Just did my nails and in the hour it took I thought of this so do with it as u please

I don’t know if you’ve ever done anything like this

But like any type of yandere monster recreating your house/ room perfectly and then bringing you there and their super happy bout it and like ‘look what I made! Don’t you just love it? 😊😊”

like a demon? Omgmgmg or some hot vers of boogie man

idk tbh I have a lot of ideas I’m just trying to give u som of my mind

like summoning a demon bc why not? A bitch was bored 🌝 and it’s all scary and shit and you’re just totally chill, “hey man, didn’t mean to summon you- you wanna just like? I don’t know…go back to hell?” And the demon is obv offended

so it follows u around menacingly and yeah

ur his now ❤️

anyways do with this as u please 💕💕 I love ur writing sm btw, I hope the food u eat always taste good and yr pillows are cold on both sides!

Pairing: Yandere Monster x reader Tw: manipulation, mentions of bringing harm to others , yanderes, notes: big brain, the best ideas always come when you're doing your nails tbh and THANK YOU, I HOPE THE YEAR GOES AMAZING FOR YOU. reblogs and comments are appreciated!

CONSIDER, the monster had already been admiring you for a while now, taking note of the style you wear, the food you eat, and trying to find what kind of house you'd like so all these things could add up as a plus point when you finally summon him.

Yandere monster who wastes no time in trying to get you to come home with him but the moment you ask him to go back sheepishly, he gives you such an offended looking, asking you what he lacks for you to try to send him away.

Eventually, he gets you to let him stay, allowing to choose whether you want to stay here or go back with him, either way, he'd making sure you lack nothing and are well looked after. He takes pride in knowing your tastes and admires the way your face lights up when you see what he's done for you.

If you choose to stay here, he changes his appearance to fit the standards of the humans whenever outside but in the house, he has no problem flaunting the markings on his skin and horns. To fit in, he uses his influence and power to build up a company from the ground, one where signing a contract with him means selling your soul for success.

He isn't concerned with competition, all he cares about his making sure you're well taken care of but do not mistake this for him being laid back, he's always at your side at parties or anyplace you go to keep other pests away from you, any idiot who dares to approach you will become bankrupt and deal with many things they've been trying to hide or they will be caught in an unfortunate accident.

If you choose to go back to his realm, the way your spoiled only amps up, being from one of the most influential families back home, you've basically become royalty. Of course, his people are not so accepting at first but seeing as he ranks way over them, they keep quiet, his family on the other hand will adore you, admiring the chaos you bring along with being their son's partner.

Always at his side in every event, not as an object to be admired but as his partner and equal and anyone who tries to approach him about how you make an excellent pet will be made an example of what not to do.

Loves picking out clothes for you that are from his realm, tailoring them to fit you perfectly and making sure that above anything else, you love the way it looks.

Any freedom you had back in the world is basically gone in his world, the people here are horrible, you never know when they'll decide to change their mind and try to show off.

octo notes:hmm, thinking of naming him deimos :p

Akira Toriyama's passing is hitting me REALLY hard. His work was one of the few ways I connected with others as a lonely kid in Catholic school. Some of my best moments were related to dragon ball as a kid. Some of my brightest memories are watching his show with others. Sometimes dragon ball z was the only thing I had to look forward to all week when I felt alone in grade/middle school.

I'm not saying that he was a perfect man, or that his character designs were without problems, but he was SO hugely influential on my writing and storytelling styles. I can't truly express how important Dragon Ball/Z/Super was and IS to me to this day.

We lost him before we should have, and his loss is felt around the world. His work transcended cultures and was SO important to so many people, and I'm actively grieving today.

Go Nagai was insane for this one

12 Days of Aniblogging 2023, Day 8

I like to always have manga of dubious quality on tap for when I’m having trouble sleeping. Ideally, reading a few chapters will distract me, but I won’t want to stay up late shotgunning volumes. Devilman Lady was the ideal manga for this, and this is maybe the last time anyone will ever describe Devilman Lady as "ideal".

An extremely brief introduction is in order. If Osamu Tezuka is the godfather of manga, then Go Nagai is manga’s weird horny uncle. He’s arguably just as influential, the two of them just moved in different circles, each reifying entire genres. Nagai is more or less responsible for magical girls, super robot, and ecchi, and also spent a lot of time in the sphere of supernatural and post-apocalyptic manga. These are fundamentally genres of extremity and ridiculousness, and Nagai dials every one of his works up to 11 by the end, one way or another. Devilman is probably his most famous work over here, and it’s a stone-cold classic for a reason. Nagai has kept revisiting it over the years, with side stories, alternate universes, manga cameos, and even entirely new series that function as stealth sequels such as Violence Jack. But his most notable attempt is Devilman Lady, which is far more than a simple gender-swap of the original.

Devilman Lady is about swimming deep in filth. It’s easily the most disgust-provoking manga I’ve read, with pretty much every content warning under the sun applicable. This is a truly rotten and conspiratorial world that Nagai is depicting. Societal decay manifests in countless forms, including rape, child abuse, homophobia, militarism, and hatred towards immigrants. Anything that could be potentially understood as fanservice is placed right next to or directly within the atrocities at hand, and it's genuinely unclear how much Nagai intended that as commentary. His intentions throughout this whole manga are a bit of an enigma, but what's clear that he is firing on all cylinders.

This is an extremely zeitgeisty 90’s work, with intelligent design debates, the mapping of the human genome, new age paranoia, religious zealotry, and anxiety over pollution all playing out on the pages. Where it breaks from many of its contemporaries is a decisive rejection of the end of history. This is the kind of thing you write when you’re still reeling from the subway sarin gas attacks and your country's role in the Gulf War and subsequent militarization. It’s the perfect manga for capturing a time period when ten to twenty percent of Japan’s population were estimated to have belonged to a new religious movement.

The punchline to all of this is that he doesn’t know how to draw women.

By the back half of Devilman Lady, Nagai’s depictions of hellscapes and grotesque monsters reach near-Berserk levels of detail and technical competency. And yet his female protagonists are still drawn in a drastically simpler 70's style, only now with giant spheres grafted to their chests. Either humans and the infernal are two completely different skillsets, or this was a deliberate artistic decision, and both are difficult to swallow. Either way, we just have to accept the juxtapositions.

one of my favorite pages to show people devoid of context

The finale is just nuts. Go Nagai makes textual the homoeroticism and gender deviance of the original Devilman manga, as the world burns in both nuclear warfare and demonic hellfire. The story starts accelerating at an unfathomable pace, the most inscrutable double mobius reacharound yaoiyuri occurs, and the universe resets once or twice. It makes the endings of Jojo Part 6 and 7 look tame by comparison. There is no way to parse this like a normal manga with a plot and narrative. It is raw id.

This has been a year where I’ve tried to deliberately broaden my comfort zone by engaging with more potentially upsetting works if I think they'll have something interesting to say. This was like jumping into the deep end. Devilman Lady may very well be Go Nagai’s magnum opus. It’s not nearly as tight as the original manga, but it’s a glorious mess, just as radical to its own time as Devilman must have been in the 70s. It made for spectacular insomnia reading. And there’s no way in hell I can ever recommend it.

At age 19, Nagai went through a bout of diarrhea so bad that he convinced himself it was colon cancer, and that he was at death's door. He vowed to leave something behind for the world to remember him by, and began laboring away on manga. And for the last 60 years of his career, he’s written and drawn with the fervor of a man who’s about to shit himself to death. Maybe that’s the real secret.

Oh are we doing Director Cuts again? I'd love you to tlk more about Something In Seattle please!! Anything you want, but I'd like to know what inspired you for the forest scene?

Tbh it can always be director's cut time, i fucking love talking lol, so thank you for asking!!!!!!!!!!!! On to some more info dumping about Someone in Seattle's forest scene :)

Inspiration for Lando's Styling:

This is a bit layered. It started, I think, back in January with my regular rewatch of 2005's Pride and Prejudice. Of course, that naturally lead to the question: how would I make that into a landoscar fic?

After talking about it on tumblr, @redcowboy1 made the horrifically influential comment: "AND u can imagine lando in the iconic 2005 white outfit with pearls... in his curly hair!". It ruined me. It's still ruining me. It will always ruin me. I don't even know if I've told him how much that comment ruined me.

I thought of direct Pride and Prejudice fics, I thought of Pride and Prejudice inspired fics, but nothing really stuck? So when I realized this was the moment where I could do it all (ethereal white outfit, pearls in the hair,,, fae-like blush,,,,) I went IN.

Shockingly, that isn't the only super loose 2005 P&P reference in that scene. There's also this:

Giving in to childish instinct, Lando jumps up onto the stump; Oscar’s arm follows him like a guide, a gentleman helping his lady into her carriage.  Lando’s fingers flex against his.  Realizing his mistake, having breached professionalism, he drops it.

Hand Scene, anyone? No?

The Setting:

This was actually really heavily inspired by my own childhood. I grew up with my home backing onto a massive forest that you could explore via a broken fence post :) Just like in this fic :)

Almost all the key elements are lifted from my own experience in the forest, like the creek with the massive tree fallen across it. That was real!!!!!! it's actually the center of a lot of my happiest childhood memories.

In the winter, my sister and I used to go exploring in the woods -- the feeling of a river so cold that it makes the air around it painful is so visceral to me. We used to walk across the tree that Lando posed on to the get to the other side, though I fell off more than once lol.

Something that I tried to capture is the extraordinary alien-ness that comes with the Pacific Northwest's forests. They're incredibly dense, with a mix of obscuring low-crawling plants like ferns and massive evergreens like nothing you've ever seen before. It truly makes it feel like the air is green, like you can't see the sky -- and even if you could, maybe it wouldn't be the same sky you saw elsewhere.

I guess, in a way, maybe I kind of wrote it from the perspective of a small child. I kind of gave the impression that Lando and Oscar are dwarfed by the nature around them -- like I scaled the entire thing up, because that's how I remember it.

Anyways, enough rambling. I found a few pictures that inspired me while I was writing: the tree stump pose, general foliage 1, general foliage 2

Other Fun Facts:

Atypically of me, I wrote this fic out of chronological order. I started it when I was sick (yes, at the same time that i started the wildly different Choking on Greatness), and my fevered brain just produced a bunch of random little scenes. One of those scenes was a solid chunk of their time in the forest.

Honestly, that's probably why this scene feels like the "main event" -- in terms of how I wrote this fic, I really wrote most of it around this moment.

Another fun fact is that I tried to imply that Lando was waiting for a doorknob confession when they got to their cars; he wanted Oscar to come kiss him.

Lando’s hand is on his car’s door handle, but he’s looking at Oscar like there’s something left to say – to do. His lips part slightly, not enough to talk but maybe enough to tempt, if things were different, if he wasn’t here because he’s doing Oscar a favor. Lando’s eyes flutter closed, only opening when Oscar speaks.

don't think I actually nailed it, but hey. Can't win 'em all.

Expect a full essay on The Cure’s album Pornography soon! I’m putting the final touches on it and adding a few more paragraphs about some of the songs on the album. I'm super proud of this essay so!!! I want to write a few more essays about more albums in the future but before I get ahead of myself here's my intro paragraph for my (so far, THIRTEEN page) essay! <3

1979 saw the birth of “goth” music with Bauhaus’s harbinger of goth, commercial hit single, “Bela Lugosi’s Dead”. Before 1979, music was still very much in its punk era with artists like Billy Idol/Generation X, The Sex Pistols, and The Clash dominating the music scene. It wasn’t until the late 70s to the early 80s that music transitioned into its post-punk era, acquainting listeners with new wave artists such as The Smiths, alternative rock bands like Duran Duran, and an entirely new brand of artists producing music under the “goth” label with archetypal goth bands like Christian Death (despite their disputed death rock status). Pornography was produced in the midst of this emergence of early goth music, only three years after goth music was officially “created” and just short before the time of the wildly influential goth rock icons, The Sisters of Mercy, Pornography was able to establish itself early on as a goth rock staple thanks to the sound stereotypes and lyrical trends it pushed in the impressionable growing subgenre. Serving as an archetype in many ways that would influence the goth bands that would not only come out of the UK but America too, the album unceremoniously thrust listeners who were accustomed to a much more tame version of The Cure, into a musical hellhole of harrowing, anxiety-inducing guitars, pounding drums, deep bass lines, and brutal nihilistic lyrics. A writing style nobody would even think to associate with frontman Robert Smith.

Drawing Wally AUs (and their Kais)!!!

🥐: hiiiii :D

🥐: I’m gonna start up a little series where I draw some Wally AUs and their corresponding Kais! 🥐: also I’m gonna write out some of the lore I made to go along with the AUs!!

🥐: some AUs will have more lore than others (it really depends how deep I fell into the rabbit hole)

🥐: I thought it would be fun and get me drawing more so yeah :D

🥐: enough intro let’s get into it!!!

AU #1 - Actor Au by @frillsand!

🥐: the Actor AU is one of my favorite AUs actually!! I got super duper hyperfixated on it and made a bunch of lore for it (🌶️ can confirm), and now I have a bunch of mini comics for it (I will post them if anyone wants them!)

🥐: now onto the Kai of this AU!!! :D

🥐: it doesn’t really translate well, since my art style is already super cartoony, but Kai’s supposed to be a living cartoon in this AU!

🥐: so just think that, compared to the others, Kai looks a lot toonier.

🥐: I dunno if anything other than puppets are living in the actor au cannon, but I thought it would be really fun if I made Kai a living cartoon because

a.) girl is halfway there already in cannon

and

b.) her father-

🥐: instead of the multi famous singer she is in cannon, Kai’s talents haven’t really left Unington. Since Kai’s family studio is pretty influential and their equipment isn’t really built for singing, they cut a deal with Playfellow Studios so Kai could use their recording equipment, and bada bing bada boom, Kai’s there!

🥐: Kai’s mild anxiety has been turned up ten notches, since she’s in unfamiliar territory with no friends/support system to fall back on. So, Kai’s mentality is, “don’t rock the boat, suck everything up, and maybe they’ll like you more!”

🥐: Kai is also super sheltered to the mistreatment people like her would face in the ‘real world’, as Unington really doesn’t care if you were human, puppet, or anything in between. As long as you aren’t a huge jerk, Unington will welcome you with open arms. Combine this with Kai’s mentality, Kai isn’t really good at standing up for herself, and often allows herself to get treated like dirt. Her first day, she allowed herself to get treated like an intern, and ran around doing errands for everyone. In her words, she’s “just happy to help!”

🥐: little does she know she’s gonna gain a verrry powerful friend (you already know it’s wally-)

🥐: and that’s where I’ll end it for now! This post is already pretty long, so I think that’ll be all! Thanks for reading! If you want more lore, I’d be happy to drop it! Bye bye now :D

🥐: ps if anyone has an idea for the series name please give it to me I suck with names

🥐: also feel free to request AUs!!

🥐: okay bye fr now :]

What inspires your art? Like, how did you come up with your art style, how happy you are with it and if there are any other artists that inspire you?

Asking a few people as a way to understand and grow as an artist at a crossroads. Have a good day.

That's a big question! lol

Inspiration:

I think it's fair to say that I'm inspired by a wide variety of things, and that's what tends to combine to influence art—most of my art comes from a place of wanting to communicate what I'm thinking, just like my writing does. Some things are easier to communicate visually, and some linguistically. I took a variety of classes in college as part of my degree, including some unrelated to it, such as cinematography, lots of art history, etc. and I think having an understanding of those things can help to cultivate an understanding of what goes into... everything, really. Composition, color, form factor, material, history. I find it all interesting and I like to think about those things when I write and draw because I like to have concrete ideas of place and object.

Influences range from manga to books to superhero comics (I mean, obviously), cartoons, music, movies, and whatever else, but also of course other little things from day to day life whether that's personal experiences, specific imagery (of a sunset or something else), foods, outfits I see on the bus, and so on. It's very much a matter of absorbing the world around oneself and translating that into images (or words).

There are definitely a lot of artists that inspire me! Not necessarily style influence but some of my current favorite artists include (but are not limited to) Petra Nordlund, zombieisok, Nick Robles, Esad Ribić, Tradd Moore, Cathy Kwan, Tess Stone, and a whole bunch of other people (too many to list them all!)

Like, Ryōko Kui has great art! Dungeon Meshi is super pretty. It's great to read comics and see great art—I love the way Non-Stop Spider-Man (Chris Bachalo) looks, I really like David Lafuente's work in Radiant Red, Scott Hepburn does some really cool work, I really enjoy the way Eduardo Ferigato draws the characters in Radiant Black (esp Marshall), etc. etc. etc. there are a ton of artists whose work I love!

And! I think this is important—my friends! Spending time talking to my friends has always been a source of inspiration for things to write or draw, since I was in middle school at least. It's fun to bounce ideas off of each other and I enjoy it a lot even when I don't draw or write something related to whatever convo (which, lbr, is most of the time lol)

Art style:

Off the top of my head, there are some specific things I studied on purpose in middle or high school while drawing—Natsuki Takaya's Fruits Basket and CLAMP's works in general but especially Tsubasa: RESERVoir CHRoNiCLE and xxxHolic were very influential on my developing art style. What I did then was not try to make my art look Like CLAMP or Like Takaya at all times, but rather mostly looking at things like how they would draw ears or whatever else, though I also did copies/studies of specific panels (freehand, not traced) where the goal was to make it look like the source to understand shapes etc.

I think that CLAMP's shōnen manga style influence is probably still wildly obvious in my art—I draw people very long-limbed and I know it! (lmao)

I was also definitely influenced/inspired by Nanae Chrono's Vassalord, plus some anime like Tiger & Bunny, which I adored in high school.

Tess Stone's work overall but esp Hanna is Not a Boy's Name has also always inspired me a lot, though I'm not sure to what extent his art has influenced mine—but I think it would be a lie to say it hasn't lol. His work with shape language, color, typography, etc. is next level 👌

As far as more recent influences, it's harder to say. I look at a lot of art, read a lot of comics, and so on, so I pick up small things through osmosis from all of the things around me, inevitably, as well as looking at reference photos. So art style is of course the specific way I process the world and art and so on—the corners of mouths, the shapes of shoes—and re-combine it on paper, and it varies from the very simple 10 minute chibi doodles to the more rare and intensive full illustrations that take 10 hours/multiple days.

As far as my own art quality/satisfaction, I'd say at this point I tend to be mostly neutral on it as a whole, with of course specific pieces I like a lot or some that didn't turn out quite right. I know I have strengths and weaknesses and I only took one or two drawing classes growing up, a couple of painting classes (a few how to draw books)... nothing more than rudimentary basics for the most part.

I have a very hard time grokking some things, esp as it pertains to spatial awareness and dimensionality (my irl coordination and proprioception isn't great, which I'm sure is related). Complicated perspective is hard, sure, but just making objects feel like objects is also difficult so I often have to spend a long time working that kind of thing out when I include stuff like turnarounds or alternate angles. My art has a strong element of harsh-edged two-dimensionality, imo, whether shaded or not, and I know that—that's not necessarily a bad thing, but there are times when it's not what I need lol

But I like the way I draw people, anyway, even if stiffness is a problem, and I enjoy drawing shoes and clothes and faces and so on, and I know my anatomy has improved a lot in the past 5 years or so which is always fun to see. Looking back on something and being like, "man that's rough," is like—a concrete sign of improvement, that's for sure. looking with new eyes.

So I am almost entirely self taught, and I tend to draw—as mentioned earlier—to communicate something specific, so while I drew more constantly as a child, as an adult I don't spend a lot of time just doodling (esp now that I'm not in school anymore lol) or anything like that... I look at references a lot more though lol

I should probably do some studies like figure drawing or take some more advanced classes, and I would like to do so at some point in the future, but for now I'm fine just doing whatever. I have a lot of hobbies (and ADHD) so sometimes it's like... help 😂

anyway!

that was long lol but hopefully helpful.

6, 10, 11, 37 and 40 for the book asks? :) Sorry for asking 5 at once, I love to read your book posting ♡

Oh don't be sorry, thank you for indulging me so much!

6. Which book was the last one you really, really loved?

Another book that I quite enjoyed reading this past year was:

Paradise Rot by Jenny Hval

Some people refer to this as "the lesbian piss book" hahaha - and I am not gonna lie, there is definitely a moderate amount of piss (and also maybe some lesbianism) to be found within! I don't even really know how to sell or explain this book except that the oppressive atmosphere and the eerie vibes and the lush and poetic writing style really drew me in a hypnotic sort of way. The way the protagonist describes her lonely awkward alienation trying to adjust to living in a new country and the sticky, visceral descriptions of the strange building she ends up living in and her relationship with her roomie just really got under my skin and fascinated me and kept me on the edge of my seat.

10. Sci-fi or fantasy? Why?

I haven't actually read a ton of either genre yet, but right now I'd probably say fantasy! I feel like sci-fi is often just a bit too thought experiment-ish and cerebral and lacking in complex interesting characters for me to really get invested in it sometimes. Definitely still open to having my mind changed about that in the future, though.

11. Classic or modern? Why?

Classics! I'm big into reading famous/influential books that I've heard a lot about and doing things like going through lists of books you have to read before you die, that sort of thing. I also find a lot of brand new books just not really up my alley most times. I kinda like to wait for the hype around something to die down and see if it stands the test of time a bit, or still remains something people are thinking and talking about regularly, before I decide to really dig into it myself.

37. How many books are actually in your bookshelf/shelves right now?

I have my books spread across two places right now so I can't give you an exact number, but I'd estimate I own somewhere between 150-250 physical books. Buying books before you read them can always be a bit of a gamble, and they're not exactly cheap brand new, so I find most of my physical books at thrift stores and second-hand bookstores, usually!

40. Name one of your favourite books from your teenage years.

THE favourite book of my teenage years by far was Interview with the Vampire by Anne Rice:

I was just obsessed with this book when I was 15-16 years old, hahaha. I related so much to Louis at the time (his guilt and angst and tortured loneliness over being a vampire = my guilt and angst and tortured loneliness over being secretly gay, ofc). I eventually grew out of it a bit and started seeing it as a little sillier when I revisited it again older, but I still have a soft spot for that series and think the first few of the books in the Vampire Chronicles are certainly worth a read. I know there's stuff in them you can easily laugh or turn your nose up at or point out as being problematic and whatnot as well, but I do think they're also super creative and interesting and entertaining and quite deep reads. And still the best/only vampire lore and world-building to me as well. I just never like the rules that any other fictional vampires follow nearly as much as I do the ones that Anne Rice invented for her world!

[bookish asks]

13 and 18 for the fic writer asks!

hellouuwww tysm beau 🫶🫶 here ya go

13. What’s the most challenging part of writing fanfiction for you?

i’m definitely a Challenge Myself and Always Be Super Ambitious About A Low Stakes Project kinda person 🤪 so the challenge is my own brain i love stepping out of my comfort zone to write things that i’m not always immediately familiar with to execute a very specific vision. so that could be for instance getting an idea like “au that’s historical to the world of atla” and having to do some research to build a world that i’ve not looked into very much before. or “incredibly athletic characters have to do an obstacle course”. or “SOMEONE decides that reciting actually good poetry is a necessary plot point in this story” 💀💀💀💀

18. Are there any fics or authors that have been particularly influential or inspiring to you?

i’m a huge fan of chuffystilton, firebender’s guide is genuinely one of the best things i’ve ever read in my life and to me opened a world of being able to explore questions about imperialism and decolonisation. i think she is also just a marvellous, super engaging writer!

in terms of early influences (largely from merlin fandom!), the now-deleted VioletteRoyale (God rest her soul) rules my smut-writing SOUL. nip it in the bud would not exist without her “mr moob booster”. derryere is another old fave, absolutely breathtaking writer and so irreverent with the summaries 🫶

i would say in terms of writing style/voice i’m much more influenced by published fiction?? i ADORE mary renault & patrick white’s eye for imagery and detail, im ALWAYS trying to sound like them (and falling short!!) and the imitatio patricii albi is probably really obvious in iconoclast 🤪 tamsyn muir has also been a massive recent influence, she’s got an incredible voice & cadence of humour and that really inspired nip it in the bud

questions for fic writers

20, 24, 29, and, just for fun (though I anticipate the answer) 6 for Minovae and Regill! :3

For Mino and Regill! Thanks for the ask~

20. What are they like when sharing a bed?

It's when they sleep best. Initially Regill is sure he won't get any restful sleep at all when they share a bed that first time after, well, their first time, but he essentially blinks and is already waking up in the morning, more well rested than he's been in a long time. The same goes for Mino, who suffers from nightmares often but finds they're more of a rarity when she's not sleeping in a cold empty bed.

They don't have any set positions or 'roles' but once they fall asleep they're pretty set - save for Mino's tail. Once she's asleep it'll coil and wrap around him slowly throughout the night and he generally wakes up in a tangle. At first it was difficult to get out, he used to have to wake her and ask to be let up, but after a while he can lightly tap on it and it'll release him without her even waking.

24. What do your characters think about marriage? Are they for or against it?

It's not on their minds at all until multiple noble suitors at the victory gala in Nerosyan attempt to propose to Mino - typical aristocrat power play where they don't marry for love but for power and assume she is like them. It goes about as well as anyone who does know her would expect, and I actually had jokingly started writing it out before losing steam... also this is super old and not my current style!

One spontaneous proposal, as absurd as the very idea was, from a power hungry and arrogant lordling, would’ve merely been an embarrassing incident. For them.

The fact that there had been several had been an unwelcome and uncomfortable reminder of just how these people actually lived their lives. She’d completely overlooked the fact that she was prime real estate to them: physically powerful, politically influential, and unmarried. It really was no wonder how insufferable most of them are when so few marry out of actual love.

At least watching their wet eyes bug out of their overpainted skulls upon being rejected, and with the implication that she was already taken—half-truth or no—had been funny enough to almost make up for the sheer mortification of it all. Even funnier was fanning the flames of gossip by not telling them with who exactly, though that was more to spare his patience than out of any sort of shame or shyness.

Certainly not the dour looking gnome with his back pressed to the wall at a royal gala, scowling with a severity bordering on malice, and the only person all night to reject her request to dance. How could it have been him? What kind of man would spurn his love so? The one she very much loved, but they never would have believed her even if she had named him. Visibly half dead and with a permanent glower like that? Sharply handsome and more passionate than one would assume, more like. 

In fact, the only thing that had changed that scowl of his the whole night was that first party-halting proposal, from a brash, young half-elven man who must’ve thought himself the future king with his misplaced confidence. Regill’s usual cold stoicism had given way to a flash of blatant bewilderment, nearly matching hers. 

And then that expression had changed… to something she hadn’t been able to place before it vanished into an ever sharper, darker scowl upon Lann clapping him on the shoulder at jest.

...

They hadn’t yet discussed such things. Surely it was premature to do so? (No it wasn’t) They couldn’t possibly consider it yet, could they? (Yes they could). She herself certainly wasn’t ready for it anyway (a lie), and wouldn’t even know how to answer (with an emphatic ‘yes!’). Hells, just the thought of the two of them getting ma—

After that night they both have marriage on their radar, but she is far too flustered to bring it up and also has no idea what he would actually think of it - even though marriage is like the tradition of society and he's super traditional, lol. They do of course get married, with a small ceremony between their friends and comrades... preceding a rather big stink from everyone else that hears about it later and wasn't invited.

29. How are they affectionate in private?

In private?? They're always touching in some way. Soft proximity and touch - her tail is always seeking him out of course and he finds his usual spot when relaxing in their chambers in the evening is on the plush rug before the hearth, propped up either against her or her tail depending on what they're respectively doing. She also kisses him quite a bit wherever she sees an opportunity or the desire strikes her, hehe.

And, the obvious, lots of sex pfft.

6. Do they have any pet names/nicknames for each other?

Nothing specific! They'll occasionally drop an "old couple" pet name such as "my dear" or "love" and that is all! Mino will sometimes refer to him affectionately with things just like "grumpy" or "the owl" but mostly when she's talking with friends.

Nanwum VII Update: 72,197

I'm starting to run out of gas, which is probably not a big deal since I already cleared 50k, but this bears out my whole strategy of building an early lead. My intention was to pull down 2k per day from the 13th to the end of the month, and I'm still on track, but on the 14th I fell a little behind and only got to 1709. It's not a problem, since I got caught up, but I need to be careful from here if I want to make it to 100k. Not that I need 100k, but I like bragging rights.

To reward myself for the insane wordcounts I put in earlier this month, I decided to watch all of the recent DBZ review videos that TotallyNotMark put up. You know, the ones with the new Team Four Star DBZA clips in them. I'd already watched the "Buu Bits" in a separate compilation video, but now I'm finally checking out the review and...

I don't know, there's a lot of good material in these things. The editing is top notch, and you could play these videos with the sound off and still enjoy it just as an hours-long DBZ highlight reel. And Mark has a lot of salient insights on the series. I particularly liked his analysis of Gohan and Videl's dynamic, and it's also refreshing to see a DBZ fan who, you know, actually likes the show. Like, he's gushing over Vegeta's character arc, or talking about how great the androids and Cell are without a bunch of qualifiers, and it's just refreshing to see that.

That having been said, the writing for these videos often ends up sounding like this:

Like, arguably, you can't do a six-hour review of a cartoon show without being a little pretentious, but there's sentences in these videos where it feels like YouTube is paying Mark by the word.

Also, he tends to make these off-the-cuff style remarks, like he's discussing creative decisions about making the video in the video. I get that too. I write my blog with that same stream-of-consciousness energy, because I really am making this up as I go. It's a blog, there's not gonna be a second draft. But he's doing a YouTube video, and there's a lot of production values involved and the work is pretty polished. I don't think it makes a lot of sense for him to talk about how the sausage is made. Just give me the sausage, which is footage of the cartoon with a guy telling me what he liked about it.

I've sort of had this fascination with the writing style throughout the series, and I think if I had to spoof it, I'd go with something like this:

"Again, as I said before earlier in this video, when I started this review, I wanted to avoid sounding pretentious, an attribute the likes of which can be disastrous for the making of a successful review. But, having established that fact firmly and decisviely, perhaps even conclusively--not withstanding earlier comments made about the length of Piccolo's cape, which is a subject for another day-- I can say with great certainty that Goku and Vegeta do indeed comprise a dramaturgical dyad, not only upon which the series depends upon, but through which we can see the true genius of one of the most influential manga authors of all time."

And while you hear this word salad, there's a cool shot of Vegeta beating up Pui Pui or something.

The weird thing is that I didn't really pick up on this in his GT, Super, or OG Dragon Ball review videos. It's almost like he's purposely writing more stuff so he has room for all the cool footage.

Right now I'm in the tail end of the Buu Saga, and while I give him credit for being diplomatic about it, Mark still falls into the same trap I see with a lot of critiques of the Buu Saga: They keep comparing the existing text with some hypothetical better story that they assumed Toriyama was planning to write instead, before he changed his mind.

I think everyone has run across this before. People saw Gohan take the main-character role after the Cell Games and assumed this was a guarantee. When Gohan gets demoted and Goku takes the lead again, they cry foul and complain about how Toriyama failed to make it work, or he just plain gave up. There's an old fan rumor about how he was "forced" to put Goku back in charge because of backlash from angry fans, but this is absurd on its face.

This leads to critiques of the Buu Saga that operate on the premise that there's some idealized "correct" version of the story, where Gohan trains really hard, beats Buu all by himself, and so on. Whenever the published version of the story deviates from this "correct" version, critics suggest that Toriyama got his wires crossed, and blame everything on the awkward pivot back to Goku.

To me, that doesn't make sense. "Gohan and the Next Generation defeat Buu" is a what-if fan theory. Maybe it's better than what we ended up getting, but it's not fair to review the published work by comparing it to a hypothetical draft that may never have existed. That's like if a food critic gave a steakhouse a bad rating because he thought it was a pizzeria and he's still mad that his sirloin didn't have anchovies on it.

When you look at the Buu Saga as it was actually presented, the throughline is clearly not about passing the torch to the kids, because they all get jobbed out and killed. So it's dumb to review the thing and complain that the Gotenks stuff is pointless, and Gohan's power up is unearned, and his loss to Super Buu really sucks the life out of the story, and gosh, this is a really terrible passing-the-torch story. Well that's because it's not a passing-the-torch story. It's a story about Goku trying to pass the torch, failing, and discovering that he still has a place in the world after all. The "torch" he was trying to pass was his identity and personal responsibility, things he can't just confer on someone else.

You can't just tell someone else they're the new protagonist of your story and now they have to go do your job and feed your pets while you play video games. Everyone talks about Vegeta going Majin as a manifestation of his mid-life crisis, but Goku's mid-life crisis was him dying at age 30 and nope-ing his way out of life to train in Valhalla for the rest of eternity. The Buu Saga forced him to accept that this was a mistake, which is why he doesn't just drink a vial full of heart-virus juice after the story ends. He's back in the world of the living and this time he knows he needs to stay there.

And when you look at it from that perspective, suddenly all the Gotenks/Elder Kai Ritual stuff makes a lot more sense as awkward farce. It's anticlimactic and unsatisfying because none of those plans were ever going to work. Nothing worked until Goku and Vegeta both got their heads out of their asses and worked together. The world didn't need martyrs or torch-passings or a 'next generation', it needed adults to put their personal feelings aside for the greater good.

9, 19 and 89 for the writer game.

(writing asks!)

9. in an ideal world where you’re already super successful and published, would you want to see a tv or movie adaptation of your work? why or why not?

THIS IS TOUGH I DON'T KNOW. In the ideal world it means they won't like fuck my story up too much? Like I'm a huge movie nerd and I consider all the movies I watch as important to me as a writer as books that I read? I love movies? It would be so fun and cool to see ????

BUT LIKE I'M TRAUMATIZED BY BAD ADAPTATIONS THAT ARE SO REMOVED FROM THE SOURCE MATERIAL THAT THEY'RE UNRECOGNIZABLE LOL. So. """ideally""" sure! But who knows.

19. what are some books or authors that influenced your style the most?

sdgjakds what a great question; as a fanfic writer learning from other fanfic writers, my no. 1 influence would be fuckin SCARLETFEVER from FFnet whose work has been long scrubbed from the internet but that I have downloaded and I still revisit. They wrote these like EPIC NOVEL Resident Evil fics when I was in high school in like 2003 and I cannot emphasize enough how influential these were on me and how much I still am always going back to them when I ask myself questions about what type of writer I'd want to be and what type of fic I'm trying to write.

When I returned to fic writing back in like 2016 I was like exclusively reading YOI fic (bc there was like zero VC fic I wanted to read lol) so some of the YOI writers that influenced me SO MUCH: SuggestiveScribe, scribblywobblytimeylimey, and dance_across ! ALSO THIS FIC THAT HAS BEEN ORPHANED NOW IDK WHO WROTE IT BUT THIS FIC LIKE BROKE SOMETHING OPEN IN MY HEAD ABOUT NONLINEAR STORYTELLING ? HELLO?

And then from 2018-onward I've been reading almost exclusively Sheith fic and a couple people who really have influenced me so much are Rifa and an_aphorism/AphAfterDark !

(Every fic writer I linked is someone who helped me think meaningfully about the way I write porn LOL)

AS FAR AS REGULAR BOOKS; I think there's something a little unshakable about the authors I liked when I was a teenager because they sort of created a blueprint? In middle school I was reading a lot of Anne Rice and Francesca Lia Block and I think both of them are sort of opposite versions of sensual writing; Anne Rice tends to be quite verbose and go on and on and on vs FLB's writing is so tight and light but full of sensory words ! So I think like those two always made me want to like describe colors and smells and feelings etc.

Then in high school I was really into Wally Lamb (he only had 3 books at the time but I was really into all of them). Like his book I Know This Much is True was absolutely my favorite book for years. I haven't revisited it in a while so I get worried because sometimes I revisit books I loved in high school and I'm just appalled them LMAO. Like I revisited his book She's Come Undone last year and I hated it so much hkjdsgasdhjk. But I think like the way he wrote Dominick's voice was so influential to me because it just cuts through all the bullshit and there's sort of like a ruggedness to it that feels so sincere and human. (I remember around this time I also read some Hubert Selby, Jr which is like not at all something I aspire to write like LMAO but basically gave me a lot to think about when it comes to like, formal prose & grammar vs writing the way people actually speak.)

So I think I came away from these authors as this Frankensteined thing of like, trying to be sincere & human but also trying to use sensory words so that I can feel immersed????????????????

89. sarcastic narrators: entertaining or overdone?

GOD LIKE. IN THE RIGHT HANDS??? VERY GOOD. But possibly overdone. I'm actually in the middle of a book right now and I'm hating the narrator SO MUCH LOL and I'm just dying to like make it through enough of this book to figure out if it serves a purpose or if the author is just a cynical asshole lol. I'm so tired of cynicism man. Like obviously when it fits the character it fits the character but it's just so exhausting when it's thrown at you as a default you know? I've read a few too many cynical books lately and it doesn't bring me any joy LOL.

6, 7, 17 for the fanfic asks

tag thing 3/3

I believe this was from this list, though my answer is super late

6. Have you written any fanfictions featuring OCs? If so, elaborate!

I actually have a repository for my Star Wars OC fics now. Hoping to put some more in there to fill upcoming whumptober prompts, it was kind of inspired by the animated short series Visions, in that it could kind of bend the rules of canon and not have to have anything to do with the main narrative. A good exercise in character development, I think. There are a couple upcoming OCs (‘dark ocean’ has one main one that helps out our MCs and I have this whole long 4 part series planned about a serial killer that spans 40 years, and while 3 parts feature canon characters, the 4th will, in theory, be almost all OCs) and I feel like most fics have to have at least 1-2, right?

And I'm kind of sad that it’s unlikely that I’ll ever finish the ‘Nordic noir’-style fic that was supposed to be the continuation to my main AU series, because Astrid, my first and most beloved OC, was going to make a comeback and play a slightly larger role. She is my most beloved because I was actually really nervous to include her because 1) past experiences especially from my former fandom days back in the 00s made me wary of OCs, especially female ones, 2) she had to deliver a lot of exposition, 3) it was exposition on a sort of controversial topic, 4) yeah I was kind of using her as a mouthpiece for my own ideas about said controversial fandom topic. So I was super nervous but she was well-received and that gave me a lot more confidence to write more OCs into fics.

7. What’s a troupe you love to write?

I am assuming this is supposed to say ‘trope’ but you know me I love an ensemble (though also ensemble casts can be so hard to write). Jk, yeah tropes, idk I like a whole range of hurt/comfort tropes, that’s definitely where I’m most comfortable. Magical exhaustion/magical consequences, always fun. ‘There was only one bed’, classic. I feel like I keep having things with ghosts in them, don’t know if that counts as a trope. ‘___ as death/grief metaphor’. I also keep writing about nightmares, so much that I had to have a little talk with myself on this current rewrite about nightmares and cut like 70% of them.

17. Are there any writers and/of stories that you consider an influence?

I think early writing inspiration came from Tamora Pierce, particularly her Circle of Magic series (see previous post about books that have stuck with me). Definitely turned me on to the idea of like, magical found families. Tamsyn Muir I feel like I have a weird relationship to because there’s a part of me that’s like…mad I didn’t think of it first but definitely once I got over that she’s for sure inspired me to just go so much harder on the death metaphors and the descriptions of corpses, so that’s fun. I’m trying to remember how I filled out this question for NaNoWriMo way back in the day…idk I think American Gods is an influential single-story for me. I can’t think of any other big authors but also in terms of fandom writers who influenced me, I’ll admit to being influenced to loving long, plotty Star Wars fics by ruth baulding, the only reason I still have an open fanfiction.net account, and when I was getting back into writing fic around 2018 or so, I was both inspired and encouraged by @veliseraptor so thank you so much <3

Ok, I have to go clean my apartment now, feel free to send any other questions from this list or from the other ask game thing (see tagged thing 1/3), and I will answer them when I return!

Hi En!! I find what you are studying so cool. Do you have any recommendations for south american literature? Like books to read or resources where I could learn about it (anything is welcome really). I'm from there but well, I never really finished my studies there before moving here and well, when they teach literature in high school in the US it is in english (unless you have spanish as an elective) 😅 Plus I would really like to start reading books in spanish again. Spanish literature would be welcome too!!

Hi! Thanks for asking <3 I love speaking about books so beware if this answer gets super long lmao. South American literature is so diverse and different depending on the country, and I've only read a little chunk, so I'll try to make a small list:

Mariana Enríquez: Things we lost in the fire (Las cosas que perdimos en el fuego) / Our share of night (Nuestra parte de noche). If you like gothic atmospheres, creepy situations, and a small share of magic/supernatural elements, Mariana Enríquez is your girl. She's one of my favorite authors of all time, and none of her books have disappointed me. Things we lost in the fire is a collection of short stories that I consider a good introduction to her universe, since the horror elements she presents are more grounded in reality and they tend to revolve around systematic violence towards women. Our share of night takes one of the short stories from that book and expands it, creating a very intricate and addicting novel about a father/son relationship, a secret cult, and dark magic.

Of course, the classics are very important, so I also recommend reading Gabriel García Márquez! Maybe starting with A hundred years of solitude is too daunting (I haven't read it yet because I'm scared), so you can start with No one writes to the colonel (El coronel no tiene quien le escriba) or Chronicle of a death foretold (Crónica de una muerte anunciada). Both are pretty short but they are super interesting. Márquez is not my favorite tbh, but I always find myself recommending his books because they're a good starting point for anyone that wants to read South American literature.

Mario Vargas Llosa: now, I know he's a pretty controversial person nowadays, but I can't deny that his writing style is impeccable. I've only read a short story by him, Los cachorros (I don't think this one is translated yet) and quotes here and there, but as soon as I finish exams I'm planning on reading two of his most influential novels, The time of the hero (La ciudad y los perros, which by the summary it seems to have some dark academia vibes) and The green house (La casa verde).

Margarita García Robayo: Holiday heart (Tiempo muerto) is —and this is going to sound as amazing as it is— like Normal people but about a married couple with children that realize their marriage isn't working, mixed with a lot of commentary about race in America and the feeling of being somewhere you don't really belong to. I really enjoyed this read and I found it so thought-provoking. Plus, it also touches on subjects like maternity and paternity in ways I hadn't ever seen before in literature, so it's super cool.

There are lots and lots of other authors I could recommend: Julio Cortázar, César Aira, Manuel Puig, Samanta Schweblin, Fernanda Melchor... but I don't want this to get super super long!

As for resources— I don't have a big idea of what is being read as of now, since in class we mainly focus on the classics, but the first thing that came to mind is the publisher Charcoal Press. They're doing amazing work translating lots of South American novels, so I'd recommend looking at their catalog and seeing what's being read right now (then, if you want, you can just search for the book in the original Spanish version and read it!)

I hope this is useful and that you can find a new read that you will like ❤️‍🩹 If you end up reading any of them, don't hesitate to tell me your thoughts!

noo... do it... be the nerd... I wanna read it.. 🥺💖

So first of all please accept my undying devotion for asking me to talk about this <3 <3 <3

Second of all, this is 1000% more Feelings than Scholarship, but I'm a pedantic little nerd who saw this post and went "excuse you, that's such a raw line that obviously it's from noted Elizabethan playwright Christopher Marlowe." Their writing styles are super distinct! Marlowe's like 1000% more straightforward than Shakespeare! And very good at Raw Lines!

And also! Marlowe got entirely screwed over by history! What with the dying young and all! (Whereas Shakespeare got incredibly lucky but that is. Another story.) If we lived on a just planet then he wouldn't be a footnote to Shakespeare, he'd be remembered for being super fucking influential to Elizabethan Theater! Shakespeare would not have been Shakespeare without him! Also he's a spectacular playwright purely on his own merit and if I ever get a time machine I will be using it to prevent his murder because I want him to have written more plays.

What I'm saying is that post is very funny but I consider it a personal tragedy that Marlowe isn't a known, easily-referenced playwright on the same level as Shakespeare. I read Faustus and it rewired my brain and I am not sorry.