#almost 1000 subscribers | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

chogiwapadada · 2 years

Text

Seeing Red

header edited by me do not remove the watermark and do not repost

pairing; lee jihoon (woozi) x f reader

genre; smut (minors dni), honestly it's filth

warnings; cam boy!woozi, sugar baby dynamics, dom dynamics, masturbation (m & f), guided masturbation, degradation, praise, use of toys, marking, unprotected sex, sex on camera, pet names, and light spanking.

word count; 8.1k and some change

svthub masterlist

part 2

a/n; will be linked to the seventeen peachybun-bun master list. hope you enjoy this and make sure you read and leave love on the other fics by the amazing writers part of this collab. huge thank you to @sapphichui for putting all the together and @bisexualgyu for their hard work with graphics. also a big thank you to @librarian-stacks and @onlychans for proofreading this beast

[sugarwoo$i online]

Freshly manicured nails tap lightly on keys as you try to steady your breath listening to him talk. He is in such a mood tonight. You had been watching sugarwoo$i for months, almost daily at this point, but each time felt exciting, and each time you got bolder with your tips and comments.

Woozi groans as his hand moves over the bulge in his undone jeans. He wanted to take his cock out and give himself some relief, but none of the viewers deserved to see him yet. He had made that very clear with his words and actions. His free hand ran through his hair as he bit at his bottom lip, leaning his head back in the old office chair, before laughing as he listened to the tips overshadowing the sound of his music playing in the background.

“Greedy tonight.”

His eyes scan over the tips, seeing a large one from domino$ugar, a smirk playing on his features as he lifts his hips and pushes his jeans down to his hips, before kicking them the rest of the way off. “Thank you, Domino. You are especially generous tonight. Are you that needy, baby?”

You gasp as he uses the name he started calling you out of habit to shorten your username. Your lips press together at the same time as your thighs as his eyes meet the camera, sending chills down your body. Warmth spreads through your stomach, down until you feel your panties beginning to get sticky with arousal.

domino$ugar has tipped $1000

cutie4woo: That’s a lot of money Domino…

Woozi laughs at your second tip, raising a brow as he slides his hand into his tight briefs, running his thumb over his head and making himself shiver with anticipation. “You’re right, it is. I expect an answer, Domino. I was speaking to you. Don’t make me ask again. I’d hate to cut off the video because you can’t be a good girl and answer when you are spoken to.”

Your legs spread as you shift in your bed, running your fingers along your panties and closing your eyes for a moment as he chastises you for not listening to him, before you finally type into the chat.

domino$ugar: I always am, for you.

“Of course you are. My little needy girl. Are you touching yourself? You better be. I know your little fingers aren’t nearly enough, but they will have to do for tonight.”

You watch as the chat springs to life as other subscribers chime in to tell him how well they are listening to his commands and how wet they are for him. Your eyes flick from the chat to his face as he scoffs into a laugh as he obviously reads the chat.

He nods, finally moving his hips once again, sliding his briefs down and kicking them off to expose his hard cock. Tilting his head, Woozi lets his shaft rest against his stomach as he leans back, just watching the camera as if you are in the room and he is watching your fingers slide your panties to the side. Your fingers circle your clit, making you gasp out his name, which he seems to respond to, making you furrow your brows.

“Such a pretty little slut for me. So nice and wet. Getting yourself ready for my cock?” His voice raises into a question, and you nod as you close your eyes, listening to the sound of his voice as he groans and wraps his hand around his length, pumping himself slowly. “Going to let me have you any way I want?”

Your eyes open to the sounds of tips. You bite at your frown, before reaching up with your free hand to send in another, not wanting to possibly be beaten out, though you knew there is no way that could happen.

domino$ugar has tipped $500

“Domino, baby. Thank you, why don’t you buy a private show at this point.” He laughs, but you raise a brow, having not considered that possibility. The idea is intriguing, but it is also so personal. But then again, isn’t that what you wanted? Woozi all to yourself?

Your finger moves the pointer over the screen as your other finger circles your clit, making your thighs tremble when you press the confirm button. The sound triggers, and Woozi laughs, leaning forward slightly and shaking his head. “You really are good at listening to me, aren’t you?”

The screen counts down as the chat moves quickly in whines when it is announced that Woozi is entering a private show. “Don’t whine. I’ll be back tomorrow.” Woozi blows a kiss to the camera one last time, before for most the screen goes to a stream end - user in a private show screen, marking the end of his show for the night.

Your screen only goes to black for a moment, before Woozi is back with a smirk and a raised brow, leaning forward towards the camera. “Hey, baby. Do you want to type, or do you want to let me hear that pretty little voice?”

Your stomach flips as you sit up in bed, your hand sliding from between your legs as you realize he is speaking only to you. An invite for you to share your voice pops up as an option on your screen. A trembling hand lingers over the button for a moment, before you accept the invitation, realizing it might be nice to not have to type the entire time as you watch him, no matter how awkward it might end up being.

Woozi watches as your picture lights up, signaling your voice is connected and waits until he hears a small “Hi.” His smirk morphs into a bit more of a smile, before he bites his bottom lip and furrows his brows, tilting his head. “Are you being shy with me, Domino? After all you’ve said to me in chat? That isn’t the dirty girl I know. This is your show, baby, but I won’t settle for that shit.”

Your eyes widen as you clear your throat, and you speak up some, shifting on your bed and bringing your knees to your chest. “I’m…I’m not shy. I just didn’t expect to be able to speak to you directly.”

Your eyes watch as Woozi laughs and nods, picking up his tripod and moving towards a bed, giving you more of a view of his room. It was clear he had spent his money in an interesting way. A few instruments are strategically in a corner and are obviously where he had invested his money, whereas the rest of his furniture is almost tragic in your eyes.

Clearly having no shame in his body, Woozi sets up the camera facing his bed, before moving to a drawer and taking out a red toy and showing it to you. “Remember this?”

You bite your lip and nod, before answering verbally. “Yes. I sent that to you. You said you liked red, and I wanted you to have something to play with. I…I wanted to watch you use it.”

Woozi laughs as you stumble over your words and confession as he takes off the end of the red fleshlight, before laying back on his bed that creaks from obvious age and just poor value.

You find yourself unable to keep yourself from speaking as you watch him reach for a bottle of lube, pouring some onto his fingers. “You need a new bed.”

Another laugh falls from his lips as he looks at the camera and shakes his head. “That’s what you want to talk about? I’m about to fuck the toy you bought for me, as if it were you, and you want to talk about my old ass bed?”

You feel your cheeks flush as you take a breath. “I mean...no, but yes. I…want you to be comfortable. I just like to see you taken care of.”

Your voice falls off into a whisper at the end, making Woozi smirk as he strokes himself slowly and looks into the camera, before putting some lube onto the toy. “You want to take care of me, Domino?”

You let out a shaky audible breath instantly turned on by his words. Woozi furrows his brows at the sound of your breath, before sliding the head of his cock into the toy with a low groan. “Yes, I do...oh my god. You look so good, Woozi.”

He bites his lips together and looks down at his cock moving into the toy, before glancing back to the camera. “Yeah? You have your fingers in your pretty little pussy for me? Fuck, I wish this was your pussy.”

You watch his hips move up to meet the toy in his hand as your legs spread once again. Your fingers slide around your panties, two fingers press at your wet entrance as you gasp when you feel the stretch when you push them in.

“I heard that. Put the computer closer so I can listen to your fingers.”

Nodding, you do as he says, sliding down in the bed and spreading your legs further apart so you can put the laptop between your legs, letting him hear the wet sounds as your fingers enter your wet core over and over.

“Fuck that’s it. Faster. I want you to cum for me, Domino, like the dirty girl you are.”

You whine as you curl your fingers up into yourself to find your spot, causing Woozi to fuck up harder into the toy in response. “Woozi, please….”

Glancing at the camera, sweat on his brows, he grins and raises a brow. “Please what, baby? What do you want? Tell me.”

Your thighs tremble as you feel yourself getting closer, your eyes fixed on him as you listen to him grunt as his hips meet his hand. “I wish you could fuck me. I need you so bad. I want you so much.”

He laughs and leans his head back, his abs tightening as he groans out “Domino…” making you close your eyes, “Call me Y/N.”

Woozi smirks and nods, “Y/N, cum for me. Fuck yourself faster. I know you can. Put your thumb on your clit. I want you to scream my name.”

Hearing him say your name almost pushes you over the edge as you follow his commands. Your thumb presses over your clit as you rub circles over it. Your fingers moving faster and harder into your pussy, you gasp, before giving him what he wants as you scream out his name as your legs close around your hand when you cum.

Woozi quickly follows you, hearing the sounds of your orgasm. “Fuck…oh fuck! Y/N…yes, baby.” His eyes close as yours open, letting you look at his fucked out face in awe. You had seen him after a climax many times, but this time seems different. He almost seems like he experienced bliss.

Opening his eyes, Woozi laughs and puts the toy to the side, before reaching for a tissue. He cleans some cum from his fingers and cock, before he looks at the camera shaking his head in disbelief.

“What?” Your voice is shaky as you move to sit up once again.

“You sound like a fucking dream. I wish I could meet you for real.”

Raising a brow, you smile and shrug. “Why can’t we? Are there some camboy rules that say you can’t?

Laughing, Woozi sits up, glancing at the time seeing 15 minutes left for the private show. “I mean, no, but I am not made of money. I can’t just go to random places to meet people.”

You smile and bite your lip and shrug. “Where do you live? I promise I’m not a crazy person. I don’t want to kill you.”

Sliding on a pair of shorts, he runs a hand through his hair and sighs, contemplating, before nodding. “I’m in California, just outside of LA. We are almost out of time.”

You perk up at his state and smile brighter. “I’m also in California. Well, one of the houses is. Give me your number, and I’ll send you some details. I will also make it worth your time.”

Woozi shakes his head, mouthing “one of the houses”, before picking up his phone. “You are loaded, aren’t you?”

Your cheeks burn as you laugh and pick up your own phone, waiting for him to tell you his information as he furrows his brows. “I have money, yes. As I said, I want to take care of you. Is that bad?”

Glancing at the time, seeing a 3-minute warning, Woozi considers your offer before sitting on his bed hard in front of the camera. “Give me your number instead. Let me think it over. I’ll text you once I decide. Is that fair, Y/N?”

Your name on his lips in a casual setting sends a chill down your spine, making you whisper yes. You tell him your number, watching him type it into his phone and hitting save as the screen flashes a warning that the show is about to end. Meeting the camera with his eyes one last time, Woozi smirks and rubs the back of his neck. “This was fun, I really will think about it.”

You start to answer when the show ends, leaving you alone in your room. The silence is almost deafening as you lean back on the pillows, sliding your laptop away from you as you hold your phone to your chest, glancing up at your ceiling, wondering if he will text.

—-----------------------------------------------------------------------

The sound of a text makes you furrow your brows as you sit on your sofa. Your attention is split between your phone and the television. You had been 3 episodes into a new show, a bottle of wine gone, certain you wouldn’t hear from Woozi, when the familiar ding on a new text went off.

Unknown: Hey it’s Woozi. I’ve thought about your offer. It’s so tempting I can’t turn it down. I just don’t want you to feel like you have to do something like this.

Sitting up quickly, you knock off a bowl of popcorn, the show long forgotten as you quickly save his number to your phone, before responding to him with shaky hands.

Y/N: I don’t feel like I have to do anything. I want to do it. I was serious about wanting to take care of you. We don’t even have to do anything. I would just like to meet and maybe you could do a show…and I could watch? Like I said I’ll make it worth your time.

Woozi leans back in his office chair as he reads your text, raising a brow at your message. It was more and more tempting. He was struggling when it came to money, that was half the reason he had started the cam show in the first place. The fact that he enjoyed it so much just happened to become an added benefit.

Woozi: Alright. When and where?

You bite your lip and kick your legs out of excitement, before taking a breath to steady yourself as you think about his question before responding.

Y/N: Saturday, 6 pm. If you send me your address I can have a car pick you up. Doesn’t matter where. I’ll find a nice place near you for us.

“I feel a bit like a prostitute but whatever…” Woozi mutters to himself as he scratches the back of his head, before shrugging and letting his thumbs run over the keyboard. If things got weird, he would let his friends know where he was, and he would make his way out. If he got lucky, you were hot and this would be a good time.

Woozi: [Address attached] Seems like a lot just for a little meeting with me. Are you trying to be my sugar mama Domino? ;)

Cheeks burning at the text, you rub your lips together and take a bit longer than intended to respond, making Woozi a bit nervous as you see bubbles pop up, marking he is writing another text.

Woozi: It was a joke.

Y/N: I’d like to be, but please when it’s not during the show call me Y/N.

The two messages send and are seen at the same time, making both of you take a moment before either of you respond.

Woozi: Are you serious?

Y/N: Yes. I wasn’t kidding when I said I like to see you taken care of. Is that bad? It makes me happy.

Woozi raises a brow as he glances at a stack of bills on his desk that even the larger tips weren’t covering before looking back at his phone.

Woozi: What would it mean? Like would you want me to stop doing the show and just be like yours or something? I don’t know if I want that.

You furrow your brows at his message, almost as if you can feel his hesitation. Shaking your head, you adjust yourself on the couch and pull your legs under you as you bite at your lips.

Y/N: Not at all. I love the shows. They are hot. I like watching people go crazy over you. Why would I take away another source of your money? That's selfish, I’m not selfish Woozi. I literally said I want to take care of you. It’s nothing weird really…we can talk more about it Saturday. The car will pick you up.

Woozi thinks about how to respond to the message when you send a kissy emoji, making him scoff into a smirk, before he just reacts to your message with a thumbs up to let you know he read it.

—-----------------------------------------------------------------------

Standing in front of the mirror, Woozi pulls at the tight button up, furrowing his brows. It isn’t that he isn’t sure that he looks good. He knows he looks attractive. He has that confidence. He has been told enough times, especially by you, that he is handsome, but knowing you have so much money and what you want with him made him suddenly self-conscious. Maybe the clothes weren’t nice enough. What if you changed your mind?

Glancing at the clock, he puffs out his cheeks before grabbing his phone, shoving it into his pocket and doing the same with his wallet and keys. Throwing a bag with his show necessities over his shoulder, Woozi sighs and checks the mirror one last time, before heading out of his apartment and down into the street. He is surprised to see a black SUV waiting on the street with a man in a suit standing next to the back door.

“Uh hi? Is this for me?”

With a nod, the man opens the door, and Woozi scoffs with a shrug, before getting into the back seat. He instantly takes his phone out to text a couple of his friends, telling them about the ride he is now taking to some potentially fancy place.

Hosh: What if she’s a babe?

Cheol: Idk why you decided to do this Jihoon. This seems reckless.

Mingyu: You can finally pay me back the $50 bucks you owe me?

Woozi scowls at the last text and decides to delete it, before leaning his head back and glancing out the window as the man drives him into the city, towards a part he had rarely visited just due to the fact he knew he couldn’t afford half the stores in the area.

“Hey, can you tell me the name of the place we are going to?”

The man driving met Woozi’s eyes in the rearview mirror and sighs before speaking in a flat tone, “The Roosevelt. Ms. Y/L/N has the penthouse.”

Woozi thought he would choke on his own spit before he swallowed it down. The driver scowls at him, before reaching back to pull open a section in the console to show drinks.

Nodding in thanks, Woozi grabs a bottle of water and twists the top open, before downing half the bottle to calm himself down, having not expected some place like The Roosevelt and the penthouse. He knows you had said some place nice, but not something that he couldn’t dream of affording.

Picking up his cellphone, he quickly types out his new information to Hoshi and Seungcheol, deciding not to update Mingyu on anything after his last response. Woozi can’t help but smirk at their fast responses and their different opinions.

Cheol: Who the fuck is she? A Kennedy? Jihoon…I know I said I’d come get you if you needed me to but how the hell am I supposed to get you out of The Roosevelt?

Hosh: That is the hottest thing you have ever said to me. Hands down. If you don’t fuck her I will. Tell her if she wants a second sugar baby I am into all kinds of kinky shit.

Woozi glances up as the car comes to a stop. His eyes look up as he leans towards the window. The sheer size of the hotel makes his eyes widen as he barely registers the door opening as the driver waits for him to get out.

“Your keycard, sir. Ms. Y/L/N is waiting for you. You can let yourself in.”

Grabbing his things, Woozi then looks at the gold card in the man’s hand, before taking it from him as if it were made of glass. He steps out of the vehicle and makes his way through the main doors, going towards the elevator. He can’t stop himself from glancing around in awe at the opulence of the entire decor. How it is almost too much, and yet he finds himself loving every moment of it.

Stepping into the elevator, Woozi slides to the side as he is joined by another couple who give him a side-eye and a scoff with a quick look at his outfit, until he presses the button for the penthouse, only to be met with a prompt for his keycard. They watch him expectantly, almost as if they know he wouldn’t have one because he doesn’t belong here. He can’t help the smug smirk on his lips when their eyes follow the gold card as he slid it through the reader, and the elevator beeps recognizing the card, approving the prompt.

“Which floor are you two going to? I can get it for you.”

The man meets Woozi’s eyes and furrows his brows, before muttering 12th and watching as it is pressed for him.

Woozi leans back against the elevator wall, crossing his arms as he watches the numbers at the top of the door go up only to stop at the 12th. Watching the couple walk off the elevator, Woozi slides to the middle of the doors and smiles sarcastically as the doors begin to close. “Have a great night you two!”

He can’t help but laugh as the man groans loudly when the woman on his arm hits him just as the doors close and the elevator begins to go up once again. His stomach begins to tighten slightly in anticipation. As much fun as this is, he has to admit to himself that he is nervous to meet you, and worried that you’d have the same reaction to him as the couple had given him.

With one last ding, the elevator comes to a stop and the doors open to a single door, making Woozi mutter out a wow as he steps into a small hall, noticing it was the only door on the floor. Shaking out his hands, he shrugs his shoulders a few times, before sliding the gold card into the reader, hearing the beep. He pushes the door open, glancing around as he moves into the large foyer area. “Hello?”

You glance up from your spot on the couch. A glass of wine barely touched in your hand as you bounce your leg. You know Woozi has been working his way up for a few minutes, but your anticipation all comes to a head when you hear his voice come from just a room away. Moving to stand, you clear your throat and sit your wine down so you can smooth your dress down, moving around the couch to meet him as he enters the living area.

Woozi is glancing up at the tall ceilings when he moves into the larger room, only glancing down as he hears a smaller “Hello, Woozi.”

A smirk is instantly on his lips as he hears your voice, until he sees you and his breath is taken away, his smooth confident exterior is broken. “Holy shit…uh, Domino? Wait I mean, Y/N? Oh my god, you are…”

Your cheeks burn hot as Woozi’s hands extend out to gesture at you as he almost seems to panic, before moving to sit his bag down with the gold key card. “I don’t have words. Fuck…I don’t know what I imagined, but Jesus christ, you are beautiful. This doesn’t seem fair.”

A scoff falls from your lips as you furrow your brows, moving a bit closer to Woozi as he watches your every move. “What isn’t?”

Woozi gestures around and then to himself. “You and what you want with me. I’m not…you deserve better.”

Shaking your head, you bite your lip and glance at his bag, before looking back at him. “I said what I wanted, Woozi, and I meant it. You are even more gorgeous in person. I’m even more certain.”

He laughs and scratches the back of his head, shaking his head, before sighing as you move in touching distance from him. He wants to reach out and touch your skin. It looks so smooth and almost untouched. He can imagine leaving marks all over you. He wants to hear you scream his name again, maybe even his real name. “You can call me Jihoon…when I’m not on camera. When it’s just, you know us. That’s my real name. Lee Jihoon.”

You take one last step, and Woozi can’t help the groan that falls from his lips as he smells your perfume. You give him a soft glance, so innocent, and yet there is something in your eyes that says you want to be fucked right there and then. “Okay, Jihoon. Should we talk about terms?”

Woozi sighs out a soft breath as you say his name, reaching out to run the back of his index finger along your arm, making you shiver slightly at his touch. “Uh yeah…whatever you want.”

You can’t help but smile at his words, before turning your hand over and offering it to him to see what he would do.

Woozi smirks a bit, raising a brow, before moving his hand over your arm, watching chill bumps spread over your skin. He takes your hand and leads you towards the couch, sitting you down in front of your wine.

“So I don’t know a ton about how this works, but I’d like to give you an…well, we will call it an allowance at the loss of a better word. I’m thinking $10,000 a month? If that seems fair? Like I told you in text, I don’t want you to stop your shows. I enjoy them. I wouldn’t mind being there to watch some of them in person. I don’t expect you to want to sleep with me Jihoon. So if that’s something you thought I wanted, you don’t have to be. That isn’t why I asked for this arrangement. I really do want to take care of you. I just…can’t fight that urge.”

Woozi’s eyes widen at the amount of money, before he bites his lips as he watches you talk, letting his fingers slide around your wrist, his fingers touching as he swallows hard. Did you not want to sleep with him now? Furrowing his brows, he nods and looks away, before laughing a bit and letting go of your wrist. “Okay. So you are just going to give me money for existing?”

You smile into a laugh and nod with a shrug. “Basically, I have enough. Why not spoil you?”

He laughs and leans back on the sofa putting his arm behind you before tapping out a beat onto the fabric in thought. “But you don’t want to sleep with me?”

Your cheeks go hot once again, and you look away as you pick up your wine, taking a sip and making Woozi smile at your reaction.

“Or do you? Are you being shy right now, Y/N? You can tell me.”

You look back over to the man who had been your fantasy for months as you press the wine glass to your lips, before he sits up to take it from you, only to sit it down. “You are either overly shy with me, Y/N, or a dirty little slut. There is no inbetween with you, is there?”

Turning your head, you are stopped as Woozi reaches up to take your chin into his hand, turning your face back to him and making you look at him. “I’ll stop if you want me to, but you act like I don’t want you, or maybe you don’t want me? Why do you watch my shows if you don’t? Cause I’m not going to lie…right now, I want to mark you up and see how good you taste, baby. Earn my keep.”

You scoff and take in a shaky breath. “I just don’t want you to think I’m paying you for sex, Jihoon. That’s not what this was about.”

Woozi laughs and runs his thumb over your bottom lip, glancing at your legs as you rub your thighs together. “You’ve made that clear, and I believe you, but I still think you want me to ravage your little cunt.”

Woozi smirks as he pulls down at your bottom lip, making you gasp when your mouth falls open for him. “I accept your terms only if we explore this. See what happens…because baby, I have to have you. You are just too sweet.”

All you can do is nod as you meet his eyes, watching him nod back to you, before his mouth is on your throat. Your eyes close as you let out a soft moan, making Woozi smirk against your skin as his kisses work up your neck and to your jaw, and finally your lips as he pulls you closer with his free hand by your waist.

“Now you said you wanted to watch me do a show? How bout you be a good girl and get out of this dress while I set up my camera?”

You try to catch your breath as you feel his fingers slide your zipper down your back, before he moves off the couch to grab his bag, taking out a small tripod and camera glancing back at you. “Where is the bedroom, baby girl?”

Gesturing to the right, you lick your lips and move to stand as you shake, making Woozi grin as he leaves you to regain your composure so he can set up for his show.

Finding his way into a large bedroom, Woozi can’t help but laugh to himself at how nice it all is. Sitting the tripod down on a dresser, he moves into the room and runs his hand over the bedding, shivering at how soft the comforter is. He can’t help but cringe at the idea of sleeping on his itchy bedding at home after being spoiled like this.

Shaking his head, Woozi glances around, figuring out the best place for his camera, framing it up the bed. He is unsure where this would all lead, but he wants to leave his options open in case you want to join him.

Glancing up at the sound of your heels, his breath is taken away once again as he sees you in just your red lingerie. Running a hand over his mouth, Woozi can’t help but palm his jeans with his other hand, muttering to himself.

“I...holy shit. Did you wear this just for me? Alright, so I won’t make you do anything you don’t want to do. How about we use the color system, okay, baby? Red if things are uncomfortable or you don’t want it. Yellow if you want me to slow down or if you want a break. Green if you are good to go. The only thing I want is for you to answer me if I ask for a color. Can you do that for me?”

You watch Woozi move one of the chairs next to his camera that he has set up on an end table at the end of the bed, before he moves to you, putting his hand on your hip and running his thumb along the band of your panties. You nod, and he shakes his head. “I need words, no nodding or shaking your head. I won’t accept that. Verbal consent only. So you answer me when I talk to you.”

Woozi gives you a look, lowering his head as you swallow a breath, before licking your lips. “Yes, I understand.”

Smiling, he bites at his bottom lip, glancing at your lips and tongue, before taking a step back to give you a once over as he shakes his head. “Sit down for me. I’ll tell you what I want you to do. Just like in any other show, only I can watch you this time. You can inspire everyone else with your good behavior.”

Sitting down, you cross your legs as you watch Woozi take a step back, moving to his camera. He takes out his laptop to open the svthub website and makes sure everything is perfect, before he presses the go live button. He smirks when he hears the sound of your phone going off in the next room to signal you got his notification. “My good girl even has her notifications turned on for me?”

You suck on your bottom lip and nod, only to see him raise a brow in warning. “Yes, I do.”

He smiles as you answer him out loud, before sitting down on the end of the bed and glancing at his laptop as comments begin to flood in with tips.

“You’re right, I’m not in my room. I’m somewhere special with a special guest. You are going to be nice to my special guest, aren’t you?”

You watch Woozi smirk as he works a few buttons open on his shirt, making you suck on your bottom lip as he meets your eyes, before looking at the camera for a moment, before reading more comments.

“It’s going to be the same as always…maybe a bit more exciting. We will see how it goes.” You listen to him laugh as he shrugs the tight shirt off his shoulders, exposing his muscles to the light in the room.

You know he is built, but you could never really make out the details with his camera quality. You make a mental note to get him something nicer, so that everyone could understand just how perfect he is.

Shifting in your seat, you draw Woozi’s attention, making him tsk. “Don’t move, baby. Not until I say so.”

You lick your lips and nod, before letting out a meek, “Okay.” Your hands grip the arms of the chair as Woozi tosses his shirt to the floor and leans back, his eyes staying on you for a moment as he almost seems to study you. It seems like only the sounds of tips bring him back to the laptop as he smirks and laughs sucking on his cheek.

“I might. We will see what she wants to do. See how shy she is. If she is a good girl and feels comfortable…”

You furrow your brows curious at what he is talking about, only able to use your imagination as to what the comments are saying.

Woozi’s hands move to his jeans undoing them as his eyes move back to yours as he tilts his head. “What’s that look for? Don’t like not being able to know what I’m talking about? You want to know what I’ve already figured out about you? You want control, hence our little arrangement, and yet you want to be completely out of control. You want someone to control you, don’t you, baby girl? Isn’t that why you like my show?”

Woozi watches your breasts rise and fall quickly as your breath quickens at his questions. He is hitting the nail right on the head, reading you like a book. “Answer me. I won’t ask twice. We talked about this.”

“You are right.”

He makes a sound of acknowledgment as he stands, pushing his jeans past his hips, leaving him in just his briefs. The outline of his hard cock makes your mouth water. Woozi isn’t oblivious to how you are looking at him. Instead, he laughs and turns to the side, running his hand over his bulge, showing the camera with raised brows.

“I think she’s hungry, but she doesn’t deserve anything just yet. Color?”

You are brought back to attention at his question as you meet his eyes when he sits down, his hand lazily running over his shaft through the thin fabric.

“Green…” You press your thighs together, trying your best to give yourself some stimulation, only for his eyes to drop to your lap as he shakes his head.

“I want to see that pretty little pussy. Take off your panties and give them to me, then spread your legs nice and wide. I can’t have you breaking rules and getting off before I say so.”

You whine to Woozi’s words, before moving to slide your shoes off and putting them to the side, so you can easily stand and step out of your panties. You hold them out, but Woozi makes no effort to move from where he is to take them from you.

Glancing towards the camera, you feel your cheeks flush as you move slightly into the frame, keeping your face hidden as you hand them to him. You move back to your chair, sitting down and slowly spreading your legs for him like you were told.

Smirking, Woozi twists your panties around his fingers, before showing them to the camera. “She knows how much I love red, but fuck…” His eyes move back over to you as he seems to eye fuck your glistening folds from where he is sitting. “Seeing that pussy knowing it’s mine…I could lose my shit right now. It is mine, isn’t it?”

“Yes, it’s yours, Woozi.”

He laughs, biting at his bottom lip with a nod, before putting your panties down on the bed beside him as he leans back on his elbows, watching you. “I want everyone to follow along with our pretty baby tonight. Can you do that for me? Can you all be good little girls tonight?”

You watch as he glances at the laptop, a grin spreading over his face as he nods and tips start pouring in. “They love this. I might never do a show alone again.” His eyes meet yours as your thighs tremble. “She’s suffering, I think she’s starving to be touched. Are you starving?”

He nods and pouts in faux concern before laughing. “All my pretty little sluts are so needy. They are all just like you, baby. I bet they are dripping.” Woozi tilts his head and sucks in a breath as he watches you literally drip onto the cushion under you.

“I can’t wait to taste every last drop of you. Play with your clit, beautiful. I can see you are in pain.”

You lick your lips, before licking your fingertips and doing as you are told, rubbing them around your clit, making yourself jump at the sudden contact. “Woozi...”

He raises a brow and bites his lip in response, before he glances at the laptop and reads the comments. “Louder, baby. They want to hear your pretty little moans. They said you sound sexy. They are right. Put your middle finger inside. I bet that needy little pussy will swallow it right up.”

Woozi leans forward as you follow his instructions, and he watches your middle finger disappear into your core. Your moan fills the room, echoed by his soft groan as he grips at his cock through his underwear. “I was right, but it’s not enough, is it, baby girl?”

You whine out a no as you curl the single finger into your core, trying to get more pleasure, wishing he would just touch you himself.

Woozi moves his hips up, sliding his briefs down and letting his cock spring back up to his stomach as he leans back slightly. Your eyes follow it out of instinct making him smirk.

“Oh no, you don’t get this yet, but you can have another finger. Just one more, that’s a good girl. Such a good listener.”

Watching his hand lazily slide over his cock, you whine out his name once more, before moaning loud enough for the camera, making his brows furrow. “Such a pretty sound. Are you moaning for me too?” His eyes are on the camera as he speaks, before glancing at the laptop and nodding to the comments with approval.

“But you don’t get to cum until I let our baby cum. I think that’s only fair. She’s trying so hard to listen to me. Aren’t you?”

You nod and curl your fingers in deep, moaning out a louder yes, making Woozi fuck up into his hand with a groan. “Shit…that’s my girl. Keep that up, and I’m gonna have to fuck you in front of everyone. Would you like that? You’d get off on it wouldn’t you?”

He smirks at your reaction as your fingers slow down, but your breath quickens. “Color?”

You take a moment as he leans forward with a questioning look on his face, waiting for your answer. “Your back can be to the camera the entire time, and you can say no. I won’t be mad. So tell me your color. I won’t ask again.”

Licking your lips, you look at his hand around his shaft as he runs his thumb over his head, making himself hiss out a soft “shit…” as he waits for you to consider his proposal. Nodding, you slide your fingers from between your legs and take a breath, “Green, yes.”

“That’s my good girl.” Woozi slides back on the bed, bringing the laptop with him, before putting his hand out for you. “Come have a seat, baby girl.”

Your cheeks warm slightly as you move past the camera and crawl over the bed, knowing your ass is exposed to the camera, but the sudden increase in tips makes your confidence soar as Woozi’s hands reach for your face as your legs move on either side of his.

“Look at how well you are taking care of me…now, let me take care of you. You want me to wear a condom?”

His lips meet yours as you shake your head no and your eyes close, one hand sliding along your side to your hip as he moves you over his hips. You moan about being on the pill and trusting him into the kiss, feeling his hand move between your legs, a calloused thumb pressing against your clit in slow circles.

“Okay, baby. You like that?”

Nodding, you whine a yes against his lips, only to lift your hips as you feel him lineup his tip with your entrance and move a hand back to your hip to slowly lower you down. The stretch almost sends you over the edge instantly as you feel almost overly full. “Woozi, oh my god. Wait, yellow.”

His brows furrow as he looks up at you, running a hand over your cheek. He waits until you nod and mutter that you are okay to move. “You sure? Color?”

“Green now. Please move. I need you. I just needed a second.” You roll your hips over him, making him throw his head back into a laugh as he nods.

“Okay, okay I get it. Bra off, now.”

You nod and reach behind your back, undoing the clasp as his hands move to pull down the straps as his hips begin to slowly thrust up, meeting your movements.

Your soft moans are almost overshadowed by his groans, until his mouth is on your skin when your breasts are exposed to him. You can’t help but lean your head back in ecstasy as he starts leaving red marks over your chest as he imagined earlier. Running your hands through his hair, you pull gently, causing a low growl to erupt from his throat as he glances up at you, before running his tongue around your nipple.

“Careful, kitten…I’ll leave you red all over if you start.”

You smirk slightly, making him narrow his eyes playfully. He bites down, making you cry out into a moan. A laugh falls from his lips, before his hands grip your hips as his hips begin to piston upwards, making you lose your breath in surprise as you grip at his shoulders to almost try to hold on to reality.

“I think you’d like that. Waking up tomorrow and looking in the mirror, seeing red and blue spots all over your pretty skin. Wouldn’t you?”

You nod, not answering verbally, causing Woozi to growl again as he thrusts up hard, making you gasp out a yes. “Yes I want that, please. Oh my god, I’m gonna cum. Please!”

Woozi groans at your pleading, his head falling back against the headboard as you moan so beautifully for him, as you beg so sweetly for him. “Yeah? You wanna cum?”

“Yes, please can I cum?”

Glancing at the laptop, Woozi laughs and bites at his lip hard, before taking a breath to calm himself down. He is close, but he wants to hold out to give you what you want. “They want you to cum too. They want to see your cum running down my cock. I want to see that too. Cum for me, baby girl.”

His thumb presses over your clit, rubbing hard as he thrusts hard, and you can’t hold on any longer, even if you wanted to try. The pressure that had been building releases hard enough to make your head spin as you hold on to his arms, digging your nails into his skin as you moan loudly.

Woozi gasps as your walls tighten around him, sending him over the edge. A few hard thrusts into your orgasm, he spills into you with a loud groan, careful not to say your name as his hands dig into your hips hard enough to leave bruises, like your nails would surely leave on him.

As you slowly stop moving, Woozi's hands loosen their grip, only to begin rubbing gentle circles in the place of the tight vice-like grip, as he laughs and tries to catch his breath. “Holy shit…”

You smile down at him, before laying your forehead on his shoulder, feeling him kiss your ear. The action sends a chill down your spine and causes a soft gasp to fall from your lips.

Smirking, he leaves a few more kisses below your ear, before moving your hair and turning your head to bring your lips to his, before speaking against them.

“My good girl.”

You laugh and nod, nudging your nose against his, before biting at your lip, thinking about your arrangement as you dare to tease him. “You keep calling me pet names, with our…deal, does that mean I get to call you my baby?”

Woozi growls into a smirk, bringing his hand down hard on your ass and leaving a bright red mark that sends the chat into a frenzy, tips coming in quickly as he mutters against your lips. “No, but you can call me daddy.”

“Okay, daddy.”

He grins into the kiss, before he slides from you, letting you lay on your stomach on the bed as he winks at the camera. “Thanks for coming to the show and being such good girls. Maybe I can talk her into joining me again, since you enjoyed it so much. I think she did too.”

You moan softly as he runs a hand over your warm ass where his handprint was still visible, before he laughs again and reaches to turn off the camera, ending the show for the night with a wiggle of his brows. “I love seeing her all red.”

[sugarwoo$i offline]

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

#woozi smut #seventeen smut #thesvttown #ficscafe #svthub.collab #svthub #lee jihoon smut #svt smut #woozi #lee jihoon #seventeen #svt #seventeen scenarios #seventeen imagines #seventeen fanfics #woozi x reader #seventeen x reader #svthub collab

1K notes · View notes

iugza · 5 months

Text

Bluey X Welcome Home!

Hello guys! So I've been thinking about this idea for a long time, and finally I can share with you the cover for one of the Bluey series along with Wally at the Bingos place! I thought it would be best to make Julie as Bluey, Wally as Bingo, Barnaby as Bandit, and Poppy as Chilli. I also drew silly concepts of Wally and Julie designs (if you're interested I can post them later!). I plan to just redraw many-many frames from the cartoon itself with the Welcome Home characters, so I don’t consider this an au… in any case, here we are! Thank you all for your support and for staying here! I am eternally grateful to everyone! (I've almost reached 1000 subscribers, it's so exciting!! Thank you!!)

#welcome home #wally darling #wally #art #bluey

87 notes · View notes

kess-in-the-perthchimzone · 7 months

Text

Kang, Sailom, and paper banknotes

I have been obsessed for several weeks now with the way Kang and Sailom flirt pass banknotes back and forth to each other -- often by tucking them in each others' pockets -- so I set out to document the major scenes where this happens. I'm starting to think these moments are intended to successively showcase the different stages of their relationship:

⏭Make Me a Cheat Sheet #1

First, Kang tries to bribe Sailom into helping him cheat. This is Kang testing the waters and thinking he can walk all over Sailom. Sailom is visibly shocked by this first instance.

⏭Money Can't Buy Everything

Only AFTER Kang fails his test using a fake sheet does Sailom return the money and reveal Kang's offer didn't work.

Um, excuse me, Sailom?? What are these looks that are positively dripping in sex and where have they gone lately?? How secure are you going to have to get in Kang's feelings for you to start seducing him like this again??

Sailom has used Kang's own trick to flip the tables and gain the upper hand. This moment is when he truly infuriates Kang, setting him on a warpath.

⏭Kang gets punched

Afterwards, Kang starts to really lose it and escalates the dickishness -- at this point he's cost Sailom his joke tutoring elementary students and has insulted Saifah's job so Sailom's patience is completely frayed.

Sailom picks a banknote up, clenches it in his fist, and SOCKS KANG IN THE FACE. Iconic. (And seen much better in this gif set than in my screenshots)

And not only that, but then he refuses money he could have genuinely earned:

(right before he throws it at Kang. Also iconic.)

In theory, this should be the end of their back and forth. Sailom snapped and Kang should have left him the fuck alone after. But no, because then Kang takes a gun to Sailom's house and THE GREATEST SCENE IN TELEVISION HISTORY HAPPENS, fundamentally altering the course of their relationship.

⏭Post Rescue

Okay so feelings have shifted between them. Kang is starting to feel guilty for the way he treated Sailom and now has a much deeper appreciation for how badly Sailom needs money:

Please note this is the THIRD pocket tuck we've seen on screen.

Kang has started to learn some tact and attempts to justify this as money Sailom genuinely deserves.

And we finally land on Sailom insisting he MUST tutor Kang to keep the money. (again much of this can be better seen in these gifs than my screenshots). Now, they are finally getting on more equal footing -- Sailom has made it clearl that he's only willing to accept Kang's money if he is legitimately doing a job for him.

⏭No money changes hands at all

And finally we have Kang offering Sailom money for a ride home -- which you could argue is fair; Kang is kind of ditching him. But when Sailom refuses, Kang only checks once, and then lets it go (the progress he's making!!). For now, they are almost true equals in this exchange -- Kang respects his choice and doesn't feel the need to force money upon him.

So all this is fun to track, but why is it important?

When Kang throws money in Sailom's face after catching him escorting again, it is going to be a major regression for them; so it should be one of the biggest low points for their relationship that we see on screen -- which also to me serves as evidence of what I will go on to say in bullet 2 (because otherwise THAT would be the low point)

If you subscribe to @respectthepetty's theory that Saifah is going to break into Kang's house (which I 1000% do), it is going to put Kang is a position where -- possibly counter to everyone else in his family -- he's going to have to choose whether or not to believe Sailom had nothing to do with it. But Sailom has shown him over and over again that he isn't willing to take Kang's money unfairly. So the foundation has thoroughly been laid for Kang to choose Sailom and for them to have to figure out a way to make their relationship work completely removed from a tutoring structure (because at that point Grandma Ging and Kang's dad would NOT be willing to give money to Sailom anymore . . . if they aren't in a coma, I SEE YOU pilot trailer).

The scene where they are happily throwing money together would be the first time they are taking the same action with banknotes at the same time -- this in theory should be one of the absolute strongest points of their relationship; when I would arguably expect their 'love scene' (as confirmed by PerthChimon) to happen [[I recognize you novel people are probably screaming at me!! don't tell me if I'm wrong!!]]

#dangerous romance #dangerous romance the series #kanghansailom #kess babbles about dangerous romance #meta meta meta #kanghan kirttin sukprasert #sailom homchan

72 notes · View notes

physalian · 2 months

Text

POVS and Past vs Present Tense (Or, the Pros and Cons of Limiting your Narrator)

This blog got over 300 notes in a single day, I'm almost at 1000! Thank you to everyone who likes, reblogs, and subscribes, you all keep me motivated in these dark times.

—

Today we’re looking at the pros and cons of the different points of view through which you can tell your story, but full disclosure, sometimes it all comes down to how you as the author feel most comfortable writing, regardless of the story you are telling.

So this is less *what you should do* and more *what you might want to think about but don’t have to do*.

Narrating POVs come in these flavors:

First Person (FPOV)

Second Person (SPOV)

Third Person Limited (TPL)

Third Person Omniscient (TPO)

What you decide for your story doesn’t really matter, only that whatever you pick, you *must* stick with (unless you’re James Patterson who doesn’t give a damn). The same applies with whether or not you decide to write in past or present tense, so I’ll be covering both topics in this post.

You can choose whatever you want, but the type of story you write can benefit from different POVS. An intimate romance with few characters? FPOV, possibly with alternating narrators. An epic fantasy with an ensemble cast that spans the globe? You’d miss out on so much of the story trapped with one narrator.

First-Person POV

I… hate writing first person POV. I don’t hate that it exists and I love reading it, I just can’t write any of my characters in FPOV, it’s too weird. To anyone struggling to give their characters strong and distinct personalities, stepping away from the “I/me” pronouns may help you.

With that said! FPOV is by no means any lesser than any other POV. FPOV is, obviously, when your narrator narrates with terms like “I, me, we, us.” You are reading in their head, their train of thought, their internal monologue.

Pros: This about as intimate a look inside the story as you can get, you are zero degrees removed from the action. The biggest benefit is how well the audience comes to understand the narrating character as all your time is spent with them exclusively, unless the story head-hops. Every scene is colored by the lenses of the narrator’s biases and the knowledge they have of the story.

Cons: Unless you head-hop, you risk losing out on much of the rest of the story. Other characters can only be viewed through the biases of the narrator and any story happening away from the narrator is unseen, because they’re not there to witness it.

FPOV gives you the most flexibility in coloring your text with personality, think Holden Caufield from Catcher in the Rye. Every page bleeds with Holden’s thoughts and musings on his world.

However, FPOV, versus TPL, traps you within the senses of the narrator. You can’t get away with lines like “he didn’t notice XYZ happening in the background” or “he might have missed this subtle tell” because there’s zero room for ambiguity unless your tone allows for some comedic freedom.

You *can* say things like “Later, I would reflect back on X” or “Had I been paying attention, I might’ve seen Y” but those lines are almost always followed up with “But I didn’t in the moment and now I’m screwed regardless.”

If you find yourself stuck with a scene of a bunch of characters of all the same gender and you have to balance your paragraphs with names versus pronouns, FPOV does, at least, remove one of them for you with “I”.

Beyond simply using “I/me” pronouns, you can go the route of Anthem. Ayn Rand’s Anthem is written in first person, but with plural pronouns and when I read it in middle school, I spent the entire novel thinking all the different “theys” and “we’s” were entire groups of people acting and not the a singular being because it was middle school and pronouns weren’t a topic of discussion.

There was a scene where “we” (gender neutral singular protagonist) sees “them” (gender neutral love interest) doing… yoga or something beyond a fence, and in my head I was picturing like, ten dudes watching ten ladies all do synchronized yoga. It was funky.

Second-Person

This one almost doesn’t count because it’s so rare. Second person is reserved, I think, for three situations: Romance/erotica, self-help books, and horror/thriller works.

SPOV uses terms like “you think, you see, you feel, you do X”. It’s self-indulgent and I’ve never actually read a fictional work written in it because it’s too weird. SPOV is as intimate as you can get, because *you* are the protagonist.

I scroll right past all the "character/reader" fanfics but they have their audience, and I've never picked up an actual published romance novel written in SPOV, but I'm sure they exist for their own wish-fulfilment purposes.

SPOV in horror deserves more content and attention. The most iconic example I can think of is the storyline through Michael Jackson’s “Thriller”. In it, the narrator tells the tale of you, intrepid hero, who find yourself in the middle of the Thriller, and details your demise at the claws and teeth of disco zombies.

Second-person fiction relies on what your protagonist does more than who they are, as too-strong of a personality limits the reader’s ability to get in the headspace of their fictional VR-goggles. In the “Thriller” example, the story tells entirely of your physiological reactions (you’re paralyzed with fear, unable to scream, etc), not your desires and emotions, beyond terror.

Third-Person Limited

*cracks knuckles* My Favorite! TPL is very much like FPOV, except instead of using “I think” you’d use “He/she/they/it thinks”. TPL is still contained within the box of following a singular narrator at any given time, but the audience isn’t experiencing the novel through the eyes of the narrator, they’re watching it through the imaginary cameraman following them. Depending on how much personality you write your narration with, TPL can be nigh indistinguishable from FPOV.

If your narrator experiences pain, or gets knocked out in a car crash or a fistfight, the narration is still limited by their consciousness and awareness. The scene doesn’t continue on after the narrator passes out.

Also, as a writer, it’s a *lot* easier to write scenes your audience demands (like romance) if you’re aro/ace and/or too squicked out trying to write it in first person but still wanting to deliver. Same goes for violence/ horror/ combat, anything with a lot of emotion and drama that you can’t bring yourself to write as “I feel such and such so much right now” can be intimidating. Then it’s not happening to you, it’s happening to those poor schmucks unlucky enough to be characters in your book, and then it’s much more fun.

TPL and FPOV both favor the internal monologue, the only difference is the pronouns through which the narration is given. TPL also tends to distinguish direct thoughts by the narrator within the style of the text. This means putting the thought in italics most of the time, or adding in a “she thought” like a dialogue tag.

Third-Person Omniscient

If third-person limited was being the cameraman, third-person omniscient is being the bird watching from above, or God. TPO is a “third” narrator who tends to not be an active character within the story, just “the narrator” watching every other character go through life.

In some cases, you could make the omniscient narrator also in first person as a non-character, but they would have to be some higher power, or make your story a fourth-wall-breaking meta commentary, a story within a story told by an unrelated storyteller.

TPO suffers from lacking intimacy. You’re two degrees removed from the thoughts and feelings of the character and the story is colored with the personality of the narrator, not any one character you’re following (if there is at all a personality to the narrator).

Children’s books tend to be TPO because they’re not that deep. When I say children’s books I mean like Rainbow Fish, or the Very Hungry Caterpillar, not children’s chapter books.

But on the other hand, many classics are written in TPO. I believe the A Series of Unfortunate Events books are written in TPO with a *very* colorful omniscient narrator. The Chronicles of Narnia are also, I think, written in TPO with the absence of a distinct narrating personality, it’s simply the voice through which the story unfolds (it’s been a while since I’ve read either and can’t recall).

TPO tends to lend itself toward fantasy and fairytales because a colorful narrator just fits the tone and the unnatural reality of your world. The narrator of A Series of Unfortunate Events would be very out of place in a book like The Great Gatsby because it would only distract from the story, instead of enhance it.

Head-Hopping and Multiple POV

Head hopping should only be used when you do it on purpose in an established FPOV or TPL work. If you change perspectives mid-narration without any indication that you’re doing it on purpose, that’s just sloppy writing and you’ll confuse the heck out of your readers.

The term “head hopping” tends to be used when writers do it poorly, versus simply “multiple narrators”. This works best with an ensemble cast, or when the author doesn’t want to limit the breadth of their story to only the protagonist’s perspective.

The narration can shift between any number of characters, but I wouldn’t go higher than five or six with rare exception because it’s too many characters to follow. You can follow the protagonist and a couple of their friends, the protagonist and the villain, the different members of team protagonist – the list goes on.

It’s entirely up to you how you want to physically structure your POV shifts. Some authors jump between multiple narrators within a chapter (myself included), some give entire chapters to one narrator at a time, or a chunk of chapters in a row. Sometimes the narrating POV is signaled with a giant banner for their name or the scene opens with the narrator’s name within the first few sentences to let you know who you’re following.

POV shifts without the big banner works best when your narrators have very distinct personalities coloring their narration, see this post about humanizing your characters and giving them voice.

How each character speaks, how they see their world, the idioms and metaphors they use in their internal monologue, the cadence in how they tell the story, the syntax -- all of these help justify your choice to shift POVs beyond the flexibility of telling more story. You know you’ve succeeded when you can write an entire page in the new POV without naming your narrator and your audience still knows who it is.

Head-hopping in bad form can be an easy mistake to make, and easiest to make in third-person limited, because you’re already one degree removed. Unless you are writing from a telepath’s perspective, any time you begin writing the thoughts and feelings of a non-narrating character in TPL, you are head-hopping.

If Jane is narrating an argument with Mark, and we cut aside to suddenly start detailing Mark’s feelings on the matter, we have broken the POV. Jane cannot know exactly what Mark is feeling, she’s not Mark. Instead, Jane can look at him and assume what he’s feeling based on his expressions and extrapolate on what he might be thinking.

In which case her thoughts on the matter would be tagged with “Mark seemed to think X,” or “Mark looked hurt”. Doing it incorrectly looks like “Mark thought X” or “Mark was hurt”.

You can get away with “Character was hurt” with any of the following tacked on:

“...they thought/presumed/assumed/suspected/guessed”

“... that much obvious”

“... they could tell”

So long as the tag reflects how the narrator interprets the scene.

Multiple narrators inevitably lend themselves to a longer story and thicker book and a perfect example is the Percy Jackon series and its follow-up, Heroes of Olympus.

Percy Jackson is a rather unique case of shifting POVS. The first five books of the series are entirely FPOV from his perspective. We follow Percy and only Percy the entire time.

The second series hops between TPL perspectives, with the benefit of exploring other characters…. and the massive disappointment of your protagonist for five whole books being completely omitted as a narrator from his final run (but that’s for another day).

The books of the second series are doorstoppers because there’s so much more plot with multiple arcs now being written for each one. HOO is a “banner style” head-hopper, giving chunks of chapters to a narrating character at any given time and following only three to four narrators for a given book.

There was a book our teacher read in elementary school, blandly titled School with a peace sign and a bus on the cover and I have no way to google it because of its stupidly generic title. In it, the entire short story has at least ten narrators and it worked because there weren’t ten different story arcs, it was all the same story just told through ten different perspectives. It was less an “ensemble cast of rich and fulfilling heroes” and more “ten children each argue why they remember the incident the best”.

Twilight hops in later books, with entire swaths of Breaking Dawn divvied up between the three main characters. The Red Queen series and Throne of Glass also hop and it seems, to me at least, that, regardless of genre, multiple narrators are much more common in recent publications.

Maximum Ride is a funky rule-breaker. For reasons unknown, the author decided to write in FPOV for the protagonist, then jump perspectives to TPL for the other characters. It’s incredibly distracting. Why not just write the entire story in shifting FPOV? Or entirely in TPL?

There is plenty of merit to *not* rotating narrators. I like doing it because I like not being limited to only following one character through the entire story. However, creativity thrives in a box and not knowing what's happening outside that box can be equally entertaining. Following one character also forces the plot to center on that character (though doesn't always give you a protagonist with agency). It leaves plenty of holes for the audience to fill in missing information as well when side characters are off doing whatever and the narrator isn't there to witness it.

Present vs Past Tense

Tense, like head-hopping, is easy to mess up if you’re not careful, and both have their pros and cons.

Books written in present tense have the benefit of being “present”. You follow the action as it unfolds, uncovering mysteries as the characters do with the added oomph of it simply being written as it happens.

Hunger Games is written in the present and the added “oomph” is that this is a hellish dystopian battle royale and it being “present” subconsciously clues the reader in on the possibility that Katniss might not survive to tell the story back to us, she can die at any moment.

Books written in past tense have the option to get cheeky, since the narrator survived the story long enough to go back and write it down for you. Some books might begin with a retrospective in the opening lines or the prologue by the narrator warning the reader about the story ahead or insisting they were an idiot for letting things play out the way they did.

Most stories written in past tense don’t think twice about it. Past tense is simply comfortable for the author to write in and it by no means spares their heroes from dying simply because of the narration having to exist.

If you tend to write in one or the other and you switch it up for a different story, you, my friend, have quite the uphill battle. You might find yourself having to comb back through entire chapters worth of content fixing your verbs because you just didn’t notice the accidental shift.

Future tense does exist, but it tends to go with stories written in second person and I’ve never read a fictitious work with it, only in bits and pieces in self help books and, again, that doesn’t really count.

—

TL;DR: How you narrate your work and in what tense it’s written is generally divorced from the genre and story you’re writing and has no impact on how the story reads. Any book with an ensemble cast benefits from multiple POVS and books in the fantasy/ supernatural/ fairtyale genre can benefit from an omniscient narrator, but it’s hardly required. First person POV gives the broadest opportunity to develop one singular character as intimately as possible, at the cost of everyone else. Third person POV removes the reader directly from the action, but is hardly inferior and can be nearly identical to FPOV save for the difference in pronouns used.

Regardless, inexperienced authors beware, head-hopping and tense-changing are easy mistakes to make. Stay vigilant and keep practicing and anything is fixable.

#writing advice #writing resources #writing tips #writing tools #writing a book #pov #first person pov #third person #narration #long post

27 notes · View notes

sotwk · 1 year

Note

If it’s not a trade-secret, how does Legolas stay so chipper/optimistic despite all the loss?

How and why is Legolas constantly cheerful?

Legolas's age at the time of his mother's death varies depending on the adaptation or each individual writer's interpretation. In The Hobbit trilogy, it seems to be suggested that he was a child, perhaps even a newborn, when his mother died, so he never really knew her. I've seen a lot of fanfic authors and artists subscribe to this version.

In SotWK however, the Elvenqueen dies in Third Age 2793, when Legolas was already over 2,000 years old. (I outlined a detailed HC of that story HERE.) By the time Thranduil's family began to suffer losses, including being forced out of their home and into the cavern dwellings in northeastern Mirkwood, Legolas had already enjoyed centuries of a happy life during the Golden Age of King Thranduil and Queen Maereth (Third Age 100 to 1000). Legolas had the maturity and wisdom to process and overcome the tragedies that befell his loved ones, so that it didn't crush his bright spirit.

There is a reason why his family's motto is "We will endure." Thranduil and his sons are ALL strong of body, mind, and soul.

Here are some key aspects of Greenleaf's background that contribute to his effervescent personality:

As the baby of his family, Legolas is already by nature the most cheerful, energetic, and relentlessly positive of Thranduil's sons.

He grew up in an almost impossibly happy and loving home, with two nurturing parents and four older brothers who were his mentors and best friends. (My multichapter fic, "Greenleaf's Day Out", paints that happy family picture.)

Legolas is amiable towards everyone he meets, and is known for going out of his way to befriend not only his father's subjects, but also the outsiders who reside at the edges of Greenwood and people of other races he encounters in his travels. He is the Elven poster boy for non-discrimination; he just went through a bit of a rough patch late in the Third Age.

What about his animosity towards dwarves, e.g. Thorin and company, and initially Gimli? I could write a separate essay about that, but in short let's put it this way: given his family's tumultuous history with the Dwarven race, Legolas deserves a TON of credit for ultimately embracing Gimli as his eternal best friend.

Thranduil sent him to the Council of Elrond not because he was the only option left to be Mirkwood's representative, but because Legolas was in fact the Elvenking's Herald, a high-ranking position he had already held for centuries at that point.

Now, it is fair to say that having such a perfect family should only make it more painful for Legolas when bad things started to happen to them. His mother was murdered and one by one his brothers were taken away either by death or some other cause, leaving him with a heartbroken, increasingly cold father he could barely recognize.

By the events of The Hobbit, Legolas had already fallen to the lowest point of his life. The movies actually portray his angst and bitter relationship with Thranduil in a logical and realistic manner.

At the end of BotFA (movie), Thranduil finally accepts that the only way for his last son to find joy again would be to send him out of Mirkwood and into the world. By suggesting Legolas seek out and join "Strider", Thranduil releases him from his obligations as Prince so that he can forge his own path.

Joining the Fellowship heals Legolas's pain and rekindles his joyous, childlike nature, because in them he found a new family to be part of. Aragorn reminds him of his wise and compassionate older brothers, and in Gimli he finds a new best friend and partner-in-crime, much like his brother Gelir (to whom he was closest in age and spirit). Even the Hobbits likely remind him of the days when the Woodland Realm thrived as a home to many elf-children.

Still, it is not a perfect joy, as is shown in the Two Towers movie, where he slips into despair as he and Aragorn argue at Helm's Deep about "three hundred against ten thousand". He cannot be faulted for this, given how much death he has witnessed; but Aragorn knows his friend's tragic history and therefore assures him, "there is nothing to forgive".

Ultimately however, Legolas behaves like a bright and carefree elf throughout the Quest of the Ring not only because it is his nature to be optimistic, but because his companions in the Fellowship were themselves a source of joy for him, a breath of fresh air after centuries of suffocating losses. He was literally "just happy to be here".

As always, thank you for your ask, mellyn nin @creativity-of-death! <3

#legolas #legolas greenleaf #legolas headcanon #lotr elves #lotr headcanon #thranduil #lord of the rings #sotwk answers

113 notes · View notes

iamthekaijuking · 3 months

Text

I’m a little late as usual but it’s time for Art vs Sloppy Rat Man 2023

I don’t have much to say about 2023. I got a job working retail and I’m still working it, and my art skills have continued to improve. 2023 was also the year I started being able to illustrate entire skeletons and not just skulls, which shows that my knowledge of anatomy and biology is continuing to advance even further.

I did a sort of special little GUARDIANverse side project, The God Children of Ana, based on the Romani legend to somewhat more formally introduce people to Gverse through a shortstory, and while I’m not always so great at writing third person I’m still somewhat proud of it. I’ve also gotten outlines for the 4 mainline GUARDIANverse books.

I’m still helping out the Unnatural History Channel and my follower count is continuing to grow. I’m almost at 1000 followers, but also my patreon is still void of subscribers. I’m taking baby steps towards getting books written and maybe doing vtubing as a sort of hobby.

Let’s see what 2024 brings.

#art vs artist #art vs artist 2023 #year recap #2023 #art

12 notes · View notes

daniel-profeta · 4 months

Text

daniel profeta Interview

Hey y'all!! Back around March/April 2023 I was approached by a diy "magazine" that was more of a blog about artists in Georgia, to record an interview about my music and other projects. Sadly they decided against using it, but they just sent me a transcript so I could post it myself. It's slightly disjointed, but maybe you'll find some enjoyment out of it.

daniel: My dad got a used acoustic guitar when I was 13, and I kinda stole it to practice with all the time. So began my awe-inspiring journey of entirely mundane events. I taught myself how to play and sing with YouTube and just went forward from there. All throughout my life I've had problems expressing myself, but music, and art as a whole, have become my voice and taken over nearly every aspect of my life.

With hindsight I realized this always was the case. As a kid I was always enamored with storytelling… From reading for hours a day to attempting and failing to write a fantasy novel, from crying listening to Elliott Smith, Alex G, Mitski, Car Seat Headrest, Phoebe Bridgers, and countless other artists and bands to writing and recording hundreds of songs that never saw the light of day, my life has been a string of "failures" that's slowly becoming a vessel for expression. Meeting that one person who knows your songs and sings along with you, knowing you wrote something that meant anything to another human, makes me feel less alone. That's what it's all about.

I owe a lot to my parents for cultivating an appreciation for art, and while they never exactly "approved" of my life choices (laughs), they never really tried to stop me. Maybe they should have tried harder, who knows. When I was really young my mom tried and succeeded at getting me interested in acting in films. While I started as an extra in shows and movies like Stranger Things and The Hunger Games (it's a lot easier to be a movie extra than many people think), I eventually started getting actual roles. I've been in a few horror short films, and if you ever try to talk to me about horror I will talk your ear off… But the highlights of my acting career have been working in the incredible educational series Super Science Showcase as the geeky character Caleb, and meeting and working with the innovative director Barry Jenkins on the show The Underground Railroad (while my role was fairly small in that, that week of filming was one of the most surreal and rewarding experiences of my life, second only to playing live music and having people scream my lyrics in my face).

I was homeschooled growing up, and my family was forced to move around a lot as we struggled to find affordable housing and jobs. The cool thing about being homeschooled is you kinda set your own hours and have a little more free time, but the bad thing (for me) about homeschooling was the feeling of isolation and inability to do much besides write and try to make stuff. I wasn't allowed on the internet until I was 14-15, but then it was like a whole new world opened up for me.

One interesting thing about trying to create this life is the weird relationship most people have to it. Like, no one supports you unless you're successful, yet it's almost impossible to be successful without support. For example, I have a YouTube channel where I have uploaded nearly 2000 videos over the course of 3 years (yes, I know I have no life, don't rub it in) that's just called "daniel profeta" (stylized lowercase cause I'm cool). In the last few months I went from having 1000 subscribers to having 25,000 subscribers. My point being, "overnight" success is only real to people on the outside, people who don't see the thousands of failed attempts. People who don't hear the conversations where everyone close to you tells you to give up. Every step of the way there are opportunities to learn and grow and adapt, but you must be willing to block out the noise and get up every time you fall. That's the realest thing people who make art will learn, not everyone will like what you're doing. It takes time and effort to find YOUR people. But just know they're out there, and never give up.

I never had formal training of any kind, for acting, writing, guitar, vocals, bass, piano, recording, editing, the list goes on. Quickly I learned that I would never have the equipment, connections, or resources that many others did, but that's where you become resourceful. I am forever indebted to lo-fi music like Car Seat Headrest, The Mountain Goats, Bright Eyes, and Daniel Johnston, because without them I probably never would have had the courage to start. The ethos of DIY is one outside of gatekeeping and elitism, the ideas and community are open in mind and heart. We will "make it", and we will do so on our own terms. So, to keep this explanation brief, I have made multiple albums of music with no "real" recording equipment and recorded music videos myself with a crappy camera and some friends. I play all the instruments and do all the mixing myself. It's incredibly fun yet tedious, but the feeling of uploading or playing something is the greatest feeling in the world.

Your question was if my road was a smooth one, but I would say there really wasn't a road at all. Just foreboding uncharted wilderness with a few guiding lights of inspiration to help me on the way to creating the life I hope to have. But the way I see it, each failing, each stumble, and each limitation were just blessings in disguise. Take my music for instance, I used to feel ashamed of the low recording quality of my early work, but now I see it like a badge. It's honest, raw, and ultimately more powerful and unique. And the people I've met are some of the most driven and ambitious people in the world. We will make it, and when we do everyone who doubted will eat their words (laughs again), not that it matters. To quote Frank Lopez Jr. "Probably won't taste like the blood sweat and tears and the fear of regret and the ever elusive 3% chance I’m going to make it."

My main thing right now is music, and I play all over Atlanta and the rest of Georgia (if any venues or people with cool basements hears this and wants to book me, hello…. My name is Daniel, and I'm a pretty cool guy who's fairly easy to exploit. Feel free to reach out as I'm nearly always desperate for work) and hope to start playing more states soon. I currently don't have a band (if any cool people hear this and want to join my band, hello…), so my live shows are a mix of covers and original music done with an acoustic guitar. Folk music, punk music, indie rock, confessional songwriting, and the heaviest industrial metal/noise music you've heard since Swans. Or 100 Gecs.

But I am most proud of my recording efforts to be honest. The website Bandcamp has been a godsend. One of the only companies that fairly pays artists right now (looking at you Spotify…), Bandcamp is a place artists can upload music and charge for it and whatever. Anyways, I have 2 full albums and a 25 minute EP on Bandcamp and on my YouTube channel. I recorded many many songs and sequenced albums before this, but none of that has seen the light of day.

The first album is called Mania Machinations and it was pretty depressing to make and to listen to. But it was incredibly therapeutic to me, it felt like casting out demons. There are also a few songs I still think are really pretty, like the song Go to Bed which is about that feeling I mentioned earlier. I remember I was on a call with someone I trusted for hours and at the end they told me I should stop trying to make music because it didn't sound good. They told me I was going to end up broke and homeless and that I was pretty stupid for even attempting to do this stuff.

To me, the point has always been about expression and catharsis. And once I found a few people who my messages resonated with, then the point expanded to almost a group therapy thing. Casting out demons. So anyways, I got off that call that fateful night at 5 am and went to my room and wrote Go to Bed to try and describe all the thoughts in my stupid head. It started out bitter, but then changed and became something beautiful.

The second album is Paper Skies, and in that one I tried to adopt a character to live the life I want to live. Themes of touring, meeting people, and still not quite finding whatever it is I'm looking for. Ideas of ascending to the stars by shooting for the moon. Lots of pipe dreams and sad breakup songs. But about halfway through, the "character" starts to fall apart as imposter syndrome takes hold. In the end I go back to themes of mental health and isolation. This album is lyrically super meta and kind of pretentious, but when I wrote it, it didn't feel that way.

And my latest project is an EP called The Sighting, which I highly recommend as a starting point if you want to listen to my music. The Sighting is titled to sound like a UFO encounter. I tried to tone down some of the darker elements, and I just really like the way this one turned out. I'm a big album person, and when I write I try to sequence things right. Everything has purpose and is tied together thematically, and in this case I was thinking of the future. Of the possible end of the world or breakdown of society as we currently know it. But instead of making songs about that, I just used a post-apocalyptic setting as a backdrop for a bunch of songs that at their heart are love songs. The music videos I made I'm really proud of, especially one called Lighting in a Bottle (which was inspired by Elliott Smith's video for Coming Up Roses).

Oh, almost forgot to mention this, but if you download any of my music off Bandcamp you get access to liner notes and cool artwork. Also, exclusive to The Sighting there is a pdf that serves as a book of short stories to flesh out the post-apocalyptic world. There's a lot of recurring themes and motifs in my work, and a lot of them get explained in much further detail. Plus, they took months to write so it'd be awesome if people got to read them.

Finally, I'm currently obsessed with YouTube. On my channel I talk about music, weird media, horror, and make video essays and commentary style videos on pretty much anything I'm interested in. Every now and then I go live and play music. I think I'm funny, maybe you will too!

The music industry is so vast, I don't think I can even begin to predict how things are going to shake out, I can only speak to my little bubble. But one thing I know for certain, you'll be hearing about me and my associates more and more as the years go on. Just kidding… Or am I?

In all seriousness, I am seeing some interesting trends develop among people my age (I'm 19) {note from current me: I'm 20 now lol}. More and more bands like, I don't know, Pigeon Pit, are finding success. The Front Bottoms are getting huge. Phoebe Bridgers is a cultural icon. People like Mac Demarco are able to release music on Bandcamp and actually become millionaires. Some would have you believe music is dying, I believe there has never been a more interesting time in music. The variety, lack of extreme censorship, ability to find fans and friends without needing a record label, power to play almost anywhere, at this point all you really need is patience, drive, determination, and something to say. Everyone has something to say.

Indie rock and psychedelic rock seem to be making a comeback into the mainstream, and so does pop punk and nu-metal. Lots of genres being mashed together to create new things. 100 Gecs basically made a whole new genre super popular. An artist called Weatherday made one of the coolest albums ever only a couple years ago. Will Toledo went from recording albums in his car to playing big venues.

The world seems to be able to tell when an artist is being real, so my advice for artists that want to find lasting success would be to do whatever you want. Don't worry too much about trends, there's a place for pretty much everything and you'll have way more fun making the weird stuff you want to make instead of making something that looks or sounds exactly like whatever happens to be popular at the time. Sure, the culture shifts, but it's never boring.

That's my whole thing, at least art is never boring. I can try to approach life as an adventure instead of as a terrifying slog through hardship and pain. Whether or not I'm deluding myself doesn't really matter at that point. Perspective is like 50% of your entire outlook and attitude I've come to learn.

thanks for reading, if any blogs wanna interview me and also not be too scaredy-cat to publish it:)

10 notes · View notes

somethingusefulfromflorida · 9 months

Text

Forever stamps cost $13.20 for a book of 20 right now, 66 cents a pop. Looking up envelopes, they range from $3.50 to $4.75 for a pack of 40, $9.99 for 100, about 10 cents a pop. Printing at my local library costs 10 cents per page, 20 cents if it's double sided. Altogether, setting up a physical newsletter would cost about a dollar per copy to mail to subscribers. I don't expect to have many takers, so I could almost certainly pay for it out of pocket. I have something like 15 or 20 active mutuals, maybe 30 or 40 regular followers whose names I recognize. At a buck a pop that's $60 per month, max, which is less than internet and utilities, easily doable. And that's assuming 100% turnover, so realistically it would be much less.

I've been meaning to ease myself off social media, but I don't want to lose all the connections I've made, so I think this might be the ideal format for me. I read about fanclubs in the 60s, 70s, and 80s, I read about offline communities of likeminded dorks who created something together, printing out entire fanzines, dozens of pages, absolute labors of love for zero profits, and I wish I could have been part of that. I miss getting mail, I miss magazines, I miss physical media, I miss not being spied on and having my thoughts sold to advertisers and cops. Not everything has to be profitable, some things are worth investing in for their sake.

I thought about making a magazine last year, even set up a blog about it, but as I thought about the logistics I realized it would be too expensive and mostly filler. A newsletter is much more manageable; cheap and short, but dense enough to say what I want to say without overstaying my welcome. Three columns per side, six total, something like 40 lines each, maybe five or six words per line, 1200 to 1500 words per issue, probably closer to 1000 after factoring in pictures and subheadings. Maybe this too is overly ambitious, but it's worth a shot. I'll keep you all posted.

#newsletter #physical media #snail mail #subscription #columns #newspaper #magazine #nostalgia

17 notes · View notes

queeniegalore · 1 year

Text

Our Dear Friend Jonathan - an Academic Analysis of Dracula Daily

I’ve had a little interest, so I'm posting the short project I did on DD for my Digital Humanities class at uni way back in June! A few caveats - this is technically an 'analysis of a digital artifact' and not an essay, so it's not hugely in depth, plus I was only given 1000 words (which i exceeded by quite a bit, whoops) so I didn't get to included nearly as much as I wanted to. Also tumblr only let me include 10 images, so I've cut out a few of the memes I'd used (it also erased my links but I have them all saved so I'll add them in list form if anyone wants me too). Finally, I've contacted all the artists included and obtained permission to post their (credited!) work! Enjoy!

Our Dear Friend Jonathan

Substack, Tumblr, and the Digital Intimacy of the World’s Biggest Book Club

By Rebecca F

Dracula Daily, created in 2021 by Matt Kirkland, is an astonishingly simple concept on the surface. Utilising the email subscription service Substack, Kirkland divides Bram Stoker’s 1847 epistolary novel into emails that are sent on the real-world date that corresponds with the in-fiction date of the events. Protagonist Jonathan Harker starts a travel diary detailing his trip to Transylvania on the 3rd of May, and the rest of the novel continues in journal entries, letters, newspaper clippings, and even a diary kept on phonograph, all dated, up until the final entry in November. Some entries are pages long, some only a few paragraphs, many days (almost two weeks in June) don’t have an entry at all. Every entry, however short, is emailed on the correct date, and unless the reader wants to go out and buy a copy of the book to ‘cheat’ and read ahead, that’s all they get. Interestingly, the book itself doesn’t present all of these entries chronologically – dates tend to skip back and forth. Reading via subscription, then, changes the fundamental experience of reading Dracula in more ways than one. In 2021 the mailing list slowly spread by word of mouth, and Kirkland ended up with 1600 subscribers. In 2022, after the idea went viral on popular internet social media sites Twitter and Tumblr, Dracula Daily has 200,000 subscribers – and climbing (Martinelli).

1. Image Header for the Dracula Daily subscription

How does reading Dracula via email change the experience of reading Dracula? For this analysis I’ll be dividing this question into two parts – firstly, the actual physical, practical and individual act of reading the novel via email and the way that effects the intended experience, and secondly, the wider, communal ‘book club’ aspect, which is the real reason Dracula Daily has gone so viral and become such an important moment in what I have coined digital intimacy.

2. Dr Seward by Tumblr user @crepuscol

Playing With Time

Dracula by Bram Stoker is a famously claustrophobic novel. The opening chapters with Jonathan Harker travelling to Count Dracula’s castle only to be held captive there lean on the sense of being trapped and confined with a monster – but these chapters are over in fifty or so pages, freeing the reader quite quickly and bringing a sense of relief before the slower build up to the main climax. Reading the book chronologically, however, changes all that. Having to wait for daily updates really intensifies the sense of time – we can feel how long Jonathan is trapped with the Count, and we can slowly see his mental state deteriorate. Occasionally, unlike in the novel as published, we escape the castle entirely, leaving him there alone, to read letters from his fiancée Mina, her friend Lucy Westenra and Lucy’s three suitors. These are amusing and engaging asides that nonetheless leave us screaming for the focus to return to our trapped protagonist. This builds a sense of intimacy, we’re now directly invested in Jonathan and every entry from him feels like a letter written personally to us. As Tumblr user @atundratoadstool puts it, “We all will–in fact–be skipping ahead some chapters in a few days to meet another narrator only to skip immediately back to catch up with our collective friend Jonathan Harker… You can’t have your dread or anticipation undercut by future events. Like all the characters you’re going to meet, you just have to wait for Dracula to act upon you,” (emphasis mine) (@atundratoadstool). Another user, @soup-is-here, describes it thus, “I think at this point the dread of Jonathan's isolation is so much worse than the idea of him actually being bitten, especially in this email format. It really demonstrates just how long the Count kept him there in a way sitting and reading the book wouldn't,” (@soup-is-here). So, we realise that the act of digitising this novel changes the nature of the novel.

In their essay “Universal Design and its Discontents,” Richard H Godden and Jonathan Hsy discuss the pervasive nostalgia that sometime overtakes discussions about digital culture, quoting Adam Kirsch who asks, “Is it actually true that reading online is an adequate substitute for reading on paper? If not, perhaps we should not be concentrating on digitizing our books but on preserving and circulating them more effectively,” (Godden and Hsy). One can’t help but wonder what traditionalists like this must think of a project like Dracula Daily, which seems to embody everything they despise about the digital humanities – and one could also feel a level of frustration that they would miss or dismiss the excitement that these readers are experience in discovering a new way of reading and meaningfully engaging with an old text.

3. Dracula going out in his lizard fashion by Tumblr user @horseboneologist

4. Jonathan Harker and Count Dracula by Tumblr user @nehezt

Digital Intimacy

Dracula Daily, as a movement rather than the literal subscription, really came to life on Tumblr. A quick browse through the Dracula Daily tag will show up thousands of posts, a combination of art, memes, discussion and – perhaps surprisingly – serious and thoughtful analysis, all with anywhere from dozens to thousands of interactions. At one point, Dracula Daily trended on Tumblr above popular Marvel Cinematic Universe release, the Eurovision song contest and hotly anticipated Dr Who casting news (Kuppermann).

Marketed as a youth pop culture microblogging site and having somewhat of a reputation for frivolity, one could be excused for being baffled that a 125-year-old piece of classical literature has gathered such a huge and devoted following. But it seems that the digital intimacy the subscription forges between the readers of Dracula and its characters also translates to the readers of Dracula and each other. In short, the act of reading the novel all together, one tantalising piece at a time, has created an exclusive 200,000-member strong book club, and in order to be part of it – to enjoy the in-jokes, to get the memes, to contribute to the meta – one has to keep up with the story.

Every day when the email arrives – the same time for everyone across the world – the Dracula Daily tag becomes flooded with people sharing their thoughts on the latest entry, replying to and reposting each other’s posts, adding to the discussion, arguing, analysing, and joking. This demonstrates a remarkable collective level of reading comprehension and critical thinking skills, as readers mine every sentence of the daily entry for material. There are blogs now to keep track of the different posts, one, who responded to my request for help in putting this project, has entries archived meticulously with tags like “memes,” “reference,” “serialisation,” and “analysis” (@draculadailytracker). And while the Tumblr denizens do tend to run with jokes like Jonathan Harker’s preoccupation with paprika, there is a surprising amount of intelligent literary discourse. An example of this is that when Jonathan writes an entry about the "g*psies" who show up at the castle, a number of posts sprang up acknowledging and discussing the racism, Orientalism, imperialism and anti-Romani sentiments that are embedded through the novel. There have also been mature discussions about the sexual politics of the book, as well as the homoeroticism and queer themes. The literary establishment has tended throughout the years to be overwhelmingly white and male, this is an excellent demonstration of the ways the digital humanities can work towards democratising and opening up these discussions.

In her essay “Whither the DH?” Lee Skallerup Bessette talks about the way Digital Humanities – in an academic sense – can help foster communities amongst disparate groups of people, she even likens it to the practice of letter writing between artists and intellectuals in years past (Bessette). This Tumblr phenomenon is an unusual demonstration of this, and all the more fascinating because it is entirely organic and without an official organising body. The only thing that holds Dracula Daily together is the daily email. There isn’t a real club, there aren’t prompts, there’s no incentive to join in. The material itself isn’t even new – it is merely presented in a new way. “When asked, Kirkland can only guess why people have been fascinated by the project,” writes Jacob Kupperman. “He proposes that the “gap between ‘vampire cliche’ and ‘actual Dracula’” driven by Dracula’s long cultural legacy may play a role, as well as the communal nature of reading the text via newsletter,” (Kuppermann). Or as a tumblr reader says, “not only is it free and making the novel available to just anyone who has an email, which is by far the most integral and necessary aspect of subscribing or interacting with anything these days in a formal way, but it's introducing this story in an ingenious, new format that gets the readers to interact with it not as a novel but as if, our dear Jonathan Harker, is emailing us personally,” (xmichaelmyers).

Ultimately, it remains to be seen whether Dracula Daily will survive the June posting drought, or make it to the end of its run with anywhere near the same amount of hype and engagement it received in its first month. But this phenomenon is a remarkable achievement in dh – it’s organic, it’s grass roots, and an excellent example of how literature can be reimagined through technology. As we collectively await updates from our dear friend Jonathan, we’re doing it together, intimately engaged, in the world’s biggest and most active book club.

Works Cited

atundratoadstool. Where Wild Flowers Grow of Their Own Accord. 7 May 2022. 10 June 2022. <https://www.tumblr.com/blog/view/atundratoadstool/683528925666770944?source=share>.

Bessette, Lee Skallerup. "W(h)ither DH? New Tensions, Directions and Evolutions in Digital Humnities." Kim, Dorothy and Jesse Stommel. Disrupting the Digital Humanities. Brooklyn: Punctum, 2018. 419-454.

draculadailytracker. Tumblr Book Club. 10 June 2022. 10 June 2022. <https://draculadailytracker.tumblr.com/>.

Godden, Richard H and Jonathan Hsy. "Universal Design and Its Discontents." Kim, Dorothy and Jesse Stommel. Disrupting the Digital Humanities. Brooklyn: Punctum Books, 2018. 91-116.

Kuppermann, Jacob. "Dracula in Real Time." Long Now 19 May 2022. <https://longnow.org/ideas/02022/05/19/dracula-in-real-time/>.

Martinelli, Marissa. "Why Hundreds of Thousands of People Are Reading Dracula Together Right Now." Slate 17 May 2022. Website. <https://slate.com/culture/2022/05/dracula-daily-bram-stoker-book-newsletter-jonathan-harker.html>.

soup-is-here. Absolute Unit. 31 May 2022. 10 June 2022. <https://www.tumblr.com/blog/view/atundratoadstool/683528925666770944?source=share>.

xmichaelmyers. The Wolf's Den. 05 May 2022. 10 June 2022. <https://www.tumblr.com/blog/view/xmichaelmyers/683421341500751872?source=share>.

5. The Three Suitors by Tumblr user @marghen

#dracula daily #digital humanities #FINALLY getting around to posting this from last semester #got a aHD for this baby #I had a ridiculously small word limit so it’s not as in depth as I’d have liked 😭

145 notes · View notes