readalie-blog

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A Tree Falls In the Forest

Oh, hey, look, Readalie’s writing at 2 AM again. This can only end well!

In my defense, this wasn't supposed to be a fic. It started off as a tiny little shred of headcanon that wouldn't fit in the word limit for asks, but then I blinked and there were over a words with a very ficcish tone to them sitting in the submit box and I'd missed dinner. Ah, well.

Anyways, see if you guys can catch the Diane Duane reference.

Title: A Tree Falls In the Forest

Word Count: 1634

Warnings: Character Death

Summary: Nothing lasts forever; not humans, not worlds, not even the Woodsman.

(Continue on ao3)

#fic #my fic #readalie writes #transcendence au #gravity falls #dipper pines #alcor the dreambender #the woodsman #feels

[readalie-blog]

I don’t know, I think it was a great choice! After all, if Marvel made a Ms. Marvel movie, they wouldn’t be able to justify the way they keep postponing the Captain Marvel movie. Clearly YET ANOTHER Peter Parker movie should take precedence over a silly movie about one of the most powerful heroines in the Marvel Universe, who led the Avengers for a while, had a pet WMD in the form of a truly grumpy cat, was a kickass fighter pilot even before she got her superpowers, and inspired an amazing (not to mention amazingly popular and profitable on the comics side of Marvel) fangirl to go out as a superhero and inspire fangirls of her own.

I mean, who’d watch a movie about people like that when you can watch a movie about the character you’ve already watched five movies about?

honestly we didn’t rly need antman. kamala khan can shrink and do like ten billion more things that scott lang

#yup makes complete sense #good choice marvel #sarcasm what sarcasm #also when the heck are we getting our squirrel girl movie

[readalie-blog]

So, I just realized that although I sent this Secret Santa gift I drew through to both the giftee (@emirana) and the community hosting it (Transcendence-AU), I never showed it off to you guys! So here, enjoy Alcor and Mizar of the Gravity Falls Transcendence AU — aka Dipper and Mabel, with Flufflernutter (a Nightmare from Alcor’s Flock) for good measure. 

I’m pretty happy with how it turned out, it’s nice to finish something and see that I’m actually getting better at the show’s style (although Dipper/Alcor was pretty frustrating, since it was my first time drawing him — I redrew him more than enough times working on this to get the hang of it, though. Hopefully. XD). Also, to look for pose ideas for Mabel and Fluffernutter I researched (Inter) National Hug A Sheep Day and trust me when I say that if you ever ever, ever need something to make you smile those are the words to type into a google image search.

Anyways, I had originally planned on just writing a quick little snippet to go along with this pic but it took control and didn’t give me any choice in the matter. It was going to become of a full one-shot whether it had to trample me in the process or not. Enjoy!

Nightmarish - ao3

#my art #my fic #gravity falls #tau secret santa #silliness and smile dip #the flock #mabel pines #dipper pines #alcor the dreambender #transcendence au

[readalie-blog]

Do I have something to say today?

...

...

Nah.

#Sometimes it’s fun just to listen #thoughts

[readalie-blog]

Something to keep in your mind, staring at the first blank page of 2016.

When I was nine, possibly ten, an author came to our school to talk about writing. His name was Hugh Scott, and I doubt he’s known outside of Scotland. And even then I haven’t seen him on many shelves in recent years in Scotland either. But he wrote wonderfully creepy children’s stories, where the supernatural was scary, but it was the mundane that was truly terrifying. At least to little ten year old me. It was Scooby Doo meets Paranormal Activity with a bonny braw Scottish-ness to it that I’d never experienced before.

I remember him as a gangling man with a wiry beard that made him look older than he probably was, and he carried a leather bag filled with paper. He had a pen too that was shaped like a carrot, and he used it to scribble down notes between answering our (frankly disinterested) questions. We had no idea who he was you see, no one had made an effort to introduce us to his books. We were simply told one morning, ‘class 1b, there is an author here to talk to you about writing’, and this you see was our introduction to creative writing. We’d surpassed finger painting and macaroni collages. It was time to attempt Words That Were Untrue.

You could tell from the look on Mrs M’s face she thought it was a waste of time. I remember her sitting off to one side marking papers while this tall man sat down on our ridiculously short chairs, and tried to talk to us about what it meant to tell a story. She wasn’t big on telling stories, Mrs M. She was also one of the teachers who used to take my books away from me because they were “too complicated” for me, despite the fact that I was reading them with both interest and ease. When dad found out he hit the roof. It’s the one and only time he ever showed up to the school when it wasn’t parents night or the school play. After that she just left me alone, but she made it clear to my parents that she resented the fact that a ten year old used words like ‘ubiquitous’ in their essays. Presumably because she had to look it up.

Anyway, Mr Scott, was doing his best to talk to us while Mrs M made scoffing noises from her corner every so often, and you could just tell he was deflating faster than a bouncy castle at a knife sharpening party, so when he asked if any of us had any further questions and no one put their hand up I felt awful. I knew this was not only insulting but also humiliating, even if we were only little children. So I did the only thing I could think of, put my hand up and said “Why do you write?”

I’d always read about characters blinking owlishly, but I’d never actually seen it before. But that’s what he did, peering down at me from behind his wire rim spectacles and dragging tired fingers through his curly beard. I don’t think he expected anyone to ask why he wrote stories. What he wrote about, and where he got his ideas from maybe, and certainly why he wrote about ghosts and other creepy things, but probably not why do you write. And I think he thought perhaps he could have got away with “because it’s fun, and learning is fun, right kids?!”, but part of me will always remember the way the world shifted ever so slightly as it does when something important is about to happen, and this tall streak of a man looked down at me, narrowed his eyes in an assessing manner and said, “Because people told me not to, and words are important.”

I nodded, very seriously in the way children do, and knew this to be a truth. In my limited experience at that point, I knew certain people (with a sidelong glance to Mrs M who was in turn looking at me as though she’d just known it’d be me that type of question) didn’t like fiction. At least certain types of fiction. I knew for instance that Mrs M liked to read Pride and Prejudice on her lunch break but only because it was sensible fiction, about people that could conceivably be real. The idea that one could not relate to a character simply because they had pointy ears or a jet pack had never occurred to me, and the fact that it’s now twenty years later and people are still arguing about the validity of genre fiction is beyond me, but right there in that little moment, I knew something important had just transpired, with my teacher glaring at me, and this man who told stories to live beginning to smile. After that the audience turned into a two person conversation, with gradually more and more of my classmates joining in because suddenly it was fun. Mrs M was pissed and this bedraggled looking man who might have been Santa after some serious dieting, was starting to enjoy himself. As it turned out we had all of his books in our tiny corner library, and in the words of my friend Andrew “hey there’s a giant spider fighting a ghost on this cover! neat!” and the presentation devolved into chaos as we all began reading different books at once and asking questions about each one. “Does she live?”— “What about the talking trees” —“is the ghost evil?” —“can I go to the bathroom, Miss?” —“Wow neat, more spiders!”

After that we were supposed to sit down, quietly (glare glare) and write a short story to show what we had learned from listening to Mr Scott. I wont pretend I wrote anything remotely good, I was ten and all I could come up with was a story about a magic carrot that made you see words in the dark, but Mr Scott seemed to like it. In fact he seemed to like all of them, probably because they were done with such vibrant enthusiasm in defiance of the people who didn’t want us to.

The following year, when I’d moved into Mrs H’s class—the kind of woman that didn’t take away books from children who loved to read and let them write nonsense in the back of their journals provided they got all their work done—a letter arrived to the school, carefully wedged between several copies of a book which was unheard of at the time, by a new author known as J.K. Rowling. Mrs H remarked that it was strange that an author would send copies of books that weren’t even his to a school, but I knew why he’d done it. I knew before Mrs H even read the letter.

Because words are important. Words are magical. They’re powerful. And that power ought to be shared. There’s no petty rivalry between story tellers, although there’s plenty who try to insinuate it. There’s plenty who try to say some words are more valuable than others, that somehow their meaning is more important because of when it was written and by whom. Those are the same people who laud Shakespeare from the heavens but refuse to acknowledge that the quote “Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon them“ is a dick joke.

And although Mr Scott seems to have faded from public literary consumption, I still think about him. I think about his stories, I think about how he recommended another author and sent copies of her books because he knew our school was a puritan shithole that fought against the Wrong Type of Wordes and would never buy them into the library otherwise. But mostly I think about how he looked at a ten year old like an equal and told her words and important, and people will try to keep you from writing them—so write them anyway.

#Writing #people telling kids not to read things is my biggest berserk button #I always internally scream at parents and teachers who do that even while I outwardly smile at them #happy new year #please fill it with creative things no matter what anyone says

[readalie-blog]

Just started Undertale and, um, nobody told me how often I'd die...

#Undertale #not that I don't love games that maul me and murderize me and all that #I mean I nuzlocke and all but #am I doing something wrong?

[readalie-blog]

That Feeling When...

...an exhausted-looking mom walks in with half a dozen kids and they all scatter to each of the far corners of the library. 

#and your only coworker just went on break #librarian problems #children's librarian #oh hey one's climbing on the fake tree #and another's climbing the gizmo #time to get to work #librarian things #library

[readalie-blog]

EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!

New official art of the Samurai Jack 2016 series.

#literally can't stop squealing #it's 1:31 AM and I think I woke up my neighbors #but this is so awesome I don't care #samurai jack #adult swim #nostalgia

[readalie-blog]

#comic #gravity falls #Wendy Corduroy

[readalie-blog]

WANT. I’ll need to check out some local places on the way home and see if they’ve got any of these in stock!

Look what I found today! They didn’t have any Steven unfortunately but I’m going to be visiting family a little later so I’ll swing by the store near them real quick to see if I can find a Steven. But 3 out of 4 ain’t bad!

#WANT #SO MUCH WANT #i neeeeed them

[readalie-blog]

HANDS, Y U NO WAN B DRAWN?!

#drawing problems #hands are hard #wordless screaming #3 am posts #there's a reason I rarely post my own art #many reasons actually

[readalie-blog]

“Our uncle had transformed his house into a tourist trap he called ‘The Mystery Shack.’  The real mystery was why anyone came.”

[readalie-blog]

History teacher: when we come back from this break we'll learn about the Liberal policies introduced by the Republicans during reconstruction

Me-*sighs internally*

Back then, the Republican party WAS the liberal party. The two parties gradually switched sides on the political spectrum. This started after the Civil War, with the Republican party of the time reaching out to the unhappy southern Democrats trying to win them over to the Republican party to make the post-War transition back to a United States as smooth and peaceful as possible. This was paramount to politicians like FDR because not only were things still extremely tense after the war, but the Democratic party in northern states had changed to the point of being a completely different party from their southern counterparts in all but name and political ballots, meaning that Democratic candidates for national offices increasingly avoided important issues (especially race and civil rights) for fear of alienating southern democrats.

Eventually, Republican efforts to win over southern Democrats resulted in the conservative party we know today. The new identities of both parties were cemented in the 1960s--LBJ rallied hard for civil rights and minorities (along with unions and working class men and women). His staunchly pro-civil rights platform was the dealbreaker that made it clear to the last of the old southern Democratics that the Democratic party was no longer the party for them.

Keep in mind that the above is an relatively basic and shallow summary of what happened, but it sounds like you'll be learning about in much more detail in class. It was definitely an interesting time period!

#history #politics #civil war #even on tumblr I'm still librarianing

[readalie-blog]

Best ways to start off a day:

-Getting a surprise eskimo kiss from a random toddler on his way to storytime.

-Helping a mom find a book series to use to start teaching her son to read.

-Introducing a little girl to the dragon, Slumber, who naps in the picture book section.

-Reassuring another child meeting the dragon for the first time by telling him the biggest secret the library has: that he’s really only pretending to sleep, since because he’s afraid of little kids. He loves stories so much that if there’s even the tiniest chance someone will read one to him, he can’t bring himself to leave the library--so to make friends with him, all he needs to do is find a story to tell him!

-Coming in to work as a children’s librarian.

#real life #librarian things #i love my job #dragon #slumber #cute

[readalie-blog]

The way I see it, you can have two people come up with two very similar ideas (great minds think alike, and all, especially in a fandom as creative and enthusiastic as this one)—that end up developing into two completely different stories. Maybe it's because of a tiny variation in base idea, maybe it's because of a difference in how you perceive a certain character as opposed to the other person (because characters and stories resonate in a unique way with every unique individual who gets to know them), or maybe it's that the story you're telling is just that: the story YOU'RE telling.

Don't be afraid to put something out there. If there's something similar around already, then take it as a good sign—at least one other person fell in love with the same 'what if...?' you did!

(Just don't steal ideas. Coincidence and theft are entirely different beasts. Not that I'd think you'd do that, of course!)

I really want to talk about the AU (and still surprised i couldnt found something similar). Like srsly I’m here like, ‘why no one thought about this’? And I’m afraid someone has already thought about it but I’m nervous cause is a crossover and I really really wanna draw for it and I dont have the time….

#gf au #yes I'm this corny irl too

[readalie-blog]

Reaching

My first attempt at fanfic for this AU that actually managed to get itself written! Ford and Dipper gave me a lot of trouble, but hopefully it was worth it..

The old man swore as the tiny flame licked his finger, dropping the lit match to the pavement by his feet. He quickly stomped the fire out before the match could roll towards his pant leg or the binder that laid open less than an arm’s-length away, frantically shaking out his hand all the while. After a few moments, the flare of pain had almost entirely seceded, and a cursory examination of the afflicted digit showed no signs of burn damage.

He looked over his work with far more care, taking the time to redraw two scuffed chalk lines and shifting one of the tiny, unscented tea light candles that had been shifted a few centimeters off of it’s appointed vertex. He went over every line, every symbol and candle, three times and then once more, measuring out angles with a clear plastic protractor and a little handheld—what had his grand-niece called it? A laser pointer? The light itself was weak, and he had no use for the dial that switched the light from a little red dot to a butterfly to a ladybug, but the device had proven to be a surprisingly useful gift from Mabel nonetheless.

He could already feel the beginnings of his old bones letting him know how little they appreciated his having spent two hours sitting on a cold cement floor of the unheated storage unit. It was his second autumn on his own after that fateful summer, since he had left the Shack and Stanley, but this one was already shaping up to be worse on his aging body than the last. 

It’s what you get for running away, a voice that sounded suspiciously like his brother grumbled.

Continue on Ao3

#fic #my fic #gf #gf fanfiction #transcendence #gf au #alcor the dreambender #ford pines #dipper pines #somebody please get the pines family in to see a therapist #and then let Mabel hug everyone

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Yup! Who better to have as a tree-topper than the insanely adorable Kohaku?

(Although I will admit I was tempted to use my plushie of the bunny from Chobits’ ‘A City With No People’ picture books. She’s holding a star and everything! Unfortunately she doesn’t stand up very well...)

(Also @clampboys because they pointed Kohaku out as well!)

Finished setting up this season’s Christmukkah tree! I’m pretty pleased with it, although I need to go and get some string lights to decorate it with (although the genre ducks seem like they’re having fun… can anyone spot my little Toothless?)

#clamp #Wish #Kohaku #Chobits #A City With No People