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archangelmacaron · 1 year

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NTMF College AU Chapter 21

It does not seem that tumblr has a way to block spoilers like Discord etc so I'll just put any content warning under a strikethrough, if that works, since they might be a bit spoilery, so if you don't need them just skim past that! Let's hope the formatting doesn't switch paragraphs again (haven't had a chance to look into it just yet). I also wrote this on my phone rather than my usual laptop, and didn't have my usual 'read over five times to edit for word choice' session, so please pardon any repetitive words or mistakes! In which reality hits, also CW for gun violence, blood/injury, death musings/anxiety

"It's much warmer than yesterday…" Noel's brow furrowed as she stepped onto the porch, taking another small bite of the toast Caron had insisted she eat, although she didn't feel like she had much of an appetite. "This weather is truly bizarre. I don't believe I have ever seen fog quite this thick, either."

She swallowed the last of the toast as she held out her ungloved hand, feeling the air. "What's truly strange… it's windy. How is there such a heavy fog when the wind should be blowing it away?"

"Stay on alert," Caron said softly, putting a hand on her shoulder as he stepped behind her, looking out into the mists. She wondered if his sharp eyes were seeing more than she could; if they were, they didn't seem to be perceiving immediate danger. She closed her eyes, listening, but all she could hear was wind, then his voice again. "Which way is the trail?"

"This way." She led him off the stairs to the back path leading to it.

The further they walked, the more the slight sense of unease grew in her. She heard creaking branches, sometimes a snap or thud as one fell, but there were no voices nor the sound of traffic as they walked through the trees behind the neighborhood. She couldn't tell if it was because the fog was muffling the ordinary, expected noises or if, as her imagination was telling her, everything else around them had simply ceased to exist.

Caron still had his hand resting on her shoulder. It felt comforting, but… She glanced up at him. "Um, Caron?"

"Yes?" He didn't look at her, his eyes still seeming to be fighting to pierce the fog deeper.

"Isn't that a bit awkward? I could, um, t-take hold of your arm, or maybe your h-hand…" Why am I stammering? We have been in bed together, h-holding hands isn't --isn't too--

He slid his hand over to her other shoulder so he was just a bit closer, more protective. She felt a pang of disappointment when he didn't move it to her hand, but as he continued to not look at her, she realized it wasn't a reflection of his own desires--his stance was alert, he wanted to be able to move quickly if necessary.

Is he taking this too seriously… or am I not taking it seriously enough? I really can't see Jillian even trying to hurt him while I'm in the way, or Fugo attacking after he said he wouldn't…

"Here we are," she said as they reached the trailhead. It was flat and covered in wood chips, unlike the hard dirt path they'd been on. She looked around, listening again carefully. "I can't hear anyone else about, but the fog is making it difficult to be certain…"

"How long is it to walk the trail to the Hall?" Caron's voice was still very low. Noel was careful to match hers.

"Um, perhaps twenty minutes… but that is on a clear day."

"Today is anything but…"

"Yes… still, it's all rather flat and finished like this, without many turns, so it should be comparable, I think."

They proceeded into the woods slowly, without speaking again.

This familiar trail seems anything but in this creepy fog… but despite how uneasy I feel, I'm not truly afraid.

She looked up at Caron with a smile.

It's so weird to think, they planned for him to kill me, and instead we're--

"NOEL!"

She didn't understand what had just happened.

There was a loud noise --so loud her ears were ringing, she felt as if she were flying through the air, and then she was on the ground, Caron on top of her, and her forehead stung badly. She blinked, looking up at him. "What jus--"

He clamped his hand over her mouth, a little roughly, lifting his head to look around, then shooting out a chain. There was another loud noise, and they were suddenly being dragged across the forest floor, dead leaves and twigs catching her hair and tearing at her clothing before Caron was able to get his arms around her more protectively. She heard him groan, then they came to a stop.

She still didn't have time to process as he sat up, seeming to concentrate for a long moment, and then she heard the strangest thing--the noises they had just made crashing through the forest were repeating, but from somewhere far away. The loud noise came again, and again, but it seemed to be following the unreal echo.

She sat up, then flinched as something poured into her eyes. The stinging from her forehead was now pain, no longer an inconvenience but something she couldn't possibly ignore. She wiped the liquid away and looked down at her hand.

It was covered in red.

I'm… bleeding…?

She clapped a hand to her forehead firmly, hoping to block the flow and wiped at her eyes with her other hand to look up at Caron. He was leaning against a tree next to her, and one of his large black hands was tightly clasping his other arm.

It took a moment for her to realize it, too, was wet.

"Caron--!" She crawled closer to him, cursing the awkwardness of the prosthetic legs. "Are you --"

As soon as she was in reach he grabbed her, pulling her against him and pressing his hand over her mouth. He whispered in her ear, "Be as silent as you are able to. We are being hunted."

"Eh?" Her gasp was nearly silent.

She felt his hand move to her forehead. He made a small hiss as he examined her wound, then she felt something very hot from his hand. She tried to flinch away, but despite its injury, his other arm held her firmly. Just as she felt sure she would not be able to hold back a cry of pain any longer, he moved his hand. Hers went to where his had been. The deep cut was no longer bleeding, now smaller as well and scabbed over.

She stared at him in wonder for a moment, before moving as close to him as she could.

"You healed me?" she whispered into his neck, hoping he could hear her. She wasn't sure where exactly his ears were.

"Mostly." His voice was so low she wasn't certain he had spoken out loud. "You can pay me later, when I finish the job."

She wasn't sure if he was joking or not. She leaned back to see his crimson eyes scanning the foggy forest. She closed her own eyes, listening.

She could hear a voice, very distantly. She focused harder, bits of a conversation were coming through.

"Yeah, I got the little … a headshot… …n't mean to kill her, I don't wanna piss off Bur… probably not dead yet… not sure where devil… I'll find… gone far…"

Her blood ran cold. The casual voice belonged to a complete stranger, she was certain of that… and also absolutely certain that he, someone she had never even met, was shooting at them.

"I hear a man talking on a phone. Just one, but he is hunting us," she whispered again. She felt him nod, pulling her closer again and flinching, as if he'd forgotten his arm was injured.

She pulled back slightly, looking at his arm pointedly. He seemed to make a face at her, as if he thought it a waste, but concentrated for a moment and the wet spot on his sleeve stopped getting larger. Relieved, she leaned back into him.

"What do we do?" she murmured against his neck again, having the strange thought that she wanted to be pressing her lips against it for a very different reason. It was a completely inappropriate thing to be running through her mind, but she realized that once again, she was trying to think about anything other than the situation she was in, trying to get back to the earlier cheerful dissociation from the idea she could actually die, and the joy of falling for someone for the first time.

She couldn't. Reality was here.

"We retreat, carefully, quietly. Find a new hiding spot." He looked down at her abruptly, still speaking so quietly even she could barely hear him. "Wait, is your mobile phone--"

Noel dug it out of her pockets with shaking hands and turned it to silent, vibrations off as well--just as it began to ring. She stared up at Caron, showing him the screen.

The caller was Jillian.

Her stomach churned.

Jillian… would never try to harm me… but calling me now can't be a coincidence, which means she might not have her phone right now… is she in danger, like Caron theorized might happen? Is Fugo? What do I do?

She felt her forehead again. She could feel the cut on it that Caron had sealed.

Was this… from a bullet?

If that had been a centimeter closer… I would be dead, and I wouldn't even have had time to understand that I was dying. Everything would just be… over.

A deep chill was settling into her, one she didn't think being held so tightly would dispell.

Someone is really trying to kill me--no, kill us.

I… I knew, logically, that's what was going on. I knew Caron was expected to kill me, but he not only did not harm me, but became my ally, and I think that made me unable to comprehend that I really am in danger.

Even hearing Spica talk about it to herself, I must have thought, deep down, that it was just her being strange and eccentric as usual. The concept of my annoying roommate truly wanting me dead just didn't make sense, so I convinced myself it wasn't a real danger, even as I made plans and talked about it as if it were so!

Even fighting Fugo, it just seemed so unbelievably fantastical; I was so afraid, but it still didn't feel real. Almost like I was dreaming, like how on earth could my dear friend be a demon with such powers without my notice? And I knew he would never hurt me intentionally, and I believed Caron was stronger… like he was my knight, here to protect me… that of course he'd win…

But all of that was just delusions!

She squeezed her eyes tightly shut, her hands clinging to his jacket tightly, listening for the sounds of the person trying to kill them.

How naive could I possibly be?

I thought… we'd solve a mystery, bring justice to those who have died for it, and wrap it up all neatly, like characters in a novel… how childish!

Instead, Caron was hurt, all because of me… Jillian and Fugo might be in trouble, all because of me… all because I was too proud and headstrong to just let accept a loss! And I might really die from it!

I hate this! Right now, I… hate myself…

"Do you hear anything?" His voice broke her thoughts. She hurriedly wiped the water forming in her eyes as she shook her head.

"No… whatever you did, he seems to be following that deeper into the woods."

"Then let's quickly head in the opposite direction."

Caron gave her a warning squeeze before moving her aside gently then standing up, offering both hands again to pull her up. The courteous action made her want to cry. Why couldn't we have met... some other way?

"Which way?" she asked, pushing the thoughts aside again.

He thought for a moment. "The fog… seems to be lifting."

She hadn't noticed, but he was right--she could see a bit more of the trees around them. It seemed to be getting darker, and a soft rumble explained the phenomenon.

A thunderstorm forming, now? What is going on…

"We can't risk being seen in the neighborhood… let's head to the Performance Hall. If he reported hitting us in the woods heading deeper in, it's unlikely a second ambush would be waiting outside of them."

She nodded, biting her lip nervously. "There are some storage sheds on the outside of the lots near the tree line--those might prove to be a good hiding spot."

He nodded, and they carefully began to walk again.

#fanfic

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whookami · 3 years

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Okay, honestly, this is how I want shit to go down. (Warning, mildly spoilery for that most recent batch of bts photos of Steve looking like shit.)

It’s obvious that shit is going down in Hawkins, and at some point Steve, Robin, and Nancy are discussing things. At first Nancy and Robin started off very adversarial, with Steve having to keep peace between them (realizing also that he definitely has a ‘type’ and what it might say about him that he likes these super smart, feisty, large and in charge women, but that’s something for later consideration), but as the mystery deepens they are getting along amazingly, and both sort of doing that thing where they roll their eyes and treat Steve’s contributions to the discussion with fond tolerance. They’re coming up with what to do next, and while Steve has a suggestion, the girls both think it’s nothing and they want to go check out this cerebral high minded theory they’ve got that Steve doesn’t really get. He makes as if to go with them, for protection or whatever (but really, they’re his besties, and he doesn’t want them in danger by themselves) but they dismiss him and say it’s fine, they’ll just be doing research or something. Something that Steve’s be bored of in minutes.

Reluctantly, Steve watches them go. He’s kinda sad and lonely and Dustin and Max are off doing… whatever it is they’re doing at this point. Steve loves and respects Nancy and Robin and knows they’re smarter than him, but on another level… well, he also thinks that sometimes that works against them (Indiana Flyer, amiright?). His idea was something much more direct and to the point, and it kind of hurts that no one was willing to back him or even give his idea anything beyond a sort of ‘pat on the head, good boy, you’re doing a good job trying so hard, but the girls are busy speaking atm’ (the sort of heavy-handed thing the Duffers seem to think is girl power or being a girlboss or whatever). So, Steve leaves to check his idea, just wanting to take a peek and get out, but it goes wrong. Not only is he right, he has cut right through to the heart of whatever’s happening, or at least the human-villain component (or one of them? There’ll probably be more than one human baddie team, Americans and Russians and who knows what else.) Anyway, Steve is caught from behind, a garrotte coming down over his neck. He does the best thing he can basically do, and falls backwards, and gets dragged backward before he manages to roll off and get free from the rope around his throat. He scuffles with the guard who caught him, and manages to knock him out, but the alarm was raised before he beat the guy. Either in the original scuffle or as he’s running away, he’s stabbed or shot in the side, and he’s bleeding badly, covering his clothes. He has to run through the forest, but he’s a Hawkins resident and has an advantage over his persuers, remembering a small cave or hiding place from his childhood. He makes it there and hides til the searchers have passed before he doubles back as gets the hell out of there.

Because it’s Steve, he doesn’t go to the hospital, he goes to find Nancy and Robin and warn them about what he found, before collapsing. He’s covered in blood, both drying and fresh, dirty, covered in small cuts and bruises, and pale from blood loss. Both girls are incredibly worried, like to the point of angry and lashing out at each other, and then at themselves, realizing that their own efforts had amounted to nothing, and if only they had listed to Steve he might not be so hurt, and that he was right. He may not be as smart, but he’d seen something they’d missed because sometimes he’s able to cut through the details and catch details that they overthink. He probably dropped his wallet or something during the fight, so they can’t take him there, and if it was the American government he tangled with them taking him to the hospital is just as risky. By this point, Dustin and Max have shown up with Eddie, who offers his house, since he’s largely unconnected to past events and no one would search there.

At Eddie’s they strip Steve down, dress his wounds and hope for the best as they wait for him to regain consciousness. During that time Nancy and Robin have an intense and meaningful heart to heart about Steve, with Nancy in particular finally admitting that Steve wasn’t a bad boyfriend, that she was also at fault for went wrong between them, and that she wishes they’d been better able to retain their friendship after what had happened, but she and Jonathan had felt guilty and awkward about things, especially since Steve had acted so mature about them. Robin tells Nancy about her and Steve’s friendship, and how despite being a lesbian (which is the first time she’s admitting this to Nancy), she can’t imagine not having Steve in her life, as he’s the first person who ever made her feel so loved and seen, and losing him is unbearable. She had planned on asking him to move away with her to college and get a place together.

The girls both fall asleep with their heads on either side of the bed, hands clasped over top of Steve, all three looking very symbolically and literally connected. Steve wakes up and once they feel him kind of moving and shifting both girls jolt awake, and he makes some kind of tasteless teenage boy joke about how could he have slept through this obvious threesome, and it releases this uncomfortable tension that had built itself up between them. Finally, trying not to cry, they admonish him, but lovingly, and pepper him with a million questions, and worry over his injuries, and they apologize for not listening to his suggestions or taking him seriously and he is way too forgiving and doesn’t blame them, because this is Steve we’re talking about here, and they all give awkward bed hugs and promise to do better in the future. Steve tells them what he saw and they make a plan that involves stocking up on a lot of supplies and going into hiding someplace (dubiously) safe, preparing for the ultimately battle to come.

Bonus points if during his bad threesome joke, Steve says something along the lines of “only thing missing to make this more perfect is Jonathan,” at which point the original trio realize/admit they are all bisexual. The End, until season 5, where they become the most awesome poly foursome to kick monster ass and love each other eternally.

(Okay, I edited this addendum out where I rant about Stobin. That became a whole different thing, and I address my misunderstandings and idiocy there.)

#stranger things #steve harrington #robin buckley #nancy wheeler #jonathan byers

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th3okamid3mon · 4 years

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The Lighthouse, somehow charming to disturbing [SPOILERS]

What happens when you have 2 man inside an isolated house? NOTHING GOOD! NOTHING. GOOD. AT ALL!

Sinopsis:

2 lighthouse keepers are doing 4 weeks shift at an isolated and mysterious island in New England while fighting the desires to succumb into insanity. The tension between them grows as time passes, even though they can no longer decipher the time of day.

Photography, sound and edition:

BOI, WHERE DO I BEGIN!? OH I KNOW! THE CAMERA. The first thing that intrigue me about this movie is the black and white and that it´s shot in 1. 19:1 (For those who don´t know what that means, its the dimensions you see the movie, for example: a widescreen television in full hd would be 16:9). Seriously, this could possibly fool someone into thinking it´s an old movie, a literal movie from the 1930´s or 40´s. But NOPE! ITS FROM THIS CENTURY! BUT WAIT! THERE´S MORE!

SO! It was shot using a Panavision Millenium XL2, which it still uses film. Some people think movies are shot with digital cameras now days and that film is completely obsolete. Well, a couple movies have been shot with film and in color. Film can and does have a really good quality, a lot of directors still like to use film to shoot the movies and then transfer the movie to digital. Some directors digitalize the movie, edits it and then imprints it in film! A mexican cinematographer called Gerardo Barroso explain in a conference in 2012 at the FIC UABC (International Film Festival UABC) how he does that because he liked the film more than the digital due to certain details it gives, specially to the colors and general shots, one of the movies shoot completely in film was 2011 Los Ultimos Cristeros. 2011. Let that sink in. Back to The Lighthouse, this movie was film with Eastman Double X film, this type of film is only in black and white and they also used a custom filter to give the stylization you see here:

They also used a vintage , 1930´s Baltar Lens to give it more the old fashion movies style. This people went full on for the ¨super¨ old aesthetic.

It looks completely like a 40´s or 50´s movie, but the sound gives it away as a modern film. The shots used were also kind of vintage or old; lots of use of closeups, really open general shots of the lighthouse and the sea, several shots to fill in the spots. Those filler shots are actually used for a very bad trip Robert Pattinson´s character has, imagining having sex with a mermaid and being tangled into octopus and then coming out of conscious not realizing whether he is in the past or in the present.

The photography works really well in representation the absurdly, horrifying isolation the characters feel and the imagery becomes grotesque with the characters as they become even more aggressive and insane.

One thing that isn´t as appreciated or doesn´t seem as appreciated is the sound design. Not only the music, all the sounds. The deafening sound of the alarm, the motor that powers the light, the sound of the waves as they turn from calm and relaxing to roaring with fury as if god himself was punishing this men for existing. Every single sound is done with care, nothing was out of place nor excessive. You could say certain sounds become annoying like the seagulls or the alarm but that´s the point. You are experiencing the same annoyances as the characters, you have to know what (at least one of them) they are going through in that isolated place. There´s nothing! Nothing. No other people. Only this old farty man and the seagulls and the sea. And when you are trapped for 4 weeks only listening to that, it can drive anyone insane.

The editing is energetic, taking care of how every shot works for every moment. At the beginning there´s this unknowing feeling because we dont know the place, the character we follow (Robert Pattinson´s) is walking around, getting to know the place. We see it being a slow edit, it has slow moments, just getting used to the place. As time pass, we can see quicker shots, they dont stay in screen for a long time. There´s more cuts, quicker cuts. When you want a succumbing to insanity sensation of course you need the actors to act and the art design to be showing part of the story and the sound, but timing is important. if you leave a shot too long, it will mean something completely different. It was careful with each and every shot, and the timing was spot on, leaving just the appropriate amount of time to see what was going on and confuse the living shit out of everyone when the characters were tripping horribly.

Art design:

Every department in a movie is highly important, in this case it was crucial. A lot of investigation must have been done to get the proper clothes, specially if it was gonna be filmed in black and white. You CANNOT use whatever clothes in whatever color, you have to make sure those colors aren´t too dark or too bright, if they are too dark there will be sub-exposure, if they are too bright there will be over exposure. It had to be in a specific palette to make sure the film doesnt fuck up. Not only did they had to search what kind of clothes were used in 1890, but also what the building was made of, the boats, the materials, the food, what did they eat? what did they drink? in what did they drink? HOW DID THEY GO TO THE BATHROOM? Everything was thought out.

There were certain things like the make up or special effects that kind of confused me, it wasn´t until there was blood involve that caught my attention. In certain scenes the blood is in gray tones, but then when more blood is involve it turns into black, not dark gray, completely black. It strike me a lot.

SPOILERY, IT INVOLVES PART OF THE END, SKIP IT IF YOU WANT: there´s a part where William Dafoe´s characters turns or is viewed as a octopus and starts spewing ink. Robert Pattinson´s Character is covered in blood as he hits this character and it looked grayish, but when he goes into the lighthouse his face is completely black. I don´t know if it was on purpose, i think it was part of his delusion and hallucination. It popped too much and it was almost out of nowhere.

All and all, it was done amazingly, they did amazingly with the design of the house and the lighthouse. They dodge a bullet with the boat, i bet that would´ve been a lot more work to design or try to get. I mean, they still got a boat but they only did closeups and really limited view shots, there was no way you could see the boat completely and say if it was a modern model or an old model. The dirt and filthiness gross me out, i left the movie theater feeling filthy and gross, not only for how it looked but also for what I saw.

Writing and Characters:

As I said before, the film has the vintage, oldy but goody look and aesthetic. That´s really clear, but you have no idea what I meant. They really went full on the look and the writing. Hearing this two actors talk reminds me so much of an old movie. They talk too much! They spew a lot of sentences that sometimes don´t mean much? I mean, William Dafoe´s character talks like a sailor, because he is one and talks with riddles or just rhymes sometimes. At first glance they dont mean much, but if you paid attention to all he says it´s all foreshadowing for the cruel and awful finale.

The way they speak gets you back, it´s nothing you´ve heard before, by that I mean you would never hear anyone talk somehow like this. I dont think sailors talk like this anymore unless its for a gag. ¨Ya´hear?¨ ¨Ay, sir!¨ ¨YER A FILTHY BASTERD¨ ¨YER NOTHING BUT A DAWG¨. The accents gives a bit more of what era they are in, the writing itself does it though.

Man, oh man! My filthy pair of sexually charged man. This two are GONE. Or at least William Dafoe´s is. You have an old, obsess man who loves the light and refers to it as his wife; he spews about his life in the sea and eventually you start to think whether that man is just bark and no bite or bite with no bark. Did I mention this man is hella superstitious? Thing he tells the other guy? ¨You better not mess with the ´gulls. They are the spirits of sailors died at sea¨. He´s been alone for a while and his last second in command was described as dead and mad. HMMM.... Weird! And then you have the new second in command, new, responsible, hard working and has this mysterious vibe, something he is keeping to himself which is eating him from the inside out (if you get it, you get it).

There´s not much you can decipher from this two. They start as just two man in a lighthouse, one is the boss the other a subordinate, nothing more nothing less. Then they become a bit more friendly to each other, but its more of a job friendly type of thing since it is a job they have to do. Tension begins to boil up when they discover they are alone and isolate for who knows how long due to the boat of provisions not coming after the 4 weeks. This characters dont develop much in the story and that´s fine. Both are not exactly thrilling, it´s what they do that becomes interesting. William Dafoe´s character is shown as gross, apathetic, strict and superstitious as well as stubborn but becomes a little more sympathetic. Why? Because we then know Robert Pattinson´s character a not more. He is (probably) a murderer, he took the lighthouse job with other name because he was a wanted man? and he was escaping his old life. He was already deranged when he got there, he had more probabilities of killing anyone. And then we discovered, the old man had killed before! So non of them are likeable, can be charismatic but not good at all.

The plot is simple, the characters show emotions and certain 3Dimensionality but since they become even more of an asshole we kind of top caring about what happen to them. I guess the ending is more of delight to audience since we see them both get punish. Then again, I feel more bad about the old man than the new guy. He was an asshole in secret and ended up being an outed asshole.

Conclusion:

All and all, this movie is not for everyone. It has a nice pace and it´s interesting. The plot is simple, almost non-existent, what intrigues is the whole eeriness of the place and the situation that becomes super explosive really quick, it´s not a bad thing it´s more of a wake up alarm that hits you with a bat. It has quite the graphic imagery (sex, nudity, masturbation, animal killing in a VERY GRAPHIC AND HORRIFYING WAY, I HOPE IT WASN´T A REALLY ANIMAL MY GOD) that I dont think its for shock value, i think each have a reason to be and I understand it, it doesn´t mean it was shocking and disturbing though. Something I also didn´t expect was the chemistry between William Dafoe and Robert Pattinson, they work really well. Their acting was spot on and well done. Robert Pattinson has done other acting jobs, unfortunately some of those are from really bad movies which is a shame cause his acting is phenomenal. Thank god for this movie, not to discredit Dafoe but the one shining is Pattinson.

It is like a love letter to the film making from back in the old days, it could become a good stylization. A lot of movies with this old backgrounds are emerging and I dont see it as a bad thing though I can see it a bit of a problem. I feel it´s saying ¨The old days were better¨ but then again, what era hasn´t done that? Oh wait, the ones where vaccines didnt exist... In all seriousness, this could potentially inspire people to use the old gears or at least achieve this type of aesthetic to tell a story, it´s saying ¨IM NOT OBSOLETE YET, AND I WILL MAKE SURE OF IT¨ Film is an old material to use but it obviously shows it´s still kicking... for now.

I do recommend it if you like thrillers, it is really eery, it is full of tension and gives you a weird claustrophobic and isolated sensation.

NOTE: I´d say no minor should watch this, but I feel they would only want to watch it more, here i go though: If you are a minor, SERIOUSLY, DONT. it depicts graphic deaths, graphic explicit sex scenes and general grossness, they were from the 1890, don´t expect them to be or act clean. I walk out of the movie theater feeling gross and dirty, never felt that way before after watching a movie like this one.

Sincerely not delusional, TOD.

P.S: Watch kitten or dog videos to ease the utter disgust and disturb sensation of watching a man grab a bird from the throat and stomping it into a rock for at least 2 minutes straight.

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lemon-writings · 4 years

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Hamish Update: Hamish Pt. II

Genre: Adult literary fiction // Status: Rewriting // Progress: 53,548 words

Pt. I

I’m back with chapters IV-VI! Hoo boy, is it an event.

Chapter IV

Epitaph: “The things that go unsaid are often the things that eat at you--whether because you didn't get to have your say, or because the other person never got to hear you and really wanted to.”-Celeste Ng, Everything I Never Told You

This is the chapter where we meet Ofelia! She is one of my favorite characters to write for. She is beautiful and wonderful and a goddess and I adore her. (I’m reading myself for filth through the character of Ofelia because she is literally both my type and the woman I’ve always wanted to be.) Ofelia is the Queen of Roasts.

There are also some confrontations between Hamish and his mother, which I live for.

Excerpts:

First of all, I love Ofelia. Ofelia Bello, if you are free this Thursday, I’m free to hang out any time. Again, Ofelia Bello, if you are on Thursday, I’m free to hang out. Please.

She’s a goddess. Literal goddess.

She looked at me, eyes large and all-seeing, more like fire opals set into the bronze of her face than eyes. I felt as though she were seeing into the very essence of my being, judging me like a god. Ofelia was one of those people who would never be referred to as mortal. She was Prithvi; she was Freyja; she was Persephone. She was anything but mortal, made of fire, flowers, and knowledge.

And a savage. She’s That Bitch every moment of every day, even when she has her “perfect daughter and sister” persona on. And when she doesn’t? Well...

“You could fight back,” she said. “You could make yourself known, reveal who and what you are. Scream, I’m a person, not a thing.” Ofelia fixes the wisps of hair arranged around her face into a perfect frame.

“I’m not a fighter,” I said.

“No,” Ofelia said, watching me carefully. “You’re a runner.” She uncrossed her legs and stretched them out. “He doesn’t like fighters. That’s me. That’s my brother. He loves runners. If you can confront your issues, you won’t stay for long.”

Hamish confronting his mother when she dismisses his childhood trauma is honestly *chef’s kiss*. Writing my characters being savages is one of my favorite things to do, right after dramatic, floral descriptions of women.

(TW: referenced child abuse!)

“Ungrateful for what? My nightmares? My feelings of abandonment? My hatred of authority? Thank you so much for everything you’ve done for me, mother. Without yours and father’s amazing parenting, I would’ve grown up to be a well-adjusted adult.”

And the trademark Soft Moment of the chapter.

(TW: death mention!)

“Don’t die,” you whispered, hot and damp against my face. “Please don’t die.”

“I won’t,” I promised you, so open and honest it felt like I’d cracked open my ribs to expose my child’s-heart to you like a blossoming flower.

The tension between all the characters has increased so much in this chapter and tbh the anticipation is killing me, and I know what happens in this book.

Chapter V

Epitaph: “At parties I point to my body and say This is where love comes to die. Welcome, come in, make yourself at home. Everyone laughs, they think I’m joking.”--Warsan Shire, “The House”

This chapter begins with Hamish and Horacio in an interview about their “relationship”. There’s something lovely about the way that Horacio and Hamish talk about each other, even if it is built on half-truths. Then we’re introduced to Leon, Ofelia’s brother, and oh boy. Oh boy. Is that a wild ride.

This is also the chapter where Hamish begins planning how he’s going to get Claude to confess to the murder, via a PowerPoint presentation. Yes. Yes, good.

Excerpts:

The first is when Horacio is asked when he knew he was in love with Hamish. It’s just... soft. As a former theatre kid, this really is the dream.

“No,” I said, tearing my eyes from you. “We were in Theatre 101 together, and he was reading Doctor Faustus and playing all the parts. He was jumping around and doing different voices, being really dramatic and having the time of his life. It was the first time I’d seen him act young instead of like a wistful old man.”

I didn’t tell her that you’d been wearing a black hoodie with the moon phases printed on it, the strings following you as you leaped from place to place, sticking your tongue out when you fumbled a line, your tongue stud glittering in the lights. It felt too intimate to share with the world. When I saw you in the lights, being a goofy young man for even just a moment, in your purest state of adorable in your glee, my heart expanded well past the confines of my too-tight ribcage.

Here’s Horacio’s mention of his past ex-boyfriends, because he can hardly believe that he is in a semi-functional relationship with anyone, even if it’s fake.

(TW: sex and abuse!)

It was simple symbiosis: I was a parasite, and they were the hosts, defending themselves against me with violence. I don’t think any of them ever loved me, just loved using me while I would use them, trying to nibble on their scraps of affection between beatings and the rough sex.

Leon is... a lot. He’s sort of obsessed with masculinity, like someone who watched Fight Club without really realizing it’s meant to be satire and wants to punch whoever talks shit about him.

Leon was one of those guys who either believed he was better than you or you weren’t worth his time. Sometimes, in his more complex moments, he would believe both at once; at his most simplistic, he would believe neither.

The further I go in this work, the more difficult it gets to pick excerpts!

Chapter VI

Epitaph: “Even still, we run. We have not reached our average of 57.92 years without knowing that you run through it, and it hurts and you run through it some more, and if it hurts worse, you run through it even more, and when you finish, you will have broken through. In the end, when you are done, and stretching, and your heartbeat slows, and your sweat dries, if you've run through the hard part, you will remember no pain.”--Lauren Groff, The Monsters of Templeton

Hamish gives the presentation. It goes about as well as you can assume. Now that Genoveva and Claude know he’s onto them... it’s game time. There is so much plot that happens in this chapter that I can’t really mention much of it, other than this being the point where the work goes from a slow-building horror to more of a thriller. It’s a major turning point and climax. Whoo!

Also, Ofelia and Horacio bond, which is awesome! I love the dynamic between them. They have the sort of friendship where you can tell that they really enjoy each other and their company.

Excerpts:

Most of these are from the portion where Ofelia and Horacio are talking in the woods because 1.) it’s the least-spoilery part of this chapter and 2.) their friendship is one of the most light-hearted parts of this work. Please, allow me to indulge.

Ofelia isn’t necessarily a “bean”, but she’s still babey. I adore her.

Ofelia gave me a mysterious look, full of night sky and brilliance, then added a crescent of a smile. She began climbing, one foot and then the other, effortlessly lifting herself up the branches as if she was built to do nothing but ascend trees, her tights protecting her modesty from me as I struggled up after her, unused to the climb.

And then Ofelia describes a dream of mine every wlw: going a group of young women and becoming the modern Sappho.

“I think I’ll buy a house somewhere by the ocean. Live with a group of girls who love books and pictures. Become my own Sappho, create my own Lesbos.”

Then there’s this astute observation from Horacio about how Hamish views himself. Hamish doesn’t have a very good self-image. At all. Then again, neither does Horacio.

You’d make yourself into an object sometimes, a cyclone of emotions and pain, held together by frozen flesh and string.

So that just about wraps up these chapters. IV-VI really is the most intense part of this work, and writing it is is just as intense as the chapters themselves.

Songs:

The music is mostly what I’ve been listening to while editing this post, since I already wrote these chapters, but they’re still jams

Your Love (Deja Vu) - Glass Animals

In the Heat of the Moment - Noel Gallagher’s High Flying Birds

Blood In the Cut - Seattle Sessions - K.Flay

Peach Scone - Hobo Johnson

That’s all for now! Part III will contain the falling action/the part where it gets Real.

Tell me if you’d like to be added to the tag list! :)

#wip: hamish #writing update #writing project #amwriting #writeblr #tw: abuse #tw: death mention #tw: sex #i adore Ofelia so much #and Horacio #these characters are terrible awful people. i love them so much

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shadowsong26fic · 4 years

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Fanfic ask: 1, 5, 11, 14 for Precipice and any other fic you feel like sharing for, 18, 27, 33, 34, 38, 41, 44, 49 (sorry for asking so many, I just really like these questions!)

Hoo boy! This’ll be fun :D

::cracks knuckles::

1) How old were you when you first starting writing fanfiction?

Ten or eleven, when I first figured out it was a Thing. (Somewhere, buried in my boxes of Old Papers, there is baby!shadowsong’s attempt at writing something involving Padme turning up at Yavin but with the serial numbers very badly filed off, before I learned it was possible to just...write fanfic, lol.

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

Oh, Lord, why must you do this to me. XD

I mean, I like all of them for different reasons? Writing Precipice is almost like coming home, I’ve been living in that AU for so long; The Devoted was delightfully self-indulgent and a fun exercise in worldbuilding and I do plan to put more in that AU at some point, I swear; These Three Remain also had some super self-indulgent bits and some sweet cuddly fluffy bits and yep; Distaff is so much fun to work with Anakin’s characterization and her (in said fic) relationship with Padme; I have some WIPs that I’m super excited to get out...even going back to old fandoms, HoTM and Cartography!Verse and The Promises of Angels and Serenissima (ish; we were posting it as a series of vignettes rather than one long novel) and For Sorrow Sung and all my AtLA fic, and...

...yeah, I’m bad at picking favorites XD

11) Have you ever amended a story due to criticisms you’ve received after posting it?

Not really? I’ve added extra notes and when I was a baby in the LOTR fandom I actually took a fic down because I got pounced on by a Canon Purist, but I...don’t usually change what I do have planned out in response to criticism? Sometimes I add in some filler/explanation, or comments inspire me to add thing, but...

I don’t plan things out in a whole lot of detail, but I do usually have a few Major Plot Points worked out, and I tend not to change them because criticism. I usually don’t go back and edit, either.

14) How did you come up with the title for the xxx? - You can ask about multiple stories.

I think I actually talked about this in detail last time I did a similar meme to this...aha, here we go: https://shadowsong26fic.tumblr.com/post/186756818127/a-and-i-for-fic-ask

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

Yep, a few. Mostly, I abandon WIPs because I drifted away or otherwise left the fandom (i.e., most of my SPN fic), or otherwise got stuck on a plot point (For Sorrow Sung, which I might rewrite, I got stuck on because I wasn’t sure how to write Roslin; Distaff has stalled because I have to do a Monster chapter next because I did some things out of order; etc., though I actually do intend to get back to Distaff at some point, and am considering rewriting For Sorrow Sung or getting back to some of my other BSG fic...). ...on that note, there are several Stalled WIPs that I don’t consider abandoned, I just get sidetracked by other things even if I intend to get back to them At Some Point (Auxiliaries, Masks, a few others.)

Also, a bunch of miscellaneous self-indulgent things that I never really intended to share outside a small circle of friends that I wander away from when my attention gets caught by a similar shiny self-indulgent thing I don’t really intend to share outside a small circle of friends...

27) Do you make a general outline for your stories or do you just go with the flow?

Moooostly go with the flow. Then again, I don’t formally outline most things, but I generally have an Idea of the Main Plot Points I’m working towards? But those are usually Super Major Things (i.e., with Precipice, when I was going into it, I had most of Arc 1 planned out ahead of time; I knew when and how Lavinia was going to be introduced; I knew most of how Rex got brought in and at least when Ahsoka came in; I knew Ahsoka was going to be Leia’s primary teacher; I knew when and how Specter was going to die; I knew that the reunion (and the attempt to kidnap Lavinia) were going to happen (though actually I was originally planning for Saw to be behind said kidnapping before realizing that didn’t make sense); I knew when Infernalis was going to be introduced and then die; and then some Spoilery Stuff for the next several arcs :)

So, yeah. I usually have a general notion of where things are going (...most of the time; I mentioned Distaff above, and I’m waffling on how I want things to end for that one...) but a loooooot of white space and things are in flux along the way.

33) What’s the biggest compliment you’ve gotten?

Honestly, probably the one I kept in my inbox to reread the most often was on The Promises of Angels--I got a very long comment about the things I’d done with both the focal character and other side characters and the way I’d handled the established lore (and places where canon had fallen short, re: ex-vessels and so on), and then saying they were going to rec it to other people. I’ve gotten other very nice comments since then, (Precipice gets a lot of comments, some of which are lovely, some of which are infuriating), but I think the reason that one sticks with me is because I worked on that fic for so long, and it was a 100k gen epic about a tertiary character who (at the time) had been dead for five seasons. So, a very niche-appeal fic, especially in a fandom that tends to be very shipping-focused, so the fact that it had that much appeal outside of my own brain meant a lot.

(Also, just...the fact that so many people have read and liked Precipice means a whole lot to me????? Was not expecting that for a long wandering genfic epic, lol. ...again, because the fandom I was most active in prior to that is very ship-focused; Star Wars tends to be more gen-friendly, at least that’s been my experience thus far.)

34) What’s the harshest criticism you’ve gotten?

Maybe not the harshest overall I’ve ever gotten, but I mentioned earlier that I took down one LOTR fic because a Canon Purist complained about it to me--I mean, it might not have actually been that mean if I were to get it now that I have a thicker skin, but I was Little Shadowsong at that point and it hurt enough for me to take the fic down, and it does kind of linger in the back of my mind as my Worst Comment Experience.

38) If you could collab with any other writer on here, who would it be? (Perhaps this question will inspire some collabs!) If you’re shy, don’t tag the blog, just name it.

...to be honest, I don’t do a lot of collaborations overall, and most of the ones I do tend to be with people I’ve been friends with/RP’d with for a Long Time.

That being said, I’m possibly open to trying? Right now I have a lot on my plate, both fic and IRL wise, over the next couple months, but if anyone’s interested, hit me up and we’ll see if we can work together!

41) What’s you favourite minor character you’ve written?

In Star Wars? Probably Bo-Katan. I really do wanna finish/start posting our faces like a mirror before the Mandalore Arc actually airs (not that I care about jossing so much, but it’d be nice to Officially lock my canon there so I can point to it if anyone does the whole ‘but canon says!’ thing at me, lol). Also, I love writing Beru, at least the way I write her in Precipice.

If we expand to other fandoms...Nick in SPN, at least before canon brought him back wrong; for BSG...well, most of the ‘minor’ characters I like are really secondary and/or Major in one arc or two--i.e., D’Anna, Gaeta, Ellen Tigh is a lot of fun; in AtLA, I personally mostly wrote major characters and OCs (though some of those were...people who had definitely Existed, but were not named or explored in canon--i.e., Lu Ten’s mother), but my primary RP/writing partner and I worked a lot with Haru and Song and Teo and the Dai Li, among others...but said partner mostly handled them.

44) What is the last line you wrote?

((With an additional line for context; also this is subject to change.))

“True,” Sabe said. “...are you sure you’re ready for this?”

“No,” Padme admitted, after a moment’s thought. “But I think if I wait much longer, I’ll...I’ll either start climbing the walls until I run out and do something righteous and half-planned and stupid, or I’ll...or I’ll never be able to figure how to start, and I’ll just...”

49) Can you remember the first fic you read? What was it about?

I cannot, sadly. But it would’ve been 15-20 years ago, and probably either Star Wars or Harry Potter. Maybe Dragonlance or DBZ or Sailor Moon.

Ask me a fanfic writer question!

#asked #answered #dedicatedfollower467

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apatheticaria · 4 years

Text

my spoilery thoughts on the last of us part ii

i apologize in advance for this super long post that you have to scroll past because i don’t know how to do the “keep reading” option thing

the only reason i’m writing this out is because i’m literally going insane from not being able to talk about my feelings for this game to anyone since no one i know actually cares lmao so this is mainly just for myself and anyone who wants to read this

the intro:

as i played through this game, i also watched a few playthroughs up until the point where i stopped to take a break. this was a game i couldn’t binge just because it’s so heavy and intense and sometimes you just gotta step away and take a breather

one of the playthroughs i followed along with was jacksepticeye’s and at the end he gave his review of the game like he normally does. i didn’t completely agree with everything he said, but for the most part i thought what he said lined up pretty well with my own opinion.

in particular, one thing that stood out to me was when he said that the introduction to this game shouldn’t have been Joel talking to Tommy about what he did at the end of the first game, but rather the whole flashback of Ellie’s birthday at the museum. then at “one” during the countdown to liftoff, the screen should’ve went black and fast forwarded to four-years-older Ellie opening her eyes in her home in Jackson (idk if i’m explaining this well, but Jack’s editor, Robin, edits this together and really sold it to me. if you wanna see it, go to the last part of Jack’s playthrough and look for it towards the last 30 minutes). i think this would have given us the time i think we all needed with Joel before he died and all the following flashbacks would be more focused on how/why Joel and Ellie’s relationship turned so distant - or hostile on Ellie’s part - and could’ve helped the pacing a bit.

Joel’s death:

potentially an unpopular opinion? but i actually like how Joel died. or uh lemme rephrase, i like the way they wrote his death. in this world of violence, hate, and brutality (actually doesn’t sound too off from our world but ahem moving on), i think the way he died was realistic, especially since he doomed all of humanity by saving Ellie in Part I. it just makes a lot of sense that someone would go after him and hunt him down

from the moment Abby and Owen stood over Jackson from the cliff, i was thinking: well theyre gonna kill Joel and since we’re gonna probably be playing as this girl for some (emphasis on some) of the game, they’re gonna go hard on the grey area of perspective in terms of revenge. which i was super on board with, but we’ll get back to that

when this game was first advertised, i didn’t know how i felt about a revenge story. it’s been told so many times and i’m never as hell-bent on revenge as much as the character is because it never feels warranted enough. that is, until i saw Joel die. watching Ellie pinned to the floor with a perfect view of his body, his face, beat to shit as she screams and begs for Abby to stop? haha that’s fucked Naughty Dog, thanks. but i do appreciate that they were able to make me just as mad as Ellie because of just how brutal his death was and how much i care, cared, about that character. no story has ever made me so incredibly enraged to the point i was with the main character full-stop to just destroy the perpetrator and take revenge. that’s why i think the way Joel dies is perfectly done. the fact that that cutscene is so horrible to watch for so many reasons just proves that it does it’s job.

Ellie’s half:

i actually don’t have too much to say about Ellie’s half of the story. this was what i both expected and wanted from the game, the whole game. while i can’t say i was having “fun”, because this isn’t really a fun game to play, you know what i mean when i say that this part was fun to play and follow.

side note: Naughty Dog’s improvement of your NPC buddy is so good, Dina and Jesse were both actually helpful, still not perfect, but also they’re not supposed to do all the work for you. i think the added layer that they could also get caught/seen and alert the enemy was completely unexpected and such a good addition to the gameplay (ofc this goes for Lev as well).

throughout the whole story, there’s kinda a problem with the pacing, and i know i’m not the first person to say that. however, i think the only big pacing issue i had with Ellie’s perspective was that kinda weird attempt of an open world map that they did with the gates. it felt a little unnecessary since i, and most other people, are playing for the story, not an open world with various side quest-like things. i missed the guitar cutscene with Ellie playing the guitar and singing to Dina (which kinda sucks, but i obviously just watched it after) because i just wanted to get back to the story rather than explore a large area. it was an attempt at something different so i won’t fault the game for that too much, but also stay in your lane lol so that section was a bit of a miss for me personally. i really liked the rest of it though, it had me engaged the whole time

Abby’s half:

ok. i have a lot to say about this half of the game since this is where most the problems occur.

first, let me preface this by saying that i don’t hate Abby. as i said, from the very beginning i knew she was going to have a, not justifiable, but an understandable reason for murdering Joel and that the game was going to be about seeing two sides to the same story. except, at the same time, i came here for Ellie, so why am i playing as this heterosexual? im mostly kidding. but fr i didn’t need the entire half of the game trying to get me to sympathize with Abby. i really didn’t need the message to be so spelt out for me, i got it from the moment i realized she was going to kill a favorite character.

i think my main gripe with the way they told this story is the way they formatted it. this story has all the elements to be amazing, but the execution just lacked the...finesse? idk if that’s the right word.

rather than splitting up the game into two halves, they could/should have integrated Abby’s story into Ellie’s so that when we cut from Abby holding the gun at Ellie in the theater to suddenly Abby as a young girl, it won’t feel so jarring when we have to start all over again with the upgrades and the timeline.

i really liked how we switched between them in the very beginning so why couldn’t that have just continued? in a book with multiple povs, the author often switches back and forth between every or every few chapters. you never see a book that starts with one perspective, then at the climax you have to start all over again from the other. at least, i’ve never seen this in any books i’ve read and i’ve read a lot ngl

maybe they forced us to stick with Abby for so long because if we’re forced to play as her, then we’re forced to get invested into her story. while this makes sense, it also really degraded at my enthusiasm for the game. it took me so long to just give up on the idea that we would be going back to Ellie relatively soon and when i did actually realize that was what was happening i was really disappointed.

instead of separating their stories, i would’ve liked to have Abby maybe one step behind Ellie the whole time so that while we play we’re just anticipating when Abby will finally catch up and it builds to this whole thing. instead, when we actually got to the point where everything was supposed to go down, we’re hit with whiplash and back to the very beginning with tutorials?? like did they just expect us to forget how to play since we switched characters?

i’m thinking, after Ellie and Dina jump over the barbed wire that explodes and Ellie’s knocked out, we could have switched over to Abby waking up in the WLF stadium. after Abby sneaks out of the stadium and you have that interaction with Jordan where he mentions Leah at the tv station, then we go back to Ellie waking up and tied to the table and we see Ellie kill Jordan.

after this i think Abby should have met Lev and Yara way sooner because i barely even remember what happened before Abby was caught by the seraphites it was so boring. so she gets caught by the seraphites AFTER we meet them through Ellie being shot through the shoulder (i still want to get all the first impressions of new stuff with Ellie because then it still makes her feel like the main character) and we meet the siblings and blahblahblah.

as a follow up, after Ellie kills Nora, which by the way, Ellie’s facial expressions are just so good with the red light while she’s just beating Nora to death? wow that entire interaction was so well done. anyway, after Ellie kills Nora, and Ellie gets back to the theater and the scene ends with her and Dina hugging, then we would switch to that whole section with Abby and Lev traveling to the hospital to get the meds and it would be cool if on her way in, Nora helps Abby and then on her way out, we run into a door we have trouble opening so we push and when it opens, Nora’s beaten up body is right there.

you get the gist. Abby’s story was barely intertwined with Ellie’s until the very end where she finds Owen and Mel dead. she doesn’t know that literally everyone else, except Leah, is dead too. i feel like that would’ve made the impact of Abby and Ellie’s fight at the theater more effective. affective? whatever i’m not an english nerd

i also think we should have gotten the flashback with Abby’s dad a little later when we’re expected to understand her character a bit more.

overall, i’m not mad about getting Abby’s side of the story, but i am mad that the way it was told felt so disconnected from Ellie. we could still get that whole arc of Abby going to the island to get Lev, she can still get her own story apart from Ellie, but she needed to have more of a interaction with Ellie’s actions.

Abby vs. Ellie, Abby’s pov:

i absolutely hate this fight. i really hate the way it was written and the way it happened. i get that the game is trying to give us Abby’s perspective and to show that in her point of view, Ellie is the villain in this story.

except, AGAIN, i don’t need this spoon fed to me!!! i KNOW that the world isn’t black and white and that people’s perspectives are different, but also? i don’t really care. both characters have gone through shit and both have done shitty things. neither of them are innocent, no one in this world is innocent (hence why i really dislike Mel, but that’s not really relevant), so it really comes down to which character you value more. in my - and most other people’s - case, it’s Ellie. i know the whole point of this fight is to make the player uncomfortable, but i wasn’t just uncomfortable, it made me legitimately start to dislike this game (spoiler for the end of this stupid-long review: i don’t completely dislike it)

the game really emphasizes that this is Abby’s story as much as it is Ellie’s and i get that, but this fight did not need to happen the way it did and the game didn’t need to be even longer after this. a lot of people say that we played from Abby’s perspective because Ellie would have killed Abby and that would be that (and she did, by the way, i relished watching Ellie get her revenge because while i don’t hate Abby, it was still so satisfying even if that wasn’t how the game wanted me to play). however however however, Abby wouldn’t have showed mercy either. she was absolutely going to kill Ellie if Dina hadn’t intervened then she was going to kill Dina if Lev hadn’t intervened.

here’s how i wouldve wanted it to go: we go back to Ellie’s perspective once Abby has the gun pointed at Ellie in the lobby and during their fight, Ellie would get the upper hand because she has weapons and shit (let’s be honest, Ellie would not win in hand-to-hand combat with fully-healthy Abby, we saw that first hand). Lev would try to jump in, but then Dina would disarm him and prevent him from escaping her grasp. then eventually Ellie would have the barrel of the shotgun pointed at Abby’s face and she would hear Lev tell her to please stop don’t kill her and Ellie would listen because the same exact thing happened to her (we could get a short flashback or something for more emotions, idk). so instead of killing Abby, Ellie would knock her out and her and Dina would leave and Lev would run to Abby’s unconscious body. this would end that cycle of revenge and because Abby has something more important to her than revenge (Lev), they would move on.

the ending:

if the game went how i just imagined, we probably wouldn’t get an ending that’s as depressing and open ended as it is, but i’m sure Neil and his team could figure something out, such as Ellie still has to deal with PTSD and Tommy’s really pissed at them and Ellie still looses her two fingers. so we get that little domestic sequence and the PTSD flashback and Tommy coming with his eye missing and showing the map. he leaves and when Ellie is about to leave in the middle of the night, Dina convinces her this time to stay and the next day Ellie tries to play the guitar one last time before giving up since she doesn’t have her fingers (i still want that last heartbreaking flashback, that one fucked me up i love it) and she goes out to leave it somewhere in the woods with it all ending with her walking away from the guitar that Joel gave her to symbolize her letting him go. idk man something like that, still not that open ended, but i’m just talking out of my ass rn

anyway that’s not how it went so we’ll stick to reality.

an open ending isn’t supposed to be unsatisfying, because that’s what this ending was. Part I does an open ending perfectly as we still get closure even though we don’t know exactly how things go afterwards (until now obviously).

after playing from Abby’s perspective for so goddamn long, it was weird to play as Ellie again, even while it was also a relief, and that makes me really sad. in the end, i did feel bad for Abby when she was literally left to starve and “hang” (but again i didn’t need 15+ hours in order to feel basic sympathy).

from the way they wrote the story, i knew Ellie wasn’t going to let it go and she was going to leave Dina and JJ. it made sense and i don’t think it was out of character for her, but the fact they did that in the first place and that Abby was the one to let go first? Abby got her revenge, she killed Joel, but Ellie never got that closure so of course she was going to go after Abby.

in the very end, Ellie is left with no one and Abby still has Lev and a group of fireflies to run to. Ellie’s biggest fear was being alone as she said in the first game, but that’s exactly what she’s left with. yeah life is unfair and i do like that the consequences feel real in this story, but i don’t think Ellie deserved to be done so damn dirty while Abby is living her best life. sure all of Abby’s friends were murdered because of Ellie and Dina leaving is Ellie’s own fault and i don’t blame Dina, but i mean we have no idea what happens to Ellie after this, where she goes. it at least feels like she’s on the road to eventually being relatively okay, as okay as you can be in this world.

i can’t completely articulate how i feel about this ending, even after three days having finished playing. all i do know is that while it’s realistic how Ellie’s story ended, i would’ve liked for Abby to get the same treatment. for her to not actually find the fireflies through the radio and escape from the Rattlers only to have no where to go so that, just like Ellie, revenge cost her everything and we don’t know where she went after.

maybe because Abby’s story was pretty much wrapped up and Ellie’s wasn’t, they’re planning for a trilogy, but i guess we’ll see.

the tldr;

this game has all the elements it needed to be amazing overall imo, i just wish they were all utilized Better. the reason it’s so hard to figure out how i feel about this game is because it has so much potential that just never came through and i’m really jealous of all the people who were blown away by this story. it’s still a good game though, but a 7/10 seems too high and 6/10 seems to low. ig it’s a 6.5/10 for me.

thanks for reading if you made it this far

#tlou2 #tlouii #the last of us #the last of us part ii #the last of us part 2 #i just love ellie a lot #i dont think abby is better than ellie for letting go because everyones an asshole #im scared of them making a part three because they would end up killing ellie somehow #this game fucked me up and im sorry if you actually read all my rambling but i appreciate you #also joel is not a bad person he’s just traumatized from losing his daughter leave him ALONE he’s HUMAN #the last of us part ii spoilers #tlou2 spoilers

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nardaviel · 7 years

Note

For the fanfiction meme: 1, 8, 18, 26, 27, 28, 39, 46, 50, 51. :D

fanfiction questions meme

THANK U MYST !!!!!!! ive hit my 400-word minimum for today so im taking a break

this is lots of questions tho so heres a readmore but will it show up on my blog… no one knows……… how do i fix this problem…………… when will i fix it instead of just complaining about it all the time

1. What was the first fandom you got involved in?

harry potter. i have extremely, extremely vague memories of reading a sailor moon usagi/mamoru smut fic as like an 11-year-old before then, but really, the first fandom i got into was harry potter

8. How did you get involved in your latest fandom?

answered

18. What ship have you written the most about?

uhhhhhhh. probably kinatsuen. i didnt write much fanfic before boueibu so its definitely a boueibu ship. but ill go look

ok here are the word count totals rn, including char & char as well as char/char:

enkin 14754enatsu 14829kinatsu 16420ibukinatsuen 16503kinatsuen 54897

not counted “i fear no fate(for you are my fate,my sweet)”, 10506 words divided up among kinatsu, enkin, kinatsuen, and maybe like 200 words max of enatsu, but i wasnt gonna go in and get word counts for all 40 drabbles because i cbacounted twice despicable objects (2791), path to the stars (4758), warmth (7205) are all included in both the enkin and kinatsuen totals

yeah … there was no way kinatsuen could have lost. spindle has several thousand more words than all the kinatsu and ibukinatsuen combined. im kind of amused at how ive written one (1) ibukinatsuen fic but it still has the second highest word count

i guess you could also count in terms of fics though in which case ibukinatsuen would lose but kinatsuen would still win:

Kinugawa Atsushi/Kusatsu Kinshirou/Yufuin En (6)Kinugawa Atsushi/Kusatsu Kinshirou (5)Kusatsu Kinshirou/Yufuin En / Kusatsu Kinshirou & Yufuin En (4)Kinugawa Atsushi/Yufuin En / Kinugawa Atsushi & Yufuin En (4)Arima Ibushi/Kinugawa Atsushi/Kusatsu Kinshirou/Yufuin En (1)

this answer is way longer than necessary but i got interested ljkasdf

26. How do you come up with your fanfic titles?

i go to the post window on ao3 and realize that my scrivener doc is still titled “tower au” or “demon en” or whatever, and i cry. then i desperately try to think of something thematically appropriate and hopefully pretty. usually during this process i drift further and further away from whats in the fic and the ideas become more and more tenuously connected (e.g. spindle, which is very appropriate to the fic but only in an extremely symbolic, abstracted way) but by this point im frustrated so i just go with it anyway. or, very occasionally, a title presents itself to me from the text of the fic (grace, despicable objects).

i also make vashti help me im probably really annoying about it

27. What do you hate more: Coming up with titles or writing summaries?

BOTH ………………… IT IS THE WORST PART ABOUT FICWRITING because its fucken impossible and also because by that point the fic is done! and im excited to post it!! or maybe just excited to not have to stress about it anymore. but i cant post it because i have to think of ONE WORD to encapsulate the fic and then like THREE SENTENCES to encapsulate it in a different way and both of them have to be interesting but not spoilery and how tf do you do that and my brain is fried from editing and asjl;dkfasdf. honestly though i hate them both equally

28. If someone were to draw a piece of fanart for your story, which story would it be and what would the picture be of?

whatever they wanted i suppose?? i would be like :OOOOO no matter what tbh

but like if i was commissioning someone and could get whatever i wanted …… idk. maybe something from spindle but my image of ens uniform is very much based on someones art of a male homura so if i was specific about what it looked like, that would be stealing someones ideas, but if not, it wouldnt look right to me ???? i wouldnt care if the fanart was free but if i was commissioning i would want to have more say in what i got ;;

so um. not spindle. possibly a scene from the merman au, with merman en and merman kinshirou saving unconscious human prince atsushi from the shipwreck and bickering the whole time lmaooo “this is the worst idea youve ever had en” “you say that all the time” “each idea is worse than the last!!” “you can always go back home” “ugh ugh ugh just keep moving” meanwhile atsushi dazedly thinks he hears beautiful voices but they sound really annoyed with each other which is not quite in keeping with stories hes heard of sirens but then he passes out again

…….. yeah thatd be the basis for my commission. that scene

39. What is you greatest strength as a writer?

fuck idk. um. …i want to say dialogue but i feel like sometimes people in my fics talk for too long because i like writing it too much LMAO and i want to say angsty introspection but i have the same problem there. maybe i just think im best at those things bc theyre the things that come easiest to me?? and i think my characterization tends to be solid but everyone thinks that, right… no one writes poor characterization on purpose, do they… unless they have some other reason i guess. this question is smth for my readers to answer for themselves!!!! bc i dont know

46. If someone was to read one of your fanfics, which fic would you recommend to them and why?

well i mean .. it would depend on who was asking. i dont really know how to answer this bc i dont know this hypothetical someones likes and dislikes??? if it was an enkin shipper who liked pain, path to the stars. if it was an enatsu shipper who didnt want sad things in boueibu (im looking at u nicole), illuminations. if it was someone who would read any pairing but didnt have lots of time to read, i would edit i want no world(for beautiful you are my world,my true) as ive been meaning to do and then tell them to read that. and so on. i really dont mean this as an evasive answer ;aljksdf but um if someone said “i like all pairings! i like all genres! i have plenty of time! i dont mind WIPs!” then i would rec veil or spindle bc im proudest of them and i think theyre good and i want more readers for my plotty multichaptered stuff

50. How did you get into reading and/or writing fanfiction?

honestly …. i have no idea how i got into reading fanfiction. literally no idea. i guess i was just poking around the internet as an 11yo and randomly found some and thought it was cool

and i guess writing was a natural extension of reading? ive been writing since before i could physically write. i would make up poems in the car as a smol smol child. i have no memories of this but my parents do bc they were like “wtf” and yeah anyway it continued from there although i like to think im better now than i was when i was like 8. and like. my first fanfiction was really bad. it was really bad yall. but i got what i now realize were the kindest, most encouraging reviews (on ff.net. i still have a hard time remembering that ao3 has “comments” and not “reviews” asdjkf) the same way my parents and teachers encouraged my often very awful writing over the years so !!! my confidence in my writing is fragile but i have confidence sometimes and its bc ppl were so nice to me when i was awful and that gave me a chance to become less awful. but that doesnt have much to do with the question im just really grateful whenever i think about it. i got into writing fanfiction bc i was already a writer basically

51. Rant or Gush about one thing you love or hate in the world of fanfiction! Go!

answered

#asks #mystofthestars #i talk so much holy shit #i blame my dad #its like literally impossible for him to answer a question w/o talking for 5 minutes #''so you guys didnt go hiking today'' i said once #and he went on for like no lie 15 minutes and told me among other things the life story of his new friend #and in the end he said ''so all that is to say.. we didnt go''#thanks dad #i might have told this story before but its just such a classic example of dad being dad #ANYWAY THANK U MYST #sorry for the tl;dr ;;#ask meme

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katesficnotes · 5 years

Text

For the ask: 1, 3 & 15 for Wild for to Hold!

1: What inspired you to write the fic this way?

I did toy with writing this other ways!!

For a time, I thought of pursuing an epistolary approach to the story (since, for most of it, there’re lots of ppl away from one another, etc.), but I found 1) I wanted to delve into the characters’ minds in ways they might not write down 2) I’m really frickin lazy hahaha and for whatever reason this more standard approach is easier for me - esp bc I can feel a little more content w myself in writing more modernized dialogue rather than letters: since I’ve never heard a Tudor person speak to me, I can pretend its ok accuracy-wise, whereas I can read Tudor letters and KNOW they don’t sound like that hahaha I’m a perfectionist and I torture myself w these weird details that I fully realize matter to no one else hahaha But I’m ultimately glad I didn’t do that. I don’t think the story would’ve flowed as well since, that way, you’re always removed from the action ++ you know certain things: for instance, whoever’s writing the letter had enough time to experience said event AND write it down, so they’re probably alive, etc.

The other thing I thought of doing - and almost did!! - was writing it in present tense. Actually, a lot of the earlier chapters I initially wrote in present tense and then went back to edit into past tense. I actually sometimes wish I had stuck with the present tense for certain scenes - for others I’m glad I didn’t. I write differently, depending on the tense in which I’m writing idk hahaha which works better for some things than others.

I did also struggle with where to begin the story, proper! I thought about following the journeys of the entire Tudor family during their exile and of showcasing the transition from rebel!Perkin to king!Richard and his consolidation of power, regal priorities, etc. As you can see, the story is way long enough withOUT all of that so that was the primary reason for cutting it and going with the time-jump to the Tudor bros arriving in France hahaha

3: What’s your favorite line of narration?

WOW!! Truth be told, I’ve written 201,564 words of this fic and probs remember a whole fifteen of them and most of that’s dialogue hahaha ;DDDD But I mean...I won’t lie to you...almost every chapter I have some lil nugget I’m quite proud of hahaha and if its not too spoilery for the given chapter, that’s generally what I put in the chapter description hahaha so reading those will give you a collection of my favorite quotes, for the most part, but yeah!!

So I LOVE this question bc it has me analyzing my own writing which is GREAT bc I’m gonna get to the editing segment of this project soon so I need to be up for that!!!!!!! Again, not to toot my own horn hahaha but I do have a number of narration quotes I quite enjoy - I mean, there’re nearly 100 chapters!! which is nuts!! so I’m glad I feel that way hahah - so I narrowed it down to my more recent chapters to find a quote and here it is!!

Her husbands all were dead and now, so was she, dead and buried and already replaced. It seemed so strange and so predictable: she’d replaced her own husbands again and again and another time yet: now it was her time to be covered over and forgotten. This, too, was her duty: to give way to another woman…even one born from so small an estate as the one that was coming. Yes, Anne would replace Catherine as Catherine once had replaced Elizabeth and on and on and on it went. Perhaps Elizabeth was right. Perhaps, even now, they all lived only in the memories of those who once had known them.

Which...small ironies bc we know, historically CoA DID give way to Anne Boleyn as Queen of England but, given the v different circumstances, seeing it in opposition of (many things hahah including) her duty, she wouldn’t relent whereas here it is in alignment with (many things including) her duty, so she ~does. I try, w this fic, always to be mindful of what really did happen, even while building a different sequence of events.

15: What did you learn from writing this fic?

So much!!!!! I’ve just...learned so, so much! For one, keeping to a v strict routine and schedule (I MUST have a chapter by midnight on Saturdays each week unless I have a very good reason why not - such reasons being limited to v srs situations such as deaths in the family, etc) works really well for me!! Things like, powering through writer’s block is the only way to get shit done!! Things like...writing about the real stuff can ultimately be super healing even when it hurts, hurts, hurts!! Things like: I am actually capable of finishing a book. I’m not there yet, but I can see the finish line, I can almost touch it, it’s so close (now, watch, it’ll take me two years to write the ending jk jk ;DDDD) And that’s not even counting alllllll the research I’ve done for this! I mean, not to toot my own horn here, but I knew a LOT of things going into this, particularly about Henry and Anne, but woW will I come out of it knowing things esp about Perkin Warbeck!! The whole thing has just been such a ride, really, I’m not gonna know what to do with myself when it’s over!! ;DDDD

#wfth

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