#pretty sure that would come under scifi and fantasy

[ebooksupremacy]

11 titles in the top 50! If anyone has a subscription to The Bookseller, please let me know if it gives the source for the top 50 as I can't find anything anywhere. The only list I can find is from the American Booksellers Association and that's a top 25.

Little over a third of books by female authors on that list are by Sarah. No other female author has multiple books on there, and the majority (if not all) of Sarah's books on that list are from her ACO series.

Where's the variety? And what about her ACO series makes it so popular compared to her first series?

#anti sjm #my post #anti booktok #i'm surprised considering leigh bardugo hasn't ranked on that list #and i would've assumed the shadow and bone tv show would've seen a growth in her book sales for it #pretty sure that would come under scifi and fantasy

[jeahreading]

(Right I think It's time for me to finally get this over with )

Helloo and Welcome to my Blog, This is Primarily a Writer/readerBlr, but there are other things too(Particularly listening to podcasts ) since I can't be bothered to make a side one.

My reader side - I am an avid reader and am almost always in the middle of a book, I will be updating here on which books I'm reading

Current read list -

Dracula (Bram Stoker)

The Screaming Staircase (Jonathan Stroud)

A Dance with the Fae Prince (Elise Kova)

American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer (Kai Bird)

The Silver Birds (Apolline Lucy)

That Night (Nidhi Upadhyay)

The Complete Adventures of Feluda, Vol 1 (Satyajit Ray)

The Da Vinci Code (Dan Brown)

The God of Small Things (Arundhati Roy)

The War of Lanka (Amish Tripathi)

City of Bones (Cassandra Clare)

Circe (Madeline Miller)

And that's all I can remember Right about now , Yes I'm reading 10 books or more simultaneously, no I do not have an explanation to that.

My main Genre is Historical Fiction, Fantasy, Mystery and thriller, But I do love widening my scope so do recommend me any books you might think may pique my interest. 😁

My reader side also includes me obsessing over podcasts, I'm including my Favourite podcasts here too, and I assure you they are amazing!

Podcasts for you - I usually listen to them on Spotify and love True crime, mystery, Murder mysteries etc. Here they are -

Rotten Mango by Stephanie Soo (True Crime) - I wouldn't suggest you listen to this if you get disgusted or scared easily, I usually am not affected by these kinds of things and I was still very disturbed, The first 2 episodes are quite... I would suggest you research about it more before you listen to it.

Baking a Murder by Stephanie Soo (Books and movies) - This podcast is again one of my favourites, the way she explains the movie is just so immersive, if you want to understand a story but don't have time to sit down and read the book/watch the movie then this is for you.

7 Suspects by Cryptic Radio(Murder Mystery ) - OH MY GOD, holy- this is probably one of the best mystery podcasts I've ever listened to, tbh you think you know what is going on and till the very end that is kinda sorta true, but then in the like the last 5 moments the plot twist so intense you are left sinking on to the floor thinking "What just happened", listen to, right now.

Magnus Archives by Rusty Quill (Story? horror? not sure what it comes under) - I've started listening to it after getting intense FOMO and can confirm it's going pretty well, I mean I have a LOT to catch up to, but I can say, it's caught my interest.

Murder in HR by Caspian Studios (Murder Mystery) - Again OH MY GOD, again, this is one of the best mystery podcasts I've ever listened to, I mean yeah, the gym ad thingy gets a little bit annoying but the rest of the story compensates for it, again, you think you know where you are going, again up until the very end you just don't know what the hell is going on, and again (Do you see a pattern) when the mystery hits you you are flabbergasted, soo I suggest give it a listen(also kinda obsessed with the soundtrack).

Murphy's Inc. by 97toNow Productions (Scifi mystery) - This is one of the better ones, I'm still listening to it and it's just actually really good, It's kinda the thing you listen to once a day, kinda relaxing (for me at least )

Ok, so this one is a bit different, there is a podcast Caso 63: Enigma: Spotify studios but it's in Spanish which I still haven't quite learnt and I didn't know this existed. I was recommended 2063 theke Esechi by Spotify Studios which is in Bengali which I do, in fact, understand. It was voiced by one of my favourite actors and I was absolutely in love with it, It feels like I wasn't listening to a podcast but a movie and there is so much confusion and so many twists. This podcast has been made in other languages as well, the other two ik are Case 63 (In English) and Virus 2062(In Hindi). So check it out!!

Treat by C13Features (Horror, gory) - This is like a podcast movie, it's around 2 hours long maybe? this is pretty good I would say, you can give it a listen.

Welcome to Night Vale by Night Vale Presents (Absurdity?) - I really don't think I need to say anythi_-_- HAIL THE GLOWCLOUD.

Morning Cup of Murder by Morning Cup of Murder (True Crime) - True crime yk...

The Sounds of Nightmares by Little Nightmares - Bandai Namco Europe (Horror, gore, mystery) - Uhh it's a little unnerving how detailed the actions of characters are As if they were compensating for the fact that there are no visuals, but it was pretty good I would say(Also like the soundtrack)

My writer side- My most popularly known name is Jeah (jee - ah) and I'll be using that here, I am a new author getting started on writing. I still have a looong way to go but, I enjoy writing very much even though my mind and body are definitely not on par with my will to write which is why my second unintended hobby is procrastination. Most of the time that I'm here on Tumblr I am supposed to be doing some other work, like right now.

Anywaysss here are my current WIP's

Mirror My Way - This is my first and only properly published Book. Tbh Not very proud of it, I did it in a hurry, because I took part in the school's Writing program, did nothing the whole year, and finished it in the last week, I honestly think It had potential but I kinda ruined it trying to finish it within the deadline. I wouldn't recommend you read it, It was supposed to be a part of a duology or trilogy but I think I'm just gonna let it sit in the corner for now, let it be there, think upon its mistakes, it did wrong 😤.

Tots and Coffee - Now this one I like better, this was actually inspired by the Scam Caller post here on Tumblr. Kinda had a sudden burst of inspiration and Wrote the first Chapter and since then it's still going pretty strong. Unlike the previous one, it is there on Ao3 if you wish to read it 😁.

I dunno what to call this but I occasionally write short stories in the replies of Pinterest pins when I come across writing prompts. This isn't a wip exactly but , I once posted the starting of a story and jokingly wrote "Continue-!" at the end thinking that would be the end of it, but someone did eventually continue it and that led to a string of events and a very weirdly Eledritch, beautiful Frankestine story formation, I'll be posting it slowly here on Tumblr as well, so keep checking!

Forgot to put it in earlier, but check out @the-writers-corner-inc It's a group blog I initiated, and you can find lots of fun stories, prompts, visuals and more!!

And that's about it, I don't what else to say, but while you're here, grab a cup of coffee or tea, pick out a book and read a page, I'm right here on the other side with a book as well, let's be booky buddies 😄😄😃😃🍵☕

#intro post #writers #writing #books and reading

[moonshynecybin]

do you have any books recommendations? 🙏

okay usually i like to know a general vibe for recommendations bc this is INTIMATE!!! and im actually in a weird place in my reading journey where im trying to branch out and try a bunch of different books in a bunch of different genres bc i got lowkey sick of what i was reading all the time so this is all over the place. whatever fuck it. here are some recent ones in no particular order that ive enjoyed OR at the very least found interesting. most of these are pretty famous i'll be real im not breaking the wheel here. under the cut bc she is long

our wives under the sea by julia armfield. was this book good hmm i dont know. was it kind of fucked up and interesting. YES. some of the prose is legitimately sooo gorgeous and the portrait it paints of the central relationship is intimate and oftentimes heartrending i still think about it which is kind of what you want from a story tbh... a really slow plot (kind of nonexistent) thats frankly more about grief than anything. theres some spooky body horror here so beware

slaughterhouse five by kurt vonnegut. shes a classic for a REASON. do you ever pick up a book that is very beloved and famous. and then get genuinely and pleasantly surprised that it actually rules. happened to me. legit kind of life changing and also made me laugh out loud. if you havent read it get on it

the kingdoms by natasha pulley. read this over the summer and i vividly remember sitting in the basement at my job hiding so i could read one more page i was RIVETED!!! its historical fantasy its time travel its amnesia it is. on a boat. basically like what if fucked up gay love and also magic made france win the napoleonic wars would that be crazy or what!!! and it was!! also read some of her other stuff which is VERY similar and it was like. fine to good. but i LOVED this one

carrie by stephen king. read it around halloween and i enjoyed it more than i thought i would ! some category 5 stephen king sexism but its an interesting 200 page scifi novel with epistolary elements and some great characters i can see how it launched his career into the stratosphere... really good one to start off with reading stephen king if you wanna dip a toe in but are wary of the 1000 page doorstop novels. i say give it a try !

demon copperhead by barbara kingsolver. recent pulitzer prize winner. its a retelling of david copperfield with a distinctly southern appalachian lens which im always interested in because i am from southern appalachia and frankly the way we get treated in fiction is wild. like hillbilly cannibals who are illiterate coalminers wild. if i ever catch the guy that wrote hillbilly elegy we are throwing hands. but i liked this ! the region does have a long history of poverty and it was interesting to think about that in conversation to the social commentary with a victorian vibe from david copperfield. i mean this is decidedly unvictorian but that was floating in the back of my head at all times reading it so it made me THINK.

giovanni's room by james baldwin. another one where i was like do you see this shit?? this shit is crazy. and the shit in question is one of the most acclaimed and beloved novels of all time. anyways another life changer get on it.

even as we breathe by annette saunooke clapsaddle. another southern appalachia moment ! this one rings VERY true for me actually, despite being a historical novel... written with a lot of love for the area and made me cry a bit cause i was homesick at the time... great mystery and cool local history. also! one of the better representations of the cherokee people ive seen in fiction. which usually im hesitant to like. pin that as a THE major reason you should read it bc the story is ALSO very good but its a central theme of the novel so i thought i should mention it. plus the author is cherokee so she's coming at it with knowledge and care

in memoriam by alice winn. recommendation from a tumblr mutual so i thought id continue the tradition! read it in literally a day so im fuzzy on the details but its about rich eton style english schoolboys getting their spirits basically destroyed in the trenches of ww1... also a gay love story... lots of poetry very tragic but not overly so and certainly very readable... a competent historical gay romance if thats ur thing youll probably enjoy it

the poppy war by r f kuang. interesting bc it initially feels like a historical fantasy novel with a young protagonist going to a magic school and overcoming the odds slash beating the evil enemy story thats been done one billion times. but it is DEEPLY not that. takes the conventions of the genre and kind of refuses to make them reducible or easy to package. deals with war (read the warnings etc). deals with genocide. deals with race. wrestles with the ethics of all of its characters and comes down with some nuance. kind of a slay

and then here's some all time faves that are just GOOD and im reasonably sure anyone would have a good time with:

jane eyre. i have quoted this enough on this blog cmon. also if youre following me youre probably a fan of fucked up relationships so you should go. be with the OG. fly. like its foundational to the GENRE babyyyy

dracula. yayyyyy epistolary novelssss... another "fun" classic along with dorian gray... read em both they slap

the book thief. took me a year to read. made me cry lots.

daisy jones and the six. look at me look AWAYYY from the amazon series look at ME. this is a fun book. and if you are in a reading slump i frankly HIGHLY recommend it bc it is done in the style of like. a documentary autopsy on a fleetwood mac esque band implosion so its told in 100% dialogue as if they are being interviewed. you can read it in a DAY and its FUN and sometimes they CONTRADICT each other which i LOVE

the queens thief by meghan whalen turner. GOD!!!!! all time. all time. straight relationships in fiction that make you crazyyyyyyy and also genuinely delightful twists at the end of each book i LOVED them. i read them all in the pandemic they slayyyy

howl's moving castle. delightful. if you like a silly time in a fantasy world that makes you laugh a lot i would recommend. also the sequel its fun

any terry pratchet novel thank you goodnight

#rapid fire ones: circe by madeline miller. piranesi by susanna clarke. the underground railroad by colson whitehead. the things they carried #also and i am beign so serious. if you have never read ella enchanted you should. it is fun. #callie speaks #asks #staring down my tbr and waiting for my brain to get better. torture. #next up is house of leaves. lfg. #the tonal whiplash on this list is so funny im realizing. 50% fun fantasy and 50% THE HORRORS OF WAR.

[indy-gray]

Indy's WIP Masterlist

Hey guys, I haven’t made a wip masterlist or a proper writeblr intro in quite a while. Guess it’s time yeah?

About Me

I’m Indy, she/they, and I’m an adult. I write almost exclusively WLW sci-fi and fantasy and it’s rare for my stories to lack a romance subplot. I just like that shit man. I have a graduate degree in Public Policy, I'm an USAmerican so my expertise is there.

This is my main blog so sometimes I do post personal opinions, updates, and rants about whatever catches my eye. Feel free to ignore or engage with whatever, for the most part I’m very open to discussion about pretty much anything, so long as it is respectful. DM’s are always open, Asks are always open and anon always available.

What I Write

Sci-fi, usually set in space and the distant future. I'll talk more about my specific wips later in the post

Fantasy, I'm not a fan of like elves and dwarves and stuff, but I love fantasy worlds where things are wildly different from our world. Magic, superpowers, aliens, all sorts of stuff pops up in my work.

LGBTQ+/Queer characters and relationships

Political intrigue, I'm a huge politics nerd so building my own political systems and then playing in them is soooo much fun

Below the Cut: My Ever-Growing List of WIPs

Alright, so I have a very long list of wips in varying stages of progress. Here I have them listed out with the covers if they have one.

Under the Raven's Watchful Eye

UtRWE is my latest WIP inspired by Norse Mythology, specifically a retelling of the most crucial myths about Odin and Ragnarok. It has:

WLW vikings

Skaldic Poetry

tragedy and a desperate attempt to avoid one's fate

morally gray characters (esp. the MC Ashildr)

werewolves

WIP Intro here.

Heavy Lies the Heart

Oh boy, how to even explain this one.

It's a fantasy-romance set in a world completely my own. Queen Alessandra survives an assassination attempt with sheer luck and the help of a handsome rogue. The queen takes her rescuer along on the adventure of a lifetime as she tries to weed out the conspirators. Featuring:

- WLW reluctant allies to lovers

- lovable rogues

- political intrigue

- plenty of romantic tropes

- pirates!! Especially lady pirates 😏

WIP intro here, worldbuilding posts here and here.

Wolves at the Door

[No Cover]

This one's a weird one. Six childhood friends are captured and put to work by the wolf-like aliens invading earth. Exposed to their power source, the six find themselves developing supernatural powers. It's up to them to drive the Wolves off their planet.

WatD includes:

- group dynamics, siblings, childhood friends

- WLW childhood friends to lovers

- angst-addled lovers with a lot of whump

- nonbinary MC (though not the POV MC)

- necromancy

Lost Among the Stars

This is one of my main scifi wips.

Following a failed rebellion, Ran and her rebels were cryogenically frozen and sent sailing through space. When aliens discover the humans and release them, they discover that thousands of years have passed, they are the last humans in the universe, and Earth is no longer habitable. Thrust into an intergalactic struggle for dominance, the last humans in the universe have only themselves to rely on.

This WIP has:

spaaaace and aliens

political intrigue

intergalactic war

humans are space orcs

themes about the definition of home, duty, and survival

The Salvation Experiment

Another scifi wip!

Sprawled on the floor, Nyx wakes up to find a baseball bat and a pamphlet. The pamphlet displays her full name as well as some other more personal details. But on the back, in big bold letters is her “prescription.” Completion of the Salvation Experiment.

She’s not sure what any of that means, or how they got all of this information about her, but she’s pretty sure that baseball bat might come in handy.

Look out for:

themes regarding punitive justice, redemption, and vengeance vs justice

there's some religious undertones in there that I would like to explore further

The Rebel's Halo

Oh boy, so I created this wip in the middle of a full-blown manic episode. A lot of my notes don't make sense, but it's a fun little experiment.

Essentially, it's a YA dystopian wip about what happens when the government can assign guardian angels to do their bidding. It does not make sense yet lmao

Featuring:

angels

dystopian themes

surveillance states

The Last Horseman

[No Cover]

Disaster strikes NYC and Adrian Marshal is stranded. While trying to escape, she is kidnapped and brought to a strange woman who claims that Adrian is an immortal being destined to bring about the apocalypse and destroy humanity. Adrian finds herself in the middle of a great battle between light, dark, and balance and must recover her memories to return to her place as the Last Horseman of the Apocalypse.

In this wip:

immortal, star-crossed lovers (WLW)

LGBTQ+ characters (a nb character is one of the main cast)

light corrupts

themes surrounding corruption and good v evil

.

So WOW that's a lot. All of these projects are in varying stages of contemplation and drafting. Looking forward to pivoting more towards actual writing than whatever I've been chatting about.

#wip intro #writeblr introduction #amwriting #writeblr #my writing #writblr #writing #new wip #creative writing #writers of tumblr #novel writing #writing community #writing fiction #wip introduction #writeblr intro

[abhorsen-and-wallmaker]

Intro: Who we are, and why we're here.

Back in 2012, a pair of twenty-somethings met under extremely strange circumstances and watched a horror movie called "Lo". Just shy of eleven years later, those two lovers of all things film are happily married and still trying to find weird and wonderful films to watch together. That's us!

Being multi-flavored geeks, we pulled our usernames from Garth Nix's Old Kingdom series. I'm Abhorsen (34f she/her) and my handsome partner is Wallmaker (36m he/him). Our posts will often refer to us as either "A" or "W" to differentiate sections, although the majority of the blog will be written by yours truly.

So, what are we doing?

W and I were up late one night in August of this year (2023) talking about movies. This was, and is, a pretty common occurance in our house. Somehow, we came to the conclusion that to make up for years of weekend warrior behavior when it came to films, we should watch one movie every night for three months. Since Spooky Season was looming over our heads like a disappointed father waiting for us to fail, we elected to dedicate September 1st through November 30th to horror; that foundational pillar of the human experience that made us fall in love after a single evening together.

I'm the one who suggested we separate the months by theme. While I lean into fantasy and the supernatural, W has a deep love of SciFi. Given that September is his birthday month, SciHorror seemed the obvious choice.

From there we established that classics, gore, and the supernatural belonged in October. We'd spare anything that could "conceivably happen next door with you none the wiser" for November. This would be our challenge for ourselves, and for each other, since we decided that night we'd alternate who chose the film.

How the blog fits in:

We're going to be posting our initial thoughts, theories, and yes! complaints on this blog. We chose tumblr because we were both active tumblr users about a decade ago under other names and this feels familiar & comfy. We're excited about our challenge and the upcoming video project(s), and want to share that excitement with other fans of the genre. Interact! Recommend your favorite movies! In a post-panini 19 world, we could all use a little more interactive fun anyway.

Why doesn't this blog start on Sept. 1st?

This wasn't initially meant to be shared with the world, to be blunt. We'd both hit personal creative ruts and came up with an idea to break out. It was a few days in that I realized we'd both talked at length about making documentaries or hosting a podcast and basically blurted out mid-conversation that we should share our horror film journey.

Neither of us has ever embarked on a project like this before, and we're starting big. Is there a chance we fizzle out? Sure. But we're going to do our best and take everyone that wants to come along for the ride.

- Abhorsen "A"

#abhorsenandwallmaker #horror movies #horror films #movie review #blog intro #introductory post #introduction #intro post

[littlyon]

I would love to hear your rant about your hatred for the concept of literature

Okay. So here’s the thing about literature and why I hate the concept of Literature with a capital L. Bear in mind this is an American perspective.

Generally speaking, when your average Joe talks about “literature”, they’re referring to the material that was taught in high school: old, dry, pretentious, written by middle-aged white men, etc. Now, that’s not always the case anymore (for instance, we read The Hunger Games and The Book Thief in a couple of my English classes, both modern), but even so, the general cultural understanding of literature derives from what people are taught, which tends towards that type of content.

When you get into higher academic circles, the concept is even more solidified. There is so much criticism and theory out there about what Literature is, and what qualifies as Literature, and there’s an incredible amount of shame leveraged towards people who argue against what’s been normative over the past century. Think about how much vitriol the Twilight fans got, or the embarrassment at admitting you read fanfiction in non-online circles. A lot of that is sexism and homophobia, since society in general really doesn’t like it when media is aimed at women or queer people, but those societal pressures are part and parcel with how we define Real Literature. 

Academia overall is a male-dominated and male-created field. What is canonized as Real Literature by the literary field is largely material that appeals to that demographic. Books written by straight white men about straight white men are the most prominent (i.e. Catcher in the Rye, The Great Gatsby). Works predating 1900 come next (i.e. Jane Austen). Following that come works by marginalized groups about being marginalized (Toni Morrison, Maya Angelou, etc). 

That’s not even getting into genre; it’s very rare to see anything other than realistic or historical fiction considered Literature, unless it’s suitably old. Aasimov and Heinlein count, Tolkein sometimes counts, Dracula and Frankenstein count, but modern scifi and fantasy rarely enter the conversation when you talk about Literature. “Genre fiction” is a derogatory term in academic circles, or at least a disrespectful one.

Now this is not to say that books considered Real Literature are inherently bad, or that you shouldn’t read them. There are things to gain from Austen and Salinger. The issue is that in mainstream academic circles and cultural consciousness, we don’t look beyond these Officially Canonized works when discussing literature. (Incidentally, this is why I studied Comparative Literature instead of English Literature; the body of work that’s looked at is much broader, and allows for more nuance, plus the focus is on examining the interplay of culture and literature. A lot of what we read in CompLit classes would not have counted as Literature by mainstream academic standards.) 

So why is this a problem? Well to start with, it limits the lens through which people see literature, and thereby the lens through which people see the world. There’s a pretty common response teachers will give when asked why students have to read all this stuff, which is that literature helps us understand culture. This is true. However, if your window into culture is the pen of a straight white man from the 1960s, you’re not actually getting an accurate fix on the culture of wherever the book is from. If the point of literature is to learn about the rest of the world, you need to be able to access multiple perspectives, not just the perspectives deemed acceptable by high academia.

But accessing those perspectives is hard, because they’re not respected by high academia. Works that fall outside of the Literature definition are less likely to be considered important enough to distribute across language lines. Now, there’s a bit of an exception for English literature here, since that’s what dominates the market; there are plenty of translations of English YA and scifi/fantasy and romance novels etc. It’s the other way where it suffers. Non-English literature is just as important to the world as English literature, but because the market is dominated by English, they don’t get as much traction. I have no idea what, say, a teenager in France reads, let alone China or Saudi Arabia - countries the English-speaking world has less of a boner for. The to-English translation market is more geared towards the classics and Literature than it is towards popular fiction.

The other big issue with the perception of literature forwarded by academia is format. Throughout this I’ve been talking about books and the written word, which is an incredibly Western perspective. Literature encompasses so much more than that. Typically literature is defined as “written works”, but that eliminates a great body of work that by all rights should count. I would say that a better broad definition would be “composed works”. A folktale doesn’t become literature when it’s put to paper; it was already part of the literary canon of its culture before it was validated by ink. 

This focus on the written word stems largely from colonialism: the counterpoint of “civilized” vs. “uncivilized”, with written tradition being seen as one of the signs of civilization. There is a lot of classism and racism inherent in the academic definition of literature, since it tends to rely on the novel, the short story, the essay, and the poem as its main components. Any type of media or method of storytelling or conveying information that isn’t one of those four aforementioned formats has a hell of a time being seen as anything but “popular literature,” if the word “literature” is appended to it at all. This especially applies to methods of storytelling that do not jibe well with being written down; oral storytelling traditions are usually not considered Literature, or often considered sophisticated. Hell, songs are barely considered literature; there was a big controversy over Bob Dylan winning the Nobel Prize For Literature back in 2016 because people weren’t sure his works should count.

But under the paradigm of literature as “composed works”, a lot of media that isn’t typically considered literature becomes so. It gives us that broader perspective on the world. It’s incredibly damaging to discount pieces of a culture’s history or storytelling simply because they don’t fit into the narrow definition of Literature as put forth by Western academia. And that’s why I hate the idea of Literature as a concept: it asks us to set guidelines for what should be respected, and what should be discarded. Capital-L Literature inherently sets itself as superior to everything else, and defines itself as What Should Be Focused On. Anything not included in that is derided and disrespected, and because of what doesn’t fit, it contributes to the derision and disrespect of marginalized groups and the devaluing of their narratives and experiences.

#hi welcome to my blog have some literary criticism essays #seriously though the whole idea of literature vs non-literature is pointless and meaningless and makes us all the worse #my words #literature #discourse #original post #MAN it feels good to write about lit again though i have missed essays #never thought i'd see the day but here we are i guess

[carriagelamp]

A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood: The Poetry of Mister Rogers

This is an anthology collection of the various poems and songs that appeared in Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood, with art by Luke Flowers. It is exactly as zen as you think it will be. If you are in need of something soft, loving, and affirming right now in the terror that is 2020, go pick this book up. I read it all over the course of two days and feel like a better person for it.

Asterix in Britain

I decided to watch my french Asterix movies on a whim the other week, and that got me rereading all the old Asterix comics I grew up with (Asterix and Obelix All At Sea, Asterix the Legionary, Asterix and the Black Gold, Asterix and the Great Divide, Asterix and the Secret Weapon…) I decided to use in Britain as my representative though because to this day it’s one of my all time favourites, and it’s one of the first ones we ever owned — while the others my brother and I collected avidly over the years (any time we were allowed to pick a new comic out of the book store) I can’t remember a time when we didn’t have this volume at home. There fun, detailed illustrations, goofy puns, over the top slapstick, and endless love between the characters seriously melts my heart every time I pick them up. Though I have to admit, the Secret Weapon sure is a bigger shitshow than I realized as a kid…

The Barnabus Project

This is a new Canadian picture book I’ve been meaning to get my hands on for a few months. It is very neat. It’s a bit more of an involved adventure story than you often see in picture books, while still not entering the domain of graphic novel or chapter book. It’s about a company that genetically engineers “perfect” pets for the public to buy. But deep beneath the storefront, well under the streets, are the sinister labs where the “failed” projects are kept, waiting to be recycled back into parts. This is where Barnabus lives, and this is where Barnabus and his friends must break free from. A thrilled little book with adorable art!

Bunnicula

This is actually my first time reading this book, though I’ve meant to ever since I was a kid. For anyone that doesn’t know this classic, it’s told from the point of view of the family dog, who witnesses his owners bring home a strange new pet: a pet rabbit named Bunnicula, with black fur that looks like a cape and the strangest teeth ever seen on a rabbit… The housecat is even more alarmed, and the two of them begin to investigate the strange occurrences going on around the rabbit and protect their family from sinister forces. It’s a very cute chapter book and a nice soft intro to the “horror” genre without going quite as dark as Goosebumps.

Care Bears: Unlock The Magic

This was… hm. Something. It was cute. The art of this graphic novel has certainly modernized the care bears from their original style, but it’s not a bad thing — the simple, bold shapes are actually pretty enjoyable. You have the care bears on a mission to protect the land of these strange new creatures from dark, “heartless” forces. Overall, if you’re in the mood for something soft and nostalgic that’s been transported into 2020, it’s not a bad read... though I can’t say it wow’ed me.

Emma and the Blue Genie

Another adorable novella (chapter book? Somewhere between the two?) by Cornelia Funke who I don’t think is capable of writing a bad story. Like all her books, this one is charming and whimsical and feels strangely classic. Emma and her wiener dog Tristan sneak out of their house one night for some peace and quiet, and discover an unusual bottle that washes up on the shore. When they release it, a small blue genie is released and Emma learns of the horrible events that befell him and his master in a far off land. A horrible yellow genie stole the source of his magic, forcing him into this small, weakened form, and has besieged the land now that the blue genie is out of the way. The blue genie seems to heartbroken that Emma can’t help but promise her help, and accompanies him across the sea… A fun little story for anyone that enjoyed Aladdin.

The Erth Dragons: The Wearle

The first miserable failure of a book I read this month. I couldn’t finish it and didn’t even try. It sounded like cool scifi dragons, but what I got was a pack of sixty dragons off exploring. A team that included a grand total of three female dragons. Who are there for, it seems, breeding. One of which is fridged immediately to jump start the main character’s story. This is a book I may have read in middle school, but I was thrilled to realize I actually have choices now and don’t need to tolerate this shit. Do not fucking bother, the world building is obnoxious as well.

 Flawed Dogs

Now this one was a delight. As quirky and bizarre and charming as Berkeley Breathed’s work always is. This is a novel that starts with a prized pure-bred dachshund, Sam the Lion, one who is a once in a life time example of doggy bred perfection. However things get mixed up on his way to the snobby dog-show-loving owner who purchased him and he ends up instead in the arms of a young girl who adores him as only children can, completely indifferent to any “perfection” he may have. The happiness of girl and dog fosters resentment in the household’s other dog, a show dog who is pampered but not loved. So begins a horrible sequence of events that sees Sam cast out of the house, horribly mutilated, and left to fend for himself in a cruel world. Flawed Dogs manages to deliver both dogs with rocket-propulsive farts as well as grim questions about what the nature of life, perfection, and vengeance means to a wronged party who has had his life destroyed beyond all recognition.

This was my favourite book of the month, and I would HIGHLY recommend it, but maybe give it a miss if you’re squicked by animal brutality because this book delivers very funny moments, very heartwarming moments, and very upsetting animal abuse in fairly equal measure.

The Land of Stories: The Wishing Spell

The second disappointing book of the month. I’ve heard so many good things about this series! About how it’s gotten so many kids to fall in love with reading and series and more complex narratives! I’ve been really excited to read it, because I love me a twisted fairy-tale. Unfortunately this seems to be a very good series for kids, and a very poor story for adults who are used to the tropes of a basic fairy-tale inspired fantasy novel. The writing was unfortunately bland and it was chockablock of clichés and stereotypes that are frankly rather unappealing. Maybe things get better as it progresses, but the series didn’t hold my interest for long enough for me to find out. Honestly, it just made me want to go and reread Inkheart instead.

Little Tails in the Jungle

The Little Tails series is an adorable blend of picture book, comic, and nonfiction educational. It shows Chipper and Squizzo as they adventure around different ecosystems and interact with the wildlife there, sharing interesting facts and trying to keep out of trouble. It’s a pleasant read for an adult that likes well done wildlife art, and fantastic for kids that are craving accessible nonfiction content about animals.

When Santa Fell to Earth

My second Cornelia Funke novella of the month. This is a Christmas favourite of mine, and I reread it around December every couple years or so. In this story, Nikolas is a young Santa who is on the run. The North Pole has been taken over by a faction of Santa’s who have given up on the traditional values of Christmas and have decided instead to focus on a more sterilized, corporate type of Christmas, one with clear present transactions and a hefty bottom line. Any dissenting Santas are hunted down and dealt with. Nikolas is one of the sole surviving rebel Santas who has managed to stay ahead of the Santa hunters… or he had, until his reindeer panics in a thunderstorm and sends his caravan crashing down to earth, to broken to lift off again. Stuck at the side of a little residential street, Nikolas befriends a couple of local children who help him, his elves, and his angels try to get things sorted out and ready to go before Christmas — or the Santa hunters — arrive.

Wintersmith

More Pratchett, and in this case another seasonally appropriate read. This is the third book of the Tiffany Aching series, in which Tiffany, a young apprentice witch, joins her mentor at the secretive dark morris dance, a ritual that happens in the winter to welcome the changing of the seasons, just as the regular morris dance heralds summer. Tiffany, though, doesn’t just hear the music but feels it in bones, and before she knows it she finds herself compelled to join in, to fill in a strange empty spot she can’t look away from. She does, in fact, find herself dancing with the Wintersmith, and now there are snowflakes coming down with her face crafted into them, frost that lovingly spells out her name, and a winter that doesn’t seem inclined to leave anytime soon. Tiffany made a mistake, and now people are going to die if she doesn’t do something.

#book review #mister rogers #mister roger's neighborhood #daniel tiger #terry pratchett #discworld #tiffany aching #wintersmith #cornelia funke #berkeley breathed #bloom county #flawed dogs #frederic brremard #little tails #the land of stories #care bears #asterix #asterix in britain #when santa fell to earth #christmas #winter #children's literature #picture books #graphic novels #comics #canadian literature #canlit #the barnabus project #chatter

[thejakeformerlyknownasprince]

Hell is For Children: Animorphs as Children’s Lit

[Guest post from Cates!]

So a couple of months ago Bug asked me to write a post about why Animorphs is Middle Grade/Children’s Fiction, not Young Adult. Since she asked, I’ve read several wonderful posts from other people questioning or explaining what the difference is between Middle Grade and Young Adult, where Animorphs fits, and why it matters. Here’s my two cents as a children’s literature scholar.

To start, Animorphs’ 20,000-30,000 word count per book is a big hint it’s not YA fiction. Obviously, a book with a low word count is not automatically a children’s book, and a book with a high word count is not automatically a book for adults. But if Animorphs was aimed at teens, Applegate would likely have been expected to make the books longer. While there are a lot of great YA novels that are as short as or shorter than your average Animorphs book (check out BookRiot’s list of 100 YA novels under 250 pages,) most YA series, and especially fantasy or scifi YA series, are expected to top 100,000 words. (The three books in the Diviners series by Libba Bray have a total wordcount of 520,000 words; Laini Taylor’s Daughter of Smoke and Bone trilogy tops 400,000 words, for example.)

Animorphs’ word count isn’t enough on its own to exclude the series from YA classification, but Animorphs’ short word count also fits the trend of children’s—not YA—series fiction in the 1990s. In order to understand this trend, and why it produced books specifically for children, not teens, we need to jump back in time to WWII. Because so many American men were drafted into the military, women took over jobs that had been almost exclusively done by men, like mechanics, sales, electricians, etc. When WWII ended, thousands of men returned home, but women didn’t leave the workforce. Realizing they had an excess of young men and not enough jobs, the US government created the GI Bill, allowing soldiers to attend college for free or at a steeply reduced cost, thus stemming the influx of workers and giving the economy and industry room to grow.

At the same time, families were having children (and those children were surviving) at an unprecedented rate. Thanks to the GI Bill, college was no longer something reserved for wealthy white men, but something available to the middle and even lower class. A college education offered social and economic mobility, and the Baby Boomers, children of the GI Bill recipients, became the first generation to grow up with the idea that college was something that could and should be pursued by all.

Then, the Baby Boomers began having children in the late 1970s through early 1990s, meaning a large chunk of those children (including Bug and I) were in elementary school in mid 1990s to early 2000s. Thanks to their parents, a higher percentage of American adults than ever before had attended college. Thanks to advancements in women’s medicine, psychology, sociology, and education, among other fields, people understood as never before the importance of instilling a love of reading in children at a young age. The huge middle class was willing to invest lots of time and money in their children’s educations, because at this point not having a college education was seen as a barrier to success.

I’m sure you can see where this is going. (Kidding).

Children’s publishing exploded in the 1990s because children—or, more accurately, their parents—were seen as a huge, untapped market. Previously, children’s publishing didn’t receive as much money or attention because, the logic went, children did not have money and therefore couldn’t buy books. But then the publishing industry realized that there were literally millions of parents willing to spend money on their children’s education, and publishers like Scholastic, Dutton, Dial, Penguin, Random House, and others rushed to take advantage of this new customer demographic.

Of the ten books featured on this Scholastic bookfair poster from 2000, seven are series fiction.

Serialized fiction—ie, stories that took place over the course of several books about the same characters and/or in the same setting—was the perfect way for publishing houses to capitalize on this new market. And hoo boy was it successful. From 1993 to 1995, Goosebumps books were being sold at a rate of approximately 4 million books a month. That means roughly 130,000 books were sold every day.

Here’s a few names to bring you back: Bailey School Kids, The Magic Treehouse, Babysitter’s Club, Junie B. Jones, Encyclopedia Brown, Cam Jansen, Horrible Harry, Secrets of Droon, The Magic Attic Club, A Series of Unfortunate Events, Bunnicula, The Boxcar Children, The American Girls, Amelia’s Notebook, Dear America, Wayside School, Choose Your Own Adventure…we could keep going for days. All of those series have two things in common: one, they were either published between 1985 and 2005 and/or experienced a huge resurgence in the 90s, and two, they’re all middle grade novels. Some are aimed at younger children, like Junie B. Jones and The Magic Treehouse, and some are aimed at older children, like the Dear America series and A Series of Unfortunate Events.

The point is, Animorphs is so clearly a product of its time (and not just because of the Hansen Brothers references,) it slots perfectly into the trend of series fiction for children. If you want to claim Animorphs is YA, you also need to claim all of the series I just listed above.

Now, let’s talk about the main argument I see in favor Animorphs being YA: the dark content.

This is my personal wheelhouse. I’m planning on someday doing my PhD dissertation on trauma, violence, war, and trauma recovery in Middle Grade—not YA—fiction. I always find it funny when people use descriptors like cute, sweet, innocent, silly, light, and simple to describe children’s books. While there are certainly plenty of children’s books that are one or more of those things, there are also dozens that are the polar opposite—dark, complex, serious, violent, and deep. I once read a review of The Golden Compass which said “it’s not like other children’s books with a clear cut good guy and bad guy and a simple message.” I don’t know how many children’s books the author of the article had read, but I’m guessing not a lot. Let’s just do a blunt reality check with a few of my favorites—including some picture books which are typically for an even younger audience than Middle Grade. Spoilers for all of the books I’m about to mention.

Baseball Saved Us by Ken Mochizuki This book follows a little boy who is sent to a Japanese interment camp during WWII. He and his family deal with abuse, starvation, and sickness. Suggested reading age*? Kindergarten and up.

*(For this and all subsequent books I used reviews from Kirkus, the Horn Book, and School Library Journal to determine suggested reading age.)

Check out this picture of Shorty playing baseball while an armed soldier watches him from a guard tower. Isn’t it cute, sweet, and innocent?

Pink and Say by Patricia Polacco Pink and Say are 15-year-old boys serving as Union Soldiers during the Civil War. Confederate Soldiers kill Pink’s mother, Pink and Say become POWs, and Pink is hanged because he is African American. Suggested reading age? First grade and up.

Fox by Margaret Wild This book starts grim and just gets grimmer. Dog and Magpie have been burned in a wildfire. Dog loses an eye, Magpie a wing. Magpie rides on Dog’s head—she is his eyes, he is her wings. Fox comes and convinces Magpie to leave Dog and come with him. There are definite sexual undertones. The book ends with the possibility that Dog and Magpie will be reunited, but no certainty. Suggested reading age? Six and up.

[The text says “He stops, scarcely panting./ There is silence between them/ Neither moves, neither speaks./ Then Fox shakes Magpie off his back/ as he would a flea,/ and pads away./ He turns and looks at Magpie, and he says,/ ‘Now you and Dog will know what it is like/ to be truly alone.’/ Then he is gone./ In the stillness, Magpie hears a faraway scream./ She cannot tell if it is a scream of triumph/ or despair.”]

Tell me this isn’t a total punch in the gut.

The Rabbits by Shaun Tan The introduction of rabbits to Australia is used as an allegory for European colonization and the casual destruction of the Aboriginals’ lives and cultures. Suggested reading age? Six and up.

The Scarlet Stockings Spy by Trinka Hakes Noble A girl spies on the British during the Revolutionary War while her brother fights. He’s killed and there’s actually a description of her finding the “bloodstained hole” in his coat where the bullet struck him. How cute and silly! Suggested reading age? Second grade and up.

Meet Addy: An American Girl by Connie Rose Porter I think this works as a nice comparison to Animorphs because it’s another long-running, popular series aimed at kids just starting to read chapter books. Among other incidents, there’s a graphic description of Addy watching her brother get whipped by an overseer and a passage where another overseer forces Addy to eat worms. I actually give American Girls a lot of points for not shying away from the uglier parts of history. They don’t always get it right (*cough* Kaya *cough*) but those books are more complex than I think most people realize. Suggested reading age? Second grade and up.

My Teacher Flunked the Planet by Bruce Coville From the sight of a child starving to death to homeless children freezing in the streets, Coville certainly doesn’t avoid the darker side of human nature. Pretty sure most adults only noticed the funny green alien on the cover. Suggested reading age? Fourth grade and up.

“That was the day we crept, invisible, into a prison where men and women were being tortured for disagreeing with their government. What had already been done to those people was so ugly I cannot bring myself to describe it, even though the memory of it remains like a scar burned into my brain with a hot iron.

“Even worse was the moment when it was about to start again. When I saw what the uniformed man was going to do to the woman strapped to the table, I pressed myself against the wall and closed my eyes. But even with my hands clamped over my ears I couldn’t shut out her scream.”

Inside Out and Back Again by Thanhha Lai The Vietnam War, migrants drowning in the ocean, refugee camps, racism…this book is a bit like Animorphs in that it’s got a surprisingly dry sense of humor even as awful events take place. Suggested reading age? Fourth grade and up.

The Great Gilly Hopkins by Katherine Patterson A pretty harsh look at the realities of America’s foster care system as told by a girl who could give Rachel Berenson a run for her money. It’s not afraid to show that parents aren’t automatically good people. Suggested reading age? Third grade and up.

Stepping on the Cracks and Wait Til Helen Comes by Mary Downing Hahn If WWII, bullying, dead siblings, draft dodging, and parental abuse are too light and fluffy for you, you can always read about a child consumed with survivor’s guilt because she started the fire that killed her mother. Suggested reading age? Fifth grade and up.

“‘How do you think Jimmy would feel if he knew his own sister was helping a deserter while he lay dying in Belgium?’

‘It wasn’t like that!’ I said, stung by the unfairness of her question. ‘Stuart was sick, he needed me! I wish Jimmy had been down there in the woods, too! Then he’d be alive, not dead!’

Mother slapped me then, hard as she could, right in the face. ‘Never say anything like that again!’ she cried. ‘Never!’”

I could go on (and on and on and on) about trauma narratives for children, but suffice to say while I think Animorphs is probably the most brilliant one I’ve ever read, it’s far from the only one. Kids’ books can be dark, which is good, because if we only tell stories about white, able-bodied children living in big houses with two loving parents then we’re excluding the majority of real children’s lived experiences from our narratives.

There’s one more point I’d like to address: without sounding overly accusatory, I think a lot of the compulsion to consider Animorphs YA instead of children’s fiction is born of the adult bias against children. I’ve mentioned this before on the podcast, but Children’s Literature scholar Maria Nikolajeva created the term aetonormativity to describe society’s tendency to value the adult over the child. Like I discussed above, we have this idea that children’s books are somehow sweet and innocent, while YA fiction is darker and grittier because it addresses so-called ‘adult’ topics like sex, drugs, suicide, violence, and death.

As I hope I’ve established above, just because a book addresses these topics that doesn’t automatically mean it’s for teens. Books about heavy subjects can, are, and should be written for children. I think most of us are fans of Animorphs because it’s a series that sticks with us long after we close the neon-cloud covers. It’s a series that strongly disputes the notion of a clear right and wrong, and doesn’t shy away from the atrocities of war. And it was written for children. It was sold to children. It was read by children.

Some of us adults are just cool enough to read children’s books that treat child readers with the respect they deserve.

— Cates

#animorphs #children's literature #children's books #literature #lit crit #childhood #young adult literature #ya sf #genre fiction #violence mention #slavery mention #imperialism #internment #beta post #long post #picture books #publishing #censorship #literary history #animorphs meta #war

[spnfanficpond]

January 2020 Pond LiveChat Recap - Writing RPF

We had a great time chatting with Taylor,  @impalaimagining​! Thank you so much for joining us and sharing your thoughts and experience!

Our topic this month was Writing RPF, and we talked about the legal, moral, and emotional aspects of writing about real people.  A rundown of the chat, as well as general Pond news, is below the cut!

We started off the chat with the legal side of things, most of which was covered back when we talked about Monetizing Fan Works back in May. Here are the related links that were brought up:

Wikipedia: Legal issues with fan fiction (The section dealing with RPF is near the bottom under Right of Publicity.) Boiled down, RPF has to deal with a celebrity's Right of Publicity. Famous people have the right to control the commercial use of their name, image, and likeness, sometimes even their broader identity or persona. Most states’ laws on this only apply to uses for commercial gain. So, don't try to get paid directly for RPF, and you're safe.

From NPR: We Stan: Real Person Fan Fiction Comes To Life. This is a fascinating discussion about RPF, the legalities, and how it’s been changing in recent years. This argues that basically since “fiction” is right there in the name, RPF is inherently more legal than regular fan fiction based off of characters. No one is trying to say that the real people involved are actually doing these things, it’s just fiction.

Goodreads Genre: Fan Fiction - Real Person Fiction. When I was researching, this link came up, and I clicked it, not knowing what to expect. Finding that Fan fiction, much less RPF is on Goodreads was surprising to me. (I thought Goodreads was only about books that could be purchased and didn’t touch “unpublished” works, but I guess not?) What I found most interesting was exactly how many of the titles listed on that page are J2-related. There are more J2-related titles than all of the others COMBINED. As a fandom, we rock!

The discussion started with most folks saying they hadn’t considered the legalities of fan fiction, or RPF in particular, when they began writing. Their first concern was just getting the story out of their head and onto the paper. Also, since no one was getting paid for it and it’s so popular, no one questioned the legalities. Also, since it’s fiction, there’s no defamation of character.

@mrswhozeewhatsis​ (Michelle): Most people know that I generally don’t read RPF, unless it’s an AU. Way way way back, when I first started reading fan fiction, I used to read the occasional RPF. Honestly, before SPN, I never really liked an actor enough to want to know more about them. (I've been burned by some jerk actors in the past.) One of the first RPFs I ever read was from Jared's POV, and it contained a scene where he was on stage at a con, and detailed his thoughts. I forget what the inciting incident was, but suddenly he was thinking, "Great, now they're all thinking about how big my dick is," and it made him spiral. Something about that stuck with me, to the point that I cringe every time I see Jared on stage and anything remotely sexual comes up. That's pretty much what stopped me from reading RPF. I have no problem thinking about how big Sam's dick is, but I can't ponder too much about Jared's dick, or I can't look him in the eye when I see him at cons!!!

Taylor: I definitely think there is a very fine line to be walked when you write RPF, and I generally don't cross into the area of writing from an actor's POV.

Q: Is that how you keep it separate so you don’t stare into their faces at a con during a photo op and think about the smut you wrote about them?

Taylor: It can be hard to keep it separate sometimes but it's actually very easy in the moment of a split second photo op. They move so quickly, I don't genuinely think I have ever had the time to consider the things I've written about them while I was talking to and hugging them!

Q: Anyone else who doesn’t read/write RPF, do you think that the whole not being able to look them in the eye is an internal thing for anyone in your life, or just celebs? 

@manawhaat​ (Mana): For example, I have A. FUCKING. LOT. of sex dreams. With tons of people, celebs and people I know in my real life... and I don't want to say that it's jaded me as far as thinking sexual thoughts about people, but in a way it kind of has. I don't have that moral dilemma of not being able to look Jared in the eye after thinking about his dick.  Taylor: I completely agree. I think writing it has made me kind of impervious to it bleeding into my daily life. I see Jared and my heart goes ohmygodwelovehim first and in person, then later when he's not around is when the wowowowbutwhatabouthisdick comes in. Michelle: I don’t think I could write about anyone in a smutty way. Just characters.

Q: I wanted to talk about 'characterization' of rpf. Do other rpf writers out there think of the people as characters and treat them that way, or do you humanize them? Idk if that question makes sense but it's along the same lines of keeping them separate. 

@fogsrollingin​ (Alex): I cast them in other stories when it's rpf. I always write rpf AUs with only a couple exceptions. We know their onscreen mannerisms, so making them astronauts terraforming a new planet with evil aliens on it is like "oh easy". Taylor: Characterization is huge for me. If someone writes an actor outside of the way they portray themselves, it's impossible for me to read. While we don't know these people personally, we know how they act outwardly and in the public eye, and that's enough to get a good idea of the kind of person they would be.  Michelle: I have no trouble reading AUs, because it's just another character who happens to look like and have the name of one of my favorite actors. In AUs, they're characters. If they are actors on a show called Supernatural, then it's too humanizing for me. Taylor: See, Michelle, my mind can't separate it to that degree. If I'm reading about someone named Jared who looks like our Jared? It's Jared. AUs give me a lot of trouble, to be honest.  Both writing and reading. Alex: I feel like it's no different than if Jared did a scifi movie during his summer break from spn & it's so low budget they just kept his real name for his character name.

Q: Do you feel differently reading ship RPF than reader insert RPF?

Michelle: Most of the RPF stories I read are ships, but I do read some reader inserts, too. It’s not an intentional choice either way. Alex: I don't feel differently about it, rly. I know I prefer reading ships over reader insert but that's just my personal jam. Mana: I have a hard time reading ship rpf mainly because I like the versions of my ships that I've built in my head, so when someone deviates from that it is a little turn off for me. Like, your version of Cockles is not the same as my version, which is totally fine, you do you, but it isn't gonna tickle me the same way ya know. so when I get into like non-mainstream ships it's extra difficult to find writers who represent them in the 'right' ways. Taylor: I feel that way about pretty much everything I read, and I think that has a lot to do with the whole characterization piece of it. I know that my idea of and the way I portray Jared or Jensen is probably a million times different than the way other people, including my readers, think of them. I try really hard to make sure the way the actors come across is "right". Mana: I think the one big piece of characterization is kind of using the way they have presented themselves as a moral compass. Obviously they don't present their whole selves so there's always wiggle room and areas where you are free to project your ideas of them into the fic, but that's also the trickiest area and where so many people drop the ball.  Taylor: YES. So, so many people take that wiggle room and take it leaps and bounds beyond what is public (fandom) knowledge. 

Q: How do you feel about RPFs that support certain theories about the wives being beards and such?

Mana: I try to not write anything that would feel as if I'm slandering anyone, etc. I wouldn't want to write a Jensen x reader fic where Danneel cheats on him and that's how they get together. If I mention it at all I just say that they've peacefully and amicably parted ways. If I don't mention it then they simply don't exist in the timeline. But never anything negative about anyone, especially the wives.  @girl-with-a-fandom-fettish​ (Kaisha): I don't write smut (only read) so I have a very different interpretation on a lot of the things being discussed. I tend to stick with non-AU, sister/daughter!reader insert RPF fics because I don't feel creative enough branch out beyond that. I feel the same as Mana, and I actually won't read fics that are based on the premise that someone cheated for the storyline to work. Alex: I'm okay if ppl deviate far into fantasy realms tho. As long as it's not too support a real life conspiracy theory about the actors, if ppl wanna write it & others like it, all the more power to them. I mean as long as you're like "I killed the wives during the zombie apocalypse in my fic but I love them in real life please don't kill me" I'm like "cool". Taylor: I avoid bashing fics or beard fics. Admittedly I have one where Jensen and Danneel never got married, but they still had a daughter together and Danneel hid the kid from him until her 5th birthday. That doesn't feel like a bash/slander fic to me because I'm not painting anyone as a bad person - things just played out differently. 

Q: The person who suggested this topic mentioned “how to write your first RPF.” Any suggestions?

Michelle: Have Mana finish it for you! (The only one I’ve ever written, she had to finish for me!) Alex: My first rpf was a ballerina!Jared & yogi!Misha romcom. It was so goofy! Taylor: I don't know if I can even answer that question. It literally just poured out of me when I started. I took the tiny little idea I had in my head (my daydream, as it was previously and so aptly named), and put it into words and it ended up being a 10 part series. Mana: How to write your first rpf: READ RPF FROM A LOT OF DIFFERENT WRITERS. find what works for you and for the people you're writing about. do a couple of trial runs with shorter fics. you have room to play, but try not to stray too far from what they've presented themselves as in real life. Kaisha: For me, when I wrote my first RPF (which was also my first fic), I was in a mental place where I was watching a lot of con videos and reading a lot of sister/daughter fics. It was more "I need an outlet for how I am feeling right now and I don't have anyone to talk to"...so I talked to the image of the boys I had made in my head from what I saw of them online.

Q: Does character shipping affect the RPFs you read? Like, if your OTP is Destiel, do you mainly only read Cockles?

Kaisha: I will read almost anything that's related to one of the Js, either RPF or SPN. But I don't have strong ship feels one way or another that changes what I read/write for RPF. Taylor: I don't know if character ships have any kind of effect on RPF ships. Because there are a lot more people involved in cons than we see on the show, and cons are my primary source of RPF inspiration. Like, we see Henry, what, twice in the show? But Gil McKinney is a whole other story. He's all over the convention circuit (or at least he used to be) and also all over fandom twitter. It just feels easier for me to write RPF because I see these actors in my real life, interacting with other real people. I have interacted with them, which makes things feel a lot more real than writing about two hot fictional dudes from my TV screen. Alex: I'm definitely up for Sam/Dean as much as I'm up for J2. Oddly tho it's Mishalecki at real life con panels that's gotten me totally happy to write/read Mishalecki.

Q: (From Taylor) The piece of RPF I struggle with the most is bringing events from the actors' real lives into my stories. Writing about Jensen and the brewery, about their kids and stories they tell about them at cons, that's where my already grey area turns even more grey. 

Kaisha: I am right there with you Taylor! My fic started as mostly the reader and JJ interacting and then I remember the twins existed, too. And with my new fic I am trying to figure out if the San Jac and FBBC will work in or not. Mana: I'm interested in this, because I don't seem to have that issue or gray area. It just doesn't exist for me and I'd like to hear more about it from you guys. Taylor: It's so hard haha. I have something coming up that deals with Jared being arrested and of course I didn't post it before that whole event went down so now it looks like I'm taking that part of his life and twisting it for my personal fiction needs. Which feels kinda (adult word for "not good").  Kaisha: For me the gray area thing is because I want to write a believable story. A believable story has realistic details and if I am ignoring or overlooking things that my audience knows to be true, I feel it takes them out of the story. Mana: So it's a case of omit it entirely or commit to it entirely? I ask in regards to like FBBC and the kids. Do you feel differently about incorporating those aspects into your fics? would you be more comfortable writing about fbbc than you would the kids? Or does that gray area cover the same on both? Kaisha: The same thing goes for when I beta read something. A detail that I don't remember or agree with will take me out of the story and send me on a research rabbit trail to know if the author is correct with what they said. I want to stay in the story as much as possible and I want that for my readers too. That's probably a good way to differentiate it. If I state in the A/N that J1 only has 1 kid, then I don't have to consider what year the story is occurring in. But if I tell you it's non-AU, well then everything that is happening in our universe should be happening in my story (otherwise, it would be AU, even to the slightest degree). The kids vs. FBBC thing I think could be very personal on which someone feels more comfortable with. I say that because I know ABSOLUTLEY NOTHING about alcohol. Kids on the other hand I get. Taylor: For me it's the same. Just, actual concrete aspects of Jensen's life are harder for me to write about. Because then - again, just for me - that feels like writing from their point of view, which is something I try to avoid.

Q: Do any of you read/write RPF outside of SPN?

Taylor: SPN is my only fandom. Michelle: I tried to read fics from other fandoms, and just couldn’t get into it. I might be getting sucked into The Witcher fandom, though. Haven’t found any Geralt fics that really align with my image of him, though. Alex: There are CW network RPF AUs I read. Taylor: I feel like, as SPN fans, we have a wonderful privilege and incredible pool of writers to choose from when we want to read. I don't know, because like I said SPN is my only fandom, if any other fandom has this level of talent or dedication.

Q: Have you ever read an RPF fic that changed the way you viewed an actor? Or given you a sense of gained insight into their lives?

Michelle: That's actually why I don't read “canon-compliant” RPF, actually. Because then I might think that idea is real, and won't see that it's not, even when proven wrong. Like, maybe Jared actually loves it when we think about how big his dick is? But I can't stop thinking that it embarrasses him and makes him uncomfortable because I read it in that one fic. Kaisha: @crashdevlin​  has a Jensen x reader series that also heavily features Tom Hiddleston. My view of Tom has forever been changed because of her story!  Michelle: My brain is very malleable. Sometimes, I'm so open-minded, my brain falls right out. I have to be careful what I let influence me. Kaisha: It wasn't something that I intended to happen. Crash just wrote a very compelling character and I think my opinion would have been altered no matter who it was that she used as the face. Taylor: I've never read anything that has changed the way I view the actors. I've certainly read things that have given me new ideas about the things they enjoy (bitey and/or rough smut), but nothing that's changed the way they appear in my mind. I think the biggest part of all of this is just remembering that all of this is 100% FICTION and should never be taken as reality in any way, shape, or form.

To close out the chat, Mana requested fic recs! Here are the recs that were mentioned:

Michelle: If you're into serial killer AUs, There's a J2 AU in my AO3 bookmarks that's genius. Adoration. The other RPF bookmark I have is called Beholder. Jared runs an animal shelter, and Jensen is a homeless man with a TBI who gets dumped at the shelter one night.

Alex: My favorite rpf fic is Tails by keep_waking_up. Werefox!Jared & kitsune!Jensen law enforcement murder mystery AU.

Taylor: One of my favorites to read is by @thecleverdame​: Modern Technology. (Jared x reader) This is unfinished but it's quickly becoming one of my favorite Jensen-things I've ever written, AND IT'S AN AU!!! Rockabye. Also, there’s You Saved Me (Jared x Reader). And have a J2 x Reader for funsies! Something is Happening

Kaisha: This is my favorite RPF. Underneath verse (series) - J2 -  Jensen is the undercover FBI agent sent to take out Jared, the boss of Chicago. #Self-promo, but I am pretty proud of this one, too: Nanny, Sister, Daughter...Family (Jenneel with sorta daughter!reader)

Mana: Here’s the Cockles x Reader fic that Michelle and I wrote: Rumor Has It And, of course, (Jenneel x Reader) Fools In Love.

Feel free to reblog with your favorite RPF fics!!

Also, the February LiveChat info is still TBD. Feel free to send in your topic ideas and suggest guest speakers!!

General Pond Updates and Reminders

What we’ve got cooking up next: Not much, at the moment, since everyone is busy, so we’re just trying to keep up with the day-to-day at the moment! Our to do list is still long, though, and will not be neglected forever! Next up is organizing the tagging system on the blog to make it easier for readers to find the stories they’re interesting in and for writers to find the help they’re looking for!

Reminders:

Angel Fish Award nominations are accepted all month long! No need to wait to tell us how much you liked a fellow Fish’s work!  IF YOU HAVE SENT IN A NOMINATION, BUT HAVE NOT RECEIVED A PRIVATE MESSAGE CONFIRMING WE RECEIVED IT, WE DIDN’T GET IT. Be sure to use Submit instead of Ask!

Don’t forget to submit your stories to be posted to the blog! When your stories are on the blog, then they are easier to nominate for Angel Fish Awards!

Say hi to December’s New Members and January’s New Members! (If we missed someone, let us know!)

Check the Pond CALENDAR to see when Big Fish will be in the Skype chat room/discord general channel and other Pond and SPN events are happening! Know of something that’s not on the calendar, send us an ask or submission with the deets info details!  The calendar offers a lot of features, such as showing you when things are in your own timezone! Since we’re an international group, that’s a definite plus!!

We’re getting lots of requests for more Big Fish, lately, but so far, only one applicant! If you know someone you think would be a good Big Fish, tell them to apply!!

#chat recap #spnfanficpond livechat #michelle answers #fan fiction #fanfiction #fan fic #fanfic #spn fan fiction #spn fanfiction #sn fan fic #spn fanfic #supernatural fan fiction #supernatural fan fic #supernatural fanfiction #supernatural fanfic #fic rec #spn fic rec #supernatural fic rec #chat room #let's chat #THE CHAT ROOM #pond chat #RPF #spn rpf #supernatural rpf

[sigmaleph]

Book recs masterpost

y’all really came through here, thanks! Here’s a collected version, I will continue to update it if recs keep coming. Format will be a little inconsistent but I will try to keep books by the same author together and give the summary if it exists and who provided the rec.

Under a cut cause it gets long:

Gene Wolfe:

The Fifth Head of Cerberus

Three interconnected novellas about life on an authoritarian twin planet system where humans have apparently wiped out the natives. Superbly well written and thoughtful imo

rec by @femmenietzsche

Book of the New Sun 

rec by @napoleonchingon

Octavia Butler:

Dawn, rec by @empresszo, @typicalacademic

Parable of the Sower, rec by @st-just

Kindred, rec by @squareallworthy

Angelica Gorodischer:

Kalpa Imperial

epic fantasy in the style of conan the barbarian, we see the stories of an old empire in some nondescript country, a nondescript amount of millenia ago. small vignettes of different time periods within the country. very light in fantasy, basically an entire book of nothing but lore for a D&D campaign

Trafalgar

comedy sci fi. the life stories of a sales man, a guy who goes door to door selling whatever he can, except IN SPACE. all the stories are framed as him in his little bar in rosario with his friends or drinking mate, telling his latests adventures through space.

La saga de los confines by  Liliana Bodoc

lord of the rings except instead of taking inspiration from nordic folk tales is based on the american conquest. see fantasy races and cultures based on the native american population from south america. lots of poetry, lots of cool classic fantasy with a fresh new flavor

(Already read)

la batalla del calentamiento by marcelo figueras

the fantasy here is very understated to the point of it being magical realism but still my top three favourite book of all time. it starts with a man who suffers gigantism receiving a message from heaven delivered by a wolf speaking in latin. the most colorful and endearing little town with the most wacky of habitants open their arms to the guy who is desperatly in search of redemption

homestuck (by Andrew Hussie)

there is really nothing i can say about this that you havent already heard, so im not even going to bother. just give the first arc (which is about a hundred pages long) a change and see where it goes from there

All of the above suggestions by @fipindustries

Ada Palmer. Terra Ignota series (starts with Too Like the Lightning) (seconded by @youzicha)

(read the first one, have the second one but haven’t read it yet)

Jo Walton, Thessaly series (starts with The Just City)

Yoon Ha Lee, Machinaries of Empire series (starts with Ninefox Gambit) (seconded by @terminallyuninspired)

Ann Leckie:

Imperial Radch series (Starts with Ancillary Justice) (seconded by @youzicha and @squareallworthy)

Raven Tower

N. K. Jemisin:

Broken Earth trilogy (starts with The Fifth Season) (seconded by @typicalacademic)

Dreamblood duology (starts with The Killing Moon)

Seth Dickinson, Masquerade series (starts with The Traitor Baru Cormorant)

(Good rec, already read the first one)

Jeff Vandermeer, Southern Reach series (starts with Annihilation)

Victor LaValle, The Ballad of Black Tom

Tamsyn Muir, Gideon the Ninth

Arkady Martine, A Memory Called Empire

M. R. Carey, The Girl With All The Gifts

All of the above by @st-just

Le guin:

The Dispossessed, rec by @st-just, @youzicha

The Left Hand of Darkness, rec by @youzicha and @typicalacademic

both also seconded by @squareallworthy

(I love Le Guin, read both of these)

Zelazny: Lord of Light, rec by @st-just

Charles Stross:

Missile Gap.

A Colder War.

Peter Watts, Blindsight

Bruce Sterling, Heavy Weather. (I assume. There are multiple books named such)

All of the above by @youzicha

Fonda Lee, Jade City

Richard K. Morgan, Altered Carbon

Shining Path, more thorough rec here.

all by @typicalacademic

Lois McMaster Bujold:

the Vorkosigan Saga

(rec by @omnidistance, seconded by @squareallworthy. Already read all of them, excellent choice)

The Curse of Chalion, rec by @theorem-sorry

Greg Egan:

Permutation City

Orthogonal

above two and “anything else” by him, rec by @saelf

Diaspora, rec by @squareallworthy

The Clockwork Rocket

Physicist discovers relativity in a Riemannian (as opposed to Minkovskian) universe. Also the world is ending.

rec by @jackhkeynes

Chesterton, The Man Who Was Thursday

Dick, The Man in the High Castle

Gaiman, American Gods

Gibson, Count Zero

Heinlein, The Moon is a Harsh Mistress.

Liu, The Three Body Problem

Mitchell, Cloud Atlas

Niffenegger, The Time Traveler’s Wife

Niven and Pournelle, Footfall

North, The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August

Powers, The Anubis Gates

Wilson, Spin.

All of the above by @squareallworthy

Pratchett, Discworld books (going postal, thud!, unseen academicals, or the wee free men recommended by @acertainaccountofevents, Wyrd Sisters rec’d by @squareallworthy)

Neal Stephenson, Cryptonomicon & D.O.D.O.

Ted Chiang, Story of Your Life and anything else by him

To Say Nothing of the Dog by Connie Willis (also suggesting this review)

 C.J. Cherryh – The Faded Sun Trilogy.

Honestly not sure there’s anything groundbreaking or unique about it but a solid scifi tale with aliens and politics and it really fleshed out and made me empathize with all the opposing and strikingly different factions.

Taiyao Fujii – Orbital Cloud

A space-related technothriller, quite fun! If you liked the first 2/3rds of Seveneves you’ll probably like this.

Gwynneth Jones – Life.

Story of a woman trying to be the best biologist she can despite a lot of setbacks, bascially. Barely counts as science fiction, really, but I just really like Anna and Spence as characters and their relationship. This a very feminist book, at times quite preachy–but personally it came across as characters being preachy not the author, and therefore much less annoying, but ymmv.

Katherine Addison – The Goblin Emperor.

Fantasy high politics but nice? Like also pretty level headed but not grimdark like fantasy high politics usually is. Also love the worldbuilding, the linguistics, and my precious cinnamon role Maia who deserves good things.

The Long Way to a Small Angry Planet

River of Teeth by Sarah Gailey

the most tumblr print book I have ever read. TBH the cover blurb is better than the book but it’s a quick read and enjoyable.

Paolo Bacigalupi - The Windup Girl.

Ian MacDonald – The Dervish House.

The twenty-minutes-into-the-future setting has aged weirdly since it was written back when Turkey was trying to join the EU, but I reread it recently and the plot and characters are still compelling.

All of the above by @businesstiramisu

"James S. A. Corey", The Expanse series (rec by @justjohn-jj)

Mariam Petrosyan’s The Grey House

kids and minders in a boarding school for the disabled, their relationships and their setting. Mostly a coming-of-age thing but with a lot of weirdness and some fantastic elements. Extremely readable

Arkady and Boris Strugatsky:

Hard to be a God

Inhabited Island

Roadside Picnic

Stanisław Lem:

Fiasco

Cyberiad

Karim Berrouka’s Fées, Weed & Guillotines

what it says on the tin. Pretty fun. I would suspect his other fantasy mystery novel comedies are good too.

The Invisible Planets anthology

extremely hit or miss, but definitely has its hits.

Bernard Weber’s Les Fourmis

All of the above by @napoleonchingon

The Murderbot Diaries - Martha Wells

Sarcastic cyborg tries to avoid humans and watch entertainment media all day and perpetually ends up saving some. With all the snark.

rec by @rhetoricandlogic

The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August, Claire North

Guy is born in 1910s, dies at 80 or so… and is born again in the 1910s, and so on. Also the world is ending.

The End and Afterwards, Andy Cooke

A probe to Alpha Centauri, an idealist Nigerian biotechnician, a humdrum English family – and then the world ends.

Against Peace and Freedom, Mark Rosenfelder

50th century interstellar humanity is mostly doing okay. But socionomics doesn’t cover crises, such as the dictatorship that’s taken over Okura, or the unscrupulous tycoon who’s plotting something over on New Bharat. For that we have Diplomatic Agents. Like you.

all of the above by @jackhkeynes

Meta-recommendations:

worldswithoutend.com, their list of lists, and in particular, defining science fiction books of the 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s, and 90s.

@squareallworthy

Jo Walton’s Revisiting the Hugos series. (by @businesstiramisu)

#book recs

[ckret2]

tumblr you need to stop deleting the question when i edit an ask:

What characters can you think of, that you like, fall under unhealthy obsessive romance?

Sit down we're gonna be here a while.

God is anyone gonna be surprised if I cite the yandere trope? Is anyone gonna cringe away if I say Gasai Yuno from Future Diary? No? We're all good? Okay.

Yandere characters are really hit or miss with me. Too often, I've seen yandere characters portrayed like their bloodlust, their willing to kidnap their beloved or kill potential romantic rivals, is working in tandem with their apparent sweet, affectionate, self-effacing devotion—rather than in contrast. Like a yandere character who's willing to draw blood is an exaggerated romantic ideal. I'm not about that. To me, a proper compelling yandere is a horror character disguised as a cute love interest.

Yuno pulls that off. Even as Yukki gets used to her and even begins to grow attracted to her, he still remains very reasonably terrified of what she might do—and his terror is validated by her actions. What really sells her for me, though, is the series's awareness of the arbitrary nature of her obsessive love. She flat-out tells Yukki, the target of her obsession, with shocking coldness and self-insight, that she doesn't love him because he's really that unique or special, but because he was there and she needed someone. When it feels like so many generic dull lead boys "win" the attentions of the cool interesting yandere for no obvious reason as a sort of wishfulfillment, Yuno's open acknowledgment of Yukki's plainness and the arbitrariness of her own affections would be a great deconstruction of common yandere tropes, if it wasn't for the fact that Yuno was basically the codifier of the modern yandere archetype.

Another character who hits all the right yandere notes is Tarantulas from the IDW Transformers comics. Mad scientist who makes wicked inventions for a high-ranked military officer who's rattled by the brutality they inflict together and terminates their professional relationship by attempting to terminate the scientist; scientist comes back from the apparent dead to kidnap the officer with the help of a gang of terrorists, blackmails him by threatening to reveal confidential information about the officer's army that could tear it apart from the inside and that the officer has gone to great lengths to keep hidden, reveals that he's invented a way to make enemy soldiers effectively invisible and untraceable, and shows off his secret lab powered by a devastatingly powerful superfuel that he's invented... and then reveal he doesn't want revenge, but for the officer to be his partner in crime again, and all these wonders will be used FOR him instead of AGAINST him. He calls the officer his "muse," and feels like he can't reach his peak scientific potential without the officer there, requesting new weapons and acting as his inspiration.

He's willing to burn down the universe if his muse wants it or burn down the universe if his muse scorns him, he kidnaps him just to beg him to be his partner, and he does all this despite the fact that the officer destroyed his life work and tried to kill him. It's fantastically messed up.

Moving away from the yandere archetype: Venom—comics Venom, from their intro through the 90s and then again once Mike Costa got hold of them—is a fantastic obsessive love story, about two people who reject everything that both of their societies defines as normal and acceptable in order to be with each other, and are incredibly tender and affectionate and mutually supportive; but like, they also validate each other's worst beliefs and tendencies in a way that lets them egg each other on into oblivious villainy, and even if "live with and for one and only one person, literally in 24/7 physical contact," is normal and psychologically healthy for the symbiote's species, it's not for a human being. Impressively, they're SO obsessively codependently in love with each other, that they each independently decide that they want to be the best possible versions of themselves for each other, and violently wrest their relationship from the jaws of toxicity in order to become an emotionally mature couple with a support system, outside friends, and the ability to communicate about their fears and insecurities, and it's a beautiful thing. It's too bad nobody's written anything with Venom since Mike Costa's run ended, but I'm sure someone will bring them back around eventually.

The knight-in-love-with-their-liege trope is one that appeals to me in theory, but in practice I basically never see it written as zealously as I'd like, so I usually have to headcanon it up myself. Pearl in Steven Universe is the only solid canon example I can think of that hits all the right notes for me.

Not strictly canon but: Drift from Transformers, who goes from grim street rat survivalist to bloodthirsty mass murderer to repentant ninja vigilante to faux-spiritual warrior with weird flashes of extreme violence while under the wing of four different mentor/leader figures, I like to interpret as a serial zealot whose repeatedly shifting morals and loyalties have nothing to do with his newest leader actually convincing him of the righteousness of their perspective, and everything to do with Drift's becoming smitten with their charisma and being willing to reinvent himself completely to conform with his new beloved leader's worldview. Drift's last writer even ship teased him pretty heavily with leader #4 (for any of y'all that don't read Transformers: not like "ship teased" in a queerbaity way, Drift eventually hooked up with a different dude), and he's shown to go out of his way to perform roles that he thinks will impress leader #4; so like, there's some canon basis to read him like that—even if my main reason is "because I want to."

I also like to slip in shades of knight-loves-leader in how I write Zim being shipped with a Tallest; the unhealthy, destructive obsession with them is definitely canon, even if the romance isn't.

"Characters that are otherwise emotionless for scifi/fantasy reasons except for ONE emotion and that emotion is love and therefore they get really obsessed with their love because it's the only thing in their void of a life, but it's not portrayed in a cutesy 'robot learns to feel' or 'demon is saved by love' way but rather in a 'this is almost as unbalanced and unhealthy as not feeling anything at all was' way" is like... a trope that I keep writing but don't think I've ever actually seen done EXACTLY like that in canon. The Nobodies in Kingdom Hearts are good for this—I've written them as having meaningless sex to try to counter the fact that they can't feel emotions, on the justification that sexual arousal is a physiological sensation rather than an actual emotion but is still close enough that they can almost feel a feeling, and end up getting extremely attached to their cooperative let's-pretend-we-can-feel sex partners. (i realize that physiology and emotions can't actually be disentangled like that but like, it's fantasy.) Axel, you can argue, latched onto Roxas in what can be (and often is) read in a romantic way, also arguably sheerly on the merit of the fact that Roxas makes him feel anything at all.

Shockwave in IDW I've also used to played around with this idea, although I haven't published the main work I've done that with. Yet.

And from what I’ve seen, it looks like the main character in Yandere Simulator is gonna have a backstory kind of like that? I’m looking forward to that game, haven’t played any of the demo versions yet but what I’ve seen from the dev’s videos looks fun.

Also: very frequently, unrequited love. Especially secret unrequited love. "Unrequited-to-requited love" doesn't fit the bill at all. It's gotta be perpetual pining. There's NO satisfaction. The longing just builds and builds eternally, until the internal pressure causes something to shatter. I can think of ships I like to imagine this way (Drift w/ any of his mentors, Starscream/Wheeljack, Hashirama/Madara, Ψiioniic/Sufferer), but off the top of my head no canon ones that reach those dizzying heights of eternally unfulfilled yearning. Sure, plenty of stories have unrequited love—but rarely the all-consumingly obsessive kind, and even more rarely is that portrayed as—oh! I got a couple canon ones, albeit more villainous/predatory ones: the Phantom in Phantom of the Opera and that dude with his mouth stitched shut in the Abarat books, I haven't read those in years. And some spins of Dracula and Mina, although it's no fun if she loves him back. You can also do this with Hades and Persephone, although for this to work it's imperative that Hades still feel like he doesn't actually "have" Persephone even if she's contractually obligated to live with him so long as she doesn't love him, and just sort of wistfully watches her from afar whenever she's in the underworld. (But to be honest I generally prefer "Persephone and Hades: Hypercompetent Goth Power Couple" to spins that lean on Persephone being an unwilling unhappy victim.)

The further I go down this list the more obscure and/or headcanony these examples are gonna get, so I think I'm gonna stop here. But feel free to send any follow-up questions if u wanna hear me ramble more about my extremely specific tastes in romance.

Shoutout to "The Maiden and the Minstrel Knight" by Blind Guardian for being a song that captures peak romanticized out-of-control love.

#(im not tagging all these fandoms) #anonymous #ask #yandere #(correction im tagging exactly ONE fandom for a follower's tumblr savior) #mtmte

[musings-on-bucky-barnes]

Q&A Part 3 with Owlet about The Infinite Coffee & Protection Detail series

Here is Part the Third of Owlet answering questions about The Infinite Coffee & Protection Detail series and also about her other writing. Some of the questions are from readers of the first Q&A, and some come from a Tumblr post of suggested questions for writers.

Warning for discussion of rape.

OWLET'S NOTE:

Thanks for all the cheers and good wishes on part 2! I'm glad people think the behind-the-scenes stuff is interesting and not just me being a windbag.

I was delighted that so many of you seem interested in my novel! It's not available anywhere yet: I still have to find an agent, and who knows how the heck long that's going to take? (I am NOT cut out for self-publishing.) But I certainly hope it'll find a home. If you want to keep up with me on tumblr (vmohlere) or twitter (virginiamohlere), I assure you that when such time comes, I will scream about it a LOT.

Pink floaty hearts, y'all.

  Reader questions:

From EssayOfThoughts:

 I know that you say that you like to imagine AOU doesn't exist, but I will admit (because I find Wanda deeply compelling and the twins story as a whole very interesting) that I've wondered a lot about how your Bucky would deal with the Maximoff twins? Like, on the one hand there's Wanda's ability to mess with minds, which he'd hate, but simultaneously (at least according to the AOU prelude comic) the twins was effectively radicalised by HYDRA while they were pretending to be SHIELD and expected to be their weapons which is not wholly dissimilar to Nat or Bucky. So if you're willing to acknowledge AOU just enough to ponder this I'd really like to know your thoughts! If not, of course, I understand.

Wanda’s not a character I’ve given much thought to. You’re right that her abilities would freak Barnes out. But he has a strict policy of observation before reaction, so he would give them a chance. And they’re so young (and so broken) that his protective instincts would kick in. I think they could probably count on some wary kindness, along with a dose of irritation at Pietro’s shenanigans.

From Ev42:

 Thing I can't stop thinking about today: babies. Specifically, Bucky + baby = ???

 I personally am a sucker for "Steve knows nothing, Bucky's a pro" thing re: babies. Mix that up with the Mission and the Briefing and what would we get? I keep think about, idk, maybe Sam has a niece or nephew, or one of the Olds has a grandchild or grandniece or something, and I just really want your thoughts on Bucky + baby... Please?

Barnes would be too worried about inadvertently hurting an infant to be willing to touch one, though he likes the directness of slightly older kids.

If in the presence of Steve trying to deal with an infant, the Briefing would definitely have a lot of commentary about everything he was doing wrong.

From Fred1085:

 I guess if I had one question though it would be: Do you always see Bucky existing as Barnes, the Briefing, and the Mission, or do you see a time in his future in which those aspects of him would be more integrated. Not through the magical Asgaridan science, but through his own force of will/healing?

  He definitely does become more integrated over time. The Mission is a protective identity, and as he needs it less, it recedes. The Briefing is literally his memories, which he does recover many of over time, though that’s a long and painful process. There’s a lot of regression throughout the long-term forward progress. But he keeps some of the habits, like “confirm” and “deny.”

 MusingsOnBuckyBarnes:

 After “This, You Protect”, the Mission went to ground so to speak for a bit and Bucky was distressed at its loss, at it not communicating with him. But over time as he heals and it recedes, he wouldn’t be so upset?

Exactly. When the Mission’s going quiet is part of the organic process of healing, he misses it but isn’t upset by its loss.

From stentorian_lore_n:

 Did Bucky and Steve ever make a donation to Sam's VA?? :)

Yes, of course! But Sam had to be bullied into buying a better chair for himself, because he wanted all the money to go to programs.

There’s a lot of red tape involved with how much money the center can receive in donations, so Steve & Bucky give that much each year, even much later, when Sam does in fact move to NYC to become an Avenger.

From englishghosts:

 Also, since you're taking questions, I'd like to ask you something. (TW RAPE)

Although Bucky suffering sexual abuse and torture "for fun" during his time with HYDRA makes perfect sense in my head (70 years in the hands of powerful white men who had complete control over him, it's difficult to imagine nobody got ideas), especially with the imagery of the bank scene, it's something we don't see that often in fics outside certain areas of fandom. I'm really glad you included this, because for me it not only makes it more realistic, but also it brings an extra layer into Bucky reclaiming himself and being comfortable with touching and his feelings for Steve. So the question is what made you decide to include it in this fic?

Like you say, powerful men with a powerful man under their complete control, over the course of 70 years – to me, it’s a given that among the many abuses he suffered was sexual abuse. It was always part of the character, for me, one of the many layers that he needed to work through to reclaim both his body and his self.

I started to think that the romantic-physical relationship with Steve was an inevitable part of Barnes’s healing process, because he and Steve really just do love each other SO much. The more I thought about it, the more I could see that given the style that I’d set up, writing Barnes’s reactions to things kind of obliquely, would be SUPER FUN for writing about bodies and sex. I cackled my whole way through writing that section.

And, you know, there were a lot of commenters who were like “hey man where’s the smut?” – a few of them NOT SO NICELY. I’m glad I stuck it in its own section, though, because I know there are also a lot of people who like to only read the gen parts.

From Selkieinthesea:

How did you come up with the curses? My favorite is “Lenin’s pickled scrotum.” It makes me laugh every time I think of it. I’d use it, but I have toddlers so then I’d have to explain what pickling is, what a scrotum is and why you’d pickle one.

That is a mystery and a blessing from the part of my brain from which jokes arise. Every one of them delighted me. “Lenin’s pickled scrotum” hearkens back to college jokes in Russian History class about how they embalmed Lenin with a mixture of Twinkie filling and maraschino cherry juice, and of course scrotums are always hilarious, I don’t know how people who have them even deal.

from Ev42 (about the fic “Love Is for Children”):

 Nicholas. Anything to do with Nick Fury? Bc I think that'd make his faking-my-death-without-telling-Natasha sting that much more. Ouch.

 I'm trying to imagine how Nicholas meeting the gang would go. I... have no idea? Barnes would bake, of course, but what? The Olds would be happy. Barton already knows. I guess I'm just trying to figure out what the hurt/happy ratio for the rest would be

I actually have a tiny bit of this written out – it was originally going to be another piece of ICaPD, but I couldn’t get it to have any kind of arc to it, and the pacing was just BALLS.

Anyhow, yes, Nicholas is named after Nick Fury. His sperm donor is no one of import, and the only one of the Avengers who knows about him is Clint.

The snippet I never wrote involved Bad Guys kidnapping Nicholas & Steve/Barnes/Nat/Clint/Sam going on a rescue mission.

In this universe, Nat & Clint have a couple of Barton-Romanoffs, of whom Nicholas is the first (Clint adopts him). Tony & Pepper likewise have several kids in this universe.

  The remaining questions are from a “Fanfiction Writer Asks” Tumblr post by criminal-minds-fanfiction:

Do you prefer writing OC’s or reader inserts? Explain your answer.

I haven’t written a reader-insertish kind of thing since I wrote a Duran Duran scifi AU when I was 14 years old. Original characters are where it’s at.

What is your favourite genre to write for?

Fantasy, for sure. Tho romance tends to worm its way into most of my stuff.

If you had to choose a favourite out of all of your multi chaptered stories, which would it be and why?

I think This, You Protect has better pacing than The Long Road Begins at Home, and writing it helped me fall back in love with writing.

If you had to delete one of your stories and never speak of it again, which would it be and why?

Um. Maybe my Loki poem? Tho I don’t think it’s necessarily bad.

When is your preferred time to write?

First thing in the morning, tho I’m grateful to be able to write almost any time. In the past couple of years, I've gotten into writing into the notepad on my phone, so I literally write any- and everywhere.

Where do you take your inspiration from?

Absolutely everywhere.

In your xxx fic, what’s your favourite scene that you wrote? [Any of your Bucky fics]

The chapter of Team-Building Exercises where Barnes & Pepper go to France is something I’m so proud of. I think I did pretty well with the action and the pacing in that one, and I love writing Pepper.

Their first Thanksgiving, with the Sandwich of Suffering, is also a favorite.

In your xxx fic, why did you decide to end it like that? Did you have an alternative ending in mind? [The Long Road Begins at Home]

It was always going to go Thanksgiving to Thanksgiving.

If you write OC’s, how do you decide on their names?

ARGH NAMES. What a pain. Second only to titles in terms of terribleness. I try to roll a few names around and chew on them until I find the one that feels right.

Do you have any abandoned WIP’s? What made you abandon them?

I have notes for 3 more sections of Infinite Coffee and Protection Detail – one that’s pure fluff, one that’s an action scene, and one at the very end of their lives. But I dunno. For one thing, the last one is unbearably sad. And I don’t really have Barnes’s voice in my head anymore. I think it’s time to be done.

More about the action scene is answered in response to a reader question in the previous section. The Sad Ending is just too far off in tone that it doesn’t fit the series at all, so let’s leave it in a dark drawer. But Barnes & Steve live for a very long time and remain faithful to the successive generations of their Avengers family. And when they go, they reach the end of the line together.

The fluff scene is CAT JACK and will post on Friday, June 7. (it's not a full story, just a snippet)

Are there any stories that you wished you’d ended differently?

The epilogue chapter of This, You Protect has some cute jokes, but it’s pretty weird, and I kind of wish I’d left it off.

Do you prefer listening to music when you’re writing or do you need silence?

Depends on the day. I definitely like music when I’m Pondering, though.

How do you feel about writing smutty scenes?

LOVE IT

Do people know you write fanfiction?

People know about my MCU fic, yes.

What’s your favourite minor character you’ve written?

That’s like asking about my favorite child!! Hill is definitely up there on the list, though. Hair Club in general was fun to have around.

Has anyone ever guessed the plot twist of one of your fics before you posted it?

I wish I could remember what it was, but yes. That was really fun.

If you could write only angst, fluff or smut for the rest of your writing life, which would it be and why?

Smut, because I think the best smut is also really emotional, so it’s not like cutting out angst, fluff, or anything else.

xXx

The link to the full list of questions for fanfic writer is here:

http://criminal-minds-fanfiction.tumblr.com/post/172926526725/fanfiction-writer-asks

(EDIT: link appears to be maybe-broken?)

#infinite coffee and protection detail #ic&pd #q&a #warning for discussion of rape #bucky barnes #owlet #reader questions

[fyrapartnersearch]

Looking For Roleplay...

The kind of roleplay that leaves you waiting with bated breath for your partner's post, one that ends up with a complicated plot and a million layers, an exciting roleplay.

I miss being excited by roleplay. I still love it, don't get me wrong, but the sort of excitement where it would overtake most of my thoughts is... hard to come by. I miss the exciting plots of my younger days. So, hey... maybe I can find it again. -jazzhands-

I'm 22 years old, a writer and poet at heart, and nonbinary with feminine leanings. That is: she/her and they/them pronouns are both fine but I'm not a woman or anything like that. My comfort zone for characters are nonbinary and chicks, and while I will play males when it comes to one on one pairings and romance I'm gonna play a girl or nonbinary.

Smut is fine and we can include or not at your leisure. I don't do roleplays in pre-existing settings, with a couple of exceptions: Undertale (where I might be pursuaded to play canon characters) is always and forever my love, and then if you convince me I miiight play a Skyrim, Pokemon, Digimon, Yugioh, or similar rp (though I won't play canon characters).

As for what I'm looking for...

1 - Someone 18+, preferably 20+. That's just my preferences. I do NOT roleplay with anyone 17 or under; it makes me uncomfortable as I'm not sure what lines not to cross (beyond not rping smut). Chat to them, sure. Rp with them? Ehhhnnn.

2 - Someone comfortable with all kinds of topics; fluff and angst in equal measure for me, and some of my rps can get dark.

3 - Someone comfortable roleplaying fantasy. I ONLY roleplay fantasy. Modern fantasy is my favorite, but I will do high fantasy, low fantasy, historical fantasy, SciFi fantasy, aaannyy kind of fantasy. Give me magic spells and dragons and whatever else, just as long as it isn't based in real life.

4 - No one-liners. Someone once started a roleplay off with three words and one sentence. Give me something to interact with and reply to. I'll match your posting length (mostly) and I'm really not particular on length, but I am not about to carry the story on my own.

So now that you know what I expect from you, what can you expect for me?

1 - I chat OOC. I will share things about my day, ask how you are, check up on you. I'm a chatterbox.

2 - I reply once a day usually, sometimes more. There are times when I don't, and I try to let my partners know. My replies are rarely consistent, my schedule is a mess.

3 - I am extremely understanding of real life nonsense generally, so other than an occasional nudge I don't bother people. I expect the same consideration: if you're messaging me more than once a day with reminders, you're messaging me too much.

4 - Ideas and muse ebbs and flows. Sometimes I will be full of ideas and long posts. Sometimes I will not be. But I try.

5 - I work as an overnight cashier at Walmart and am mentally ill. I'm not always gonna manage posts, but I try to let people know what's going on.

I like to think I'm a pretty chill person. I don't bite, and I'm usually friendly. I'm also very adaptable and I have some prompts already. I am especially looking for romance (with and without smut) and detailed plots. For smut, I have an f-list with my kinks and limits I'll give you.

Contact me:

Kik: kunabee

Discord: Kunabee#1734

Tumblr: @kunabee

#indie rp #indie roleplay #independent roleplay #oc rp #multiple paragraph #para #semipara #long term #messenger #tumblr #pokemon rp #smut rp #discord #kik #submission

[das-boog]

I had an idea for a battle-monster setting where instead of being divided up by an elemental type (fire, water, dragon, etc) monsters were categorized by genre. B-movies have an advantage over Modern Scifi due to their solid rubber bodies being hardier than CGI, whereas Fantasy creatures get a fascination effect against Art Flick Metaphor Puppets. Wrote a drabble for it below.

———

When I was told I’d be conducting an interview with the local MonsTactics champion, I wasn’t sure what I’d expected. Certainly not the woman I’d been handed a photo of; tiny Anzu Goda, in a prim pantsuit, all professional smiles as she held up a tournament trophy alongside two other well known monster breeders clapping politely. Besides the artificial-plastic-orange hair she looked like she could be any other professional athlete, a far cry from the bombastic personae she had in the arena.

That was to be expected though; most breeders prestigious enough to have their own dojo were expected to be larger-than-life personalities. A career MonsTactician had a lot of expenses, and winning battles could often come a far second to selling merchandise. Ms. Goda was known to be more committed to the keyfabe of her profession than most, and I hoped for the chance to crack through that gaudy, vaudeville exterior to show people the REAL Anzu.

Driving up to her dojo, however, I felt the hubris of that expectation settle on me like a lead blanket. Ms. Goda’s flagship dojo, Milktooth Hall, is an imposing edifice miles into the mountains outside of town. Formerly an asylum, Milktooth’s imposing bulk of gothic architecture, wrought iron and apparently unfinished renovations did not exactly give off a welcoming, homey vibe. While the main building looked largely livable, from the road I could see shattered windows and missing shingles on the upper floor, and another house on the grounds that looked like it had suffered a recent fire. Even already knowing her reputation, the structure was intimidating, and I felt it was nearly instinct that made me check my phone’s reception and my pocket for mace before stepping out of the car.

So braced was I for some sort of danger that it was almost a relief when, at my touch, the door creaked open on its own to pitch blackness. It was too blatant for me to keep taking seriously, she had to be messing with me. Repeating that to myself until it was convincing, I walked into the house.

The foyer opened into a largely unaltered reception area for the asylum. Wooden benches had been replaced with plastic seats bolted to the ground and the floors replaced with linoleum the color of curdled milk. Lights seemed broken or flickering at random. I was the only person there. This was all, again, expected decor for the famed MonsTactician Goda, but I was surprised that I was the only person in the room. Had she been told I was coming? Image was one thing, but certainly Milktooth Hall had to have other staff? Battlers being trained, monster wranglers, classes, accountants, clerks, something? Even Black Jacobs, who raised monsters found at the unexplored sections of maps, kept local offices in his port of call to handle business. But besides the buzz of the neon lights and the odd distant creak or snap of the building settling there was nothing. After a few minutes alone and confused I made up my mind to search the building and opened the first door to my right.

This is how I met her, standing stock-still just behind the door, not showing so much as a flicker of shock when I shrieked in surprise an inch from her face. The beloved, bellicose, Bloodsplatter Tactician, Anzu Goda.

She was wearing the costume she had on in all the major tournament photo-ops, faux-leather strips and resin-faked metal scraps covered in fake bloodstains and artistically draped rags. The outfit was ramshackle mess faked perfectly around superhero sleekness. I was briefly disappointed. If she was meeting me the same way she met her battle opponents, then this might be just another promotion opportunity.

“You are… From the magazine.” She giggled, true to her stage presence as ever. Unblinking, mad grin, movements just a little bit too fluid. A performance cultivated by a slew of dance instructors, acting trainers and psychologists whose careers Anzu had made very, very prestigious. I tried not to let my judgment show.

“Yes. Ms. Goda, MonTactics Monthly. I’m Ezra, Ezra Goodfellow? I believe I spoke to your agent on the phone?”

“Yes I… Recall.” She froze and then whirled away from me, fake metal pieces clattering in my face as she made a 540 degree turn away from me. “This way, to down the hall! Everything will be clear there!” She giggled again, “We’re going to have so much FUN!”

I followed and tried not to audibly groan. Ms. Goda skipped ahead, pixielike, in my own opinion probably a bit too much so for a woman just entering her thirties. Lights began to click off at random. “This way, this way!” Another flash of the mad grin and a ballet twirl around a bend, out of my sight. “We’re almost to my favorite place! My favorite place in the whole building!”

Her voice was still echoing, like from the bottom of a well, when I rounded the corner and found her gone.

I was understandably frustrated; I’d naively hoped my status as a professional would’ve spared me this funhouse nonsense and, to be honest, the whole thing was getting to me. Not the building itself, although it certainly didn’t help; As we’d gone deeper in rusted pipes began to drip unidentifiable brown-red substances down the walls, tiling was missing, and the lights just seemed to get worse and worse as I went. It was how clearly manufactured it all was. The hokiness of the whole thing, right down to the dye in her hair. Something glass, a small bottle or vial, cracked under my foot and I cursed. I’d be lucky to leave this place without tetanus.

I have no idea how long I wandered, but it was more than long enough for my irritation to take root and ferment into a constant low-grade tension. The whole first floor of the building seemed like an endless maze of crisscrossing halls, and more than once I turned back toward what I was CERTAIN should be the lobby just to find more carefully-ruined medical offices and creatively stained wards. Eventually at intersections I would just turn the first way I heard a sound down, a distant giggle or a scratch. I briefly considered calling my editor for help but, true to form, my phone had already died.

It was in this high-strung, exhausted mood that I met Anzu Goda again, standing backlit in front of the door to what appeared to be an administrative office. “Ms. Goda!” Decorum long forgotten, I broke into a half-jog. “Ms. Goda please, I-I get it, we just-“

“Do you know what you are here for, Ezra… Goodfellow.” Sillouetted in the doorframe I couldn’t see her expression, but even so it felt like her gaze bore right through me. An air duct banged and dented overhead, something crawling inside!

“Yes the- the INTERVIEW dammit just let me do my fucking job-!” Professionalism abandoned, I broke into a sprint. My shirt had come untucked. Sweat stained my collar. I was grabbing her arms, shouting, shaking,  “Just let me know where we can actually sit DOWN and-!” The vent banged again. Something in it. I looked up at the vent. Wrong! Too late! Something screaming from BELOW me, bursting out of the tiles (loose, shitty linoleum, easily peeled up.) I feel back, flailing, screaming, crying-!

And… So did Ms. Goda. Some pale, bruised, almost translucent-fleshed THING had burst from the ground and was standing over her, shrieking, and tears were running down her face. Just two, around a wide mouth that stretched and contorted her cheeks so the tears ran zigzags. Her scream lasted longer than mine. It lasted longer than the monsters… And slowly faded to peals of laughter as she threw her arms around our assailant.

“Oh that was WONDERFUL Humphrey! Oh who’s my jumpy boy, who’s my loud jumpy BOY!” The creature- soft, eyeless, its fishbelly flesh mottled with random oozing bruises- made another small shriek followed by heavy wheezing and panting as it’s tongue lolled over its almost-human teeth, flopping randomly like a slug exploring. It had hooks for hands, and clammy skin pulled tight over bestial musculature and bones. At its full height it came up to Ms. Goda’s chest, and walked with a pronounced hunch. It headbutted her shoulder twice in catlike affection. Ms. Goda turned to me with another of her signature grins. “All the vents, pipes, secret passages and crawlspaces in the building intersect here, so this is the spot I picked for my office. Any of my rowdy little guys can come surprise me at any time. It’s my favorite place in the whole building!”

The office was comparatively more brightly lit, although I noticed there was still a slight flickering problem. I was soon sipping tea in a large comfortable chair while Ms. Goda ushered a few more Monsters into the room, casually pointing out where I could charge my phone (Humphrey had, out of a desire to “play” with me, apparently drained the battery. “He was probably stalking you about a half an hour,” She added conversationally). Her creatures (or, as she referred to them, “rowdy boys”) mostly kept on a large, thick shag carpet where they would stalk the perimeter, groom themselves with their tongues or rusted-looking blades, or get into brief and terrifying scuffles while we were at the other end of the room. The sole exception was a gaunt creature with what appeared to be a metal cylinder for a head, which set down a large butcher knife to crawl across the room and lay its not-head in my hosts lap. She patted it absentmindedly as we spoke.

“Sorry about all that… you seem pretty wiped out!” Her voice remained just as chirpy and sing-song as it had been when I first encountered her but I was starting to believe that might just naturally be who she was, ellipses and all. “That might’ve got a little out of hand. I was hoping to show off the unique… charm, I guess? Charm and beauty of my lil’ guys here.”

“I mean they made an impression. Humphrey was… Very intimidating. I’m sure he’s a terror in the arena.” I mentally went over the recent tournaments Anzu Goda had been in. I might’ve seen Humphrey deployed in the Hugo Arena in Heorot, exactly once, but I wasn’t sure.

“Hm? Oh sure that too, he’s an Aughts Greenscreen, little bit MacFarlene Slasher and Western Jumper mix. TECHNICALLY a vampire. See the hooks?”

“Yes, I remember now, he used those to bring down a Kelpie being fielded by the Heorot champion, Liana Monteblanc. Would you say then that that was your reason for using a mutt rather than a purebred-“

“Would you like to pet him?”

I froze. For most of these interviews a Tactician would parade out a few of their most prized or crowd-pleasing creatures for some photo ops, I’d never been encouraged to actually interact with one beyond throwing a target for it to chase or cajoling it into roaring for the camera. Besides a tank of Slithy Toves I’d kept when I was little and my mother’s loud, squawking Phoenix I’d always been more of a dog person.

“Would that be alright?”

“Humphrey! Come here!” The creature shambled up obediently at Ms. Goda’s beckoning, the one in her lap already shuffling away in some territorial submission display to Humphrey (Ms. Goda seemed displeased by this, but I didn’t really notice until later).

I slowly, tentatively reached out my hand, and Humphrey jerked to bite down on my wrist. I gasped and looked away, but the pain never came, and when I looked back the monster was holding my hand gently, but firmly, between its teeth. Its fat tongue squirmed between my fingers.

“Humphrey no!” Laughing, Ms. Goda placed one hand on the beasts flat face and shoved it away, making it release my hand with a wet scrape. “You’re going to want to reach out more forcefully,” she explained, demonstrating. She patted its head like a three year old would pat the head of a dog, a clumsy pantomime of affection, “Anxiety, fear, tentativeness, they zero in on that really closely. They’re incredibly empathetic creatures, even compared to most other monsters. If you seem doubtful about what you’re doing for even a moment they can tell, and the only way they know how to react to fear is to exaggerate it. Here, try again.” I did, this time imitating her rough handling, and was rewarded this time by Humphrey nuzzling my hand. Pretty soon the creature was hunched next to my chair, my arm reaching down to pat it occasionally. It felt cool and smooth, like leather with a thin layer of silly putty over it.

“Isn’t that nicer?”

“It is,” I had to admit it. I’d never seen a MonsTactician’s creatures behave so… intimately. Like something kept as someone’s pet rather than some grand incarnation of raw power. I’d stood beneath the bellies of dragons while their handlers pointed out the patterns of their scales, I’d seen pixies twinkle toxic or wish-granting glitters inches from my eyes, but casually patting the flank of this bleating, oozing horror I was cowed. My prepared questions fled me. “Do you… Do anything to get them like this? Some socialization training?”

“Oh most tacticians I’ve met are like this with their monsters in private. Some not,” Ms. Goda shrugged, “But for the most part you really cant work with any animal without some degree of empathic connection or affection, monsters are no different. I’m not surprised you cant really get at that side of them though, I didn’t really agree to this for the same reasons.” Her laugh twinkled, “I’m already rich, I don’t need to do favors for publicity.”

That rankled me a little. “That’s a little strange to hear, Ma’am. With all due respect, it seems odd that someone who doesn’t need publicity would go to the trouble of this whole performance.”

“Hm?”

“You know… Your whole battlefield schtick.” I was beginning to get frustrated again. “The abandoned haunted house, the costume, your whole mistress of horror act.”

“What?” She threw another mad giggle into the conversation, the way a card shark throws down a winning hand, “Ezra, what about this do you think is behavior that I wouldn’t exhibit anyway?”

“Ms. Goda,” I was getting a little sick of being condescended to, not that I wasn’t earning it. “It’s well known that every inch of this building, down to the rusted clasps on your costume and the passages in the walls, are the product of teams of set designers, acting coaches, fashion designers-“

“Oh pfft yeah everyone knows THAT Ezra, god,” she waved me to silence, still laughing, “Because I want to do the thing I would do anyway WELL.” She must’ve noticed my confused expression, because she continued, “I LIKE doing this Mx. Goodfellow. There’s no ‘’trouble’ involved. I LIKE playing the mistress of horror, and I don’t hide that I’m acting.” Her hand gently massaged the base of the metal-headed monster’s neck, eliciting a thrumming tinny purr. “I mean holy smokes man, my door opened by itself like something from an October B-movie. You KNOW who I am.”

I was heartbroken. I wanted to get to the real Anzu, and she was essentially telling me that there wasn’t one. That the woman WAS a fabrication, and lived as one, and liked it that way. She grinned at me leaning back in her chair across from me, fang-caps on her teeth sharp and obvious, streaks in her thick black mascara from when she’d been crying just ten minutes ago tracing drips and zigzags down to her jaw like they’d been painted on. Maybe they had been. I sighed and got into the boilerplate questions; if she wanted this to be rote, I could do it rote and leave.

“Most famous MonsTacticians pick a genre of monster to raise, sort of as their bit. Is that why you chose Horrors, to play into this fantasy?”

“Sort of a chicken or the egg thing really. The truth is that when I first got into raising these guys I hated the idea of ever making them fight.”

“Ah, but most monsters need some degree of violence, conflict or intrigue. Even something as docile as a sphinx needs chances to ask riddles and gamble on the outcome,” I pointed out, “We’re not talking about a pet bird or a normal animal, we’re talking about something with flesh wounds for eyes and rusted fishhooks for hands. A lot of monsters are innately aggressive and need an outlet.”

“No.”

“What?”

“No. No monster is innately aggressive.” Briefly, Ms. Goda’s smile took on a frozen edge. A simian display of teeth. “Monsters are reflections of us, of humans. WE’RE innately aggressive and need an outlet. We’re innately dangerous, loving, curious, most HUMANS need some degree of violence, conflict or intrigue. And monsters follow us to them. Do you want me to finish answering your question?”

“I’m sorry, do continue.”

“To fall back on stereotypes, I never really got along with other kids when I was small. My parents had a big house with a property that extended into the woods behind it, and I was an only child, so I spent a lot of time by myself.” She sat back and gripped her mug of tea in both hands, delicately, that soft thrumming anger I’d only barely glimpsed fading to reminiscence. “I was homeschooled for a long while, so I only started spending much time around other children in middle school.” She grimaced, “Bad place to start with humans, really. I honestly think we should raise the age where you’re allowed to take care of monsters a little higher than thirteen, after they stop being monsters themselves. It’s like a feedback loop. But that’s not what you’re here for.” She sipped the tea once, one hand at her jaw to preserve her makeup. “I didn’t really understand them, and they didn’t want to understand me… It felt like the results of every interaction I had with people was completely divorced from my actions. I’d tell a joke, I’d get stared at. The next time I did they laughed. The time after that someone called me an idiot. Eventually I was just… doing random things to see how they’d react. Throwing behavior at a wall to see what would stick.”

 “My parents noticed this and would try to get me to break out of my shell. They’d ask me about my classmates, invite the ones they thought I might like to our house for playdates and birthday parties and we’d go romping around the woods, but it still didn’t really click. They liked my toys, they liked my big house and big yard, but I was still an incomprehendable foreign being. The best I could do was mimic them.” She laughed again, twinkling, “Honestly by then it was probably a self fulfilling prophecy. I already assumed nothing I did to make real friends would work.”

“These days, a child with a monster or two can be afforded a lot of freedom. We’d go rollicking deep into the woods, with a couple kids and their monsters keeping watch for anything wild. I remember one of them had a dragon, a big fat goofy eighties-barbera lump of scales and tiny, agile wings, while the other one had some big floppy puppet of a brute that has parents had gotten to teach him his numbers and ABCs when he was little. Supposedly, they would be able to smell any other monsters coming and hustle us home if something were to go wrong.”

“So, when the other kids didn’t see what was following us, I assumed I wasn’t supposed to either and ignored it.” I remember when she got to this part I double checked that the recorder was working. There is a page in my pocket notebook where I distinctly recall writing the words ‘dark backstory???’ and circling it.

“Every glance I got of it was moving slowly, deliberately through the trees above us, gentle enough to be mistaken for just branches moving in the breeze, but it seemed to have no trouble keeping pace with four rambunctious children and their caretakers. Maybe one of the kids had brought a third monster? I heard some fae were supposed to be shy. Or maybe it was something mundane, like some… big monkey. I was twelve.” Ms. Goda chuckled, “It made sense to me.”

“We hadn’t really DECIDED we were going to the creek, Shifat just said he saw a deer there and we just sort of wandered in that direction.  Susan hated the woods though; the dragon was hers, and riding on its back had gotten her hair caught in hanging branches here and there.                “As she ran up to the waterfront to check her curls in her reflection, I saw the thing in the trees above us speed up, to keep pace with her. I almost raised my voice to shout a warning, but back then I didn’t really have the nerve.”

“I waited with this kind of dread you only experience with social anxiety as like, the look on her face went from preening to frozen fear and confusion, when she saw whatever was waiting above her reflected in the running water. And it was new to me because for once I felt like I could predict how she was reacting. Like, I knew she was about to freak out, because I understood what was prompting this.”

I tried not to salivate and wrote over ‘dark backstory???’, capitalizing it.

“It dropped from above, slower than gravity should allow. Its flesh was mottled hues of dirty pink and green, solid and warty like an armadillos shell. Its face was a cluster of human molars. Its twelve legs ended in delicate, ladylike hands that reached out to brace against the surface of the water, like it might float away without the surface tension to latch on to, with steepled fingers as it lurched its bulk, mouth first, toward Susan.”

I circled ‘DARK BACKSTORY???’ a few more times, excitedly. Ms. Goda did not appear to notice.

“We all screamed. That’s… Kind of the main point I remember. If I focus I could tell you about how her dragon pulled her back with a wheezing burble before horking a wad of flame at the thing, or about Shifat’s Puppet sweeping all of us into its hairy arms and booking it for my house. Or about Aaron’s snotty panicked face a few inches from mine or the clacking howling of the creature behind us but what really stuck with me was that… Scream. It was the first time in forever I’d done anything around anyone else that I hadn’t overthought or tried to control. I just let loose and let what I was feeling come out and everyone else did too, at the same time.”

I underlined ‘DARK BACKSTORY???’ frantically.

“I’d never really felt like I was doing something WITH others before.”

… I thought for a moment, and then crossed out ‘DARK BACKSTORY???’

“I was… Really, really used to not really being in-sync with other children. I didn’t react the same way as them… to bad news, to surprises, to new experiences or enjoyment. Everything I did around my school friends was really carefully analyzed or rehearsed in my head first because I was worried about humiliating myself, or driving people off. But I just reacted instinctively, on the same level as the other kids, without a moment of thought. And afterwards I felt great! Feeling so pent up all the time wasn’t exactly good for a preteen, one good long scream did more for my mood than all the therapy my parents could pay for.”

“I’ve heard some say fear is more of an instinct than an emotion, a defense mechanism.” I offered, “You had trouble connecting empathically, but something so basic-“

“I mean sure maybe,” Goda shook her head and took another sip of her tea, “The point was that I finally had a starting point. Fear. Surprise. Shock. There was a… a Control group that I could start from for understanding other people.”

“So what was the next step?”

“Immediately after? For a couple weeks I was in the habit of hiding in closets and cupboards and jumping out to scare my parents. So when they got fed up with that I got sent along to a new therapist, who figured that I was trying to work through my traumatic incident with the creature in the woods.”

“Something of a swing and a miss.”

“I mean hell, he wasn’t completely wrong. Just whiffed the follow-through. His first idea was exposure therapy, had me play with small therapy monsters they kept that were similar. He had a tooth fairy and a boggart that he thought would be similar. Real couple of cuties, but … Kind of missing the point. The next step was him showing me the articles about how they, y’know like, captured and relocated the thing from the woods that attacked Susan, and that DID catch my eye. Apparently it was a Bandersnatch that had been feeding off ectoplasm runoff from a local prison. When it got big enough to divide, it split into this and a few other ghoulies. It’s really fascinating, like when a Bandersnatch or a Jabberwocky or anything else of the Wunderlander family take in enough external thematic elements they just kind of swell up and SPLIT into new monsters, it’s why there’s so many-“ The topic seemed to be working Ms. Goda up and I was worried we’d lose the plot, so I tried to bring the subject of our chat back to her.

“The creature that attacked you, where was it relocated to?”

“… Uhh, a shelter.” Goda got quiet. “According to the article it was, um, slated to be destroyed.”

“Oh.”

“I guess I understood? It had attacked a child. But I feel like a lot of problems could have been avoided if they’d just moved it to the right habitat. A sunken ship or an abandoned laboratory, someone puts up a sign, maybe get a behavioral specialist in there…”

“A specialist… Like you are now?”

“A bit, yeah.” Anzu grinned, “You know, horrors are the only breed of monster whose primary means of defense or offense requires forming an empathic connection?”

“You mean like Humphrey here did earlier?” I raised an eyebrow and patted the creature with a damp ‘slap,’ “Oh yes, we bonded.” The creature wheezed and, in spite of myself, I rubbed the top of its head and cooed to it. “I’d hardly call screaming and leaping an empathic connection, Ms. Goda.”

“I’m sure you wouldn’t,” There was that stiff, toothy smile again. The woman had some sort of direct access to the lizard-brain prey instincts of whoever she was speaking too. Her pupils pinned me to my chair like a moth to a board. I felt like I’d made myself look extraordinarily stupid to her again. “An abrupt scream can, without language, communicate intent and elicit a reaction that requires an understanding of the recipient and what they’re concerned about, but let’s disregard that. You used Humphrey as an example. Maybe you didn’t feel so close to him, but over the course of the entire time he was hunting you he had to figure out how attentive you were, how much noise he could get away with making in the vents to put you on edge without making you run for it, when to drain your phone’s battery so that you’d feel isolated, and when to bring it all home so that you’d be at your most panicked when he jumped out.”

I looked down at the monster incredulously. It was resting its head on its ankle in an awkward, folded up heap, tongue darting out to lick a scab every so often.

“He played you like a fiddle, Ezra. The instincts that make dogs play fetch are the same ones that they’d use to hunt squirrels. In the wild, the part where you were screaming, flailing and confused would have been where he’d brought the hooks out.”

Humphrey chewed on one toe. I could not find it in myself to describe the action as thoughtfully.

“The more I studied up on horrors, the better I understood what people found offputting. Did you know that there are celtic horrors, a breed of fae called The Gentry, that can completely fake a conversation with a human? They’re no more sapient than any other monster, but can give an impression of complete power with only vague, instinctive answers and precise body language? 50 people a year make bargains with them to grant wishes, and the backfire from the wishes are the Gentry’s feeding apparatus. There’s also the Eastern Haunt which, in addition to constantly emitting anxiety-inducing infrasounds, floods its prey’s den with a gas that suppresses the fight or flight response, but not the desire to act on one of them?”

“So you argue that, what, horrors understand human behavior better than other monsters?”

“I mean, I don’t want to disparage the work of my colleagues.” Ms. Goda grinned and chuckled again, hands fidgeting with each other as she spoke. I got the impression that she would, in fact, LOVE to disparage the work of her colleagues but that isn’t really my role as a journalist. Her fingers interlaced and broke away from each other quickly, like fighting crabs. “Black Jacobs once told me he sees man’s wonder for exploration reflected in the eyes of his favorite sea serpent, I’ve got no reason to disbelieve him. Rational Rick Redcliffe, the Paradox Tactician, says that his Rokos Basilisks and Laplace’s Demon make better company than most people he knows, but I kinda think that’s just because he’s really, really bad with people. I certainly do think Horrors are trying harder.”

“To understand us?”

“To empathize with us. Horror relies on emotion. Connection with an audience where you know exactly how uncomfortable to make them, and what kind of discomfort they need or want.” Anzu shrugged. “That’s what I learned from studying them, anyway. The more I learned about how Horror monsters defended themselves, the better I got at defending myself from humanity. What buttons are okay to push or lean on a bit, which ones to avoid because they’d provoke too much blowback.”

“So that’s all this then?” I gestured to the artfully delapitated building around us, “You do this to push people’s buttons.”

“Swing and a miss, Goodfellow.” Her grin was back, lightly infuriating. “I don’t do this FOR anyone. I just accepted that I’m going to push people’s buttons anyway. So I might as well pick the ones that we both get something out of.”

“Can you elaborate?”

 “I didn’t need to pull back from people, Ezra, I needed to throw myself at them with fuller force! Monsters just need presence, the chance to exist as a force upon events. PEOPLE need drama, Ezra. They need the things that they think monsters need. Violence, intrigue, they need to feel like sometimes things have high stakes! Instead of holding myself back, I let myself go off the rails. I got in people’s faces, laughed at my own jokes if nobody else was going to… I let myself be as loud and abrupt and as frantic as I needed to be, with just enough awareness and control of where I was sending things to avoid the stuff that would really hurt people. It didn’t matter if I staggered too far into discomfort as long as I veered out again right after. A good scare is followed by closure. A mess can be therapeutic, as long as it’s cleaned up. After people scream it all out, endorphins flood into the space left behind and they laugh!”

“And this got other children to like you?”

“Oh no they HATED it,” Ms. Goda gave another cackle, “For the most part. But there’s more place in a social group for an oddity than there is for someone trying and failing to fit in. I found people that appreciated who I was naturally rather than having a role in their life that needed filling. Or, maybe they just needed the role I filled naturally? Either way, things picked up.”

“It sounds like this is where you really started to come into yourself. Where the Bloodsplatter Tactician began. What did your parents think of the change?”

“They were glad I was happier, but were worried that my new habits would make life harder for me. Got me tested for aspergers syndrome, fussed over whether I’d be able to hold a job or find a husband.”

“Those sound like the sort of concerns most would buckle against.”

“I never really thought about it enough to have an opinion? My ex-wife thought it was funny as hell though.” I perked up here; Anzu’s personal life was the subject of much gossip and speculation, and there had been a rumor that her five year cohabitation with the troll-rearer Liana Monteblanc had been something more.

“I suppose you may have had some trouble getting close to others, what with your larger than life personality-“ I was rewarded by another peal of frantic, chirping laughter.

“Sure thing Ezra, that’s why so many leads in romance stories play such passive, subdued characters,” That grin was back, toothy and playful, “People need intrigue, remember? They need to be regularly overwhelmed and awed and released. That’s part of what attracts people to monsters in the first place, and it gives monsters a chance to be provided what they need.”

“I thought you said monsters don’t need violence?”

“I’m not talking about violence Ezra, I’m talking about presence. Look at Grendel, or Medusa, or Polyphemous. What they need is to be massive, to have an impact that bends circumstance around it. It reflects on humans that the best ways we can ever think about expressing that is violence. Not that it can’t work in context, but it’s part of what I want to address in my own career. Hence today’s interview.”

“It sounds like your opposition is to the very concept of Monster Battling, Ms. Goda.”

“I’m opposed to ONLY monster battling, Mx. Goodfellow, because it results in drastic misunderstanding of beautiful creatures that have been our companions at least as long as the dog, if not longer. Like look, take in Jiji here.” At this Anzu chucked the cylinder-headed monster under its, lets say chin, and ran her knuckles down its back roughly. I leaned in to peer at the creature, noting the flutelike oozing perforations on its arms and legs.

“I don’t think I’ve ever seen you employ this one in the arena, Ms. Goda.”

            “And you won’t, he’s a rescue.”

            “Where from?”

            “My last batch of classes.”

            “Pardon?”

            “Milktooth hall is a battler dojo Ezra, I DO train people here.” Anzu giggled, a high-pitched rattling of pleasure, “A few people wanting to get into the Montactics industry sign up for classes on raising and battling monsters every year. You have to be committed, of course, we’re something of a remote locale, but for people that want it badly enough…”

            “I see.”

            “Jiji was being kept in a steel locker the trainer had bought at an auction for a dilapidated school, chosen simply for rusted aesthetic without even the slightest attention to who the prior owner had been or whether or not it had been used for any sort of sinister disappearance. The ectoplasm he was being fed was scraped entirely off of vengeance fantasies and suppressed fetishes. Jiji here was weak, malnourished, aggressive, and showed signs of wanton abuse.”

            “I mean, it is a horror Ms. Goda, I would expect that-“

            “Hence WANTON, Ezra!” Anzu launched forward out of her chair at me, Humphrey and Jiji scattering away with a spray of scabs and soft, flailing limbs. The Bloodsplatter Tactician’s arms reached out to either side of my chair and, instinctively, I tried to recoil and hide deeper in the cushions.

            The light was behind her head, casting all of her into a silhouette. Stick-thin limbs interrupted by the jagged offshoots of her costume. All I could make out were here eyes and teeth, gleaming above me.

            “Horrors aren’t just a collection of Bad Things you can funnel human grossness into and get a result, Mx. Goodfellow!” Spittle flecked my face with every other word, blowback from the unknowable world of her open and enraged maw, “Each one of these creatures is, in and of themselves, an ECOSYSTEM of emotion, experience, texture, and instinct that has to be kept BALANCED! A monster needs to be able to bend the world around it, to have presence solid enough to keep itself impacting its environment! Jiji was forced to sleep in a box, Ezra! An ugly, unhaunted box, without a scrap of history for it to soak! Forced to choke down and guzzle scraps of teenage agony without the rich nutritional value needed to develop a thematic target! How could it empathize with its prey enough to victimize it without any personal qualities of its own? What archetype is it supposed to break when it’s only disruption is good taste?! I do not train people that don’t aspire higher than running some slasher-mill to keep the new owners of the Native Animosity stocked up on disposeable ghouls!”

            She was breathing heavily. Her breath was fogging my glasses, but I almost saw a new trail making its way down the mascara on her cheek.

            I clicked my pen, awkwardly, “So you… Took Jiji?” Anzu blinked and stepped back.

          �� “Ezra that would be illegal as hell.”

            “I mean, you just sounded very passionate about-“

            “Could you imagine if it got out that a major MonsTactician was just stealing monsters from people that came to her for training? My career would be over.”

            “Well that’s very-“

            “I took her aside, expressed my concerns and explained to her that I was worried that she couldn’t provide what this creature needs. I told her what needed to change, and if that was too difficult I offered to take the creature off her hands and compensate her for it.”

            “Okay well that makes more-“

            “Then she got institutionalized and I cut a deal with her family instead.”

            “What?”

            “Uuuugh it was so stupid,” Ms. Goda flopped back in her chair, head rolling back like a frustrated teenager. “The girl heard what I said about history and tried to hook Jiji up directly to a psychoactive pump funneled directly off of a set of violent crime news blogs. If it had worked, her failure to dilute it with adequate metaphor could have taken years off Jiji’s lifespan, but instead the pump sprung a leak and doused her with the raw ectoplasm.”

            “Oh my god.” Anzu nodded.

            “Stage 3 Cthonic Genre Awareness. They had her taken away to St. Pratchetts, screaming about being a background character in a piece of short genre metafiction.”

            “That’s horrible!”

            “It is… But I suppose it works out for Jiji here.”

            “Cold comfort, I suppose.”

            “Is it?”

            “You don’t think so? The girl wanted to make a change, she came to you hoping to gain understanding. The fact that your advice was so misunderstood, or went so catastrophically wrong in its execution, doesn’t strike you as a little tragic?”

            “I mean, yes, of course.” Anzu’s hand fluttered and grasped, spiderlike, to the back of Jiji’s neck to resume petting. “Honestly, that might be part of what she might’ve misunderstood in the first place.”

            “How do you mean?”

            “There’s a temptation, in horror, to contextualize it as something that only happens to bad people. That we can feed them vengeance fantasies and gifts from exes and personal, unbreakable judgement,” Anzu pulled Jiji further into her lap, where it began to emit that metallic ringing purr. As she stroked its back, spines dripping some sort of green ichor rose and fell along its vertebre, careful to point away from its masters fingertips.

            “I think that’s something people do in real life a lot, too. Contextualize horrors as things that only happen to people who made some kind of moral or tactical mistake,” I hadn’t noticed it at first, but the sound of the monsters playing on the carpet had stopped. A creature like a ball of tar with nails sticking out had paused mid-wrestling with something not unlike a fanged barnacle. Both had turned their heads to stare at me.

            Humphrey had too, for that matter. When I reached out to pat his bald eyeless head again he pulled back, with a warning hiss.

            “They figure they’ll never be poor, or assaulted, or lonely, not because of any external factor but because they consider themselves ‘good’ in some abstract, unaddressed definition of the term. Pious or rational or charitable or successful or kind.” Jiji’s lower body still knelt on the floor. Anzu Goda, the Bloodsplatter Tactician, wrapped one leg around it possessively and clutched it in her arms like a child with an oversized toy. She glared at me over the top of its head, her voice trancelike.

            My phone was still charging on the desk, five feet away. It felt like a mile. I remembered what Anzu had said about monsters not needing to be violent. I also remembered that the one she’d encountered in the woods in her youth, that she had so much sympathy for, had attempted to seize a child.

            “The fact of the matter is that horror, that real meat-hook sensation you feel behind the ribs to drag out a scream, works best when you acknowledge that a perfectly good person can do everything right and still be the next…” I heard a low, rumbling wheeze from Humphrey, “… Victim.”

            Why would a reclusive celebrity agree to her first interview in years, gush about how much more closely she connected with the most aggressive breed of monster than she does with humans, and then cop to giving advice that might have gotten one of her trainees sent to an insane asylum?

            I looked down to organize my notes. My hands felt clammy and I remember hoping, briefly, that they didn’t smudge my ink. Breaking eye contact was a mistake. “W-well Ms. Goda, you’re clearly passionate about your work, I s-suppose I should ask if you have any further thoughts for our readers before-“

            Anzu Goda let out an earpiercing HOWL, and Jiji launched itself from her lap. Before it reached me my world turned sideways; some part of me that wasn’t screaming registered that Humphrey had slammed into my chair from the side. I pressed back into the cushions to keep from banging my head on the linoleum and tumbled across the floor, coming to a rest by the desk.

My phone. It should be charged by now. I scrambled to my feet, still lurching and dizzy, and grasped for my canister of mace. It took another three seconds of panicked fumbling, staring down the approaching monsters and the back of Ms. Goda’s seat, before another all-important detail bubbled to the surface of my thoughts.

            “… Did you just yell ‘Boo!’?”

            Laughter erupted from the other side of the seat. Anzu clambered up to sprawl over the back of her chair. In spite of myself, I began to laugh too. “Oh my god I’m so sorry, I didn’t expect Humphrey to get in on it, that was way out of hand, but that was AMAZING. Are you alright?”

            “Possibly a little bruised,” I admitted, still chuckling (I wouldn’t notice until later, in my car, two perforations in my neck just below the jaw. They were healed by the time I’d gotten home, and at the time of writing this I’m pleased to observe no noticeable signs of tetanus). I hated to admit it, but Anzu had a point about how you felt after a fright. My muscles felt loose, my heart was pumping, I was incredibly relaxed. If she could bottle a good rush of fear endorphins I suspected Anzu Goda would never have to work again. Not that she’d ever willingly retire.

            “If anything aches I have ibuprofen in the top drawer of that desk and tequila in the bottom one. I hope that wasn’t too much Ezra, I’m supposed to keep them under better control than that.” Jiji and Humphrey had marched back to either side of her chair, and at this remark she reached down and pressed their heads into a lower bow with a ‘tsk’. “You two say you’re sorry, I have to go give Mx. Goodfellow the rest of their tour.”

            “You asked me for a closing statement, Ezra,” Ms. Goda went on, escorting me out of the office and locking the door behind her (I heard the sound of some of the creatures clambering back into the buildings air ducts, others scratching and whining on the other side of the wall). “Do you mind if we handle the photos the Monthly wanted while I think of a good one?”

            “You mean that whole display wasn’t it?” Anzu gave another cackle and reached up to throw an arm around my shoulders. It felt like being hugged by a rubber Halloween skeleton.

            “Mx. Goodfellow, I have to invite you over again sometime. You’re exactly my kind of stick in the mud.”

            “A perfect victim, you mean.”

            “That too. But really, I don’t think you appreciate how much you’re helping me today.” Her tone softened in a way I hadn’t heard previously. “Horrors are the most frequently misunderstood genre of monsters. I agreed to this interview to sort of… Un-demonize them in the eyes of the public, I guess? Help them get more popular, and into good homes.”

            “You un-demonized them by having them chase me around an abandoned asylum?”             “I mean I’m not magic. They demonize themselves a little.” She winked, and I noticed some of her remaining makeup clotting at the corner of her eye. “But some folks need a few demons, right?”

            The interview portion of my visit was a difficult act to follow, so Ms. Goda elected not to try. Or maybe she took showing me around the actual functionality of Milktooth Hall too seriously to ham up. Regardless, I finally got to meet some of the battlers Anzu had trained, working in the nurseries and pens for her creatures. They were a varied bunch. A man of forty with a long goatee and tattoos on his palms delicately removed a Xenophormous creature from the chest cavity of a pig and gently placed the writhing, mewling monster pup aside as he moved to the next hanging incubator. His name was Marv. He’d gotten into raising horrors as something to do after his daughter left the house. Anzu was giving him the pick of this litter for volunteering, after they’d been weaned and eaten the obligatory runt.             I also got to witness the feeding of her latest addition, an attempt at Genty/Greater Vampire crossbreeding, with the assistance of a gaggle of teenagers from one of her classes. They were taking turns swinging a ballistic gel dummy wrapped in a Kevlar vest winched to a cable at the ceiling (which Ms. Goda assured me was a standard enrichment toy most battlers gave to their monsters) into range of the things claws where it would rake the gel body to pieces, babbling gothic nonsense in iambic pentameter. Every successful strike resulted in peals of laughter from the youngsters, followed by dares to swing the next pass closer. It was actually while I was lining up the photo of the group I eventually chose to accompany this article that Anzu settled on a closing statement.

            “So far, Mx. Goodfellow, I’ve been threatened with closure seventeen times.”

            She simply dropped the sentence into the silence of me setting up my tripod so neatly, like a seltzer tablet into a glass of water, that you could mistake it for your own thought. Words bubbled forward without disturbing the surface as I lined up my shot. She spoke evenly and quietly, not looking in my direction.

            “Three times were concerned citizen groups. Two were former students. One was due to a city ordinance that, abruptly, qualified my dojo as an unlicensed slaughterhouse. Once was Rational Rick Redcliffe, although I think it was just because he wanted to prove one of his tedious ‘points.’ I don’t totally remember the others. And most don’t surprise me. I’m in the business of making people uncomfortable. 

“People have every good reason to be repelled by horror, Ezra. I don’t deny that. That same immune response that lets people recognize other people as untrustworthy is the one that leads them to the conclusion that me, my creatures, and my work doesn’t belong in the public eye or should be subject to strict, codified limits.”

            The teenagers smiles had begun to freeze. I didn’t dare take the picture. If the click of my camera interrupted Anzu I’d never forgive myself.

            “Monsters are reflections of US though, Ezra. Denying or limiting the myriad forms they can take is to deny our own nature. Being disgusted by one is like a dog looking in a mirror and getting angry at this other, similar dog. Locking these sorts of things away or shoving them into the dark parts of the world we don’t look at… That doesn’t HELP a lot of people. Some need to understand that discomfort. Some need to experience that horror in order to get their release. Some need to find their way to empathy just by this… groundwork, followed by process of elimination. Raising or handling horrors can often provide those things safely, so long as the owner can be trusted to recognize what they are.             “My hope is that these breeds will become more popular with the general populance. Not just battlers, but ordinary people that need this kind of companionship. I want to see more slasher mills shut down, I want to see more Haunts and Psychopomps go to good homes instead of ending up as scared and sickly as Jiji was when I found him. I sincerely implore your readership to look into their hearts and ask themselves… ‘do I need a good scare?’”

            Anzu Goda finally glanced in my direction and winked, grin returning like a crack in a cartoon earthquake. “How’s that for a closing statement, Mx. Goodfellow?”

            “Sounds like good press, Ms. Goda.” I replied, and took the photo.

            -Last Professional publication of Ezra Goodfellow before leaving Montactics Monthly. Present whereabouts unknown.

#horror #anime #manga #artists on tumblr #writers on tumblr #fiction #pokemon #digimon #monster rancher #cute #oc #punk #gross #gore #creepypasta #resident evil #silent hill #amnesia #condemned #monstergirl #gym leader #beast #brute #bruises #violence

[sapphicvevo]

:O wait can you talk about your story? i'm interested :3!!!

AAHH THANK YOU FOR BEING INTERESTED!!!! sorry for the late reply i wanted to be able to format BUT YKNOW

so basically it’s a mismatch of fantasy and scifi that leans more towards sci-fi if anything. it’s not based on earth or our solar system, and its a bit of like… cyberpunk in terms of cybernetic modifications + technology with a steampunk aesthetic. so like a few technologically advanced cities that are huge scattered throughout the world, and the further out you go from these cities, the less technologically advanced they are. there’s also a bit of magic, creatures, and quests that make up the fantasy elements.

it’s set five years after a huge world war that devastated the planet. the planet’s currently rebuilding, but resources are scarce, quality of life is impaired significantly, and there’s rebuilding but it’s slow. the good guys won, but they’re considerably weak and are still in the process of freeing some of the smaller societies that are still under siege (by the imperialists).

in the background there’s a secret organization of assassins who’ve been in stasis until the war ended. they believe they’re the answer to the problems of the world, and believe that people should be controlled without knowing they are. they’ve waited in stasis during the war, refusing to help either side, and are now in the process of wiping out political leaders and sending in those they’ve placed to take over without anyone knowing.

originally they were formed to be neutral and their sole goal was to maintain peace for the planet, and started off with good intentions and the belief that humanity as a whole were good and they were merely protectors. however, as time went on, corruption and a lack of desire to change and adapt to the world around them + growing cynicism made them into the organization they are currently.

this organization would take children during the war, either in the dead of night, or were given away by parents who believed them when the organization said they would protect these children during the war. of course, the parents never saw them again. these children were trained as elite warriors and depending on how well they did as children, would rank up within the organization or be sent out to the world to spread peace throughout the masses.

there’s a few conspiracy theorists that talk about the group existing, but it’s mostly seen as spooky campfire stories by the gen population at large about children going missing in the dead of night.

MY CHARACTERS… MY OCS.. MY BABIES UNDER THE CUT FOR THE LENGTH AND NOT WANTING TO CLUTTER THE DASH

so the protag is a former assassin of the group whose name is azura! she’s the only one who managed to escape from the organization. on her first assassination mission, she couldn’t kill someone, especially while they were asleep and weaponless, so she faked their deaths and ran.  

at the start she’s very on edge despite her very blasé personality. she’s crude, funny, cocky, and has a habit of running when things get too real. she found the biggest city closest to her, changed her name, and decided to hide within a crowd.

most of her skills are based in fighting, so she’s made a living as a merc for hire because… well she doesn’t have any other skills that are worthwhile to a nonviolent lifestyle and nobody would hire her. she doesn’t kill, but she’ll find people, objects, etc. for anyone after she’s gotten a reasonable background check on them.

bisexual former assassin who’s got a heart of gold who’s trying her best despite her mouth getting in the way

her main goal is to help bring peace to the world after realizing her hand in what made the world the way it is. also to make sure ajur gets justice after trying to kill her lol (a lot of vengeance vs justice ties in between her and ajur)

she also has a robo dog named fish!

my antag is named ajur and him and azura were raised in the same organization together. same teacher, and were neck and neck for the top spot, but they actually got along really well together. he actually considers her his sister, so when she left, it felt like a betrayal. 

since she failed to complete her first mission, his first mission was to kill her. he spends the whole year she’s gone searching for her, and the only reason he finds her is because she takes a job with a higher pay roll then she usually does.

farah and ajur are both traumatized survivors who are raised the same way and in the same place, but have both made choices that lead them on very different paths. i just wanted to show that you have the choice to be good or not based on your choices, not your upbringing and i wanted to highlight that

while azura is more skilled in combat, he’s more skilled in leadership and is more charismatic than she is, and has the backing of many young members of the organization who feel the same as he does

his main goal is to also bring peace to the world, first by dismantling the organization of assassins and leading them and the rest of the world into a new age of safety (through murder, manipulation, and false sense of security - is very pragmatic and believes the ends justifies the means, and if the world needs a person to be the one to kickstart with violence in order for the world to know no violence, he will take on the role)

then my side charas are farah, a runaway lesbian who azura first met when she came to the city then left because of how strong their connection was. (bisexual disaster.) nobody knows she’s a princess, and for good reason. her kingdom is still under siege by imperialists and she was the only one of her family to escape. she’s the head to azura’s heart, very logical, charismatic, and good with a sniper. 

there’s eva and bones hawthorne, my twins!!! eva is a pilot/mechanic and bones is a hacker/cyborg/dabbles in the occasional engineering. their older brother died during the war, and their family and village are still recovering from the effects of it. they learned their skills from their family, and are heavily involved with resistance groups. 

eva’s very head in the clouds, a little naive, but very protective over bones. she learned to pilot from her older brother, and how to maintain the ship too. she believes there’s good in everyone, you just have to look for it. 

bones is a little more realistic than his sister, and is also very protective over her even though they have that ‘hey ugly’ ‘what’ ‘lol’ ‘omg shut up’ relationship. he lost his his leg up to his knee from an attack on their village, and feels guilty because their family had to give up nearly everything in order to get a cybernetic replacement so he does jobs here and there that are a little more criminally inclined to help his family. 

then comes ari malloy, eva’s boyfriend! he’s the one who hired azura to retrieve a part of a map that leads to a mystical force that could restore the planet to its former glory (the fantasy quest-ish part, which i havent completely figured out yet lol). he’s a scout for the resistance, good with medicine, and average in combat. he’s also pretty much the glue of the team, and takes on a more parental role for the team.

and last but not least is ronan acosta. he’s a seer who is plagued by visions of the planet’s inevitable destruction due to humanity, and has a big hatred for it, partly due to his vision of the end and how he was treated because of his ‘curse’ as he sees it. he’s also able to talk with those from beyond to gather information, but it comes at a cost to his health where he gets migraines, passes out, or goes into seizures. he’s very closed off, angry, and not willing to help azura and co. with their quest at first, but he’s got a secret soft side where he just yearns to be a kid and have a family considering his abandoned him. (he’s also bones’ love interest)

I’M SORRY THIS IS KIND OF LONG BUT YKNOW I WARNED YA !!!!! this is my very vague outline/cast and i need to fill out names/timelines and other minor characters but this is the gist!! :~) thank u so much for asking

#answered #untitled project #and of course i have my superhero au i wanted to make into its own original work #and a novel thats basically like... abt my life #long post #AHHHH i wrote sm lmao #Anonymous

[aschenink]

Project Updates | May ‘18

↢ April ‘18 update

I’m going to start posting these monthly! Unfortunately the past month has been pretty rough for my writing, as the writer’s block I was staving off hit hard.  Personally though, this month is really exciting in that I’m coming up on finals to round out my fourth year of college and--I’m moving!! So while I may not get as much writing done this month, I’m hoping to make up for it this summer when I have a nicer place to work. 

Projects are listed in order of priority.  Warning for a very long post under the cut.

EOSOPHOBIA

novel | goal: 110K-130K | current: 20K | about

I haven’t mentioned this much, but Eos is intended to be four separate stories that are woven together to create a dynamic, deep novel. This translates to me writing a short novel (Jackal’s PoV), two novellas (Magenta’s PoV; Oswald’s PoV) and a novelette (Onyx’s PoV) while trying very, very hard to keep them intertwined in surprising ways--the end effect is that each of them is the antagonist of another’s story.  It’s super fucking cool, but also a total headache. 

Not much drafting has occurred since the last update, but there have been some significant changes to the plot.  

Now trying to save as many of my characters’ lives as I can (proving difficult) and am making their lives that much worse in return.  

At least three major character deaths (out of a 10 major character cast) are confirmed to die. Two minor characters confirmed to die as well.

Onyx has a much improved character arc that features something resembling a personality and not just a steep decline into psychosis. 

Amaryllis’s arc is much more shocking, sudden, and emotional.  

Onyx/Amaryllis (Amarynx) is confirmed to be the second romantic relationship, joining Iris/Magenta.  Amarynx is now a much healthier relationship thanks to changes in Onyx’s arc.  

Jackal now has a much deeper character motivation but is causing unreliable narration difficulties.  Jackal is arguably even more of an asshole now, but with much better intentions. 

Viktor is changing his physique and thus his faceclaim is no longer Jason Momoa.  Due to a strong likeness to a preexisting character, Viktor is now paler, has lost a slight bit of musculature, has darker hair, and is also somehow more of an asshole (?? I blame Jackal for this development)

Started writing a modern casino AU bc I like to procrastinate, but didn’t get very far.  Made a moodboard for it, though. 

CONSIDERING: changing Jackal’s PoV to Viktor’s PoV due to problems with unreliable narration; changing Oswald’s PoV to Peni’s PoV due to not knowing how to write Death’s PoV; may be dropping focus on four horsemen subplots; may be increasing the age of both Jackal and Viktor. 

NEXT FOCUS: developing outlines for all four PoV’s; resuming drafting.

GONE ARE THE GODS: A COLLECTION

story collection  |  goal: 80-90K  |  current: 10K  |  about Infra.Red

My collection of Greco-Roman mythology retellings with a dystopic/cyberpunk twist.  I’ve been really loving this collection, even though it is experimental for me.  I’m currently planning to self publish this collection when it’s ready, but that’s subject to change. 

Currently in collection, in order: 

Viral (short story) | Medusa retelling of a technological apocalypse

When Love Crumbled (poem) | Orpheus retelling

Where the Gods Don’t Venture (flash fiction) | Nymph-based 

Infra.Red (novella) | Hades + Persephone retelling in an urban dystopia

Updates:

Collection is organized by chronological order--Viral is the opening story as it tells the story of society’s dissolution into dystopia, and Infra.Red is the feature story at the end in which the dystopia is dissolved. 

When Love Crumbled is added to the collection, which is a piece related to the flash fiction piece Where The Gods Don’t Venture

I’ve really enjoyed working on Viral, as even though it’s a cyberpunk piece it allows me to weasel in some biological metaphors and that makes me really ridiculously fucking happy (I’m a biology major, so)

NEXT FOCUS: plot/outline Infra.red; edit When Love Crumbled; continue developing stories to add to collection

ASSORTED WORKS

I literally can’t sit down and focus on just one thing, so lately I’ve been bouncing around with a lot of short stories etc... I just need to prove to myself that I can actually finish a story and still enjoy it, and I’d like to publish a few short works while I’m at it!  

Currently working on:

The Rotted Rose  |  short story  | fantasy/romance |  currently drafting

Female Robbery  |  prose poem | contemporary fiction |  currently editing

Invisible Stitching  |  flash fiction | fantasy/magical realism | currently drafting

A Shotgun Named Love  |  short story | fantasy/literary | currently drafting

Pendulum Heart  |  short story | fantasy/clockpunk(?) | currently drafting

Clementine  |  flash fiction | scifi/lunarpunk |  currently drafting

Updates:

Organized WIP flash fiction and short stories

Plotted, developed 6 short WIPs

Female Robbery finished drafting, currently taking a break before editing it.  Not sure what I’m gonna do with it when it’s done, since I don’t really like it. 

Spent a lot of time hovering over the SFWA qualifying markets page and daydreaming about publishing.  Not productive but it was fun, 10/10 would recommend.

ALIGHT IN ASHES / THE MORTAL CONSTELLATION TRILOGY

novel  |  goal: 80-100K  |  current: outlining  |  about

Still working on redoing the characters and possibly adding more PoV characters, though not to the extent of Eosophobia’s bullshit.  No update.

EVEN GOD IS ENTERTAINED BY MY SINS

novel  |  goal: 60-70K  |  current: 30K  |  about?

Starting to edit sections of the first draft whenever the mood strikes me. No update.

#project update #aschenink #may 18 project update #eosophobia #gonegods