sarcasticdolphin

[sarcasticdolphin]

instagram: smacmccreanor

#bird #XD #one of Smrt's angels? #that sort of vibes #in a very cracky way

[sarcasticdolphin]

April 22-29, 2024

#bird #raven #birb #birblr #with babies :) #love that first pic in particular

[sarcasticdolphin]

I understand why the costume design for Vienna/Hamburg Mozart!'s Nannerl is a reduced conservative version of vaguely 18th century fashion but the letters written to Marie Anne by her family suggest that she loved news of new fashions, and expensive dresses and pretty ribbons and I want that for her

#I occasionally have the urge to write something #where Nannerl ended up as a court musician to Colloredo #and if I do end up writing it #I hope to give her some properly fashionable dresses

[sarcasticdolphin]

Velvet-purple Coronet (Boissonneaua jardini), family Trochilidae, order Apodiformes, Ecuador

photograph by Jorge Luis Cruz Alcivar 

#hummingbird #cute

[sarcasticdolphin]

Poetry? More like CROWETRY!

Read Crow Time // Read Namesake // Patreon // Store

Crow Time Plush is now up for sale!

#crow time #secondlina art #<3 #love this :)

[sarcasticdolphin]

Dvd commentary for this please!

The lecturer is animated enough, but the topic seems nonsensical, even by the standards of Divination. The prediction of time of death through what Tom can only describe as a dartboard. At least the lecturer is honest enough to call the method imprecise, at times. More accurate when the time of predicted death is within a year or two.

They end with an activity that Tom finds entirely superfluous, all throwing darts at the board. Predicting the time of their own death. Still, he lingers back. It’s not something he really wants to know or even imagine. He’s seen enough of death over the summers. In the rubble that the morning sun revealed, and in the tense and terrible silence of the bomb shelter. He has no desire to have death creep up on him here, at the castle he has come to think of as home. The castle his ancestor built.

A Gryffindor goes first, predicting a date in 1982. Then another, predicting a time of death in 1997. On and on the procession creeps. Tom doesn’t pay much attention to it all, hanging back as the line grows shorter and shorter.

A collective gasp draws his attention. There is a Ravenclaw at the front of the line. Myrtle Warren or Warret, as Tom recalled. Her dart was embedded in the board. June 8, 1943. There are quick and insipid mutterings from her friends, assuring her it won’t come true.

Aemilia Hohenberg is next, her dart embedding in July, 1947. No one offers her reassurances. And she doesn’t stay to receive them, coldly sweeping from the room.

Tom finds himself at the head of the line only a few minutes later, taking up the dart. This means nothing, he tells himself, tossing the dart at the board.

It doesn’t stick, instead bouncing off of late 1981. 

“Well, Mr. Riddle. Congratulations. It seems you are immortal.” The lecturer seems to find the whole thing humorous, but Tom’s cheeks burn. No one else had failed to even get a dart to stick.

He takes a second dart and hurls it at the board. It sticks this time. May, 1998. “Or perhaps not.”

Thank you for the ask :)

The lecturer is animated enough, but the topic seems nonsensical, even by the standards of Divination. The prediction of time of death through what Tom can only describe as a dartboard. At least the lecturer is honest enough to call the method imprecise, at times. More accurate when the time of predicted death is within a year or two.

My Tom generally thinks that divination is unreliable drivelry at this point in his life, but he's still curious and/or superstitious and/or wants to be in all the classes to have the most Os so he's still in the class.

The dartboard divination is completely my own invention, and just something that is supposed to sound a little ridiculus but still plausible as a divination method.

They end with an activity that Tom finds entirely superfluous, all throwing darts at the board. Predicting the time of their own death. Still, he lingers back. It’s not something he really wants to know or even imagine. He’s seen enough of death over the summers. In the rubble that the morning sun revealed, and in the tense and terrible silence of the bomb shelter. He has no desire to have death creep up on him here, at the castle he has come to think of as home. The castle his ancestor built.

As much as Tom thinks divination is driverly, he is still terrifed of Death to the extent that he doesn't want to even try.

A Gryffindor goes first, predicting a date in 1982. Then another, predicting a time of death in 1997. On and on the procession creeps. Tom doesn’t pay much attention to it all, hanging back as the line grows shorter and shorter.

So here we have someone who died just after the first war, and someone who died in the second. I though it would be typical Gryffindor to go first for something like this.

A collective gasp draws his attention. There is a Ravenclaw at the front of the line. Myrtle Warren or Warret, as Tom recalled. Her dart was embedded in the board. June 8, 1943. There are quick and insipid mutterings from her friends, assuring her it won’t come true.

This is foreshadowing Myrtle's (rather quickly approaching) demise at the eyes of the Basilisk and showing that she's not on Tom's radar for any reason at this point.

Aemilia Hohenberg is next, her dart embedding in July, 1947. No one offers her reassurances. And she doesn’t stay to receive them, coldly sweeping from the room.

In this story my OC Aemilia is someone who is supposed to be completely contrasted with Tom. He flees from Death, but she runs toward Death. So she's going to die young (and probably by her own hand).

Tom finds himself at the head of the line only a few minutes later, taking up the dart. This means nothing, he tells himself, tossing the dart at the board. It doesn’t stick, instead bouncing off of late 1981.  “Well, Mr. Riddle. Congratulations. It seems you are immortal.” The lecturer seems to find the whole thing humorous, but Tom’s cheeks burn. No one else had failed to even get a dart to stick. He takes a second dart and hurls it at the board. It sticks this time. May, 1998. “Or perhaps not.”

And here we have Tom finally coming to the front of the line and foreshadowing his own Death. Really most of this entire passage is foreshadowing while also showing how thinking about Death - especially his own - makes Tom rather nervous. I did want to make it so in this moment, Tom's need to be the best overcomes his fear of Death, if only for a moment.

#dolphin's hp stuff #thank you for the ask #ask game

[sarcasticdolphin]

This is not a drill, we have the first pictures of setpieces for DJKT's Dracula and oh my god, I'm in love already. Dave Benson just never misses in his DJKT collabs, doesn't he?

#djkt #this looks amazing

[sarcasticdolphin]

Writing Meme!

Pick any passage of 500 words or less from any fanfic I’ve written, and stick that selection in my ask/fan mail. I will then give you the equivalent of a DVD commentary on that snippet: what I was thinking when I wrote it, why I wrote it in the first place, what’s going on in the character’s heads, why I chose certain words, what this moment means in the context of the rest of the fic, lots of awful puns, and anything else that you’d expect to find on a DVD commentary track.

#sounds interesting #writing stuff

[sarcasticdolphin]

Clarice Lispector, from “Preciousness” in Complete Stories

#Smrt drawing lots of constellations in his books of hours #just the night sky #:)

[sarcasticdolphin]

Personification of Death at the beginning of the Office of the Dead, from an Italian Book of Hours, c. 1470-1480.

#book of hours #death in art #reference #smrt #smrt's realm

[sarcasticdolphin]

Trés Riches Heures du duc de Berry

A Book of Hours (prayer book)

Created for the Duke of Berry by the Limbourg Brothers in the 15th century, left unfinished many suspect due to death of the plague; prayer books with intricate paintings and drawings had began to become popular in the 13th century.

#book of hours #reference

[sarcasticdolphin]

The last #unboxing of our new acquisitions is this fantastic 19th century book of hours, written in French. It's heavy for its size, the leaves having been coated in white lead to prepare it for writing, like the early 20th c. Clothilde Missal at @waltersartmuseum

#book of hours #reference #smrt

[sarcasticdolphin]

BOOK OF HOURS OF LORENZO DE MEDICI (1485). Illuminations by Francesco Rosselli.

A bibliophilic testimony to the alliance between the French royal family and the wealthi Medici family. Pope Leo X’s wedding gift to his nephew Lorenzo de Medici.

source Ziereis Facsimilies.

[I wish the images were clearer but they were the best available. ~Lydia]

Binding of the facsimile edition.

#book of hours #lorenzo de medici #illuminated manuscript #reference

[sarcasticdolphin]

Today's #YearOfHours #BookOfHours is Ms. Codex 1063, produced in England, probably London, perhaps for a member of a religious confraternity or community. The musical notation in the Office of the Dead is unusual, as is the absence of the prayers Obsecro te and O intemerata.

🔗:

#book of hours #reference

[sarcasticdolphin]

🖤 Black: Do you think about your story when you're not physically writing it? Does it help with plotting scenes, character arcs, etc.? 👀

Oh yes. There is a whole phase of my writing process that I refer to a 'pre-thinking' where I am mapping out the fic in my head and just thinking through it.

Sometimes I've already gotten an outline in a document and am thinking through the fine details, while other times I am trying to figure out a plot that makes logical sense or anything in between.

I do think it definitely helps with my writing speed when I got to write, if nothing else. When I've already done all the thinking ahead of time then I can just write without having to think too much about anything.

#ask game #thank you for the ask #elisabeth das musical #feel free to send more :)

[sarcasticdolphin]

For the ask: 🩷💛🤎🤍

🩷 Pink: Do you find a certain character (or characters) easy to write? More difficult -- and if so, do you avoid writing that character (or those characters) when possible?

For the Elisabeth fandom, I find Rudolf and FJ to be the easiest to write while Sisi and Tod are harder.

Part of that is down to the fact that my philosophy with writing FJ is that he does love Rudolf, he's a rational person, and he is trying to be a good dad even if he isn't doing the best job.

Comparatively, I find it hard to write Sisi in a way that feels even-handed and makes it clear she is imperfect while not devolving into bashing, which is why I so often have her be distant and only show up when Rudolf is thinking of an idealized version of her.

Tod is by far the hardest (especially his POV - Tod POV is _so_ hard - that's part of why Ornithology updates are so irregular. I have to be in a very specific frame of mind to be able to write Tod's POV). Also because his characterization can go any one of half a hundred different ways, and keeping him consistent within a fic can be hard.

I would say that Smrt is generally easier for me to write than Tod, but a good chunk of that is down to how much world building we've done for Smrt. He was very hard too when I was first starting to write Smrtolf drabbles.

💛 Yellow: Do you ever alter, highlight, or de-emphasize certain canonical traits in a character? If so, why and describe how.

Oh yes. Rudolf changes tons, and becomes what I need him to be in the story that I am telling. I very much put the literary needs of the fic over even attempting to keep him historically accurate. (Some of that is down to the fact that I can't read German so I couldn't read the primary sources even if I tried).

Tod changes too, again depending on the fic and usually to meet the literary needs of the story that I am telling.

🤎 Brown: How did you decide to write (or why are you writing) a certain fanfic? (Asker, feel free to choose a specific story you're curious about. You can also let the answerer choose the story.

Hmmmm. So for "January" and the upcoming "February," I wanted to explore (and continue to explore) a slightly more angsty dimension to the usually incredibly soft and fluffy Smrtolf relationship.

Alas often times my reason for writing a certain fic nothing too special - just that I want to read it and it doesn't exist.

🤍 White: What's a fanfic scenario or idea you'd like someone else to write so that you can read it?

Hmmmmm.... I tend to think the Elisabeth fandom takes itself a bit too seriously at times, and that we don't have much crack fic in this fandom. I'd love it if someone wrote some more crack fic (maybe something where Taaffe is trying to catch Rudolf with his mystery 'mistress' (aka Tod/Smrt) and is just not being very successful).

Alternatively, I've had a few thoughts about something where Rudolf fully becomes a todesengel even when he is alive - like with the death kiss and everything - but I've never been able to come up with a good plot for it. Shades of the idea have shown up in other fics, but never the full idea.

#ask game #thank you for the asks #elisabeth das musical #feel free to send more

[sarcasticdolphin]

Fanfic Ask Game

Put a color in my ask box, and I'll answer the corresponding question. Please ask me only one at a time. 😄

If you'd like me to ask you a question in return from this list, add a ✏️.

💚 Green: Do you ever feel inspired by and/or jealous of other people's writing?

♥️ Red: Do you ever feel anxious or scared while writing? If so, why?

💙 Blue: What inspires you to finish writing a fanfic, and what makes you quit writing one at any stage in the process?

💜 Purple: Name one song you're listening to while writing your next/current fanfic. How or why does it help the writing process?

🧡 Orange: When in the day do you typically write?

🩷 Pink: Do you find a certain character (or characters) easy to write? More difficult -- and if so, do you avoid writing that character (or those characters) when possible?

🖤 Black: Do you think about your story when you're not physically writing it? Does it help with plotting scenes, character arcs, etc.?

💛 Yellow: Do you ever alter, highlight, or de-emphasize certain canonical traits in a character? If so, why and describe how.

🤍 White: What's a fanfic scenario or idea you'd like someone else to write so that you can read it?

🤎 Brown: How did you decide to write (or why are you writing) a certain fanfic? (Asker, feel free to choose a specific story you're curious about. You can also let the answerer choose the story.)

#ask games #ask away :)