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sideprince · 6 months

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A movie question I wanted to throw your way: what do you think about the decision to use a decent amount of physical acting on Rickman’s part for comic effect? I’m thinking his snatch of thin air in Philosopher's Stone, his creeping along the table towards Ron and Harry in Chamber, his dramatic point in that same scene, his walk up to the stage for Dueling Club, his whacking students in Goblet and Order, etc.

On one hand, I feel like this does match the tone of the books; he canonically lurks and prowls and points and snatches at the air, and his menace is often undercut by a physical description that’s meant to be some level of comedic. On the other hand, we don't see Snape nearly as much in the movies as we do in the books, so this aspect of his character seems somewhat overinflated by the movies?

TLDR I don’t think these decisions in the movie were completely out of left field, but it also feels off for some reason. Idk I don’t know how exactly to verbalize my feelings on the matter and wanted to hear your thoughts!

It will probably come as no surprise that I feel like any answer to this question is inseparable from the absolute hatchet jobs that are Steve Kloves' screenplays for the HP franchise. This reply is going to end up inevitably long (you ask me about my favorite subject, you suffer the consequences), but all of it is ultimately framed by the problem of having to make the best of a badly written script. (**edit: This post is way too long. Run away. Don't look back.)

The writing doesn't support the story

The first thing that jumps out to me is that there's a separation between where and how these comedic moments are used, up until the end of GoF and after. They're more a part of the story only until Harry's story arc reaches the point of Cedric's death, when he first witnesses death in the way that allows him to see thestrals after. GoF is when the story takes its first dark turn, and up until then the tone and story is much more in line with children's literature, so it makes more sense that Snape is portrayed in a bit of a playful way. After GoF - even though the films reveal it as an aside and much later than the original story does - Snape resumes his role as spy and becomes more integral to the story as a key character and is thus no longer just a foil in a children's story. I think what doesn't work about it is the inconsistency. The books have comedic moments with Snape too, which are cartoonish, up until the end of DH - I feel those are also out of place, but at least their existence gives a basis to what's done in the films.

Nevertheless, one of the biggest problems with the films is that they're badly edited. I'll leave that analysis for another post (you're welcome), but essentially these comedic moments feel inconsistent in part because there's often a disconnect between the performance a director has asked of his actors and the tone that's established in the editing room once pacing and a soundtrack are added. Any vision a director had for these films was muddled by the involvement of big studio producers and limitations. This is made more jarring by the way that Kloves has interjected light, funny moments in awkward ways throughout the scripts. He struggles overall to convey the world that Rowling has created, and if it weren't for the brilliant production design of Stuart Craig, Kloves' failures would be much more obvious (again, worthy of its own roast post).

Take the scene where Snape whacks Harry and Ron on the head in Gof: why are the students all studying in the Great Hall? Why are various years sitting together? Why is Snape overseeing them? It's a scene almost verbatim out of the book (Fred asks Angelina to the ball casually, he and George tell Ron and Harry to get dates "before all the good ones are gone," we find out Hermione already has a date), but like pretty much every scene that originally takes place in the Gryffindor common room, this one is moved to another location for no discernible reason. The main difference in the change is how restrictive it is: in the common room the children are free to be themselves, but in the Great Hall, under a strict teacher's nose, they have to be quiet and restrained. Another subject that would need its own post is the myriad of ways Kloves goes out of his way to rewrite settings and characters to avoid allowing them to express themselves or grow as characters, and how hard he works to stifle and limit them in ways that are convoluted and work against the story, as if he himself couldn't deal with any kind of emotional vulnerability (in a way, his scripts are a desperate cry for help). This directly contributes to why so many of Snape's comedic moments feel off.

The changes in the scene in GoF don't even make sense from a production perspective, as they required more actors, more lighting, and more setups. Instead of using the cozy setting of the common room to establish camaraderie between the students, Kloves replaced that energy and lightheartedness with Snape in a way that's uncharacteristic. The scene, as he wrote it, is already light and has humor, but Kloves doesn't trust it - he feels the need to exaggerate it and the casualties, as always, are the characters and their portrayal. It's as though he's following a formula and saying, "this page number/scene number must provide relief from the tension of the story" and then doesn't consider how following that directive fits into the rhythm of the narrative. It's closer to being an isolated scene akin to a comedy sketch than to a scene that's part of an act that's part of a film. It's worth noting that, in GoF, Kloves interjects this scene as if he's forcing this moment of comic relief into a story that didn't require it and then relies on playing off of Snape's usual seriousness as its crux. In OOtP, when there's a callback to it as Snape smacks Ron with a book again, it's no longer the point of the scene, but an aside in a comical montage focused on Umbridge (OOtP was also the only film not written by Kloves, so this moment is more likely the result of Michael Goldenberg trying to maintain a consistency with Kloves' work). Overall, I think that feeling of something being off is, again, more rooted in the writing than the performance.

Rickman as an actor playing Snape

There's a lot of criticism in the Snapedom of how Alan Rickman portrays Snape, but not enough acknowledgment that none of the characters are portrayed well, and most of it comes down to Kloves' writing of them. Book!McGonagall insists that all students under 17 are evacuated before the Battle of Hogwarts, where Movie!McGonagall only cares that the Slytherin students are locked in the dungeon, everyone else can stay, what does she care if first years die? Book!Hermione is intelligent and empathetic while Movie!Hermione is a two dimensional maternalistic harpy whose main job is to be a mouthpiece for plot exposition. Book!Ron is funny and brave and fiercely loyal, while Movie!Ron throws Hermione under the bus, is cowardly, and is reduced to a flatly written sidekick. Book!Harry is complex and while I could list a million examples, I'll stick to this one: in PoA when he finds out Sirius betrayed his parents, he's enraged but has no reply when asked if he'd want to kill Sirius. Movie!Harry says with conviction, and without prompting, that he wants to find Sirius with the explicit purpose of killing him. Every single character takes a hit because of how Steve Kloves writes them, and Snape is, sadly, no exception.

While some film shoots allow for improvisation, a big budget production on a tight schedule with scenes that require a lot of prep work can't afford to make many changes. So, for example, while Ralph Fiennes was asked to improvise his scene as Voldemort at the end of DH2 when he re-enters Hogwarts victorious (and that's why the dialogue is redundant and that weird hug with Draco continues to plague us), it could be done because the wardrobe and set and cast were already in place and the time required had already been scheduled in. It wouldn't be possible, though, to add an additional scene - like Snape going feral in the hospital wing at the end of PoA - unless it was written into the script. Additional actors would be required, which would mean coordinating with their schedules and adding them to the budget, not to mention scheduling in additional days with the crew who may already have other work lined up. It would require either pushing every other shooting day back - which is near impossible - in order to use the hospital wing set while it's still up, or tacking on production days to the end of the shooting schedule and rebuilding the set on those days. This can be done for necessary pickups that round out existing scenes, but you can't really say, "hey I decided we need a scene here that didn't exist before" without causing huge problems. Because of how contracts work, any significant scene changes would have to be sent back to Kloves who would have to write alternate scenes and/or dialogue, and even then if you wanted to fix a specific character's arc - like Snape's - you would have to add in so much that it just wouldn't be feasible. Screenplay lengths have to fall within a certain number of pages, because each page is approximately a minute of screen time, so adding a few more to a finished script mid-production is very difficult. The actors have to make the best of what's on the page. Which brings us to Alan Rickman, his choices as an actor, and what informed both him and the character of Snape.

Alan Rickman was a RADA trained actor, so his approach to a character involved a lot of physical work as well as character analysis. As far as I know, he was the only actor to contact JK Rowling directly to ask about his character, because he wanted to make an informed decision about how to play him since Snape was so nuanced and gray. Unlike some of the other actors (like Michael "DIDYAPUTYANAMEINDAGOBLETOFFIYAH" Gambon) Rickman read the books - those that were available when he took on the role, and each as they came out afterwards - and used them to inform his understanding of his character beyond what Kloves wrote (presumably in crayon with all the e's backwards). In interviews and Q&A's it's clear Rickman was fond of the HP books and story, and had a thoughtful process taking on Snape's character. He did not see him as a villain, because, as he's said, he didn't approach characters with that kind of judgment. And while I'm sure the egregious amounts of cash Warner Brothers threw at the actors was inevitably a factor for all of them, several of the ones playing teachers or other adults have said that they took on their role because a child in their life insisted on it, despite them being unfamiliar with the books, whereas Rickman's process was to read Rowling's books in order to decide whether to take the role. Again, he was a RADA trained actor, and thus had a meticulous approach to his work that followed a thoughtful, considered process and a decision based on whether he felt he could embody a character in a way that did them justice/if they were interesting enough to him. By the time he started shooting PS, he also had experience directing a film and was working as a director in theatre as well as still acting, so he understood the process from the perspective of not just an actor, but also as someone behind the camera, someone working with actors both as a peer and director, and someone sitting in an editing room.

We know from his diaries that he became increasingly frustrated with how his own process and expectations clashed with that of the producers on Harry Potter. He wasn't interested in renewing his contract after the first few films (goodness knows how much money they offered him in the end - his wife has said that he never let anyone else pick up a tab in a restaurant and if they argued, he would just say "Harry Potter."). He writes about seeing the films at premieres and being frustrated with how little story and development there is (especially for Snape), which makes me think there are deleted scenes somewhere that haven't been released. At one point he writes about a premiere party where he had internally lost patience with the three Davids (Yates, Heyman, and Barron). It's obvious that there's a discord between the work he wanted to do with Snape's character and what choices the production made:

He describes how, during the filming of the Yule Ball scene in GoF, there was an attempt to get him to dance but he refused because he didn't think Snape would dance:

It was a rare moment of potential for improvisation because, again, the set and cast and timing were already accounted for, and in this case there wasn't even dialogue. The scene where he smacks the boys with the notebook - as far as I know - was scripted. So there's a difference there in how much freedom he had, as an actor, to say no to what he was asked to do. Even in the above diary entry it's clear that, given his way, he felt the character wouldn't even be present in that scene, but he had no choice. This tells me that when he had more freedom to make choices, he did so based on his understanding of Snape as a character and, given that he was an actor who was both very respected (and got away with more than most) and also someone who could get argumentative about his character choices, I think this is the most apt lens to examine his physical work with Snape through.

Knowing that he wasn't interested in continuing the role of Snape after the first couple of films and that he was often frustrated with the lack of characterization and story arc, his physicality in his first scene in CoS (when he reprimands Harry and Ron for flying the car) says a lot. (Caveat that one of the reasons he didn't want to renew his contract was that the shooting schedule restricted his schedule and he wanted work on other projects, but I can't help but wonder if that had been the case had HP provided a more satisfying process.) It's almost certain that he had read all the available books by the time the scene in CoS was filmed, including PoA where Snape becomes apoplectic with rage in a way that, to a child reader, is comical (and intended to be) and to someone analyzing Snape is clearly rooted in triggered trauma.

Alan Rickman knew from the outset that Snape's motivation was his love for Lily, so he would have understood the dynamic between his character and Sirius re: who Snape thought sold Lily out to Voldemort. He would also have understood that Snape's reaction in PoA was more about distress and anxiety, and that this was connected to the promise Snape had made to protect Harry for Lily's sake. This would have therefore informed his portrayal of Snape's anger at Harry in CoS, and it's reasonable to assume that Rickman was trying to walk the line between the way Rowling portrayed Snape in full unhinged rage in PoA, what this tells him about this character when angered, and the connection between the moments in PoA and CoS when it comes to Snape's anxiety over Harry's safety. Unlike the author of a book however, who has full control of how they tell a story, Rickman was an actor in a film - an inevitably collaborative medium which therefore made his portrayal reliant on the decisions of others as well.

Chris Columbus, the HP movies, and feral Snape

PS and CoS were directed by Chris Columbus, the guy who directed both Home Alone and Home Alone II and Mrs. Doubtfire. He was a successful director from the 90s tradition of children's movies whose sensibility was informed by the era's attitude towards children's media: kids wanting to see themselves in narratives, in ways that felt empowering and allowed them to process the confusion of a world run by adults in playful, quasi-cartoonish ways within a 3 act structure where the villains - mean adults - get their comeuppance because it feels fair. One thing that set Harry Potter apart was that the villain was not the mean adult; Snape, the mean adult, is a character kids can hate and project their own experiences onto, but Voldemort is a true villain who represents evil and is vanquished by the hero. Chris Columbus established a tone for the first two films that was no longer apt by PoA, not only because it didn't work for the story, but because that 90s era of children's movies had ended and the culture moved on to more complex narratives (and Columbus has focused more on producing than directing since, because his style doesn't work for audiences anymore).

What's ironic about the way Snape's scene at the start of CoS comes off is that, in the book, there's a great comedic moment that's left out:

This is cut from the film, and instead it's Filch waiting at the top of the marble stairs who catches Ron and Harry being late and delivers them to Snape (I don't know why, the scene in the book is much more dynamic and would have taken up about as much time on screen). Rickman, meanwhile, is using the information he's gotten on who Snape is from the books, and imbuing some of that feral Snape energy into his portrayal of a Snape who is genuinely angry:

(Thank you for making these gifs @smilingformoney , they are truly the gift that keeps on giving.)

The thing is, no matter how much of feral Snape Rickman brought to this, no matter how menacing his performance is, this moment still lives within the dynamics of a Chris Columbus children's film. It gets cut off by Dumbledore's entrance - meant to be a comeuppance for Snape, since Dumbledore (being the voice of wisdom and fairness in this world) prevents him from punishing Harry and Ron (you know what, at least in the books they got detention, but ok). Despite Rickman's performance, Columbus as a director has framed this scene in the same context as the one Kloves cut. The tension is brief, and the focus is on Snape being foiled, because it's what children want to see - a mean adult experiencing consequences. It's down to the editing and soundtrack, choices Columbus made in the editing room. In addition, we don't know how many different ways an actor tries a scene, only what ends up in the final cut of a film. The process of the work done on a set is often much richer and more diverse than what an audience sees in the finished film.

Tbh I think this is also why Snape's feral moments were cut from PoA: it's a darker film, but had to straddle the line between being for both children and tweens and not getting too playful, nor too intense. As much as I want to see feral Snape on screen, it's extremely difficult to make work in a narrative that is about Harry and his friends. It either skews too intense, making the audience uncomfortable because seeing an adult becoming unhinged and in pain is difficult and frightening for most young people, even adults, and would therefore take away from Harry's goals and narrative as well as his changing relationship to Sirius (all of which is already barely supported by Kloves' writing). Alternately, it could also skew too comical and over the top, which takes the audience out of the tension of the film's climactic moments.

If Snape's story had gotten more focus and screen time, an unhinged moment would be better justified because the audience would have been more invested in the character and their arc. PoA sidesteps pretty much all of the most compelling parts of the book, which is the realization that Harry is not only connected to Sirius personally, but that his dad, Sirius, Lupin, and Pettigrew created the Marauders Map, that they were animagi, that Harry's patronus takes the form of his father's stag, and that Snape was initimately connected to all of them as well. For me, reading the end of PoA was what cemented Snape as someone who would be crucial to the narrative and whose role would increase as the series went on. As a result of Kloves skimming over these essential plot twists, Snape is a minor character in the film, showing up mostly as a foil who tries to expose Lupin and then catches him and Black in the Shrieking Shack (this also sets his character up to be minimized in every film down the line, which has a worsening impact as Snape becomes increasingly integral to the plot).

One thing I find interesting is that Snape's comical physicality changes over the films. In PS and CoS he's menacing, a looming, larger than life figure the children fear and easily assume to be a full-fledged villain. By GoF there's a relationship embedded in how he interacts with Harry and his friends. He's no longer terrifying, just intimidating, more of an adult Harry challenges than someone he must defeat. The comedic effect now comes from a rapport within an established dynamic between characters. By HBP, the only comical moment is at Slughorn's party, and it's no longer Rickman who uses physicality - the action happens around him, and the comedic effect is in his lack of reaction to any of it. In other words, he's no longer the comic one, he's become the straight man in a (badly written) comedy sketch (with abysmal timing, what even).

Ultimately, as with most of the characters in the HP films, Snape is undermined by the writing. Rickman was stuck working within the confines he was given. No matter how well he may have understood the character, the limited screen time and character development were always going to stifle how Snape was portrayed on screen. I'm very much pro Let Snape Be Feral but I also don't fault Rickman in how little we saw of that.

How Feral is Snape?

If I'm honest, I feel like the Snapedom has taken the Let Snape Be Feral thing and has started forgetting that he wasn't all-feral-all-the-time. The point of Feral Snape is that it's a heightened state of tension in a character whose trauma is being triggered. Apoplectic Snape wouldn't have an impact at the end of PoA if that was his usual way of being. And, as you so brilliantly showed @said-snape-softly Snape's speech patterns are primarily quiet and controlled, his speech gets softer the more dangerous his mood, and it's only after he reassumes his role as a spy that the description of his speech becomes increasingly volatile (but is still controlled). Feral Snape's definitive aspect is the lack of control shown by a character who usually is so exceptionally capable of self restraint and compartmentalization. So again, while I would have loved to see Feral Snape on screen, I think it's also important to acknowledge that this is not the defining feature of his character and is more about what those moments mean to his arc. Their absence is primarily due to poor writing that didn't create space for them (including what leads up to them), and the direction that didn't carve out any kind of niche for them, not Rickman's choices as an actor.

In fact, Snape as a character is defined by descriptors of his voice more than any other character by far. I have my own theory about why this is, and it has to do with Alan Rickman being inextricably connected with how Snape is written. Chris Columbus said that Alan Rickman was always Snape as far as he was concerned, because when JK Rowling showed him a sketch of Snape she had made, it looked exactly like Rickman. I don't think this is accidental.

Alan Rickman was always intended to be Snape

First, what's important to remember is that before Harry Potter, Alan Rickman was best known in the 90s for playing both villains and sad romantic leads. His signature defining feature was his voice. I think it was Ang Lee who described the casting choice of Greg Wise and Alan Rickman in Sense and Sensibility as wanting Willoughby (Wise) to be dashing and Brandon (Rickman) to be sexy (if this was Emma Thompson and not Ang Lee, my apologies, I can't remember where I read this and can't find the source). This is how Rickman was perceived by audiences up until Harry Potter. And I know a lot of the Snapedom considers him to be sexy as Snape too, but the general audiences of the films don't, so please don't @ me, I'm just setting up a point here.

This is relevant because, as we find out in the end of the books, Rowling wrote Snape's motivations to be rooted in romantic love (I'm very nobly putting aside, for the sake of focusing on Rowling's intentions, my personal interpretation that Snape's feelings for Lily were platonic, please acknowledge how brave I am for this). She pulls a lot from gothic tropes into how he's written, and as much as she's talked about the character having been inspired by a chemistry teacher she disliked, and as much as she's talked about Snape being both morally grey and someone she personally dislikes, she also romanticized him. Between this and what Chris Columbus said about her sketch of him, it's hard for me to ignore that this character, conceived of in the 90s, wasn't written with Alan Rickman in mind from the beginning, especially since Rowling herself has said that she envisioned him in the role. Whether or not he lived up to Rowling's imagination is, frankly, his choice and Rowling's problem.

The story of how Harry Potter was written according to JK Rowling is that it started with the idea coming to her on a train ride in 1990. She completed the PS manuscript in 1995. While everything I'm about to say is absolute conjecture, I can't help but wonder at the connection between these films and the way Snape was written (spoilers ahead, no regrets, these films have been out for over a quarter of a century - forgive my reviews, I can't help myself):

1988: Die Hard comes out. Alan Rickman plays Hans Gruber, a villain who is a genius, composed, controlled, and soft-spoken. (Great film, a classic, the only valid Christmas movie.)

1990: Truly, Madly, Deeply. Rickman plays a man whose wife can't get over his tragic death, nor can his own ghost, who comes back to spend more time with her. No one else can see him, and they can't really share a life anymore. She eventually lets him go as she realizes that his spirit doesn't belong in the mortal world and her own life can't move on as long as she clings to it. (Beautiful film, will break your heart and put it through a shredder.)

1991: Robin Hood, Prince of Thieves. Rickman is the Sheriff of Nottingham, an unhinged, feral villain who wears all black complete with billowing cape. (Terrible film, disaster of a period piece, Rickman's performance is the only redeeming thing about it. Halfway through its press tour talk shows started booking Rickman instead of the lead, Kevin Costner, because Rickman stole every scene.)

1995: An Awfully Big Adventure. Rickman is an actor who comes back to his hometown to revive his role as Captain Hook in a local theatre production of Peter Pan. In the process he has an affair with a young ginger stagehand who reminds him of his lost love, a vivacious woman named Stella with bright red hair who, as far as he knows, birthed his child - a son - before she died. It turns out the girl he has an affair with is his daughter, which he realizes when he visits her home where she lives in the care of her aunt and uncle - whose name is Vernon - and connects the dots of who this girl's mother was. (He then rides his motorcycle out to the pier, screams "Stella" at the heavens like he's in a revival production of Streetcar Named Desire, trips and hits his head on the edge of the pier and falls into the water, drowning. I can't make this up. Mike Newell directed this. The same guy who directed GoF. As if following in the vein of the 90s movie obsession with incest as the controversial-trope-du-jour wasn't enough. I don't even need to review this, just sum it up.)

1995: Sense and Sensibility. Rickman plays Colonel Brandon, a forlorn, grieving man who lost his first love at a young age and spends most of the film pining for the only other woman he's ever had a romantic interest in. Wears all black, rides a black horse.

Given what a well-known actor Rickman was in the 90s - especially in England - and how connected his characters all seem to be to various aspects of Snape, it's hard not to see a connection. The entire premise of Truly, Madly, Deeply sounds like the inspiration for the Resurrection Stone in Deathly Hallows. The redheaded lost love whose child is left in the care of an Uncle Vernon in An Awfully Big Adventure is difficult to look past. All of these characters either exude menacingly soft-spoken Snape energy, feral Snape energy, or forlorn because of his lost love Snape energy. As a result, I feel like it's almost inevitable that Rickman inspired Snape, especially when you consider how known he was for his voice and how frequently Snape's voice is used to describe him. When Rowling said that she envisioned him in the role, it makes me wonder if she meant during the casting process for the first film, or well before it. I think his previous roles were a contributing factor in how the character was written in the books. After Tim Roth - who was originally cast in the role - had to back out due to scheduling conflicts, she got her way. Authors don't often get to choose who plays their characters, but in this case it worked out as the production thought Rickman was a good fit as well.

I'm done, I promise

So where does this leave things at the end of this horrendously long post? Rickman's choices of how he physicalized Snape - comedic or not - are only part of a larger whole. He was playing a character who was written based on his other roles, and limited by the shortcomings of how Steve Kloves translated that character from Rowling's books into his own screenplays. Whatever Rickman did on set was limited by that writing, by the directors he worked with, and by the choices made in the editing room.

I'm fascinated by the idea that Rickman was playing a character written with him in mind - but not really him, the him who embodied other characters whose echoes show up in Snape. It's difficult enough to contend with an actor playing a character in a screenplay you wrote with them in mind when you're directing your own script, because they'll never be what you imagined in your head. But for that process to get filtered through several directors, a team of producers, another writer who changes your work, and an editor, let alone throughout a decade of films - that's downright wild. The original intention gets lost and reinterpreted like a game of telephone, and I think that a lot of the consistencies between Movie!Snape and Book!Snape are down to Alan Rickman's nuanced and generous nature as an actor. If I'm honest, I'm not convinced that every Snape moment that comes off comical was meant to be so by Rickman. But again, film is such a collaborative medium that his intentions aren't the only ones that matter, ultimately, at least they aren't the only thing that ends up in the final cut.

My take, personally, is that I'm more interested in critical analysis than personal criticism. I respect that everyone has their own vision of a character and fandom is absolutely here for, among other things, having a place to share those thoughts and feelings. But a character is rarely going to appear on screen the same way you see them in your head, and that's not always going to be a fault, even if it's a disappointment to you. It's interesting to hear different people's perceptions, but there isn't that much to discuss there - you can't refute how someone feels, and you can't argue that their truth is what it is, to them. Whereas with critical analysis there's a lot more to talk about and examine, so it's where my own interest is much more invested.

#asks #long post #said-snape-softly #do I have regrets about the length? not one.#is anyone still reading? not one.

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snacksizedgates · 2 years

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idk if anyone pointed this out but "boy" is written between them the entire time in this scene +++more.

First I want to start off with the most interesting one, which I have not seen anyone point out yet. If you have, you're just like me fr. But look at this parallel and tell me that's not intentional.

There's not much to say besides they're both thinking about boys. El's looks just like a thought bubble and it's the same exact frame for Mike so... Maybe El is thinking about just Mike but I think she suspects Will likes Mike at the very least. She is not as naïve as people think she is, imo. + There are two boys in El's thoughts whereas there is just a boy in Mike's thoughts.

The next most interesting part to me is:

It doesn't just say boy. It says "for boy" (really fer boy but its in cursive so it could plausibly be for). Again, call me delusional, but I think stuff like this is intentional. For boy between them in a scene where Will gives Mike a special painting and confesses his love vicariously... almost like a letter.

And on the side of Mike there is consistently a "boy" somewhere. So far as to when the "boy" starts panning out, they are panning it back in. Watch the sequence of these frames:

Notice that when Will is turned away getting the painting, the "boy" is coming out of the shot. But by the time he hands Mike the painting the "boy" is fully back in the shot. It's easier to see in the actual video, so I would go rewatch. It looks like they're playing with the lighting to make it seem like the car is moving but they still want to keep that boy in. I could be wrong cause idk how they film stuff like this but still lol.

So Mike is definitely thinking about SOMETHING boy related because why is there all that imagery?

Like give me a heterosexual explanation please??

And last but certainly not least seeing as it ties the whole situation together:

First note Mike still has boy written next to him. It's out out of focus along with Mike but it's still there, conveying he's still thinking about a boy, boys or whatever.

But for Will there is no solo boy imagery, just coupled with Mike. What Will has is the word "surfer" which is one letter away from suffer and he's crying in the foreground 😞😐 Again it's also in cursive so it can easily look like suffer especially backwards, so it's purposely put there.

It doesn't have to be that deep and they could have just thrown the boy in there to hint at their queerness over all but...

It could also indicate Mike recognizing his true feelings for Will and/or understanding what Will is saying. Regardless if he reciprocates I think he understands what Will is trying to say in this scene. His facial expressions give it away. But the ton of boy imagery, and especially "boy" not "boys" could definitely indicate he's recognizing his feelings for a boy.

Idk, maybe maybe not. But why.

#byler #byler is real #byler is endgame #mike wheeler #will byers #mike wheeler is gay #mike queercoded #queercoded #stranger things #stranger things 4 #mike and will are endgame #mike and will

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doodlboy · 8 months

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ANYWAY

*grabs the handful of ppl who liked my hypmic oc post*

It is time.

Under the readmore bc this is probably gonna be an essay

Ok, so note, I literally started making this guy bc I was going to draw him 4 a meme that he's the "excuse me, they asked 4 no pickles" kinda guy and specifically he'd b that guy 4 jyushi who at the time of me making, was older than my oc which is funny 2 me

Anyway ×2

I made moodboards bc im too tired 2 draw detailed stuff rn, his current filler name is Pink, bc of his hair

1 4 his hair ⤵️ & 1 4 his outfit ⤵️

Also, this doodle of me attempting 2 convey the hair I'm thinking of, dunno why he's so desaturated but whatever

His hair is white-blond in the front and a reddish pink in the back, I haven't decided if that's bc of dye or if it's like doppo and hifumi w their two-toned hair.

- street kid who got abandoned by his parents "going traveling" 2 Japan and basically leaving him there 2 fend for himself

- I still need 2 do more research but I'm thinking as far as a division goes, he'd be from Seto Japan bc⤵️

- he almost gets arrested 4 graffiti[ing??] murals & an elderly classical artist [pottery artist maybe since that's a thing in seto] more or less bails him out & takes him in

- the old fella essentially becoming a mentor 2 Pink, teaching him how to express himself of canvas since he had a knack 4 it. Pink doesn't learn all that much in the way of typical schooling tho, so he speaks with a kinda rough accent

- typical mentor story tho, the old fella didn't have any other family and took Pink in like a son so when he eventually passed he left everything 2 him including a little studio where Pink lives

-----------

Anyway×3 idk where go from 2 get 2 these parts of the story

- winds up in Yokohama & makes fast "friends*" w the local yakuza

[*they insult each other a lot of the time, like samatoki calling pink two-toned brat & pink calling samatoki mr.rabbit bc of him being so insistent on ppl calling him honorifics, his stage name Mr. HardCore, & the fact pink thinks he looks like a white rabbit. Despite insults, they actually agree on a lot of things.]

- Pink's rap style is- really erratic tbh, he's good but if u aren't paying attention you will get lost

- Additionally, his rap ability is called "Framed," similar to Jyuto's Prison ability, Pink freezes opponents in paintings of themselves [but the twist is that the paintings r how he sees them so he hardly uses it bc ⤵️]

- He's a bit of tsundere dumbass. Any affection shown is off-handed. "Yeah, whatever, I got your favorite, ya mention it so much it's hard to forget" kind of off-handed. And he has massive respect 4 the other divisions [& since the music from the game exists in canon, he also knows every song very well].

- Which is why he uses his framed ability sparingly, bc it reveals his true emotions, not just 2 the opponent he used it on, but everyone else, too. [Specific ex is samatokis painting being a like- a fuckin fancam type deal, or Rei's painting being actual shit bc he hates deadbeat dads.]

- Anywayx4, he's abt 22/23 & takes the younger members of divisions under his wing since his indifferent 2 all the beef going on between them.

- Esp jyushi bc isth that kid would just not eat if a fast food restaurant fucked up his food, so pink and kuko r the "he asked for no pickles" duo, 1 is quiet & kinda bitchy lookin and the other 1 is loud as hell, but after they fix the food pink still tips em & apologizes 4 kuko yelling sm unintentionally

Anyway ×5 that's all I got rn ty 4 coming 2 my oc tedtalk

#elliot rambles #oc #oc rambling #hypmic oc #pink oc

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beevean · 8 months

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Idk it’s actually almost hilarious that they made Dracula in Netflixvania just… Some guy

You could argue that the show ‘tried’ to showcase him as an extremely intelligent and powerful being but if you remove the part where he’s old and has a house that moves and he’s literally no different than any other vampire so all that build up was for absolutely fucking nothing. In Netflixvania vampires ruling large sectors of land isn’t special [Especially when Camilla says something about her being a regional ruler like that’s borderline insignificant], vampires having supernatural powers isn’t special, vampires being intelligent beyond their era isn’t special. Dracula isn’t special.

I’m not sure if they just missed the point of his character that badly or if they genuinely didn’t know how to make him a cruel, obsessive, vengeful monster AND a merciful, loving, compassionate father and husband even though those two aspects of his character are so intrinsically linked they can’t be separated.

They tried making him a father and husband and they tried making him a monster but for one reason or another they couldn’t do both so his entire character was watered down at best

Dracula lost all dignity the moment Carmilla #girlbossed into the throne room:

youtube

Look at him. He can't even tell his own court to be silent. Maybe you should try to raise your voice, genius?

And then there's Carmilla. She literally stands there, smug as hell, and her very first course of action is to blame Dracula for moving the castle around, insult his generals for being incompetent and in disarray, and oh, question him in front of everyone why didn't he just turn Lisa? What, did he like having a pet? Like, the sheer amount of blatant, brazen disrespect!

(I also misremembered Carmilla's line. I thought the implication was "well, had you turned her, she would still be alive". No, she just deadass calls Lisa his pet. In front of him.)

... Dracula does nothing to her.

Oh, he pretends to be furious, red eyes and all. But he only asks her "why did you do that?" (after some personal smalltalk, may I add) and Carmilla is like "eh everyone is thinking the same thing, so I wanted to put you on the spot <3", and... nothing happens from here. He's like "welp, nothing I can do to her, she can rejoin the others".

Do I need to say what Dracula does to people who disrespect him?

And this is his prized General whom he needs. Not a random "regional ruler", one of many.

Also look at Carmilla's mannerisms in the second scene. She's like "yes?" with a cocked eyebrow and a hand on her hip, before shifting to a more respectful stance. She's lying out of her sparkly ass. This is as subtle as a taser to the balls.

I'm not impressed by Carmilla's manipulations when literally everyone around her is a giant, steaming idiot.

Also, another thing that bothers me. Dracula in S2 is frequently depicted in his... private quarters, I think? This room with the fireplace. And look at the framing:

Carmilla is standing above Dracula, who is slumped in a low, unassuming chair.

Framing matters to convey how important a character is. Observe:

Dracula in S2 is constantly put on the same level as his subordinates. This is made even more blatant in the scene where he asks Isaac if he's still his friend, where he sits next to him.

Dracula is not a ruler in S2, and it was done on purpose. He is portrayed as a depressed old man who only wants to die and take everyone else with him, and he has lost his mind so much that Carmilla can take the reins for herself. The OCs all sit around and talk about him as if he's a delusional idiot, looking down on him, and we're supposed to think they have a point because they are never challenged on it. This is the main villain of the franchise. The fucking FRANCHISE and SHOW are named after HIS DAMN CASTLE! He's kind of important!

Shankar talks as if he had the idea of turning Dracula into a tragic figure, but he did not. That has been a core part of his character since SoTN. And expanding on it would have worked fine! But they went way too far in that direction, and forgot that yes, Dracula is a grieving husband with a complicated relationship with his son, yes he can feel emotions... but he's also the fucking Dark Lord with the legions of Hell under his command, he can curse and possess and shapeshift and you do not fuck with him unless you're a Belmont or you have Dracula's own power by your side.

And as I said, the fact that Trevor can barely scratch this neutered version of Dracula only speaks poorly of him too.

#anti netflixvania #i hate carmilla too #smug ass bitch who is never set back and never proven wrong and never shows any side of her that isn't smug #she's boring and irritating and what little depth she could have is easily brushed aside #also yes she humiliates the villain i actually care about and that's a sin i can't stand #i hate ocs who shit on the canon villain #oh another thing that bothers me!#isaac in the show calls dracula just 'dracula'#bro. bro that's your lord.#isaac in ptr speaks in immaculate keigo when referring to him because he's fucking lord dracula and deserves respect :\

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murderoushagthesequel · 1 year

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my cover for teach them how to dream by @im-still-tryin-to-find-it is done!

the full image is here, and below the ~keep reading~ will be the front cover, spine, and back cover individually in better quality with explanations (this will include minor spoilers, mainly references to specific scenes i think are cute)

for those of you that haven’t read tthtd and don’t want spoilers, read it! you won’t regret it. if the color and joy i tried to convey on this cover is any sign, it’s every bit as cute and bright as i’ve drawn it.

---

front cover (click for better quality):

so the front cover obviously has the most easter eggs, but i’ll explain them all here for all y’all who are interested:

the stars above the blackboard are meant to resemble the glow-in-the-dark stars that are referenced a few times throughout the story

i really hope some of you get this but i added those white/blackboard borders teachers would always put up with fun patterns on them, i picked the alphabet

the chalkboard drawings!

a stack of chocolate chip pancakes because harry is obsessed with them

a whisk from james and regulus' halloween costumes

a text convo because the texting is pretty important in this fic

the framed poem!!

forget-me-nots because they just remind me of jegulus

snowflakes and hearts because of james’ love confession on christmas

butterflies flying in the shape of a heart: one is red for james and one is green for regulus

and finally a sunrise/sunset because james texting reg sunrise/sunset pictures!

ofc regulus likes reading in general but i drew the books specifically thinking about when regulus goes to lily’s bookstore and they first become friends

a pen cup both because it’s a classroom and because i wanted a way to represent regulus and james’ love of writing (thinking about the scene where regulus just looks at james' empty google doc and starts writing)

a rotten apple to reference one of my favorite scenes, chapter 6: the apple orchard, when regulus and james are talking about the kids finding rotten apples and then james has to eat one because harry asks him to

the desk, idk why i just picture regulus having this needlessly fancy wooden desk

and finally the sun streaming through the windows, i’ll explain a bit more when i get to the back cover

spine (click for better quality):

not much to go over here but

used the ao3 logo as a publisher mark

same writing of the title as the front cover but in solid writing instead of chalk

paint splatters for the background!

back cover (click for better quality):

starting with the background, again we got paint splatters

most books have a review on the back so i included an excerpt of my own review at the top

then one of my favorite quotes which is just so cute shut up don’t talk to me (this quote is part of the reason i included the sun streaming through the windows on the front cover)

and the official description by gabby from ao3

i used hearts as a separator between the words just because love!

and there are little doodles around both to fill space and also for the vibes

copied the cover art credit format from some books but without the publisher cuz there is none

and then the barcode! believe it or not there’s a lot here:

first of all the price, books in the us usually have prices written like that but the second one is canada- i changed it to international because it's the internet! and the marauders fandom is international!

the barcode itself is made up i just drew it

but the numbers are code for a series of letters (the alphabet where every 10 letters is assigned to the numbers 0-9) it spells “caught the moon” which is a reference to regulus and sirius’ memory of sneaking out to go capture the moon

and the qr code is a real qr code that leads you to the first chapter of tthtd!

ok that took forever to type out lol

i had a bit of trouble trying to balance out the kindergarten-y aspect with the actual plot and love story but i'm pretty happy with how it turned out anyway

if you haven’t read teach them how to dream yet PLEASE do, making this cover and going back through all my favorite parts of the story was such a joy and i really hope you appreciate it! i could only include so many references on this cover, there's so much more in the story.

going to go take a break and not move my hands for 5 hours because i just typed this all out on my ipad.

#fic: teach them how to dream #teach them how to dream #regulus black #james potter #jegulus

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whentherewerebicycles · 1 year

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ok finished my morning meetings and got to have a really nice goodbye with the HR team ladies. i love them so much!! they were truly the one bright spot of that job... just this little team of super competent, kind, & funny women who were such a delight to work with. and they are all scattering to the winds too... two just got big promotions that will take them out of our office and the other is going on maternity leave (and i kinda wonder how long she’ll stick around when she comes back). i got to work on a big project with them for a few months this winter and the whole thing was just like... me observing how capable they all were but also how undervalued and condescended to they were by their direct boss. idk man! i am sure people management is extremely hard work but also it really does not seem THAT hard to speak to people in a way that conveys that you recognize and respect them as people. and i feel like it’s probably a bit like teaching in the sense that to do it effectively you have to learn to self-regulate your own emotions like a grownup instead of letting your stress and frustration about work continually spill over onto the people you supervise.

my dad was asking me yesterday what i felt like i learned from this job... and i feel like i learned virtually nothing in terms of useful skills or content lol but i DO feel like i learned a lot about organizational hierarchies and interpersonal relationships in the workplace and what ineffective people management looks like. i know i already did a version of this journaling a few months ago when i decided i HAD to get out of this job, but i want to do a slightly updated/final version just to mark this point of closure & to think about the specific concrete things i want to apply to future workplaces. so here we go!

things i want to take with me:

for the love of godddd jes don’t ever take your work frustrations out on people who are less powerful than you, no matter how stressed you are or how much pressure you’re under. if you are coming into a meeting hot and you can’t manage your own emotions, you need to take five, breathe, and get your shit together so you can transition into the next meeting without letting all your negative overwhelmed emotions avalanche onto everyone else who’s just sitting there nervously trying to figure out if they’re in trouble or if there’s something they should be doing to make you less mad. it wasn’t like my bosses were MEAN or anything! i just feel like people aren’t always good at recognizing when they’re super stressed and that makes it hard for them to self-regulate or self-soothe, which means bad feelings start leaking everywhere and you get this awful free-floating miasma of anxiety/tension that is very difficult to dispel.

don’t talk to your employees negatively about your other employees. i am just going to make this a categorical rule for myself in all situations, not just with people i’m supervising but also with students and coworkers and bosses. if i would feel uncomfortable with that person overhearing what i’m saying, i shouldn’t be saying it to someone else. i can write about it in my little diary if i need to process it lol but like... just keep that kind of gossipy venting talk out of the workplace. it damages trust!!! i feel like often our bosses would be venting to us about another employee or team, and it was always framed as “well YOU understand why this is so maddening, YOU aren’t like this” but how can you really trust that? i feel like the message it sends is: ‘you’re in my good graces now, but if you ever make a mistake that annoys me, I will have no qualms about venting to your colleagues about how incompetent you are at your job.’ it just creates suuuuch bad vibes and i think can really lead to certain people (cough my l**d) trying frantically to curry favor with the boss & being quick to throw others under the bus to avoid being the target of that derision. i just really really think there is no room in relationships of any kind, professional or otherwise, for derision or contempt, even if you are not aiming it directly at the other person.

respect people’s time. treat other people’s time as exactly as valuable as your own no matter what rung on the power hierarchy they occupy. this drove me absolutely fucking NUTS in this job. my lead was constantly changing meeting times five minutes before they started without telling me or showing up to meetings 5-10 min late without giving me a heads up that she was running late. obviously stuff comes up now and then and that’s fine! but people deserve to have a reasonably predictable schedule and if things need to be shifted around they deserve to be consulted in that decision. i feel like, again, the underlying theme of all of this stuff is just... think about the implicit message you are sending. because every time she fucked with my schedule like that, the message was: ‘my time is more valuable than yours. my priorities, my projects, my workload, my preferences for what the workday looks like are all far more important than yours. and when i am changing things around to suit my needs, you don’t even register as important enough to me for me to reach out and notify you of the change. it is YOUR job to be attuned always to my changing needs & desires and to adjust your own expectations or preferences to suit mine.’ phew i’m getting heated again just thinking about it!!!!

do not, ever, under any circumstances, claim other people’s work as your own. just don’t fucking do it, not even if it seems easier or more convenient to elide their contributions into a general “we” or whatever. attribute ideas to the people who came up with the ideas. recognize and name the work people do!!! this is ESPECIALLY important when they have less power or clout than you!!!!!

my dad has said this to me a lot but i feel like i didn’t really fully get it until this job... he said that when you are managing people, part of your job is to help develop the person you’re managing so that one day they can leave that job and move up to a bigger job with more responsibility. you’re managing personalities and performance to ensure that the work gets done at a certain standard, but you’re also holding someone’s longer professional trajectory in your mind and actively asking yourself: how can i help this person develop and grow? what are their areas of strength and weakness? how can i give them opportunities to publicly shine where they’re already strong, as well as projects that will really challenge them to develop skills they’re lacking? how can i treat each interaction as an opportunity to both gain greater insight into how they think/work/make decisions and to give them thoughtful feedback that will help positively shape their decision-making? i feel like one of the most demoralizing parts of this job was just feeling like nothing i did really mattered, nothing i did was recognized or elicited feedback beyond a cursory “that was great, thanks,” and no one spared a single thought to what my future in the organization might look like (much less felt like they had any role to play in shaping that future). i saw so many smart, capable people leave the organization over the course of nine months and i feel like the organizational attitude was just indifference... like it just felt like nobody cared about a good person leaving because anyone in the org could be replaced at any time and each new person who came in would be pretty much interchangeable with the person who’d left. which to me is so different than an attitude that is like, “i recognize that you are smart and competent, and because of that i believe (and actively hope!) that you will eventually outgrow this role and be ready to move onwards and upwards into a bigger role with more responsibility. but part of my role is to help you get the most out of this role, both for the organization’s benefit and so that you can be really, really well-equipped to take that next step in your career when it’s time.” idk man! like obviously the latter approach takes a lot more care and thoughtfulness and curiosity about the inner lives of your fellow human beings! but I suspect the payoff is actually worth it!

fuck gallup strengths lol. fuck it forever. it does have some limited utility as an initial tool for assessing people’s values & work styles, but after that it just becomes empty meaningless corporate buzzwords that become a lazy shorthand for the harder work of actually building a meaningful relationships with people so you can understand how they see the world. and get OUT of here with that noise about how you should never focus on your weaknesses. the best, most useful, most meaningful work I’ve ever done in my life has emerged out of a commitment to really looking at my weaknesses and working hard to develop those areas where I’m not as naturally or instinctively strong.

LASTLY: if i am in a position of power over someone, i can and should be friendly towards them, but i am not their friend! they do NOT see me as their friend. they are not going to speak to me with the same openness and honesty as a peer. they are not going to naturally feel comfortable bringing issues or concerns to me the way someone at my own level might, and that is true no matter how smiley and upbeat i am in conversation with them. i might feel like i’m just the same friendly approachable person i always was, but people see you differently when you are in a position of power over them and they are going to interact with you in more guarded ways. i am going to have to assume that people are not being fully honest with me - not that they’re lying to me or deceiving me in some way, just that they are in a more vulnerable position and have to use a different calculus in deciding how to frame things or when to bring concerns to me. (this is ESPECIALLY true if i am inviting people to share feedback or concerns that might be critical of the way i’m approaching a project.) i want to remember that if i really want people to be more open with me, i have to PUT IN THE WORK of demonstrating that i am a person who is worthy of that trust, ie someone who will listen attentively and ask thoughtful questions in an attempt to understand, then respond to the concerns raised without retaliating or punishing anyone or nursing weird little grudges against the person who brought them to me. earning trust happens slowly over time, as you give people the chance to observe you repeatedly and consistently behaving in fair, transparent, non-vindictive ways across a wide range of situations. ugh if i take only one thing away from this job let it be this!!!! being nice is not the same as being worthy of trust. and it can feel EXTREMELY gross and disempowering to be caught in a professional power dynamic where the more powerful person acts/talks in a way that seems soooo “nice” and smiley on the surface, then repeatedly reveals that they have zero qualms about fucking you over in big and small ways the second it’s politically convenient for them to do so.

#work #don't rb #long post

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knickynoo · 1 year

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While I was gathering the High School USA gifs, I couldn't help imagining scenarios where Marty, APK, and JJ are all interacting with each other. Idk if it would be a case of "identical strangers" or alternate timeline versions, but it would be fun. Especially with Marty and JJ! The many similarities and slight contrasts between them could make for some interesting stuff. In particular...

The fact that both of them don't exactly have happy home lives (at least not original timeline Marty). George and Lorraine, while physically present in Marty's life, aren't emotionally there and have their respective issues going on. Meanwhile, JJ's parents aren't physically or emotionally there. His character is alone in an empty house most of the time (I can't remember why--I think his parents travel a lot?), and they dont seem to really care much about him, so he's kind of raising himself without any real parental support system. [EDIT: I went back to check. JJ's father is always traveling, and JJ never knows when he's coming home. He hasn't seen his mother since he was 2 years old.]

They both have nerdy, science-loving best friends! Marty has Doc, obviously, and JJ has Otto, whose main storyline involves his quest to build this huge robot that mostly just ends up walking around and destroying things; it's great.

↑ Otto, in his very first scene meant to clearly convey, "Hey, this guy is a nerd." Look at all that sciencey stuff. He even has a framed picture of Albert Einstein!

Speaking of nerds, JJ is also one. Except, he's not the smart kind; he's the "outcast, class-clown" kind. JJ is just not considered cool by his peers, especially since his social circle mainly consists of other outcasts and "weirdos." Now, I don't think Marty is quite that ostracized by his own peers--he does dress cool, has a band, and skateboards--but I've never pictured Marty as being part of the in-crowd. His personality (sweet, sensitive, low self-esteem, etc) and the fact that his best friend is a widely disliked/rumored to be dangerous and crazy scientist probably puts Marty more on the fringes of most social groups rather than in any popular crowds. This is another thing they'd be able to relate to each other on.

Also! Perhaps my favorite thing would be just...sticking them in a room and watching them attempt to converse or attend to anything for longer than 5 seconds because. JJ is every bit as adhd as Marty is. Like. JJ is all over the place. He's late for school all the time like Marty is and basically lives in the principal's office because he's time-blind and scattered and always goofing off. One of my favorite scenes (and what spurred this whole concept) is where JJ has been sent to the office because he's in trouble again, and through the whole scene, JJ is just touching everything on the principal's desk as he talks. So as he keeps reaching for things, the principal keeps having to grab them back and move them to a place JJ can't get to until there's nothing left on the desk. And the whole scene is played like they do this every single time and the principal is so tired of it. [I think I'll gif this scene hmm]. Anyway! It got me thinking, "Wouldn't it be fun to stick these two in a situation together and watch them literally not be able to stay still or remain on a singular topic for more than 2 seconds."

Now, for a slight contrast: JJ loves Hawaiian shirts. Aside from the very last scene of the movie, where he wears a tuxedo, he's in Hawaiian shirts for the entire film. Not Marty's taste, clothing-wise, BUT! He does happen to have Doc, who is also a Hawaiian shirt aficionado. They can bond over that.

Additionally, a thing I find hilarious: the Crispin Glover Factor. I've neglected Alex P. Keaton in the scenario thus far, but this is a spot where I'd love to throw him into the mix since Crispin is in BTTF, Family Ties, and High School USA. And I just can't get over an imagined scene where, not only are JJ, Alex, and Marty weirded out by their own identical faces, but they realize they also all have this Other Person in their lives who shares the strange predicament. Like, maybe one of them has a picture or something and Marty's like, "Hey, that's my dad when he was younger" and Alex goes, "Um, no, that's my friend Doug," and JJ is all, "?? What? That's my buddy Archie." And it leaves them all so confused because, as far as they can tell, they don't have any other look-alikes that they share in their lives. It's just themselves and for some reason Crispin Glover. Weird.

So, yeah, thanks for coming to my rambling, everyone.

#i'm just. i'm just having fun.#throwin stuff out there #making up bonkers AUs to rotate around in my brain #would love to see Marty and JJ as a duo--teaming up to accomplish something #and tossing in APK who i imagine would NOT get along particularly well with them #he'd be like: ''You guys are. So dumb. I can't believe I have to share a face with you two. I'm suing."

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protect-daniel-james · 6 months

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ask game! 1, 7, 8!

1. What part of the writing process is the most enjoyable?

Omg the research! + the moment when it starts making sense, you know? when you think of a story that would explore certain things and then you start thinking of specific scenes that could convey and portray what you want them to.

So, I'll take the example of Just a Step from Heaven, I knew I wanted to write about Franko's longing for cousin Jamie in an even more...concrete/sexual way than it was in Behind Blue Eyes (can you believe there was a guy called Alan in Behind Blue Eyes? where did he disappear in the verse lol... It wasn't him at all. It was cousin Jamie all along....). And then, I start thinking of the "scenery", the moments when it could become obvious, the setup... And as I do my research, I find out that Jamie & Louise & Frank & Christine actually went for a holiday together after the World Cup in 2010 - so that gives me a time frame, and I can work with that - Louise is probably bored in the marriage, Christine just recently became "public" with Franko, Jamie is now a pundit after his career was cut short with injuries, and Franko has just had a bad World Cup... plus there's the rivalry with Stevie G, Terry's scandal, Franko's ghost goal, Franko's previous relationship with Elen and cheating... And immediately, the characters have like...motivations, moods, emotions ready to be explored. And that's is like the A-ha! moment that I like - when I feel like I found the perfect setup like this, where I can write a few scenes and flashbacks that will give a broader image of the past, and the possible future - what Franko has been through, what he hopes for, what he remembers and doesn't remember... This is I think why I also like to "jump directly" into the story, in the middle of a scene, a convo, a situation. So this story starts with "Christine did even better than he'd expected..." so we immediately get the idea that he has expectations, and Christine is passing with flying colors, and the holidays are just a big test for her if she can be "part of the family"...

I think I do this a lot? It's probably taken from some writing manual I read years ago haha, where it said to throw the reader directly into the scene without explaining much - do not introduce characters in the way of "Frank entered the room. He was the son of Lampard Sr., a former West Ham player. He was quite short, had blue eyes and long lashes, and some freckles on his face" etc., like, make sure all these informations are conveyed, but gradually, don't just describe them immediately. Same with Txoria txori, I think there part of the beauty is that at the beginning you're not really sure what Mikel and Xabi are waiting for, where did they come from, what are they doing...

So yeah, I enjoy when the story suddenly comes together (sometimes it takes longer lol). And the research for the info, because every little bit of info can be turned into a huge headcanon.... Lampardverse style.

7. What do you love most about being a fic writer for your fandom?

I think now I have like a small circle of active people that we all kinda...vibe with? And it's awesome. I'm in a football fandom but in a sort of niche corner, where I tend to "know my readers" (yeah, the occassional Gavi/Pedri fics might get more kudos and comments, but idk, I just want to write whatever I feel like writing and not base my happiness on the number of kudos and comments - it just makes me happy that there are people in this fandom who appreciate stuff like Kvara/Victor, Lampardverse, Unai/anything, vampire!Unai, Mikel/Unai, Eddie & JT,... Niche things I guess. But the happier I am then when someone reads and appreciates it.

And of course as I said, I write self-indulgent fics. If I could draw, I would draw it - but I can't. So I have to write and hope it paints the picture as I see it

8. Talk about any friends/connections you've made as a fic writer.

Omg yess! So many amazing people with great ideas, fics and art of their own... Back in 2018 I was in the Croatia NT fandom, but it fizzed out pretty quickly after the World Cup, and I was kinda pissed off because I lost contact with almost everyone from the old fandom (and deleted everything from my old tumblr haha. but I'm glad I did that, it was the right decision for me in that time because I grew unhealthily obsessed with tumblr and the...validation from there?) Since then, I wasn't really one for building any "network" or community or whatever, I just wanted to write my fics in peace... But the community kind of sucked me back in/grew ? and this time it's not one specific NT or anything - and maybe that's the beauty and strenght? And these days I don't really feel like I belong into any specific football community, I'm just here to shitpost and thirst and spout out thoughts about stadium fucking and vampires and breeding and sad round faces... And if anyone wants to listen to it and read it, I'm more than happy to discuss anything! I suppose you as my Lampardverse co-creator know nothing is off limits :3 So yeah, this is a huge thank you to those that keep engaging and commenting and sharing their ideas and discussing the story ideas/characteristics with me on here, discord, and in DMs... obviously you (every morning, I check my discord to see whether a new idea has been dropped for the verse), @milfcaptainpike for the Graham&Thomas and Unai&Klopp love and more, @new-berry for all the fics and thoughts and posts and weirdness (in a good way), @antigonyyy for all the Grizione headcanons, @arthurhurtland for the Unai love and all the beautiful art, @skyenthusiast I miss you and the Magaluf shipping but maybe that ship has sailed, @blaugrana-blues for the Shevaverse, [redacted], and discord... And I could go on. Every single person that has ever commented/asked/DMed has one way or another affected what/how/how often etc. I write. Trust me, every time I see a notification on discord or here from one of you guys, I'm just incredibly happy, even if we don't really know each other that well.

#this is looooong

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michelleelizabethtanner · 1 year

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For the writing ask!!

3. How would you describe your writing style?

23. Dialogue or description? Why is the other one so hard?

33. Give your writing a compliment.

😍 🥰😍 🥰

Ok so I see why Tumblr is so addicting. Haha! It lets you get all the thoughts of writing out while still procrastinating all your actual writing. 😂

@joeyjoeylee you’re so sweet with your asks and your generous encouragement! ❤️

3 and 23 go hand in hand. I would say my writing is very descriptive stream of consciousness, and I use overdescriptiveness to establish atmosphere. Amateur writing is so interesting! I’m not even an experienced amateur writer (I know it seem like an oxymoron but you know what I mean – we forget some amateur writers are amateurs because of their unique ability to either mimic or inherently know how to use professional writing conventions), so I struggle with some of that concise storytelling some people are able to achieve.

Ironically, even though I blab endlessly, I find writing descriptions of scenes very difficult. Sometimes I’ll go back to re-read and it’s just endless action sentences “and then she touched his hand; and then he looked at her…” and I just cringe. Idk why it’s so hard! I’ve been reading others’ works with much more attentiveness to how exactly they structure their descriptions to see if I can pick up technique. It’s just incredibly difficult to convey what I picture visually, in phrases that don’t sound like a step-by-step report of character robot actions.

Dialogue, on the other hand, is often much easier. Especially if I feel like I really really understand the characters I’m writing, (let’s get real though, who am I writing besides Beth and Rio? Lmao!), dialogue is such an easy way to establish everything without having to create atmosphere through description. Just a couple of well-placed words out of a character’s mouth can say so much. Particularly in fic, which benefits from already having all the world and character-building completed in canon, and the reader already having a frame of reference for who these characters are and how they normally use language.

So for 33, I will compliment my written dialogue. I feel like I mostly get that the way I want it to sound, and that the readers tend to experience my written conversations among characters the way I intend. (Man, this part is hard to do! Does self-complimenting ever not sound like arrogance?)

@joeyjoeylee I would actually like to hear your self-compliments! I know why I love your writing, but why do ✨YOU✨ love your writing? You’re so talented and I’m so curious!

#ask games #writing #fic #fanfiction #fic writing #ao3 fanfic #AO3

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blueiight · 1 year

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I appreciate that you answer book questions without being weird or condescending about it or act like you know everything re: what the show is going to do. Some parts of tvc fandom just act so patronizing towards show viewers as if they can't google or read wikipedia cause like why is there a PSA campaign going on rn warning viewers that Armand is evil (literally who doesn't know this already??). IDK what it is about L/A that makes them so weird but like are show viewers not allowed to just discover the story as it unfolds.

i cant speak for anybody but myself , least of all for blogs i dont know but im sorry u have had a hard time and i do appreciate that ive offered something to u? i always feel as though im rambling or not answering questions correctly bc ppl r always asking for clarification or tryna correct something i didnt say .. so i do appreciate hearing that something is being conveyed. theres been a habit of ppl pretending to be armand x louis fans trolling blogs on anon for a good min now. idk why now some ppl r extrapolating these anonymous trolls to be representative of the show fanbase? ive even had some of them come my way i just ignore them cuz i assume theyre trolls but if yall srs why u cockwatching 2d charas& hollering at me like im supposed to care😂 its funny tho i was thinking how both lestat and armand are introduced as antagonistic mysterious forces of terror louis [w lestat& armand] and lestat [w armand] find attractive & we get all of their perspectives/backstories and how they make sense over what theyve become.. theyre all batshit in their own ways💜 so crying tears of blood over 'whos more evil' w armand or lestat or btwn any vampire rly is stupid. while the show has reinvigorated my interest in tvc bc i wanna know what the showrunners will adapt i am not committed into my lines of speculation on what theyll do im more than willing to be proven wrong.. but i think ppl should understand some people do not have an interest in tvc or the immortal universe bc of the show, and that most of these ppl who are show-only r not represented by these handful of trolls. most ppl who watched the show know these characters have a capacity for evil, and have enough common sense that even w/o knowledge of the books they do suspect armand's manipulative ways.. i dont know how much / twe of this urge to humble armand x louis likers w #hardfacts [LOL] comes from the fact that both men in the show adaptation r men of color as much as it is them taking these trollish anons as actual representatives of common opinion lol s1 twist at the end is framed much like armand shedding the skin of rashid, like the horror is escalating anyways.. like one of my twitter mutuals said amc louis is the vampire wendi deng. i havent seen much of the bs on my tl directly, i like to think my tl is way smarter than me so they know how to conduct themselves somewhat

#yn.#yn answers #stop the fighting! encourage the 2d fucking!!#armand #iwtv #louis de pointe du lac #lestat de lioncourt

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essayofthoughts · 2 years

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36, 28, 23?

23. Dialogue or description? Why is the other one so hard?

If I know the voices of characters then dialogue is pretty easy, usually, and I like to get some idea of new characters, especially OCs usually by writing a scene with some dialogue so I know how they sound.

That said, description is generally easier for me, especially if I'm writing something Thinky, and I have found it frustrating, sometimes, when my description feels flat and I know I need some dialogue to balance it because sentence length variation isn't doing the trick but I can't. Fucking. Think. What. To Write.

So yeah, description is easiest, but I find dialogue best for pinning down a character. Idk why it's harder, but they serve different purposes to me anyway.

28. Any writing advice that works for you and you feel like sharing?

Okay so uh. Some people have commented on my description before, and its been described as having lyricism in at least one comment and... the tl;dr of this all is read poetry and figure out how it works.

Like, no jokes, that's why sometimes I'll write a description weird or use an unusual sentence formation or use a contrasting phrase - like "piece apart" instead of "piece together". The way poetry works is by ignoring conventional grammar to create emotive connections that allow you to grasp at what it's trying to convey without using 10,000 words to get there and yes, I can get wordy, but the thing is if I described everything in the excruciating detail I could it'd be so much worse - but if I use poetic tricks then I can cut that down by 90% if I go hard at it. That's kind of why I used the vignette style for so long because it let me basically make each scene a verse where I'm making sure the core impact and essence is conveyed. I do this with choppy action scenes too - you don't provide every detail but you provide important details that give the feeling and emotion that you want. You focus on small details that hit you. You use sibilance and alliteration and rules of three and sometimes you kludge together words with hyphens in a style like Norse epithets because that can be so much more evocative than trying to just describe it with regular words.

Over used this can absolutely go beyond purple prose and into urple but genuinely: be poetic. Look at poems and figure out what works. Tyger Tyger burning bright in the forest of the night what immortal hand or eye could frame thy fearful symmetry. Why is the symmetry fearful! Is it something you fear or is the symmetry itself afraid? The line construction suggests that one needs to be immortal to dare to frame this fiercely burning, perfectly matched creature, you see? What the hammer what the chain, in what furnace was thy brain what the anvil what dread grasp dare its deadly terrors grasp? The essence of this poem is telling you a tiger is terrfying. It's scary. It is burning bright it is forged in fire, it's brain was trapped in a furnance, it was hammered out on an anvil - this is a creature you dread. And when the stars threw down their spears and water'd heaven with their tears: did he smile his work to see, did he who made the lamb make thee? - The stars themselves are too scared to fight, their silver is the tears that cry from the skies beyond heaven itself, did God himself smile at this horrible creation - this thing which eats lambs, when he created those two! What is this dichotomy!

God I love The Tyger. Or... Dulce et Decorum Est, lets say - the latter two thirds only because I could go on forever about the poem as a whole:

Gas! Gas! Quick boys! An esctasy of fumbling/Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time/But someone still was yelling out and stumbling/and flound'ring like a man in fire or lime/dim through the misty panes of thick green light/ as under a green sea, I saw him drowning

in all my dreams before my helpless sight/he plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.

It goes from the slow of the first verse into this haste, into this panic, you speed up reading it because of that sudden rush and then it just stops and slows - as under a green sea I saw him drowning. You have to give that line it's measure, you have to let it go from all that rushed and broken haste and staccato description into this awful, painful exact witness: as under a green sea, I saw. him. drowning.

That comma after sea arguably doesn't need to be there but it is because you need to pause. There is beauty first, still in that energy of the fearful haste and then there is that simple, simple reminder I saw him drowning. You cannot take it as anything else. And then Wilfred Owen makes you stay slow, makes you stay with him and remember before my helpless sight, he plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.

Triple. Because we remember threes. And then:

If in some smothering dreams you too could pace/behind the wagon that we flung him in/and watch the white eyes writhing in his face/his hanging face like a devil's sick of sin/ if you could hear at every jolt the blood/come gargling from the froth corrupted lungs/obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud/of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues/ my friend you would not tell with such high zest./to children ardent for some desperate glory/the old lie dulce et decorum est/pro patria mori

This is a poem where, by the end, you should be spitting it. In the words of this poem you are witnessing a young man, just a moment slower than his fellows, die, choked out on his own poisoned, rotted lungs and the gas which did it, but it's not the gas Owen is angry at, not the man or even the other side - he's angry at those who told the lie that led this young man out there into this field where one second's slowness was his death, his angry at the lie and those who tell it, right where the blame should be placed and he is spitting fucking angry.

Or... The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam - only one or two of the translated stanzas because it's fucking long:

The moving finger wites and having write moves on nor all your piety nor wit shall lure it back to cancel half a line nor all your tears wash out a word of it

and that inverted bowl they call the sky whereunder crawling coop'd we live and die, lift not your hands to it for help- for it as impotently moves as you or i.

God I. I fucking love this translation of it because there's such imagery in the poetry, nor all your piety nor wit shall lure it back to cancel half a line - what's done is done and cannot be undone, nor all your tears wash out a word of it.

And then just that inverted bowl they call the sky whereunder crawling coop'd we live and die - GOD. "that inverted bowl" is so evocative and "whereunder" is a term you never here except in old texts or poetry and then the idea we crawl, we are cooped up, we are trapped here but that which traps us has no more power over our fates than we do just, fuck.

...

Look, I really like poetry okay. And I repeat the tl;dr: Look at poems, look at what makes them fuck you up right in the feels, and then use that yourself. You'll have some fucky sentence formulation and some weird punctuation but I promise it's so worth it for the leaps and bounds it'll give your descriptions. You can do this with other things - and should, really! - but poetry is the epitome to me. Poetry does all of what song lyrics can do without music to aid it, it has to set it's own rhythm - and as shown with Dulce et decorum est, it can slow and speed that as it pleases. And on that note:

36. How do you come up with fic titles? What’s the one you’re most proud of?

Applicable poetry. I've used the Rubaiyat and Dulce et Decorum Est to name fics before - and I've used song lyrics too - but I really like using poems when I can. I also like sometimes using excerpts from the fic itself, which is pretty common as a choice for oneshots and sometimes I just use the WIP title if I don't mind it too much. But if's most favourite of all of my fic titles uh...

So there's a secret with the titles for the rest of the Ghost Cass fics. I've got names for all eight parts, but they'll only be revealed as we come to each part but uh.

Yeah, suffice to say I'm really fucking proud of the titles I've got pinned out for that series. Not just Whisper - I do mean all of them, and how they fit together.

#fic things #ask games #anonymous #ask #living up to my username

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