Federal Communications Commission (FCC) fines came their way. Although Witherspoon chickened out at the last minute (replacing the teleprompter’s fucking with the word balls for her joke, leaving the audience none the wiser), Michaels’s original plea conveyed how the arbitrary taboo of an F-bomb could feel ridiculously immaterial compared to the fire and brimstone a few miles away. With the world crashing down, a little uncensored fucking—scandalizing everyone but, really, no one—would have rhetorically embodied what all of the talking heads were claiming anyway: the country had been forever changed, no going back, no take-backs. After abundant media jabber about the death of irony, Michaels wished to send the message that, for at least one night, all bets were off and all laughs fair game.4
Fast-forward to 18 June 2015, the night Jon Stewart ran out of jokes on The Daily Show.5As Stewart told a stunned audience, he couldn’t bring himself to write funny material in the wake of the previous afternoon’s massacre of nine black worshippers at a church in Charleston, South Carolina. Stewart’s silent treatment made loud news. The moratorium on comedy flashed across the internet as sagacious testament to the stupefying effects of tragedy.
At the time, the respective acts of foreign and domestic terrorism sent shocks through the citizenry’s collective funny bone, exploding entertainment’s permissions and proclivities. SNL dared to make ‘em laugh; The Daily Show dared to desist. Lorne Michaels wanted to take back laughter (to retrieve it and return it to the nation’s viewers); Jon Stewart sought to take out laughter (solemnly hushing the audience and flipping the studio soundscape on its head). Opposite tacks, yet both got away with it, snatching praise and publicity for good measure … funnily enough.
Laughing out of Court
Remember the last time someone told you to lighten up? It’s a gut punch, a low blow. Accusations of “why so serious?” feel like serious attacks, striking at a core failure of character in societies ruled by laugh tracks, witty tweets, and punny headlines.6 Even (or especially) in times of strife, humor should presumably serve as fantastic armor against no-good realities. But this armor is not so much iron as it is ironic; for within neoliberal logics, people who endure systemic oppression (blacks, queers, crips)—who might have the leastreason to lighten up arbitrarily—tend to be the ones who are most exhorted to gain a sense of humor, to take a joke, and to laugh things off. A quotidian illustration involves men who goad women to smile, as if an unhumored female countenance (Resting Bitch Face) were an affront to physiognomic aesthetics and social mores.7
Yet when disenfranchised people do appear overpeppy or do laugh out loud, they can get slammed anyway. On 22 August 2015, eleven women (ten black, one white), part of a book club called Sistahs on the Reading Edge, were kicked off the Napa Valley Wine Train because they allegedly made too much noise while celebrating a member’s birthday. For the record, when the laughers asked the maître d’ whether passengers had voiced complaints, he replied: “Well, people’s faces are uncomfortable.”8 In other (or no) words, the maître d’ addressed the noise violation by reading into the passengers’ silent expressions. The incident birthed the hashtag #LaughingwhileBlack, a spin on #DrivingwhileBlack. For a persecuted population to laugh, this meme suggests, risks circumstantial vulnerability and sanctions. Because minoritized individuals bear higher evidentiary loads for propriety, mirthful outbursts can sound amplified to suspicious or envious ears. Laughter may be damning not only for the chronically marginalized but also for anyone in temporary hot water—a child being lectured by parents, a student in detention, or a defendant on trial.
Consider the 1988 appellate proceedings of State v. Parker, in which the court found the defendant unremorseful based on his laughter during the prosecutor’s statements. Although laughter can bubble up from all kinds of feelings and conditions—nervousness, despair, incomprehension—this court’s litigious hearing of the defendant’s laughter pegged the act as evidence of impenitence or even evil.9
Alternatively, take the case of Sgt. Robert Bales, currently serving a life sentence for murdering sixteen Afghan civilians in 2012. During the trial, prosecutors played a phone recording of Bales and his wife laughing as they discussed the case—again, a putative blow to claims of remorse.10
In these instances, courts assumed that laughter spills secrets, always saying something. To extrapolate from Miranda warnings, anything you say—and any laugh let loose—may indeed be used against you in court. Most recently, the public doubled down on its vilification of former pharmaceutical CEO Martin Shkreli, who, when testifying before Congress in February 2016 (on charges of price-gouging drugs), repeatedly pleaded the Fifth Amendment while smirking and looking “as if he were about to burst out laughing.”11
Here, just the look of suppressed laughter—no less so than any sound of laughter—sufficed to cement Shkreli’s reputation as “the most hated man in America,” racking up accusations of immaturity and douchery to boot (fig. 1).12
Figure 1. Martin Shkreli testifying before Congress.
Or rewind to the biblical story about the birth of Isaac. God tells Abram and Sarai, who are one hundred and ninety years young respectively, that they will bear a child. Incredulous, Abram falls facedown and laughs, enacting the first ROFL in Hebrew scripture. Later, when God repeats this prophecy, Sarai laughs to herself. God asks her (rhetorically, since He obviously knows the answer), “Is anything impossible for the LORD?”
“I did not laugh,” says the fearful Sarai.“Yes, you did laugh,” God replies.[Genesis 18:14–15]
It’s a classic case of He said, she said, except there’s little room for negotiation here; the He in this case is the final Word, the divine rule of law. Although Sarai tries to retract her laugh, God operates under the schoolyard principle of no take-backs. “Once laughed, a laugh persists,” points out Anca Parvulescu in her reading of this Bible passage. “God would not hear of it.”13 (Or, rather, God would not not hear of it.) Notably, both Abram and Sarai laughed, but God gave the latter a harder time. Gender politics aside, this discrepancy may owe to how Sarai laughed quietly (whereas Abram LOL-ed), as if attempting to get away with it. And if there’s one thing God can’t stand, as the Old Testament certifies, it’s people who underestimate his omniscience.
Such stories about laughter’s liabilities run counter to more common portrayals of laughter and humor as subversive, free, and empowering.14 Comedians and laughers, after all, often demand get-out-of-jail-free cards by professing something to be just a joke.15 The just in just a joke serves double duty, meaning not only only, but also fair, as in “all’s fair in love” and comedy. A homophobic punchline or an act of sexual harassment might dodge censure if the case can be made that it was performed in good fun.16 This is comedy’s signature alibi. Alibi hails from Latin’s alius and ibi, roughly meaning “someplace else.” With a license to kill, comedians are expected to boast, “Oh yes, I went there!”—there, meaning “someplace else,” out of bounds and beyond the pale. Comedy’s anything-goes exemptions conjure the Bakhtinian carnivalesque, a state of upheaval where “serious matters are suspended, things do not count, absolution is offered ex ante.”17 Comedic alibis can be so powerful that they drag errors and faux pas into the realm of respectability, enabling even the most egregious ethical or aesthetic failing to pass for … well, passing.18 Given how critical alchemy can turn just about any catastrophe into comic gold, the arena of risibility in today’s media appears virtually boundless.
For how many of us can claim immunity to comedy’s exculpatory rationales? Even Christie Davies, who has spent decades researching jokes and humor (in effect, studying why jokes matter), peppers his work with disclaimers concerning how jokes might not matter, noting that they do not “have any significant social consequences or express profound moral or existential truths.”19 Against the familiar notion of rapier wits, Davies insists that most jokes neither embody nor engender antipathy.20 A set-piece joke, he says, “cannot be used as a sword; it is merely decoration on the scabbard. Jokes are entertainment only, a mere laughing matter.”21 This said, excuses about levity don’t always succeed. Telling someone to “lighten up!” or “take a joke!” can fetch the killjoy retort that “you can’t joke your way out of this!” (an appeal against effectivity) or “you hurt my feelings!” (an appeal to affectivity). So while comedic alibis have potential to excuse failings of aesthetics and ethics, they might fail unto themselves—not least in the face of a hostile jury.
A familiar saying is that “against the assault of laughter, nothing can stand,” a Mark Twain gem uttered today in inspirational contexts (despite the lesser-known fact that it’s spoken by Satan in Twain’s novel).22 Beyond its advocacy of using mirth against malevolence, however, this quotation can be read another way: that when our bodies are assaulted by our own impulsive laughter, we show our cards and lose our moral credibility, leaving no leg—nothing—to stand on. If you snicker at a comedian’s racist joke, it becomes that much harder for you to scramble onto high ground because, listen, you laughed; the evidence is in the vibrations, right here (not someplace else, no alibi). Yes, you may argue after the joke that you were laughing cynically and knowingly at the structural racial injustices that fuel such cruel comedy, but by this point you’re necessarily on the defensive, carrying the burden of proof. In any case, having to say something was just a joke already implies that court is now in session, that some possible offense lies in need of retraction or explication. Complicating every aspect of the comedic alibi, furthermore, is the fact that people don’t always know (how to describe) why they laugh.23 And just as people hate explaining jokes, most loathe having to rationalize their laughter out loud.
In this article, I perform an acoustemology of comedy’s alibis in contemporary media. I listen for means by which laughter—its emission, contagion, suppression—can serve as audible barometers of how alibis either fly or bomb. A paradox emerges from the ways spontaneous-sounding laughter can simultaneously free us from societal scripts while shackling us within our own telltale, tittering bodies. A laugher’s accountability poses a moving target precisely because so much of comedy’s generic success relies on procedures of failure, impropriety, and breakage. Through three progressive cases, I delve into modern technologies of taking back laughter via the breaking and hacking of cultural texts. Each case features a do-it-yourself (DIY) phenomenon that exposes the stakes and choreographies of comedy’s consumer sovereignties: first, television fans who, through techniques of editing and recomposition, remove laugh tracks from comedies (The Big Bang Theory, Friends) or, inversely, add laugh tracks to dramas (Breaking Bad, The Wire), using the silence or surplus sound to break the show’s original mood; second, a YouTube game show that tries to make contestants break into smiles or laughter by presenting them with outrageous videos; and, third, Apollo Theater audience members who, through brash laughter and boos, use their collective judge-it-yourself authority to make or break the dreams of hopeful performers on amateur nights. All three of these examples hinge on the breakage of norms and the breaking in of new normals, embodying or eliciting laughter that may variously sound ambivalent, uncomfortable, or out of line. Lending a musicological ear to laughter’s stubborn materialities and technical hackability opens resonant perspectives into some of comedy’s funniest alibis. I conclude with a tribute to laughter’s Debbie Downer cousin: the groan.
Hacking Laughs: Big Bang Bombing
Bombing is the sonorous metaphor for the devastating silence that greets a floundering comedian. A maw of muteness engulfs the performer, turning an atmosphere of optimistic joybringing into cringe-worthy desperation. Just as bombs blast away landscapes, so bombing demolishes the ideal soundscapes of comedic call-and-response.
One domain of comedy where bombing remains virtually impossible is a television show with either a laugh track or a cued-to-laugh studio audience. So long as there’s no audio malfunction or audience reticence, every gag and punchline should fetch reliable, lively chuckles. But although producers have historically used laugh tracks to bestow this sense of liveliness and liveness, the tracks can strike a deadening tone. Slavoj Žižek says he experiences both catharsis and unease when he watches a show with canned laughter. “Even if I do not laugh,” he declares, “but simply stare at the screen, tired after a hard day’s work, I nevertheless feel relieved after the show …: my most intimate feelings can be radically externalized; I can literally ‘laugh and cry through another.’”24 Canned laughter—or, as Ron Rosenbaum calls it, “Mirth Muzak”—is as flat as funny gets.25 Ontologically, a recorded or synthesized laugh track is all surface, a veneer of jocund artifice; amplitudinally, decibels for canned chortles versus canned guffaws vary minimally, since television audio requires volume equalization according to the FCC, the European Broadcasting System, and comparable national broadcast-safe standards. Even at live tapings for sitcoms and stand-up comedy specials, audiences face flat-out restrictions in terms of how they’re supposed to sound. Audience members may be instructed to laugh and cheer as they normally would rather than in attention-grabbing ways. At a shooting for The Big Bang Theory, a producer told the audience, “Your mission is simple tonight—all you need to do is to sit back, relax; please do not identify your laughs.”26 This audience’s task was to mesh like a musical ensemble, to produce an orchestrated simulacrum of a laugh track (recorded, remixed, refined) for the benefit of home viewers, whose patronage remains, of course, what really matters in terms of ratings and revenue.
With either obedient studio audiences or synthesized sound files, a sitcom can opt for laughter as a formatted failsafe. No need for alibis, no risk of comic failure. But similar to Žižek, Jean Baudrillard has expressed bemusement at how “laughter on American television” resembles “the chorus in Greek tragedy,” such that “it is the screen that is laughing and having a good time.”27 For some critics, a laugh track already embodies affective alienation and failure. It epitomizes the potential falsities of laughter more generally, masking the fault lines of the homogenizing pleasure industry and its ransom promises of happiness. Technically, sounds of other people laughing in no way preclude ourselves from doing likewise. Yet this laughter, if heard as distracting or paternalistic or counterfeit, can seemingly yank the laughs out of our own mouths. Like a flat soda, a flat laugh track might leave a weird feeling on our tongues—all sugar and no pop, empty calories for the ingratiated body.
Although Žižek’s and Baudrillard’s hifalutin criticisms sound like familiar brands of Adornian spoilsport commentary, canned laughter has, since its inception, polarized popular audiences as well.28 One of the most picked-on sitcoms today is none other than The Big Bang Theory, which contains frequent and over-the-top laughs. Pushing against the show’s egregious laughter, fans (or hate-watchers) have lately experimented with taking out this laughter through basic sound editing and scene splicing. These tinkerers scrub out the laughter while leaving the visuals and narrative progression intact. The result of this DIY détournement is that characters’ japes crash into silences. A YouTube user named Sboss has released a series of such videos with the explanation: “Due to my hatred for the television show ‘The Big Bang Theory,’ I expose how unfunny the show actually is when you take out the laugh track.”29 According to Sboss (essentially a Big Bang truther), canned laughter is the shoddy alibi for the show’s comedic failings, both breeding and excusing unfunniness with a sonic smokescreen. Below is the transcript of a clip made by Sboss, a scene involving a drunk Raj on a horrendous first date with Lalita, an acquaintance from childhood.30
RAJ: [Smiles.] I can’t believe I’m sitting here next to little Lalita Gupta. [1 second of light laughter replaced by 1 second of silence, and so on.]
LALITA: [Smiles.] Well, you are.
R: [Smiles.] Little Lalita. That’s kind of fun to say. Little Lalita, little Lalita, little Lalita. [1 second of light laughter removed.] You should try it.
L: [Smiles.] No, it’s okay. [2.5 seconds of medium laughter removed.]
R: You have lost sooo much weight! [2 seconds of loud laughter removed.] It must have been difficult for you because you were so, so fat! [2.5 seconds of medium laughter removed.] Do you remember?
L: [Smiles.] Yes, I do.
R: [Smirks.] Of course you do. Who could forget being that fat? [1.5 seconds of medium laughter removed.]
L: [Smiles.] Well, I’ve been trying. [Half second of light laughter.]
R: So you’re a dental student. Are you aware that dentists have an extremely high suicide rate? [Half second of light laughter removed.] Not as high as, say, air traffic controllers, but then, there are far more dentists than air traffic controllers, so in pure numbers, you’re still winning! [Half second of light laughter removed.]
L: [Smiles.] Yay, me. [1 second of medium laughter removed.]
Especially for viewers who have seen the original episode, this minute-long segment’s omission of a laugh track can be earsplitting and mindbending. In total, thirteen seconds of laughter-turned-silence (almost a quarter of the clip’s runtime) blow a lot of dead air, a conversational vacuum made all the more awkward by Raj’s clueless giggles and Lalita’s politely rueful smiles. Without the noise of loyal laughers, Raj’s quips about obesity and suicide sound downright cruel. Barbs wither on the vine, and any imagined alibi of just joking! fails because no one is laughing. The gaping silences, however, cause the scene to fail so spectacularly that it stands to become funny on another level. No longer an aesthetically sensible text, the scene can tease laughter anew from the YouTube viewers who may find the metatextual manipulation absurd and subversive. Rather than laughing with the drunk Raj, we laugh at the laugh-deprived show. A taken-out laugh track enables viewers to take back their laughs, to reassert sovereignty over the choice of laughing and, moreover, to find humor in the bleak laughlessness.
On The Big Bang Theory and other laugh-heavy shows, part of what makes laughter sound fake is the rigidity with which it punctuates onscreen events: a character will say or do something funny, and laughter ensues (then stops); another character replies, and more laughter follows; and on it goes. Producers cannot afford to let laughter drown out the dialogue or excessively stall a scene’s pacing. Yet in real-life scenarios, people do not pause for laughter every five seconds, nor do laughers perfectly synchronize their outbursts. (Granted, if a friend tells a truly hilarious joke, it might cause everyone to crack up for a prolonged period of time, requiring people to catch their breaths; the point is, however, that these moments of dramatic hysterics are rare.) Tightly edited (or, with studio audiences, thoroughly instructed and choreographed), the laughter that erupts from sitcom one-liners boasts a sonic cleanliness in homogenized start-stop motions. At the same time, it is exactly these neat starts and stops that easily enable a sound-hacker to snip out the laughs without interfering with dialogue.
Even easier than removing a laugh track from a show is adding a laugh track using sound superimposition. One user did just this for the drama Breaking Bad. Besides interjecting laughter, the DIY video “Breaking Bad as a Sitcom” includes an upbeat musical intro, whooping cheers, a sentimental aww, genteel applause, and a cheery outro.31 The original scene is supposed to be unfunny, with Skyler White calling the cops on her estranged drug-dealing husband. Solely through sonic reframing, the affect short-circuits. Just a dash of well-timed laughter makes the scene funny. People have similarly added laugh tracks to shows and films such as The Wire and Schindler’s List (dir. Steven Spielberg, 1993), as well as to touchy scenes in sitcoms: Laura Winslow finding a racist slur spray-painted on her school locker in Family Matters; Will Smith getting reabandoned by his father on The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air; and little Stephanie Tanner mourning her deceased mother on Full House (fig. 2).32
Figure 2. Serious moments overlaid with (and undercut by) laugh tracks on (left) Family Matters (season 2, episode 20) and (right) The Wire (season 4, episode 3).
Popular descriptions of laughter as a contagious force break down in instances where others’ laughter (canned tracks) make us less inclined to laugh or where we laugh largely in response to nonlaughter (redacted tracks). 33 Such affective flip-flop bears out in an episode of the dramedy Ally McBeal, when Ally goes on a first date with a man named Dennis, who, it turns out, has a low threshold for what he finds funny and, what’s worse, sports a massive braying laugh. In fact, during the date, he laughs and snorts so loudly that he draws the attention of nearby diners, who stop their conversations to stare. Ally, meanwhile, doesn’t laugh; she is embarrassed. The next day, Ally tells her friend Elaine, “I spent the rest of the date either talking about AIDS or the Holocaust or Linda Tripp, the most unfunny, horrible things I could think of: anything just to make him not laugh again.” 34 Ally, in sum, was trying to use her words to remove the laugh track—the overbearing sounds of Dennis’s inexplicable (and admittedly machinelike) vocalizations. Alas, she failed to mute or hack him. His automatonic mirth had no off switch. So later, in the company of Elaine and another coworker named Nelle, Ally finds Dennis and tries to do the next best thing—goad him into laughing so that her skeptical friends can at least hear firsthand how terrible he is. After the women tell several jokes—eliciting several fake outs along the way, leading Dennis to chuckle only lightly—he finally lets loose his obscene, gargantuan laugh. As Dennis howls, the three women are stunned into silence, albeit with mouths likewise agape (fig. 3). Dennis’s dramatic exhalations (laughs) and inhalations (snorts) suck up all the oxygen in the room, while Ally, Elaine, and Nelle remain motionless, breathless, speechless. The three women fail to stop his outburst once it starts, yet it is also this very failure that’s intended to tickle the show’s viewers, who stand to be moved, like Dennis, to laugh out loud.
Figure 3. Dennis, Nelle, and Elaine in Ally McBeal (left to right).
For Ally, Dennis’s laughter turns out to be a deal breaker—unsurprising given that he breaks with conventions of polite conduct, breaks up flows of conversations, and sounds broken when he’s guffawing. Canned laugh tracks are bad enough. But a walking, talking laugh track? Inexcusable.
Laughable Games
Ally disapproved of Dennis not because he happened to laugh at offensive or discriminatory jokes (a would-be moral flaw) but rather because he laughed offensively and indiscriminately (apparently a far worse crime in the games of courtship). Confronted with Dennis’s outbursts, Ally and her friends understood neither what he found so funny nor why he laughed so much. Laughter indeed doesn’t always reveal accurate or actionable information. Its alibis and liabilities depend on legibility. A “laughing face,” says Murray Pomerance, “can indicate not mirth or release but secrecy, darkness, surrender, derision, and improbability.”35 Yet the point remains that when people laugh, their sonic and physiognomic excess tends to draw attention and thus to invite scrutiny. Because laughter can be hard to stifle, its leakages purportedly speak volumes, gurgling with confessional authenticity. The assumption is that people who are laughing may do so despite themselves, unintentionally revealing something in the process.36 For even when someone appears about to laugh (say, Martin Shkreli testifying before Congress), we might presume to know what they’re all about. Imminence of laughter telegraphs immanence of character … or so believed the tweeters and YouTube commenters whose hatred for Shkreli intensified at the mere sign of his smirking face.
Leave it to none other than YouTube—Broadcast Yourself!—to popularize the recursive spectacles of stifling laughter. Fine Brothers Entertainment’s React Channel initiated a recent series of YouTube videos called Laughing Challenges, which task contestants with suppressing smiles and chuckles while watching trending clips on YouTube. The slightest grin or chortle gets you booted from the competition. The winner is whoever keeps a steely face against the onslaught of humorous prods. For each contest, the camera cuts between twelve contestants and keeps an inset display of the footage that they are required to watch. Although, for the sake of fairness, all contestants watch the same series of videos, they will sometimes defiantly shout, “That’s not fair!”
upon breaking into grins or laughter at an irresistibly (unfairly) uproarious video. In one challenge, the contestants are shown a YouTube clip of a young man shrieking with laughter; some contestants manage to maintain a stony expression, but others don’t last long. The off-camera producer coyly accuses a young contestant: “Sydney, you smiled!” And like the Bible’s defensive Sarai (responding to the likewise disembodied voice of authority), Sydney tries to get away with it, protesting: “No, I didn’t! I didn’t! I didn’t! I didn’t!”37 Pleading to no avail, she is removed from the competition (fig. 4).
Figure 4. We (YouTube viewers) are invited to laugh at Sydney trying not to laugh at an inset video of a man laughing. Besides the laugh factor, the mise-en-abyme operates medially and geometrically (rectangular screen within screen within screen).
The bankable purpose of these challenges is primarily to attract and to amuse YouTube viewers, who are encouraged to laugh at contestants attempting—and failing—to refrain from laughing. Watching someone aiming desperately to preserve a straight face can be a funny yet disquieting experience. As the Laughing Challenge contestants try to keep from smiling or laughing, they show bulging eyes, flaring nostrils, quivering cheeks, pursed lips, and other compensatory contortions (think of sci-fi scenes where an alien is about to burst out of someone’s face). The gestural excesses born of suppressed laughter end up visually sonifying this laughter anyway, as pressures that normally would escape from one’s throat find weird release from alternate orifices and pores. But for all of their funny fails, contestants may occasionally astonish us with how adeptly they succeed in curating a staid, blank expression. “I seem like a really cheerful person,” a winner named Becca declared darkly, “but when I want to, I can be dead inside.”38 If Becca took any aesthetic pleasure in the carousel of funny clips, she let nothing show.
In the age of YouTube, remarks Sianne Ngai, “what we might call Other People’s Aesthetic Pleasures have become folded into the heart of the artwork.”39 Affective responses refract and percolate through a palimpsest of spectators and spectacles. Ngai parses the case of the famous Double Rainbow video, in which the natural wonder of a double rainbow became upstaged by the effusive response of Paul Vasquez, who recorded it; Vasquez’s response was subsequently upstaged by millions of delighted YouTube viewers, parodists, and media commentators. “Aesthetic artifact and affective response,” Ngai points out, “were thus conflated in a way that ended up doubly short-circuiting the original object of aesthetic appreciation and leaving it behind.”40 Watching a Laughing Challenge, we likewise redistribute our attention and affects among a panoply of funny things. Were we to describe the laughing game with the stock preamble, “The funny thing about this is …,” we would fail to pin down a singular subject. But in this carnivalesque melting pot of recursive laughter, would we really care to explain why we’re laughing anyway? Or might we feel content to let this resonant laughter, like a good joke, stand on its own and speak for itself?
A Laughing Challenge on the React Channel appears to be just a game, just for laughs: safe spaces to frolic and fail in the name of entertainment. As contestants suppress laughter, or laugh at themselves for laughing, or make a YouTube viewer laugh at the laughability of nonlaughter, the spectacle of heavy-handed levity is both positively intense and intensely positive. But the chronic bright-sidedness of these games belies the possibility that the stakes can creep higher than their ludic façades. Predictably, many of the laughable videos shown to contestants involve, to riff on Ngai, Other People’s Epic Fails: falls, face-plants, notorious groin hits, and the sorts of obvious painful acts long featured on clip shows (America’s Funniest Home Videos), stunt shows (Jackass), game shows (Wipeout), and Tumblr blogs. These are physical injuries and sometimes near-death experiences. They are serious insofar as there might be visible evidence of maiming and trauma. In one Laughing Challenge that showed a montage of various people getting hit on the head, a young contestant named Anita proclaimed (while keeping her eyes obligatorily glued to the screen): “You know these people can die, right? I don’t laugh at that kind of stuff.” Now, maybe Anita truly found nothing funny about sadism. Or maybe she said this out loud in order to stymy her own impulse to laugh. (At the end of the challenge, after learning that she had won, Anita asked: “Can I laugh now?”—then undammed a huge guffaw.)41
What’s revealing here is that even when an epic fail does involve injury, its outrageous goals of knee-jerk amusement tend to stamp out a spectator’s long-term concerns. Viewers do not lose sleep wondering whether a crotch-smacked jackass has gone on to suffer permanent testicular damage or whether his health insurance will pick up medical fees. By subscribing to the comedic alibi that epic fails are all in good fun, viewers banish the inconvenient specter of killjoy consequence. In order to justify our externalized laughter at someone else’s expense, we may have to internalize—conjoining Lauren Berlant and Susan Sontag—a certain cruel optimism regarding the pain of others.42 Comedy’s alibis effectively make the very genre of epic fails possible.
Sure, we might feel mildly ashamed when laughing involuntarily at a video showing a skateboarder’s agonizing pratfall. We might even wish we could take back our laugh so as to disavow guilt over schadenfreude. Yet the advent of YouTube has complicated the power gradients in spectacles of harm and victimhood. Especially when a laughable injury goes viral, the viewers can plainly see its stratospheric page hits and up-votes, which convey not only that many other people must be laughing at the same thing (moral absolution via mass participation) but also that this epic fail has already become too big to fail (with the subject’s fifteen minutes of fame compensating for whatever damages enabled this lulz-mongering celebrity to begin with). Alibis of permissible laughter therefore become that much tighter when there’s safety in laughers’ numbers and when we assume, whether rightly or wrongly, that notorious butts are willing subjects who are handsomely paid for their troubles.
To nuance these assumptions, let’s eavesdrop on a Broadcast Yourself venue that preceded YouTube, an infamous stage where performers have sought fame, risked humiliation, and funnily bombed time and again: the Apollo Theater.
Judge-It-Yourself
In the Apollo Theater, Harlem’s house of boos, comedians and musicians perform for a jury of their peers. Marion J. Caffey, producer of Amateur Night at the Apollo, sets the scene:
We offer [audience members] what no one else offers them—the power of the boo…. When you watch little old ladies, Eurocentric ladies and African ladies and Asian ladies, man, power up their boo? And they’ve never booed a person in their lives? And the freedom that comes over them, when it’s like, “Is it OK?” To watch that transformation in the audience where, by the last person or second-to-the-last person, they feel like, “Hmmm … I’m gonna try this! Booo!” And it’s a timid boo! Yet, it is a boo from deep within.43
Caffey’s gleeful synopsis of the Apollo audience’s internal monologue makes the people sound akin to the metamorphosed participants of the Stanford Prison Experiment or Stanley Milgram’s shocking tests. Apollonites’ boos burst forth as if exposing an impish, repressed drive to judge and condemn. On Amateur Nights, an audience’s prolonged razzes will summon the Executioner, the Apollo’s tap-dancing avatar who uses a shepherd’s crook or a broom to usher struggling performers off the stage.44
If you watch any video recording of the Apollo’s jubilant spectators booing an amateur performer, what you hear and see is, yes, booing (out of puckered lips and oval mouths). What you also see—yet cannot hear—is people laughing at this spectacle of humiliation. Funnily enough, an acoustemology here requires sharp eyes; the staccato laughter is visible but virtually mute, drowned out by the wall of sostenuto boos.Amateur Nights at the Apollo operate under the yays and nays of spectatorial DIY. With considerable sovereignty, audience members take adjudication into their own power-tripping hands and, if dissatisfied, use their vocal cords to terminate a performance and to hit Play Next on the night’s set list.45
But despite the garish sights and sounds of the Apollo’s apparent mob mentality, audience members do not always agree. A performance can sometimes split a jury, especially at the outset. A famous yet frequently mischaracterized example is the 1988 debut of a thirteen-year-old Lauryn Hill, who, on the televised Showtime at the Apollo (featuring amateur artists along with more established performers), sang “Who’s Lovin’ You,” the 1960 Motown standard by William “Smokey” Robinson. Most click-baity websites emphasize that Hill was booed, a delicious outrage given that she would go on to win eight Grammys. Few writers mention, however, that if you listen closely to the full performance, the audience’s response undergoes several changes over the course of just two minutes.
HOST: Well, come on, Lauryn, we’re going to love you! Sing for us! [The audience cheers and applauds; applause fades as Hill begins to sing.]
LAURYN HILL: [Singing.] When I had you, I treated you bad [audience boos immediately] and wrong my dear. And boy since you been away, [boos crescendo but are counteracted by a bit of applause] dontcha know I sit around with my head hangin’ down, and I wonder who’s lovin’ you. [Boos and applause mix and jostle; both die down by the end of the first verse, leaving only some isolated cheers and jeers. In the three beats of rest between the first and second verses, someone from the audience shouts, “Move up to the mic!” Hill heeds the advice and keeps singing.] I should have never, ever made you cry, and boy since you been gone, [smattering of boos and cheers; cheers grow louder as Hill takes mic off its stand] dontcha know I sit around with my head hangin’ down, and I wonder who’s lovin’ you. [Audience vocalizations begin to die down, replaced by people clapping along to the song’s second and fourth beats.] Life without love is oh so lonely. I don’t think I’m gonna make it. [Clapping continues; there are no more audible boos by this point.] Dontcha know I sit around with my head hangin’ down, and I wonder who’s lovin’ you. [With ritenuto in the song’s final line, the clapping stops, then turns into full-on applause and a standing ovation.]46
Although Hill persevered through her performance and won the audience over, she reportedly cried afterwards backstage.47 And who could blame her? Belated applause doesn’t erase the horrors of initial boos, which must have felt particularly traumatic for a thirteen-year-old. Simply from watching this video, you would also never know that an unofficial rule prohibits Apollonites from booing children.48 The rule shows a vague institutional acknowledgement that even comedy’s alibis and free passes should have limits. The fact that this rule isn’t enforced, however, implies the existence of certain limits to these limits.
Seeing as how the term amateur (amator in Latin) connotes a person doing something out of love rather than for monetary gain or fame, the boos and jeers during Amateur Night may come across gratuitously dissonant. But this gratuitousness is the point. Within the magic circle of the Apollo Theater, politesse has no place. Entering the Apollo is like entering a video game or a carnival, as players and performers acquiesce to an otherworldly domain that rewrites codes of conduct, rechoreographs bodies, and rehearses trials by fire. Granted, Amateur Nights resemble mock trials rather than real ones. Juries and judges (audience members) and executioners (the Executioner) exhibit high-and-mighty personas that, by virtue of their overblown kitsch, signal the relatively soft stakes of the performances at hand. This doesn’t mean that boos can’t sting; it means that, in a colosseum where boos are part of the game, the consequences can seem diminutive because they operate prima facie under the comedic alibi, a vindication predicated on the phenomenal pleasures of aesthetic judgment and the consensual funniness of a booed, bombing artist.
As with Laughing Challenges, epic fails, and quandaries of sadism, the comedic alibi draws strength from the assumption that if enough people are laughing—if something is sufficiently funny by consensus—then the burden of responsibility becomes diffuse, soothing moral qualms along the way. Beyond the Apollo Theater, audiences’ cheers and laughter have long resounded as beacons of populist metrics. A clap-o-meter on the 1950s game show Opportunity Knocks claimed to measure audience response, though the machine was operated by a hidden person who manually turned the dial according to his own estimate of applause volumes. On America’s Got Talent (now in its eleventh season), the audience can boo and flash thumbs-downs to encourage judges to terminate a contestant’s audition. Off the live stage, there’s the well-named example of Funny or Die, a comedy website (founded by Will Ferrell and Adam McKay) that shows humorous videos open to viewers’ votes. If a video receives ample votes, it is deemed “funny” and stays on the main site; if it receives insufficient votes, it “dies” and descends into the website’s Crypt.49Like Reddit and other judge-it-yourself sites (along with, more generally, any online content algorithmically curated by search engine optimization), the game here is natural selection, where nonspreadability means virtual death. On a site such as Funny or Die, the binary system of up-voting or down-voting comes with the added benefit of obviating the need for anyone to elaborate on why a video passes as funny. If a video lives or dies, it is because the people have spoken and, in turn, because the humorous intricacies of the video need not be spoken. Systemically, the humor goes unexplained—which is, of course, how good jokes are said to remain.
Even as consumers today vote with their laughs, majority opinions leave room for dissent. Boos! might bump against Bravos! in the Apollo Theater, while trolls make their obligatory clamor on comment threads of beloved viral artifacts. In comedy reception, there’s also a sound that, within itself, personifies ambivalence and contradiction—laughter’s abject countersign: the groan.
Coda: Fade to Groan
Midway through the documentary Saturday Night Live in the 2000s: Time and Again, we see clips of past SNL sketches that pushed the limits of political correctness. One sketch involved Ben Affleck yelling at a “mentally challenged guy” (Fred Armisen) to shut up; another featured Jon Hamm encountering a grown-up trick-or-treater (Will Forte) “dressed up” as a sex offender.50 Former cast member Horatio Sanz reflected on the studio audience’s mixed reactions to these edgy moments: “What it would take to offend us [the cast] is a lot higher than I think most people. So when we hear groans in the audience, we kind of like it. If the laughter stops, then we don’t like it. But a groan and a laugh is probably the best thing you could ever ask for!”51 Groans mixed into laughter is like spice added to something nice, signaling affective equilibrium or illusions thereof.
For all of the critical thought devoted to laughter, it’s funny that groans have received almost no consideration. Groans are a regular and vital component of audiences’ responses to stand-up comedy, SNL, and talk show monologues. Superficially, a groan voices moral or aesthetic disapproval, suggesting that the comic has stepped out of bounds or failed to land a punchline. But as with the Apollo audience’s reactions to Lauryn Hill, the time-lapse soundscape is complicated whenever groans are involved: typically, a foul joke or bad pun will draw sharp laughter, followed by some groans (from audience members realizing belatedly that such material might not merit laughter), then more groans (with recognition of faux pas catching on), and then finally yielding a reuptake of laughter at the situational humor of this very quandary.52 These reactions launch a boomerang of affective display, a graceful A-B-A ternary form that affirms the comedy’s success, after all. In short, the game of groans is long exposure. A groan can’t erase a prior laugh but demonstrates an effort to take back the laugh—that is, not through subtraction but through the addition of a neutralizing or mitigating agent. Short of being able to turn back time (or to snip out a laugh track with the click of a mouse), a groan is the next best thing.53
So that you have a sense of your own body, try this: force yourself to laugh (it will likely sound artificial), listening as you do so, and then attempt to stop abruptly. How did your body feel at the moment of cessation? Probably uncomfortable, even vaguely painful. Now laugh again, but this time, let it give way to a groan, as if you’ve just heard someone’s joke, chuckled instinctively, then realized a second later that the joke is misogynistic and that you better stifle your outburst lest nearby people judge you. Chances are you found this second routine far easier on your lungs, throat, and mind. Physiologically, this is because a laugh-turned-groan involves a guttural quick-change with respiratory continuity. (Groaning merely takes the pulsations out of laughter’s exhalations.) It’s an awkward yet manageable transition, an exercise in glottal backpedaling that oozes apology and ambivalence. Admittedly, no less funny than the feeling of a groan is how groans sound. We stylize groans as monotone; while the utterance fades from loud to soft, the pitch stays mostly the same. A person groaning can thus sound almost nonhuman, like a machine emitting an error tone (indicating uncertainty over how to process the input of a joke). Maybe, then, groans have flown under our critical sonar in part because they come off as literal noise, plain and simple. Unlike bubbly laughter (music to the ears), groans sound and feel flat.
Any time we laugh, boo, or groan—inappropriately, inopportunely, involuntarily—the utterance vibrates stubbornly in the air, admissible as exhibit A to all who care to judge. Like touchy speech acts or an embarrassing text message that you regret immediately upon hitting Send, take-backs are technically impossible. Life isn’t a courtroom. We can’t officially ask to strike a line or a laugh from the record. Yet in the wake of offensive jokes, injuries, or even national catastrophes, people have simultaneously found reasons to laugh and not to laugh (recall the contrasting cases of post-9/11 SNL and post-Charleston The Daily Show) because with laughter, reason isn’t necessarily the point. Not only can laughter signify generously, but its verdict is also rarely final. Appeals abound, for even though the echoes of a laugh cannot be materially retracted, its hermeneutic terminus remains a shifting target.
Laughter isn’t always overflowing with intense secrets. Anyone claiming that a joke is just a joke could likewise insist that a laugh is just a laugh—a syntactic tautology working double duty as moral alibi. Minding the sociopolitical stakes of laughing out loud means recognizing how different people shoulder differing burdens of sonic, gestural, and physiognomic propriety and, by extension, how people face variable charges and convictions amid the difficulties of taking back a laugh. Given how laughing bugs can infect any of us, we should know that we don’t always know why people laugh. Modern hackers of laughter are producing humorous artifacts and performances that make such uncertainties wilder than ever. If laughter both begs inquiry and calls for interpretative forfeit, then it perpetually pleads alibis through its own semantic promiscuity. From one moment to the next, auditors of laughter might be tasked with condemning or forgiving a laugher, choosing between austere suspicion and benefit of the doubt. Resonating in our collective chuckle huts may be the funny feeling that, when we opt to humor others’ laughable excuses, we stand to be humored in kind.
Notes
1. See Scott Weems, Ha! The Science of When We Laugh and Why (New York, 2014), p. 52; Chris A. Kramer, “An Existentialist Account of the Role of Humor against Oppression,” Humor 26 (Oct. 2013): 629–51; Trevor J. Blank, The Last Laugh: Folk Humor, Celebrity Culture, and Mass-Mediated Disasters in the Digital Age (Madison, Wis., 2013), pp. 38–56; and Bill Ellis, “Making a Big Apple Crumble: The Role of Humor in Constructing a Global Response to Disaster,” in Of Corpse: Death and Humor in Folklore and Popular Culture, ed. Peter Narváez (Logan, Utah, 2003), pp. 35–79.
2. A well-known portion of this SNL premiere was the appearance of Mayor Rudolf Giuliani, to whom Lorne Michaels posed the question: “Can we be funny?” Giuliani deadpanned: “Why start now?”
3. Witherspoon’s tame joke featured a baby polar bear repeatedly asking his mom whether he’s really a polar bear. When the mom inquires why he keeps wondering this, he replies, “Because I’m fucking freezing!”—or, as Witherspoon told it, “Because I’m freezing my balls off!” (“Reese Witherspoon / Alicia Keys,” Saturday Night Live, 29 Sept. 2011).
4. See Eric Randall, “The ‘Death of Irony,’ and Its Many Reincarnations,” The Wire, 9 Sept. 2011, www.thewire.com/national/2011/09/death-irony-and-its-many-reincarnations/42298
5. See Ed Mazza, “Jon Stewart Says He Can’t Tell Jokes after Charleston Church Shooting,” Huffington Post, 19 June 2015, www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/06/18/jon-stewart-charleston-no-jokes_n_7618110.html
6. On stereotypes of the humorless feminist, see Mary Ann Doane, “Masquerade Reconsidered: Further Thoughts on the Female Spectator,” Discourse 11 (Fall–Winter 1988–89): 50. See also Judith Butler, “Feminism by Any Other Name,” interview by Rosi Braidotti, Differences 6 (1994): 27–61; Wendy Brown, “Resisting Left Melancholy,” Boundary 2 26 (1999): 19–27; and Sara Ahmed, “Feminist Killjoys (and Other Willful Subjects),” The Scholar and Feminist Online 8 (2010), sfonline.barnard.edu/polyphonic/print_ahmed.html
7. See Jessica Bennett, “I’m Not Mad. That’s Just My RBF,” New York Times, 1 Aug. 2015, www.nytimes.com/2015/08/02/fashion/im-not-mad-thats-just-my-resting-b-face.html?_r=0
8. Victoria Bond, “Dear White People, Laughing Is Not a Crime,” Al Jazeera America, 28 Aug. 2015, america.aljazeera.com/opinions/2015/8/dear-white-people-laughing-is-not-a-crime.html, emphasis added.
9. See Bryan H. Ward, “Sentencing without Remorse,” Loyola University Chicago Law Journal38 (Fall 2006): 151. The case was State v. Parker, 373 S.E.2d 558, 559 (N.C. Ct. App. 1988).
10. See Lewis Kamb, “Bales Faces Survivors of His Afghan Rampage,” Seattle Times, 20 Aug. 2013, www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/bales-faces-survivors-of-his-afghan-rampage
11. Linette Lopez, “Martin Shkreli Could Not Stop Laughing during His Testimony to Congress,” Business Insider, 4 Feb. 2016, www.businessinsider.com/live-martin-shkreli-the-ceo-of-valeant-and-others-face-congress-2016-2
12. Zoe Thomas and Tim Swift, “Who Is Martin Shkreli—’the Most Hated Man in America’?” BBC, 3 Sept. 2015, www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-34331761
13. Anca Parvulescu, Laughter: Notes on a Passion (Cambridge, Mass., 2010), p. 18.
14. Gaëtan Brulotte, for example, insists on laughter’s wholesale subversiveness in this grandiose manner: “With laughter, the social machine creaks, its herd-like unanimity falters, its habitual cohesion breaks up, and its mechanical reactions break down” (Gaëtan Brulotte, “Laughing at Power,” in Laughter and Power, ed. John Parkin and John Phillips [Oxford, 2006], p. 15).
15. See Anthony Julius, Transgressions: The Offenses of Art (London, 2002), pp. 25–26. Closely related is what I’ve termed the “ludic alibi,” the excuse used by offenders who claim that they’re just playing a game, just horsing around; see William Cheng, Sound Play: Video Games and the Musical Imagination (New York, 2014), pp. 6–8, 130–32.
16. See Julie A. Woodzicka et al., “It’s Just a (Sexist) Joke: Comparing Reactions to Sexist versus Racist Communications,” Humor 28 (May 2015): 289–309; Elise Kramer, “The Playful Is Political: The Metapragmatics of Internet Rape-Joke Arguments,” Language in Society 40 (Apr. 2011): 137–68; and Michael Billig, Laughter and Ridicule: Towards a Critique of Humour(London, 2005), pp. 1–6, 11–21.
17. F. H. Buckley, The Morality of Laughter (Ann Arbor, Mich., 2005), p. 35. See also Muhammad A. Badarneh, “Carnivalesque Politics: A Bakhtinian Case Study of Contemporary Arab Political Humor,” Humor 24 (Aug. 2011): 305–27, and Lisa Gabbert and Antonio Salud II, “On Slanderous Words and Bodies-out-of-Control: Hospital Humor and the Medical Carnivalesque,” in The Body in Medical Culture, ed. Elizabeth Klaver (Albany, N.Y., 2009), pp. 209–27.
18. See J. L. Austin, “A Plea for Excuses: The Presidential Address,” Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 57 (1956–1957): 1–30.
19. Christie Davies, Jokes and Targets (Indianapolis, 2011), p. 2.
20. See Egon Larsen, Wit as a Weapon: Political Joke in History (London, 1980), and Hans Speier, “Wit and Politics: An Essay on Power and Laughter” (1975), trans. and ed. Robert Jackall, American Journal of Sociology 103 (Mar. 1998): 1354.
21. Davies, Jokes and Targets, p. 267.
22. Mark Twain, The Mysterious Stranger (New York, 1916), p. 142. Immediately preceding this line, Satan says: “Power, money, persuasion, supplication, persecution—these can lift at a colossal humbug—push it a little—weaken it a little, century by century; but only laughter can blow it to rags and atoms at a blast” (ibid.).
23. See Peter Jelavich, “When Are Jewish Jokes No Longer Funny? Ethnic Humour in Imperial and Republican Berlin,” in The Politics of Humour: Laughter, Inclusion, and Exclusion in the Twentieth Century, ed. Martina Kessel and Patrick Merziger (Toronto, 2012), p. 24.
24. Slavoj Žižek, The Plague of Fantasies (London, 2008), p. 141.
25. Ron Rosenbaum, “Kanned Laffter,” in Media Culture: Television, Radio, Records, Books, Magazines, Newspapers, Movies, ed. James Monaco (New York, 1978), p. 137.
26. “The Big Bang Theory—Live Show Taping HD 720p,” YouTube, 1 Mar. 2014, www.youtube.com/watch?v=pEKm54STV2Q
27. Quoted in Mike Gane, “Baudrillard’s Sense of Humour,” Jean Baudrillard: Fatal Theories, ed. David B. Clarke et al. (1986; London, 2009), pp. 171, 172. See also Jacob Smith, Vocal Tracks: Performance and Sound Media (Berkeley, 2008), pp. 15–49; Parvulescu, Laughter, pp. 146–48; and Darragh McManus, “No Laughing Matter: Silence Is Golden When It Comes to Comedy TV Shows,” The Guardian, 24 Mar. 2010, www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/tvandradioblog/2010/mar/24/canned-laughter-track
28. See Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno, Dialectic of Enlightenment: Philosophical Fragments, trans. Edmund Jephcott ed. Gunzelin Schmid Noerr, (Stanford, Calif., 2002), p. 112, and Esther Leslie, Hollywood Flatlands: Animation, Critical Theory, and the Avant-garde(London, 2002), pp. 178–79.
29. “The Big Bang Theory—No Laugh Track 1 (Avoiding the Shamy),” YouTube, 2 Jan. 2012, www.youtube.com/watch?v=jKS3MGriZcs
30. “The Big Bang Theory—No Laugh Track 2 (Raj Is a Dick),” YouTube, 4 Jan. 2012, www.youtube.com/watch?v=dffCCSb1JCo
31. See “Breaking Bad as a Sitcom,” YouTube, 12 Sept. 2011, www.youtube.com/watch?v=-6v-ApehVbc
32. See “Inappropriate Laugh Track,” YouTube, 16 Apr. 2013, www.youtube.com/watch?v=iZjP_IoxCHU, and “Inappropriate Laugh Track 2,” YouTube, 13 Nov. 2013, www.youtube.com/watch?v=WSvkkTWrRGo
33. Various recent videos show everyday people transmitting laughter to one another, typically in enclosed and resonant spaces such as subway cars (effectively, viral videos about viral laughter); see the humorously titled “Contagious Laughter Is Contagious,” YouTube, 29 Nov. 2012, www.youtube.com/watch?v=fM45JMTpkBU
34. “In Search of Pygmies,” 14 Feb. 2000, Ally McBeal.
35. Murray Pomerance, “Introduction: The Great Corrective,” in The Last Laugh: Strange Humors of Cinema, ed. Pomerance (Detroit, 2013), p. 1.
36. See Mikita Brottman, Funny Peculiar: Gershon Legman and the Psychopathology of Humor(New York, 2004), p. 66.
37. “Try to Watch This without Laughing or Grinning #2,” YouTube, 23 Apr. 2015, www.youtube.com/watch?v=mxjjhQcODUE.
38. “Try to Watch This without Laughing or Grinning #5,” YouTube, 16 July 2015, www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ss39UktpXk0
39. Sianne Ngai, Our Aesthetic Categories: Zany, Cute, Interesting (Cambridge, Mass., 2012), p. 28.
40. Ibid.
41. “Try to Watch This without Laughing or Grinning #16,” YouTube, 4 Feb. 2016, www.youtube.com/watch?v=ed7BhyZrGaA&index=1&list=PL73YndQawY3PB6odG3R5ThUElhxBw8xaS
42. See Lauren Berlant, Cruel Optimism (Durham, N.C., 2011), pp. 3–6, and Susan Sontag, Regarding the Pain of Others (London, 2004), pp. 95–103.
43. Quoted in Christopher R. Weingarten, “Amateur Night at the Apollo: Behind the Boos of America’s Toughest Crowd,” Rolling Stone, 11 Mar. 2015, www.rollingstone.com/music/features/amateur-night-at-the-apollo-behind-the-boos-of-americas-toughest-crowd-20150311
44. Earlier incarnations of the Executioner included the Porto Rico and the Sandman.
45. On the declines and renaissances of audience sovereignty, see Richard Butsch, The Making of American Audiences: From Stage to Television, 1750–1990 (Cambridge, 2000), pp. 57–65; Danilyn Rutherford, Laughing at Leviathan: Sovereignty and Audience in West Papua (Chicago, 2012), pp. 10–22; and James H. Johnson, Listening in Paris: A Cultural History (Berkeley, 1996), pp. 228–35.
46. “Lauryn Hill at 13 Dings Who’s Lovin’ You (Amateur Night at the Apollo),” YouTube, 6 Feb. 2009, www.youtube.com/watch?v=gdwhGmvB7aA
47. See Touré, “The Mystery of Lauryn Hill,” Rolling Stone, 30 Oct. 2003, www.rollingstone.com/music/news/the-mystery-of-lauryn-hill-20031030
48. See Robert Smith, “Harlem’s Apollo Theater Gets Its Own Show,” NPR, 13 Feb. 2011, www.npr.org/2011/02/13/133729700/Harlems-Apollo-Theatre-Gets-Its-Own-Show
49. “About Funny or Die,” Funny or Die, www.funnyordie.com/about?_cc=__d___&_ccid=lzz1fg.nvrnjz. If a video receives an exceptionally high number of “funny” votes, it attains the status of “immortal.”
50. Saturday Night Live in the 2000s: Time and Again (Kenneth Bowser, dir., 2010).
51. Ibid.
52. For an example of the laugh-groan-laugh boomerang, see Louis C. K.’s 2015 SNL monologue (first aired 16 May 2015), in which he made fun of child molesters.
53. Just as people have taken out and added laugh tracks to television clips, so someone has replaced all laughter with groans for an episode of Two and a Half Men (to portray disparagingly that perhaps the show’s jokes are more groan-worthy than laugh-worthy); see “Laugh Track from ‘Two and a Half Men’ Replaced with GROAN Track (Video),” Huffington Post, 25 May 2011, www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/02/19/laugh-track-from-two-and_n_469362.html
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good things by good people: the best fic i read in 2017
The community aspect of writing fic is easily my favorite part of fandom. I was so lucky this year to get to know so many talented writers who brainstormed with me and encouraged me and allowed me to beta for them and left me nice comments and tolerated me screaming into their inboxes. So I’m going to close out the year by gushing about all of them and my favorite things they wrote in 2017.
queerlyalex: I learned multishipping at @queerlyalex’s feet, and I continue to admire their versatility, enthusiasm, and prolific production. Also I am eternally grateful to them for reblogging me early on; it’s only thanks to Alex that I have any pals around here. Alex absolutely slayed me with a few well-crafted sentences this year (e.g., ”Louis stares at Niall like he’s a map without a legend.”) and I also adored their hiatus nouis and creepy robot nouis and… okay, I just realized Alex is my favorite nouis writer.
Mildly_Maddy: @mildlymaddy writes with such heart and tenderness, and I particularly admire the physicality of her writing. Cold noses, headaches, fingernail scratches… she always makes me feel the characters’ physical sensations. Maddy’s also the most genius editor in all the wide world; every single thing I’ve written this year has benefited from her keen eye and unerring ability to not only diagnose the problem but to come up with the solution. Finally, Maddy makes brevity her bitch. Nobody writes tagfic like she does, and her hamille drabble might be my favorite thing I’ve read this year, 100 words densely packed with so many things I love (a clever joke on current canon, positive treatment of female side characters, harry in a collar). In 2017 I also particularly loved her hedgehog fairy louis, lilo bad wardrobe phone sex (a brilliant concept well-executed), and of course her nouis post-louelle breakup porn.
dramaturgicallycorrect: I am in awe of @wickershire’s skills at worldbuilding. She writes an amazing diversity of settings and eras, and every single one of them feels completely realized. She also has this way of centering her characterizations on lesser-emphasized canon details, which is a brilliant trick that makes her characters feel simultaneously familiar and fresh. Her wolvesfest fic leaned into Niall’s fearlessness, Harry’s need to feel useful, and Louis’s protectiveness. Her Wimbledon fic took Harry’s treatment by the media and somehow used it to make this clumsy deer-legged menace into a believable professional athlete, alchemy of the highest order. (The sentence that laid me flat: "He stretches his long limbs as far as they can go and just like that, everything that’s Liam’s belongs to him.") Her narry road trip fic turned Harry’s aggressive image curation into obsessive travel experience planning (ohhhhh goddddddd, “’You’re an act of god,’ Niall tells him, but he means Harry’s a natural fucking disaster.”) AND AS IF THIS WASN’T ENOUGH, Kate also wrote the alex/peter fic the world needed.
saysthemagpie: You’re all aware that @saysthemagpie is the total package: brilliant plotting, achingly beautiful character development, gorgeous imagery, hilarious crack, and smoking hot sex scenes. I love Jes’s writing so much that it’s hard to narrow down my 2017 favorites, except that her dunkirk sex pest crackfic is unquestionably at the top of the list. 50 shades fionrry was also an instant classic, and I think the very first appearance of the barry characterization we didn’t know we needed but now can never live without. I also loved every scrap we got of small town divorce fic and sexswap narry and dog park lilo/fionrry and hazoff mpreg, and she finished always be your boy with some grade-A Harry Styles suffering. Also, these particular sentences: “He feels light and sort of airy, like someone’s flung open all the windows inside of him, sunlight spilling in.” and “When his gaze drops to Mitch’s mouth, Mitch feels the tug of it in his chest, a pull like the tide: moon-drawn, inexorable.” and “when he can’t stop himself testing his thumb against the bright keen edge of his loss”
countthestars: @moondoggiestyle is a plotting genius who somehow manages to make the tropiest of tropes suspenseful. She can turn any scrap of canon into angst, usually in a way that’s also hilarious, and I really admire the way she interacts with prompts and cultivates readership. Here’s how much I have reread her fic: I was beta’ing something of hers and recognized a turn of phrase repeated from something else she wrote like two years ago, and I almost didn’t say anything because I was super embarrassed to admit that I am like the foremost scholar of her work. I am forever grateful that she’s put up with me chattering away in her inbox all year long about hitch and werewolves and the midwest, and allowed me to deluge her with my thoughts on the excellent when the wolves come out under the guise of beta’ing it. Other 2017 favorites: hitch, and more hitch, harry vs. shapeshifting demon (SO MANY LAUGHS IN SO FEW WORDS), pop punk nouis (my number one dream in life is 50K of this), the small town little league au, and oh my god this sentence: “His touch is soft, almost tentative, like Niall’s something breakable. Like Niall’s not something he’s already broken.” ALSO she has written the very best part of dark werewolf hitch and if I have to construct a 40k ark to bear her 1K forth to the world in 2018 I will happily do so.
fliptomybside: uni fionrry is maybe my favorite verse going right now. It’s soft and hot and tentative and happy and I love every new installment. I also love @polaroidgirlfriend‘s queer kendall and how effectively she’s characterized through the many ways she tries to physically erase herself.(”She spreads her arms and her legs out so they’re not touching. It’s easier to feel weightless, this way. Takes away her awareness of her own limbs and the way she takes up space.”)
sunsetmog: I am in awe of how @magicalrocketships makes every single sentence, every single word, contribute to character development (this 26-line story is a perfect example.) In 2017, she upended the famous/not-famous trope with Harry Styles Cooks.... I love, love, love that Louis’s reaction to Harry appearing on his doorstep is to be mad at him for materializing instead of remaining a safely abstract celebrity crush. She also blessed us all with You’re a Naughty Rabbit, Louis; a long-awaited installment of I Had Rather; and the gryles Mallorca fic we all desperately needed.
rilla: The greatest zarry author of all time posted little writing this year but every bit of it was exceptional. Her hogwarts zarry has all the beauty and wonder the source material is missing, her similes make me want to cry (”He’s lit around the edges like someone’s taken a cigarette lighter to a sheet of paper”), and even this plot outline was exquisite. (@flomps, we don’t talk enough? I’m so grateful you hung on in this fandom long enough for me to know you even a little, though.)
yeahloads: Attempting to praise @harryshippudge by praising her fic is a misleading exercise because it completely misses a major area of her genius, namely her brilliance at generating plots and prompting others to do the same. I have written thousands upon thousands of words because Liz asked the right question or came up with the right twist on a trope, and I hope that someday she will bring her abandoned wolvesfest concept to life either as gryles or as original fiction, because it’s an absolutely brilliant idea. The single snippet she posted is maybe my favorite thing she wrote this year. (Although I am also delighted she got on board the hitch train, and her hazoff abo mpreg verse is weird and wonderful communication porn.)
1000-directions: I love @1000-directions’s quick wit, grace under fire, and willingness to go as niche as it gets (ESPECIALLY breaking the seal on loufro, a ship that I have high hopes for in 2018). Her pig dog POV was one of the most clever, original things I read this year -- the voice sounds just like a dog wagging its tail. I also deeply appreciate her Camille blogging and the associated fic.
#la's 2017 introspection#this list is not ranked#it's roughly in the order in which we became mutuals#and hell yes this is me bragging that all these amazing people are my mutuals#sorry this is so long#i wanted everyone in one post#and nobody behind the cut#fic rec
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This post is being brought to you by several days of deprived sleep, so I’m sorry in advance for things not making sense. Also this is very “thinking out loud”… I have just 14 followers now and I feel slightly should in theory feel less anxious about putting out these sloppy/unorganized thoughts and emotions.
Anyway, I’m writing because yesterday I said that I would, about what’s going to happen with this blog:
The truth is that I’m trying to figure out what will make me happiest, and I feel torn between two main options/ideas.
1st option/idea: Continue to work on and finish my writing page; repost a few things, including the longer pieces I mention here (two of which I have already prematurely(?) reposted); and when I’m done with that, essentially bow out. Maybe post the two gifsets that I made before I lost my account.
2nd option/idea: Repost everything. It occurred to me the other day that I actually could repost everything on the same day that I originally posted them; only the year would be different. (So, the alchemy essay? I could delete it (sigh) and wait until it’s actually May 6 to post it again.) There’s not much I can do for the edits/gifs I’ve made, though, other than reblog some of them back onto my blog.
About the 2nd option: I know that reposting everything [on the same day] might sound very… particular. Why is this so important to me in the first place? Part of it has to do with a promise I’d made to myself early on in my PoE blogging days (April 2016), which was to not delete anything I make or write, especially major things like analyses and edits. It was a self-challenge but also a self-kindness. And it’s a promise I’ve always kept, with the exception of one essay (I’m pretty sure it was just the one).
So, losing everything is kind of a cruel irony: The thing that I took so much care not to do, and that I didn’t want to happen, has happened. Choosing the 2nd option would mean, to me, reclaiming and re-owning everything. I don’t know if that makes sense. But more simply, it would just mean having these posts on my blog again. Being able to edit them. Having them in order.
…What I can’t do is re-create the context or the exact emotions from when I first posted these things (*pauses to scream into pillow*). But that wouldn’t be the point or goal of the 2nd option anyway. I think it’s inevitable that emotions will come up, though, and if/when/however they do, it’ll probably be a double-edged sword. (I don’t/wouldn’t plan on editing much of anything before reposting them; some especially older things are very much “products of their time,” but (a) that’s not necessarily a bad thing, and (b) they pretty much stand true.)
Finally, from a(nother) practical standpoint, there’s a lot of content stretched out over quite a long time: a year and half, April 2016 - October 2017. Do I intend to stick around Tumblr through October 2019? I can’t imagine doing that, to be honest.
…I think that the 2nd option would ground/steady me, but it also has the potential of causing quick burn-out. It would allow me to hang around here longer than, say, a month (1st option). I could intersperse writing with more gifsets. I could stop/shift to the 1st, or other, option at any time.
About the 1st option: I think it’s the easier and less stressful of the two. It just feels sort of… terrible… like I’m leaving things incomplete, or like I’m abandoning all of my work. And to be completely honest, and this is generally speaking, I don’t want people to think I deleted my account on purpose because I don’t care about PoE or about what I’ve written/made.
So perhaps not easier and less stressful.
There’s more to the 1st option than I can think of right now. I’ve been thinking about all of this for a couple of days, have forgotten some things, and will edit and/or add on to this post later.
Oh, but if anyone has any suggestions or questions, feel free to message me or send an ask.
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Writer Journal Entry
// {Saturday November 25th, 2017}
Raw Notes: Places
Vale:
—Rugs
—Brick fireplace ovens
—Pottery
—Patterned rugs
—Wooden furniture and place settings
—Book: “Being an Adept—Hone your Psynergy. Do not use if for evil…”
—Book: “Legend of Mt. Aleph— [It says the mountain’s name refers to the origin of all things…]”
—Book: “Making a Great Village”
—Book: “The Laws of Vale— Get permission to leave the village. Never show Psynergy to outsiders…”
—Book: “The Mighty Power of Nature—The power beyond human understanding can be seen in volcanic eruptions and great floods…”
—Book: “The Psynergy Stone—Psynergy is replenished by touching a Psynergy Stone…”
—Book: “Etiquette for Travelers—It is rude not to introduce yourself to the town’s mayor.”
—Book: “Journey to the Northern Continent of Angara— [Mt. Aleph is on the western edge of Angara]”
—Book: “All About the Southern Continent of Gondowan”
—Jenna’s aunt keeps a scrapbook of sketches she and Jenna’s mother made as children.
—NPC in Vale can use some variation of Tremor?
—Felix is sad/displeased/uneasy when asking Isaac if he has business with him
—NPC children/young adults desparately want to leave, or at least hear stories of outside world
—Vale laws prohibit leaving the village, restrict freedom, idolize mayor’s authority
—NPC: “Our Psynergy was granted to us by the sacred ower of Mt. Aleph. Psynergy is what grants wishes of the chosen people.”
—NPC: “The Valeans are a chosen people. Our powers of Psynergy are proof of that.”
—Prox knows more about Sol Sanctum than Vale does
—Book: “Encyclopedia of Alchemy—All things are composed of four elements: earth, water, fire, and wind…
—Book: “Study of Alchemy—To understand Alchemy, one must understand the Elemental Powers… [That’s where the script ends…]”
—Book: “In Search of the Ancient Lemurians”
—Book: “The Fountain of Tolbi—The fountain of Tolbi will test your luck…”
—Felix’s home was never rebuilt.
—Sol Sanctum has a minotaur head theme for decoration.
—Sol Sanctum: built in honor of the sun.
—Kraden: “Sol Sanctum holds the origins of Alchemy”
—Luna room only one to have night
—Psynergy Stone veins inside Sanctum
—The portal to the Sol Sanctum Inner Sanctum happens when the Sol symbol is turned into Luna
—The stars contain the “purified essence” of each element
—Kraden says Alchemy exists because to the Stars—but actually, Alchemy is natural, and the Stars were created to serve as keys to breaking the seal.
—Created plot point; Isaac took the Venus Star, following the instructions Kraden gave. Garet got jealous and took the Mercury Star, which hurt him pretty badly. Garet felt short-handed, so he also took the Jupiter Star—but used the Mythril bag properly this time.
—Isaac doesn’t have the willpower necessary to disobey the Wise One
—The Wise One says “Felix must unlock the power.” Plot point: it was his destiny to restore life to the world!
VAULT:
—Book: “Gems of Angara: [Nothing about psynergy stones.]”
—Felix stopped by Vault on the way south. He was headed northeast to the Goma Range.
BIBLIN:
—Felix’s group passed over the Goma Range; winter is starting by this point.
—They say the world of “misty darkness” begins beyond the ocean…? (Umbra Clan?)
—Legendary healer from Vale? (Surely not Felix… his father, maybe?)
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ARCHITECTURE NOTES:
—Lalivero
—Rugs: Eagle, some guy using Psynergy (or else that’s the sun?)
—Obelisk in town: three figures at the base. (Three trident towers? The other Lighthouses?)
—Possibly glyphs along the walls around the town?
—Food: Fried fish, local rice, stew, salad (potato and… cactus?), large cheese wheels, mushroom soup (local beans and herbs)
Healer at Suhalla Gate
—Suhalla
—Mulukhiya soup
—Tolbi
—Food: Pasta, pizza (!!!), seafood pasta,
—Babi has a statue of himself immediately as you walk into the palace. Oooooffffffff course.
—There’s an encyclopedia of ancient ruins?
—Babi’s palace probably influenced by Lemuria
—Kaylay
—Salad (with cucumber and yogurt), curry, pickles (with garlic), toasted bread,
Northern towns and cities have more brick fireplaces than stone ovens, and their Sanctums are sun/compass themed.
—Imil
—Food: Porridge
—MERCURY LIGHTHOUSE
—Maidens with jars
—Giant statue of a lady (the goddess)
—Lion heads that spew water
—Pipes, grates, plumbing
—Floating pedastals next to the lifts
—Voice gives instructions
—Altin
—Food: Shrimp (with chili sauce), roast beef (with peppers),
—Xian
—Food: Hot bean curd, stir fry (with cabbage), steamed dumplings, Xian Gourmet (?),
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