#i just want to read fanfics about moon where he's a fucking terrible guy. and also youre into him. is that so wrong. the murder makes him
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today has been a bad day so ive been reading a lot of fanfiction as thats my only coping mechanism to ever exist and anyways.
why does everyone turn my little blorbos into sex gods. i want them to be my little creepy fucked up guys!! or my little funny dude who's kind of really terrible and disgusting!!!! if youre going to make porn at least make it more accurate my god-
#demons lurk#<- new little tag for these funny things.#personal#i think its so so so fucked up .#i just want to read fanfics about moon where he's a fucking terrible guy. and also youre into him. is that so wrong. the murder makes him#better.#also why is he always a top. ive only found one fic so far that makes him into a bottom. fucks sake.#100% drawing (probably sfw lets be real) fanart for that.#ALSO. IM PISSED ABOUT THIS HAPPENING TO MY SANSES.#THEYRE FUCKED UP OR DISGUSTING STOP WATERING THEM DOWN!!!!#IF I SEARCH FOR SHIT OF NIGHTMARE AND HE'S NOT TRYING TO ACTIVELY TORTURE SOMEONE. YOURE DOING IT WRONG.#only ones that do it right last i checked are uh. a bit too far for me. fits the character but i am not touching that..#is it weird to write that. yes. but. whatever. not touching it.#not to mention what people do to default sans...............#how dare you.... thats my disgusting funny nerd..........#he has NOT fucked........ there is no way... there is no way..........#he is NOT a sex god... sshut upp.. he smells like ketchup and unwashed laundry...#he is NOT hot. he is disgusting and its great#(is this why my standards are rock bottom.)#sorry if you opened the tags and saw all this. lol
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Funny thing happened to me recently.
Twitter was on fire a few weeks back when a lady who runs a podcast about being a better writer tweeted about how shitty fanfic is and how "bleak" it is that young writers are cutting their eyeteeth on it. She got massively, massively dunked on, which I’m sure ruined her week but was pretty great for the spectators, but this story isn't about her.
I was clicking around in the discussion, and I found a guy who agreed with a lot of her points, and had tweeted like, "Good thing this lady's got everyone talking about fanfic, maybe it will drive traffic to MY new article about how terrible fanfiction is!"
YOU GUYS. THIS ARTICLE.
A jeremiad is a literary form named for the Hebrew prophet Jeremiah. It is a work in which the author bitterly laments the corrupt and immoral practices of their times, and preaches about how this break from humanity's more innocent past will lead to society's immediate downfall.
And this article's subheading is literally, "Fan culture’s endless search for “content” is leading us into artistic poverty."
You can read it here, but the basic gist is: Fandom used to be about creativity and telling new stories, but now it's just about sucking up whatever derivative drivel Disney wants to sell us and never demanding better from corporate mass media. Fans are slaves to capitalism and never resist being monetized or economically exploited!
At which point I was like... not only has this dude failed to prove that there was an Edenic "before" point, especially since he himself points out that Sherlock Holmes fans in the 1890s were clamouring for Arthur Conan Doyle to produce more content the same way Star Wars fans want new eps of The Mandalorian, but also, have you fucking met modern fandom?
And like, I get that in, say, video game fandoms, there are a ton of fans who scream loudly when their newest Call of Duty game release is pushed back two weeks because it's not like the people making the thing need to eat or sleep, and when it’s out they scream at any reviewer who doesn’t give it 10/10. But this guy specifically comments on stuff like Sherlock, Star Wars, and slash fandom:
"[O]fficial shows or books could offer ambiguous homosocial/sexual relationships between characters with a nod and a wink, while counting on fans to generate the more explicit possibilities of Johnlock on Archive of Our Own. The [copyright owners] could therefore capture audiences hungry for homoerotic content without needing to create any themselves [...] these corporations have realized that the existence of fan-made slash fiction means they don’t need to actually include diverse relationships in official works."
THAT’S NOT HOW THIS WORKS
THAT’S NOT HOW ANY OF THIS WORKS
So I got Big Mad and I tweeted about it. And the author found and replied to my tweet, defending himself.
I pointed out how bad his takes were, especially since fan communities have been a leading force in the push for more diverse media over the last decade and fan frustration over Sherlock and recent Star Wars movies IN PARTICULAR led to mainstream publishing houses putting out books like Claire O’Dell’s A Study in Honor, where Holmes and Watson are Black lesbians, Zen Cho’s The Order of the Pure Moon Reflected in Water, a Rogue One Malaysia-inspired wuxia Baze/Chirrut love story, and Emily Skrutskie’s Bonds of Brass, the Finn/Poe space royalty AU the movies never gave us. I stayed civil, and I think I made some pretty good points.
Because, uh...
The magazine @ed me to say they’d buy my response article.
My word limit was 1600 because that was all they could afford to pay me for, so I had to cut out the part where my eyes rolled out of my head because this dude called some white guy who published a Sherlock Holmes pastiche in 1949 “the first truly archetypal ‘fan’“, but I’m mostly over that. I worked out some of my rage and cut my initial 3400 word draft down. I tried to focus on the facts.
And... it’s up. You can read it here.
Please consider giving Blood Knife Magazine a high five for paying me to dunk on its assistant editor. It’s a digital magazine about science fiction and anticapitalism, and it’s funded primarily through its Patreon.
And if you like the work I do, please consider supporting me through PayPal or Patreon.
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I hit 7k recently after losing almost 1.5k followers when I converted to a Reylo blog (not sorry in the slightest) and decided it was time to finally compile some of the INCREDIBLE fanfics that I’ve read since joining the fandom in December.
I’m constantly impressed by the talent around here and I'm so grateful to love a ship that has some of the most amazing content I’ve ever seen. The creators in this fandom are second to none. I’m so thankful for all they do and all that they give to us.
Please keep never stop sharing your gifts. <3
**Note: Most (pretty much all) of these are rated E.
Without further ado, here are (some of) my favorite stories:
The Jedi Path by SouthsideStory | 19k | E | I am such a sucker for Jedi Academy Ben and Rey. It’s everything I never knew I needed, and this fic is a beautiful rendition. If you know me at all, you know that I devour Angst with a Happy Ending stories, and this is no exception to that rule.
Exile by Ernzo | 22k | E | Oof. This one hurts. Leia sends Rey to the planet where Ben is exiled. It’s angsty and sad and cathartic in every way. I’ve read it dozens of times.
Before the Saber Swings by @waterlilyrose | 28k | M | Fuck. When I tell y’all that this story fucked me up, I mean it from the bottom of my s o u l. It stayed with me for days. I literally couldn’t get it out of my head. It felt so real to me that I was in physical pain while reading it. I also made an AU gifset of the fic with a quote from Buffy because I’m extra and love pain.
penitence by @bettsfic | 16k | M | Look, Betts is one of my favorite fanfiction authors of all time. Her Bellarke works are some that I’ve read dozens of times and I was fucking ecstatic when I found out she also writes Reylo. This is an A+ TROS fix-it that is lovely and soft and sweet.
The Writings of Ben Solo by BurnedStars777 | 39k | E | This was recced to me by the fabulous @galacticidiots and is just a fantastic story all around. Rey finds Ben’s journal whilst stuck on a planet with Kylo Ren and she (eventually) connects the dots. Rey falling in love with Ben sight unseen? Here. For. it.
find a thread to pull, and we can watch it unravel by again_please | 17k | E | A fantastic post-TLJ story with angsty and broody Ben and just some all around quality smut. I devoured this and have read it multiple time since.
We Could Plant a House, We Could Build a Tree by @likeadove | 124k | E | I will probably never stop reading this fic. It’s such a beautiful coming of age story for Rey and her relationship with Ben as she grows up is just... gah. It’s fantastic. Please read it.
Soul Searching by OptimisticBeth | 205k | E | Soulmates AU where Ben is Rey’s teacher? Sign me the fuuuuck up, and Soul Searching is so fucking well written. I go back to this one every few weeks and just gush at how great the world building is. I love the relationship Rey has with Leia and Han. It’s rich with love and angst and fluffffff. So good.
Coveted by OptimisticBeth | 82k | E | WIP | OptimisticBeth is just an incredible writer, so you should honestly read all of her stuff, but I am so, so, so into this fic. It’s A/B/O and Ben’s Rey’s pack leader. He, along with a bunch of other Alphas are trying to court Rey, a highly desired Omega. It’s so fucking delicious, y’all. Alpha Ben Solo is just...it doesn’t get much better.
A Treehouse Covered in Salt by violethoure666 | 34k | E | This fic made me cry my eyes out. I’m not kidding. It’s so raw and real. It hurts to read at some points, but you care so much about Ben and Rey in this that you fight through the pain. They grow up together as neighbors and Han builds them a treehouse where they meet throughout their childhoods/teen years. Prepare to cry but also be so fulfilled and satisfied. It’s wonderful.
love it when you call me lover by @kylotrashforever | 66k | E | WIP | First, let me say that anything by KTF is going to be gold. These fics I have listed are just a few of my favorites at the moment. Lover is hot as fuck (as is all of her stuff) but also fluffy in the best way. It’s in Sadsville right now so I’m fucking PUMPED for her to update. Ben’s a doctor who basically gives Rey a sexual awakening when he proves her statement of “I just don’t think I can come from (insert sexual act here)” very, very wrong.
mountain at my gates by @kylotrashforever | 26k | E | More A/B/O goodness. Omega Rey’s car breaks down on a mountain. Ben is a mountain man Alpha. You can probably guess what happens from there. *fans self*
take me to church by @kylotrashforever | 26k | E | I love this story so much. Ben is the pastor’s son at the church Rey grows up in. They start hooking up in secret and are terrrrrrible at communicating with each other which leads to angst. But it’s so sweet and soft while also being super hot. I love this Ben and Rey so much.
Your Pretty Little Heart by @ever-so-reylo | 64k | E | The A/B/O Reylo bible, I feel like. They’re doctors and he’s a grumpy as fuck Alpha. Shenanigans ensue. And by shenanigans I mean a lot, a lot, a LOT of sex.
The Food of Love by @lovesbitca8 | 60k | E | Y’all. If you haven’t read this yet, please stop what you’re doing and read it RIGHT NOW. I ate this fic up in one sitting because holy SHIT it’s amazing. It’s so well written and the story is just... absolutely exquisite. Ben is cellist that’s also a famous rockstar and Rey’s an up and coming violinist and they fall in loOOoOOve in the best, most angsty, sexiest way. Please just read it right now. The scene when she firsts goes to his apartment and plays one of his cellos............you guys. It’s a lot.
Already Home by AttackoftheDarkCurses | 81k | E | This is soulmates + A/B/O so naturally I am obsessed with it. Rey gets connected with her soulmate via a website and he’s going by the name Kylo Ren. At the same time, she’s also moving in with grumpy librarian Ben Solo. She falls in love with both but has no idea that they’re the same person. It’s INCREDIBLE.
Tangled but Unbroken by AttackoftheDarkCurses | 20k | M | I read this the other night and it’s so fucking soft. I am such a fucking sucker for growing up together fics and this is just such top quality. The braiding kills me every goddamn time. Also, I’m making my way through all of Attack’s works right now and they’re all incredible. Highly recommend.
Dear Mr. President by @shmisolo | 89k | E | I love this Ben so much. The characterization is so on the money. The angst is absolutely delicious. The smut is top brass. Oh, and did I mention they’re soulmates? It’s everything you need, I promise.
Good Day, Professor by @faequeentitania | 38k | E | One of the best Professor Solo fics out there. I’m such a sucker for age difference fics. Of course there’s angst, who do you think I am?
Embers by sciosophia | 34k | E | Breaking up/getting back together fics are some of my favorites and this one is fantastic. The pining with these two is ridiculous. You just want to smush their faces together. It’s a beautiful love story.
Reclaimed by @bettsfic | 14k | E | Ughhhhhhhhhh, Reclaimed. I am so in love with Reclaimed. Alpha Ben adopts Omega Rey after she’s rescued from this terrible Alpha that held her captive for most of her life. She doesn’t talk and Ben has to help her learn to be a human being and not just a subservient Omega. This Ben is the Ben of my dreams. No contest.
the following are all written by @kylorenvevo. please read them all if you haven’t already.
landscape with a blur of conquerers | 362k | E | Y’all know this shit is fire. It’s basically the bible. If you haven’t read this yet, consider this as me yelling at you to do it NOW.
like young gods | 84k | T | fuck, the Sword of the Jedi series is incomparable when it comes to in-universe fics. I cannot begin to express how much I love this story. It’s so soft and intense and sad. Like, gut wrenchingly sad. Ben senses Rey on Jakku when she’s six and he and Luke take her back to the Jedi Academy. She grows up with Ben.
to kingdom come | 145k | M | The sequel to Like Young Gods. I’m not gonna spoil much here, but just know I cried through most of this fic. I downright SOBBED at the end. It’s gorgeous and I will never stop rereading it. The love these two have for each other... it’s unreal.
i kill giants | 34k | E | WIP | The TROS fix-it we all need. Ben is alive and finds Rey on Tatooine. It’s soft and Thea does a great job of soothing so many of the gaping wounds we were left with after TROS. My heart soars every time I read a new chapter. This is what we deserved. :(
the heartbreak prince | 58k | E | WIP | Harry Potter AU. Professor/student. Size kink. Virginity kink. ANGST. All the good things life has to offer. Professor Solo is fucking filthy in this and I (along with Miss Niima) am here 👏 for 👏 it.
place the moon at my eyes (and her whiteness shall devour) | 29k | E | Another breakup/get back together fic that I absolutely adore.
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Thank you to everyone that’s been so kind and welcoming to me the past couple of months! I love this fandom and its energy and enthusiasm and how much everyone seems to care for each other. I hope that I can continue to create content for you forever <3
#reylo fic rec#reylo#reylo fanfiction#reylo fic masterlist#follower celebration#reylo fic#reylo ff#reylo fanfiction rec
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𝔹𝕣𝕚𝕘𝕙𝕥 𝕒𝕣𝕖 𝕥𝕙𝕖 𝕤𝕥𝕒𝕣𝕤 𝕥𝕙𝕒𝕥 𝕤𝕙𝕚𝕟𝕖
{This is a fanfic dreamed and desired. All I write about is my feelings, sensations and desires. TEXT BY: L.M}
Day 1 - Embark on the dazzle.
October 9, 2023, Monday.
I am exhausted, the recording will begin on Tuesday at 11 am.
I think I slept only 3 hours and 20 minutes or I’m just kicking it out loud. This was a very tiring trip I confess. Maybe because it was almost a change of two months and a week. On the bright side, the production has provided a nice apartment for me to live in. My new home is beautiful and comfortable, one block away from Crescent Street, here in Montreal - Canada.
Honestly, I can’t believe I’m finally having the opportunity to work with Xavier Dolan, I left my family in Brazil to embark on this dream, I already miss them. I should tell you that I have no idea of the cast that will be on this project, but the script looks fabulous. Before I embarked on this opportunity, I realized a portion of the dream. I and 7 other members of the team dined with Dolan last Thursday, debated the first decupagents and agendas. We had already read the script before the meeting, is it a low-budget experimental drama, and honestly? I lost my breath.
I’m not in the position of art director I’ve always dreamed of, but I’m in the position where I have full knowledge and experience. Curious, I am not trembling with nerves, I am completely at peace with this realization. However, very anxious. We’re less than two hours away from reuniting in Saint-Laurent with the cast of "A race by Joseph".
[.... ] - Less than two hours later.
Okay, I’m about to get my guts out from all the nerves. I’ve heard of some names on the list of actors, including Troye Sivan, Vincent Cassel, and Louise Coldefy. The team is sensational and fucking, Xavier is like a master for me. I need to make these days my best college.
I’m at home/rental number six, it’s wonderful. I can see two cars coming through the window, and "God bless me so that Suzanne Clément is in this cast" [Spoiler, I wasn’t, I had to accept], I think I’m going to have an anxiety attack, I need to splash water on my face.
I lost count of how many times I filled my hands with water and threw it in my face, I needed to understand that I was really living this moment. I came out of the bathroom apprehensive. Céline handed me a cup of tea mix of Sage, Eucalyptus, Lemon Peel and said "Hey, relax, I’ll see you in the living room.. ah, one more thing, don’t freak out".
I feel a chill creeping all over my body as I walk through the door frame. Everyone was waiting for me in the room so we could debate the first two weeks of the recording. I could feel my legs swaying to the point of not having enough sustenance to stand.
Timothée Chalamet was sitting on the arm of Dolan’s armchair in silence, reading what would be the 4°page of some document. Quickly he gets up and presents himself squeezing my hand gently. Silence has taken over the environment, I don’t remember my name. [I remembered! ] It was remarkable how difficult he was to pronounce it, it made it all very comical, in seconds we were all laughing.
At that time, other cast members performed, but my thoughts were so far away that I don’t know if I missed any important information. [Damn, how many questions are going through my head right now? I don’t even have control over them. Stop! Focus, your future depends on this delivery. ]
[.... ]
With the passing of the hours I was reasonably more relaxed and with an unparalleled feeling of gratitude for what was happening to me. We discussed the script, much of it together, the day was very productive.
I kept looking at him, he’s so funny and authentic, I feel comfortable now. Obviously we wouldn’t be friends, he wouldn’t notice an assistant director [even though I’m the director’s right-hand man]. The team will be dining with the cast soon, it’s 5:47 pm and I haven’t been able to confirm my presence at this dinner. What’s my problem?!
Celine: You’ll go, right? We’ll go home together and unpack.
Me: Oh Céli, I don’t think I will. I have a lot to pack, tomorrow starts the recordings and I want to do everything right.
Celine: No, you are not going to organize things by yourself. Nor has dinner there in the house, let’s eat please, I’m starving. Think you need to catch up!
Me: Relax Celi, I’ll do things in my time, have a wine while I cook something and sleep early. Look, Wednesday we won’t record.. We can go downtown and get a quick look at the city, what do you think?
Celine: You’re hopeless. Well, I’ll tell you about it.
Arriving at the apartment I opened all the windows, and went to cook thinking about what the following days would be like. I decided then that I should not intensify anything, it could disrupt me at work and I can’t let my impulsive Aryan side get out of hand. I decided to go to the disco and see what the last song the host of the apartment heard. Well, did you start playing Nick Drake’s Pink Moon and honestly? I can’t let the pink moon get me.
Fuck, I’ve never seen anything more beautiful in my entire life, it’s as fascinating as on screens or in photographs. [Stop! Concentrate. ]
[...]
00:01 am The wine bottle is 98% empty now.
I have not yet fallen asleep and Celine is already in her 8th deepest sleep. I need to sleep. She said that they were so energized, that the team’s relationship is great and that she ate a delicious Poutine, I found it very courageous for those who will spend the whole day recording tomorrow.
[I’m laughing alone while imagining a disaster]
I will sleep and tomorrow will be the first day of my life. I swear I was born now and suddenly everything changed. Things will be built from now on. Timothée Chalamet? I hear you’re a good actor, I don’t know you.
Good night and see you soon.
Part 2
Day 50 - And I’m probably happy, could it be different?
November 27, 2023, Friday.
There are times I do not write in this "virtual diary", my days are super busy. Today we finish the work a little earlier, we finish the movie! I think it’s 4:00 now.
Right, and why did I come back to write? Well, I wanted to forget the feeling that took me completely 50 days ago. But today something has happened that does not allow me to escape any feeling that exists here.
Louise is severely ill, Christ! We’re at the end of the shoot, she’s Timothée’s date, missing four takes of a kiss between them for her last acting scene. Dolan needed two different angles and he didn’t have a voice voice available so suddenly. Louise and I have very similar hair and what I feared went through Dolan’s mind. "Be the Double" he said.
Yeah, Chalamet and I kissed today, and, hell, there was no professionalism on my part or for a millisecond, I feel terrible! I felt like I had been thrown out of a plane and I was in a free fall. My heart had never accelerated so much. My fantasy almost made me believe that one of the butterflies in my stomach was coming out of my mouth 1 minute later. Holy shit!
[What if it was not reciprocal? Of course it was not, silly! We are friends. ]
I’m so pissed about it, I’ll tell them why.
All these days I’ve really become friends with Timothée, can you believe it? I’ve always been very afraid to talk to him because he doesn’t find me interesting enough. But we have an unusual tune. We had a lot of coffee together, a lot of claquettes I hit due to recording mistakes, we went out with the guys several times, even "alone" and that’s okay, we talked about Brazil and he made sure to go there anytime, I even smoked one of his cigarettes, even hating cigarettes.
We were talking about how funny Vincent is and how amazing he is, and we were talking about how they were both working for the first time with Xavier Dolan. We laughed at stupid things until the belly hurt and even bet race in the parking lot next to the location. [He won, of course, has huge legs].
One day we were together cutting fruit for the rest of the team on the set as we talked about Georges de La Tour, "That ordinary painter" I said, and he gave a delicious laugh. He’s much simpler than I thought he could be, carries an admirable humility. And I swear, it was fine, because I was fascinated by that friendship and I could feel that it would last for many years. I’ve learned to deal with your stunning beauty.
I liked the way he accepted me and had fun with me. He didn’t think I was silly.
I was working for a salary and a bright future, and suddenly I felt I had won the lottery until that moment after the kiss. I feel like I’m failing at my resolve.
To finish screwing with my mind, Celine told me something that made me much more sensitive about a feeling that, I swear, once again, I had managed to forget. Although I often fantasized that a mood was going on, I knew it was impossible. He definitely sees me as the cool girl makes him laugh and that he can truly trust.
Celine: Look. I, for recklessness, overheard Timothée talking to Troye about you. I did not hear enough but I must say that your tone of voice was of pure indignation... Troye said, "She’s the kind of girl you want so much, you feel sorry for".
Me: God damn it, did he hate my kiss?! I’m going to die, Celine! Troye clearly should be making fun of the situation. Who am I supposed to show up at Dolan’s tomorrow for dinner?
Celine: Calm friend, you are traveling.. I have noticed things and I will not open my mouth. Everything will be fine, seriously.. kiss the chalamet? How can you be angry about that? [laughed] By the way, tomorrow after dinner, I’ve arranged to spend the night at Julie’s, do you want to go?
Me: Oh.. I’m not in the mood to hear Julie talk all night about the new vegan recipes, sorry, pal.
Celine: Okay.. I won’t bring you nice things.
[My phone vibrated. I was reluctant to look, but it could be work.. ]
Text Msg Timothée: I hope you’re okay, you seemed strange going away. Want to talk? By the way, you did well in tonight’s performance, you should try harder.
Me: Says my angel, how are you? I am well, of course I am. [laughs nervously and it was noticeable] I was just nervous to have to act for Dolan and know that I will see myself on a movie screen, even if at closed angles. By the way, Mr. Chalamet, thank you very much. I have the seal of approval that interests me hahah
Msg of text Timothée: I like it. See you tomorrow?
Me: Yes, of course, until tomorrow!
Msg of text Timothée:
[video uploaded]
Part 3
Day 51 - Ecstasy, landscape of the soul.
November 29th, 2023, Sunday morning.
I don’t know how to write about how last night went.. I was upset, but I remember everything. I won’t be able to keep this journal after that I’ll tell.
We were all gathered at Dolan’s house, drinking and laughing a lot, toasting to finish this incredible project. I already felt completely dizzy and with the warm body, things kept spinning in my head, it was so beautiful. He wore a leather jacket over the green sweatshirt, had a golf cap (Odd Future) hanging on one of the pants straps where his belt was, the black jeans almost on his knee and a red vans, and that hair.. that hair! It’s like a restless ocean.
I was wishing to walk across the room and kiss him again with all the intensity that belongs to me, he would like it this time. My body was on fire, suddenly I was frozen, it’s coming toward me. I knew I could spoil any conversation by being totally random and awkward, I was dying of shame in advance.
Timothée: Are you happy?
Me: Sure, congratulations! You did a great job, I’m very proud of all of you.
Timothée: Thank you, but none of this would have been the same if you weren’t on the team, right?
Me: Right! [Cheers]
[Silence]
Timothée: What are you thinking right now?
Me: Who you are, Where you’re from, don’t care what you Did as long as you love me..[I started singing As Long As You Love Me by the Backstreet Boys, really?]
Timothée: Oh my God! [He laughed almost for the world to hear].
Are you going to Julie’s with Céline? There’s going to be a vegan class. I’d like a pizza, okay?
Me: Look.. I also wanted a pizza instead of vegan food.. But I’m getting dizzy and I think I’m gonna go home and do my drunken show in the shower.
Timothée: Ah.. Right, you’re dizzy, but you still know how many fingers you have here? [He did an 8 with his fingers]
Me: Yes, of course. I’m fine, man, I’m weak but not that weak. Give me a skateboard there! [I screamed, and they didn’t take me seriously]
Timothée: So.. we can go for a coffee to break the alcohol and fill the stomach with a piece of pizza, what do you think?
Me: Wooah! Come on, send world pizza!
[I couldn’t say no, I was completely taken. ]
We got to what used to be a kind of blinker-light coffee, it had a super-hot vibe. We sat down and made the request, we laughed drunk and said nothing that made sense, I felt our friendship alive again. However, the silence and the exchange of looks came, so we could hear the music that played in the background. It was "And I Love Her" by the Beatles”. Suddenly he began to sing.
Timothée: "She gives me Everything and Tenderly. The Kiss my Lover brings, she brings to me and I love her."
Me: Yeah.. beautiful music. You sing over and over again better than me. When did you start playing music? [My hands started sweating]
Timothée: [he laughed] Are you all right?
Me: Timmy. .ah.. I think I’m going home to take another shower, rest and call my family, I don’t know.
Timothée: Okay, I’ll accompany you, I can’t let you go back alone so late.
Me: You don’t need my angel. I’m a ninja!
[I made the shameful gesture of a martial coup and tripped. The truth is I wanted him to insist]
Timothée: Without that [laughed] let’s go!
We got to the apartment, he came up with me and put his coat on the couch. I offered him water, am I pathetic? He said he did not want to, but that if possible, he would like to stay. I felt as if we were talking by telepathy, I am not crazy. He feels the same. I said he could stay, even super apprehensive.
I took two cigarettes from Kumbaya that I made on Tuesday and shouted from the room "let’s get some air on the balcony while we smoke!?". Upon returning to the room, he had put Cigarettes after sex to play, silently.
Nothing but the music. Breaths. Another dose of silence. My body pumped blood with so much speed, [says something] I thought.
He touched my right hand and looked at me. Those green eyes made me feel warm inside as never before.
I got up the courage to pull him to the balcony that led to the fire escape. The sky was beautiful and the wind touching our faces was like a sky giveaway, I needed that fresh night air.
Timothée: Do you need me to say it? I can say it.
Me: I know what you’re going to say and I’m terrified. You want me too.
Timothée: I want to. You make me feel good. I feel my presence truly when I share a moment with you. "Sometimes I think I’ve felt everything I’m going to feel in my life. And from now on, I won’t feel anything new. "
Me: I promise that one day I will feel that everything is right. but it feels so wrong. Man, I feel like I’m living a fanfic, and I don’t want to wake up tomorrow and none of this ever happened, or worse, if it’s real, our friendship being compromised by what’s possibly going to happen here.
He put his hands on my face, kissed my forehead.
Timothée: The heart is not like a box that fills, L. It expands in size, the more you love someone. I’m different from you. It doesn’t make me love you any less. It actually makes me love you more. I want you.
Me: Right.. We are here only briefly, and at this moment I want to allow myself joy. I want that, Timothée. And I promise that one day I will feel like everything is fine.
He lovingly bowed to touch his lips to mine. Feeling those soft lips against mine, it was almost like an apocalyptic sensation, the world could end right there, would have no problem.
We kissed as we entered through the large window of the room, the first pieces of clothing filling the lonely floor of the room. The music Sunsetz conducted our intimate dance. The words "you have to do the right thing, do the right thing" started to disappear from my head.
I feel overflowing out of the body, sensitive, I am under the effect of exaltation, very intense feelings of joy, pleasure, admiration, reverent awe... Timothée. I truly love him.
We are lying on the living room floor, apparently wrapped in a curtain that has been disastrously removed. Timothée, his breath is hot, the sound coming out of his mouth shivers my body. We were like the painting of Egon Schiele - Gli Amanti (L'Abbraccio).
Blackout. Light. The voice of an angel reaches my ear. My eyes open.
He looked at me in silence, I could smell his mildly sweet citrus smell all over the room. Its aroma stimulates my sensations.
Timothée: I’ll make you a cup of coffee. I’ll be careful with the amount of sugar, it’ll be just the way you like it. Keep lying down, angel.
Geez, what happens now? I don’t know, he doesn’t know, you don’t know.
Anyway, I feel complete.
#timothée chalamet#tchalamet#timothee chalamet#timothee#fanfic#art#xavier dolan#cigarettes after sex#the beatles#nick drake#backstreet boys#movie#music#bright are the stars that shine
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My Read On Hiroki and Why He Gets On My Last Good Goddamn Nerve
First thing I want to make clear: I am not biased here. Although my favorite Egoist fanfiction on the planet is “Turning Back Time” By Lucicelo, this read on him is solely based off of my observations, interpretations, and is backed up with proof in the manga. I actually used to like Hiroki in the past, even made a fanfic and everything many moons ago (I was 16-17 shhhhh).
Christ, where do I even begin with this fool? Strap in for this one, folks!
Welp, I guess we should start off by saying he’s a narcissist. This isn’t an insult, Hiroki is a textbook narc, he suffers from this. Why we’re starting here is because this is the baseline for his mindset and explains the drive behind most, if not all of his actions. This also explains the whole issue behind his ‘pride’ and avoiding things that are ‘embarrassing’. This also is a huge factor as to why the Egoist relationship just doesn’t fucking work and why if a relationship with Akihiko happened, Akihiko wouldn’t have been the likeable character he is now.
Hiroki is probably the most self centered character Nakamura has created next to Taka-no-means-no. In chapters told from his points of view, you never see him even consider anyone else or how they would feel. It’s all about how everything is impacting him and assuming that he’s always in the right or that he’s the victim in all this. During the stupid America thing, his head is so far up his asshole that he didn’t remember Nowaki being interested in studying a science nor their conversation about going to America because he thought it was appropriate to work on papers for school during a time he’s supposed to hang with Nowaki.
Not to mention, most of his actions are completely self-serving. One of the majorly terrible things he did was sleeping with Akihiko. Instead of helping his friend through being devastated about unrequited love, he just took advantage of his emotionally vulnerable crush instead of the friend Akihiko needed. I think THIS is why Akihiko was so pissed off afterwards. Not just at himself but at Hiroki using his grief as an opportunity to make Akihiko fall in love with him.
One that sticks out particular in terms of being self-serving is when he does nice things for others. But, almost all of those nice things are motivated by wanting to quell guilt or he’s fucking hammered. That was the main reason why he took care of Nowaki when he was sick which makes me confident that Hiroki wouldn’t have done anything at all if he wasn’t motivated by guilt. Why did he celebrate Valentine’s Day with Nowaki? Guilt! Why did he decide to take a bath with him? Guilt! Why did he even bother sending those bride photos back to his parents with that letter? GUILT! It’s hardly ever because it’s just a nice thing to fucking do or even the right thing. The only other time he told Nowaki he loved him? He was drunk!
Narcissistic Rage: He’s not just a hothead, I think it goes deeper. While him being the Kamijou the Devil is funny at all, it’s literally just him in bouts of narc rage. That’s because students not listening to the lecture makes Hiroki feel like he lost control of his class and the fact that he’s being ignored in a threat to his self esteem. This also explains the many times he gets extremely angry when there’s an inkling that he is wrong and him lashing out by trying to hurt the person threatening/challenging him. So, not only do students get things thrown at them but it also explains why Nowaki does as well. HIs stubborness also stems from this, because he believes he’s right at all costs.
Narcissistic Selective Memory: I bet there are a lot of problematic things about Hiroki that people forgot because only Nowaki’s faults are brought up anymore. While everyone loves to dogpile on Nowaki about him being a stalker, so was Hiroki! Hiroki was just as bad IF NOT WORSE! He not only wore disguises but he also would time his stalking to such a precise degree so that he and Nowaki would bump into each other so they could walk home together. He made a pattern to do this every seven or so times that he’d stalk Nowaki so that Nowaki wouldn’t catch on (but he DID because our boy is perceptive as hell). In a more recent chapter, Hiroki criticizes Nowaki for being a scary stalker.
Superiority Complex: So high and mighty, this guy. But, this is mainly evident by the way he treats Nowaki. For almost the entire relationship, Hiroki has treated Nowaki like a child. He would poo-poo Nowaki’s rightful concerns and accomplishments. He’d constantly talk down to him. Like, if this guy wasn’t making fun of Nowaki he was putting him down. This is what lead to Nowaki finally blowing up at him which brings us to our next thing-
He didn’t just take advantage of Akihiko, oh no, he fully takes advantage of Nowaki’s kindness/selflessness. Hiroki is aware of what he can get away with, evident by the way he assumes that Nowaki will just stay quiet and agree. Also by the way he will automatically just reject whatever Nowaki has said to him because he knows Nowaki is too nice to fight back. If Nowaki is openly upset, this is where Hiroki’s guilt starts.
Hiroki is Junjou Romantica’s BIGGEST HYPOCRITE: Not just from him only pointing out and criticizing bad things Nowaki did even though he did them himself, but the fact that he can’t take criticism himself. I think it’s very weird for someone to constantly be so judgmental of everyone around them but then not be able to take what they’re dishing out. This is evident why the way he acts when Nowaki was “sick” and was telling him that he ran off with the idea before he fully listened. You think Hiroki accepted that and changed? Haha, NO.
Which also ties into his emotional immaturity. Listen, Hiroki, fuckface...can I call you fuckface? I’m gonna call you fuckface: you can’t tell someone that you don’t care what they do while also not wanting to act like you want to be in a relationship and then get mad if it seems like they’re taking your advice. You also shouldn’t hop into a relationship when you’re still in love with someone else. THAT’S RIGHT! You guys think Hiroki has gotten over Akihiko at all? Absolutely fucking NOT. He even said that he’d always love Akihiko but that he loves Nowaki ‘a different way’, but I’m not sure what that different way is? I mean, the first thing Hiroki thought about in terms of Nowaki was not his kindness or concern for his well-being, but that his hands were similar to Akihiko’s. Also, the whole thing about Nowaki not being allowed to call him by his first name but Akihiko being able to that is just another red flag to me. He’s also immature in the way that he barely faces his problems. He has run away figuratively and literally many many many many many times. Lastly, he barely takes any initiative in the relationship and has Nowaki constantly carrying their relationship.
Which brings me to the part that boils my fucking blood: Hiroki treats Akihiko better than Nowaki and is a lot softer with him. With the way he speaks to Akihiko vs Nowaki, who gets to refer to him by his first name, the way he’d drop everything to read a manuscript- it is so fucking obvious that Hiroki would treat Akihiko so much better if they were together. I sometimes get the inkling that it frustrates Hiroki that Nowaki isn’t Akihiko.
Does that mean Minimum is better than Egoist? Yeah, no. Akihiko would not have blossomed into the beautiful flower that he is now with Hiroki because there would be no motivation for him to change. Hiroki would enable his bad qualities since he’s accepting of a lot of Akihiko’s faults and the strained relationship with his family by both of their lack of empathy. Evident by the way Hiroki did fuck all to encourage Akihiko to move on in a healthy way and the way he kind of idolizes him. The other side of the clash is Akihiko not putting up with Hiroki’s narcissism, immaturity, and quirks as a whole. Akihiko does not take any of Hiroki’s bullshit, even now.
So, what even is Egoist then? Well, kind of quoting Bojack Horseman here, Hiroki sunk his claws into the one person on the planet who will put up with his bullshit and make him the center of the universe. Nowaki is wearing rose colored glasses, so all the red flags just look like flags.
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i was finally able to see the bad star war that everyone said was bad. as it turns out, it was bad. here’s a read more post with my thoughts on it so that i don’t spam my twitter with spoiler tweets
for a baseline: i like the original trilogy, but i don’t think any of those movies are perfect. i think the prequels had some good ideas but i were mostly terrible. i love the clone wars (both versions) and rebels. while i admit that tfa was extremely similar to a new hope, i thought it was executed great and had a wonderful new cast that showed a ton of promise. i liked rogue one, although i found its first act really sloppy. and i have some quibbles about tlj, but it had an incredibly strong vision and actual themes, and i’d consider it my favorite in the series
i’m exactly the kind of person who was always going to hate the rise of skywalker, because it’s basically a bad fanfic written by someone who didn’t like tlj and wanted to “fix” the story. like that bizarre story treatment jenny nicholson read for this movie. the bad one. it was like that
it wasn’t all bad i guess. here are the small things i liked:
some of the new environments were cool. there was cool imagery and practical effects work
i appreciated that the moon of endor where the death star wreckage was wasn’t just the one with the ewoks, and thought the vibe there was cool
zorii bliss’s armor was really cool
the image of the fleet of star destroyers all lined up was striking
i liked that the ghost showed up for the final battle
i liked that ahsoka was one of the jedi voices rey heard, even though that kind of implies that ahsoka is, uh... dead?
while extremely fucking trite and dumb, i’ll admit the closing scene on tatooine got me. yeah, rey has no real connection to this place and it’s just a nostalgic throwback, but i’m a sucker for full circle endings like that
uh. that’s about it
this movie kicks off in the middle of an action scene and just kind of keeps jumping to new setpieces nonstop until it’s over. new characters and locations get introduced and then moved past in the blink of an eye. there’s no time to let any of it sink in. it feels like abrams crammed two movies worth of shit into this one to make up for the the fact that some people didn’t like tlj, and as a result none of it resonates. i just felt so empty throughout most of the film. events were happening on screen and none of it mattered
thoughts about individual elements:
LEIA
putting the scenes with the recycled footage of carrie fisher at the beginning of the film completely took me out of it. it was so obvious that she wasn’t really responding to what was being said, and the conversations had just been built around the limited leia lines they could use
the dialogue scenes with leia felt like a space ghost interview
C-3PO
was in this movie a lot for some reason? i guess abrams wanted to make up for how little c-3po there was in the last two movies. they tried to have that emotional moment where his memory is wiped, but then they just turned his memory loss into a big joke?? and then he got most of his memories back anyway
in general, the movie is afraid to let the audience be uncomfortable for long. 3po’s memory loss. the supposed deaths of chewbacca and babu frik, that sort of thing. you’re not allowed to be sad. after tlj so effectively built tension throughout the film and really pushed the heroes to the brink, this is a disappointment
LANDO
is here because he needed to show up, and because it’s a throwback to have him pilot the falcon again. he’s just kind of there with little to do and no arc
FINN, POE, AND ROSE
before the movie came out, i had low expectations. all i really wanted was to get one last fun adventure with the new characters. when i started to hear about the spoilers, my expectations sank even lower. but maybe i would still get this
nah! rose gets like two minutes of screentime because redditors hated her, and finn and poe are barely even characters. they don’t have arcs in this film, they’re just sidekicks on rey’s journey
finn really hurts. prior to tfa’s release, finn was framed as the new star. this was, of course, a bait and switch, as rey was really the new jedi. (finn apparently IS force sensitive according to this one, but hey! we can only have one big jedi hero, so like leia before him, i guess we’ve gotta wait for some EU novel to give finn a lightsaber)
but finn was still a central character in the last two films, and he had so much potential. he was a stormtrooper who defected! that’s something new! that’s interesting! it complicates the black and white morality of the series. but no. that’s been all but abandoned at this point
many have complained about how tfa establishes that basically all the stormtroopers are people who were kidnapped as children and brainwashed by the first order... but then they still have no qualms about gleefully killing them. in the first two movies i was like “yeah, it sucks that they have to kill those guys, but if it’s to prevent genocide, it’s understandable. that’s just war. maybe they’ll touch on it in the last movie.” so in this one, they kept reminding the audience that the stormtroopers were enslaved as children. jannah is even introduced as another stormtrooper who defected like finn. but then... it goes nowhere. finn doesn’t get any first order troops to defect. they don’t care about the other stormtroopers. how many hundreds of thousands of enslaved soldiers did they kill when they blew up those star destroyers
it was nice to see finn and poe take the charge as leaders in the end, but it also feels like they didn’t take the lessons from tlj to heart. the whole point of that story was that one-in-a-million shot heroic suicide missions aren’t worth it, and that they’re more useful to the resistance alive than they are as martyrs. but then in the climax of this film they take like 30 ships to go fight a fleet of a hundred fucking star destroyers
on the subject of that final battle: i thought that the ending of tlj was so powerful. the resistance was decimated, but they still had hope, because they knew there were others out there who could help. people like rey, or the broom boy, who came from nothing but had good hearts. in this one, though, they say that apparently nobody responded to the leia’s call for help in the entire year since the last film. everyone only shows up during the climax after lando’s like “no, but for real guys, we need help”
and i did think that that sequence was cool. and i did like seeing the ghost among the ships. it was fun. the message that fascists like the first order rule by making people feel isolated, and that they’re defeated by realizing that good people are never alone? that was good. i thought that was a strong message. but it’s such a minor footnote on a movie that’s so bad in so many other ways
oh and they made the latino dude a drug dealer. okay. thanks for that
KYLO REN
i hate that they redeemed kylo and i hate the way they did it
yes, him being coerced to turn to the dark side by snoke (who was apparently just a puppet controlled by palpatine all along (UGH)) as a kid was tragic. but that doesn’t excuse his actions. kylo was given infinite second chances throughout the trilogy, and every time he responded with violence. he killed so many people himself, and willingly took part in a fascist regime that killed billions. yes, his story is sad, but he’s not some poor little boy, he’s thirty fucking years old and he vents his trauma by slaughtering innocent people
literally the entire main trio of the original trilogy died because of this asshole. han tried to talk to him in the first movie, and got stabbed and dropped into a pit. luke died astral projecting to face him in tlj. and now leia just kind of arbitrarily died to flip the switch in his brain from bad to good from across the galaxy. it’s literally as simple as that. he doesn’t have a personal journey here. he just stops being evil because his mom made him through the force
like, again. all those enslaved stormtrooper grunts who had been brainwashed since they were kids? gunned down. but giving kylo endless second chances is the most important thing in the world
and then they end the movie by having this creepy abusive stalker genocidal asshole sadboy kiss rey, retroactively framing their dynamic as a romantic one. just, gross as hell. even in this one, for most of the film, all he does is threaten rey and boss her around
i dunno. i thought the first order were interesting as antagonists. yeah, they were just the empire 2.0. but i thought it was appropriate! the idea was that just because palpatine was dead and gone didn’t mean that fascism was gone. there were still hateful people who wanted to rule the galaxy via genocide. like how we still have nazis in the 21st century. except, oops! palpatine was actually alive and pulling the strings the entire time, so now that theme’s out the window. we just have to kill him again FOR REAL this time and now the galaxy will actually be safe
people wondered where the first order would go after snoke died in tlj. but it was so obvious to me? kylo was in charge. kylo was always the most interesting bad guy. just let him call the shots and be the final adversary. but no. that wasn’t good enough. we had to bring back palpatine as the jrpg final boss to have an epic conclusion
REY
oh, poor rey. youtube critics got mad that a girl could be a strong jedi without being related to some other powerful force user from the old movies, so now she’s stuck being a palpatine forever
i will admit, the protagonist of the new movies being related to palpatine but still being a good person in spite of her heritage... that could have been something. but it’s so clearly not what they had in mind from the start, and it spits in the face of the last movie’s themes. it turns out greatness CAN’T come from anywhere. it has to come from one of these select few Special Bloodlines
oh! and this ALSO reframes rey’s parents abandoning her and selling her into slavery as an act of kindness, because they had to hide her from her spooky evil grandpa. so THAT’S fun. (edit: OH! and luke and leia knew about rey the whole time!!! and didn’t go out and look for her!!!!)
it’s just. it’s so bad what they did to rey. i don’t know if i even have much to elaborate on there, everyone’s already said how stupid it is
---
overall, i still wouldn’t say it’s the WORST star wars movie. it’s more watchable than the phantom menace, that’s for damn sure. the actors put in effort. the sets and practical effects are nice. it’s just so... empty
tros possibly feels the closest to how i imagined the new trilogy would be when it was first announced, but in a bad way. a movie built entirely on established ideas of What Star Wars Is with nothing new to bring to the table. it’s like a bad eu novel. just recycled imagery, cameos from characters we already know, palpatine coming back from the dead, that sort of thing. it’s a movie made by committee to appease reddit. it’s nothing
now i gotta use that free trial of disney plus to watch the mandalorian and wash the taste out of my mouth i guess
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neon moon || chapter 1 - broadcast me a joyful noise unto the times
A/N: Disclaimer, I haven’t written fanfic since I was fourteen so please be gentle with me, friends
AO3 link
Fair warning that the only editing this has gone through has been proofreading!
Also, the first two chapters are largely exposition and setting up the various connections between Frankie and the MC (Natalia), but they will finally get to meet in chapter three!
Neon Moon summary: [starts three years after the events of the movie]
Single dad Francisco "Frankie" Morales and former Ph.D candidate Natalia Yevstigneyev-Diaz are trying their best.
Alternatively: Frankie and the woman about to change his life keep missing each other, until they don't.
“Whoo-wee! Nice one, Diaz!” Benny said from where he’d just been knocked onto his back atop the sparring mats.
At her instructor’s praise, Natalia Diaz preened, making a show of taking her long dark wavy-curls out of her workout ponytail and flipping her hair over her shoulder. “Thank you, thank you, always happy to hear my badassery is increasing.”
“I’d say perfecting. That was solid.”
“Yeah, haven’t seen him go down that unexpectedly probably ever,” piped up a man with big, kind brown eyes whose name Natalia swore was Frankie. She’d only ever heard him called by his real name once or twice --- Benny usually greeted him as Fish.
If Frankie was here, that meant the rest of Benny Miller’s military buddies would be trickling into the gym. Pity they seemed to be on time today— flipping Benny was fun, maybe he’d’ve given her a window to do it again. Sometimes if his buddies ran late he’d keep sparring with her past the self-defense session she’d paid for.
“It’s thanks to him and his lessons! Wouldn’t know where to begin without him.” Natalia hi-fived Benny from where he was on the floor, now sitting. “Thanks as always, Benny. See you Friday afternoon?”
“Hell yeah!”
“Awesome. Well, I’ll get out of your hair before the rest of the guys show up. Later Benny!” She nodded politely to Frankie just as she spotted the man she knew to be Benny’s older brother and...Pope? Santiago? again, she’d only run into these men in passing.
~.*~.*~.*~.*
Natalia Diaz’s early life read like an adventure, and in many ways, it had been. Her mother, Anna Diaz, was a first generation Mexican-American of Spanish, Mixtec, and Chinese background who met her father, then in medical school, while studying abroad in Russia. Her father, Gavril Yevstigneyev, was from Yakutsk of mixed Russian, Yakut, and Chuvash background. He was a doctor who gave up the possibility of an ultra-lucrative career to spend most of his life working as a medical officer in human rights organizations, and she was a research assistant in those same organizations.
Born while her father was practicing in St. Petersburg, Natalia Gavrilovna Yevstigneyeva Diaz didn’t spend too long in one place. She may have been a dual citizen of the United States and Russia but she didn’t set foot in the United States until she was twelve years old, and her earliest concept of ‘home’ was Pakse, Laos. She was educated at international schools across Southeast Asia, and spoke Lao, Khmer, and Vietnamese in daily life depending on where the Yevstigneyev family was living, Russian at home, learned English and French at school, and her mother taught her enough Spanish to understand her abuela’s English-Spanish mix on birthday and Christmas phone calls.
When it came time to graduate from secondary school - she graduated in Laos, ultimately - she even applied to universities across Laos, Canada, Cambodia, France, The United States, Switzerland, China, Singapore, Australia, and Russia. At her parents’ insistence she cast her net far and wide. Except, with twenty-two acceptance letters and zero rejections, she almost wished she hadn’t.
She studied at McGill University and through a combination of scholarships, her parents’ help, and her “waitressing” job (stripping job actually, and Natalia was damn proud of it and the crazy money it made, but knew her parents would flip out on her so she lied), she earned her B.A.s in linguistics with a minor in translation and interpretation, and anthropology.
She had her pick of the litter as far as where she could settle post-grad: her dual citizenship made the US and Russia wide open to her, Canadian employers were offering to keep her in Canada, her parents still lived in Laos - six years in one place? That was a record for her folks! - and the NGO they were working for straight up offered her a job without her even sending an application.
There wasn’t a grad school on planet Earth that would’ve rejected her application.
Natalia’s life should have been set forever. For a while, it was.
After a gap year traveling Bhutan, Thailand, Indonesia, Mongolia, and completing the Trans-Siberian railway with her younger sister Mariya, who took a gap year between secondary school and university herself, Natalia prepared to conquer grad school….at motherfucking Yale!
That same year, her parents and younger siblings (save Mariya who was studying at Yakutsk State University in their father’s home Russian Republic of Yakutia) moved to her mother’s home state of Texas. A part of Natalia felt bad for her eleven year old sister and the three year old twins out of some sense that her upbringing had been, objectively, the best possible. Natalia did not feel Russian, or Mexican, or American, or Laotian, or Cambodian, or Vietnamese, nor did she feel the need to. Borders were an arbitrary thing. People were people just with different languages, looks, and customs, and she believed she came to know that truth early in life because of her childhood as a third culture kid.
She understood why her parents made that decision though.
In her first year of grad school, the Yevstigneyev Diaz siblings were twenty-two year old Natalia, nineteen-year-old Mariya, eleven-year-old Valentina, and two-year-old Alisa and her twin brother, the only boy in the family, Pavel. Alisa had been born partially deaf and their parents, as if they could react any other way, saw it not as a terrible thing to mourn over but as an opportunity to learn. A challenge did not equal a burden in their eyes. When she was two, however, they realized they needed to either move back to Russia or move to the United States.
The Yevstigneyevs primarily worked and lived in Vietnam and Laos, and there was no singular Laotian or Vietnamese sign language, rather, localized sign languages. As Alisa grew from an infant to a toddler they decided they did not want to deprive her of Deaf culture, and thus, the decision to move to Texas was made.
Just two years after relocating to Texas, tragedy struck the family.
A car speeding through a red light killed Anna and Gavril on the way home from volunteering their time to teach Russian classes at the local Russian cultural center. Natalia, then twenty-four years old with a newly minted Masters from Yale and acceptances to three Ph.D programs, had to force out emails declining the offers, pack up her apartment, and move to Texas to raise her siblings.
Abuela Rita instinctively offered to handle her grandchildren, but Natalia couldn’t possibly make her abuela (who she barely knew at that) raise three children again. Besides, her mother’s youngest sister still lived at home, and this was the same year Hurricane Harvey destroyed one of her uncle’s homes and he, his wife, and their children were also living in Abuela’s home...yeah, no. No, this had to be Natalia.
It was Natalia or the state of Texas and like hell she was going to throw her three little siblings, two of them just four, and one of them deaf, into the system. Alisa being able to communicate in ASL was so important to her parents...how could Natalia possibly let Alisa go into a system that wouldn’t care?
And anyway, it wasn’t so bad. She used her fluency in Russian, Lao, Khmer, and French to work as a book translator. She’d even gone back to dancing four days a week for two reasons. A. You’d think speaking five languages fluently would mean she was making an assload of money, right? Wrong. and B. The inheritance and life insurance policies from her parents wouldn’t last forever and she had four college educations to finance.
That was three years ago, and two and a half years before she started taking self-defense classes from Benny Miller. She’d only been working at an Austin strip club for about four months when one handsy patron reminded her that she needed a refresher on how to throw a punch.
As for why she was Natalia Diaz now and not Natalia Yevstigneyeva? Well. She was still Natalia Yevstigneyeva-Diaz, but unless she was filling out legal papers, or at the Russian cultural center, it was just Diaz. Her mother’s last name was just easier for Austinites to pronounce right. You had to be at least a level six friend to unlock her tragic backstory and her full last name.
Natalia had had everything going for her until one drunk driver took her parents, her Ph.D goals, her planned return to traveling the world, and even her name in one instant.
She wished she had it in her to be bitter but that would require her to have time to think about herself anymore. If it wasn’t taking ASL classes with Alisa, it was listening to Mariya complain about her job. If it wasn’t Valentina’s archery competitions, it was Pavel’s gymnastics meets.
(Yes, yes, she knew. How stereotypically Russian of them to have a kid in competitive gymnastics. It wasn’t her idea! Pavel loved it and when he begged his big sister to be allowed more than one class a week...she dared anybody to say no to that face.)
Any Natalia time she did have was too precious to spend being bitter, she decided.
~.*~.*~.*~.*
“Natasha! Nataaaaaaaasha….NATASHA!”
“Wha!” Thud! “Fuck. Oww.”
Natalia groaned from where she’d fallen into a startled pile on the living room floor, staring up at the ceiling and turned her head to shoot a glare at Mariya.
“Marusya, one day, you’re going to scare me awake to actual death.”
“That’s impossible.” Valentina said from where she sat at the dining table typing up a paper for school. “If you’re scared to literal death you can’t be scared awake because you’ll be dead. Dead people can’t be awake.”
“Unless she’s a zombie, Valya!” Shouted Pavel from his room down the hall.
“Pasha’s got a point.” Mariya said, to which Natalia grabbed her foot and yanked hard, making her shriek as she fell against the couch. “Oof. Anyway, you’re going to be late for work if you don’t hurry up.”
Natalia checked her watch and let out a swear under her breath. “I really need to not spar with Benny on work nights. Hey, Valya-” she sat up on the floor and whirled around to face her middle sister. “Do I need to drop you off for babysitting anywhere tonight?”
Valentina shook her head. “Abuela’s picking me up to take me to Mr. Morales’. I’m watching Daniela.” Mr. Morales - whoever that was - lived near Abuela and her taking Valentina to his house gave her some ‘Valone time’ she liked to say.
Natalia peeled herself off the floor and made her way to her bedroom, stopping by Alisa’s on the way. She grabbed the purple narwhal plushie that lived in a little basket attached to her door - the Get Alisa’s Attention Narwhal - and gently tossed it at Alisa, and when it landed in her lap Alisa tossed it back to Natalia, kept her hands free, and said “I didn’t forget.”
“Good. If you’re good at the dentist tomorrow morning, I’ll buy you ice cream after.”
“Isn’t that the opposite of what you should do after the dentist?”
“So you don’t want ice cream?”
“That’s not what I said!”
Natalia laughed and stepped far enough into Alisa’s room to ruffle her hair and then said, “Be good. Masha’s in charge while I’m at work.”
~.*~.*~.*~.*
“Thought you were day shift on Wednesdays, Natasha!” A black woman with her hair in box braids — Jess, stage name Phoenix — said, throwing her arm around Natalia when she first got to work.
“Nah, I talked to Paris, got my hours changed around, remember? Gosh, it’s like you don’t remember everything I ever say to you.”
Jess stuck her tongue out and muttered, “Bitch,” before smooching Natalia’s cheek.
Natalia shoved Jess off of her with a giggle. “Go finish getting ready, ya crazy.” She sat down in front of one of the available mirrors to touch up her makeup before she was officially working, then addressed Jess again. “My 11-8 days are now Sunday and Monday. Wednesday, Saturday, I’m here with you 8 til 4, baybeeeee.”
“Mm, good call. Wine Wednesday.”
Half price wine meant more cash for dancers.
“Needs more body glitter,” Natalia said in her best Christopher Walken impression, before unscrewing the cap of her body glitter to shiny herself up.
“Now in your Zoya voice!”
“Needs more body glitter,” Natalia repeated, this time, in her stage persona’s stronger Russian accent.
The accent helped to further distinguish between Zoya the performer and who Natalia was offstage. It also wasn’t exactly offensive, either, because it was just Natalia exaggerating the accent she naturally had and just making it consistently Russian. It was a mess otherwise. Natalia and Mariya...talked funny. Their accents were kind of impossible to place because of how they learned English and which languages they first learned to actually speak in.
At first listen, their international school education would hint at American- ish . But listen closely and certain vowels come out like an Aussie or a Canadian, courtesy of international school teachers from those countries. Listen for another moment and you’ll hear that Natalia’s tongue, specifically, never learned to consistently make certain sounds that English has that Russian, Lao, Vietnamese and Khmer just don’t. Natalia’s H’s came out harsh courtesy of her Russian father. And both Natalia and Mariya had a habit of dropping articles when telling their younger siblings to ‘close window’ or ‘feed dog and cat.’
For the most part, as Natalia tried to explain to anybody who asked about her accent, English was a language for the classroom. They spoke exclusively Russian in the home and out in ‘the wild’ spoke the local language. Yakutsk was a closer flight from Laos, Cambodia, or Vietnam than Austin was so if they visited any grandparents for Christmas it was their babushka and dedushka in Russia.
Returning to the US permanently never was the plan, remember. It was only a decision they made for Alisa to live somewhere with a standard sign language -- and the only reason, Anna confessed to Natalia once, that they didn’t go back to Russia, was because Natalia had recently come out as bisexual.
“We worried for Valya and the twins. What if they also grow up and realize they aren’t straight? The way it is in Russia for people like you...your father and I love Russia more than the United States. But we love our kids more than Russia.”
She hated how vivid that conversation was in her head. There were some truly beautiful moments with her mother that had already faded from memory. How unfair of her brain to let things like holidays, birthdays, and her mother’s hugs slip.
“Drive home safe, Jess.” Natalia bid her friend farewell a little after four the next morning, kissing her on the cheek before she unlocked her own car. If she got up to 70 and stayed there, she’d be home in time to count her tips, shower, and fix breakfast for the kiddos before school and in Alisa’s case, the dentist.
~.*~.*~.*~.*
“Stand still Pasha,” Natalia said as she gently bopped the seat of her baby brother’s pants to knock the glitter off them. “Your butt looks like a glitter cannon exploded right next to it.”
Pavel giggled and pointed out, “It’s your fault there’s always glitter in your bed.”
“You shouldn’t lay down in my bed for naps after I’ve woken you up for school anyway. Especially not after you’ve already got your clothes on, you dingus.”
“ Heeeey, that’s mean!” Pavel pouted.
“Not if I’m saying it with love. Which I am.” Natalia stood up and pressed a kiss to the top of her brother’s head. “Okay, your butt’s as unsparkly as it's gonna get.”
“I don’t see what wrong with having a sparkly butt anyway.” Pavel grumbled.
“Now run along to the bus stop with the other kids. Be good at school, learn lots, I love you kid.”
“Love you too , Natashe-!” the -nka! came muffled as Pavel had darted out the door to run down to the bus stop.
Natalia sipped on her coffee and watched out the window as her brother darted across the field to the complex’s mailbox pavilion to make sure he joined the other children safely. Satisfied he had, she turned away from the window to trudge back to the kitchen and refill her coffee and begin her vanilla work for the day before she had to wake Alisa for the dentist. On today’s docket? Trying to get through editing at least the first third of her Russian translation of the next book in the hottest new YA series.
There was nothing Natalia wanted more than a nap but she was already cutting her deadline close. Right on schedule was the same as being behind in the literary translation world. If she wasn’t so ahead of schedule she was getting bored then she was nearing panic mode.
Logically she knew that only she felt that way. Her boss didn’t, or at least never felt the need to express to her that he did, but just herself was enough to put the pressure on from beginning to end of a project.
It had benefited her in school. Not so much in her career.
A life in academia as a linguistics scholar and researcher would have suited her better. The universe didn’t consider that when it let a drunk driver kill her parents and leave her three siblings to raise and Mariya’s academic dreams to finance.
#pedro pascal fandom#triple frontier fanfiction#frankie morales fanfiction#francisco morales x ofc#my fic#neon moon fic#ofc of color#multiracial ofc#Francisco catfish Morales
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Quill’s Swill - The Worst Of 2019
Congratulations! You’ve made it through another year! You’ve faced many obstacles and overcome many adversaries to arrive here, at the dawn of a new decade. So as we prepare to leave the 2010s and make our way into the 2020s, lets take a look back at the challenges and hardships of 2019. And by challenges and hardships, I of course mean shitty fiction and media.
Yes, it’s time for yet another edition of Quill’s Swill, where we mark the absolute worst stories that the industry had to offer over the past year and proceed to tear them to shreds. Think of it as like voiding your bowels before the New Year.
As always remember that this is my personal, subjective opinion. If you happen to like any of the things on this list, that’s fine. More power to you. Go make your own list. Also bear in mind I haven’t seen everything 2019 has to offer due to various other commitments. So as much as I really, really want to, I can’t put Avengers Endgame on here. I know what happens. It sounds fucking terrible, but I haven’t seen the film, so it wouldn’t be fair of me to put it on the list, even though it would most definitely deserve it.
...
Seriously, read the synopsis of Endgame on Wikipedia some time. It’s like fanfic written by a nine year old. It’s truly shocking. And now it’s the highest grossing movie of all time? Give me strength.
All In A Row
Don’t you just hate it when you’re expected to parent your autistic child? Like actually show love and care and consideration to your offspring. Look at him, expecting you to treat him like a human being. Selfish bastard! If only there was a play that explored the horrors of having to be a decent person to your own flesh and blood and how objectively awful it is. If you’re one of those people, then the play All In A Row will be right up your street.
Premiering on the 14th February at Southwark Playhouse in London, All In A Row was a total shitshow to say the least. The playwright, Alex Oates, claimed to have ten years of experience working with autistic children, which you wouldn’t have believed if you saw the play as the autistic child at the centre of the play, Lawrence, seemed more like a wild animal than a person. In fact two of the main characters compare him to a dog. And if you thought this wasn’t dehumanising enough, Lawrence isn’t even a child. He’s a puppet. Yes, it’s as bad as it sounds.
All In A Row seems to place all of the blame for the family’s predicament on the autistic child, who’s presented as barely functional, bordering on bestial. There’s no effort to really make an emotional connection with Lawrence (how can you? He’s a puppet!) as the play instead focuses on how this kid has effectively ruined this family’s life because of his autism and aggressive behaviour. Speaking as someone on the autism spectrum, I can say quite confidently that this play is fucking despicable. Badly written, badly conceived, insulting and downright mean spirited. I wouldn’t want Oates looking after my autistic children, that’s for damn sure.
Anthem
EA is back and this time they’re dragging the critical darling that is BioWare down with them.
Anthem was a desperate attempt to jump aboard the ‘live service’ bandwagon, trying to replicate the success of other video games like Overwatch, Destiny and Warframe. They failed spectacularly. The game itself had more bugs than A Bug’s Life, loot drops were often stingy and unrewarding, loading times were farcically long, and the story and worldbuilding was fucking pitiful. Oh yeah, and if you played it on PS4, there was a good chance it could permanently damage it. Thankfully I have a uni friend with an Xbox One and they allowed me to play the game on that. It was a crushing disappointment, especially coming fresh off the heels of Mass Effect Andromeda, which didn’t exactly set the world on fire back in 2017.
It didn’t help that EA’s reputation was in tatters thanks to the lootbox controversy of Star Wars Battlefront II and having to try and win back the trust of fans, but worse still reports began to service of what went on behind the scenes at BioWare during the game’s development. Apparently the game’s story and mechanics kept changing every other day as the creative directors and writers didn’t have the faintest idea what kind of game they wanted to make, and the developers were often forced to work obscenely long work hours in abusive crunch periods to get the game finished for launch. It got so bad that, according to an article on Kotaku, some members of the team had to leave for weeks or even months at a time to recover from ‘stress casualties.’
To think this was the same company that gave us Mass Effect, Dragon Age and Knights Of The Old Republic. Thank God that Obsidian Entertainment is there to pick up the slack on the RPG front because I think it’s safe to assume that BioWare won’t be around for much longer at this rate.
The Lion King (2019 remake)
Here we go. Yet another live action remake of a Disney classic. Excpet it’s not live action, is it? Well... it’s live action in the sense that Dinosaur was live action (remember that film? Don’t worry if you don’t. No one does). Real locations but CGI characters. Millions of dollars spent on cutting edge tech to create photo realistic animals... and the film ends up duller than a bowl of porridge that really likes trainspotting.
It’s not just the fact that The Lion King remake is yet another soulless cash grab from the House of Mouse, it’s also the fact that it’s done really badly that upsets me. The Lion King works as an animated film. Bright colourful images, over the top song and dance sequences and vibrant character designs. As a ‘live action’ film, it just looks awkward and stilted. None of the animals are very expressive, leaving it up to the poor voice actors to carry the film, and to cap it all off the CGI isn’t even all that convincing in my opinion. At no point did I look at Simba and go ‘oh yeah, he looks like a real lion.’ It’s so obviously fake. In fact it reminds me of those early 00s movies like Cats & Dogs or Stuart Little where you see the jaws of the talking animals moving up and down like some messed up ventriloquist act or something. And here’s me thinking cinema has evolved past this.
BBC’s The War Of The Worlds
Remember Peter Harness? That guy who wrote that Doctor Who episode about the moon being an egg? Yeah, he’s back and he’s doing an adaptation of H.G. Wells’ War Of The Worlds. And guess what! It’s fucking ghastly! :D
The three part BBC mini-series was without a doubt some of the worst telly I think I’ve ever seen. It’s staggering how clueless Harness is as a writer. For starters he managed to achieve the impossible and somehow made a Martian invasion of Earth boring. I didn’t even think it was possible, but somehow he pulled it off. Then he sucks all tension out of the story by revealing the ultimate fate of the Martians at the beginning of the second episode, so now any threat or danger has been chucked out of the window because we know that the main female protagonist Amy at least would survive. And then finally he takes a massive dump over the source material by having humanity weaponise typhoid to kill the red weed rather than just having the Martians die of the common cold like in the book. Because God forbid us Brits should be presented as anything other than heroic and dignified.
So what we’re left with is a poorly realised allegory with ineffectual horror tropes full of OTT progressive posturing in a pathetic attempt to make Harness and the BBC look more liberal than they actually are. There’s no effort to really explore the themes of imperialism and colonialism outside of casual lip service, and we barely get a glimpse of the dark side of humanity. Everyone is presented as flawed, but basically awesome or, in the case of Rafe Spall’s character, utterly gormless. Our TV license fees help fund this shit, you know?!
And if you think this was bad, just wait till New Year’s Day where we’ll get to see Steven Moffat and Mark Gatiss’ butcher Dracula. Can we stop giving these beloved literary icons to these hacks please?
Glass
I liked Split. It wasn’t an amazing movie, but it was entertaining with some good ideas, a great performance from James McAvoy and was a true return to form for M Night Shyamalan. That being said, I wasn’t keen on the idea of it taking place in the same universe as Unbreakable. I feared it would be a step too far and we’d end up having something like... well, something like Glass.
On paper, Glass isn’t a bad idea. The idea of superpowers being a delusion is legitimately intriguing and could have been a great post-modern deconstruction of the superhero genre. Except Shyamalan never actually does anything with it. The first act drags on and on with absolutely nothing happening, none of the characters really grow or change over the course of the film, Bruce Willis in particular is basically only here for an extended cameo as his character does pretty much nothing for the majority of the film, and then the entire film is undermined by that stupid Shyamalan twist. Turns out superhumans are real and there’s a big cover up. Oh great! So not only does it render the entire film pointless, it also undoes what made Unbreakable and Split so good. They’re no longer people capable of extraordinary feats via rational means. They’re just superhuman. They can do anything. Sigh.
Shyamalan... maybe it’s time to give up the director’s chair, yeah?
Cats
Oh come on! Don’t act surprised! Did you honestly think I wouldn’t put Cats on this list?!
Cats, without a doubt, is the worst film of the decade and, yes, the CGI is terrible. Not only are there these sub-human cat mutants running around, we also have mice and cockroaches with child faces, James Corden coughing up furballs, Taylor Swift trying to give the furries in the audience boners, Idris Elba looking disturbingly underdressed and Rebel Wilson being... well... Rebel Wilson. It’s a disaster of a film. And really, should we even be surprised? We all knew this was going to suck. And no it’s not because of the CGI. I thought the CGI in Pokemon: Detective Pikachu was creepy as well, but at least it had a decent script and good performances to back it up. No the reason why Cats sucked is because... it’s Cats. It’s always been that bad. No amount of ‘advanced fur technology’ was going to change that. It was still going to be a confused, plotless mess with one dimensional characters and bad songs.
The only consolation I had was that I didn’t waste money buying a ticket. A friend of mine snuck me into the premiere and we watched it in the projector room. The plan was to make fun of it and have a laugh, but we didn’t even do that because honestly there’s nothing to really make fun. There’s only so many times you can take the piss out of the CGI and honestly the film was just boring more than anything else. It doesn’t even have the distinction of being so bad it’s good like Sharknado or Tommy Wiseau’s The Room. It’s just bad, period.
I just hope we don’t see something similar happen to Starlight Express. Just think. Anthropomorphic, singing trains on roller skates. Shudder.
Star Wars: The Rise Of Skywalker
Finally we have yet another cynical cash grab from Disney.
I confess I didn’t exactly go into The Rise Of Skywalker with an open mind. I was never all that keen on a sequel trilogy in the first place, and neither The Force Awakens nor The Last Jedi ever convinced me otherwise. Admittedly they weren’t bad movies. Just derivative and painfully uninspired, and I was expecting more of the same for Episode IX. What I got instead was quite possibly the worst Star Wars film since Attack Of The Clones. Yes, it’s that bad.
This film is very poorly made, filled with plot contrivances and logic holes galore. I lost count of the number of times the protagonists got into a dangerous situation because of Rey constantly wandering off like a confused toddler lost in a shopping mall. Oh and we finally find out who her parents were and it was quite a twist, but only because it was really stupid. Of course we didn’t see it coming because nobody would have guessed it would be something that moronic. I feel JJ Abrams’ stupid ‘mystery box’ philosophy is to blame for this. It’s derailed countless franchises before such as Lost and Cloverfield, and now Abrams has fucked up Star Wars because he’s obsessed with mystery for the sake of mystery and Disney are so lazy that they couldn’t be bothered to plan an actual trilogy out properly beforehand. Instead they just wing it, making it up as they go along, which led to Rian Johnson ‘subverting our expectations’ and left Abrams desperately trying to pick up the pieces.
In fact a lot of The Rise Of Skywalker seemed designed specifically to appease people of both sides of the wide chasm The Last Jedi had created. The roles of characters of colour like Finn and Rose were significantly reduced, Poe and Finn don’t end up together because of homophobia, but we do see two women kiss in the background of one two second shot that could easily be cut out when they release the film in China, Kylo Ren gets his stupid redemption even though he hasn’t fucking earned it, Lando Calrissian shows up for no fucking reason, Rey is given ‘flaws’ relating to her parentage in order to combat those accusing her of being a Mary Sue, but they’re the boring kind of flaws that don’t have any real impact on her character, and that ghastly ship Reylo is made canon even though it makes no sodding sense in the context of this movie, let alone the whole trilogy. They even go to the trouble of baiting us with a FinnRey romance before pulling the rug out from under us. Then, just to add insult to injury, the film retroactively ends up making the entire original trilogy completely pointless. All because Disney wanted more dollars to put in their Scrooge McDuck money bin.
The Rise Of Skywalker, and indeed the entire sequel trilogy, should serve as a cautionary tale against the dangers of hype and nostalgia. The reason The Force Awakens was successful wasn’t because it was a good movie (because lets be brutally honest here, it really fucking wasn’t). It was because it gave gullible Star Wars fans warm fuzzies because it reminded them of A New Hope whilst tempting them with the vague promise that things might get more interesting later on. And when that didn’t materialise, quelle surprise, the fanbase didn’t take it very well. I would love to think that this will serve as an important lesson for the future when people go and see Disney movies, but who am I kidding? I guarantee at some point we’re going to get Episodes X, XI and XII and we’ll have to go through this sorry process all over again.
So there we have it. The worst of 2019. May they rot forever in Satan’s rectum or wherever it is stories go to die. Tomorrow we’ll take a look at the other end of the spectrum. Yes it’s the Quill Seal Of Approval Awards! The best of the best! Who shall win? The suspense is killing me! Ooooh, I can’t wait! You’ll be there tomorrow, won’t you? Of course you will. How could you not?
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Children of a Lesser Matrix: It’s Like A Saturday Morning Cartoon, But With… Genocide
Children of a Lesser Matrix is by no means a complete work- more of an outline that never got past the “slap some ideas in as they come to you” stage. Fun fact: you don’t have to write in sequential order if you don’t want to. It can actually help with writer’s block to jump around.
Let’s take a look at the writing process, shall we?
I wasn’t kidding when I said the self-insert got the shaft in Eugenesis.
It turns out that back when the Transmasters UK club was a thing, it was pretty common for the members to have a sort of mascot for themselves, a character that would show up in their work repeatedly. You see it nowadays with fanfic writers too, so it isn’t exactly an odd phenomenon, but it’s something I found interesting.
You know who else shows up repeatedly in Roberts’ other works?
Throwback.
But that’s a topic for another day.
This story takes place in the year of 1990. No peering into the future here; this was probably set in the modern day at the time of writing. Seeing as Eugenesis was first published in 2001, it’s safe to assume that we’re looking at the work of a very young Roberts.
Our focus at present is an asteroid in uncharted space.
Oh!
Oh.
Looks like these guys are Autobots, and their ship crashed into this space rock, killing them instantly. These must be the equivalent of Transformers’ red-shirts, because it usually takes a little more to take them out. There’s also a Decepticon, but we’ll get to him in a second.
What else is on this asteroid? Oh, y’know, nothing special. Just the Creation Matrix.
AND IT’S EVIL.
And everyone knows that green is the color of EVIL.
We’ve got an interesting take on the Matrix here, in that A) it’s evil, and B) it’s sentient. Like, really sentient. Also, it can summon demons, and is gonna stuff them in these Autobot corpses it found in the ship.
No mention of what it does with Thunderwing, if anything at all.
Yep. Thunderwing. If you read the IDW Stormbringer miniseries, or the MTMTE Revolutions one-shot, you know about Thunderwing at least a little. In the Marvel UK comics, his whole shtick was that he was obsessed with obtaining the Creation Matrix, believing himself to have an affinity with it. Guess that sort of backfired on him here.
This is the first time I’ve seen something bolded like this in Roberts’ work, and I really couldn’t tell you exactly why, but it’s oddly endearing. Maybe it the mental image of this 14-year old kid just furiously getting this outline down, underlining the word “will" so hard the lead in his pencil breaks off.
We get hit with an interlude, taking place inside a robot grandpa.
Of course, I’m being facetious, but this is a little interesting. Perhaps this is referring to his base on Cybertron, and not Alpha Trion himself. It seems more likely than Roberts mistaking the name for a place.
And who’s inside Delta Triton? Why, it’s Skimmer!
You probably don’t know Skimmer.
Skimmer was actually in MTMTE #41- or at least, he was mentioned. Hailing from Caminus and serving under Thunderclash, the comic doesn’t even know what gender he is. He’s male. Probably can’t put that on the wiki, seeing as this is about as far from “canon” as it gets- an unpublished, basically unwritten fanfiction. It’ll be our little secret, just between you, me, and James Roberts.
Skimmer runs into his boss Quillion- who does not show up anywhere else, as far I can can tell- who doesn’t look terribly happy at the moment. There’s a huge blip on the radar, and it isn’t anyone they want to have over for tea.
Language!
Quillion orders for these massive rocket boosters they’ve strapped to the moon be turned on so they can get the hell out of the way of this honestly preposterously large pile of Decepticons coming their way. They flip the switch, and moon #3 blasts off.
Oh hi, Luna 01, didn’t recognize you there!
Back at the asteroid, the Matrix went and brought the Autobots back from the dead, and proceeds to wax poetic on the nature of life, and how its new underlings will serve it.
That’s the royal we, baby. The Matrix is making no bones about it, this thing is KING. Seems like the Omniforce is a Roberts-original idea. Wonder what that’s all about. And what of this new force of evil?
Oh my fucking god his name is Genocide.
If I were a middle-school kid reading this outline, I’d be losing my mind over how cool and edgy this was. Roberts is trying so hard here, and I’m all about it. You go, tiny JRo. You go full cowl on these evil robots.
Our Omniforce have personalities to match their new looks and identities, and it’s about what you’d expect- these boys are a drop of blood in the water away from going completely feral. Also, Thunderwing’s starting to wake up. So, that’ll be a thing soon.
Back at the interlude, everything’s settling down as the gravity rights itself. The moon almost hit light-speed- which, holy shit- but it looks like the laws of inertia in a vacuum are on vacation today.
Not that I expect a kid from the 90’s to know about that.
They’re roughly 7000 hours away from Cybertron, so they better start heading back now. Assuming that there’s still a Cybertron to go back to.
Back with the first plot, Thunderwing’s having a seizure- Roberts’ prose characters seem to do that a lot- and the Matrix is freaking out, because if he dies, they won’t have a ride off this barren space rock. There’s only one thing to do!
The Matrix zaps Thunderwing with green (evil!) lightning, saving him from the brink of death. Thunderwing is less than enthused with this turn of events.
You get redundancies like this when outlining, it happens.
Thunderwing is pissed, and the brand-spanking new Omniforce isn’t super sure how to handle the current situation. The Matrix, thinking quickly, merges with Thunderwing.
This does not help the situation.
You’ve had them for five minutes, and you’re already killing them. I know you’re new to this, Matrix, but come on now.
TWENTY THOUSAND YEARS LATER, it turns out that Quillion’s estimate of their arrival back at Cybertron was off by just a smidge. The moon runs into a tomb of all things in the depths of space, and brings it on inside to see what all the hubbub’s about.
It’s got a Mind-Krell in it.
No, I have no idea what a Mind-Krell is. Another Roberts original. He’s always been rather ambitious as a writer, it would seem.
Jumping back in time, Thunderwing’s throwing out his rawest lines, and it’s amazing.
Like holy shit, I unironically love this. I wish he’d decided to do more with this, it’s fantastic.
We get our first taste of action. Theres a lot going on here: Genocide is apparently a necromancer, capable of controlling the dead, which Thunderwing currently technically is. However, this takes time to set up, so it’s Black Fusion’s turn to step up to the plate. He shoots off a volley of Black Fusion from his eyes, knocking Thunderwing over.
Yes, they’re named after their powers. Or are their powers named after them? Anyway, they’re about to head for the shuttle, when Genocide orders Kaos to use his- you guessed it- Kaos Energy.
We’re also dealing with the “can’t just use said” phase that every young writer goes through. Kaos’ staff, which he’s had this whole time, turns into a gun? It’s not clear, but he shoots Thunderwing and then dives into the shuttle at the last possible second, Indiana Jones-style.
As the shuttle takes off, Genocide warns their resident possessor Daemon to not do the thing, even though he really, really wants to. With that, they train the onboard weapons systems on Thunderwing below- all of them.
And that’s all we got for Children of a Lesser Matrix.
Clearly there would have been more if he’d continued with the ideas, but as is we have a fascinating snapshot of what was probably one of Roberts’ first forays into writing. You don’t get to do this with very many authors, where you can go this far back and see what they were doing, what changed, what stayed the same. I wasn’t expecting to see ideas from MTMTE pop up here- and certainly not ones that were as big as the moon thrusters.
If this entry seems a little soft around the edges, it’s probably because it is. I’m of two mind about covering this at all. On one hand: it was published online for others to read, which makes it free game, and it’s a part of his growth as a writer, so of course I’m going to look at it! On the other hand: Literal. Child. I wouldn’t make fun of a kid just starting out now, and I’m definitely not trying to rag on a young writer retroactively. That being said...
I’m not gonna lie, this is kind of a rough sit. I mean, other than it being an idea springboard that never went anywhere. There are some neat ideas, but… look, anything that’s truly made from the bottom of one’s heart, out of pure love, is always going to be at least a little cringe-inducing. That’s just how it goes, even with the best writers, and this is an outline written by a kid who grew up on 80’s-era media and was just starting out.
Still, there was a lot of potential here. It’s ambitious, it’s over the top, it’s silly and earnest. I like it. It makes me smile to read it and think about the person creating it and having fun doing it.
It just goes to show that no one starts out amazing at what they do.
Up next, a relic of a bygone era- the ‘zine! It’s The Mystery of the Transformer Decoys, a ‘zine that was printed out and sent via snail mail. We truly are spoiled by the internet.
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He’s Mine: A BakuDeku Fic Spork- Chapter 4
WOW I can’t believe this story only ran for 4 chapters! Or no, wait, I can absolutely believe that.
For those of you who are new, I read a terrible BakuDeku fanfiction and made funny commentary on it with the help of some good buddies!! Thanks again @kittykatz009, @the-wizard-l, @satsuneade, and Phos!!
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Support me on Patreon! I am poor!!
https://www.patreon.com/WingSongHalo
And check out my YouTube channel, where you can see video sporks!!
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCgTMFf7W6SyWoZdpqY9ZdPw/
Last time, Shoto made terrible jokes and lied to Izuku’s mother, Izuku and Shoto went on a date, and our helpless damsel protagonist got attacked by a villain!! Also, I provided several of my own takes on the pairing! When we left off, Izuku had received a note from Katsuki that had a love confession on it!
In today’s installment, we see the fight between Lord Explosion Murder and Ice Ice Flamey from the beginning! Also, they stalk Izuku and hang around him creepily all night at his house!
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Me: Izuku would stare at that letter for ages and find a hidden message in it.
Izuku, reading the note:
"Hey, damn nerd...
Even though I didn't get to tell you yesterday, I was trying to say that I'm in
Love with you. I want to go out with you. Let me know what you think.
PS- Tell anyone else and you're dead."
[long pause]
"...............oh my god... the first letter of each line... HE'S IN TROUBLE!! I HAVE TO SAVE HIM"
Wiz: 🦢
Me: First off, I think it's kind of telling that within the universe of this story, I'm kind of rooting for Bakugou over Todoroki. I mean, at least Bakugou beat a girl unconscious to save him. Todoroki just kidnapped him while he was dressed like a girl and then took him to a park for no reason and left him there.
I like how this chapter is formatted like the shittiest poem I've ever seen.
and yes THE DOOR SWAN OPEN
Phos: I need to record myself reading bad fanfic like ee Cummings poetry
Me: absolutely
YOU COULDN'T SEE IZUKU ANYWHERE IN THE WHAT????
WHY WOULD HE--I--WHAT??? THE FUCK????
Jaz: did that say catheter??
Me: IT SAYS CATHETER
Wiz: hvgjhgjhRTDYFYGIU
Me: IM DYING OH MY GODDDDDD
Jaz: that doesnt sound very sanitary
Me: MAYBE LOOK IN SOME BETTER HIDING PLACES, TODOROKI
intill: It's all inside
Okay but where is Izuku sitting??
Jaz: he’s levitating
Me: "About What?"
"Right, about Western Heroes' Acting Theater. They're putting on a show and I want to know if I can make it"
"............"
And then it’s like "Gee, I have no idea if i should go out with this dangerous person who has always asserted his unquestionable dominance over me with violence if necessary!!"
"[internally] oh my god, is Izuku... is the guy I like... dumb??"
Jaz: afudshgoudshuigdsh
Me: Of course he doesn't know. Izuku isn't allowed to have a thought in his head in this story
Suddenly, Bakugou just fucking Apparates there
Jaz: What’s the dose?
Me: I dunno, but if it's a Bakugou dose, I'm assuming it'll be
-hard to handle
-a little too spicy for comfort
-really bad for my health
Jaz: mhmmm spicy
Me:
He must of herd
Surely you mean a Herd of Must? Majestic animals
also who is Bakagou and when did he get here? At least we know one thing about him: He's an idiot
(...because baka.)
WAIT, maybe Bakagou was the author's idea of a pun?? Because he is now Todoroki's rival in love??
...nah, that's giving the author way too much credit...
Jaz: im just picturing Bakugou's head on a horse's body running through a pasture
Me: LKAJF;LKSDJLK
Or--hot take, but hear me out--mayyyybe Izuku belongs to no one but himself?? DID YA EVER THINK OF THAT, AUTHOR???
Who is Intill allmight and why is only the first word of his name capitalized
Where the fuck did he come from, anyway? Doesn't this take place after the school festival? If so, how is All Might in muscle form? Or did he just appear here in his Smol Might form??
Then he just... fucks the hell off with both of them in tow, I guess
IZUKU, HON, GUESS WHAT: YOU DON'T HAVE TO CHOOSE EITHER OF THEM! THEY'RE BOTH BLAND PIECES OF DRYWALL
Wiz: RIGHT
Me: also I like how they both just stalk Izuku until he makes up his mind. Except NO I DON'T, THAT'S SUPER FUCKING WEIRD AND DISTURBING
Wiz: IT REALLY IS
Jaz: this is so painful
Wiz: this poor kid
Me: Stay over to night? Does that mean they're going to leave at nightfall? sounds a'ight
Jaz: the coach
Me: "Eh yeah"
WHAT THE FUCK. WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK. THIS IS SO STUPID I'M 😂
"Oh remember Izuku"
"Yes mom I remember Izuku because that is me"
"Oh, okay, just checking. I forget sometimes"
that poor coach
Izuku might as well be a stupid princess doll for all the agency he has in this fic
So the three of them just... sat there in uncomfortable silence while they slowly smushed Izuku between them? And then Izuku just gets up when he's done watching TV? DIDN'T ANYONE WANT TO TALK? THIS IS SO UNSETTLING INKO, COME BACK! WE NEED AN ADULT
Wiz: PLEASE COME BACK
Jaz: hfdsihgdsiugh
Me: "Don't ask me what vegetables. Just... nameless vegetables. Honestly I'm not convinced they were even vegetables, but that's what the large blue letters on them said, so I thought I'd take their word for it."
Wiz: That last line is so creepy for some reason
Jaz: it IS creepy
Me: "Your going it wrong"
They should have said that to Inko when she was leaving. "Your going and leaving us alone with your son? It wrong."
"I never knew that you were good with at cuting!"
I mean, yeah, he could definitely use a refresher course on cute-ing. He has forgotten how to cute.
So like, Shoto's just sitting in there staring brainlessly at the TV while Bakugou impresses his supposed love interest by being a culinary genius? Weak, Shoto. Step up your game.
I haven't spend this much with kacchan
Good lord, I wasn't aware you were spending anything!! How much did those "vegetables" cost??
I went through
WENT THROUGH WHAT?? IS IZUKU SO TWO-DIMENSIONAL NOW THAT HE CAN PASS THROUGH WALLS??
"You were cute when you were a kid weren't you"
Bitch!!! HE'S STILL CUTE AS FUCK!!!
Wiz: It's paper mario :O
kjwbejhbewfj
Me: PFFFFFF
Jaz: let this fic die plz
Me: His checks went red??? GOOD LORD, THOSE "VEGETABLES" HAVE BANKRUPTED HIS FAMILY
Wiz: oH NOOOOO
Me: I can only assume the dinning room is where his mother goes to cause a din by screaming MEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE
Wiz: That’s it
Me:
After dinner because author-chan is lazy
You only admit it after all this? You despicable coward.
Wiz: gvhbjkhgjkuhilk mood
Me: Should we be letting this expressionless cardboard cutout just silently look through all of Izuku's childhood photographs? Definitely not. Is anyone going to stop him? Definitely not!!
Jaz: Izuku telling him to back off? GOOD
Me: Why is this author writing both of them as these silent onlookers, hovering over Izuku's shoulder like the inevitability of death??
Also, jesus, why on EARTH would Bakugou just be like "welp I'm gonna shower with him derpdedoo!!"
Okay Izuku doesn't feel safe in his own home now. WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU, AUTHOR.
Wiz: THAT’S SO CREEPY JHB
Me: so... you're writing one of his love interests as a silent but loyal protector who diligently waits for him and follows him everywhere like a dog? Author, are you... was your first crush a dog or something??? I'm???
(except with “man”)
I mean his other choice was to fucking leave, but everyone forgets about that I guess
Jaz: god, i hope they were wearing gloves
Me: Author, when you don't put A/N before your stupid pointless interruptions, HOW AM I SUPPOSED TO SEPARATE IT FROM ALL YOUR CHARACTERS' STUPID POINTLESS THOUGHTS
Jaz: his waste
Me: "You still cute Izuku!"
the Southern Accent returns, this time with Shoto
Okay Bakugou's growling when someone's getting close to his beloved now. It's official. Bakugou has become an actual dog
Jaz: a smol doggie
Me: WHAT SO IZUKU JUST GOES TO BED WITH TWO SUPERPOWERED STALKERS STILL IN HIS HOME?? I???
WHY ARE THEY INVADING HIS SPAAAACE OH MY GODDDD IZUKU HAS GIVEN ZERO INDICATION THAT THEM EVEN BEING IN THE HOUSE IS OKAY HHHHHH
Also yeah apparently someone pooped the bed
Wiz: fdghjkhgjkl
Me: THE END???
And then it was never updated because nobody wanted any of that shit for poor Izuku
Wiz: THE END
WOW
Jaz: the end jesus
thank god
Me: look... I don't usually say this, because it might seem hypocritical coming from someone who hoards fanart and writes character analyses and... does what I'm doing right now, but…
please get a life
Jaz: maybe they are also sporking and want an update
Me: I mean, fair?
Wiz: What a journey
Me: ANYWAY YEAH THAT WAS "HE'S MINE!" THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR JOINING ME, Y'ALL
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Hope you all enjoyed that!! Please let me know if you’ve found any terrible fanfictions you’d like me to spork! Right now I’m working on a Sailor Moon one that was submitted to the blog earlier, so I definitely take your suggestions! Thanks for reading <333
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Book Reviews
I’m getting back into reading fantasy, getting a bunch of random books out of the library if they look good. I thought I’d post my thoughts on them.
The Tiger at Midnight, by Swati Teerdhala
Inspired by the culture of ancient India and Hindu mythology, The Tiger at Midnight by Swati Teerdhala features a cat-and-mouse game of deception and thrills between a rebel assassin and the reluctant young soldier tasked to bring her to justice.
Just finished this one. There were definitely times when I thought I was just going to stop and take it back to the library unread. It’s by no means a terrible book, but in many ways it feels too much like every other YA book I’ve read. I really like the concept of the central romance: it’s an enemy romance, which I love, the characters have a pretty equal power dynamic, and there’s no gross abuse stuff to put me off. It also felt like a gender-reversal of the typical YA dynamics - Esha is like the dark, handsome, conflicted romance hero, and Kunal is like the sweet, repressed heroine. I liked that, and I really liked Esha as a character. Kunal was by no means unsympathetic either. But the relationship between the two of them, which was central to the book, felt really under developed. The narrative informs us that they feel something for each other very early on, when they’ve barely spoken, and continues informing us of their feelings, but I kept wondering . . . why? There were a couple of points where there was a line like “It’s strange that I feel so strongly for him given we barely know each other!” and I feel like, when you find yourself writing a line like that, you should sit back and think a bit about why you felt the need to point this out. It felt like there were opportunities for them to be pushed together and bond, and the book didn’t really capitalize on them - or, rather, acted as if they’d already been pushed together. It felt like it was missing a key moment early on in the book where they bond. There’s a reveal halfway through the book (pg 300 out of 500) that they knew each other as children, but it’s too little too late.
5/10. I’m thinking of picking up her next book because I feel like there’s a lot of potential here and I’d like to read a more polished version of this book.
Akata Warrior, by Nnedi Okorafor
A year ago, Sunny Nwazue, an American-born girl Nigerian girl, was inducted into the secret Leopard Society. As she began to develop her magical powers, Sunny learned that she had been chosen to lead a dangerous mission to avert an apocalypse, brought about by the terrifying masquerade, Ekwensu. Now, stronger, feistier, and a bit older, Sunny is studying with her mentor Sugar Cream and struggling to unlock the secrets in her strange Nsibidi book.
Awhile back, I was at SDCC, and I walked by a publisher’s booth, and they handed me the first book in this series, for free! They just gave me a whole book for free! I’ve had this happen before at cons, but it’s usually self-published stuff, or spin-off books of dubious quality. But this is a book that’s perfectly relevant to my interests, a YA fantasy novel with an exciting new setting, and they just gave it to me! What a wonderful thing to have happen.
Anyway, I was hooked, and I got the next book in the series out of the library. I loved it. The woman at the publisher’s booth told me this was “Nigerian Harry Potter,” and I definitely got Harry Potter vibes from it. It honestly took me back to my days reading the original HP books in a way none of JK Rowling’s subsequent books (or the movies) have been able to do. That’s not to say it’s a copy, or anything - this series is way more eager to dig into the big, magical mythical stuff that HP mostly only hinted at, and is conversely much more willing to spend time in the real world and discuss real-world issues. It’s . . . really really good.
Also, as a personal bonus for me, there are multiple cool magical creatures which are arthropods - mythical spiders, cool magic wasps, I just love it.
9/10. My mom stopped reading it halfway through saying “As I get older, I’ve had less patience for books that aren’t very good.” But then again, she never liked Harry Potter as much as I did either, so maybe she just doesn’t get our generation.
Click more for reviews of We Hunt the Flame, Bloodwitch, and The Throne of the Crescent Moon
We Hunt the Flame, by Hafsah Faizal
Zafira is the Hunter, disguising herself as a man when she braves the cursed forest of the Arz to feed her people. Nasir is the Prince of Death, assassinating those foolish enough to defy his autocratic father, the king. If Zafira was exposed as a girl, all of her achievements would be rejected; if Nasir displayed his compassion, his father would punish him in the most brutal of ways.
I really wanted to like this book. I’ve been reading a lot of Middle-Eastern history and the thought of a fantasy inspired by that is 100% my jam. But this book is just . . . not that good. It’s not offensively bad, it just feels like the first draft of another, better book. I actually did not finish this book. I gave up and took it back to the library.
The main romance feels very predictable, and honestly, it was giving me big Reylo fanfic vibes. The exposition, of which there is massive amounts, is clumsily delivered. It feels like it ought to be the second book in a series, because there are so many past events being explained all the time.
The one thing I kinda liked was the bits of Arabic in the book, and the choice to not exposit the Arabic bits on top of the fantasy bits. And I learned a new Arabic word from this book! That’s a positive.
3/10. Wish they’d spent more time on the editing.
Bloodwitch, by Amelia Atwater-Rhodes (and its sequel, Bloodkin)
Vance Ehecatl was raised with every luxury he could imagine in a beautiful greenhouse within the powerful empire of Midnight. Vampires are the only guardians Vance has ever known since he was abandoned by his shapeshifter family as a baby quetzal, and he is grateful to them for generously providing for all of his needs. When an act of violence forces Vance from his sheltered home, he is startled to meet Malachi Obsidian, a fellow shapeshifter with conflicting ideas about Midnight and its leader, Mistress Jeshickah.
This is a new book from an author I loved as a child. Atwater-Rhodes published her first book at 14, when I was four, and I came across her books when I was 11ish and first learning to write. Her book Hawksong was the first romance story I really enjoyed, and its sequel Wolfcry was one of the first times I ever encountered a queer romance in a fantasy novel, at a time I was starting to wonder whether I was queer.
This book still caught the same interest I had in her books all those years ago. Bloodwitch is set in the same world as Hawksong, but centuries later. Personally, I would have preferred a book set in the same timeline, but it was still great to return to this world and its conflicts and magic.
With that said, it wasn’t perfect, and this wasn’t one of those times where I returned to an old favorite author and was like “Oh my god, I never appreciated what a genius she was when I was a stupid kid!” I was particularly struck by Vance’s character arc in the first book, which felt uneven. Vance is raised by the villains, and believes they’re the good guys initially. And then, early in the book, one of them kills his friend in cold blood, shouts at him, tries to kill him, and chases him out of their stronghold. And then . . . he goes back to them, and there’s ANOTHER, separate moment where he suddenly realizes they don’t care about him and turns on them. I really didn’t understand why that first moment didn’t shake his loyalty, but the second one did.
I was also kind of disappointed by the lack of queer characters. A lot of my favorite straight authors, when I checked back in on their work in 2019, have included queer representation, and because I knew that Atwater-Rhodes is herself queer, I was really hoping for some of That Gay Shit.
7/10. Give me that gay shit, Atwater-Rhodes, I know you’re holding out on me.
The Throne of the Crescent Moon, by Saladin Ahmed
The Crescent Moon Kingdoms, home to djenn and ghuls, holy warriors and heretics, are at the boiling point of a power struggle between the iron-fisted Khalif and the mysterious master thief known as the Falcon Prince. In the midst of this brewing rebellion a series of brutal supernatural murders strikes at the heart of the Kingdoms. It is up to a handful of heroes to learn the truth behind these killings.
This, this was the book I wanted when I picked up We Hunt the Flame. This is the quality content I want in my fantasy novel. I fell in love with the main character, Adoulla, almost immediately, and I was terrified he was going to die. I just love this prissy, hedonistic, idealistic, middle-aged, fat hero so much, and I will RIOT if Ahmed kills him off.
I liked the other older characters in this book a lot too. Ahmed clearly has a knack for making cool characters. Dawoud and Litaz are cranky old ex-adventurers. Adoulla’s love interest is a middle-aged sex worker who really wants him to commit and marry her or fuck off, and I am so rooting for them, I want them to live happily ever after, they deserve that.
The treatment of sex work and sex worker characters in this book is also a major plus. There’s a lot of moral ambiguity in this book, where I’m not sure which character we’re supposed to believe, but the one issue the book takes a firm stance on is DON’T BE AN ASSHOLE TO SEX WORKERS, THEY ARE PEOPLE TOO. This book is written by a man and is not the kind of feminist fantasy I read a lot of (like We Hunt the Flame and The Tiger at Midnight are) so I was pleasantly surprised by this strong pro-sex worker’s rights message.
On the downside, I did feel like the younger characters were less interesting than the older characters. They still felt like colorful, detailed characters drawn with a skillful hand, but they also felt much closer to the kind of characters you usually see front and center in a fantasy novel. What I loved about Adoulla and company is that you don’t often see fantasy heroes who are fat and old and tired. The romance between the two younger heroes is competently drawn and believable but I did find myself wishing the camera would pan away from them and go back to the cool characters.
Other notes:
I found out that Saladin Ahmed is a Marvel Comics writer and is writing a comic about my favorite superhero, Ms Marvel, and I couldn’t be happier with that news.
I was certain, reading this book, that Ahmed plays D&D and that this book was inspired by D&D, and HA, CALLED IT. My nerd-dar is ON POINT.
9/10. Adoulla is my dad now, no take-backsies.
#throne of the crescent moon#saladin ahmed#akata witch#nnedi okorafor#book reviews#hmu if ur a fan of Throne of the Crescent Moon too#@mr ahmed I NEED THE NEXT BOOK#I kno ur busy writing Ms Marvel but PLS
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All of the bookish asks. I hate you. And your stupid fucking face. Im so tired dude i stayed up ridiculously late to finish that
Hey I stayed up ridiculously late to finish mine too. Well not ridiculously late because me and then I couldn't fall asleep anyways but whatever. And you literally love me you jackass.
1. (what book did you last finish? when was that?) Willingly? Leah on the Offbeat by Becky Albertalli, in July. For school? Of Mice And Men. I didn’t care that much, and I forgot to finish A Midsummer Night’s Dream, but I still finished my project fine without any issue whatsoever and should get at least a B, if not an A. But whatever.
2. (what are you currently reading?) The Odyssey, for school. But also I’m like ¾ of the way through What If It’s Us by Adam Silvera and Becky Albertalli. (what book are you planning to read next?) Well for English it will have to be A Narrative of the Life of Fredrick Douglass by Fredrick Douglass, Night by Elie Wiesel, Farewell to Manzanar by Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston, or Lord of the Flies by William Golding. However, I really want to read The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller. And I’m also trying to get a hold of the Harry Potter books because I haven’t read them since I was 7, and I was a compulsive moron so I read them out of order based on length and the title. I did that a lot.
3. (what was the last book you added to your tbr?) I don’t fully know what it means by that, but I’ll give this a try. The last thing I remember actively seeking out that I need to read again (for writing purposes, and the fact that I’m a nerdy bastard) was the Harry Potter series by J.K. Rowling.
4. (which book did you last re-read?) Leah on the Offbeat by Becky Albertalli, I loved it so much that I read it twice in one month. I also re-read Simon vs. the Homosapiens Agenda by Becky Albertalli twice before moving to the former.
5. (which was the last book you really, really loved?) Again, Leah on the Offbeat. I loved that book so much oh my god.
6. (what was/were the last books you bought?) I actually bought 3 books in September (after I got all my books for English), which were Leah on the Offbeat, Simon vs. the Homosapiens Agenda, and The Song of Achilles.
7. (paperback or hardcover? why?) Paperback. The hurt less to hold while reading, and they’re cheaper so I can buy more of them. But I do love a hardcover book if the cover is really intricate and beautiful.
8. (ya, na, or adult? why?) Idk. To me it doesn’t matter all that much as long as it’s a good book. I really like anything that isn’t racist, sexist, super heteronormative, transphobic, or hating of any particular religion (except like if it’s vaguely poking fun at catholicism and christianity because we deserve it)
9. (sci-fi or fantasy? why?) Fantasy. God I just fucking LOVE fantasy. I wrote a 20,000-word oneshot that was of the fantasy genre. I just love it too much.
10. (classic or modern? why?) Idk. Doesn’t really matter, again, as long as it isn’t racist, transphobic, against a religious group, or too heteronormative.
12. (political memoirs or comedic memoirs?) Idk man. But I hate politics in every way, shape, and form, so I’m gonna go with comedic memoirs.
13. (name a book with a really bad movie/tv adaptation) Um………. idk. I’m gonna go with Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire simply because of the fact that they cut so much out and, sorry not sorry, if the whole series was written by someone not transphobic, homophobic, and antisemitic it would be better. It’s great, but it could be so much better.
14. (name a book where the movie/tv adaptation was actually better than the original) Again idk. I’m gonna say The Princess Bride because that movie is so fucking good guys.
15. (what book changed your life?) I know it’s not technically a book book, but Unknown Colors by Gabriels_Wings on Wattpad. It got me into reading again and that’s only benefitted me so far (except for distracting me from homework, but who cares).
16. (if you could bring three books to a deserted island, which would they be and why?) Well, obviously, Simon vs the Homosapiens Agenda and Leah on the Offbeat (ok I’m gonna some up with abbreviations now, LotO for the latter and SvtHA for the former), and the last spot would be between The Song of Achilles and The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkein. Because they’re good books. And I’m gonna end up dying on said island and I need my gay fix with me.
17. (if you owned a bookshop what would you call it?) Oof, that’s hard. Probably….. Narnia. And it would be a very gay place with beanbags and a small coffee shop inside and it would be like this one place my mom went to all the time where you could buy a book and if you wanted to you could bring it back and they’d buy it back for slightly less than you bought it for. It was a great place. And my bookshop would be amazing.
18. (which character from a book is the most like you?) Toughie. I’m gonna go with… Blaise Zabini from Harry Potter or Abby Suso from SvtHA and LotO. Because Blaise is very gay and sassy (idk if he actually is in the books but hey, fanfiction) and Abby is a bi disaster and relatable af.
19. (which character from a book is the least like you?) Idk. Hannah Abbott? Because she’s a Hufflepuff? Idk man.
20. (best summer read?) LotO.
21. (best winter read?) Been a while since I actually remember reading a book in winter. I remember when I was in 5th grade I really loved reading Where The Mountain Meets The Moon by Grace Lin. That was good. But I think The Hobbit would be good too.
22. (pro or anti e-readers? why?) Pro, it makes reading at random places so much easier. Plus, I can then read gay fanfic at my christian grandparents’ houses.
23. (bookdepository or amazon?) I’ve never used Book Depository, but I looked it up (omg Kass you aren’t going to believe it, I googled something on my own!) and it seems smaller and cooler because it’s just books. So I’m gonna go with that one.
24. (do you prefer to buy books online or in a bookshop?) In a bookshop without a doubt, you can browse for hours. I love bookshops
25. (if you could be a character in a book for just one day, who would you be and why? bonus: any specific day in the story?) Simon Spier. From SvtHA. On the day of the carnival fair thing. Because zqawxsedcrfvtgbyhnujmikolplomiknujybhtvgrfcedxwszqa
26. (if you could be a character in a book for their entire life, who would you be and why?) Again Simon Spier. Because infdjfcdncewhfiubdkjcnsoawehfwedscnsaoufgrwiofbv cisahcsoainh
27. (if you could change one thing about mainstream literature, what would you change?) NO. MORE. DISCRIMINATION! And I swear to god people, quit idolizing authors who are racist or sexist or transphobic or homophobic or against certain religions or anything else because I swear they don’t deserve it! No more discrimination in the media guys.
28. (how many books have you read so far this year?) A lot. Idk the actual amount but a lot. Especially if we’re counting fanfic.
29. (how do you sort your shelves?) I don’t actually own enough books to sort lol. But I assume I would sort them alphabetically by author. And if I had a ton of books, I’d sort them further into genres.
30. (who’s your favorite author?) Becky Albertalli.
31. (who’s your favorite contemporary author?) Idk. I’m not that smart, I don’t put authors into genre categories.
32. (who’s your favorite fantasy author?) See above.
33. (who’s your favorite sci-fi author?) See above.
34. (list 5 otps) Oh god, here I go. Pansmione (Pansy Parkinson x Hermione Granger from Harry Potter), Wolfstar (Remus Lupin x Sirius Black from Harry Potter), Sabriel (Sam Winchester x Gabriel from Supernatural), Johnlock (John Watson x Sherlock from Sherlock), and Merthur (Merlin x Arthur Pendragon from Merlin).
35. (name a book you consider to be terribly underrated) What If It’s Us by Adam Silvera and Becky Albertalli.
36. (name a book you consider to be terribly overrated) Of Mice And Men by John Steinbeck.
37. (how many books are actually in your bookshelf/shelves right now?) 19, including a book I accidentally stole from my 7th grade LA teacher (sorry), and a college workbook I stole from my dad on lifesaving first aid for heart problems. + 1 movie (Love, Simon), 5 comic books, and an adult coloring book because why not. I also have 2 full boxes downstairs full of kids books (about half of which I've never read or have any interest in reading) from when I moved.
38. (what language do you most often read in?) English because I’m a dumb bitch and don’t know other languages well enough. I might be able to stumble through a kid’s book in French, and I could read a basic novel in Spanish.
39. (name one of your favorite childhood books) Goodnight Moon was one of my favorites. I also was obsessed with Where The Mountain Meets The Moon by Grace Lin, and when I was about 5 my mom would read The Hobbit to my brother and I when she got home from work if she was working a half day, or she wasn’t held up too late on a normal day. Ah, some actually decent childhood memories.
40. (name one of your favorite books from your teenage years) SvtHA.
41. (do you own a library card? How often do you use it?) Yeah, and decently often.
42. (which was the best book you had to read in school?) The Outsiders. In 7th grade.
43. (are you the kind of person who reads several books at once or the kind of person who can only read one book at a time?) Multiple at once. I kind of have to if I want to read for fun while I’m in school.
44. (do you like to listen to music when you read?) Honestly, my mind is like an iPod I can’t fully control, I was laying in my bed half asleep singing What I Got yesterday morning for no reason, so I don’t have a choice. There’s more of a choice if I’m listening to music, so yes.
45. (what is your favorite thing to eat when you read?) Nothing? I don’t really like to eat when I’m reading, unless I’m reading on my phone and then it doesn’t really matter. But when I'm reading I usually forget to eat.
46. (what is your favorite thing to drink when you read?) Tea. Without a doubt. If I’m not too lazy to make it, that is.
47. (what do you do to get out of a reading slump?) Well, I do one of two things. I either try to convince Kass (@eyeforaneye-toothforatooth) to write something for me, or I’ll write (because I know I have to read over it a bajillion times, and I write too much for anyone’s good)
48. (where is your favorite place to read?) In my mind palace. I have a little place in my mind palace that I go when I’m reading or writing, and it changes. Sometimes it’s in a cottage at night with the only light a fireplace that I’m sitting in front of, sometimes it’s leaned against a tree. Three of my favorites are leaning against a cherry blossom tree looking out at a river, on a beanbag in a cozy, quiet bookshop/library, and on a beach in Roatan, Honduras. Other than that, it’s curled up on my UFO couch in my front living room, in front of the gigantic window.
49. (when is your favorite time to read?) It actually depends on the season. In the summer, always because I don’t want to go outside because it’s too hot. In the winter it’s during the evening. Spring it’s early in the morning. Fall it’s around sunset.
50. (why do you love to read?) Because you’re taking yourself and delving into a different universe, where nothing you know exists and only what you’re reading does. It takes me away from the world and all of my struggles, and puts me somewhere where that doesn’t exist. It’s refreshing. I hate you too
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Headcanons on how the ToG series might have gone if Sam and Nehemia had stayed alive? I’ve been pondering on it myself, since I want to write a fanfic kinda involving how that dynamic would have played out with the story.
oooohhhh my gooooddd im so delighted you asked me that I have SO many thoughts!!! I’d love to read a fanfic like that bc im always……thinkin abt it
okay so in MY head it goes a lil somethin like this:
In terms of Sam, the plot of the final story in TaB goes ahead as it does in canon- Arobynn tells Celaena that Sam is dead, BUT this time he tells her one of his spies reported they saw sams body in Rourke Farrans house.
So good ol celaena, like the big dumb chaotic aries moon she is and forever will be, goes to farrans house for revenge.
Except- its a trap to catch her, like it is in canon, and she ends up in endovier.
But this time, instead of grieving for sam and dealing with the fact that arobynn might have betrayed her, she believes both arobynn AND sam have betrayed her
Maybe because she doesn’t see sam in farrans so she thinks its a trap, or maybe arobynns plan to seperate the two is to manipulate the two apart by sowing that seed of doubt in celaena, knowing that she will return to only trusting him, so he plans to have celaena think sam is in on it
Now when Sam hears celaena’s gone to endovier? loses it. He’s totally suspicious of Arobynn and enlists the help of lys & Wesley to get revenge/ and or get her out.
I don’t know whether he would stay with arobynn- part of me imagines celaena being gone means he’d have to pay off his debts again or something, maybe he wants to hang around arobynn to gather more information about why he set celaena up
i don’t really think he could bear to live in celaenas apartment, because i think he’d feel REALLY guilty and angry.
so sam doesn’t succeed in breaking celaena out before dorian gets to her, and i think he as a character would grow a bit tougher and a bit meaner. maybe throw himself into the pit fighting a bit more.
so dorian comes to exploit i mean free celaena, and then i think the plot progress as normal- in terms of how nehemia is introduced, and how their relationship develops.
[quick side note-i think celaena, still reeling from what she thinks is a betrayal, and then a terrible year, maybe does go through with the dorian half-romance b plot in the first book, and then can’t go through with it in the end. I don’t think she would go for chaol at all, because part of the reason she’s drawn to him is the sense of stability he provides, and because its a chance for the life she wanted with sam- stability and sam-like traits work against her in this timeline; why would she be so taken when chaol says he’d leave adarlan with her? Sam promised to do the same and he betrayed her.]
Now in terms of Nehemia- like i said, the plot progresses as normal in terms of their relationship and interactions, and nehemias desire to force celaena to become the person she needs her to be- this time, NOT because she think aelin/celaena is the only one who can save her people or her country or whatever, but because her firepower and her country are valuable assests to the strategy nehemia wants to plan for her country/
and nehemia is working on dorian AND aelin at the same time, but she feels way less bad for dorian. She’s determined that this is what needs to be done, that it HAS to be done that way, but she’s really struggling with the guilt of watching celaena clearly struggle a year out of endovier.
I think she’d also be slightly, secretly angry at celaena/aelin- like she COULDN’T understand why and how aelin would want to shirk her role as a queen. And I can see that tension being there for a while as a response to nehemias guilt, maybe to mask it, because she genuinely has come to love celaena.
So I think it goes one of two ways- Nehemia fakes her death as a way of escaping the castle and the dodgy rebels to get back to Ellywe with the information she’s learned, making an educated guess that doing so will tip the emotional tether in celaena to force her to become aelin. aelin = firepower = fighting skills = terrasen army. jackpot.
OR celaena eventually confies in Nehemia, instead of chaol that she’s the Queen, and then its Nehemia who convinces the King to send her to Wendlyn.
And that creates a massive tension because celaena is like WHAT i JUST told you these people are literally related to me
And she’s angrier than she’s ever been because this, to her, is betrayal no. 2
Maybe its that anger, instead of grief that fuels her revival as aelin.
So then back to Sam- I don’t know exactly if he’d be part of the Terrasen resistance, but I think maybe celaena being taken to endovier, run by adarlan tips him into Fuck Those Guys territory.
Either way, when celaena runs into Archer in book 2, archer goes back to sam to say GUESS WHAT
celaena is not only alive, but working for the king! she’s the kings champion!
Sam either takes this well: I cant believe they would make her work for them how terrible are they lets keep resisiting them
Or he takes it badly i.e “You mean to tell me I’ve been working against adarlan FOR her this entire time and she’s been working for them happy as a clam? she just SIGNED over her life to the guy?? Fuck her”
Because here’s the thing- I don’t see a role for a chaol in a world where sam is still alive, because I think sam would fill the role chaol occupies in com/hof/qos/tod/- the bitter, jilted lover who felt like they gave up SO much for her and look what she’s gone and done that stupid bitch
Im saying this based on how sam confesses to celaena in TaB- he knows they are BOTH being abused by arobynn, he knows he’s the only one of the two that recognises it as abuse, and he still says to her that he can’t be around her if she “chose” arobynn over him. He doesn’t really….want to share.
OR option 3: In the timeline where Nehemia sends Celaena to Wendlyn, Nehemia herself stays in Adarlan and continues working with the rebels, one of whom is Sam. From Sam she learns more about celaenas back story and begins to feel a bit more understanding of her, and begins to queitly pray that she’s done the right thing, that celaena will understand why it had to be done. I don’t think she would make apologies for it, but she would be genuinely concerned about how she’s doing over there, unlike every other character in hof.
But Sam learns from Nehemia about Celaenas brief dalliance with Dorian, or learns from Aedion about who she actually is. I don’t think it would be the knowledge of who she is that bothers him, like it did chaol, but instead the idea, warped by the bitterness of her and dorian, that she had all this power all this time and ran away from it. I see that being that kicker in the confrontation, and I see Aelin having to have the conversation on the balcony with him instead of chaol.
Ok so second side note, and i havent finished koa so i dont know if we meet the royal family in Ellywe or if we learn whether or not they knew about her plans but in the timeline where Nehemia returns to Ellwye, the court and her family are FURIOUS with her, 1. because she’s the heir to the throne in an increasingly dangerous environment what do you mean you faked your death to escape the country are you fucking serious??? WHY??? and maybe these grown men in her court don’t take her seriously because thats a big theme.and then 2. because her court are annoyed she took the iniative to do something so they keep chipping away at her- where is your firebringer- oh she’s not here? and we don’t have a guaranteed alliance? and you’re not in contact with the rebels because 1. they think youre dead and 2. one of their leaders was murdered by your friend to avenge you? Hows that gonna help. So she has to fight for their approval the same way aelin later fights darrow. what a beautiful parallel that would be.
Like imagine the JOY and relief and FEAR nehemia would feel upon hearing about aelin setting maeves people on fire- she begins to wonder for the first time,,, who is it she’s actually unleashed…. and will she want to help her?
Sorry I know thats SO long and rambly and kind of aelin centric i literally dont know how to write ANYTHING without including ms [g]a[y]shryver in it. also i cannot,,,,,, spell,,,, but THANK YOU for this ask i hope your fanfic goes well!!!!!
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Bughead Family Discord Member Spotlight
This Halloween week the spotlight is on our spooky admin, Tori ( @tory-b )! Click the read more link below to get to know our member!
Spotlight by Mila, @jughead-jones | Graphic by Katie, @betty-cooper
Tori | @tory-b
Name: Tory or Tori
Age: 21 (but only for a few more months!)
Location: Western US
Any other languages aside from English people can contact you in?: I can read basic Japanese and German. I won’t be able to communicate well but I have like some understanding. (I’m just really bad at languages I’m sorry universe, i want to be good at them)
Favourite Riverdale characters and ships?: BUGHEAD! Jughead Jone is my son, I love that boy. But I’m also a big Archie girl you know? Like just in the ‘he is my big dumb son and he just needs to be protected at all costs.’ I’d probably kill for a Jarchie person.
Favourite moments from S1 & S2?: There are so many it makes it hard to choose from you know? But S1: the iconic “hey there, Juliet, nurse off duty” is just like…so cheesy and soft it makes it hard to not just be utterly in love with that big dork. S2: When Archie cuts Jughead’s chains in front of the building, and they have that shot where the chains are falling away and he looks just like a fucking mythical fallen angel. That moment is so powerful between the boys, but it’s also just such a beautiful image on screen. Like Riverdale’s cinematography is eh on the best of days but in that moment like wow just absolutely WOW
What are your hopes for S3?: All my hopes and dreams look like they’re coming true and I could cry. Betty has a therapist! Bughead is investigating! Josie is getting more SCREEN TIME. I really do want more Cheryl/Betty friendship moments but I’m not sure if we’ll get them. I’d also love a Jug/Cheryl friendship moment. Also if we could get our Jarchie kiss.
Other fandoms you’re into?: I was in the Miraculous Ladybug fandom for a little while, and the Voltron fandom for some time after that. I just kind of commit to like one fandom or I’ll be dead.
What are some of your favourite movies/TV?: My other go-to show right now (I’ve been rewatching) is RuPaul’s Drag Race because I’m Reality TV Trash. My favorite movie is tricky. I always tell my mom that I don’t watch many movies because I like that TV can show longer more complex plots than movies.
Favourite books?: Fever 1793 was my favorite growing up and sometimes I’ll still read through and cry like a fucking baby even though I know how it goes. I love historical fiction. BUT my absolute FAVORITE book is Crime and Punishment by Dostoevsky.
Favourite bands/musicians?: It is I, your friendly admin hipster who has a lot of vinyl, and my fave bands are Panic! At the Disco, Walk the Moon, and the 1975. Also I listen to an absurd amount of broadway musicals because I’m a theatre nerd through and through.
If you could live in any fictional world which one would you choose and why?: I was gonna say Riverdale but I don’t want to chances of me getting murdered to jump up to an absurd amount. I’m small and meek I’d die like Midge. Maybe the Miraculous Ladybug’s Paris because it’s soft and even if I get turned into a bad guy no one hates me and I get a cool costume.
Favourite food?: Strawberries! Specifically Strawberry Shortcake but anything with strawberries on it.
Favourite season?: Winter or Fall! Spring is amazing but it makes me sneeze because allergies.
Favourite plant?: Sunflowers!
Favourite scent?: Lime! It’s clean and fresh.
Favourite colour?: Pastels. Pink, blue, yellow!
Favourite animal?: Doggos! (I’d say cats but i’m terribly allergic to cats even though I love them).
Are you a night owl, an early bird, or a vampire?: My sleep schedule is garbage. I am a night owl who works early morning shifts and is forced to be an early bird.
Place you want to visit?: I want to visit more of europe, specifically France, see more of England, and very much Japan!
Do you have pets? If you do, tell us a little about them: I do have pets! I’ve got my sweet little Poppy. She’s a rescue mutt who I got on my 13th birthday. She’s probably 11-12 right now but none of us have an idea. She’s so soft and beautiful but she is absolutely a little bitch. I go to college so whenever I come home for holidays, she stares at me like I’ve just utterly offended her and turns away. She’s a Princess who is utterly spoiled.
Tell us a little about yourself?: Oh gosh. I’m not sure what to say in this really. I’m graduating a semester early with a double major in Psychology and Anthropology, which I think is really cool, even though I have no idea what I’m going to do with that frankly. I moved a lot growing up because my mom can’t stay still. I’ve got this skin condition called vitiligo so lots of my body doesn’t have pigment!
Fun or weird fact about you?: I can’t properly scowl. Like bring my eyebrows together. I have no idea why.
Asks for fanfic authors:
How long have you been writing?: Oh gosh. So I’ve been writing in notebooks since I was like 5, but I posted my first ever fanfiction (did you mean that Harry Potter fic I posted that I like to ignore?) when I was 10 or 11? I quit writing publicly from about 12 until…I was like 20?
Which is your favourite of the fics you’ve written?: One Last Chance. It was 12k of really just emotional catharsis. I cried while writing it and it just felt so good to write it. Whenever I read it I just smile because I think ‘wow i can’t believe I’m the person who wrote this’.
Favourite fic/chapter/plot-point/character you’ve ever written?: The plot points in What Happened on Elm Street are my favorite because they’re so twisty and turny!
Which was the hardest to write, and why?: What Happened on Elm Street is very difficult to write for me. It’s super complex and I can only give away a little at a time to keep some of the mystery in it. So I have to think a lot for each word I write.
How do you come up with the ideas for you fic(s)? (examples: Do you draw inspiration from real life? Listen to music? Get inspired by TV/movies?) Do you have an process to your writing?: It’s a combination of everything! It’s real life in some ways, like my college experiences, or with songs, like my oneshot I Hate Love Songs! It all depends. Sometimes it just comes to me, like I’ll be watching a movie and I go ‘yes!’.
Idea that you always wanted to write?: A Zombie Apocalypse AU. SO BADLY. But I don’t think it would be very popular, so I always sort of hang back and don’t write it even though I kind of have the first chapter of a WIP written for it. I just love that kind of angst and fear.
Favourite character to write?: Cheryl fucking Blossom. She is just…I love writing all her wittiness! Also apparently Jughead? Since all of my writing has been through Jughead’s POV lately.
Best comment/review you’ve ever received?: So I received a comment on the first chapter of 101 Ways and it was just “DOGGIES” which made me laugh out loud> I also had someone (her name is Cat, she’s an admin, not sure if you’ve heard of her) tell me she cried into her Taco Bell reading One Last Chance. That was iconic.
Best and worst parts of being a writer?: Best parts are absolutely getting to stretch my creativity. I have a lot of ideas and writing is just such a cathartic thing for me. Writing makes me feel unburdened and free and that means a lot to me. I use my writing to cope with some of my anxiety and depression, because I feel good about words and how well I can manipulate them. Worst: That fear. That constant fear of not being enough. Of not being as good. Of comparison. It comes with fandom culture I think, this need to compare yourself to other people. I don’t ever mean to do it, but I can feel it happening sometimes. I love being able to learn from other writers by reading things and being encouraged to experiment, but perhaps it’s just who I am but I do have a problem with comparison.
Do you have any advice to offer?: Experiment experiment experiment! If you like something in another person’s writing, like a certain style, how they use metaphors, etc, there’s nothing wrong with adopting things you like and evolving you're writing based on what you like to read. It’s so important to keep changing and evolving and the only way you can do that is by trying new things!
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This is the fifteenth instalment of Bughead Family’s Member Spotlight series. Each week, a member’s url is selected through a randomizer and they will be featured in a spotlight post. In order to participate, please join the Bughead Discord (more information found here). Thank you.
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One kiss before we die
A while back I read a prompt from @creativepromptsforwriting and it stuck in my head. So here you are. I’m still new to Voltron so I’m still trying myself out.
Nevertheless I hope you like this fanfic.
Some time after Krolia left the group they land on a planet and are surprised by Galra and an unexpected hard fight occurs. In the eye of death Keith asks for something he has wanted for a while now.
One kiss before we die?
Fuck! Fuck, fuck, FUCK! Keith thought when he took the situation in. But he didn’t say it. He was the leader after all. He shouldn’t let the others know that he thought this situation was… bad at best.
They were stranded on a planet no one knew the name of and they were attacked… By Galra, who somehow had managed to tame the deadliest beasts the local fauna had to offer: not quite wolf, not quite tiger but something in between with terrifying teeth and claws. The lions were out of order for still unknown reasons and no one knew if they would be able to recover soon enough to save their bloody lives.
And as if that wasn’t even bad enough the Galra had managed to separate them. As far as Keith has kept the overview Lance was with Allura at a lake and Pidge and Hunk fought in a forest. Coran, Romelle and the animals stayed hidden in the Lions.
And he? He was stuck in a canyon with Shiro and a deep cut from a beast’s claw on his right leg which he tried to ignore the best he could.
Not that he minded his best friend’s presence, not at all but… Shiro had only returned from the Dead a mere month ago. Yes he had been recovering quickly; yes he had started to train again but… It was not the same. Keith gripped the haft of his Bayard-sword a bit stronger. Shiro had found a strong branch he used as a weapon but it was obvious it wouldn’t hold long against their enemies.
They stood back to back; the number of fallen enemies was quite impressive considering their desperate situation.
“Keith! We can’t hold on much longer!” Lance’s voice came from the speaker in their helmets, he sounded pained, desperate.
“Hold on! Do you want to die?” Keith asked voice calmer, than he felt. But he had to send out a signal of strength to his team. If he gave up, everyone else would lose their hope and then they’d all die! He couldn’t risk it.
He darted forth to slay another Galra who tried to kill him and instantly jumped back to the shelter of Shiro’s broad shoulders.
“No! But…”
“Keith! He’s injured!” It was Allura’s voice. The Altean princess, usually so collected and level-headed, sounded almost in panic. Shit!
“Keep calm, Allura! We…” – Another slash to a four legged monster which thought it was witty enough to be able to attack from above and cost it its head – “we’ll come as soon as possible!” which wouldn’t be anytime soon Keith was afraid. “But you need to keep a calm head! They’ll kill you instantly if you get reckless or panic! We will come!” He wasn’t sure if he could keep this promise, but…
“Thank you!” Allura’s words confirmed that he had said the right thing to keep hope afloat.
He felt how Shiro attacked an enemy and shuddered when he heard a terrible ‘Crack’ when Shiro’s weapon broke.
It only took a few more minutes until they were pressed against a wall of stone, their space to move strictly limited when four beasts and at least ten Galra circled them.
Keith took a breath. How could they survive that?
“You really have grown into a great leader. I’m proud of you”, he heard Shiro’s voice next to him. He switched the communication off. The others didn’t need to know he was close to giving up, now that he also noticed a shadow on a ledge just above them ready to kill them off. His grip around his weapon strengthened.
“Thank you.” Keith sighed and lifted his injured leg a bit to keep it from giving out but keeping his will to fight to the end. “Come… How many do you think we can take with us?”
Somehow some kind of lethal determination slipped into Shiro’s eyes. “Preferably all of them!”
Keith smirked. “Yeah… preferably.” His voice was full of sarcastic determination, knowing that that was nearly impossible. The enemies came closer. He couldn’t see a way to escape alive. But he wouldn’t die without the fight of his life. “One kiss before we die?” he asked in the same ironic mocking voice. He had never told Shiro what he really felt for him, that his love was more than brotherly.
“You can have as many kisses as you want when we survive! So move!” Keith felt Shiro’s hand at his back. “I’ll cover your back!” Then he pushed him forwards into a big pile of Galra and beasts and seven human limbs with many screams and more blood.
The roar of a lion froze the battle. And the instant Black took part in it the tables were turned. It was a matter of less than a minute until the remaining enemies fled. No one wanted to mess with a robot many times the own size. And the moment the threat was over and Black opened her mouth, Keith collapsed, his leg giving up the will to carry him. He knew he bled somewhere on his scalp and his arm. And soon he felt Shiro at his side. “Come, we need to get into the Lion and help the others!”
Keith needed two seconds to get what Shiro meant. But then he gathered all his strength and pulled himself up on Shiro’s shoulder! “Let’s get moving! We can’t afford any fatalities!”
Shiro nodded and supported his friend to the lion with his one left arm and sat him down in the pilot’s seat. “Let’s do this.” He said and the lion roared.
“Guys! We’re on our way!” Keith informed the others with new determination. Yes, he was injured, but as long as he was able to pilot his lion he would not let anyone alone. A quick glance on the map and he knew where he had to go.
“Pidge? Hunk? Status?” he asked on the way to the lake where Lance and Allura fought. He hadn’t heard anything of the Yellow and green Paladins, yet.
“We’re fine. Green just arrived! Take care of the other two!” Pidge’s answer relieved Keith. Within seconds he arrived at the lake and let Black do the cleanup quickly joined by Red and Blue, who were back online as well and couldn’t leave their Paladins to their fate as well. So it was a matter of mere minutes until the lake was Galra free as well.
Keith sank back in his seat and groaned. Now that the adrenaline in his blood slowly faded, the pain in his body and especially his leg returned full force.
“Everyone, take first care of your wounds then we’ll meet in Black to plan where we will go next. Pidge? Can you look for a Galra free planet, moon or whatever close by?” he ordered. He knew they needed to leave as soon as possible. But they also needed to take care of themselves first.
“Copy that!” Pidge replied and the line went quiet as well as the connections to the other lions.
“Let me take care of your wounds until you can get into a healing pod!” Shiro said. He had already gotten the first aid kit and taken out the necessary things.
Keith nodded. One kiss before we die? God, how could he have been so bold? He didn’t dare to look at Shiro when he gently wiped the blood from his face. He wanted to say something but nothing came to his mind. You can have as many kisses as you want when we survive! Damn… Despite his tone Keith had been serious… But was Shiro?
“Are you alright?” Shiro asked concerned. He had helped Keith get out of his space suit and was now taking care of his leg. He had cleaned the cut and was now bandaging it.
“Yeah. Thank you for being here!” Keith opened his eyes. Should he ask Shiro for the promised kisses or… would that ruin things between them.
“That’s what friends are for.” Shiro replied gently. Keith looked at him now and Shiro returned it. The tension almost bristling in the air between them.
“Keith!” “Shiro!” both spoke at the same time. Shiro smiled and pushed himself up.
“Back then… you wanted something… Do... you still want it? We survived after all.” Shiro’s voice was smooth as silk. Keith gulped. So Shiro had also been serious?
He hesitantly nodded. He would be a fool not to accept the offer and a few seconds later he could feel Shiro’s lips on his, gentle, testing. Keith closed his eyes and returned the kiss, arms circling Shiro’s neck and pulling him closer.
He had read so much about the first kiss being like some kind of firework, all bright and magic and excitement, but he experienced none of that. What he felt was so much better. It was mutual trust and love, not burning but calm, things falling into place, just as they were supposed to be. He groaned when he felt Shiro’s tongue nudging his lips and he gladly granted access to his mouth welcoming it with his own. Somewhere in the back of his mind he felt Black purring out her blessing.
No one knew how long they stayed like this when they separated again.
“Wow! You’re amazing!” Keith murmured.
“You’re the one to talk!” Shiro replied with a happy smirk, but then he stood up and stretched his back. It sure was uncomfortable to lean down so much just to kiss your best friend.
Keith felt the warmth of Shiro’s hand against his cheek and leaned into the touch. “We should go to the hangar and meet the others…” he murmured a bit unwilling.
“Yeah. Can you walk?” Shiro asked and held his arm out.
Keith stood up but soon noticed he needed support, his leg wasn’t ready to carry him. And Shiro smiled and put his arm around Keith’s waist to support him. But before they left the lion’s cockpit he leaned down again and stole another sweet kiss from Keith’s lips.
A few minutes later everyone was gathered in Black’s hangar. Everyone had at least a few band aids somewhere on their body. Lance’s arm was in a sling. So he, too, would need a healing pod later.
“That was a tight fight!” He stated weakly.
“Yeah. I’m glad we survived!” Hunk said. He had only minor injuries which didn’t need any special treatment.
“Thanks for not giving up on us, Keith” Allura smiled.
“I’d never give up on you.” Keith replied with a weak.
“Only on yourself.” Was Shiro’s dry remark to that.
“Hey, in Slav’s words… the chance of us surviving was around three percent.”
Shiro smiled and pulled him close to his chest. “But I’m glad we made it.”
“Yeah… Me too.” Keith smiled and snuggled closer to Shiro. They could plan their next steps like this, too, right?
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so my .02 on That Doujin that absolutely no one asked for:
so before we begin, a note: i didn’t get through it. i’ve read some really fucked up shit on the internet -- there’s a lot of really twisted fics out there, including the one that supposedly gave squick its definition (it was lucius/draco and a real literal mindfuck, for the record). but i couldn’t get past the first three pages because viktor nikiforov is a character i am emotionally invested in, a character i genuinely like and relate to, and the last thing i want to see is torture porn starring him. so i knew my limits and i clicked out.
and yeah, it’s okay to feel upset about this. we all relate to fictional characters. that’s what makes fiction so powerful. being attached to and loving fictional characters and seeing how they grow and change in different environments and circumstances makes fandom what it is -- is the cornerstone of fandom, in fact. and if someone else out there wants to make torture porn of my favourite character, that’s their prerogative, and the crux of my argument:
it’s okay to feel upset. but it is not okay to take it out on the artist.
first off, according to twitter that doujin was never meant to see the light of day. we were not its intended audience; it was meant to be circulated through people who knew what they were getting into. the scanlator violated the artist’s wishes by uploading and translating it. so the artist didn’t even intend for english fandom to find it. so while you might be feeling upset that it exists at all, remember -- the original artist took precautions to keep it from being leaked to fandom at large, and then someone leaked it.
secondly, it’s fiction.
i’m not going to bandy about the cause-and-effects of reality versus fiction but let me just tell you this: viktor nikiforov is a fictional character created by sayo yamamoto and mitsurou kubo, and no amount of torture porn is going to affect the fact that he is alive and well with all of his limbs and happily engaged to the love of his life. it’s okay to feel upset that viktor was hurt in this fan media about him. but then it’s important to remember that this is just one person’s story, and if it’s not a story you like, you can put it down and watch the show again. or go read through some of the amazing fanfics we have on ao3 of viktor being soft and warm and loved. i’ll even rec you a few in a bit.
the responsible way to recover from something like this is not to go screaming to the artist and sending them hatemail and trying to doxx them or whatever other hell tactics you wanna use to chase someone out of a fandom for doing something you don’t like. the responsible way to recover is to put the damn thing down and go be productive. write and draw soft viktor being loved. don’t give this thing more attention than it already has. i mean, like i said, the original artist didn’t want that much attention drawn to it in the first place, and i can assure you, sending death threats to a real person over a fictional character makes you look like a sad coward with no life.
okay, now lemme share some fics with you guys that i liked recently feat. viktor being very very loved:
23. M. Looking for a challenge. by @alykapediaaa, rated t: “A cute boy with an ass like that says he’s up for a challenge and you send him a math problem?" (Giacometti, 2017).
A (not-so) comprehensive study on the (terrible) mating habits of (beautiful) grad student, Yuuri Katsuki, and (future) Nobel Laureate Viktor Nikiforov D. Sc.
(Or: That one where two physicists fall in love and set off a nuclear reaction. Except not really.)
limited time offer by @katsukiyuuristrophyhusband, rated t: Yuuri accidentally mixes up Victor and Yurio's gifts. It goes about as well as you'd expect.
goodnight moon by @ebenroot, rated g: Victor smells like sunflowers, especially at the nape of his neck, and it’s strongest when he’s just stepped out of the showers.
with every mile by youaremarvelous, rated t: Yuuri looks into Viktor’s eyes—clear blue and overflowing with affection—and thinks of the glittering briny roads, the rattling buses, the cramped trains, the gossamer clouds, and all of the endless miles that have brought him to the day where he would marry the man who made every inch of distance feel like home.
puppy love by @adreamingsongbird, rated g: A class that Yuuri Katsuki is going to single-handedly petition this damn university into teaching: CRUSH 110, or "what to do when your drunk (and cute as hell) friend starts crying because your dog is too adorable for him to handle". Because honestly, he can't be the only person out there in this situation. Right?...Maybe it's better that it doesn't exist, though. He sincerely thinks he might fail the midterm.
Gonna Give You Something Better by @forochel, rated e: Everyone & their evil twin has done this:
Yuuri wanks in a nest of Viktor's dirty laundry because of Reasons; Viktor walks in on him and -
dick: hard
clothes: off
fucking: happens
(that last one isn’t necessarily soft, but let me tell you forochel’s stuff really helped me recover from the three pages i saw. so it works, trust me.)
#sorry for the length#wank for ts#that doujin#you know which one#fic rec#yoi#viktuuri#feel free to add your fave soft viktor being loved fics
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