alivannarose

[alivannarose]

having anxiety is like being given permanent unwanted custody of a halter arabian. like okay buddy is it panic time again. cool you probably need more exercise and an apple and then maybe you'll calm down.

[alivannarose]

I got some beautiful fucking mugs but FUCK lmao

the kiln over fired everything on the bottom shelf apparently because everything from that shelf (my mugs) got at least one flaw

but this mug turned out fucking hilarious with the flaw

it’s so much funnier than the original

[alivannarose]

Hang on did the season nine credits say "created by Chris Carter" instead of "written by"? I should watch the next ep more closely. That could explain everything.

I've been bingeing X Files because I couldn't remember if I'd ever gone back and watched it to the very bleeding end.

Season six, episode three. Ffs. Maybe my favorite episode of any television of all time. It. Has. Everything. Bermuda triangle. Time fuckery. Punching Nazis. Alt timeline doppelgangers as surprise cast cameos. AND THE CINEMATOGRAPHY MAKES ME WEEP. Those shots are so long, and so complex, and have so many marks for so many people to hit that I wind up cheering at the fight choreography because they are nailing the motherfucking take and the sheer orchestration of it takes my breath away. I know everyone flips out over the kiss and yes, that is a great moment and bit of fanservice but the whole thing is just so good.

And then the later seasons happen. Was there a writer's strike? Did an executive producer shove their cop-loving incel nephew into the writer's room? Were the main cast protesting for wage equity and being punished for it by the studio? Whatt thee fvck. It's a shame the budget for special guest cast rolled in right as the good, nuanced, intelligent writing and cast chemistry just evaporated. I think I bailed out in season nine last time because I couldn't take it anymore.

(Burt Reynolds as Hermes was a baffling thing of beauty in an episode with an abysmal investigative narrative.)

[alivannarose]

I've been bingeing X Files because I couldn't remember if I'd ever gone back and watched it to the very bleeding end.

Season six, episode three. Ffs. Maybe my favorite episode of any television of all time. It. Has. Everything. Bermuda triangle. Time fuckery. Punching Nazis. Alt timeline doppelgangers as surprise cast cameos. AND THE CINEMATOGRAPHY MAKES ME WEEP. Those shots are so long, and so complex, and have so many marks for so many people to hit that I wind up cheering at the fight choreography because they are nailing the motherfucking take and the sheer orchestration of it takes my breath away. I know everyone flips out over the kiss and yes, that is a great moment and bit of fanservice but the whole thing is just so good.

And then the later seasons happen. Was there a writer's strike? Did an executive producer shove their cop-loving incel nephew into the writer's room? Were the main cast protesting for wage equity and being punished for it by the studio? Whatt thee fvck. It's a shame the budget for special guest cast rolled in right as the good, nuanced, intelligent writing and cast chemistry just evaporated. I think I bailed out in season nine last time because I couldn't take it anymore.

(Burt Reynolds as Hermes was a baffling thing of beauty in an episode with an abysmal investigative narrative.)

[alivannarose]

[alivannarose]

You may think it cruel but when a white witch pisses me off I go through her etsy listings for native bird feathers and forward it to fish and wildlife services

[alivannarose]

[alivannarose]

Hey btw, if you're doing worldbuilding on something, and you're scared of writing ~unrealistic~ things into it out of fear that it'll sound lazy and ripped-out-of-your-ass, but you also don't want to do all the back-breaking research on coming up with depressingly boring, but practical and ~realistic~ solutions, have a rule:

Just give the thing two layers of explanation. One to explain the specific problem, and another one explaining the explanation. Have an example:

Plot hole 1: If the vampires can't stand daylight, why couldn't they just move around underground?

Solution 1: They can't go underground, the sewer system of the city is full of giant alligators who would eat them.

Well, that's a very quick and simple explanation, which sure opens up additional questions.

Plot hole 2: How and why the fuck are there alligators in the sewers? How do they survive, what do they eat down there when there's no vampires?

Solution 2: The nuns of the Underground Monastery feed and take care of them as a part of their sacred duties.

It takes exactly two layers to create an illusion that every question has an answer - that it's just turtles all the way down. And if you're lucky, you might even find that the second question's answer loops right back into the first one, filling up the plot hole entirely:

Plot hole 3: Who the fuck are the sewer nuns and what's their point and purpose?

Solution 3: The sewer nuns live underground in order to feed the alligators, in order to make sure that the vampires don't try to move around via the sewer system.

When you're just making things up, you don't need to have an answer for everything - just two layers is enough to create the illusion of infinite depth. Answer the question that looms behind the answer of the first question, and a normal reader won't bother to dig around for a 3rd question.

[alivannarose]

having used tumblr as a teenager is a vaccination against using tiktok today

[alivannarose]

[alivannarose]

cat laziness is so contagious. you'll see your cat flopped on its back in your bed a completely comfy cozy baby and you'll be like. you're right. you make a compelling argument.

[alivannarose]

[alivannarose]

if you're not obsessed with anything weird and niche please try harder. stop going outside for a while. consider getting weirder about the things you already like

[alivannarose]

On a lighter note.

The main reason I ever wanted to write a Hungarian mythology-based urban fantasy is that I needed to see someone do Bread Magic in a mundane modern setting.

Bread Magic shows up in a variety in Hungarian fairytales. It works like this: when someone evil, usually the devil, sometimes a dragon, wants to come into your house and hurt you, usually by taking your children, what you do is put a loaf of bread on the windowsill. It will speak for you.

When evil demands admission, the bread will say: First, they buried me under the ground, and I survived. When I sprouted, they cruelly cut me down with sickles, and I survived. They threshed me with their flails and I survived. They ground me to flour with their millstones and I survived. They put me in a bowl and kneaded me, then they put me in a hot oven to bake me, and I survived. Have you done all these things? Until you do all these things and survive, you have no power here.

This is pretty powerful magic I think, and it makes sense in a country where wheat is the staple crop and bread is the staple food. If you have bread, you are alive, if you have no bread, you are dead, therefore bread is life. It was customary to refer to wheat as “life” well into the twentieth century, and not in high literary circles either: rural seasonal workers negotiated their wages in so and so many sacks of life.

And I totally want someone to do bread magic with a shitty store-bought muffin.

[alivannarose]

another random epiphany I had on my drive home from the store was that things that are the most obvious often feel the most profound. I was looking at the sunset through my window. I was like “this is beautiful and it changes all the time so every sunset is a little different and also beautiful.” Which led me to think “if you look at the earth from space, the clouds are never pink or blue or yellow or orange, they are just white and grey all the time. In space perhaps the sunsets are not very different or very beautiful.” Which led me to think “the sunsets are only beautiful because i am so small.” Which led me to think “so many things are only beautiful because i am so small, or if not only then they are at least much more beautiful than they might otherwise be, either because my vantage point of smallness allows me to see details that big things wouldn’t see, like when I see the flash of the sun at sunset with my little eyes on this big planet, or because my briefness finds vastness so incredible cuz it’s so much bigger than me, like when I sit under a very very old and very very tall tree.” And this was all somewhat obvious but it didn’t make the feeling of epiphany go away or diminish at all

[alivannarose]

Literally when I start thinking about how White Collar tried to make their main character a pretty playboy womanizer and at the same time gave their other main character a healthy loving affectionate marriage and the two things combined to make an unignorably poly throuple because Neal can't not flirt with El and Peter and El are obviously in love and Peter and Neal literally joke about being a couple several times and yet there's no jealousy anywhere just three people in love I lose it. "I made a perfectly straight FBI procedural" you've made a poly love story actually congrats that's an upgrade <3

[alivannarose]

Transphobia is so antithetical to genuine feminism it blows my mind there's such a wide overlap like you either believe in autonomy and self determination or you don't